The interior of the house was as aggressively modern and angular as the outside—mostly leather, metal, glass, cold colors, white oak floors.
“What are you drinking, Detective?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. Right. And for you, Ms. Corazon?” He gave the name an exaggerated Spanish inflection that, combined with his smile, was like a lewd caress.
“Maybe just some water?”
“Water.” He nodded, repeating the word as though it were an interesting comment she’d made, rather than a request. “So. Come in, sit down.” He gestured with his glass toward a seating area in front of a cathedral-size window. As he spoke, a young woman in a skintight black leotard flew across the expansive room on eerily silent Rollerblades and disappeared through a doorway in the far wall.
Getz led the way to a set of six brushed-aluminum chairs around an oval acrylic coffee table, his mouth widening into a smile-like expression, shocking in its lack of warmth.
After they’d seated themselves at the low table, the Rollerblader flew back across the room, disappearing into another doorway. “Claudia,” Getz announced with a wink, as though revealing a secret. “She’s cute, eh?”
“Who is she?” asked Kim, who seemed taken aback by the display.
“My niece. She’s staying here for a while. She likes to skate.” He paused. “But we’re here for business, right?” The smile evaporated, as though the time for small talk had passed. “So I have some great news for you. Orphans of Murder got a top score in our audience polling.”
Kim looked more confused than pleased. “Polling? But how did you—”
Getz interrupted her. “We have a proprietary system for evaluating program concepts. We create a representative slice of the show, expose it via podcast to a statistically representative audience sample, and get real-time online feedback. Turns out to be super predictive.”
“But what material did you use? My interviews with Ruth and Jimi?”
“Slices. Representative slices. Plus a little surrounding info to set the scene.”
“But those interviews were shot on my amateur cameras. They weren’t intended—”
Getz leaned forward over the table toward Kim. “Fact is, the so-called amateur look in this case turns out to be perfect. Sometimes the zero-production-values look is exactly right. It says honesty. Just like your personality. Earnest. Open. Young. Innocent. See, that’s another thing our test audience told us. I shouldn’t tell you this, but I will. Because I want you to trust me. They love you. They absolutely love you! So I’m thinking we have a future in front of us. What do you think of that?”
Kim was wide-eyed, her mouth open. “I don’t know. I mean … they just saw a slice of an interview?”
“Wrapped in a little blanket of explanation, perspective—like we’d do in the actual show. The testing vehicle on the restricted podcast is put together like a one-hour show, composed of four program concepts—thirteen minutes each. So in this case we included yours, plus three other programs we’re considering. This testing vehicle is called Run It or Dump It. Some people think that sounds crude. But there’s a good reason for it. It’s visceral.” Getz intoned the word with a confidential, almost reverential intensity. “You want to know the real RAM News success secret? That’s it. It’s visceral. In the old days, the networks used to think that news was news and entertainment was entertainment. That’s why their news operations lost money. They were sitting on a gold mine and didn’t know it. They thought news was about pure facts, presented as boringly as possible.” Getz shook his head indulgently at mankind’s capacity for delusional thinking.
Gurney smiled. “Obviously they got it all wrong.”
Getz pointed a finger at him, like a teacher drawing attention to a bright student. “Obviously! News is life, life is emotion, emotion is visceral. Drama, blood, triumph, tears. It’s not about some starched asshole reading dry facts and figures. It’s about conflict. It’s about fuck you! … No, fuck you! … Who the fuck are you saying ‘fuck you’ to? … Bam! bam! bam! Forgive my language—but you get what I’m saying?”
“Clear as crystal,” said Gurney mildly.
“So that’s why we call the show where we test our ideas Run It or Dump It. Because that’s what people like. Simple choices. Power. Like the emperor looking down on the gladiator. Thumbs-up, he lives. Thumbs-down, he dies. People love black and white. Gray gives them headaches. Nuance makes them nauseous.”
Kim blinked, swallowed. “And … Orphans of Murder … got a thumbs-up?”
“Big thumb, way up!”
Kim started to ask another question, but Getz cut her off, continuing along his own train of thought. “Way up! Which I find personally gratifying. Karma, full circle! Because it was our original coverage of the Good Shepherd murder spree that catapulted RAM News to the top. Where we belong. The idea of coming back to it now, exactly ten years later—that has the perfect vibe. I feel it in my bones! Now, how about a fantastic lunch?”
On cue, Claudia reappeared, balancing a large tray, which she placed on the coffee table. Her gel-spiked hair, which Gurney had originally taken for black, he now noted was a deep blue—a blue just a bit darker than her eyes, which met his momentarily with a disturbing frankness. He doubted she was out of her teens. She pirouetted on the tip of one blade, then cruised languidly across the room, looking back once before gliding out of sight.
There were three plates on the tray. On each there was an elaborate, delicately arranged display of sushi. The colors were beautiful, the shapes intricate. None of the ingredients were familiar to Gurney—nor, apparently, to Kim, who was studying the display with alarm.
“Another Toshiro masterpiece,” said Getz.
“Who’s Toshiro?” asked Kim.
Getz’s eyes glinted. “He’s the prize I stole from a hot sushi restaurant in the city.” He took one of the bright little chunks from the plate nearest him and popped it into his mouth.
Gurney followed suit. It was unidentifiable but surprisingly delicious.
Kim, who appeared to be calling on her reserves of courage, tried a piece and visibly relaxed after a few seconds of chewing. “Lovely,” she said. “So now he’s your personal chef?”
“One of the rewards.”
“You must be very good at what you do,” said Gurney.
“I’m very good at recognizing what people will connect with.” Getz paused, then added as though the idea had just dawned on him, “My talent is the ability to recognize talent.”
Gurney nodded blandly, intrigued by the man’s shameless self-regard.
Kim seemed eager to move the conversation back to Orphans. “I was wondering … did you learn anything from your Run It or Dump It polling that I should take into account with my remaining interviews?”
He gave her a shrewd look. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve got that natural innocent thing going for you. Don’t overthink it. That’s for now. Long-term I smell an extension opportunity and a spin-off opportunity. The Orphans concept has strong emotional appeal. It’s got legs that take it way beyond the six Good Shepherd victim families. It extends easily to families of other murder victims. It’s a natural franchise, so maybe we can run with it. But it also leads to a second concept—the unsolved angle. Right now we’ve got both those things wrapped up together. You got the pain of the families, right? But you also have an escaped murderer, the lack-of-closure thing. So I’m thinking if Orphans runs out of juice, we could switch the emphasis. I’m thinking of a spin-off deal—In the Absence of Justice—new show, we just shift the slant to the injustice of unsolved crimes. The lingering injustice.”
Getz sat back, watching her absorb this.
She looked uncertain. “That … could work … I guess.”
Getz leaned forward. “Look, I understand where you’re coming from—the emotional angle, the pain, the suffering, the loss. Just a matter of adjusting the balance. Series one, we have more pain-and-loss emphasis. Series two, we have
more unsolved-crime emphasis. And now I just got a whole other idea. Came to me out of the blue, just looking at this guy here.” He pointed at Gurney, with the glint of discovery in his hooded eyes.
“Listen to this. I’m just thinking out loud here, but … how would you two like to be America’s hot new reality team?”
Kim blinked, looked simultaneously excited and baffled.
Getz elaborated. “I see some natural dramatic chemistry here. A juicy personality conflict. The emotional kid who cares only about the victims, the heartache—locked in a love-hate partnership with the steely-eyed cop who only cares about making the collar, closing the case. It’s got life. It’s visceral!”
Chapter 9
A Reticent Orphan
“What are you thinking?” asked Kim, glancing nervously over at Gurney as she made another adjustment in the speed of her wipers.
They’d just crossed the Ashokan Reservoir causeway and were heading south toward Stone Ridge. It was a little after two. The afternoon had remained gray and sporadically misty.
When he didn’t answer, she added, “You look pretty grim.”
“Listening to your business associate brought back some memories of how RAM handled the Good Shepherd case. I’m sure you don’t remember. I doubt you were watching much TV news at the age of thirteen.”
She blinked, stared ahead at the wet road. “How did they cover it?”
“Overheated fear pieces, twenty-four/seven. Kept putting different names on the shooter—Mercedes Madman, Midnight Madman, Midnight Murderer—until he sent his manifesto out to the media, signed ‘The Good Shepherd.’ After that, that’s what they called him. RAM zeroed in on the anti-greed message in the manifesto and started whipping up a panic that the shootings were the start of some kind of revolution—a socialist guerrilla campaign against America, against capitalism. It was loony stuff. Twenty-four hours a day, they had their talking-head ‘experts’ ranting about the horrible possibilities, the things that might happen, the conspiracies that might be behind it all. They had ‘security consultants’ saying it was time for every American to be armed—a gun in your house, gun in your car, gun in your pocket. The time had come to stop coddling anti-American criminals. The time had come to put an end to ‘criminal rights.’ Even when the shootings stopped, RAM just kept going. Kept talking about class warfare—how it had gone underground, how it was sure to break out again in a more horrendous way. They beat that drum for another year and a half. The ultimate RAM mission was clear: generate maximum anger and maximum panic in the service of audience numbers and ad revenue. Sad thing is, it worked. RAM coverage of the Good Shepherd case created the ultimate trash model for cable news: mindless debates, amplification of conflict, ugly conspiracy theories, the glorification of outrage, blame-based explanations for everything. And Rudy Getz seems perfectly happy to take credit for it.”
Kim’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. “What you’re saying is, this is not someone I should be dealing with?”
“I’m not saying anything about Getz that wasn’t obvious in the meeting we just had.”
“If you were in my position, would you deal with him?”
“You’re smart enough to know that’s a meaningless question.”
“No it’s not. Just imagine you were in the same situation I’m in.”
“You’re asking me what kind of decision I’d make if I weren’t me—with my background, my feelings, my thoughts, my family, my priorities, my life. Don’t you see? My life couldn’t possibly put me in your position. It’s a nonsensical statement.”
She blinked, looked perplexed. “What are you so angry about?”
That question took him by surprise. She was right. He was angry. It would be easy to say that amoral reptiles like Getz made him angry, that the transformation of the news media from relatively harmless information sources into cynical engines of polarization made him angry, that turning murder into “reality” entertainment made him angry. But he knew enough about himself to know that external reasons for his anger were often excuses for internal ones.
A wise man had once told him, Anger is like a buoy on the surface of the water. What you think you’re angry about is only the tip of the issue. You have to follow the chain all the way down in order to discover what it’s attached to, what’s holding it in place.
He decided to follow the chain. He turned to Kim. “Why did you bring me to that meeting?”
“I explained that to you.”
“You mean I was there to look over your shoulder? To observe?”
“And to give me your perspective on what you saw, on how I handled things.”
“I can’t evaluate your performance if I don’t know what your goal was.”
“I didn’t have a goal.”
“Really?”
She turned toward him. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“Watch your driving.” His voice was stern, parental.
When she looked back at the road, he continued. “How come Rudy Getz doesn’t know you only hired me for one day? How come he thinks I’m more involved in this thing than I really am?”
“I don’t know. It’s not because of anything I said.” Her lips tightened.
Gurney had the impression she was trying not to cry. He said calmly, “I want to know the whole story. I want to know why I’m here.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly, but at least another minute elapsed before she replied. “After my thesis adviser submitted my proposal and initial interviews to Getz, things started moving very fast. I never thought he’d actually buy it, and when he did, I sort of panicked. This huge thing was being offered to me, and I didn’t want it to be taken away. I thought, suppose the RAM people suddenly wake up and say to themselves, ‘This is just a twenty-three-year-old kid. What does she know about murder cases? What does she know about anything?’ Connie and I thought that if someone with real experience was involved, a real-life expert, it would make everything more solid. We both thought of you. Connie said that nobody knew more than you did about murder, and that the article she’d written about you had made you sort of famous. So you’d be perfect.”
“Did you show the article to Getz?”
“When I called him yesterday to tell him about your agreeing to help me, I think I did mention it.”
“And what about Robby Meese?”
“What about him?”
“Were you hoping I might help you deal with him, too?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’m more scared of him than I said.”
Gurney’s long experience as a cop had taught him that deception comes in various packages, some wrapped elaborately, some hastily; but there is a bareness and spareness about the truth. Regardless of the complexities of life, the truth is usually simple. He sensed that simplicity now in Kim’s voice. It made him smile.
“So I’m supposed to be your expert murder consultant, a celebrity detective, a provider of credibility, a reality-show cohost, an anti-stalker bodyguard. Anything else?”
She hesitated. “As long as I’m being exposed as a manipulative idiot, I should confess to another crazy hope. I was thinking that your presence at the meeting we’re on our way to now—with Larry Sterne—might convince him to participate after all.”
“Why?”
“This is going to sound really underhanded. I was thinking, since you were a famous homicide detective, he might think the hunt for the killer was being revived—and having new hope of the killer’s being caught might persuade him to take part.”
“So in addition to everything else, I’m supposed to be your cold-case specialist on the trail of the Good Shepherd?”
She sighed. “Stupid, right?”
He didn’t volunteer an answer, and she didn’t press for one.
Somewhere high above them in the dense overcast, the heavy, thumping heartbeat of a helicopter grew stronger, then weaker, then dwindled away to nothing.
In contrast to Rudy Getz’s dramatic eagles, Larry Sterne’s driveway
was marked by an ordinary mailbox next to an opening in a low fieldstone wall. The house, one of the eighteenth-century stone cottages typical of the area, was set back about two hundred feet behind a casual country lawn. Kim parked the Miata outside a detached garage.
The front door of the house was open when they got to it. The man standing just inside was of medium build and medium height, and appeared to be in his late thirties or early forties. He was dressed in a golf shirt, a rumpled cardigan, loose slacks, and expensive-looking loafers—all in shades of tan that blended seamlessly with his light brown hair.
According to Gurney’s recollection of the information in Kim’s blue folder, Larry Sterne was, like his murder-victim father whose practice he’d taken over, a top-shelf dentist.
“Kim,” he said smilingly, “nice to see you again. This would be Detective Gurney?”
“Retired,” emphasized Gurney.
Sterne nodded pleasantly, as though happy with the distinction. “Come in, we’ll use this room here.” As he spoke, he led them into a bright sitting room with wide-board floors and tasteful antique furniture. “I don’t mean to be rude, Kim, but I don’t have much time today, so I hope we can get right to the point.”
They sat in wing chairs arranged around a circular rug in front of a stone fireplace. The red-coal remnants of a fire made the room pleasantly warm.
“I know how you feel about RAM News,” said Kim with great earnestness, “but I felt it was important to try one more time to address your objections.”
Sterne smiled patiently. He spoke as one might to a child. “I’m always willing to listen to you. I hope you’re equally willing to listen to me.”
The man’s gentle tone of voice reminded Gurney of someone he couldn’t place.
“Of course,” said Kim, unconvincingly.
Sterne leaned a little forward, the picture of polite attention. “You go first.”
“Okay. Number one, I’ll be the person responsible for shaping the format and style of the series. So it’s not like you’d be dealing with some faceless media corporation. I’ll be conducting the interviews, asking the questions. Number two, the children of the victims—people like you—will be providing ninety-five percent of the content. Your answers to my questions are what it’s all about. The substance of the series will be made up almost entirely of your own words. Number three, I have no personal interest in anything but the truth—the true impact of murder on a family. Number four, RAM News may have its own corporate agenda, but in this case they are just the venue, just the communications channel. They are the medium. You are the message.”