Free Frames Per Second by Bill Eidson Page A

a Pulitzer by degrees. In reputation and skill, she dwarfed Lucien, and everyone in the room knew it.
    “So,” Kurt said, “I’d like to start this meeting off with a welcome to Sarah Taylor.” Kurt picked up the phone and asked his secretary to bring Sarah in.
    A moment later, she entered, and Ben was struck that this was the first time he had ever met his best friend’s wife. Ex-wife, anyhow.
    Sarah was in her early to mid-thirties. She was relatively small, with fine features, dark blue eyes, and a light complexion. There was a faint dusting of freckles on her cheeks and nose. Short, curly black hair.
    “Face like a Girl Scout,” Peter had said. “A Girl Scout who can sell you a half dozen boxes of cookies and get you to confess every bad thing you ever did just because this nice girl is so damn interested in you.”
    Ben could see it, the openness of her face. But now, tension was also evident there, the tightness of her mouth and a hollowness about her eyes.
    Kurt introduced her to the group.
    “Thank you,” she said. She looked around the group quietly before speaking. “I expect all of you are surprised that I’m here. I expect some of you aren’t too happy about it either, feel that I might be upsetting the balance of order. To which I’ll tell you that I’m sorry, but that it can’t be helped. I have a consuming interest in finding out what happened to Peter. And I know it sounds arrogant, but I’ve found that when I’m truly interested in getting to the truth of the matter, I just about always do.”
    She looked around at each of them. Her eyes settled on Ben, locked briefly. She said, “I’d appreciate any help you can offer.”
    Lucien looked down, but everyone else spoke up, made sounds of welcome and condolences. She thanked them all, but her eyes kept coming back to Ben.
    Kurt stood up and formally welcomed her aboard. He told Sid, Glenda, and Leslie that they were free to go back to work now that the staff portion of the meeting was over. They filed out, leaving the new investigative team of Ed, Ben, Sarah, and Lucien. Sarah opened a notebook computer while Kurt turned over the first page of a flip chart he had standing in the corner.
    On it was a list:
     
    1. Johansen
    2. Battered Wives
    3. Cheever
    4. McGuire
    5. ???
     
    “Anything else?” Kurt pointed to the question marks. “Any other stories that Peter was working on that he may have mentioned to you and not me?”
    Lucien and Ed looked to each other and smiled.
    “Until you handed me that story about the battered women to follow up on, I knew nothing about it,” Ed said. “Peter kept his stories to himself.”
    Lucien nodded to Ben. “Maybe a word or two to his buddy here, but otherwise, you’d know more than us.”
    “Fine,” Kurt said. “So this will be our base of stories and I’ll expect you to keep me informed if others appear.” Kurt smiled faintly. “We’ve promised the police to keep quiet to any other media outlets about the projects Peter was working on. Naturally, this is something we’d want to hold on to anyhow, because I want Peter’s story on the cover of Insider next week. Sarah and Lucien, this week I want you to work together on a lead-in starting from Ben’s experience with Johansen to a quick and dramatic summary of the explosion that killed Peter. Sarah, I also see a sidebar about your own reaction when you heard of Peter’s death and insight into the risks reporters take.”
    Ben winced.
    She appeared to pause, but then she simply nodded. “Makes sense,” she said.
    Ben saw Lucien’s shoulders slump.
    Kurt continued. “Now, all the other media outlets think Peter was simply using a company van when this happened. Let’s keep it that way for Ben’s sake, keep the random nuts from thinking they should go after him, do it right.”
    “I’d appreciate it,” Ben said.
    Kurt continued. “In any case, from there we go on to some background on Peter himself, and then we go into the violence