“I’m in, too,” Nicky answered. “What’s going on?”
Ainsley held up two cassettes.
“Run the stuff we shot this morning.” I twisted the cell phone down in front of my mouth. “Hey, Nicky. Thinking about something you said yesterday, that I forgot to follow up on-do you mind?”
“Shoot.”
“Is that safe to say in a police station?”
“Funny. Don’t quit your day job.”
The speakerphone called my name. “O’Hara? You with us?”
Press a button. I chided all the fellas at once. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Local and long distance-they all grumbled.
Ainsley was the only one who fully appreciated the show.
The conference call continued with the mute on, topic-satellite problems-while I continued speaking to Nicky Curzon. “I heard you say you ‘did some checking’ before you sent the letter on Jost. I haven’t found anything to support the freaky image of Jost that the magazines suggest. Can you help me out?” I left it hang for a second. “Who’d you talk to?”
“I talked to the guy’s partner at the fire station. Friend of the family knows him.”
“Really? What’d he say?”
“Said Jost was a closet kink, hiding mags everywhere, all the time. Also said he’d had girl trouble before. Jost told the guys in the firehouse he’d left the Amish community over a girl.”
Ainsley hit Play on the stuff we’d shot earlier.
“What the hell? You kidding me?” I said, mostly to my college boy. He’d played with the angle, zoom and the registration. I had the doctor in black and white as well as colorized like a bad hallucination.
“No, I’m not kidding,” Nicky said. His voice dropped. He didn’t like me getting excited about something he’d said. “Look, I gotta go, Maddy.”
“Transfer me to the sheriff, would you? I got questions for him, too.” I went into transfer limbo.
On the conference call, a sales himbo was stroking himself over the marketing pre-sales.
“College, didn’t I tell you to quit screwing around with the artsy-fartsy shit?”
“It’s only the early stuff,” Ainsley assured me. “I was experimenting.” He hit the FF button until the picture was recognizable.
“Well, cut it out. You’re making me nervous.”
“If I’m making you nervous, why would I cut it out?” Jack Curzon asked.
Shit. I hadn’t heard the pick-up. “Hello, Sheriff. How’s your day?”
“Fine. Very open over the lunch hour. My appointment didn’t show.”
“Really? Listen, Jane Citizen would like to ask a question about Samaritan law in this fair county. How’s it work?”
“That’s state law, actually. Protects a citizen who tries to help from legal action. Requires anyone who is licensed as fire, police or medical personnel to assist if they see a person who needs help.”
“And that’s all?”
“Yep.”
“Ah.” So Tom Jost wasn’t trying to get his father in trouble for being a “bad Samaritan” by providing him that timely set of binoculars.
“Why does Jane want to know?” the sheriff asked.
“Jane likes to be informed.”
“Jane needs to get her ass in here to make a report if she wants to get any more cooperation from the sheriff’s office.”
If SUV-guy was trying to scare me, the last thing I wanted to do was look like I was running to the cops. Running encourages a bully to chase you.
It’d be nice to hang the whole thing on Schmed. I figured I better throw Curzon a bone to get him off my back about the reckless driving report. “Yeah, about that-I’m fairly certain the driver was a guy from the office.” Ainsley gave me a sharp glance over the shoulder. “I’m re-thinking the whole situation. Maybe I should try and resolve it in-house. I got to work with the guy every day, you know what I mean? I’m sure we can come to some kind of peace pact.”
Curzon remained silent.
Ainsley paused the audio on the interview. The conference call expanded to fill the dead air. Voices droned on about local issues, each market forecasting inevitable success. The bullshit factor was ten-plus.
“Fine.” Curzon blinked first. “I’ll let you slide. For now.”
“That’s all I got for this week,” said the guy in Boston.
I hit the speaker button and answered them both. “Great.” New York still had to give a report, so I hung in there with Curzon. “Jane’s got one more question for you, Sheriff.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Jane doesn’t give up.”
“Admit it, you love that about her.”
Ainsley rolled his eyes in disgust. I shrugged, what?
“I don’t remember you mentioning, did Tom Jost have a phone with him when you found him?”
“A cell phone?” He thought about it and answered me with the question, “Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity.”
Another silence followed. The kind of silence that squeezes between moves when old guys play chess.
When Curzon committed to his response there was no hesitation. “We didn’t find a phone.”
“Really? Too bad. I had my next question all lined up. Thanks, Sheriff. I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than one. You’re running a tab now.”
“Bull. I got you off the hook with Grandma and the rest of the clan yesterday. I think you still owe me.” Best defense: be offensive. “And next time you need a beard, warn me so I can dress the part.”
“What you wore yesterday was fine.” His voice dropped into that dark place where whispers take root. “But I’d love to see how you’d dress the part.”
“Whoops! Boss just walked in. Gotta go.”
I could hear the man laughing as I hung up which was bad enough, then Ainsley gave me a know-it-all look that was totally inappropriate from someone his age.
“Shut up.” I pointed at his face. “You do not have time.” I flapped the shot list at him.
He skimmed my notes, top to bottom. His expression made it clear when he got to the one requiring the Dawn-pick-up. Need long, wide, establishing shot of tree where Tom died.
“Dawn? How am I going to get that?”
“I find if I set the alarm for 3 a.m. I can get camera ready in plenty of time. If I skip breakfast.”
“You’re kidding?”
“This afternoon I want you to concentrate on the firehouse. Your mom left a message that we had permission to go in and shoot interiors-his locker, his bed, whatever.” There was a definite advantage to working with someone hooked into the power loop. Not that Richard Gatt was going to hear it from me. “See if you can set up a couple match dissolves to what we’ve already got from his apartment.”
“Got it.” Ainsley nodded.
The shock of a 3 a.m. call time was passing; he was starting to get excited again which was a good sign. If he didn’t love it enough for 3 a.m., he didn’t love it enough. There are worse things about the business than an early call. Lots of them.
“I want nice clean shots, College. Nothing funky. Think journalism, not art.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Text me if you run into trouble. I’ll be here. Working.” I tipped a nod at the conference call. Sounded like they’d almost finished driveling through the LA rep’s report. My agenda had no name listed for the next spiel. Maybe they would wrap early and I could squeeze in a little studio time. “Warn Mick I might be late, would you?”
Ainsley looked wistful at the thought of the next editing session. “I’ll tell him.”
“Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty to do tomorrow.”
He smiled at the thought. “Yeah. That’s true.”
“Get out of here, College. You’re making my teeth ache.”
I went back to buzzing through the shots of Grace and Dr. Graham, looking for sound bites and jotting down times.
The conference call was still going strong. A couple major players from the top ten markets had been invited, so the grunts kept interrupting with clever comments.