The private line in the studio lights up.The caller ID says APPLE. It’s my pal, Dr. Steve. I have a sense the news will not be good. Without explanation, I turn off my mike. “Make it quick,” I say. “Rani’s on line three.”
“Keep her going.” His voice booms with the finality of a church bell at a funeral. “An officer just called from Janet Davidson’s apartment. It’s a shambles. Books everywhere. Aquarium smashed and fish flopping on the floor. Ms. Davidson’s bed has been slashed with a kitchen knife.”
“What about Ms. Davidson?”
“She’s gone. Vanished. Evidence of a struggle but no blood. Rani didn’t have much time. The investigating officers think it’s possible she knocked Janet Davidson out and has stashed her someplace in the high-rise. They think Janet is either dead or will be dead when Rani gets back to her. Charlie, it’s imperative that you flush Rani out. She’s the only one who knows where Janet Davidson is. This is our last chance to save a valued police officer.”
“You’ve got it, Steve,” I say. “One psycho coming up.”
I flip my mike back on. “Sorry,” I say. “Technical glitch. Rani, I have to see you faceto-face. I know you don’t trust my producer. I’ve sent her home, so we can talk.”
“I need to be with you,” she says. “It’s time.” Line three goes dead. I lean into my mike. “We’re moving closer to the midnight hour and that means we all drop our masks and let our real selves come out to play. Here’s another variation on tonight’s theme. Joni Mitchell and ‘The Crazy Cries of Love.’ Listen to the words, Rani, my queen, and fly to me.”
The red light on the private line starts to blink again. I take off my earphones and throw them on my desk. I am tired of talking. I am tired of listening. I am just plain tired. I stare at the red light on the private line. Maybe it’s my imagination, but the name APPLE on the id seems to pulse like a neon sign, saying Pay Attention to Me. I ignore it. I’ve had enough.
“Crazy Cries of Love” fades down, and I’m back on air. “You’re listening to ‘The World According to Charlie D,’ and if I sound freaked, it’s because I am freaked. But freaked or not, I forge ahead. Forgive any technical blips. My producer, Nova, left early. But whoa, here’s a surprise! Nova is back in the booth with her escort for the evening.” I turn on the talkback. “Mama Nova, why aren’t you and that rather forceful- looking lady cop on your way home by now? My queen is undoubtedly on her way… you should not be here.”
Nova picks up the microphone from the desk. I’m baffled. She knows she just has to sit in her usual place to be heard. “Change of plans,” she says. The female cop moves closer to her. This pleases me. I want Nova and her baby to be safe. “I need to be live,” Nova says, and her voice is so tense it’s almost unrecognizable. “We all need to be live,” she says, and she spits the words.
I know immediately that something has gone terribly wrong. Nova is never on air, but when she says she needs to be “live,” that’s what she is asking for. Obviously, she wants the cops to hear everything she says. I flick on the mike in the control room and my own mike in the studio. “So who’s your friend?” I say.
“This is Staff Sergeant Janet Davidson,” Nova says tightly.
The relief washes over me. “Janet Davidson! My own Marion the Librarian. Am I glad to see you.”
Nova’s body jerks oddly, and she moves the microphone toward Marion.
“And I’m glad to see you, Charlie,” Marion says. Nova’s eyes meet mine. I see the terror on her face, and I understand it. Nova identified the woman with her as Janet Davidson. But the voice coming through the microphone isn’t the flat, toneless voice of the police researcher whom I nicknamed Marion the Librarian. The voice in my earphones is low, seductive and unmistakable. It’s the voice of Rani, Queen of the Air.
The woman standing behind Nova steps a little to the side. In the full overhead light, I can make out her general appearance. It’s disturbing. She’s heavy-set, middle-aged and dressed in a regulationblue police uniform. She wears a cap with the force insignia. She looks like any other female cop. But there are two false notes. She’s wearing makeup that is applied so heavily and awkwardly that it’s almost clownish. And her cap is askew, allowing a number of platinum curls to escape. As I watch, the wig, of which the curls are a part, begins to slip to one side. Clearly Janet was in a hurry when she donned the wig, and she didn’t have time to make the necessary adjustments. Keeping her left hand behind Nova’s back, Janet grabs the microphone with her right. She puts her mouth too close to it, as amateurs always do. The closeness of the microphone distorts the voice, but the seductive growl is familiar.
“I’m glad to see you, Charlie,” she says. “But there is no Janet. There is no Marion. There’s just Rani now.”
I can’t get my head around it. The purring voice, the grotesque makeup, the wig, the curious positioning of Janet Davidson’s body against Nova’s.
“She has her gun against my spine, Charlie,” Nova says. “I need to be live, Charlie. We all need to stay live. Help me.”
“I’m lost,” I say. “Janet…Rani. Why the gun? And how did Janet stop and you begin?”
“Janet was nobody,” the curious creature in front of me says. “She was just a researcher for the Major Crimes Division. All day long she sat in front of her computer, analyzing other people’s emotions: love, hate, envy, passion, greed, ambition. She became an expert on what drove the lives of other people. She had no life herself.”
“And that’s why you…why she became Rani?” I say. “That came later. At first everything was fine. Janet called your show because she heard that your topic was Nurture versus Nature. She’d read an article that said that the brain of a child who was ignored by his mother for the first two years of his life was different from the brain of a child who was lovingly nurtured. You probably don’t even remember.”
“I do remember,” I say. “The lines were jammed after you-after Janet- called. Everyone had a story. It was a great show.”
“At the end you thanked Janet, but as a joke you called her Marion the Librarian.” The seduction is gone from the voice of the woman in front of me. She sounds dead. “You called her ‘a pearl of great price.’”
“And I said she should call me anytime,” I say.
“That’s exactly what you said.” Rani’s fury is back-hotter than ever. I see Nova’s panic. “Can you imagine what it meant to Janet to be invited into the life of a man like you? To know that, for the first time in her life, she was ‘a pearl of great price’? Suddenly she had a reason to get up in the morning. As soon as she woke up, she would call your studio to find out the topic for that night. She would spend every coffee break, every lunch hour, researching the topic so she would have something to offer you. She lived for those calls.” Nova winces. Rani is jamming the gun into her spine. “Then this person wouldn’t let you take them anymore.”
“It wasn’t Nova’s choice,” I say. “It’s not her fault.”
“She took other people’s calls. Young people. Twisted people. People who sounded… exotic.”
“Charlie, please.” When she calls my name, Nova’s voice is forlorn.
Rani’s face twists with rage. “You sound desperate, Nova. Janet knew that feeling. Every time the
