Free The Shadow Killer by Gail Bowen Page B

I’m swimming upstream. I look again at the newspaper in my hand and my spidey senses begin to tingle. That’s when I know that even though it’s still ten minutes to showtime, I’m already in over my head.

CHAPTER TWO
    W hen I enter the brightly lit control room of Studio D, Nova Langenegger, who has produced the show since the beginning, is keying something into her computer. She has a phone balanced between her ear and her shoulder. In the year since her daughter, Lily, was born, Nova has started running. I thought she looked fine with a few extra pounds, but she didn’t share my opinion.
    She’s my age, but tonight, with her blond hair tied up in a ponytail and her runner’s body in a tank top and shorts, she looks about seventeen. Nova never wears makeup. She doesn’t need to. Her skin is creamy and taut, and her eyes are the intense blue of an Alpine sky. Her steady gaze has rescued me more than once over the years.
    Nova is not easily rattled, but she can’t take her eyes off whatever’s on her computer screen.
    â€œLook at this.” She points to an email.
    I lean over her shoulder and read the words aloud. “ For all of us, being dead would be better than living with him. When Charlie said ‘no man is a man until his father dies,’ I knew what I had to do. ”
    â€œNo name,” she says. “Just an email address. [email protected].”
    There’s a coldness in the pit of my stomach. After ten years, I can tell when someone is about to cross the blood-red line. I keep my voice even.
    â€œDid I say that?”
    Nova’s fingernails are already chewed to the quick, but she slides what remains of her thumbnail into her mouth and nods.
    â€œYou did. I checked through the tapes for the last six weeks and found the exact words.” She adjusts the elastic on her ponytail. “The topic was guilt. The caller’s name was Brian, and he was beating himself up because his father died, and all he felt was relief.”
    â€œI remember,” I say. “That voice is pretty hard to forget. Brian sounded as if he was being torn apart by the hounds of hell.”
    â€œIt wasn’t any easier listening to him the second time,” Nova says dryly. “I jotted down the key points of your conversation.” She picks up a scratch pad and begins reading. “Brian said, ‘A man’s supposed to cry for his father, but I can’t cry. I just keep feeling relieved that he’s finally gone.’ You tried a couple of approaches, but you weren’t connecting. Finally, you reached into your Tickle Trunk of a brain and came up with something that worked. ‘Fathers cast long shadows,’ you said. ‘It’s easy to get lost in them.’”
    â€œThat’s when Brian started listening,” I said. “I told him about an article I’d read. The writer believed fathers become an audience of one for their sons.”
    Nova reads from her scratch pad.
    â€œâ€˜Fathers teach their sons how to throw a ball, and then they watch and cheer. A boy grows up knowing that his dad’s always going to be in the stands, watching.’”
    â€œWhich is great unless the boy becomes a man who is still always trying to please that audience of one,” I say.
    â€œAnd that’s where the fatal quote came in.” Nova consults her scratch pad again and reads. “‘The son who is always trying to please his father will never be a man until the father dies.’”
    I rub the back of my neck. The aspirin has not yet worked its magic. I watch Nova’s face carefully.
    â€œWould you interpret that as me giving someone license to kill his father?”
    Nova’s smile is thin.
    â€œNo. I’d interpret that as you telling Brian that he isn’t a monster—that other people have reacted to a father’s death the way he has. But people hear what they want to