In the makeup chair, Amanda Tucker had finally had enough of holding still while Gina dusted powder onto her cheeks. She batted the makeup artist’s hands away, and said, “God, Gina, you’re literally suffocating me! I feel like I’m trapped in a dust storm…Enough!”

Careful not to spill powder onto her suit, Amanda tugged the bib off her neck and held it out to Gina as gingerly as if it were a loaded diaper. Gina folded a paper towel around her collar to protect her shirt, then Amanda freed herself from the chair.

She endured the makeup ordeal twice daily—once before her three p.m. Update and Preview spot, and then a quick touch-up before the main event, Amanda Tucker’s American Crime Prime Time, broadcast live across the country on the Current Event Network, and syndicated internationally. At first she’d enjoyed the primping and the fussing—a reflection of her significance. But she’d been doing it for five years now, and her numbers were big, and she got all the affirmation she needed from the mid-seven-figure salary that followed the big numbers—and from the Saturday Night Live parodies that followed the big salary.

Amanda left Gina to tidy, and walked back to her office. She stood in the window, peering out over Madison Square Park, watching the halting flow of buses and taxis as they shuffled down Fifth Avenue past the Flatiron Building.

Even the view bugged her. A fantastic view, sure, but pretty much the same view she’d had since her show began to pull in the numbers, and they’d bumped her from an office near the elevators up to one that looked out onto Fifth, and then finally to her big corner office, with its views of the park, and Fifth, and her beloved Flatiron.

Shit. She smiled to herself. An office with a 270-degree view over some of the priciest real estate in the world, a hundred grand a week in base salary (not including syndication residuals or royalties from the American Crime books and video game), an $8,000,000 duplex on Central Park, and she was feeling restless? How spoiled she’d become!

When Amanda had checked in at the reception desk at her Georgia State Law ten-year reunion in January, the coordinator had playfully refused to give her a name badge, insisting everyone already knew who she was. And of course, they had known, particularly since she and Nancy Grace had shared the cover of People that October (“New Southern Justice: Amanda and Nancy Lay Down the Law”), and then half of America had been glued to her show through November and December, between her relentless coverage of the Sheldon cult child abduction in Sedona and the Inquisitor killer in New York.

Her numbers had slipped during the spring—they always did as the days got warmer—but the night before, she’d had to squeeze the juice out of the divorce of a Hollywood producer and his Russian mail-order bride. She’d slapped around her usual panel of slimeball divorce attorneys and entertainment reporters like the pro that she was, but her heart hadn’t been in it. The producer’s name was very Armenian, and the trophy wife’s accent incomprehensible, and caller response had been dismal—her show just didn’t sparkle without some spicy incest/rape trial, or a callous mom/missing tot combo, or even just a contentious appeals trial for some remorseless serial killer.

That’s what we need, she thought—another sexy serial killer. In America, everyone loves a serial killer.

She sat at her desk, pulled out a legal pad, and tried to drum up ideas for the following week. Ray Goldberg, her show runner, coordinated the guests, but Amanda had a lot of input into what topics they’d cover. She sat there tapping her pen for about fifteen minutes, but the page stayed blank.

She looked at the trophies from her past. Hung in neat rows on the far wall were mug shots of the forty-seven scumbags she’d nailed as a Clark County ADA in Vegas, where she’d moved with Holly after her marriage failed. It was in Vegas that she’d been shot, targeted for her participation in the prosecution of a soldier from the Sacramento wolf pack of El Eme, the Mexican Mafia. The shooting had been a blessing in disguise, bringing her national media attention and ultimately a new career.

With a sigh, she put down her pad and turned on her TV. She settled on CNN, where the police were recovering bodies from the Everglades. She unmuted the set and listened to the anchor—some kind of multiple-homicide story. Sources were saying four adult males, which wasn’t perfect but the number was good—mass murder always put butts on seats.

Ray came rushing into the room, beaming. “Amanda!” He glanced at the TV and nodded. “Good! CNN! Did you see it?”

She shrugged and gestured at the screen. Helicopter footage of body bags being carried out of the woods on an island in the Everglades.

“Multiple homicide, but all grown men. Worth a look, but I don’t know if there’s really anything for us…”

“No, not the victims. Watch this bit, they’re showing it again.”

She turned back to the set.

On screen, the helicopter moved in very close, and the trees and bushes began swaying wildly, and then she saw a tall man in a blue police-type windbreaker and a blond woman in olive green angrily waving away the helicopter.

She sat up in her chair. “Oh my fucking God!”

Ray laughed out loud. “I knew you’d love it!”

“Dr. Edward Jenner, as I live and breathe…” She shook her head, grinning from ear to ear. “So that’s where you’ve got to, my precious!”

“It gets better…Apparently he’s been working down there a couple of weeks now, filling in for the chief medical examiner. Nothing exciting there, but you know who he just autopsied?”

He paused dramatically. Amanda muttered impatiently, “Go on!”

“The chief medical examiner! He autopsied his own boss!”

“No. Fucking. WAY!”

“Yes! His own boss—murdered!” He shook his head. “What the hell is it with this son of a bitch? He runs away, takes a job in East Assfuck, Florida, and the next thing you know, everyone’s dropping like flies!”

She pounded the table with her fist. “Oh Ray Goldberg, you old goat…—I could just blow you!”

He pretended to fumble at his belt buckle. She shook her head with a grin. “I can’t believe this—it’s just too perfect!”

Goldberg said, “We’ll find someone from one of the local stations for tonight, set it up for an in-depth on tomorrow’s show. We’ll have a segment producer and crew down there by morning.”

She turned to him. “Screw that! As soon as we wrap tonight, American Crime is going on location to…” she turned to the TV, couldn’t see what she was looking for, then turned back to Ray. “We’re going on location to East Assfuck, Florida!”