Maximum Exposure (2 page)

“I don’t need to listen to your pitch.”

“Yes, you do. I don’t think you understand what an amazing idea this is. It’ll be like a news magazine, but better. We’ll be integrating all communications media—television, a Web site, podcasts, social media, print. It’s cable, more flexibility, more edge. Multiple venues will get your reports out to more people.”

The excitement in Ben’s voice grew as he spoke. Max was grateful her wine arrived.

“I like my job,” she said after sipping her drink.

“You don’t have a job.”

She snapped her fingers. “Exactly. I investigate the cases I want, write the articles I want, do what I want. Do you sense the theme?”

“You do what you want because you’re rich.”

“You make being rich sound like it’s a bad thing.” She sipped her wine and assessed Ben over the rim of her stemware. “You’re not exactly collecting welfare, Mr. Lawson, grandson of Tobias Lawson the Third, the self-made and successful businessman who owns half of Boston.”

Her attempt at getting under his skin failed. He said, “You’re scared.”

She laughed again. “Ben, you know me well enough to know I don’t scare easily.”

“Not by anything out there—” He waved his hand loosely toward the quaint cobblestone intersection. “—but by change. You’re not even thirty, but you’re an old stick-in-the-mud, as my grandmother would say.”

“Then let me stick in the mud
here
and leave me alone. I don’t want a television show.”

“Your books are doing fine, but you only write one every two or three years. Newspaper readership is way down, and they’re still scrambling to get their online component growing. You pay for your own research, your trips, your investigations. If you had a television show, production would pay all that.”

“Because, like you said, I’m rich. If I want to spend my money investigating a cold case in Small Town, USA, I can. If I sell the article, great. If not, I don’t care.” Except she did. She cared because if she couldn’t find anyone interested, the story wouldn’t get the exposure it deserved. But that had nothing to do with television.

As if she hadn’t spoken, he continued. “Cable television is not the crazy aunt in the attic anymore.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Is that even a saying?”

“We’ll have an entire
team
working for
you
. I would be your producer—”

“Hell no—”

“And you would have a say in what cases we cover.”

“Say? I would have
a say?
My answer was no at the beginning, and now it’s ‘over my dead body.’”

“I don’t accept that.”

Their food arrived but neither of them picked up a fork. Usually, Ben amused or annoyed her; today he was pissing her off. “Ben, we’ve known each other for ten years. Have you ever in your wildest dreams imagined me taking orders from anybody?”

“You wouldn’t. You’d be the boss.”

“It doesn’t sound like it.”

He sighed, played with his food. “Max, without you, there is no show.
You
are the show.”

“I don’t want to be the show.”

“You’re blunt, you’re beautiful, you have an uncanny ability to see through people’s bullshit and get them to spill their secrets. In two years, I can make
Maximum Exposure
the top news show on the network and the top investigative show on cable television.” He held up his fingers in a V. “Two years!”

“You’re calling it
Maximum Exposure?
” Unbelievable. “That’s a play off my name, isn’t it?”

“It’s perfect. You expose the truth. The good and the bad. You’re honest. You’re driven. You already have a name because of your books, you have a platform. Not just a platform, but stage presence. I’ve watched every interview you’ve ever done on television, and—”

“What?” she interrupted. “Why would you do that?”

“I’m a news junkie. You know that. And because of Karen…” For a second, he hesitated, and she saw the young college boy that he’d once been. Then the producer Ben Lawson was back. “I follow crime. You’re a natural. The camera loves you, even if you’re in the middle of a swamp with gnats swarming your head.”

“You saw that?” She hadn’t thought that feed, when she found three boys dead in a Louisiana swamp, was picked up by any station other than the local Baton Rouge affiliate.

“This is the natural next step for you. Or are you going to be satisfied running around the country solving crimes like Nancy Drew on steroids?”

“Now you’re being insulting.”

“You’re good, dammit! You’re wasting your talent.”

Max stabbed a fork into her salad and stuffed the mix of chicken and lettuce into her mouth before she let loose on Ben. He was right, she was blunt—so much so that she could go for his jugular right now, and just say good-bye to their odd and unnatural friendship.

She didn’t want a television show. She didn’t want a staff, didn’t want to report to anyone or have anyone report to her. She liked her life just the way it was. It was comfortable. She could fly off to Colorado Springs to investigate the disappearance of a college student that may or may not have involved foul play, and not worry that she was going to say or do something that would screw with ratings and cost people their jobs.

She liked being the only one she was responsible for. She liked her freedom. She
needed
her space. And Ben, of all people, should understand that.

The word no was on the tip of her tongue, when Ben said, “Don’t say yes now.”

“I wasn’t going to.” But she smiled. She couldn’t help it. Ben had that way about him, making her crazy one minute and laughing the next.

“Think about it, Max. I’ll e-mail you my proposal, the one I used to sell the idea to Robert and Catherine Crossman, and maybe it’ll explain things better than I have.”

“You explained things well enough,” she said.

“Go on your trip. Read my proposal. And tell me yes when you come back.”

The smile disappeared. “Don’t be cocky. I don’t want to do this.”

“Yes, you do.” He visibly relaxed. “We have ten minutes before you have to leave to catch your plane. Tell me about this trek to Colorado Springs. Who, what, why, when, where, how.”

“College student Scott Sheldon, missing for six months after walking away while on a camping trip with friends.”

“Dead?”

“Probably.”

He stared at her. “You’re going because of Karen.”

“No, I’m not.” But there was some truth to his observation. Karen disappeared while she and Max had gone to Miami for a wild spring break their senior year. She was definitely dead—the police had found evidence of a violent death with an extensive amount of blood—but her body was never found. Max had spent a year of her life searching for answers, and still no one knew what happened beyond a theory that couldn’t be proved. And a killer had walked away.

She swirled her wine in her glass, but didn’t drink. “Scott’s mother wrote to me. She doesn’t know what happened to him. If I can find out—well, she might be able to sleep better.”

Adele Sheldon had said,
I need to know what happened to my son. I need the truth.

Max was good at uncovering the truth. Not everyone appreciated it; not everyone was truly strong enough to handle it. But Adele Sheldon was a grieving mother with no body to bury. She accepted that her son was dead, had told Max that if he were alive, she’d know in her heart.
I’m in limbo, Ms. Revere. I want to bury his body.

Ben didn’t say anything for a minute. He leaned back, a sad and wistful expression on his handsome face. She wished she had something to say, something cutting or witty, but her mind was blank. They were both thinking about Karen, a girl they’d loved, and Scott Sheldon, a boy they didn’t know. All hostility she’d felt toward Ben for his ridiculous idea to give her a television show dissolved.

“What happened to the kid?” Ben asked.

“I won’t know until I talk to his friends or find his body.”

“You’re searching for his body?”

“That’s the plan.”

He leaned forward. “This would be a great report for your television show.”

“I don’t have a television show,” she said, glaring at him again.

He smiled, picked up
her
wineglass, and drained it. “Not yet.”

Chapter Two

Max woke up at 4:30
A.M.
in a luxurious suite of the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, cursing Ben for her uneasy sleep. Seeing him and talking about Karen had brought up all the memories, failures, and frustration of that year in Miami after Karen disappeared. Max often had insomnia—she fell to sleep easily enough, but if she woke at two or three in the morning, it was rare she could go back to sleep.

She’d stayed at the Broadmoor many times in the past; it was one of her favorite resorts. The executive suite had a fireplace, balcony and breathtaking view of the snow-covered mountains. Max appreciated quality accommodations, and didn’t mind paying for them. She pulled herself out of bed and decided to wake up with strong coffee and a bubble bath.

Ten minutes later, she sighed as she sank into the hot, scented water. She sipped the sweetened coffee and closed her eyes.

When she should have been relaxing in the deep tub, her thoughts instead went back to Miami, back to when she was twenty-two and enjoying spring break with her best friend and roommate. Columbia had hooked them up their freshman year and it should have been hate at first sight—Karen was everything Max was not. Karen was short, Max was tall; Karen was chatty, Max was reserved; Karen was a slob, Max was neat. Blond hair to red hair; brown eyes to blue; middle-class family to wealthy family.

Yet, somehow, they worked. It was books, Max believed—they both loved books, both were lit majors, and they had the same sense of humor. Better, Karen didn’t lie. She was as blunt and straightforward as Max, and Max ended up trusting Karen more than she did anyone.

She’d needed Karen at a time in her life when everyone she’d known and grown up with proved to be untrustworthy. Her friends, her ex-boyfriend, her family. Max had wanted to be far from home, moving from California to New York, and she didn’t look back. Max didn’t want to care for anyone except herself. She understood—because she had always been honest with herself—that the reason she didn’t want any close friends was because she had abandonment issues. First her mother dumped her on her rich grandparents’ doorstep and walked away, sending her sporadic postcards that had ended abruptly when she was sixteen; then nine years later, her friend Lindy was killed the week of their high school graduation. She didn’t want to get attached to anyone it would hurt her to lose.

But Karen was the type of girl who latched on and didn’t let go. When Max was irritated with her, she called Karen a parasite, impossible to get rid of. But now, more than ten years after they’d met, Max knew Karen was exactly what she’d needed to reconnect with the flawed but compelling human race.

Karen wasn’t perfect. She was a flirt. She drank too much. She slept with the wrong guys and got her heart broken more times in their first year of college than Max had in her lifetime. They needed each other—Karen to bring Max down off her pedestal and enjoy living again, and Max to protect Karen from herself.

But in the end, she couldn’t protect Karen. Karen had disappeared, and though Max and law enforcement knew she was dead, they’d never found her body, nor brought her killer to justice.

The one time Karen lied to her had proved fatal.

Max sighed and stretched. The water had cooled uncomfortably, so she quickly finished her coffee, pulled the drain, and rinsed off under a hot stream of water through the dual jets. She dressed in layers, since the early spring morning was cold, then dried her thick hair and put on make-up while drinking another cup of coffee.

Finally, she felt ready to start the day.

She called room service for breakfast and more coffee. She didn’t like to eat in her hotel room, but she couldn’t bring her desk down to the restaurant and she had work to do.

After room service left, she ate a blueberry scone and reviewed her e-mail. While on the flight yesterday, she’d planned her day, but Max preferred to remain flexible when starting an investigation. She had the basics of the case, but it wasn’t so cut-and-dried as she’d have liked.

First, there were jurisdictional issues. The college was in the county, not the city of Colorado Springs. The campsite where Scott Sheldon had disappeared was in a national park, putting the location under the federal government. The National Park Service rangers were responsible for the initial search and rescue, but they had a joint operation with the county and adjoining cities. Adele Sheldon had told her she filed the missing persons report with the college and with Colorado Springs PD, and Detective Amelia Horn was her contact. Why CSPD? Neither the college nor the campsite was in the city. Who was really in charge? Detective Horn had nothing to add when Max spoke to her, pointing out that CSPD
wasn’t
in charge.

Max pulled out a trifold board she’d created last night and set it up on the credenza. The time line was clear, even though it made no sense.

Last Halloween Eve, nearly six months ago, was a Friday. Scott Sheldon told his roommate that he was going camping with three friends—Tom Keller, Arthur Cowan, and Carlos Ibarra. They planned to be back Sunday morning.

According to the statements by Scott’s three friends, they’d been drinking and joking Friday night. At some point, Scott got angry—no one claimed to know exactly what set him off—and he grabbed his backpack and left. When he didn’t return, they assumed he was sleeping in the truck, which was parked an hour’s hike from the campsite.

The next morning, Scott still hadn’t returned. The weather turned from overcast to rain, and Keller, Cowan, and Ibarra returned to the truck. When they didn’t find Scott, they looked for him in the area, but the rain came down hard and heavy. They left—there was nothing in the notes saying that they went back to the campus on Saturday, but that was implied. It snowed late Saturday night and the boys said they trekked back to the campsite Sunday morning and looked for Scott. They didn’t call the rangers, they didn’t alert campus security,
nothing,
until Sunday afternoon.