He knew that from Fort Wayne, which ranked 102 among the 210 television markets in the United States, she had gone to Columbia, South Carolina, the number eighty-seven market, and from there to Albuquerque, number fifty-two, and then on to Cincinnati, number thirty. In 1987 she had come to LA. Soon afterward KPTI had started to win accolades and viewers.
He knew-everybody knew-that Kris was the reason.
There was nobody else worth watching on Channel Eight or on any of the other channels, for that matter.
There was only Kris. As KPTI racked up Golden Mike Awards and higher ratings, her salary rose. Her first million-dollar contract-1992. Two million for three years-1997. And now her new deal, the richest yet, the richest in the history of LA news broadcasting.
'The Six Million Dollar Woman,' the Los Angeles Times had called her in the headline of a feature story.
He had devoted every minute, hour, day, week, month of his life to Kris Barwood, nee Kris Andersen, born Kristina Ingrid Andersen at Meeker County Memorial Hospital in Litchfield, Minnesota-yes, he even knew the hospital, which was recorded on the copy of her birth certificate he had obtained through the mail for a nominal fee.
She liked skiing (Redbook, July 1999) and pasta (Los Angeles Magazine, March 1998) and chocolate (extemporaneous on-air remarks, 6:00 News, December 21, 1997 broadcast). She had attended the premiere of Toy Story and had enjoyed the movie (Entertainment Weekly, November
25,1995).
He had committed himself to her. He had given his life to Kris Barwood.
For a long time he had sustained his hopes that somehow they would be together. Yes, of course she had a husband, Howard Barwood, whom she'd met at a Brentwood fund-raising event for cerebral palsy.
Howard Barwood, who had made more than twenty million dollars in Westside real estate by buying old houses on choice lots, tearing them down, and putting up mansions worth three times the original price. All these details had been revealed in an interview with Mr. Barwood in the April 1996 issue of Success magazine.
But Howard Barwood was not the man for her. He was merely an accident in her life. Hickle was her destiny.
She should have been able to see this. He had explained it often enough in letters and phone messages.
But she refused to be reasonable, refused to treat him with any courtesy or decency whatsoever. She had rebuffed him. She had been rude.
She-Wait.
Down the street came a long gray car. A Lincoln Town Car? Yes.
Kris's car.
It eased forward to the studio gate and stopped, engine idling.
Hickle lifted the gun. His finger fondled the trigger.
Could he kill her at this distance? He wasn't sure.
The spray of shot would fan out wide. It would certainly shatter the side windows, but he couldn't be sure of hitting her. She would take cover, and the driver would squeal into reverse and spirit her away…
The gate lifted. The car pulled through. Hickle watched it go.
He'd never had any intention of shooting her. Not here. When the time came, as soon it would, he would choose the right place for the ambush.
He would make no mistakes.
The Lincoln cruised to the far end of the parking lot, finding Kris Barwood's reserved space near the rear door of Studio A. Hickle reached into the duffel bag and produced a pair of binoculars. He watched the car through the lenses. The driver got out first. He opened the side door for Kris, who emerged into the sunlight, tall and blond. She was wearing a blue pantsuit, but he knew she would change into another outfit before airtime.
Then someone else climbed out of the sedan's rear compartment. A man.
Hickle focused on his face and identified him as Howard Barwood.
He had never seen Howard Barwood in person before.
On previous occasions Kris had not been accompanied by her husband when she went to work. Hickle was surprised the man was here today.
He studied Howard, a silver-haired, grinning, thick necked fool who had won a woman he could not possibly deserve.
Hickle felt a band of tension tighten across his chest.
Briefly his hand went to the shotgun again, but the distance was much too great, of course.
Anyway, Howard might have Kris now, but he would not have her for long.
Hickle contented himself with this thought as he watched the bodyguard lead the Barwoods toward the studio door. At the door Howard stopped to say something to Kris, then leaned forward, clasping her by the waist, and kissed her.
Kissed her.
'You fucker,' Hickle whispered, his voice hoarse with outrage.
'Don't you do that. Don't you even touch her. Don't you dare.'
The kiss lasted only a moment. Then the door opened, and the Barwoods went inside. The door swung shut behind them.
Hickle kept the binoculars fixed on the door for a long time. He was not seeing the door. He was not seeing anything at all except the memory of that kiss.
He had watched Kris on TV for months, taping her shows, playing back the tapes frame by frame and freezing on her varied expressions. He had collected images of her from magazines and newspapers. He had watched her jog on the beach and had caught glimpses of her in the windows of her home.
But he had never seen her with her husband. He had never seen him kiss her perfect mouth.
He lowered the binoculars. His hands were shaking.
It took him a moment to recognize that what he felt was rage.
Kris belonged to him, whether or not she would acknowledge the fact.
She was his, by destiny. She was his, not that other man's. That man had no right to hold her. Had no right to meet her lips with his…
Hickle shut his eyes, but it didn't help. Now he saw the two of them in bed together, Mr. and Mrs. Barwood, Kris naked and supine, Howard mounting her, the paired bodies shivering, Howard driving in deeper, rutting like an animal, and Kris liking it, liking what he did to her, asking for more-His eyes opened. He blinked at sunlight and blue sky.
All of a sudden he knew he had to get the hell out of here. And he knew where to go, what to do.
He started the car and drove away, avoiding the studio gate so the guard wouldn't catch sight of his car.
He hooked up with the Glendale Freeway and proceeded north to the Angeles National Forest. Near the town of La Canada Flintridge there was a secluded section of the woods, which he had discovered during an aimless drive last year. A brook whispered through a sunlit glade at the end of a dirt road.
He parked. When he got out of the car, he took the duffel with him.
He marched a hundred yards into the woods, set down the bag, and removed a pair of sound-insulating earmuffs, which he slipped over his ears, and the shotgun and two boxes of shells.
His first shot scared up a flurry of birds. After the second shot there was only stillness and the muffled echo of the shotgun's report.
The gun had a four-shell capacity. He emptied it and reloaded, then repeated the process. Deadfalls of timber and drifts of small stones were his targets. But really he had no targets. A shotgun was not a weapon to aim; it was a weapon to point. The wide spread of shot would wipe out anything in the direction of the blast.
What he sought was not accuracy but familiarity with the weapon. He needed a feel for its range, power,
