The Boy from the Woods(32)
“Why do you say that?”
Pine mulled that over. Then he said, “Would it sway you at all if I said a father just knows?”
“Not in the least.”
“She was taken.”
“By?”
“I have no idea.”
“Any signs of foul play?”
“Foul play?” He frowned. “Are you for real?”
“Any evidence at all she was taken?”
“I have the absence of evidence.”
“Meaning?”
Bernard Pine spread his hand and smiled in a creepy way. “Well, she’s not here, is she?”
“I don’t think I can help you.”
“Because I can’t prove she was taken?”
Pine staggered toward Wilde a little too quickly, as though he was going to attack. Wilde took a step back. Pine stopped and held up his hand in surrender.
“Look, Wilde or whatever the hell they call you, have it your way. Let’s say Naomi ran away. If that’s the case, well, she’s out there all alone.” He lifted both arms and spun, as though to indicate his daughter might be in these specific woods. “She’s been traumatized by those Neanderthals in her school and now she’s scared and sad and…and she needs to be found.”
Tough for Wilde to admit, but that made sense.
“Will you help me? No, not me. Forget me. You met Naomi. I can tell you connected with her. Will you help Naomi?”
Wilde stuck his hand out. “Give me your car keys.”
“What?”
“I’ll drive you home. You can tell me everything you know on the way.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
Hester tried to focus, but she also felt giddy as a schoolgirl.
Her guest right now on Crimstein on Crime was famed activist/attorney Saul Strauss. The topic, like the topic of nearly every broadcast on every show right now, was the disruptive presidential campaign of Rusty Eggers, a talk-show guru with a sketchy background.
But her mind heading into commercial break was on the text she’d just received from Oren Carmichael:
I know you’re going on air. Can I come up and talk when you’re done?
She’d giddily—man, she was too old for all this giddy—replied yes and that she’d leave Oren’s name at reception and he could come up at any time. She almost typed one of those emoji hearts or smiley things at the end, but a fly-through of common sense restrained her.
But still.
Coming out of commercial, Hester read the quick bio on Saul Strauss off the teleprompter—son of an old-school Republican governor from Vermont, served in the military, graduated from Brown University, taught at Columbia Law School, worked tirelessly now as a staunch defender of the underserved, of the downtrodden, of green causes, for animal rights…in short, he never met a bleeding-heart cause he didn’t betroth with total ferocity.
“Just to be clear,” Hester said, diving straight in, “you are suing the producers of The Rusty Show, but not Rusty Eggers himself, is that correct?”
Hester guessed that Saul Strauss was in his early sixties. He had the trappings of a stereotypical liberal arts professor—long gray hair in a ponytail down his back, flannel dress shirt under corduroy burnt-orange sports coat, complete with the patches on the sleeves, facial hair that sat somewhere between fashionable and Amish, reading spectacles dangling from a chain around his neck—but no matter how he dressed, Hester could still spot the steeliness of the old Marine.
“Exactly. I represent one of the advertisers for The Rusty Show, who is justifiably concerned that he was sold a false bill of goods.”
“Which advertiser?”
Strauss’s hands, folded on the desk, were thick, enormous, his fingers like sausages. Last time he’d been on, Hester had rested her hand on his forearm during the conversation, just for a second. The forearm felt like a marble block.
“We’ve asked the judge to keep my client’s name confidential for now.”
“But you’re suing for fraud?”
“Yes.”
“Explain.”
“In short, we feel that The Rusty Show defrauded my client and other advertisers by deliberately hiding information that could be damaging to their brands.”
“What information?”
“We aren’t sure yet.”
“Then how can you sue?”
“My client in good conscience connected their company to Rusty Eggers and his television program. We believe that when they did so, both the network and Dash Maynard—”
“Dash Maynard being the producer of The Rusty Show?”
Saul Strauss grinned. “Oh, Dash Maynard was much more than that. The two men are longtime friends. Maynard created the show—and really, he created the fake entity we now know as Rusty Eggers.”
She debated following up on the fake entity thing, but it would keep. “Okay, fine, but I still don’t understand your claim.”
“Dash Maynard is sitting on information damaging to Rusty Eggers—”
“You know that how?”
“—and by not revealing what that damaging information is, even with all the NDAs in place, Dash Maynard knew that he was selling advertising for a program that could blow up at any moment and harm my client’s brand.”