It's News to Me
Also by R. G. Belsky
The Clare Carlson Mysteries
Yesterday’s News
Below the Fold
The Last Scoop
Beyond the Headlines
The Gil Malloy Series
Blonde Ice
Shooting for the Stars
The Midnight Hour
The Kennedy Connection
Other Novels
Loverboy
Playing Dead
Writing as Dana Perry
The Silent Victim
The Golden Girl
Her Ocean Grave
Silent Island
Copyright © 2022 by R. G. Belsky
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-60809-456-1
Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing
Sarasota, Florida
www.oceanviewpub.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
As always, for Laura Morgan
“Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides.”
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
KING LEAR
“I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.”
—RON BURGUNDY
ANCHORMAN
PROLOGUE
She felt like someone was watching her.
Following her.
It was a strange sensation, and she was having it more and more recently. Right now, she tried to dismiss it as just paranoia or nerves from being alone on the darkened New York City street.
She hadn’t lived in New York for a long time, but she felt comfortable in her ability to watch out for herself and stay safe here. She was a survivor. Always had been. She didn’t scare easily.
Still, she began walking faster, toward the lights on the campus ahead of her. Her college and her dorm and all her friends were there. Yes, as soon as she reached those beckoning lights, everything would be all right.
Behind her, she thought she heard a noise.
She whirled around, but no one was there.
It wasn’t until she turned back toward her destination again that she discovered her mistake.
Because, as she soon found out, the danger wasn’t behind her.
It was right in front of her.
When the first blow hit her, she screamed and tried to run—but it was too late.
“Why?” she thought to herself a few minutes later as the life drained out of her. “Why are you doing this?”
It was the last thought Riley Hunt would ever have …
OPENING CREDITS
THE RULES ACCORDING TO CLARE
I LOVE TO tell the “Didn’t She Used to Be Kathleen Sullivan” story to the young reporters who work for me at Channel 10 News. It goes like this:
Back in the 1980s, Kathleen Sullivan was the hottest thing in the TV news business. She hosted the nighttime updates from the Winter Olympics in Switzerland for ABC Sports, and she wore tight sweaters that everyone was talking about. The ratings went through the roof every time she wore one of those sweaters on air.
Then, after the Olympics, ABC brought her back and she substituted for Joan Lunden on Good Morning America for a few months while Joan was having a baby. More blockbuster ratings. Everyone in the media business wanted her now. Everyone wanted Kathleen Sullivan and her sweaters.
CBS News signed her for really big money—and with all sorts of publicity—to host the CBS Morning Show. Kathleen Sullivan sure seemed to be on her way to the top of the media world.
But then a few years later, after the ratings fell, she got fired by CBS and dropped out of sight for a while.
Later, she tried making a comeback on cable and doing commercials and radio and stuff like that.
I saw her at a broadcasting party once after all this had happened. Not many people recognized her anymore. But one guy finally did. He looked at her now, then turned to me and said, “Hey, didn’t she used to be Kathleen Sullivan?”
Do you see the point I’m trying to make to young journalists here?
No, not that it’s a good idea for women to wear tight sweaters on the air in the wintertime.
My point is that—in television news—you’re only as good as today’s show.
The other story that I tell them is a classic one that I’ve heard in the journalism business for years. I’m not totally sure if its apocryphal or not, but that doesn’t really matter. Because the message is still a true one.
The story goes like this:
A reporter for a newspaper wins the Pulitzer Prize for an exclusive, blockbuster investigative story he writes, and so the newspaper throws him a big party afterward in the newsroom to celebrate.
Champagne corks are popped, toasts are offered, and everyone at the newspaper praises the reporter as the greatest thing to come along in journalism since Woodward and Bernstein with Watergate. It is the moment every reporter dreams about with a story. The ultimate triumph of a journalistic lifetime.
Then—amidst all the champagne and the toasts and the adoration—the reporter’s editor pulls him aside and asks him: “So, what have you got for me tomorrow?”
Yep, the message here I’m trying to send to the young reporters who work for me is a pretty clear and a pretty obvious one.
It doesn’t matter how big the last story was, you always have to do it again.
Nobody cares about yesterday’s news.
Not in newspapers.
And even more so in the fast-paced world of television news where I work today.
That’s an important rule every journalist always needs to remember.
Even me …
PART I
THE COLD OPEN
CHAPTER 1
I MET BRENDAN Kaiser, the owner of my TV station, Channel 10, and about a zillion other properties, for lunch on a sunny spring day at a restaurant called Tri-Bar in Lower Manhattan.
Tri-Bar is what’s known in New York as a celebrity restaurant. In other words, whenever you read the gossip columns, there’ll be an item about how “so and so said such and such over dinner last night at Tri-Bar …”
Robert De Niro sometimes ate there. So did Jimmy Fallon and Alec Baldwin and Julia Roberts when she was in town.
I’d been to trendy hot spots like this a few times to see if I could spot someone famous. Mostly all I ever saw were a lot of other people like me hoping to see if they could recognize anyone. The closest I ever came to a celebrity was when I ran into Sally Struthers once in the ladies’ room of a restaurant on the Upper East Side. It had been a long time since Sally was a big star on All in the Family. My last memory of her had been doing those late-night infomercials about world hunger, and she sure didn’t look much like Gloria Bunker anymore. I decided not to ask for her autograph.
There was some kind of a maître d’ standing at the entrance to Tri-Bar. He wore a black tuxedo-like outfit, highly shined shoes, and white gloves. I had on a pair of tan Calvin Klein jeans, a chocolate-colored silk blouse, and beige sandals. I thought my outfit was pretty swell, but he looked me over coolly.
“Is there something I can do for you, ma’am?”
“I’m looking for Brendan Kaiser. My name is Clare Carlson.”
“And?”
“I’m t
he news editor of Channel 10 News.”
He still didn’t seem too impressed.
Maybe he didn’t like my color coordination.
“And what might your business be with Mr. Kaiser?”
“Well, I might be here to pick up his dry cleaning, but I’m not. How about I discuss my business with him?”
He scowled and picked up a phone to check with someone inside.
The truth was I wasn’t sure why Brendan Kaiser wanted to meet me here. I’d had a few dealings with him in the past on big stories in my job as the news director for Channel 10—but he’d never invited me to lunch. Maybe he was going to give me a raise. Maybe he was going to tell me I’d been named Employee of the Month. All I knew is that when the big boss asks you to go to lunch with him, you go to lunch.
The maître d’ still looked unhappy when he got off the phone, but he eventually directed me to a table inside. Brendan Kaiser was already there. Kaiser was in his 50s, with thick gray hair. Not a bad-looking guy, but he did have a bit of a paunch. I noticed it when he stood up to greet me. Probably from eating too many lunches at a place like Tri-Bar.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Clare,” he said. His office had just arranged the meeting with me a few hours earlier. “I hope I didn’t interfere with any other lunch plans you had for today.”
“Well, until I got your call, my lunch plan had been to go for a Big Mac at McDonald’s. That special sauce they put on it is to die for.”
He smiled.
We made small talk for a few minutes, and then a waiter came over and took our orders. Kaiser was having some kind of duck dish with orange sauce and shoestring potatoes. I went for the tortellini with a salad. According to the menu I’d scanned, this meal was going to cost a lot of money. What the hell—he was paying, not me. Whatever happened next, maybe I’d at least get a good meal out of it.
“So do you want to tell me what this whole lunch deal between me and you is all about?” I said after a bit more conversation.
“You do get to the point, don’t you?”
“I’m a journalist. I used to be a newspaper reporter. I like to get to the lead of the story as quickly as I can.”
He nodded.
“The reason I asked to see you like this was to discuss a situation we need to deal with, Clare.”
“What kind of situation?”
“A situation involving Channel 10 News.”
“I didn’t know we had a situation.”
I took a drink of some iced tea I’d ordered with my meal. I wished now it was something stronger.
“Look, I think that everyone at Channel 10 News is doing a really terrific job,” Kaiser said.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Especially you as news director.”
“Glad to hear that too.”
“And you’re a star, besides being the news director. You’ve broken some big stories for us, gotten a lot of publicity and notice in the media world. The Charles Hollister murder case. The serial killer you helped catch. I appreciate that from you, Clare. I appreciate all of your success and all your hard work. I really do.”
“But?”
“Excuse me?”
“There is a ‘but’ coming here, right?”
“Yes, there is.” Kaiser sighed. “Despite all your hard work, the ratings—and, as a result, the advertising revenue—isn’t quite at the level we need at Kaiser Media to run a profitable news operation. I want to do better. I think we can do better.”
The waiter brought our food. We both ate in silence for a few minutes. I waited to see what Brendan Kaiser would say next. I didn’t really have anything to say. So I stuck my fork into the tortellini and bit into a piece. Pretty tasty. Good cream sauce too. Almost as good as the sauce on a Big Mac.
“I’ve decided to make some changes at Channel 10 News,” Kaiser said finally, nibbling on a shoestring potato.
“What kind of changes?”
“Changes at the top.”
“Wait a minute—are you firing me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Demoting me? Is that the reason for this lunch?”
“You’re still going to be the news editor.”
“But you said you were making changes at the top so …”
That’s when it hit me.
“Jack Faron?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Jack Faron was the executive producer at Channel 10 News. My boss.
“I’m replacing Faron. Jack’s done a good job, but he’s more old school than we need right now. I’d like to put someone in the job with more drive, more energy, more new ideas. So I’ve hired a new executive producer. Jack will still be with us at Channel 10 News. But moving forward, he’s going to be in a more … uh, advisory role.”
“Does Jack know about this?”
“Not yet. I know you’re close to him, so I wanted to make sure you were the first to hear about this.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Jack Faron had been my mentor at Channel 10 News. The one who had hired me when the newspaper I worked for went out of business. The one that stood by me when my early on-air appearances as a TV reporter bombed. The one who promoted me to news editor and had backed me on every story and crisis since then.
And now he was not going to be there for me.
At least not in the same way.
I asked Kaiser the obvious question.
“Who’s replacing him as executive producer?”
“Susan Endicott,” he said. “Do you know her?”
“Not really.”
“I think you two will get along really well. That’s why I wanted to have this conversation with you. I want you to accept this. I want you to understand the reason for it. I want you to be happy. I want you to help make Susan Endicott feel welcome here. Are you good with all that, Clare?”
“Hey, you know me—I’m a team player.”
“No, you’re not.”
I sighed. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m not.”
“Let’s try to make this work, huh?”
I wasn’t sure what to say next, but it turned out I didn’t have to. I got a break. My phone rang, and—when I looked down at it—saw it was from Maggie Lang, my top editor at Channel 10 News.
“Where are you?” Maggie said.
“At lunch.”
I hadn’t told anyone who I was having lunch with.
“We’ve got a big story breaking. A murder. Female college student found murdered near Washington Square Park.”
“Who is she?”
“Her name’s Riley Hunt. She came here from Ohio to go to school at Easton College, not far from the park. Family has money, it sounds like. Her father’s a doctor back in Ohio, her mother a lawyer.”
“All hands on deck for this one,” I said.
“Already done. We’re gonna lead the newscast with it at 6.”
After I hung up with Maggie, I told Kaiser what was happening. I said I needed to get back to the station right away to direct the news coverage. That wasn’t totally true. Maggie could have handled it on her own. But I wanted to get out of here, and this seemed to be the perfect excuse. I didn’t like what was happening to Jack Faron. I didn’t like the fact I knew about it before him. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to like Susan Endicott, even though I’d never met her.
And so I did what I do anytime I can’t deal with problems in my life. I threw myself into a big story. And this murder sounded like a big story.
I said goodbye to Kaiser, walked through Tri-Bar and out the front door to catch a cab back to the Channel 10 newsroom.
The maître d’ didn’t bother to say goodbye.
CHAPTER 2
RILEY HUNT TURNED out to be a classic New York City crime story.
She was a beautiful girl. Blonde hair, blue eyes, people who knew her said she always had a sweet smile for everyone. A young woman who came to the city from the Midwest with stars in her eyes and determined to make it big. She’d finished
at the top of her academic class during her freshman year at Easton College in Manhattan, where she was majoring in political science. She was elected to the Student Council as a sophomore, starred on the women’s basketball team, and played music too—both with the school orchestra and in a band she belonged to off campus.
Her father was a plastic surgeon who specialized in Botox and other beauty treatments for wealthy people back in Dayton, where the family lived. Her mother was an attorney with a law firm there.
There was a color photo of her that appeared in one of the Easton publications after she joined the Student Council. Looking at it now, you could see much more than just her physical attractiveness there. Riley Hunt’s eyes were bright and friendly; her smile infectious; and she had a determined look on her face that told the world this was a unique, interesting woman with a big future ahead of her.
No question about it, Riley Hunt sure seemed to have everything going for her in life.
That’s why it was going to be such a big story for the media—including us at Channel 10 News—after someone took it all away from her with a violent, deadly, and tragic attack on a New York City street.
The facts we knew about the Riley Hunt murder went something like this:
She was last seen alive during the early morning hours of April 13, leaving a bar called the Cutting Edge in the West 30s near Herald Square. Someone thought they spotted her trying to hail a cab on the street outside after she left between 1 and 2 a.m. But no one was able to confirm that or whether or not she ever got into a cab.
The night had started for her much earlier at an awards dinner for the women’s basketball team she played on. It was held at a restaurant on Broadway in Times Square, and she was one of those honored with trophies for her achievements on the court that season. After that, she had drinks at another bar nearby in Times Square with some of the people from the party. This lasted until the place closed a little after midnight. Then a handful of people made their way down to the Cutting Edge, about ten blocks south near Herald Square, which stayed open until 2 a.m.
While she was there, she received a phone call on her cell phone. She told people after the call that she was going to meet someone else later before she went back to her dorm. She didn’t say who it was or where she was going. That was how everyone left her.