Sidney walked the twelve blocks from the subway instead of cabbing it, and enjoyed the wide-open streets and sidewalks. She grabbed two coffees from the Starbucks in the lobby and rode the elevator to the forty-fourth floor. Leslie was already on her computer cutting film that had been recorded the week before when Sidney visited Grace Sebold in St. Lucia.
“This footage is incredible,” Leslie said with a pencil long ways between her teeth and staring at the screen. Her hair was in a messy bun, she wore jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, and thick plastic glasses sat on her face in lieu of contact lenses.
“Morning,” Sidney said. “Here’s your coffee. You look . . . casual.”
“Did you shower?” Leslie asked.
“Foolishly.”
“This place is a ghost town. Who are you trying to impress?”
“I forgot how empty it would be. What are you looking at?”
“Your footage from St. Lucia. You took it on the handheld, but it’s great quality and we can do a lot with it. Plus, it looks . . .”
“Urgent.”
“Exactly. This is going to make a great episode. Even what you shot on your iPhone looks great. I made it a little grittier, just the way you like it. Check it out.”
Sidney sat down and looked at the computer screen.
Leslie had put together an animation of the crime scene as the St. Lucian detectives described it in the original report, coupling it with the ten-year-old footage taken by St. Lucian authorities. She touched the screen and a scene played out on the monitor. In it, a man stood near the edge of a bluff and a woman approached from behind. She raised a large boat oar and struck the back of his head. The footage was gritty and dark, with blue hues and grainy contrast.
“So this depicts the suggested way Julian Crist was struck. We found a couple of C-list actors to reenact the crime scene. But we also put together an animation that will show several variations. So, if we piggyback off of what we learned from Dr. Cutty’s episode, we know Julian was six-two and Grace is five-three. The first animation shows that in order to create the skull fracture in the superior and posterior aspect of Julian’s head, she would have had to swing the oar in an awkward overhead manner, like swinging an axe to chop wood.”
“That’s a nasty visual you just gave me.”
“Sorry,” Leslie said, hitting the touch screen. “This is the animation of the overhead swing.”
They each watched the screen and the animated version of a short woman swinging a large oar, more than six feet in length, over her head to strike the back of a taller man’s head.
“We can pair this next to Dr. Cutty’s demonstration on the cadavers. As of today, there are over ten million views of her swing on YouTube, so let’s ride that wave and show it again in Friday’s episode.”
“Agreed,” Sidney said.
“Then we’ll replay Dr. Cutty’s explanation of why the oar in question could not have been the weapon used, and end the episode with footage of your trip to St. Lucia and the blowup of the proposed bloody room and bleach cleanup. But we’ll leave it hanging there. We won’t get into the full explanation of the blood and the bleach until episode seven. And reviewing all the footage you took in St. Lucia, we’ve easily got enough to cover two installments. That includes this coming Friday, episode six, and part of episode seven. Three episodes left after that to wrap everything up nice and tight.”
“I love it,” Sidney said. “What the hell time did you get here?”
“Early. I couldn’t wait to get going on this. The city is empty and I’m feeling productive. I might work every Fourth of July weekend.”
“I feel guilty for sleeping in.”
“Please. You went to Raleigh to get the footage of Dr. Cutty, and to St. Lucia to follow up with Grace. I owed you some hours.” Leslie took a sip of coffee. “Hear anything about ratings from last night?”
Sidney shook her head. “Not yet. All the suits are at theirmansions on the beach, so they probably won’t tell us until they get back. Did you watch Luke’s special?”
“No,” Leslie said. “I turned on the Yankees game afterGirlended, and I hate baseball. But I’m sure tons of old people couldn’t wait to watch another old person talk about the history of the White House over a patriotic weekend. We don’t want old people. Strike that. We want everyone, but our demo is under forty-five, and we’re killing it. Eighteen to twenty-five? Our numbers are ridiculous, and once these episodes air”—Leslie pointed at the screen—“every one of them will be hooked until the end. Hell, I can hardly wait to see it and I’m putting it together.”
“Okay,” Sidney said. “I’m officially motivated. Move over, let’s figure out the back half of episode six.”
“Who knew it was so nice to work when everyone else is on vacation?”
“Yeah. If Luke Barrington could do his show from his house in the Hamptons for the rest of his career, I’d be a much happier person.”
CHAPTER 33
Saturday, July 1, 2017
