Free The Last Good Night by Emily Listfield Page A

back, before I crammed it deep inside my purse. Then I phoned the studio’s head of security, Hank Baldwin. It’s his job to protect us from the numerous fans, besotted, beleaguered, lonely, mad, who occasionally seek us out. “Congratulations on the overnight ratings,” he said.
    â€œThanks.” I was only somewhat surprised that even he studied the overnights. I asked about his wife and then I got down to business. “Hank, no one can get into the studio without proper ID, can they?”
    â€œOf course not. Why?”
    â€œNo reason. Just checking.”
    â€œYou worried about that guy McGuirre again?”
    â€œI don’t know. Not really.”
    â€œHe’s got two more months before he comes up for parole. Getting some headshrinking, I hear,” Baldwin said. “They’ll let us know when he gets out.”
    â€œOkay.”
    I heard the rustling of papers, a deep breath. “Look, has anything happened?” he asked. “Is there anything I should know about, anything you want to tell me? Confidentially, of course.”
    I paused, stumbled. “No, nothing like that.”
    Hank sighed with disappointment. “Well, no one who’s not authorized can get into the building, Laura, but if you’re nervous I’ll put the guards on extra alert.”
    â€œThanks.”
    What both of us knew but did not mention was that people did slip through, the zealots, the lovelorn, the possessed. They had disrupted live broadcasts with political demands, they had cornered another anchorwoman in her office, holding her hostage for two hours, they had followed a talk-show host to his home in Connecticut and broken all his windows, slashed his tires, jammed his locks. There are a whole litany of deaths that fame has caused. Those of us within its domain only mention them in whispers, if at all.
    Baldwin reassured me that under no circumstances would anyone give out my home phone number or address, and then he added, “I’ll check on McGuirre.”
    I thanked him again and hung up.
    There was no way that Sean McGuirre could have known about the Breezeway Inn.
    Or what happened there.
    Â 
    I WENT BACK to the computer, back to the news, went back to doing my job.
    What else could I do?
    Still, I felt it, the card in my bag, like a scab.
    Berkman had a new idea of spending the last five minutes each evening on a single topic under the headline “Nightly Notes.” The pieces would be filed by bureau reporters as well as Quinn and me. Jerry told me to make a list of ten possible topics. “Exposés are always good,” he said. “Think government waste. Or anything to do with radiation. Money, that too. Always money. Especially when it’s being squeezed from little old ladies.” Though I’d always prided myself on my ability to generate story ideas, I’d only come up with three viable possibilities so far. I wondered how many Quinn had. Whatever it was, he wasn’t talking. I stared at my list for a few minutes, adding nothing, and then, distracted, I called Dora to check on Sophie.
    â€œShe’s fine, our little girlie is fine, thank the Lord,” Dora said. “Sleeping like the innocent she is.”
    Dora thanked the Lord so repeatedly and for such prosaic events, a good bowel movement, a well-attended bottle, that everyday occurrences took on a miraculous and ominous air. She was, as David said, a woman after my own heart.
    I hung up, checked the progress of the evening’s broadcast on the computer, and then, at four-thirty, I went to makeup.
    Perry was perched on the counter alongside her brushes, her small rounded figure tightly encased in a black knit dress, as shetalked on the telephone. She put down the receiver as soon as I walked in.
    â€œThat sounded bad,” I said, settling into one of the clammy vinyl chairs. “Billy?”
    â€œWorse. The National Enquirer .”
    â€œWhat did they want,