Private Scandals

and whiskey spread through him like velvet lightning. “But I don’t think he did. I can’t be sure until he turns up. If he turns up.”
    “Why wouldn’t he?” Fran demanded. “He’s worked for Dee for two years. He’s never missed a single day.”
    “He’s never been dead before, has he?” He swore at her, at himself when her color faded to paste. Rising, he poured her whiskey, straight. “I’m sorry, Fran. I’m half out of my mind.”
    “How can you sit in here and say things like that? How can you work, think about work, when Dee’s out there somewhere? This isn’t some international disaster you’re covering, goddamn it, where you’re the steady, unflappable journalist. This is Dee.”
    He jammed useless hands in his pockets. “When something’s important, vital, when the answer means everything, you sit, you work, you think it through, you take all the facts and create a scenario that plays. Something that’s accurate. I think Jeff’s got her.”
    “Jeff.” Fran choked on whiskey. “You’re crazy. Jeff’s devoted to Dee, and he’s harmless as a baby. He’d never hurt her.”
    “I’m counting on that,” he said dully. “I’m betting my life on it. I need everything you’ve got on him, Fran. Personnel records, memos, files. I need your impressions, your observations. I need you to help me.”
    She said nothing, only studied his face. No, his eyes weren’t cold, she realized. They were burning up. And there was terror behind them. “Give me ten minutes,” she said, and left him alone.
    She came back in less than her allotted time with a stack offiles and a box of computer disks. “His employment record, résumé, application for employment. Tax info.” Fran smiled weakly. “I lifted his desk calendars. He keeps them from year to year. They were all filed.”
    Meticulous. Obsessive. Though his blood iced, Finn accessed the first disk.
    “That’s his personnel file from CBC. I hope you don’t mind breaking the law.”
    “Not a bit. This application is from April eighty-nine. When did Dee go on air at CBC?”
    “About a month before that.” Fran reached for the whiskey to unclog her throat. “It doesn’t prove anything.”
    “No, but it’s a fact.” The first he could build on. “Same address he’s got now. How’d he afford a house like that when he’d been working as a radio gofer?”
    “He inherited it. His uncle left it to him. Finn, I had to call Dee’s family.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “They’re getting the first flight out in the morning.”
    “I’m sorry.” He stared hard at the screen. Families. He’d never had one to worry about before. “I should have done it.”
    “No, I didn’t mean that. I just—I don’t know what to say to them.”
    “Tell them we’re going to get her back. That’s the truth. Fran, see if you can find the date in his calendar when Lew McNeil was killed. It was February ninety-two.”
    “Yeah, I remember.” She opened the book, flipped through the pages, skimming Jeff’s neat, precise notations. “We had a show that day. Jeff was directing. I remember because we had snow and everybody was worried that the audience would be thin.”
    “Do you remember if he came in?”
    “Sure, he was here. He never missed. Looks like he had a ten o’clock meeting with Simon.”
    “He’d have had time,” Finn murmured.
    “Christ Almighty, do you really think he could have gone to New York, shot Lew, come back and waltzed into the studio to direct a show, all before lunch?”
    Yes, Finn thought coldly. Oh yes, he did. “Fact: Lew was killed about seven—that’s Central time. There’s an hour’s time difference between Chicago and New York. Speculation: He flies in and out, maybe he charters a plane. I need his receipts.”
    “He doesn’t keep his personal stuff here.”
    “Then I’ll have to get back in his house. You make sure he comes in tomorrow morning. And you make sure he stays.”
    She got up, poured coffee into her whiskey. “All right. What else?”
    “Let’s see what else we can find.”
     
    She’d lost track of time. Day or night, there was no difference in the claustrophobic world Jeff had created for her. Her head was cotton from the drug, her stomach raw, but she ate the breakfast he’d left for her. She didn’t open the plain white envelope he’d left on her tray.
    For a timeless, sweaty interlude, she tried to find an opening in the wall, had pried and poked with a spoon until