The Convulsion Factory (12 page)

She’s cool and steady, forever striving for the perfect blend of authority and compassionate story involvement. That intangible quality which will later, on playback after editing and splicing with other footage, reach out through the tube to seize viewer attention. Telling one and all,
I speak the truth, it’s something you want to hear, and no one can tell it quite like I can.

Sandra’s trick: She focuses not on the camera lens, as do so many lesser-talented competitors. Instead, she focuses two feet
beyond
the lens, a starmaking quality that plunks her firmly inside the living room of an entire city.

In truth, Darryl Hiller has yet to be sentenced. Sandra and her crew — cameraman, sound recordist, and film editor — are taping the segment in advance. If they’re wrong they’ll reshoot later. But no one in his right mind expects the Tapeworm to get slammed with anything less than the max. Pre-hearing is simply less congested outside the Municipal Court. Less background clutter to detract attention from Sandra Riley. And it will give them more time post-hearing to scrounge reaction footage of the principle players in the Tapeworm’s final day as a newsmaker: attorneys, police officers, victims’ families.

As well, she has her own press conference to give, and the anticipation is delicious. Her contemporaries and competitors citywide — from network affiliates, network O&Os, local indies — have already accused her of grandstanding. She can afford to laugh off such accusations, knowing they’re born of professional jealousy. All of them report the news; only Sandra is an insider on this,
making
the news as well as distilling it for consumption. She had no say in the manner it plummeted into her lap.

“But even as the city breathes a collective sigh of relief,” she continues, “this day of justice cannot be considered a total victory. Police still have no leads in the copycat killings patterned after the Tapeworm’s methods of rape and murder, which began two months ago…”

Sandra wraps it, packages it, and Kevin the cameraman bags it. She reaches around her back and unclips the Sony from her skirt’s belt, draws the earphone line from beneath her jacket. Every word was taped informally from a written script so she could listen and repeat verbatim — no TelePrompTers on site — and be free to concentrate on projecting through the lens.

“Let’s get set up outside Courtroom C,” she tells her crew as they pack it up. No cameras allowed inside the courtroom.

Sandra lights a nervous cigarette and the nicotine rush calms her empty stomach. She’s eaten nothing today but a handful of peanuts gulped for breakfast, and the cigarette helps her forget.

Kevin straightens from his camera, a tall and handsome black man with a moustache and a hightop fade. “You oughta give those up. Give you those pucker lines around your mouth, look like hell on camera someday.”

She smiles, considers grinding the cigarette with a shoetip but doesn’t. “By the time I get the lines, my airtime days’ll be over.” She’s on a fast-track rise, gunning for network anchor by thirty-five. Only the youthful need apply. There are no female equivalents of wise old Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace. Her biological clock is ticking, and it has nothing to do with children.

Gear is packed for mobility and Sandra pitches in to help lug it along. No off-camera star demeanor for her, and the crew loves her for it.
She’s one of us.
But in her heart she questions the purity of her motives. Even altruism can be self-serving.

As they reach the court steps they realize something is wrong. Pandemonium and harsh voices rebound along marble corridors. Sandra and her crew break into doubletime and gear is readied on the run, and they find themselves in a swarm of confusion. Civilians are herded away by police. Courthouse deputies speak frantically into walkie-talkies. A custodial type flanked by two cops aims a fingertip along a ceiling path, as if following ductwork. A pudgy, weeping, red-haired man in a rumpled jailhouse jumpsuit is escorted from a men’s bathroom, wearing handcuffs, but these are quickly removed. Moments later a uniformed deputy is stretchered out of the bathroom, a bloody mask for a face, and a police sergeant is screaming for everyone to get back, back —

“Are you getting this?” she snaps to Kevin.

His camera is balanced on one broad shoulder. “
Oh
yeah.”

The sound tech feeds her impatient hand the microphone and they wade into the fray. Sandra digs in for internal focus, that center of calm, grace under pressure. They battle chaos to find someone who can tell them what’s going on, but deep within she knows it’s all about this man who vowed he would do no hard time.

Thrusting the mike into official faces, she’s rebuffed time and again, until at last she shanghais a young uniformed cop trying gamely at crowd control.

“Can you tell us what’s happened?” she asks again.

He whirls, irritable, ready to tell her to get lost. But the recognition is instantaneous —
it’s her
— and his will dissolves in a giddy rush of celebrity proximity. Putty in her hands. He will later be reprimanded for his poor judgment and big mouth.

“He got away! Darryl Hiller got away!” he says, breathless.

Sandra doesn’t let the hammer blow of distress register one flicker across her face. “How did this happen, do you know?”

“He … he told his guard he had to go to the crapper, and … and I don’t know
what
happened! Slipped his cuffs and beat hell out of his guard and cuffed that poor asshole” — a quick finger-jab toward the plump red-haired man — “and stole his clothes. And then he just … disappeared!”

“By disappeared, you mean —”

“He’s gone, but there was no place for him to go.” The young cop is white-faced. “Miz Riley … that bathroom doesn’t even have a window.”

*

Seven months earlier, November:

She came home, near midnight, and the day had been typically long and exhausting. She sorted mail in the sixteen-story elevator ride up to her floor, some addressed to Sandra Riley, the rest to Shanna Riley. The latter was technically correct. Some long-ago news consultant down in Dallas had suggested a change in her pro name. Shanna sounded too close to Sheena, as in Queen of the Jungle, which some female viewership might find threatening. Management backed him, but at least she got to pick her replacement moniker.

Her feet ached, and she wore L.A. Gear tennies instead of heels toward the day’s end, when spit and polish were less crucial. She closed her apartment door, triple-locked it. Shed her overcoat and collapsed onto the sofa, a single lamp on for company. Home was a jumbled contrast to her immaculate video image, everywhere stacks of current magazines and nonfiction books, a hamster-in-wheel race to keep abreast of all matters financial and political, scientific and cultural.

A few tears, then, and cramps.
ActioNews 8
was a battleground of mammoth egos and managerial shufflings. In “The Waste Land” T.S. Eliot had deemed April the cruelest month, but she knew better. It was November. November saw the year’s most crucial Arbitron sweep, and
ActioNews 8
was currently ranked fourth in a nine-station market. Unacceptable. As reporter and weekend co-anchor, she didn’t have the most to lose, but it seemed that the less you had the more viciously you had to fight just to hold onto it.

The whole city was, of course, abuzz over the murders. Some whackout who assaulted women in their homes, bound them with vinyl tape so they couldn’t flee, taped over their mouths so they couldn’t scream … then taped over their noses so they couldn’t breathe. He raped them as they convulsed into suffocation, then left them for someone else to come home to.

After victim number three, when a police captain was quoted as saying, “We’ll catch this worm,” media pundits were quick to christen the killer the Tapeworm, for a populace preferring its more murderous aberrations to be packaged with readily-identifiable labels. Sandra hated the name, had no choice but to use it. Over drinks, the more battle-hardened reporters even hoped that the Tapeworm would send the police taunting notes. Given the vinyl and the rape, the notes could then, in a morbid nod to C.S. Lewis, be called “The Screwtape Letters.”

A little requisite tube-time before bed. Sandra reached for the remote control for the TV and VCR, always stationed on the coffee table, and only then realized something was wrong.

It wasn’t there.

When the TV winked on as if by telepathy, she whirled in sudden panic. Saw him strolling out of hallway shadows, remote in one hand and cutlery in the other. There was never any doubt as to who he was. The roll of tape braceleted over one wrist was mere confirmation.

Sandra scrambled for the door but he was quicker, lithe as a gymnast, and blocked her way.
Back to the sofa,
he motioned with the knife, and she obeyed against her will. Ridiculous — compliance hadn’t saved his sixteen priors. The sense of invasion brought a wave of nausea.

“I’m not here for that,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.”

She poised on the sofa like high-tension wire while he took the nearest chair. She looked for weapons, escapes. Nothing in this room, at least, looked as formidable as the blade. In the bedroom, however…

He pointed at the TV and its outboard gear. “You record the competition’s newscasts to watch later, don’t you.” He appeared pleased with this deduction.

She nodded, studying him, fighting for self-control. He was remarkable only for his look of being so totally ordinary. The Tapeworm’s identity and appearance had been matters of great speculation, since he hadn’t left anyone behind to provide a description. He was young, mid-twenties, with limp blond hair and the pale pallor of someone who holed up with too much late-night TV. His eyes were devoid of feverish madness, touched instead by an intelligent gaze of intense curiosity.

Stronger than he looks, though, she had to reason. He could not have broken in through her front door. Which meant this bland lunatic had scaled sixteen floors of balconies to meet her.

“That’s smart, taping the others’ news. I’m sorry, I had to take your tape out, but I rewound it for you. It’ll be okay. You have to know your competition.” He nodded, toyed with the knife.

“What do you want, then?” Her voice, so tight, so wired, was not at all what she heard when reviewing her own newscasts.

“I brought my own tape. I edited it myself. It’s called
Sex, Death, and Videotape
. Let’s watch.” He hit the remote again and the VCR kicked in. She felt his eyes never leave her, couldn’t trust her, no, couldn’t trust her yet.

She watched a moment of snow, then

herself Sandra Riley rapidfire edited images of her at scene after scene of the crime change of seasons noted by change of wardrobe her professional sympathetic concern always the same “This is Sandra Riley” crying families frustrated cops whirling red lights and yellowtape crime scene cordons “We’ll catch this worm” victim profiles black and white and color photos of young women who breathed no more “This is Sandra Riley” academic post-Freudian graybeard spouting psychological murderer’s profile then footage of older murders older crime scenes shootings knifings bludgeonings strangulations never connected never related because of wildly varying M.O.’s frightening cavalcade jumpcut montage “This is Sandra Riley” herself at weekend anchor desk “For ActioNews 8, this is Sandra Riley” same closing image on flashcut repeat Sandra Riley/Sandra Riley/Sandra Riley/Sandra Riley/Sandra Riley/Sandra Riley —

Snow, and white noise.

“What
is
this?” she managed to choke out.

“Don’t you get it?” He looked at her in earnest. “It’s my résumé.”

Sandra Riley, numb and blank. A media first.

“Don’t you see?” he asked. “I want to
work
with you.”

She staggered inside, trying to convince herself,
This is not personal, this is nothing personal.
Survival depended on divorcing personal from professional. Professionally she was unflappable. Last fall she’d done a live Special Olympics report while wearing a jersey. Of numerous airtime mandates there was but one unforgivable sin: Thou shalt not lose control on the air. She’d done ninety seconds of live feed with calm, warm, caring composure for these handicapped children. After handing it back to the studio she had astonished her crew by shrieking and twisting until she dislodged two squirming grasshoppers from inside her jersey.

“Work together,” she repeated, now steady. “How so?”

“There’s so much information I could feed you. So everyone could know me. They’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s like admiring the painting without knowing the artist.” He rose, grew more animated, gesturing with the knife. “I mean, look what I’ve done for your career already. Look what you’ve done for me.”

She met him eye to eye. “I’m not the only one, by any means. Everyone’s covered you.”

He dismissed the rest with an irritated flip of the blade. “Hacks, they’re all doing hackwork, assembly line journalism.” He lowered to one knee, imploring her as if proposing marriage. “You’re the best. I watch my coverage every night —
every night
— and you’re the only one who can take me back there. I watch you standing there where I’ve been and I can smell it, I can taste it, I can feel myself right back there … ‘cause you step right out and take me by the hand and pull me back through the screen with you.”

A moment’s flash:
What have I created?