A long pause. "This is a nuclear bomb we're playing with, Rune. You've got a lot of speculation. There's no direct evidence linking her to the killing."
"I know she did it, Lee."
"The way you knew Boggs was innocent?"
She said nothing to that. The producer continued. "Just let me ask you one thing. You're bitter because Piper fired you and ruined your story. If that hadn't happened, if you were an objective reporter, would you still be coming down against Piper?"
"Yes, I would. Maybe there're no eyewitnesses but there's plenty of circumstantial evidence."
Maisel was silent for a moment. "I'll have to call Dan Semple. I'll ..." His voice was fading. "Semple ..."
Rune asked, "What are you thinking, Lee?" She remembered Semple's picking Piper up in his limo after she and Rune had dinner at that French restaurant. "Oh, no, you think he's in on it too?"
"They had an affair, you know. Piper and him. Around the time Hopper was killed."
Rune said, "And after Hopper was killed Semple got his job ...! "What are we going to do, Lee?"
Maisel said, "Okay, stay on the line. I'm going to make some calls." She heard him use his cell phone to talk to Jim Eustice at home and tell him what Rune suspected. He then called Timothy Krueger, the Network lawyer who'd presided over Rune's unemployment. Then she heard a conference call as Maisel spoke to Krueger and, apparently, the police. She deduced that they were all going to rendezvous at the Network in a half hour--in Studio E, an old, unused space in the basement of the building where they could meet in private.
Maisel hung up his mobile phone and came back on the other line. "Rune, you there?"
"I'm here."
"I talked to Jim and our legal department."
"I heard."
Maisel confirmed that they were meeting two homicide detectives in Studio E.
"I'll be there," Rune said.
"Lay low until the cops get there. We don't want Piper to see you."
"Sure."
"Man, this's bad," he muttered. But that was the only emotion he showed. Instantly he was Edward R. Murrow again. He said to her, "You did a good job, Rune. Whatever the fallout from this, you did good. See you in a half hour."
THESE WERE THE LONGEST MINUTES OF HER LIFE.
The hour was late but television networks never sleep and she was afraid that if she got to Studio E before Maisel or Krueger or the police, a security guard might see her and word would get back to Piper or Dan Semple.
So she sat in the booth at the Greek diner, bouncing her toes on the linoleum, feeling the terrible sting of betrayal.
Feeling fear too. Recalling all the time she'd spent alone with Sutton, inches away from her, a killer whose heart was as cold as her journalist's eyes.
After fifteen minutes Rune could stand it no longer and she left the deli and headed back to the Network. She slipped in through the door Bradford had doctored to let her inside then started down the corridor through a slightly more populated part of the studio.
A noise nearby. Rune froze.
But it turned out to be only Bradford.
"What's up?" he asked, noticing her troubled face.
She looked around. "Just between us, okay?"
"Top secret," he whispered.
"Piper Sutton had Lance Hopper killed."