Best Laid Plans(159)

The waitress came with the water and the beer. Max stared at Trixie, who lay both alert and peaceful next to Chuck.

“Then there’s nothing more to say,” Max said. Not now, at any rate. But she’d been working on the article all weekend. She would expose to the public everything that had happened to Scott Sheldon, and who was responsible.

“I’m sorry,” Horn repeated, then left.

“I tried,” Chuck said quietly. “But without physical evidence, and all three sticking to the same story, it wasn’t possible to get the D.A. to change his mind. He didn’t even want to put up a plea deal, but Amelia convinced him that a misdemeanor and probation were better than nothing.”

“It’s not fair.”

God, she hated the feeling and couldn’t believe she’d said it out loud. She damn well knew life wasn’t fair. Her life had been a roller coaster for twenty-nine years. Was it fair that her mother had walked out on her, dumping her with her older grandparents? Was it fair that her college roommate was murdered and no one could prove who’d killed her? Was it fair that Scott Sheldon died the subject of a cruel joke?

Fairness had nothing to do with living. Max believed in the truth, believed that all truth was knowledge, and with that knowledge, justice would prevail.

Nowhere in that was there fairness.

She and Chuck sat drinking in silence.

Truth. The truth could be told. Because truth was a different brand of justice.

*



Max called Ben first thing Tuesday morning.

“I’ll be back in New York next week. I sent you changes to your proposal.”

“You’ll do the show?”

“If you agree to my changes.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t know what they are.”

“I don’t care.”

She smiled, genuinely smiled, for the first time in days. “Yes, you will.”

“Okay, give me the basics.”

“I want creative control. I want to decide what cases I investigate and air. I liked your Web site idea, the short articles, the snippets around the country—we need to expand that.”

“Did something happen in Colorado?”

For someone so self-absorbed, Ben had a knack for getting to the truth. She had to admire the trait.

“This case—a group of college kids left another student in the middle of nowhere as a prank. He died, they got off with probation. As if Scott Sheldon’s life isn’t worth the cost of a minimal sentence.”

“What do you hope to accomplish, Max?”

“Shine a light on the cruelty of human nature, how the selfish choices of a group of kids resulted in the accidental death of another, how their lies and misdirection resulted in a mother not knowing what happened to her son for six months. Six months of the unknown. Of fear and worry. The emotional turmoil the callous actions of youth created in a family.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” She expected him to argue with her, that the story wouldn’t be “sexy” enough or big enough for a cable news show.

“I trust you, Max. I know you’ll put the right angle, the right spin on it. But it won’t fill up the forty-four minutes we need for the show.”

“I can—”

“Hold it. This is my job, making this work. A theme—those left behind. Friends and families of missing persons. I’ll find three other cases you can interview, and we’ll use your Colorado case as the positive, of persistence in finding the truth.” He paused. “You’ll have to talk about Karen.”

“No.”

“You wrote a book about it, it’s a perfect lead-in for the show. You’re the best person to understand how these families feel. Max, trust me on this—I’m not going to sensationalize Karen’s disappearance. It’s a hook. You know it. And I’ve read your book a half dozen times. You had a call to action—if anyone knows anything, they need to come forward. We can do the same call to action on this show. We’ll find cases like Scott Sheldon, and call people to come forward.”

She liked the idea. She really liked it. If she worked on cold cases, the chances were that most of these people were dead. But closure—that would help the survivors.

“Find a runaway,” she said. “Someone who might come home if they knew their family ached for them.”

“I knew you had a knack for this.”

“I’m not doing a weekly show. I wouldn’t be able to do these cases justice.”

“Semimonthly.”

“Monthly.”

“Max—”

“But I liked your proposal about integrating with a Web page and current cases. We can do more of that if I’m not investigating a cold case every week, which takes time.”

“You’ll have a staff.”

“Monthly.”

“Fine.”

“You gave in too easily.”

“I actually pitched the show as a monthly program. I tweaked the proposal to give you something to negotiate away.”

She laughed. Maybe Ben did know her better than she thought.

“Send me the contract when you have it drafted.”

“It’s already drafted. I’m sure you’ll have changes.”