As Allison watched, Cassidy copied two sentences of the interview and pasted them into the script.
"That special on Jim. It's going to cover his life and times, as well as his death. I certainly have plenty of footage for the part of the story where Glover committed suicide rather than face the consequences of his crimes." She swiveled in her chair to look up at Allison. "The thing is, the more I think about Glover killing himself, the less clear-cut it seems. What if--and I know they've already put this case to bed--but what if Glover killed himself just because he was worn down and desperate, knowing he was probably going to jail for taking kickbacks?"
Allison straightened up and bit the edge of her thumbnail. "I've been thinking about it too, Cassidy. All the evidence we have is circumstantial. Glover hated Jim Fate, and he had access to both fentanyl and smoke grenades. But if hating Jim Fate was a crime .. :'
Cassidy finished the thought: ". . . then there are a lot of people out there who are guilty."
"And the fentanyl and even the smoke grenades aren't so unique that only Glover could have gotten his hands on them. And he never came out and admitted to killing Jim."
"I guess there's no way we'll ever know for sure." Cassidy sighed. "I'm almost done. Let me just check this B-roll footage of Jim at one of the governor's press conferences. I'm thinking I could use it to illustrate how good he was at getting people's goats." In a new window on her computer, she clicked on the file that held five-year-old footage.
The clip began to play. Allison leaned over Cassidy's shoulder again.
At the same instant, they both sucked in their breath. There it was. The missing piece. The thing that had been nagging at Cassidy for days.
Only it wasn't a thing.
It was a person.
Allison tapped a short fingernail on the screen. "Isn't that ... ?"
Cassidy turned the knob to shuttle back the footage. The cameraman had panned the audience of activists. And there in the middle was a familiar face. One she had seen recently in person. Only in this footage, the woman wore her hair in two swinging braids and was dressed in black Carhartt overalls. At Jim's funeral, her hair had been in a sleek twist, and she had worn a tailored black suit.
Willow Klonsky. Jim Fate's intern.
Somewhere in the intervening years, Willow had gone over to the other side, gone corporate, forgotten her roots as an activist.
"Wait," Allison said. "What group is this again?"
"Some kind of environmental group. But narrow. I'm trying to remember. They focused on . . ." Cassidy thought a moment. "On food. Stuff like keeping antibiotics out of animal feed, more frequent factory inspections, banning that additive they give milk cows now."
Allison peered at the frozen photo of Willow. "Looks like she parted company with the group. I can't really see one of those activists going to work for someone like Jim Fate."
"She couldn't have been much out of high school in this photo. Maybe not even." Cassidy felt the final puzzle piece fall into place. "So Willow grows up, forgets about her youthful ideals when she realizes that otherwise she'll never be able to keep herself in iPods and Nikes, decides to go corporate, and starts working for a guy who opposes all kinds of governmental regulations. But what if one of these people"--she pointed at the blurry figures in the background--"saw what she did as a betrayal?"
"Jim Fate was a big name," Allison said slowly. "The kind of guy who always had an army of people to do his grunt work for him--clean his house, pick up his dry cleaning, get him coffee. The kind of guy who would have someone else open his mail. But he always insisted on doing it, because he sometimes got personal items in the mail."
Cassidy almost got sidetracked, wondering what those items had been. She dragged her tired mind back to the question at hand. "So maybe the package was never meant for Jim at all? What if they addressed it to him, knowing that it would throw the cops off the scent, but they expected all along that Willow would open it?" She started to pick up the phone. "We need to talk to her."
Allison put one hand on top of the receiver. "No. Law enforcement needs to handle this. I'm going to go talk to Nicole, see what she knows about this group. Do you remember their name?"
"It was something like SAFE or SANE. Some four-letter acronym that started with S."
"Okay. But I'm serious, Cass. Do not call Willow. If her group did target her, we don't need her alerting them."
"I promise. But you have to let me have first dibs on the story. If I didn't have this footage, you would never have seen this."
Allison nodded, already grabbing up her purse. As soon as Cassidy saw her turn the corner, she grabbed her keys and hurried the other way, toward the parking garage. She had promised not to call, but she hadn't said a thing about not talking to Willow in person. This was her scoop. This was the story that might put her back on top.
And Cassidy ignored the little twinge she felt that maybe, just maybe, this wasn't the right thing to do.