Free You Can’t Stop Me by Max Allan Collins, Matthew Clemens Page B

papers in this morning—end of the month’s my last day.”
    “You heading for a beach, or coming aboard?”
    “Send me an airline ticket. If it’s to Hawaii, I’ll head for the beach.”
    “And if it’s to LA?”
    “Then I’ll come work for you.”
     
    In Casper, Wyoming, at the state crime lab, Harrow met up with the last candidate on his Dream Team list—Jenny Blake.
    A petite blonde with blue eyes, Blake was painfully shy, and Harrow was well aware that her limited social skills could hamper her in the over-the-top world of television.
    That limitation aside, the twenty-five-year-old had tremendous computer skills. As a teenager, she had used those skills to lure child predators to her foster parents’ house in Casper, Wyoming, before calling the local police. Her legend spread to the Wyoming state crime lab, where a friend had passed the story on to Harrow. After college, Blake joined that same Wyoming crime lab.
    Of all the potential members of the team, the shy Blake would likely be the hardest to convince to join up.
    Their mutual friend introduced the pair over coffee in the crime lab’s breakroom, then excused herself.
    Harrow laid out his pitch with quiet intensity and what he felt was sincere eloquence…and Jenny Blake turned him down cold.
    Her shyness made her tremendously uneasy about the whole television aspect of the job, but having been raised in foster care, she had as much empathy for a parent who had lost a child as she did for the children who were preyed upon by adults.
    “Jenny, this isn’t about television,” he told her. “That’s only a means to an end. Thanks to the network, we can afford the best people in their fields—like you.”
    “I’m happy here,” she said.
    “I just need to borrow you for a while. Jenny, this person, these persons…”
    “Unsub,” she said.
    “Yes, this unknown subject killed my wife and my son. David had a great future in front of him, and it was taken from him, stolen from him, and…we believe this unsub has killed many others, young people like my son, children too. And this is my chance to stop him.”
    “Here,” she said. She was handing him a napkin.
    “What?”
    “You’re crying.”
    He didn’t realize. He dried his eyes.
    “I’ll do it,” she said.

Chapter Nine
    Harrow had seldom set foot in the conference room used by the top UBC execs and, for that matter, the board itself. You could have played touch football in here, if it weren’t for the long narrow table of dark polished wood bisecting the space. The walls were beige and blank, lacking even framed posters bragging of hit shows, not that UBC had many. Tables in a back corner held shining stainless steel urns of coffee, orange juice, ice water; and offered baskets of breakfast pastries, fresh fruit, and yogurt cups on ice.
    At the front of the room, behind Harrow, was a mammoth plasma screen that could display one huge image or dozens of smaller ones. Just behind Harrow at his left was a cameraman capturing his every move, and at his right, a female audio guy’s boom was a sword of Damocles over his head. Two more cameramen were positioned on either side of the table—not directly across from each other, of course—and a male sound guy with a boom was catching the talk at the table.
    Way at the back, near the craft service area, stood network president Dennis Byrnes in a light gray Brooks Brothers, black shirt, and charcoal tie, arms Superman-style at his waist; next to him, of course, was Nicole Strickland, arms folded across the admirable shelf of her breasts, like a bodyguard in Donna Karan.
    Harrow turned his attention to the people seated at the table. Nearest were the five forensics experts that made up his dream team; farther down were Carmen Garcia and a contingent of top production personnel.
    They were chatting among themselves, the ones already acquainted taking the lead. One thing law enforcement professionals and TV/film people had in common was an