“Record it? You can’t. No DVR in this place.”
“How can I watch the first few episodes? Are they replaying them?”
“Replaying?”
“Yeah. Like a rerun.”
“It a prime-time documentary, Gus. NotI Dream of Jenny.”
“It’sJeannie,you snot-nosed teenage punk.”
“I’m thirty, but I’ll take that as a compliment. No reruns, but you can stream the earlier episodes. Watch them whenever you want.”
“What’s that mean?Stream?”
“Watch ’em off the Internet.”
“I don’t have Internet here.”
“Sure you do. Whole place has Wi-Fi.”
“Can I do Wi-Fi through the TV?”
Jason smiled. “I thought you used to be a cop. Didn’t you use computers?”
“I was a cop when you were in diapers. I finished my career as a detective, and I’ve never loved computers. I’m sixty-eight years old and don’t plan to learn now.”
“TV’s don’t have Wi-Fi, unless you have a smart TV. You don’t. You need a computer to stream old episodes. Laptop or a tablet.” Jason plugged more information into Gus’s chart. “You still having trouble sleeping?”
“If bystill,you mean for the last twenty years, then yes.”
“Nurses can give you something to help you sleep.”
“I’m sure they could. Probably cyanide.” Gus looked back at the television. “Say her name again.”
“Grace Sebold.”
“Who was the guy she killed?”
Jason glanced at the screen, where he saw Grace Sebold sitting in a St. Lucian jail cell talking directly to the camera. “Julian Crist. Her boyfriend. You don’t remember this story?”
“I do. My mind is just slow from all the meds they’re pumping through me.”
Gus cocked his head as he stared at the television, brought his eyebrows together so they looked like wings of a diving hawk. It was something he did often, back in the day, to gethis mind into the right mode for thinking. It took him a while longer now to get his brain churning than it used to when he was working and sharp and on his game. Despite the delay, his mind finally made the connection.
“Looks like she’s innocent, though,” the young man said. “That’s what’s all over the Internet. Everybody’s talking about it. Tonight’s episode is supposed to feature a medical examiner who ran some experiments that blew the forensics straight out of the water. People are starting to scream for her release.”
“Son of a bitch,” Gus whispered to himself.
CHAPTER 28
Monday, June 26, 2017
GRAHAM CROMWELL STROLLED INTO THE CONFERENCE ROOM ONMonday morning with a stack of papers in his hands. Half-spent coffee cups and pastry crumbs filled the long table, where morning sunlight slanted across the mahogany and the bright New York sky screamed of summer.
“Okay, people,” Graham said. “Numbers are in and we officially have a hit on our hands!”
He tossed the packets into the middle of the table, and the herd of television personalities converged like a school of starving fish. Monday mornings were when the suits revealed the ratings from the week before, when numbers were discussed, when hierarchy was established. It was when each host discovered where he or she fared across all of American prime time and, more importantly, where they ranked within the network. Each of them wanted to beat their same-slot rival from competing networks, but bragging rights came from within the network.
