Nic said, "And in real,life?"
Willow raised one shoulder and smiled. "About what you would expect. I answer phones, and sometimes check the newswires for stories. But I'm mostly a gofer. I go out for coffee and sandwich runs."
"So how did Jim Fate like his coffee?" Allison asked.
Willow replied without hesitation. "Twenty-ounce latte with four shots, extra hot, no whip, with three sugar packets. He was very firm about that. No Splenda or Equal. It had to be sugar."
"So Jim was a man's man, huh?" Nic said. "Not afraid of a little sweetener?"
A smile quirked Willow's mouth. "Jim wasn't much afraid of anything."
Nic wondered if that trait had gotten Jim Fate killed. "How long have you known him?"
"I met him when he interviewed me and the other finalists for the job. But I've been listening to him since I was in middle school. In fact, he's the main reason I decided to major in broadcasting. He spoke the truth without fear."
Willow was so earnest that Nic practically expected her to put her hand over her heart.
"What was Jim like to work with?" Allison asked. "Was he a good boss?"
"He liked to explain to me how radio worked, what listeners wanted versus what they said they wanted. He liked to tell me why something was wrong, and how it should be changed."
"Sounds like pretty one-sided conversations," Nic observed. She had worked for a lot of people like that in her time. Some of the older guys at the Bureau still treated her like she was wet behind the ears.
"But that's what I'm here for," Willow said earnestly. "To learn about how things really work in the real world."
"What are your plans now?" Allison asked. "Will you stay here?"
"I don't know." Willow sighed. "Aaron says I can stay. But my dad wants me to quit. He's worried that it's not safe here. He keeps asking me, what if someone sends another package? Aaron says they are going to contract with a company that will X-ray any package before it comes to the building, but my dad's afraid something will slip through, or that some crazy guy will just show up at the front desk and start blasting away with a machine gun."
Nic could understand that. If this girl were her daughter, she would already be gone.
"Did Jim Fate have any enemies?" Allison asked.
Willow's answering smile seemed faintly patronizing. "You must not have listened to the show very much. He made a lot of people mad. I saw some of the letters Jim threw in the trash after reading them. People would say that they hoped he would get cancer or that lightning would hit him or that God would strike him dead."
"Given that Jim made people so mad, were you surprised that he opened the package? Why didn't he have you screen things for him?" Nic asked.
Willow shrugged. "Jim always opened his own mail. He made that clear to me the first day."
Allison asked, "Isn't that just the kind of thing you have a gofer for?"
Her cheeks pinked. "He got a lot of, um, things, in the mail. Personal things."
Nic raised an eyebrow. "Personal things?"
Willow looked down at her lap. "One time I saw him open a package, and a pair of lace panties fell out. Maybe he just wanted to check out everything on his own so he could decide what to do with it without everyone knowing about it."
"It sounds like he was a player," Nic said.
Willow's smile was rueful. "Kind of. I guess I didn't pick up on that when I was in middle school."
Allison said carefully, "If you don't mind me saying so, you're very attractive. Did Jim ever express an interest in you?"
Her lips twisted with disgust. "Jim Fate? He's old enough to be my father! In fact, my dad's only two years older than him."
"But you didn't really answer the question," Allison pointed out. "Just because Jim Fate was older doesn't mean he didn't have eyes in his head. Did he ever flirt with you, ask you out, touch you inappropriately?"
"Flirt? Jim flirted with any woman from seventeen to seventy. But if I had thought there was anything more there, I would have cut him off right away."
Looking at Willow's curled upper lip, Nic had no doubt she was telling the truth.
"Now, you were there when Jim died, is that right?" Allison asked.
"Yeah." The girl swallowed. "Aaron was talking to me and Chris--that's the call screener. There was a break for the top-of-the-hour national news feed, and Victoria got up to get her tea. The next thing I knew, Jim was pressing the Talk button and telling us we had to leave, that there was sarin gas."
"You've heard that it wasn't sarin, right?" Allison asked.
"Yeah, but at the time, I think all any of us could think of was that we were all going to die. You could tell Jim was trying to hold his breath. It was awful. His eyes were all wide and pleading, just staring at us through the glass."
"But Victoria stayed, right?" Nic said. "She stayed with him until the end."
"That certainly took a lot of courage," Allison added.