Dead Air
⚠️ Trigger Warning: This story contains references to murder, fatal falls, workplace manipulation, emotional deterioration, suicidal imagery, media exploitation of tragedy, and psychological obsession. Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter 1: Red Light
The first thing I notice is that the sheet will not stay put. Its corners keep lifting in slow, stubborn pulses, as if the body beneath is still negotiating with gravity. Annoyance flares at each ripple as a reminder of the task in front of me. The wind from the water nearby feels sharper than it looks on camera. It cuts through fabric, skin, and even the careful sound of my voice. Someone behind the camera calls my name and starts the countdown. I wait to turn at the perfect moment. My nerves edge in and my hesitation feels like both resistance and dread.
I face the camera and see my reflection in the monitor's black glass. My hair is pinned back. My mouth is already set for the script. My shoulders are squared. I almost don't recognize myself. I feel the gap between who I am and who I want to be. There is a version of me that appears only when the red light blinks on. She is always neater than the woman standing here now. When the sheet lifts again, I step closer. I press my shoe down just enough to keep things in place without drawing attention or disturbing the scene. Guilt pricks at me as the outline of the body shifts under the fabric. It's strangely intimate, in an awful, disturbing way.
I shift my stance, finding a better angle for the shot, trying to bury my discomfort under my professionally trained, straight face. The city streets sound alive like electricity. News vans swarm the scene like moths around a porch light. Blue and white lights strobe against the glass, the pavement, the station across the street. I know my face already waits in the queue. I inhale steadily and raise the microphone as the countdown ends. The producer motions to go, and I give the camera the exact version of me it expects. Just enough to draw viewers in, hungry for more.
“Good evening. I’m Paige Turner, reporting live from downtown Los Angeles, where police are still investigating what appears to be a fatal fall from the ninth floor of the parking structure behind me.”
My voice comes out just right. Not too muted, not too piercing. I breathe out, relieved that I’ve met expectations. My tone carries weight, as if I’m keeping something fragile from breaking. Beneath my composure, anxiety sparks, trying to escape. The sheet stirs again in a gust of wind.
“Witnesses say the victim was alone at the time, though investigators are working to determine whether this was a tragic accident or if someone else was involved.”
I let that hang. I've learned how long silence stretches before snapping back. Each pause sits heavy on my chest, the tension as real as the clothing against my skin. The wind tugs at my blazer, molding it to my ribs. My heartbeat is fast and steady. It already anticipates what to do. My hair flicks against my cheek. I ignore it.
“There have been no official statements released yet, but sources close to the investigation suggest there may be inconsistencies in the scene.”
I don’t actually know that information for sure, but it makes the story feel alive. It gives it direction and keeps viewers coming back for updates. I glance up as the camera pans away, just to confirm what I already know. The drop looks clean from down here. It always does. It makes tragedies like this less complicated, and the victims less human. I bring my eyes back up to the lens.
“Local police are asking anyone who may have seen something to come forward with any information.”
I nearly smile as the phrase slips through me, though I thought maybe it should linger. The sound floats on the wind between the camera and the body behind me, heard by everyone but the one person who already knows the ending. I tilt my head, listening for the producer in my ear, but she stays quiet. She does that when she thinks I have it handled. She trusts me to get the job done. Everyone I work with trusts me in that smooth, newsroom way. People like to trust someone who never flinches on camera. That trust hangs over the scene. It feels almost tangible.
“Reporting live, I’m Paige Turner. Back to you.”
The red light clicks off with a small sound that always seems bigger than it is. For a moment, everyone freezes, waiting for the noise to return. Afterward, voices rise, radios crackle, shoes scrape concrete. Someone brushes past me, already talking about getting a better angle on the next shot. I hand off the microphone and notice my heel is still holding down the sheet. When I step forward, the fabric lifts. It sails higher this time, catching enough air to reveal the horror of what lies beneath. It’s pale and splotched with red, like bad hamburger meat dressed in shreds of human clothing. Remnants of the person they used to be, turned into something that doesn’t belong to anyone. One of the news interns rushes forward and pulls the sheet back down. She stands up with her hands shaking like she just touched a live wire.
“Jeeze, they could have done better than a sheet, haven’t they ever heard of Santa Ana winds?” she half-whispers to herself.
I watch her and notice how her face tightens. Her eyes keep darting to the edge of the roof, trying to figure out the distance. It’s not that far, not really. She should have seen the view from up there. The distance only seems impossible until the body relaxes. Afterward, the choice is simpler than most care to admit. He didn’t even struggle or try to fight back. It was almost like I did him a favor.
“Paige.”
I turn around to see Mark, one of the producers, standing a few feet away. His headset is crooked, and his eyes are bright; the way they get when he expects good ratings.
“That was good,” he says. “Really good. We’re leading with you at ten.”
Of course we are. I nod, pretending it matters. I earned it, didn’t I? A dull sense of fraud creeps in, and I force it away. My hands stay steady as I smooth my blazer. I notice a faint smear near the cuff, probably dirt. I rub it away with my thumb. It vanishes, but unease still lingers.
“Do we have an ID yet?” I ask a detective standing nearby with a notepad in her hand.
“Not yet,” she says. “Soon.”
There’s always a moment before the facts roll in. The story feels like it’s mine alone. I feel almost possessive, but also a nervous, exciting flutter of dread. We head up to level nine of the parking structure, the roof. I walk toward the edge. The wind has picked up again. The sheet on the ground snaps in smaller, quicker motions. I step closer to the edge, wondering what the victim thought as gravity took them forever. I picture the fall as it looked from here. A chill creeps in, shadowing the hesitation, shifting the weight of this tragedy. It’s the last, swallowed hope. The instant when balance can no longer be snatched back. My hand twitches, and my fingers curl into fists. The urge feels small, innocent, but I know better. I lower my hands, watching the lights in the distance. I can see the neat outline of the fall as if I had taken the plunge myself.
There's still a lot of time before the next broadcast. Other news teams crowd in for a shot of the scene. For now, the story is mine.
Chapter 2: Before the Broadcast
Two months earlier, before anyone noticed a pattern or paid me extra attention, the station felt like the only safe place in the city. Back then, I believed that with a sincerity that now makes me cringe. I thought I could handle fear if I just worked hard and smiled at the right times. There was a real difference between being desperate and being dangerous.
Every time I come back to the station, I still feel the electricity of the city. Salt, hot wiring, and city dust cling to my blazer, even after I smooth the lapels in the elevator mirror and check my lipstick. I’m not vain; I just have a career on camera. The fluorescent lights cast shadows on everything, turning my skin translucent and my eyes sharper. That actually works in my favor.
The newsroom is noisier than necessary, but it’s an unsolved crime day. Phones are ringing off the hook, scanners spitting out half-sentences and static, and monitors show the same dull angle from three different camera feeds. Suddenly, my face appears above the assignment desk, silent at first, my mouth forming words I already know. I pause just long enough to watch myself turn to the camera.
“You’re everywhere,” Lauren says.
The fresh-faced new anchor-in-training leans against the copy desk, with a cup of coffee perched on a stack of rundown news pages. She smiles with that wide-eyed brightness people have before they learn to tuck their ambition out of sight. She’s probably three years younger than me, but in this place, youth is like a new social media filter. It smooths out flaws and makes even mediocrity look potentially useful.
“Big story,” I say.
“It looked good.” She tips her head toward the monitor. “You got there fast.”
I smile back, because if I didn’t, it might give me away.
“That’s usually how breaking news works. Whoever gets there first gets the story.”
Her expression falls, just a little. It’s a slight change, a flicker in her eyes, a quick mental note. Then she laughs, like I said something clever instead of something pointed. She picks up her coffee and pushes away from the desk.
“Mark wants you in conference two,” she says. “Ratings meeting.”
Of course he does. Men like Mark treat every ratings spike like an excuse. Another meeting that could have been an email. I take the long way and go to the makeup room first. It’s not about vanity here either; it’s just maintenance. The room is small and always too cold, with those classic carnival bulbs around the mirrors and a powdery smell that lingers in your throat. I sit down, set my bag aside, and sit still to look at myself for a moment.
The woman in the mirror looks composed. She sits up straight, has clean hair, wears expensive, waterproof mascara, and her mouth doesn’t tremble. She’s the woman people believe, even when she speaks softly. She looks nothing like the young girl who once knelt in the Nevada dirt with a screwdriver and a shoebox, taking apart dead things just to see what made them tick.
I touch the skin under one eye and pull it down to test the elasticity. I immediately remember the routine we had before elementary school. My mother would stand behind me looking into the mirror, one hand on my shoulder, the other fixing what she called my camera-ready face. She wasn’t cruel, just always in a hurry. Powder for shine, brush through my hair, turn toward the light, hold still. She only really looked at me when she was fixing something. That’s the only thing I learned at an early age from her: that it’s easier to be seen if you give people something to fix.
“Two minutes, do you want a touch-up?” the makeup artist asks from the doorway.
“I’m fine.”
She shrugs and leaves. I stay, staring at my reflection until the bright lightbulbs sting my eyes. In the mirror, the room around me is staged. Chairs tucked in, tissues untouched, brushes lined up like soldiers in a ceramic cup. If someone walked in now, they’d think this was the cleanest room in the building. I turn off the lights and head back down the hallway.
The conference room smells like burnt coffee, and everyone in there pretends it’s fine. Mark is waiting there, clutching a printout and radiating that excited, unpleasant energy men get when tragedy means good numbers. Two producers hover by the wall, and Lauren sits at the far end with her legal pad, looking like she was born for this. I feel a tension in her smile before I sit. It’s like she’s testing me.
“You led the six,” Mark taps the page. “You carried the teaser. We bumped almost twelve percent from yesterday.”
One of the producers lets out a low whistle.
Someone else shouts, “That is huge.”
“This is your lane, Paige.” Mark looks right at me. “Viewers trust you on this stuff.”
I didn’t expect his words to make me feel something. I keep my fingers entwined together so no one sees how much I want to fidget.
“We should keep covering this through the ten o’clock. Push for witness interviews. Pull scanner traffic if possible. If detectives start leaning toward foul play, we need to be the first with plain language on air.”
Lauren writes something down. Mark notices.
“That’s good. Everybody heard that?”
Everyone hears everything here. That’s the problem. Clever ideas get stolen. Good instincts get recycled by someone younger. You can disappear in this place while people are still congratulating you.
“We also need backup faces on crime,” Mark says, glancing toward Lauren. “Just in case Paige burns out on overnights.”
He says it casually, almost as a joke, but no one is laughing. I keep my face calm. Lauren doesn’t look up from her notepad. She keeps writing, which somehow feels worse than if she had reacted. I hear the fluorescent lights buzzing above us. It’s not loud, but just enough to make the silence feel uncomfortable.
“I’m not burning out,” I say with a dry laugh.
Mark gives me a nod. “Nobody said you were.”
He always puts on that gentle act when he wants to be ruthless without looking like it. I nod, pretending I believe him, because the alternative would get messy, and women who make a scene do not last long in prime time. First, they call you difficult, then unstable, then conveniently unavailable.
The meeting ends with new assignments and a fake sense of urgency. Lauren gets to dig up background on the victim. I get the ten o’clock live spot and a morning follow-up. It almost feels like a win. I pass her in the hallway, catch a whiff of her citrusy, expensive shampoo.
She says, “You really do make it look easy.”
I stop for a second to look at her. Maybe she means it as a compliment, maybe not. I turn and smile in her direction. Behind her is the hallway and the bright square windows above the stairwell. It’s only nine floors up.
“It isn’t easy,” I tell her. “You just have to be willing to go where the story is.”
She nods like that was some hidden wisdom. I walk away before I say anything else that makes me cringe. The fluorescent lights chase me down the hall, harsh and bright, turning every window into a mirror. In each one, I catch myself looking up, measuring ledges, counting exits, noticing who is alone and who is not. The city is full of tall places. That never seemed important before, and it’s disturbing enough to make me uneasy. Every ledge, roofline, and open stairwell starts to look less like architecture. It looks like inventory waiting to be cataloged.
Chapter 3: Ninth Floor
By 9:15pm, the news station parking garage is emptier than my fridge before payday. The upper levels always clear out first. Office workers vanish, and business suits line up in convertibles down the freeway onramp. What’s left is a kind of emptiness that feels comfortable. The concrete holds onto the day's heat like a grudge. Up here, the air is all dust, oil, and the metallic sigh of cooling skyscrapers. I sit in my car on level nine across from the skybridge, engine off, watching headlights sweep the street below. I pretend I’m just here to think. Really, I’m waiting. I keep telling myself it’s research for my next story, as if that balances it out in my head.
My police scanner spits out static rapidly from the stereo speakers. Streets, codes, the usual white noise, but nothing worth chasing. I stare through the windshield at the painted exit arrows, then past them to the low wall and the not-so-impressive drop beyond. It is not even a movie-worthy height. That is exactly why it works, why they never see it coming.
A silver sedan rolls up the ramp and claims a spot three spaces over. The man who steps out looks like he could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. His face is young, but his shoulders hang like he’s older. He loosens his tie, shuts the car door, and stands with one hand on his hip. He gazes at the city like he’s misplaced his life somewhere out there. He laughs under his breath and takes a swig from a bottle in a paper bag. I notice his shoes. Black leather, expensive, but the heels worn down like he’s been running from something.
I think I should leave. Even the idea of driving away offers comfort. Leaving the car means trudging back to the station, enduring another late-night meeting with Mark droning about backup. Lauren’s pen would surely be dancing across her legal pad in perfect, tiny script. I’ll sit under the fluorescent lights, waiting to be replaced piece by piece by boredom. The thought leaves a bitter taste on my tongue.
The man sets his paper-bagged bottle on the edge of the railing and leans out with both hands pressed to the concrete. He is close enough that I can see sweat glinting at the nape of his neck. He’s alone, and obviously unsteady. He fits the scene a little too well. He fishes a crumpled piece of paper from his suit jacket and smooths it on the ledge of the railing. I imagine that he’s trying to remember what made it worth keeping. On the back, there is a child’s drawing in green marker. A crooked sun over a box house. He studies it, laughs softly, then tucks it away, back in his pocket. It makes him painfully real, which is somehow worse than just being a stranger.
I open the car door before common sense can stage an intervention. My heels click loudly on the concrete, so I slow down, trying to muffle the sound. He hears me anyway and glances back, wearing a sheepish smile because someone has caught him being sad in public. I stop a few feet away and rest my hands next to his bottle on the ledge.
“Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t realize I had company.”
“You don’t,” I tell him, and then I give him almost a flirty smile.
He gives me the once-over, the blazer, the hair, the face he almost recognizes but cannot quite pin down. People know me in pieces, and that works in my favor. He turns back around to face the city lights.
“Hell of a view,” he says.
“It is,” I reply softly.
The concrete is still warm from the heat of the afternoon. Traffic lights blink far below through their colors, mysteriously silent from up here. The man smells like whiskey and expensive aftershave. It reminds me of my father in our Nevada kitchen when I was incredibly young. One hand on the counter, staring out the window after twelve hours on his feet, too worn out to talk to anyone who cared about him. I almost told this man to go home.
“You should be careful,” I tell him.
He laughs again. “You sound like my ex-wife.”
That shrinks him in my mind. He’s just a guy. Not feeling guilty, not a villain, just ordinary enough. He looks at me and reaches for the bottle, fumbles, then grabs it with his other hand. His shoes are moving too close to the ledge. I can see the sole nearly hanging over the open air under the railing.
“You work around here?” he asks.
“At the station.”
He turns and squints at me.
“Wait. You’re that reporter.”
I nod.
“My wife watches you,” he says, then corrects himself. “Ex-wife. Still. She likes your segments.”
A shiver runs down my spine despite the warmth in the air, and the hair on the back of my neck begins to rise. Even here, with the city wide open and no one else in sight, the sky is offering me a clean slate. I am a face in someone else’s living room, someone else’s TV, someone else’s wife’s story. I wonder again why I keep myself here, chasing other people’s tragedies and turning them into stories. If it’s not me, it would be someone else. It would be Lauren. I can’t let that happen, even when it costs everything.
He lifts his paper-covered bottle toward me in a clumsy little toast.
“Crazy running into you in person. You’re a local celebrity.”
It’s a good story, in the right spot at the wrong moment. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my fingertips as the garage walls seem to close in. The painted lines on the concrete glow like runway lights, narrowing my world to the ledge, the man with worn shoes, the low concrete railing, and the drop beyond. When he turns back toward the city lights, still smiling, I move before my conscience can talk me down.
My palms hit the middle of his back. He is stunned and resists for less than a second. He tenses his muscles and wrestles with his jacket in a quick, shocked reaction. He makes a horrid sound I’ll remember later in quiet places. It’s not a scream, sort of something more hollow. I tell myself I’m intervening, that I’m deciding because I have to make the story. To be the first on the scene. His bottle falls and breaks on the ledge, staining the paper bag. As he falls forward, one of his expensive leather shoes scrapes the concrete, then both feet slip away. He turns his head to look at me, then he is gone.
I stand still, hands hovering in the air like I’m waiting to be searched by a nightclub bouncer. I glance around to get a grip on my surroundings. The garage is calm. If there had been a noise, it would be heavy enough to rattle up through the concrete and into my bones. My stomach knots itself into origami. I think I’m going to vomit on the concrete. I press my hand to my mouth and swallow hard until it burns down my throat. My whole body feels electric. Every nerve is raw and buzzing. I step back, away from the place where the man stood only moments before.
I should run, but I don’t. My hands are steady as I smooth my blazer down and force myself to shine my compact mirror over the edge. I expected it to be bad, but it is much worse. He landed in the middle of the street. I can barely make out a shape. His proportions look wrong. From nine floors up, he looks like a movie prop.
I get up and dust myself off, and quickly take the elevator down to the studio floor and think of a quick excuse for popping back in. I throw my credit card under a chair and wait for someone, anyone, to pass by.
“Lose something?”
Lauren’s peppy, upbeat voice sneaks up behind me.
“Oh, there it is! Yes, thanks, but it’s found now. Try ordering dinner when you drop your card on the floor at work.”
“Try a mobile wallet, so worth it,” Lauren says with a ridiculous gaping, toothy grin.
I nod and walk around her as Mark yells down the hallway.
“Fatality downtown. Unidentified. Possible accident. Police and EMTs are heading to the scene. Paige, go!”
Sounds of sirens start rising outside, as I think about my opening line.
Chapter 4: Exclusive
The applause starts in the meeting room before the body is even cold. I just need enough space to breathe. Shouts come from the control room in bursts, warped through the wall. They’re distorted by my headset, but impossible to miss. Not a standing ovation, just a few claps, a laugh, and Mark’s voice. That bright sound with the greedy edge he gets when ratings spike. I am still under the lights when the other anchor tosses to commercial. Static in my earpiece crackles like a live fuse. Inside, my stomach feels like a pretzel factory. I hand off the mic to someone behind me and brace myself on the hallway entrance. TV screens are stacked two by two, each replaying a different flavor of the same night. Police tape from above the parking garage, the broken bottle in the paper bag, my face talking into the microphone. The parking garage looks ominous from street level. All concrete and shadows. On one screen, the victim’s shoe sits by a chalked edge, black leather turned sideways, worn at the heel. He might step back into it if the night rewound far enough.
“Tell me you saw that spike.”
Mark materializes at my elbow before I even hear him. He smells like the hot circuitry of a backup generator. He shoves a ratings sheet into my hand, standing way too close, too pleased to notice my fingers are ice cold.
“We beat Channel Eight in the quarter hour,” he says. “Not by a little. By enough to make them nervous.”
I glance at the paper, but the numbers blur before I can focus. Up arrows, share points, graphs and lines. My segment time is circled in red. I feel sick. I can still feel the man’s suit jacket in my hands, his resistance echoing in my arm muscles. I might be feeling relief, which is almost dangerous.
“That fast?” I ask.
Mark grins, “Fear moves.”
He says it with admiration, like a professional. I hand the sheet back, noticing that I creased it. On the center monitor, my live segment plays without sound. I watch myself standing with perfect posture, chin up, hair catching just enough wind to look effortless. It’s like watching someone else do my job better than I ever could. The woman on TV is measured; she is necessary. She does not look like someone who just sent a stranger into the night and then told the city about it during prime time.
“Ten wants a longer package,” Mark says. “Morning wants a cut too. Stay on this. Nobody hands it off.”
Nobody is handing it off. I nod once. Mark claps my shoulder possessively, then disappears back to the control room where everyone is still busy, excited, and very much alive. The static in my earpiece pops again, and I flinch, annoyed at myself for reacting. I go to the restroom because it is the only room in the building where people let silence exist.
The fluorescent lights in there are harsher than those in the newsroom. They turn my foundation into a powder mask and shrink my pupils to pinpricks. I lock myself in the farthest stall, sit on the lid of the toilet, and press my hands between my knees until the shaking stops. My palms smell metallic. Like the garage railing where I braced myself. I rub them on some tissue, flush it away and adjust my skirt anyway. When I open the stall door and walk to the sink, Lauren is already there.
She is reapplying lipstick in the mirror, one hip cocked to the side, her legal pad tucked under her arm. She catches my reflection and smiles through the half-finished red line at her mouth.
“You own this story,” she says.
“Do I?”
“You should. Own it.”
“Yeah,” I say, but not with confidence.
She caps the lipstick and studies me in the mirror.
“You had language ready before the detectives did, about inconsistencies. Then the scene starts leaning that way.”
The water runs over my fingers, ice cold. I keep them under until I feel pain in my fingertips.
“I was guessing,” I say.
“You guess well.”
She says it lightly, but she stays put. That is what makes her dangerous, curiosity with bad posture. I turn off the water and dry my hands slowly. In the mirror, we are two versions of the same ambition, but the lighting flatters her more. Her face is open. Mine is all control. She has no idea I am thinking about her silhouette over the roofline outside the studio annex, the one you can reach if you know which fire door sticks in the summer.
“People say things at scenes,” I tell her. “You learn to hear the useful parts first.”
Lauren nods, but her eyes drop briefly to my blazer cuff. I follow her gaze and spot what I missed. A pale smear of grit caught in the seam, gray and dusty. Parking garage dust. My stomach tightens, and I feel the acid climbing up my throat.
“You’ve got something there,” she says.
I brush it away with my thumb and force a laugh that sounds almost normal.
"Story residue."
She smiles at that. She shouldn’t, but she does.
Back in the newsroom, the ten o’clock package is already being built around me. My stand-up gets flagged. My phrasing gets repeated. The victim’s ex-wife is on hold with the assignment detective, willing to say ‘nothing ruled out’ on background. It’s almost better than an official quote because it leaves room for fear. Every monitor in the hall seems brighter now. Every voice reaches out for me before anyone else can hear.
I sit in the edit bay and watch the segment take shape. Tape rolls, freezes, rewinds. My voice plays over the images. The fatal fall, the ongoing investigation, troubling questions. The man becomes a sequence, an angle, a lower-third, a tease. When the editor crops the frame to hide the worst of him and focus on the broken paper-covered bottle, I almost feel grateful.
Now I see the real danger. It’s how well the story works, how easily a victim of a crime becomes a tool for fear once the right words start shaping it. That realization shows me something about myself I cannot unsee. Someone starts clapping and jolts me out of my own thoughts. New numbers come in. This time, more people join the celebration. The static in my earpiece flickers as I adjust it; the noise runs through my head like an electric current.
On the monitor, my segment begins from the top. I watch the corners of my mouth, the timing of my breath, the careful pause before I speak. The viewer graph in the corner climbs as the minutes tick by. I keep my eyes on it like watching a heart monitor, waiting to see if the woman on the screen will make it through the night.
Chapter 5: Drop Pattern
The city presents itself before I even set foot outside. That’s what runs through my mind when I look at the map behind the assignment desk. It’s lit from above and covered with colored pins. Red means confirmed and complete. Yellow marks active scenes. Blue is for pending follow-up. Orange is for unsolved. The downtown section of the map is full of them. Parking structures, hotel balconies, freeways, swimming pools, and a stairwell landing in Koreatown where a drunk college kid broke almost every bone in his body.
I glance out the window. The whole city feels vertical, even on a two-dimensional map. Everywhere I look, there are towering buildings. Downtown Los Angeles looms over the whole valley. I stand there too long, enough for my coffee to become cold in my mug. The police scanner rattles out its usual bursts. Male, deceased. Witnesses unavailable. Units responding. The words feel different, less tragic.
“Careful,” Lauren says behind me. “You look like you’re plotting war.”
I turn around, already sending a smile her way. She holds a stack of printouts to her chest, covering them from her hair that is still damp from a quick shower. Her face looks too fresh for this early hour. Morning light comes into the newsroom through the narrow windows above the editor bays, making everyone seem cheery and less guarded. Lauren glances at the map, then she looks at me with a puzzled smirk.
“I’m plotting coverage,” I say.
“Same difference when you’re working in this building.”
She probably means it as a joke. She moves to one of the intern desks, drops the printouts, and starts sorting through them with quick, efficient hands. She annoys me a little more each day. She’s been on the morning rundown twice this week. Mark likes her questions. Producers like her energy. Men always admire ambition in younger women, as long as it still seems harmless.
The scanner pops again. A partial address. Hollywood Hills. Possible jumper at the Lansdowne apartments.
My pulse changes, but not in the usual dramatic, slow-motion way. It’s sharp like fear. Something inside my head stirs like a machine set on a timer. I set my coffee down slowly and grab my bag before anyone can ask me any questions. This one matters. If I miss it, Lauren gets the story that should be mine. Mark shows up suddenly, headset crooked, shirt half-buttoned, running on caffeine and stubbornness.
'Paige, go,' he says. 'Lauren, background package. Split it.'
Split it? Are you kidding me? The words sting, but I keep my face neutral. I nod at Mark anyway, because arguing in front of everyone would only make me look smaller, and losing the scoop means Lauren gets the story. It’s my story.
The Lansdowne building has a rooftop pool that stays empty until at least noon, and a concrete wall that’s too short for such an expensive building. It was all too familiar. I covered a celebrity overdose there last spring. I know which elevator is closest to the service stairs, the side entrance with no cameras where the concierge sneaks out to smoke, and that the building manager doesn’t check vendor badges if you walk quickly and act like you belong there.
By the time I step onto the roof, the building is being evacuated. The pool water is so bright it almost hurts my eyes. Sunlight bounces off the surface and flickers on the glass around it. A woman in a white robe stands near the edge, phone to her ear, pacing three steps one way, two back, then stopping to listen. She looks about thirty, barefoot, with thin ankles. Her hotel slippers are tossed in a lounge chair next to a wrinkled towel. Her hair is pinned up messily, as if she did it herself with shaky hands.
“I told you, I’m not doing this again,” she says into the phone.
I stop near the service door and wait. Her voice is sharp enough to carry in the open air. She says something about sending flowers, the lobby, and humiliation. She turns and sees me, and embarrassment flashes across her face before anger takes over.
“Roof’s closed,” she says, pulling the phone away from her mouth.
“I’m here on business,” I say, lifting my station badge just high enough to blur the lines of authority. “There was a call about someone up here.”
Her face changes into a wide frown. People act differently when they know someone is watching. She lowers the phone, stands a bit straighter, and looks toward the pool, as if it could explain her better than she can.
“I’m fine,” she says. “My boyfriend called. Ugh! He is so dramatic.”
She hangs up her call quickly, then presses her lips together as if her words have betrayed her. When she shifts her weight, I give her a good look. I notice smeared mascara under one eye and a hotel keycard tucked into her swimsuit strap. She can’t be much older than me, but there’s something almost childlike in how she tries to stand tall through her embarrassment. I momentarily forget where I am. I don’t see a story; I only see a woman trying not to fall apart in public.
I move closer to her, slowly and carefully, trying to show concern. The city stretches out behind her in pale layers of buildings. From up here, every building seems to lean in toward the ground, each waiting its turn to crumble.
“Do you want to talk off the record?” I ask the woman.
She begins to laugh, but it sounds tired.
“About what? His cheating, or me being stupid enough to come to this forsaken city?”
Her hand trembles as she squeezes her cell phone. I can see how hard she’s fighting back tears. Part of me wants to take her by the hand and lead her inside. I want to sit her down, give her a glass of water and tell her no man is worth falling apart for, especially on the rooftop before breakfast. It doesn’t matter, unfortunately. I stay where I am, because the roof is already turning into a story of its own.
Then she says, “You people would love this, wouldn’t you. Sad woman on a ledge.”
Her words cut like a knife, but she doesn’t mean me; she means all of us. The entire system is hungry for stories that turn private pain into public content. I try to smile at her, to show her something human, but it feels wrong.
“Only if you gave me a reason.”
Her face opens with outrage. She takes a few steps towards the edge of the roof, which is exactly the wrong direction.
“Are you insane?” she asks, almost in a scream.
“No,” I say casually as I walk towards her, “I came here for a story.”
I said ‘no’, but this time I’m leaning towards ‘maybe’. The push is not as difficult as the man at the parking garage. It’s cleaner, too. No dust to get caught on my blazer cuffs. My hands land high on her shoulders, thumbs brushing the fluffy cotton fabric of her robe. She’s already off-balance from anger, bare feet, and not realizing how close she is to the edge. She barely resists. She gasps at me as she falls, one syllable caught in her throat. I know I can’t walk away from this now, and I’ve crossed into something I can’t return from. The woman’s phone crashes onto the concrete and skids into the pool.
The white robe floats like wings in the wind over the concrete edge. I can’t look down right away; I could be seen. A moment later, I hear a sound, muffled in the distance by landscaping equipment. A scream, maybe, or a whistle. I stand completely still with my arms at my sides, waiting for the blood to leave my face and for the roof to feel steady under my feet.
Later, I report from street level with the Lansdowne apartment building behind me. I decided to leave the pool scene out of sight. By noon, another body is found in a hotel laundry room. A maintenance worker’s body was found caught between two buildings. The report said he must have fallen while repairing a railing on a balcony. The city gives me two more falls on the same day, almost like a gift. I cover those stories from a distance, asking viewers if they see a pattern or a coincidence. I sit quietly on the sidelines, listening to detectives tying evidence together while trying to choose their words carefully.
I return to the station early and look around at the dim hallways. The wall map of the city is haloed by a nearby lamp, but it looks different. Four new red pins have appeared since the evening coverage, two downtown, one in Beverly Hills and one by the coast, near Venice Beach. Mark stands in front of the board with a producer and a string, arms folded, eyes narrowed in a concerned way, but it might also be a look of satisfaction. Lauren stands beside them, pen ready over her notepad, watching the pins create a circular pattern. It’s a pattern I can’t ignore.
“Three in three days,” the producer says.
“Four this week,” Lauren adds.
“You think we’ve got a thing here?”
Mark exhales through his teeth. No one else makes a sound. The scanner crackles quietly from a nearby desk. Someone in the bullpen laughs loudly at something, but the sound fades when no one else joins in. I stare at the map until the space between the pins starts to spell out something grim.
A text message comes in on my phone, and the sound makes everyone in the room jump. A local detective at an early morning scene sent in a story tip after no news stations reported on it.
“Got a tip. Gotta go.”
Mark looks at his watch and says the worst thing imaginable.
“Lauren, tag along. You can learn a lot from Turner.”
At the scene, it’s an awful sight. A man’s body was found after a train conductor nearly ran off the tracks. The man had fallen from an undeveloped overpass construction site, directly in front of the oncoming train. The detective sighed and looked past us at the construction site.
“This doesn’t feel random anymore,” he said, almost to himself, maybe not meaning for us to hear.
Chapter 6: Fresh Face
She’s appearing in places that used to be mine. It wasn’t in person at first. It starts on the monitors. Split screen during the morning tease. Her field package on the left, my live shot on the right, both of us shown from the shoulders up like two versions of the same woman. The producer calls it balance. I call it bullshit. I watch from the newsroom and feel a chill down my spine.
“She tested well,” Mark says to me, not even looking up.
He says it while chewing on the end of his pen, as if it’s so normal it won’t hurt anyone. The ratings report sits between us, full of neat columns and highlighted time blocks. My segment still leads. My name still matters, and that should be enough. I keep staring at the frozen side-by-side image on the monitor wall, Lauren’s face paused for half a second, her mouth just opening, like if she screamed, it wouldn’t even echo.
“What does ‘tested well’ mean?” I ask.
Mark shrugs. “Audiences trust you. They’re curious about her. It’s not a threat. It’s another gentle word with a bite.”
I nod at him silently because that’s what keeps a woman working in places like this. I get up to leave before I say something that would sound too emotional. The hallway mirrors catch me rolling my eyes from a million angles. It’s almost like a funhouse with all the fluorescent lighting. I stare into the mirrors until I lose track of which one is my real reflection.
Eventually, I make it down to the end of the hall. Inside the makeup room, the television is on mute. Lauren is already on the screen, framed so cleanly like she has placed herself there on purpose, just to test my reaction. She stands in front of the city while the sunlight makes the edges of her hair look like gold. I can’t even hear her, and I know she is speaking with the sincerity young reporters have before they learn their place. The lower third of the screen scrolls news about a possible developing pattern. I start to feel nauseous, and I sit in the chair without even taking off my blazer. I’m going to regret the wrinkles from this. I hear a voice that sounds nearby, but it’s not mine.
“You two could be sisters from far away.”
The makeup artist, Mindy, glances at the screen, then looks hard at me with squinty eyes. I have to force a laugh back so hard that I nearly choke. The news screen shows my earlier segment, with Lauren doing commentary. It’s the split narrative, shared authority, co-anchors. The station is making us work together. That’s almost worse than being replaced. It means they think I can be watered down.
“Sorry,” I say. “Long week.”
Mindy gives me a small smile and starts dusting powder under my eyes. I let her do her thing; I didn’t want her to remember me for the wrong reasons. The muted screen with my face on camera sits over my shoulder in the mirror like another warped reflection. Lauren’s profile turns a little toward the camera, and I notice the angle of her jaw, the way she lowers her eyes for certain words and phrases. She’s been watching me closely, maybe too closely.
After the evening news segment, Lauren and I end up alone for a minute near the archive desk, where old videotapes are stacked in gray plastic cases that haven’t been labeled in years. She leans against a cabinet, a legal pad in hand, looking relaxed. I don’t know why that makes me so uneasy.
“You always beat the scanner,” she says.
I keep shuffling tapes around the archive. Why does she make me so nervous?
“That’s the job,” I reply to her.
“No, I mean always.”
Her tone is light, almost admiring.
“Before the Lansdowne call was even fully logged, you were already gone. Same with the garage. It’s like you can sense where the story is before anyone else. Do you have some sort of tip line or something?”
I look at her standing there, smiling, but there’s too much focus in it. She’s not accusing me, just noticing patterns. She’s close enough that I can smell her shampoo again, citrus and something expensive, and suddenly I hate that I know that. I hate that she’s becoming familiar to me. I don’t want to know her; I just want to beat her at this game.
“You say that like it’s suspicious,” I tell her.
“I say it like it’s impressive.”
There’s a moment when either of us could still pretend this is harmless. Down the hall, a phone rings over and over. On a monitor above the archive door, a silent replay shows both of us from the noon block, our faces side by side. We’re nearly duplicates, one live, one waiting in purgatory. Lauren glances up at the screen and laughs softly.
“It’s weird, right? Seeing us like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like they’re trying to put us against each other. Making us compete.”
My hands feel cold. I smile.
“And what do you think they’re deciding?”
“Whether one of us is the future or maybe already the past.”
Her eyes look directly into mine, then she pushes her hip off the cabinet. She gives my arm a quick, friendly tap, and walks away while I stand there with my mouth open. I keep standing there, slowly bending the cheap plastic video case in my hand as she walks down the hallway.
I stay late after almost everyone has left. The monitor wall is dimmed in power-saving mode but not completely turned off. On one screen, a rough cut of Lauren’s latest segment loops without sound. On another, my own face appears from an older crime story, looking sharper than recently, hungrier, less tired around the eyes. Side by side, we look like before and after, though it’s hard to tell which of us is which.
I sit in the darkened edit bay and imagine what Lauren’s death coverage would sound like. I didn’t imagine it would be gory. Would anyone grieve after her? This rising young reporter who had a promising career cut short. Our colleagues would be stunned. I can already hear myself reading the headline with just the right amount of restraint. I can picture the rooftop access door by the annex, or maybe the parking structure next to the employee lot. No, definitely the corner of the fire stairs that cameras never seem to catch. The thoughts should unsettle me, but it’s worse than that. I feel calmer than I have all week. Thinking of removing the threat has finally given my mind something solid to hold onto.
On the dim monitor, Lauren’s frozen face waits beside mine while the timecode blinks in the corner like a pulse. I watch the split screen until my own reflection emerges faintly over both of us in the dark glass. The next story can’t just feed the rating numbers; it has to protect me and my job.
Chapter 7: Cliffside
A text message appears on my phone at 8:12am, right as the sun rounds itself into a copper penny over the ocean. It’s from a freelancer, Noah Raines. I’ve hired him twice for bargain marina footage and once for courthouse stills when the station left me without a cameraman at the last minute. Noah’s competent, but forgettable until you need him. His text is very concerning.
Think I caught something near Lansdowne. Not sure. Need to talk in person.
It’s not enough to explain, but he sounds like he’s been waiting for me to show up. I read the message three times to make sure it’s correct before I reply. First, I want to pretend it’s nothing, but then I start doing the math. I text him back, say I’m chasing an angle on the series of fall patterns. I text again, saying if he wants to talk, to meet me at Point Dume Overlook in an hour and bring whatever he’s got. He texts back and agrees right away.
The drive is a mess of traffic. A sea of red leads through the hills of the Pacific Coast Highway as brake lights blur together for morning rush hour. I grip the steering wheel with one hand and keep my other hand on the blinker, ready to step on the gas if one of these lanes would ever open up.
After sitting in gridlock for an hour and sixteen minutes, I get to Point Dume. It’s mostly empty, besides a few joggers. I park at the front where the lot thins out and sit for a moment with the engine off, listening to my own breathing. The seagulls interrupt my thoughts; their screams sound suspiciously human. I finally force myself out of the car and walk to the trailhead above the cliffs. The whole place is just packed dirt and loose stones, bordered by some sort of spiky cactus-bush that smells dry and feels sharp when the wind stirs it up. I can hear the water slam itself against the rocks on the shore. The sound comes and goes, like the ocean is trying to both hide and dig up its secrets.
Noah is already there when I reach the overlook. He’s got one foot propped on the low rail, his camera bag slung across his chest, and his golden hair is whipped sideways by the wind, covering his quick, dark eyes. He’s in his mid-thirties, maybe. His windbreaker masks his narrow shoulders. He smiles when he spots me, but the kind that lets me know I owe him something.
“Paige,” He says and lifts a hand to shake mine. “Thought you might bail.”
“I almost did.”
He laughs like he’s flirting. I step a few feet away and let him talk. The overlook behind us drops straight down to jagged black rock and angry, crashing waves. The railing is tall enough to save most people from falling, but I carefully look for flaws.
“What did you catch?” I ask.
He unzips his bag but doesn’t take anything out.
“Lansdowne, on the roof. I was shooting pickup for a travel segment across the street. You were up there before the cops locked it down.”
“That’s not unusual.”
“No.” He tilts his head. “What might be unusual is after. After the fall and you were already at the scene reporting on the street. ”
The wind picks up. His voice comes in pieces, some of it blown away into the ocean before it reaches me. I step closer to him to hear him better. My pulse is racing. I have no idea what he has, but it can’t be good.
“Show me.”
He finally pulls out a cassette and turns it between his fingers. It’s such a small thing for how much weight it suddenly carries.
“I wanted to ask first.”
When he shifts the bag on his shoulder, I spot a plastic dinosaur clipped to the zipper, sun-faded and ridiculous against all that black canvas and camera gear. Maybe it’s from a kid, maybe it was his as a kid. Maybe it means nothing except he found it on a bus somewhere and never bothered to take it off. That tiny, silly thing unsettles me more than whatever is on the tape.
“Ask what?”
“If it’s worth more to the station than to the police,” he says with a sly grin.
Now I see an opening. I can almost relate to him for that. He’s not here to save anyone. He just wants to cash in on a story. That makes him easier to read, maybe even easier to forgive. It’s a dangerous feeling, and I don’t trust myself with it.
“You should have called me sooner.” I smile and sit next to him.
His eyes have a nervous look, but his body language is still confident, so I’m not sure what to think.
“I wasn’t sure what I had,” he says. “The shot is wide. Grainy. But there’s someone on the roof. It looks like you, but not you. It looks like you from when we first met.”
“That was nearly ten years ago, Noah,” I say impatiently.
“I know, it doesn’t make sense. Just… let me show you.”
The ocean swells as I sigh and wait for him to load the tape into his camera.
“Let me see it,” I say.
He holds the camera back a little.
“Let’s talk numbers.”
“You think I’m going to screw you?”
I laugh so hard I almost choke. He shrugs, embarrassed to be right out loud.
“I think everyone at the station screws freelancers.”
“You’re the one that asked to meet.”
He looks at me for a few seconds, then he rolls his eyes and presses down on the play button. We both watch the screen as the silhouette of a woman falls from the roof. It’s just the right angle that I’m somehow behind the short wall, out of the camera’s view. I blink a few times just to make sure of what I’m seeing. The camera zooms out, and after a few minutes, I arrive on the scene, on street level. I catch movement out of the corner of the shot. There’s someone else on the roof of the Lansdowne apartments. Noah pauses the video and pans the shot over to the roof.
“I thought it was you, at first. But with you reporting live on the street, I knew it had to be someone else.”
“Lauren…” I say in almost a whisper.
Chapter 8: Playback
I wake up to my phone ringing. The sun isn’t even up yet as I squint at the screen. I answer and put the call on speaker as I let my head fall back onto the pillow. Noah’s voice comes in loudly over the sound of wind.
"Paige. I looked back through my crime scene photographs. I have more information."
I sit up and nearly knock the phone off the bed.
“What is it?” I ask, trying to stay calm although I’m nearly in a panic.
“Can we meet? It’s a lot to explain. That old diner with the burned coffee?”
“Yeah, an hour?”
“I’ll bring everything,” Noah says.
I get to the diner, and it’s already packed. Noah whistles from a corner booth in the back. I order a coffee from the waitress, although I don’t intend to drink it. Noah places a large manila envelope on the table.
"I found something. A lot of things. Could be nothing, but it definitely looks like someone has been following you."
“Are you serious?” I ask him, half shocked and a little intrigued.
Inside the envelopes are photographs. Hundreds of them. Most are from recent crime scenes, but some are familiar. Outside the parking garage at work, my car on the freeway, and a park a few blocks from my condo.
"What is this?"
Noah slides another photograph across the table. It’s Lauren. She’s standing behind a newspaper box, watching me report live on the unsolved falls. Another of Lauren inside a parking structure. She’s just watching me. Another.
“Where did you get these? How far back do these go?" I ask.
"Some are mine; some are public CCTV footage. Probably months by the look of it. It’s bordering on stalker behavior."
Months. She’s been following me and I never even noticed. Not once. Noah reaches into the envelope again. He’s got schedules, security logs, archived footage, traffic camera stills. Lauren appears everywhere. I look around, suddenly paranoid that she is in the diner with us at that moment.
Every victim, every scene, every story, she’s always nearby.
"I think she's obsessed with you," Noah says.
"She's convinced I’m cheating somehow. Getting stories before anyone else. I think she's been following me, trying to figure out how."
“She appears at every crime scene, in the shadows, watching you. It looks to me like she’s causing these accidents to try to frame you.”
I stare through the diner window. The ocean in the distance looks flat and metallic. For months I believed Lauren wanted my job. Now I realize she was after something more. She wanted my secret.
The rest of the week becomes an investigation into Lauren. Noah helps me pull security footage from the station. Lauren had been entering assignments after hours. She copied schedules, pulled my notes out of the trash. Lauren’s car appeared on the highway behind my car, behind my news vehicle, and even at the sandwich shop next to the newsstand where I get my Sunday coffee.
Lauren arrives at locations just minutes after me, before official dispatch notices go out, right when I go live on crime scene reports. She probably spent months trying to build a case against me, but she actually ended up building one against herself.
When she walks through the newsroom in the evening, she smiles like she knows the winning lottery numbers. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
Chapter 9: Live at Ten
The newsroom is quiet. Everyone is focused on trying to figure out the key to the recent unsolved crimes. It’s been nearly a month with no answers. Lauren finds me reading my notes twenty minutes before air. She looks confident and is dressed in an outfit that nearly mirrors mine. She doesn't bother with small talk.
"I know what you've done."
The certainty in her voice would be impressive if it had come sooner. I wonder if she has any proof.
“Sorry, Lauren, if I knew you wanted the last maple bar, I would have split it with you.”
"You can stop pretending."
I almost admire her determination. She spent months chasing a story nobody else could see. The problem is that she never realized someone was also on her trail.
“I can get proof. I know how you get those stories.”
I nod at her as Mark pops in out of nowhere.
"Conference room, ladies. Now."
His voice leaves no room for argument. We follow him down the hallway, and I stop in the doorway. Noah is sitting with two detectives. Photos and videotapes are spread out covering nearly every inch of the conference room table. Lauren loses her confident smile and suddenly looks confused.
"No," she says. "No, you don't understand."
One detective looks up at her.
"That’s definitely her. No question."
Lauren looks at me, tears welling in her eyes. She understands her plan backfired.
"It’s not what it looks like. I was following Paige, but…"
Mark interrupts, “Do you need to read her rights?”
Lauren points directly at me.
"She's the one you should be investigating."
The detectives exchange a glance as they stand up and move to either side of her. One cuffs her while the other reads her Miranda rights. Lauren continues to struggle while the detectives try to list her charges.
“…conspiracy, stalking, misconduct, criminal trespassing, first degree aggravated assault resulting in death.”
Lauren just angrily stares at me, pulling and straining at the handcuffs. The five-minute warning light flashes in the hallway.
“Paige, you can go. Thank you for your cooperation,” Mark says in a disappointed voice.
A scream echoes through the hallway behind me as Lauren loses all restraint.
“NO, it’s her! She did it all! She’s the one! HER! IT WAS HER!”
Lauren drops to her knees and sobs uncontrollably while the detectives try to get her to stand.
The door closes behind them, and the newsroom goes silent. Mark exhales heavily.
"What the hell…”
He looks at me, and I shake my head.
"You know the crazy part?" He laughs a sort of relieved chortle, “She thought I was training her to replace you."
My stomach tightens into a thousand knots.
"What?" I ask with disbelief.
“I was training her for lead anchor,” Mark rubs his eyes, “But not at this station. Our Spokane affiliate asked us to train her for an anchor position three months ago."
“She thought she was getting my spot?”
"You have one minute ‘til air. Get up there. She was never your competition, Paige."
I sit at the lead anchor desk and read my lines. My co-anchor introduces our newest permanent camera operator, Noah Raines. I announce that a suspect has been arrested in connection with the string of unsolved crimes involving victims falling to their deaths. Mark gives me a thumbs up as the ratings tally moves up higher than any other news segment.
The irony is that I never needed to try to solve my own problems. Lauren and I were never competitors, until it came to the blame for the murders. I can’t tell the truth now. It wouldn’t be fair to Mark, or Noah, or the viewers that rely on me for news they can depend on.
No one would ever understand what it actually takes to be the best news anchor in Southern California prime time.
END
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