Keith called from the editing booth.
“It’s done. Do you want to come down and see it?”
“Sure. I’ll be right there,” answered Eliza.
She took the stairs down two floors to the hard-news editing center, passing half a dozen small rooms with sliding glass doors until she reached Joe Leiding’s booth. Keith got up and offered her his chair.
“Are you happy with it?” she asked as she took the seat.
“Yeah. I think it’s pretty good. See what you think,” Keith said. He stood at the back of the booth and began gnawing at his thumbnail as Leiding hit the PLAY button. The piece opened with a clip of Linda Anderson wrapping up the last news broadcast she ever anchored. Then Eliza’s narration began.
“Linda Anderson did not know, as she signed off from the Garden State Network on the night before Halloween five years ago, that it would be her last time reporting from the anchor chair. She thought she had everything to look forward to.”
Mrs. Anderson’s careworn faced appeared on the screen. “People said that when you met Linda, you felt you knew her. That came across on TV as well.”
“Indeed, the audience responded to Linda Anderson,” Eliza’s track continued. “She had a loyal following in New Jersey and there was interest on the other side of the Hudson River as well.”
Sound-bite Florence Anderson: “An agent had approached her and submitted her audition tape and there was actually an interview set up. Linda was so excited about the possibility of going to work for one of the big networks.”
Eliza’s voice picked up the story. “But Linda Anderson never went for that network interview. After she finished her late broadcast, she left the studio and was never seen again.”
Florence Anderson: “In the beginning, the police went all-out. They searched everywhere, interviewed people who knew her, questioned old boyfriends, spoke to her coworkers.” Mrs. Anderson’s voice was still heard, but file tape of pictures was edited over to illustrate her next words. “The story was on the Garden State Network every night. People tied yellow ribbons around trees. There was a reward offered for information, but nobody came forward with anything. But if you ask me, as time went on, the police gave up.”
“That’s a charge the police deny,” narrated Eliza.
“Linda Anderson’s file is still open here and will be until this case is solved,” said a detective Keith had interviewed at the police station. “There’s a national preoccupation with celebrity in this country, and though we’ve searched and investigated every possible lead, the fact is that anyone with a television set could have targeted Linda. That’s a pretty broad range of suspects.”
That was the end of the edited package. Keith handed Eliza the script she was to read on camera, coming out of the piece.
“Before she disappeared, Linda Anderson told her family and friends that she thought she was being followed. Stalking is illegal in all fifty states and while it is the celebrity stalkings that receive media coverage, the most common victims are not news reporters or movie stars. The largest number of stalking victims are ordinary people on whom another person, for whatever reason, becomes fixated. The advice from law enforcement professionals? If you meet someone who makes you feel uncomfortable, act on your feelings. Get away from that person and break off any future contact.”
“What do you think?” asked Keith.
“It’s good, Keith. I just wish we had a little more time to tell the story in greater depth.”
“Believe it or not, Range wanted us to edit out ten or fifteen seconds. I told him there was nothing left to cut.”
Eliza nodded. She well understood the executive producer’s preoccupation with time. “Nice job, Joe,” she complimented the editor as she rose to leave. Eliza noticed the box that contained Linda Anderson’s audition tape lying on the console table. She picked it up.
“Can I take this with me?” she asked. “I’d like to take a look at it.”
It was eerie how much Linda reminded Eliza of herself.