They hadn’t moved the victim yet, good thing. She got as close as she could, pushing through the looky-loos, then pointed the lens, rolling off thirty seconds as close up as appropriate-no blood allowed on Channel 2 News, so medium tight was all that would air. Then a wider shot, showing all the medics, then even wider, showing the crowd. Pan across to reveal the number of people. Tight shots of a few on their cells, a few others clicking off photos.
She was taking pictures of people taking pictures. Very twenty-first century.
The medical examiner was already there, meaning someone had died. Kat McMahon might slip her some inside info, if she could get to her. The two women still weren’t sure of each other, still skittish about their conflicting responsibilities-Jane’s to tell and Kat’s not to-but Jake had let it slip that Kat and DeLuca were an item. So there was some solidarity in mutual professionally iffy behavior.
What had happened here? Jane would need to ask around, see if any of the onlookers saw anything revealing. She’d look for tweets, too, and Facebook posts. She could imagine the texts. OMG, I’m at a murder! The cops were certainly trolling for video, too. And they had dibs. Unless Jane got lucky.
Wide, medium, tight. Pan of the crowd. Establishing shots. She hit the double backward arrows-that had to mean rewind-hit Stop, then the one forward arrow, and after half a second of snow and a twist of color, saw the whole thing again on the tiny screen. Okay. It worked.
She stopped for a moment, the sun hot on her hair. An empty brown paper bag caught the breeze, fluttered, and flapped away. Someone had left a big phone book on the bench. Cops were everywhere. Was there anything she’d forgotten?
Across the street sat the grotesque gray stone façade of the monolithic Boston City Hall, a controversial and unattractive expanse of concrete and double-tall plate glass. She shot the exterior to illustrate the irony that this crime occurred right under the noses of the city officials. She zoomed in to one window in particular. The mayor’s office.
Mayor Elihu Holbrooke-or someone in his office-could probably have seen what happened right from that window.
She tucked that thought away for later. This wasn’t going to be her story, she reminded herself. She was a per diem. A freelance. A TV temp. Not that anything in TV wasn’t temporary.
Now the interviews. She scouted the onlookers. Saw a possibility.
“I’m-” Jane began.
“Yes, I’ve watched you on TV, Jane,” the woman said.
Bingo. Jane aimed the little camera.
“Could you tell me what you saw?” Jane had chosen the woman-khaki linen suit, possibly-diamond stud earrings, and leather briefcase-because she was reasonably well dressed, looked like she spoke English, didn’t seem in a hurry. Profiling, sure, but the key was to get usable sound bites, articulate, containing actual information. Emotion, if you were lucky. Jane was also careful about diversity. It all mattered, requiring more judgment than simply sticking a mic at some random face. Unless that was your only option.
“I suppose so,” the woman said.
To keep the context, Jane composed her shot so the circular park and the wide-open doors of the ambulance were in the background. This time of day, the sunlight was impossible. The only choices were squinty eyes or glary backlighting. Jane opted for sun on the woman’s face.
The woman blinked at Jane a few times. Took a step away from the camera. Jane stayed put. No need to crowd her.
“Ma’am?” Jane said.
“I was getting lunch at the corner, at the counter,” the woman began.
Cor-nah, coun-tah, Jane heard. So, a local. Good. “Then what?”
“I heard yelling. There’s always commotion around here, with the traffic and tour buses and all, and my office is up there, on the third floor of the bank.” She gestured behind her. “I’m used to it, so I got my takeout, as usual, assumed it was a…”
Jane let her talk, tried to keep her camera steady, hoping something usable was coming. The woman’s back was to the murder scene-if it was a murder-so Jane could keep track of any changes while the woman talked and shift the camera if necessary. In the viewfinder, the video appeared black and white, which made it a pain to keep track of individuals. Still, the main attraction would easily recognizable: the one laid out on a stretcher. Jane had to get the money shots, the one of the victim getting loaded into the ambulance and of the ambulance driving away.
She supported her threatening-to-be-weary camera arm, holding her elbow with her left hand.
Nothing could stop her now.
5
As Tenley felt the touch on her shoulder, she flinched, spooked. She turned to see Ward Dahlstrom, boss man, big shot, GQ wannabe, who had all the other office girls swooning. Not her, of course, not ever. Ticktock, in four hours she’d be home.
“Miss Siskel? Are we ready for lunch in fifteen minutes?”
Dahlstrom smelled like peppermint and, she swore, scotch, even though it was barely lunchtime on a Monday. She hated his hands, his manicured fingernails. His preppy checked shirt. His show-offy watch. She and Lanna met him first when they came to visit with Mom, him and his stupid jokes, and even Lanna thought he was cool, “so much power” and “a real man” and “so handsome.” Tenley never understood that. Plus, she completely loathed when he said “we” when he meant “you.”
“I guess so,” she said.
She felt Dahlstrom standing there, felt him walk away. He didn’t like her. So what? Maybe at lunch she should head down to the park, see what was going on in real life, not sit here and watch the movie of it.
Tenley tugged her hair into a knot, looped the long strands twice, then stuck in a yellow pencil to hold it off her face. Blinked at the screen of Curley Park in front of her. Like a… movie? That made it, somehow, kind of different.
Watching her computer monitor was kind of like watching a movie. A movie of people’s lives. Weird that it was her, a college student and the only remaining Siskel daughter, watching this Curley Park story-whatever it was-unfold.
The monitor was the only good thing about this job. It let her look for Lanna. Lanna, who she knew was gone, impossibly and unbearably gone. She watched for Lanna in crowds, in the audience at concerts, looked for her ponytail and shoulders at Starbucks. Sometimes thought she’d caught a glimpse of her just around a corner. She’d even-she was embarrassed to admit-run after a few girls, Lanna’s name on her lips, but soon skidded to a halt, remembering her older sister would never return.
Lanna was dead. No one could bring her back.
But watching for Lanna was a way of keeping her alive. Thinking just the next moment, in the next screen, her darling sister would appear. She’d recognize her walk, or that way she stood, one foot on her knee like a stork, her ponytail bobbing outside her Newton North High School baseball cap.
It couldn’t happen, of course. Dead, and buried, funeral and everything. She’d been there. There was no mystery, no suspense. Lanna, almost twenty-two, and cool, and beautiful, had “met” someone online. But one night she’d gone out late, no one knew why, and tripped, hitting her head on a log in Steading Woods, the expanse of pine trees and underbrush behind their house in Forest Hills. She was found the next day, just off the path. No trace yet of the “boyfriend,” police said, after taking Lanna’s computer. Looked like an accident, the police said. She’d had no suitcase, no purse.
Did Tenley know the boyfriend’s name? Where her older sister might have been going? No, she’d said, and that was true.
But Tenley knew Lanna had been planning to run off with him. Someday, though. Not that night. She’d promised Lanna never to tell. And hadn’t. Until it didn’t matter anymore. She never forgot the way her mother had looked at her then, and her father, and even the cops. And everyone. Everyone. Could she have saved her?