7:03:28 a.m.
College Boy arrived on time and raring to go for our first interview. Unfortunately, Jenny’s school wasn’t open at the crack of dawn. Failing to anticipate the intersection of work and family can be fatal in my business.
On the other hand, the survival instinct kicking in with a vengeance does add a certain edge to the morning.
“This is my niece, Jenny,” I said as we piled into the truck. “We’re taking her with us.”
“Hi,” Jenny said.
“Hey.” He nodded hello and offered his hand to guide her over a spaghetti pile of cables and stick bags, so she could strap herself into the spare jump seat. “Wow. You two are related?”
Jenny hit me with her big-eyed, blank look-the mask of trouble. She resembles the female side of my family: smooth brown hair, round dark eyes, and the translucent skin of an Irish elf. Even for a kid, she was small.
Looks-wise, I got my dad’s package: the Viking strain of Celtic blood, tall and broad, plenty of freckles, wild hair which is politely known as red, but actually closer to orange, when I don’t color it-which is never. I’d dyed it fatal-blond right before the job interview. I’m all for irony. Now Ainsley and I looked more like relations than Jenny and I.
“I’m the black sheep of the family,” I said. “Let’s roll.”
Ainsley took a convoluted back route of smaller roads to get us to the site of yesterday’s incident and avoid the morning rush hour. We passed fields, farms and for sale signs.
September was a good time to be in Chicago-another two months, we’d all be freezing our asses off. The rising sun cast a perfect yellow light on dead grass and reddened sumac leaves. I opened the window to snap a few pictures and the autumn air rushed me, crisp with the scent of endings and beginnings. The wind helped blow away the last of the dusty, creepy feeling that had followed me home last night. I was on my way to work. Life was good.
Since I was busy hanging my head out the window taking pictures, Ainsley focused on getting Jenny to chat. It didn’t take long for the two of them to bond; they were practically peers. As soon as we parked, Ainsley set her up with something to watch in the back of the truck. What he was doing with cartoons in stock, I don’t want to know.
It took twenty long minutes to prep for our quickie on-camera interview with Al Lowe, the man whose land had been the site of yesterday’s tragedy. The fact that College Boy had managed to find the man and schedule an interview on such short notice was such a pleasant surprise, I didn’t bug him about his pace. There were always other things to cover.
“Fill the frame with the subject. Don’t try to shoot me. I hate reporters in the story. You’ve seen the kind of stuff I do, right? We’ll cut around my questions and tie everything together with a narrating voice-over. Got that?”
I wanted the black skeleton of the oak tree behind the man being interviewed. It looked different today. More mysterious.
We heard Lowe’s truck before we saw him. He went off-road and parked ten feet from where we stood.
“Thanks for coming out to meet us, sir.”
I offered my hand as he slammed the door. Lowe was a perfect interview to get us started. He wore jeans, a Cubs jacket that had seen better days and a squared-off bill cap. His face and hands bore the weathered tan of an outdoor work life. Everything about him said farmer-pure, old-fashioned, regular guy. Whatever he had to say, people would believe.
“Beautiful view,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lowe replied. Midwesterners could pack more meanings into “yeah” than Eskimos had words for snow. This one meant, sad. What a shame.
Ainsley fumbled with the tripod behind us, trying to lock down an even footing for the shot I wanted. Not easy. The ground was all torn up by the cars, trucks and men that had been trooping around the day before.
Lowe kept his back to the camera and stared out across fields that came together like a quilt beneath the eternal-blue morning. It wasn’t the kind of sky that recorded well on video. The technology could never get the color right.
I stood beside him and gazed unblinking into all that color until vertigo brought me back to the earth. The view to the horizon held nothing but dirt and straw and the scalloped border of a tree line. I dug my hands into my pockets and tried for a happy quote. “Reminds me of ‘the pleasant land of counterpane.’”
Lowe looked at me, surprised. In a grave, rusty, morning voice he spoke the words,
“‘I was the giant great and still,
that sits upon the pillow hill,
and sees before him, dale and plain,
the pleasant land of counterpane.’
“My dad used to recite that one,” he admitted with a bashful crook of his head.
“Mine too,” I said. We were having a moment, so I didn’t mention that I was full grown before I’d understood the word was pane, not pain.
“Almost ready,” Ainsley said.
Farmer Lowe and I chatted about hay harvest and dairy feed, while the Boy Wonder locked and loaded. By the time we got to bovine hormones, Lowe was at ease; I was on suppressed impatience.
“Ready,” Ainsley finally called.
Interviewing is part skill, part talent, part luck of the draw. When it works, you become the glass through which someone else is seen. Sometimes, you blend transparently. Sometimes, you reflect. Sometimes, there’s an invisible wall. I ran down the establishing facts with Lowe quickly.
I could feel his resistance before I asked, “Were you the one to find the body?”
“No.” Lowe studied his boots. Kicked over a clod of dirt. “The authorities knew before I did. I got a call from a neighbor who’d driven by, saw all the commotion.”
“About what time was that?”
“Neighbor called as I was finishing my pancakes.”
“Could it have been that neighbor-over there?” I looked across the field, beyond the fence and the line of shrubs even farther back.
The buildings appeared exactly as they were yesterday, the perfect icon of farm, like an illustration from a kid’s picture book. The second-story barn window stood open. No sign of binoculars watching.
“Old Mr. Jost? I couldn’t say,” Lowe mumbled.
Ainsley popped his head around the camera. “Has he even got a phone?”
“There’s a booth out back,” Lowe answered. To me he said, “The Amish don’t allow phones in their homes. It’s one of their rules. No wires to the outside world on their homes. They get around it by putting the phone in a separate little building, like a phone booth, that’s outside apart from the house.”
“An Amish family lives there?” I couldn’t help pointing. “In that house?”
“Yeah.” Lowe turned away from me and the relentless stare of the camera.
“What about cell phones?” I asked, thinking of the girl in the bush. “No wires on a cell phone. Do they allow those?”
“No. Don’t think so,” he snorted. “They’d have to charge it somewhere.”
“Oh yeah.” I laughed. Joke on me.
“Is that it?” Lowe’s reluctance suddenly took a shape I recognized.
Gently I asked, “Did you know the man who died?”
His chin dropped to his chest. There was silence for a good twenty seconds.
“Suppose it’ll come out sooner or later… Yeah, I knew him. Damn shame. Seemed to be getting along alright these past few years. Boy’s name was Tom. Tom Jost. He was adopted by my neighbor over there-” Lowe jerked his head in the direction of the farmhouse, “-years ago. Kid had a hard life and old Jost tried to do right by him. I respected him for that.” He half-turned his back to the camera, mumbling. “Some hard years for a while there. Teenage stuff mostly, not too bad. But Old Mr. Jost is religious, you know, so he didn’t see it that way. Boy left the farm, never came back.”
Except to die.
“Why’d he choose this tree?”
No answer.
“Do you know why Tom chose this tree?”
Lowe’s whole face tightened and I wished he’d have been facing the camera, instead of looking over at Mr. Jost’s farm. “Guess I do.”
“Why?” I whispered.
The quick glance he shot my way held all sorts of implications, but I needed words for the tape.
“This going to be on TV, Miss O’Hara?”
“Yes, we hope so.”
“The Amish don’t care to be photographed, you know.”
It was a warning. Stay away from Old Mr. Jost.
“Yes. I’ve heard that.”
Lowe turned and pointed a finger at the oak. “That tree is over a hundred years old, you know. The town moved the road for that tree.”
The morning sun was fully awake and the leaves on the sunny side were glowing.
“Seen a lot, that tree. It was worth moving the road around it.”
I nodded. “It’s a beautiful tree.”
“I suppose that boy would have found himself another tree someplace else,” he said and it was almost a question. The rest wasn’t. “There are things worth trying to preserve, Miss O’Hara. Even when you can’t.”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. He was speaking a local dialect of neighborhood history, a language I’d never understand without translation. I hesitated, searching for what to ask next and I lost him.
Lowe made his decision. He stuck out his rough, tanned hand and shook my own-goodbye. Interview over.
Damn. “Well, thanks for agreeing to meet with us, Mr. Lowe.”
“That’s no problem.”
“Can I ask you one more thing?”
“No.”
I’m not so young I can’t remember back to the days when shame was still serious business. As a kid, I remember people averting their eyes at something awful, instead of reaching for their camcorders.
How many times did I hear the words, hurry, don’t let anyone see. What will the neighbors think? Bad enough. But now the pendulum’s swung so far the other way nobody can turn on the TV or open a newspaper without somebody flashing their streaky underpants in your face. How is that an improvement?
The problem isn’t that it’s so painfully tacky, it’s that we have only so much time, so much compassion, for our fellow human beings. I want to focus on trouble that matters. Ending wars, and hunger, and the sickness we know how to cure if we’d only pay attention. If the freaks would stop distracting us.
Which is a long way of explaining that even though people like farmer Al Lowe made my job harder, I can’t say I always mind.
I followed him over to his standard issue, rusty pickup. “Mr. Lowe?”
He climbed in the cab and slammed the door shut before he answered. “Yeah?”
That one meant, don’t push your luck, lady.
“No camera. I’m just wondering, do you have any idea who alerted the authorities about the body? Could it have been your neighbor?”
“No. Had to be someone before that,” Lowe said. “Sorry.”
I said, thanks, but it bothered me. Usually, it was easy to find the person who’d tipped the authorities on something like this. Even if it was a random bystander, they generally had an emotional stake in telling the story again. The thirty-second hero was an easy interview to bag.
“One last thing-have the police identified the body as Tom Jost?” I didn’t want either of us getting into trouble for not passing along important information.
“Oh yeah.” Lowe hooked a hand over the steering wheel and his mouth registered a nasty-tasting frown. “They know.”
Questions started popping in my head, but Lowe slipped the truck into gear and revved the engine.
I nodded and he returned the gesture. With the big bill on his cap, it looked like he was tipping his hat to me; a move that registered as perfectly midwestern, formal and yet familiar. I bit my tongue and stepped back to watch the truck drag a line of dust into the air as he cut back onto the road.
“Keep it rolling,” I told Ainsley. “I want the truck.”
Jenny popped her head out of the door. “How much longer?”
I started to say we were done, when I noticed action up at the Jost farmhouse. Somebody had come out to gather the laundry. A pair of little girls and a boy were dodging between sheets draped in rows, playing at hide-and-seek as the wind flicked the bed tails. If I strained to listen, I could hear the squeals as they popped in and out.
“Shoot it,” I ordered Ainsley.
He looked around, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Those kids playing?”
“Yeah.” And this one meant, trust me. “Quick, College. Before it’s gone.”
He zipped the camera off the tripod and propped it on his shoulder for the shot. I had a sinking feeling that we’d lose the image because he wasn’t used to shooting hand-held, or worse, he couldn’t see the picture I wanted. Sometimes that happens. They just can’t see.
“How much longer, Aunt Maddy?” Jenny whispered.
I was startled to find her right there, at my side all of a sudden. “I don’t know. Not long.”
“Oh man!” Ainsley finished all his maneuvers and turned to face us, the camera still resting on his shoulder. He sounded pumped. “This was great. What next?”
I wanted to walk up to the farm and knock on the door, but Jenny was quietly pulling my sleeve to check my watch. I took the hint. “We better head back to the station. Check in with Gatt. And we’ve got to drop Jenny on the way. At school.”
“Sure,” Ainsley assured her with a smile. His sandy hair seemed to change color to suit his environment. In the morning sun, he was blond as a prom date.
“I’ll help strike.”
“No. I’ve got it.”
I admit I was itching to help wrap the equipment. You learn to pack fast when the aftershocks are bringing the building down around your ass. Unfortunately, Ainsley’s progress was about as urgent as the seasons changing.
By the time we delivered Jenny to school, then found a gas station with a quick mart, the best part of the morning was gone.
This is another thing I wasn’t used to in my new life-the dead weight of other people’s needs. On my own, I’d have a story half in the can already. It took my college boy twenty minutes just to fill the gas tank and buy us a newspaper.
“What the hell took you so long?” I crabbed when he finally returned.
“Not much of a morning person, are you?”
“I’m a busy person, College. Busy, busy, busy.”
Ainsley shrugged the obvious. “Had to take a leak.”
“Pee on your own time. When I’m waiting in the car, tie it in a knot.”
“Easy there, Boss. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” College tossed the newspaper onto my lap. “Take a look at page three.”
Don’t get your knickers in a twist? Bold talk. That was promising.
Above the fold on page three of the Clarion was a quarter-page reprint of the photo I’d left Melton: tree, ladder, rope and a crowd of men in uniforms. Most of the body was blocked by the ring of men. The caption read, “Unidentified man in Amish clothing was found dead yesterday in a field just south of Route 59. Police and fire department services were brought to the scene by an anonymous phone caller.”
“Wonder if anyone else picked it up,” I said.
“We could call the station. Ask them to check the wire and keep an eye on the noon news until we get there.”
“Good thinking, College.” My congratulations should have included letting him make the phone call. Reception put me straight through to Gatt.
“Where the hell are you?” my new boss blared.
“In the van, with Ainsley ‘Life Is A Journey, Not A Destination’ Prescott. You remember, my partner?”
“Cut the crap and get your fanny in here now.”
“My what?” I cracked a grin. I hadn’t had a fanny since I was ten.
“You heard me, O’Hara. I got some township sheriff sitting in my lobby threatening to get a subpoena and trash my office.”
“Sounds like Curzon read the paper this morning,” I reported aloud for Ainsley’s benefit. “What’s he want?”
“Photos of a crime scene. I thought Ainsley told me you didn’t get any video on that suicide.”
“We didn’t get any video.”
Gatt wasn’t an idiot. The silence hung between us like a bad smell. “Just get in here and deal with him.”
“On the way. Hey, Gatt? Remind me again, how’d you get tipped on the story yesterday?”
“Phone call,” he spouted. “Civilian asked for me, so I assumed he’d called the network hotline and they’d put him on to me as the local contact.”
“Weird.” It made sense network would call the crew that was closest to look into the story. But no network hotline on the planet turfed a call that fast-Ainsley and I had arrived within twenty minutes of the cops. Which meant Gatt had gotten his call within minutes of the authorities. This reminded me of Ainsley’s homework assignment. “Later, Gatt.”
“Sooner, O’Hara.”
“Right, right.” I pressed the button that made him go away. “What’d you find out about Sheriff Curzon, College?”
“Not much,” Ainsley said. “I asked around but nobody knows why he might be shy about reporters.”
“Shy? I’d call it hostile. Who’d you ask?”
“Guy I know on the city council.” He shrugged his bony shoulder. “And my mom.”
“Your mom? You called your mother to ask about Curzon?”
The tops of his ears turned red. “Yeah. I had to talk to her anyway, you know, about Mr. Lowe.”
“No. I don’t know.”
“Come on. It’s not like that guy agreed to be interviewed because he wanted to be on television.” Ainsley snarfed. “I asked Mom if she’d, you know, vouch for you. She knows a lot of people. She’s been involved in town politics for a while.” He paused and seemed to think better of what he was going to say next. Which is why I was surprised to hear, “Oh, and she and Curzon’s ex-wife go to the same hairdresser.”
“Same hairdresser. Right. Stop there. You’re scaring me.”
Ainsley gave another friendly shrug to say, whatever. He concentrated on singing along with the radio for the rest of the drive while his ears cooled back to their normal color.
Small town politics-where political science meets the theater of the absurd.
Curtain up. Sheriff Curzon was awaiting my entrance.
10:19:44 a.m.
We pulled into the rear dock at the station within ten minutes. Despite the lobby’s visual clues to the contrary, WWST was on the cutting edge of the television business in a few significant ways. I’d been pleasantly surprised to discover the remote operations equipment was state of the art.
According to the trades I read, the entire office had been established as an experimental sister station to a downtown Chicago minor network affiliate. It began as a way to divide the grunt work it takes to run a station, while boosting the signal coverage. All the boring, space-consuming aspects of the business-like the video library and the accounting department-were routed to the hinterlands where real estate doesn’t do such a ream-job on the bottom line. Over time, everything but the main news studio and the general manager’s office had been shifted westward.
As far as I was concerned, if they could find a way to lose sales and promotion, it’d be an ideal work environment.
“Barb-A-Ra!”
Ainsley and I could hear the shout all the way at the back of the building. This time it wasn’t Gatt calling her. It wasn’t a voice I recognized.
“Barbara, I need you! Now!”
We came around the corner just as Barbara marched by, fists clenched and sensible shoes clomping across the linoleum like combat boots.
Ainsley blew out a breath and shook his head. “She hates when he does that.”
“Who?”
“Jim, the sales manager. Barb works for Uncle Rich, you know. But Jim’s such an-” Ainsley dropped his voice to a whisper, “-asshole-his secretaries keep quitting. Barb gets stuck helping him out.”
A door slammed, muffling the roar of battle. Ainsley grimaced.
Up and down the hall, a flurry of action ensued. Somebody called, “I’m on the phone, people.” Another door-slam echoed. Another shout of “Keep it down.” Then, from behind us, the deepest voice yet called, “Quit slamming the fucking doors!”
One big, happy family, as they say, just living the dream.
“That last guy you heard was Mick, one of the engineers.” Ainsley threw a thumb over his shoulder pointing down the hall that led to the edit bays. “I’ll introduce you later. You’ll like him. Maybe we should go in the back way, to be safe?”
“Sounds good.”
We entered Gatt’s office through a back hall door. Gatt was seated in the same position I’d first found him in yesterday-phone against his ear, slouching deep in the chair behind his desk. “Tell him to kiss my hairy butt and call my lawyer. No way am I giving him two runs in prime.” He looked up and saw us in the doorway. “Gotta go. Call me if you hear any more.”
“We’re here. Where’s Curzon?” I asked.
“In my lobby.” Gatt’s phone rang again almost the instant he hung up. “Go talk to him. Be diplomatic.” He snatched up the receiver and growled, “Hold on-I’m in the middle of something here,” then he called to Ainsley, “Go with. Watch her. She screws up, come get me.”
Diplomacy at its finest.
Sheriff Curzon almost seemed at home in WWST’s retro-tacky lobby. Except for the fact that his suit was too fine-a dark summer-weight wool, lightly breaking cuffs, crisp white shirt, dark narrow tie-he looked like a cover model for an old Detective Magazine. Standing in the center of the room, with his cell phone pressed tight to his ear, his body language said he didn’t want to get too close to any of the solid surfaces. Not that I blamed him.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t worn anything particularly outrageous today, just my usual jeans and a nice, black T-shirt. I’d thrown a blazer on over the shirt because it was cold and I knew I’d be interviewing Farmer Lowe outdoors. With a touch of evil glee, I slipped off the jacket and tossed it over the back of the receptionist’s empty chair.
Did I mention I don’t usually wear a bra?
As my daddy used to say, when dealing with a hard-ass, the best defense is hard offense. I think my nipples qualified.
“Sheriff, what a surprise.” I stepped out around the counter. “I’d have been happy to come get that press release, you know.”
He snapped his phone shut. His eyes flicked down, no more than a quarter second, but I counted a double blink and two-Mississippis of silence.
“I want the rest of the pictures,” Curzon announced.
“What pictures?” See how diplomatic I can be?
“You were not authorized to take photos at my crime scene.”
“From a public road?” I grabbed the plastic badge that hung around my neck and flipped it so the sheriff could read the large black type: PRESS. I smiled some more.
He took two steps toward me and bent at the waist so his face was level with mine. In a quiet voice he asked, “Where’s that badge going to get you if the police department shuts you out, Ms. O’Hara? Zero cooperation from now on.”
“And your cooperation’s been such a big help to me so far, Sheriff Curzon.”
“It can get a lot worse.”
I spread my hands wide, palms up, innocence incarnate. “I do maybe two, three, stories a month for the next year, Sheriff, then-poof-I’m gone. I think I can stay out of trouble that long.”
“Nothing but business to you, isn’t it?” he asked, the words crisp with bitterness. “You don’t care who gets hurt in the process.”
All of a sudden, it clicked. “But you do.” I lowered my voice. “Who? Who are you protecting?”
He jerked back before he could stop himself, and then popped out in those little jaw-knuckles men get when they clench their teeth.
“We got off on the wrong foot here.” I was suddenly sorry I’d baited him. Sincere-yet-pert is a tough look to pull off. He was worried about somebody and I’d never figure out whom while I had him at DEFCON 1. “Look, I’m not out to get anyone here. I only want to know what happened.” I’ve heard the public ranks journalists right up there with plumbers and lawyers these days, but some of us do try. I crossed my arms in front of my chest, dropped my voice to something soft and private. “Can you help me?”
For a long moment, Curzon hesitated. Cynicism eventually bubbled to the surface of his expression, spoiling my view of his pretty eyes. “Anymore of those pictures turn up in the paper, I know where to come looking, Ms. O’Hara.”
“Happy thought, Sheriff. Any idea when you’ll have that press release ready?”
He tried the death-ray look on me again.
That’s when I noticed Ainsley creeping up behind me; I could feel him twitching.
I walked to the door and held it open. “Have yourself a great day, Sheriff,” I said as Curzon stomped past me. “Come back anytime.”
Good manners are the bedrock of diplomacy.
10:51:30 a.m.
“Yeah, I heard you. Auto sex-something-sounds good. Sounds great,” Gatt mumbled between calls. “Call the county hospital. They must have some of those head shrinkers. See if you can get someone to expert witness on this. Somebody credible. And make ’em say it a couple times, so we get a decent promo. What is it, again?”
“Autoerotic asphyxiation,” Ainsley offered helpfully.
Gatt looked pained. “Don’t tell your mother I taught you that.”
Ainsley rolled his eyes, one shoulder slouched against the wall. I couldn’t figure out whether he was doing the brooding, James Dean thing for his uncle’s benefit or just avoiding sitting down ’cause it might wrinkle his pants.
“We’re going to try and interview Mr. Jost, the adoptive father, later today,” I told Gatt. “Maybe swing by the victim’s place after we get an address. I still don’t know what we’re gonna use as visual on this. Ainsley says these people don’t go to public school. No yearbook photos, none of the usual sources for a head-shot.”
“Keep looking,” Gatt muttered. “Something’ll turn up. And stay away from Curzon for a while.”
“Yes, Mother,” I droned.
“I’m serious. Let him cool down.”
If I was right and Curzon was running interference, I’d have to go after him again. “Let me do my job, Gatt. That’s why you’re paying me the big bucks, right?”
“Fine. Speaking of which, I’ve got the GM coming in for the weekly management meeting in an hour. I want you both attending the show from now on.” He flipped his finger back and forth, pointing to Ainsley and me. “But your final contract meeting will have to wait until Monday, O’Hara. GM’s got a conflict.”
“Fine.”
“That’s it. I’m done. Get the hell outta here,” Gatt said. “I got work to do.”
I have no patience for most TV office politics. Once you’ve watched World Wide Wrestling, or read The Art of War, there are no surprises. Making me wait to review my employment terms was a standard opening ego-blow. Managers like to count coup on new employees. Happens all the time, especially with a reputation like mine. ’Til now, freelancing had kept me out of the worst of the fray. As a permanent hire, there was lot less room to maneuver. Pucker up, O’Hara. Life’s a series of trade-offs.
Of course, I hated being seen as a complete push over.
“One more thing, Richard. When do I see my office?”
“What the hell do you need an office for? You’re supposed to be out on location shooting and in here editing. I’ll have Barbara find you a desk someplace.”
“A desk? You want me discussing station business with Curzon-and any other concerned citizens I happen to meet-at some bullpen desk?”
A growl roughed up the back of his throat. “See what I can do,” Gatt answered. “Now get lost.”
Ainsley seemed impressed. I smiled, modestly.
Not bad. Second day on the job, and Richard Gatt and I had already established a rapport.
With no office to call my own, I went out to my car to make a few confirmation calls while Ainsley went to find us a room to view what we’d shot this morning. The social worker at Jenny’s school helped me set up an after-school care scenario back when school started in August, so I’d have a place for the kid as soon as I got the work situation pinned down. All I had to do was confirm my new employment details over the phone.
Bad enough I had to ask Ainsley to chauffeur the kid around this morning; no way was I about to use the public office phone for these calls. The television business is a wild ride, fickle with her favors and always sniffing after the next, younger thing. I’m not saying it’s right, but once somebody gets a reputation for putting business second-behind the kid, the lover, the mother, whatever-the business finds a way to claim her pound of flesh. Or she drops you cold. The only way I figured to keep this whole situation in hand was if my personal life remained as vague as possible within the station’s walls.
It took some serious begging but I managed to get them to take Jenny into after-school care immedia-mento, paperwork to be finalized at pick-up. The relief of not having to rush out and meet the kid by three o’clock eased the sting of the grovel. After another three calls, I’d nailed down addresses for all the Tom Josts listed in the phone book. Business was in hand. Life was good.
Ainsley had our raw material on standby when I tracked him through the building to the available editing bay.
Edit bays are the cold, dark, primordial wombs of electronic storytelling. Cold keeps the machines happy, and light creates glare on the monitors. All the walls are covered in dark egg-crate foam to absorb any stray sound waves. The rooms are usually small and made smaller by stuff-blocks of players in various formats, switcher technology, playback monitors, audio controls, oscilloscopes and miles upon miles of connecting wires. The finished product may be seen by millions but most of the work is done alone, with an engineer assisting on the final cut. Two chairs on wheels are all you need.
It’s a slightly different kind of darkroom, but one I’d also learned to love. When I’m developing film, I can almost convince myself each photo is one hundred percent my creation. In the edit bay, I can never forget that creation is a team effort. Keeps me humble.
Well, most of the time.
“Staff meeting in sixteen minutes,” I reminded Ainsley. “Let’s see what you got.”
He flicked a little glance over his shoulder at me, are you ready for this? and hit Play. I watched it all the way through once and felt myself flatline a bit with surprise.
“Again.”
Rewind. Play. Same images.
Not bad, not half bad, is what I was thinking. What I said was, “Shit, College. You are awful tight on some of these.”
He’d framed most of the interview as an extreme profile close-up of the farmer’s face. I hit the freeze frame. The close-up highlighted the rough skin and deep lines of Lowe’s face and revealed the unique patina of the working man. He might not be Tom Jost’s father, but it was clear he knew the cost of a young man’s death.
“I like to shoot tight,” Ainsley answered.
I released the freeze. “Unfortunately, you’re out of focus every time he moves.”
“I figured we’d work around it with B-roll.”
“Did you shoot me any B-roll?”
B-roll is filler, supplemental shots, extra footage, whatever’s left over. Right now, I didn’t have enough A-or B-roll to even fill air time.
“Um…”
“You have a reason for shooting tight?”
“I kind of like the way it looks.” He shrugged and kicked back in his wheeled chair to stretch his long legs in front of him, like an over-sized retriever relaxing into a sprawl.
“Not good enough.” If he had a reason, I might listen. If he was just showing off- “I don’t need artsy-fartsy, College. I need clean and clear. That means in focus. Got it?”
“Yeah.” He turned his back to me and punched a few buttons. Hard. “Got it.”
“Next time give me some head room.”
“Fine.” He jerked his chin.
After thirty seconds of sulk, I tacked on, “I like the shot of the kids.”
“You do?” He spun around on his chair, eyes bright, smile starting to glow. In the darkness of the booth, the contrast hurt my eyes.
“I said I did.” I checked my watch. “Time to hit the staff meeting.”
“Okay. I’m looking forward to this,” he answered with gusto. “They cater these meetings, you know.”
“Well, eat fast. We got a lot to accomplish today. I’m planning to blow out of this place as soon as we can,” I told him, as he led the way through the building, past the kitchen-Ainsley slowed but didn’t stop-to the conference room. “I found a possible address for Tom Jost.”
“Cool.” Looking more eager than an address usually warrants, he added, “This is my first time at a manager’s meeting.”
In my experience, manager meetings are best handled like amputations. Strive to remain unconscious while the big shots lop off a few hours, and pray the whole thing doesn’t cripple the entire remainder of the day.
I gave him a pat on the back. “It’s never good the first time, College. But I’ll remind them to be gentle.”
The boy ducked his head, denying the rise of pink to his cheeks more so than the grin as we entered the conference room.
Gatt saw us and frowned suspiciously in my direction. I gave him the what? shrug. Ainsley paid no attention to this side play. He went straight for the counter with the bagel extravaganza and hot caffeine.
The guy standing next to Gatt stared me down. Typical sales guy: buffed nails, french cuffs and more teeth than a sports announcer. His cologne reeked from eight feet away. In my experience, any man wears that much perfume is full of shit and laying down cover.
“This must be our latest acquisition,” the guy thundered loud enough for everyone in the room. “Get over here. I want to shake your hand. Jim Schmed, sales manager here at WWST. You’ve got to be Maddy O’Hara.”
“That’s right.”
“Love your work. Great stuff. How’d we get so lucky eh, Gatt?”
Schmed gave me the Grip-o-Death handshake-the one they exchange right before the ref calls “…and come out swinging.”
“Really great to have you on board,” he schmoozed. “Can’t wait to see what you do for us once you settle in. Love to get some promo materials from you, soon as you’re able.”
Everybody’s heard of love at first sight. In my case, hate at first sight is a lot more common. Sales guys never make me warm and fuzzy, but this was something else. My last name and my coloring come from my father. My first name-Magdalena-and my hostile intuition come through my mother’s blood.
Schmed raised every hair on the back of my neck.
“Why would you need promo material from me? I thought the promotions department was going to work off my stuff?” I turned to Gatt to clarify.
“No, no, not on the show. On you.” Schmed winked at me. “You’ve made yourself quite a name, honey. And it’s my job to sell that name to advertisers. Right, Rich?”
“That’s right.” Gatt rubbed the flat of his free hand across his bald head and frowned.
“I am not doing personal promos.”
“Sure you are, hon.” My resistance piqued Schmed’s interest. He’d stopped scanning the room for admirers and focused all his attention on me.
“No-” I tried to make it sound equally cheerful, “-hon, I’m not.”
Schmed the Sales Shark and I played a quick round of who’ll-blink-first?
Then he barked a laugh. “Is she busting my ass?” he asked Gatt. “She’s been here, what?-five minutes, and she’s busting my ass already? Are you kidding me?”
I wasn’t thinking of the first five minutes, but of the five million to come when I forced myself to suck in a calming breath.
“I’m not busting your ass, Jim. I’m just saying, I don’t do on-air. Never have.”
Like any good predator, he kept his eyes on me and slowly edged in closer. “Why not? You’d be great. Pretty girl like you. Camera would love you. Camera would eat you up.”
“Thanks, but no. That’s part of my charm, Jim. I let the pictures and the people making news tell the story. I stay off-screen.” It also made me unique in the freelance world. By staying off-air, I could produce a story for any network, any station that wanted to foot my bill. My face and voice never became the commodity. Only my work.
“Gotta have promos, O’Hara. How else am I gonna sell you? Make up for what-all you cost us, right, Gatt? Cost us a pretty penny to hire a professional with your reputation. Am I right? Jesus-Priest, I can’t sell you, if I don’t have product.”
Ah. Apparently, rumors of my potential salary had ruffled the Sales King’s feathers before I’d even walked in the door. CDB, I reminded myself, cost of doing business. Nothing personal.
I started us off on a round of chuckle-chuckle.
Gatt looked back and forth, one to the other, before he joined the merrymaking. We all laughed together.
The sound faded.
As if I was full to brimming with good humor, with a last gasp of mirth I asked, “So…you renewing your contract soon then, Jim?”
Gatt cracked up. Schmed didn’t.
It was the sweetest kind of return. Was I implying he was using me to leverage Gatt for a better contract? Or was I hinting, in a fight between us, Gatt would side with me?
Schmed looked like he was going to say something very un-funny, but Gatt interrupted. “You got a head-shot, O’Hara?”
“Maybe something old,” I replied, suspiciously.
“Fine. Get us an eight-by-ten and your resume reel. Promo department can figure something out. That’s what I pay those assholes for. Which reminds me-Jim, Barb says you got both offices on that side of the hall tied up.”
Keeping my face ever-so neutral at the mention of office space, I mumbled, “I’m going over to make sure Ainsley’s not getting into trouble. Excuse me, gentlemen.”
The room had crowded up. Nobody had taken a place around the long conference table yet. Ainsley introduced me to the usual cast of characters: woman from HR, woman from accounting, guy from engineering, guy from studio and the promotions director.
After another eight or ten minutes of chit-chat, the door opened and a little busha in a business suit entered. She was fifty-ish, solid, glossy white hair and sensible pumps. Her Secretary-at-Arms followed, laptop in hand.
Most general managers are a bit like feudal lords. They command as far as the eye can see. They make continuous war on neighboring peers. The most successful of the breed trace their management style back to Genghis Kahn. Ruthless is good. Bigger is better. Dead enemies are best.
“Right,” she called out, hands on her hips. “Where’s our new star?”
Everyone in the room turned and looked at me. Most of the faces were neutral. A few showed more than healthy skepticism. Jim Schmed looked like he wanted to try out his favorite WWF takedown on me.
Welcome to the family.
Ainsley gave me a little shoulder shove. “Here she is,” he called proudly.
“Shirley Shayla.” She chugged across the room on sturdy legs and gave me the mutual respect shake-solid grip, taking my measure. She stood with her feet a bit widespread, her trunk tilted forward. The way you’d need to stand if people were always trying to knock you down. “Good to finally meet you, Ms. O’Hara. How are you settling in? Anything I can do?”
“Definitely.”
GM’s always ask anything can I do? the first time they meet you. The standard answer is, thanks for the opportunity to join the team, and other similar crap. No GM has ever asked me that question twice. Which is why it’s a good idea to have a list ready.
“For a start, I need an office with a door.”
She tipped her head and stared at me over the top of her frameless glasses. “I’ll see what I can find for you, Ms. O’Hara. See what I can find.”
11:16:00 a.m.
He had to find it. Had to find it all. Now.
Being in the house like this was making his palms so wet, the cornstarch inside the gloves was congealing into lumps.
He searched the top of the medicine cabinet first, trying to think like Gina. She was compulsive about where she kept that kind of shit. She would never leave a bag of medical samples someplace the kid might get her hands on it.
Gina was a good mother.
Next, he searched the bedroom and bathroom. Opening the bedroom door had been a shock. It was like a museum in there. Nothing had been taken away, moved, even touched. There was dust on everything. Not that he was some kind of a clean freak, but he started sneezing the minute he opened a drawer.
Maddy O’Hara might be hot shit in TV-land but she was a lazy bitch when it came to housework.
After an hour of careful searching, he was pretty certain Gina hadn’t hidden the bag in her room. He put everything back exactly as he found it, but he hated the fact that the room was gathering dust.
Someone ought to do something.
That’s when he’d opened the night stand and discovered the stack of photos.
Months ago, right after the accident, he’d snuck back into the house and removed the obvious photos of him-one from the fridge and one from her bedside. “Play it cool” was the plan, especially with a reporter in the family. He’d stayed away from the kid at the funeral. Done everything he could to convince the guys that his relationship with Gina was short-term only.
Nobody understood how bad he felt. Nobody.
He picked the photo off the top of the pile-he was smiling, Gina was smiling, a birthday party?-and he sat down on the bed. Nobody appreciated what he’d done to keep things under control. His sacrifices. His feelings.
Maddy O’Hara was one selfish, lazy bitch all right. This sad, dusty room proved it.
If she continued to make things difficult, more sacrifices would have to be made.
But this time around, Maddy O’Hara was the one who’d be making them.
12:48:38 p.m.
Ainsley kept shaking his head and shooting me sidelong glances while he maneuvered the truck out into traffic.
“What?” I asked. I’d no clue what his problem was; pretty typical manager’s meeting as far as I could tell. I snapped my phone shut. “No answer at any of the Tom Jost addresses. Let’s try the farm. See if we can talk to somebody out there first.”
“Oh sure. Why not?” Ainsley said. He sounded a little on the sarcastic side.
“Just drive.”
It didn’t seem to take as long to get to the Jost farm this time. Either I was getting used to the distances or the absence of Ainsley’s singing improved our wind resistance. He parked the truck on the road and said we should walk to the farmhouse from here. He made a point of mentioning, “It’s considered polite not to park on their property.”
“Okay, Miss Manners. Before we get too close to offend anyone, get me an establishing shot of the whole scene, a view downhill from here of the hanging tree and a nice tight shot of each of the outbuildings.” It was the kind of stuff I could use with a voice-over, while recapping Tom Jost’s childhood.
We went to work. I took my camera out and shot a few stills. The farm buildings were all weathered wooden structures, painted either white or dark red and grouped at the end of a winding drive. There were two black buggies parked in the gravel near the house. No sign of the usual ugly 1950s slab house beside an old picturesque barn like most of the modern farms around here. There were no people to be seen but we heard children’s voices when the wind carried the right direction.
College hung behind me a few steps, but he had the camera up and rolling. As we came up the driveway a rangy-looking dog loped out to greet us, stopped fifty feet away and started barking his head off.
“Camera down,” I ordered. I’ll argue a person to the mat for the chance to hang around and shoot. Dogs don’t negotiate. “Someone will come now. Let’s see what they say before we shoot anymore.”
“‘See what they say,’” Ainsley mumbled to himself. “Right.” He lowered the camera immediately. The old camera jocks I’ve worked with would never stop just because I told them to. Now there’s a benefit to snapping the kid fresh out of college I hadn’t considered.
“Rascal! Rascal, stop that.” A young woman in dark fairy-tale clothes appeared in the doorway of a small outbuilding. Her face was obscured by the brim of her bonnet. “Rascal, come.”
“Good afternoon,” I called. “We’re looking for Mr. Jost.”
The girl took a half step back, into the shadow of the doorway, her long dress and hat cloaking everything but her face and the silver pail she carried in front of her. I knew her face. It was the girl I’d seen hiding in the bushes.
“Hello, again.” I tried a smile.
She remembered my face as well. From her expression, I’d say she considered me unpredictable and potentially disease carrying. “Who are you? Police?”
“No. I’m Maddy O’Hara. We’re from WWST, the television station. Do you watch television?”
She shook her head vigorously.
“Is Mr. Jost around?”
“I’m here,” a man called from the doorway of the barn. He was dressed in the Amish uniform with suspenders to hold up his pants and a straw hat. Together with the wiry, gray beard covering the lower half of his face, he also resembled someone lifted from the pages of a Grimm’s fairy tale. Another much younger man, his whiskers still black, appeared in the doorway behind Jost. On the porch, two women stepped through the front door. A small girl-child peeped curiously from between the folds of their long skirts. Another face appeared in the upstairs window. People seemed to appear from thin air, all eyes on Ainsley and me.
“Good afternoon, sir. I’m Maddy O’Hara with WWST. I know this must be a difficult time for your family. I’d like to ask you about your son Tom.”
“I have no son. You don’t belong here. Please, you will leave.”
“We were told Tom Jost was your adopted son. Mr. Lowe spoke very kindly of the way you took the boy in.”
Jost’s face shifted from blank to grim. “Lowe is a good man. He’d be a better one with his mouth shut.”
“So Tom wasn’t your son?”
“Go away.”
“Father?” the girl called out from the shadowy doorway, her voice high and thin with concern. Inside the shed, a commotion of clucks and caws erupted. She was standing in a chicken coop; I’d never seen one before.
“No, Rachel. Not now.” Jost turned his back and shuffled out of sight, back into the barn.
I thought about following him but the crowd of onlookers was not encouraging. I nodded at them, and signaled a retreat to Ainsley. The men went back into the barn, the women into the house.
We had almost made it back to the truck, when I heard the fast crunching sound of feet behind me.
Rachel ran toward us, bucket swinging in her hand to the rhythm of her stride. When I turned, she stopped short, as if afraid to approach too closely.
“You said…‘this must be a difficult time.’” In the sunlight, her eyes seemed endlessly dark against her pale face. “You said… ‘was.’”
I’ve known since I was a kid, I was born to play messenger. It’s the kind of calling that makes you tough, fast. Everybody knows it can get you killed. Not everybody knows it kills you pieces at a time. Still, I have to look them in the eye.
“Tom Jost is dead,” I told her.
The pail in her hand dropped. Seed spilled everywhere.
Rachel backed away from me before she turned and ran.
“We should go,” Ainsley called softly.
I watched her run toward the barn, toward her father. It was hard to make myself move.
Ainsley started back to the truck. I walked the other way. Righting the girl’s pail, I tried to scoop the fallen seed back inside. I took out one of my freelance cards and scribbled my new home phone number on the back with the words I’m sorry. Call me if you want to know more and stuck it straight up in the chicken feed.
2:21:56 p.m.
“What a bust,” I groaned. “Let’s try the phone-listed Tom Josts again. Even if they aren’t home we could do a drive by.”
“I thought we did pretty well,” Ainsley said.
“You need to set your standards a little higher than thirty seconds of establishing shot, College.”
“No, really. Amish don’t allow photography. I’m surprised we got all the way up the driveway with the cameras at all.”
“What do you mean they don’t allow photography? I’ve seen coffee-table books on Amish, College. They must allow some pictures.”
“No, really. It’s against their religion. Those rules they follow, you know. Ordnung? They told us this in school. People can take pictures from far away and stuff, but never of their faces.”
“Are you kidding me?”
Ainsley shrugged. Inconsistency didn’t bother him much.
“Amish living isn’t on the curriculum where I grew up,” I told him. “Give me the Cliff Notes version.”
“Ordnung is their law. Each community has their own. Some are really strict, some not so bad. The one near here is known for being pretty progressive-they’ve got those phone booths Mr. Lowe mentioned, and kerosene fridges. Some even have electricity for the dairy barns, I think. Not in the houses though.”
“I thought they couldn’t use electricity at all.”
“There was some accident, years ago. Somebody died in a fire. Things changed after that, to make the barns safer. There was a big story about it in the newspaper when I was in high school.”
“Nothing like death to effect a little change,” I mumbled. “I’d like to read that article. Let’s pull everything we can on the local Amish. Which of those characters back at the station works the library?”
“Mick.”
“‘Quit-Slamming-the Fucking-Doors’ Mick?”
“That’s him.”
The charming ones always end up alone in the stacks. Coincidence?
“Right, I’ll talk to Mick. You google the periodicals. I want copies of anything on the local Amish community. Check local weeklies, magazines and the Clarion as well. Which reminds me…” I checked my watch to confirm. “Time to call Melton.”
“We’re here.” Ainsley pointed out the window. “This is the only address that’s an apartment building. I thought we should try it first.”
“Good idea.” I checked my list again. “How did you know? There’s no apartment number noted.”
“I’ve lived in this county my whole life, remember?”
The address took us to an ugly prefab apartment building at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was two-stories high, not a single open window and surrounded by a scruffy vacant lot. At the back of the building, you could just make out a set of railroad tracks that cut toward the city. We parked in the front lot alongside a convention of rusty muscle cars.
The bumper stickers on the car we’d parked behind said, “You’ll Get My Gun When You Pry It Out of My Cold, Dead Hand” and “I Can Be One of Those Bad Things That Happen to Bad People.”
Definitely the kind of place that could accommodate a suicidal depressive.
“Let’s check it out,” I said. I didn’t sound thrilled.
“Camera?” he asked. He didn’t either.
“Find out if it’s the right address first.”
“Good idea.”
There was a sidelight window beside the steel security door entrance with the sign Attack Dog on Premises prominently posted. We stood out front for a while buzzing the bell; nobody came.
A young guy in a cloth coat and a Grateful Dead T-shirt came flying out and Ainsley grabbed the door. The kid never looked back. I walked in. Ainsley followed.
The buzzer label and a pile of junk mail helped me figure out which apartment was Tom’s. Ground floor. Right in the middle. Worst spot in the place. Rent must have been nothing. I rang the bell. Twice.
“If the guy’s dead, he’s not going to be answering the door anytime soon,” whispers Ainsley Wiseguy Prescott.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want any nasty shocks when I peep in the windows.”
“There are no windows,” Ainsley said, inspecting the dim, grungy hallway.
“Not in here anyway.” I waggled my eyebrows at him.
Ainsley stared back, computing that thought.
“See if anyone else is home.” I pointed to the other doors on my way out. “Ask if they knew Tom. Tell them we’ll put ’em on TV if they talk to us.”
Knowing which apartment was the mysterious Mr. Jost’s, I was able to tromp around the outside of the building and find his window. There was nothing to see through the small frosted-glass rectangle that I was guessing looked into the bathroom, but there was a sliding patio door. Luckily, the curtains weren’t quite closed. I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed them to the glass to cut the glare. It was strangely quiet out there and the act of peeping in on someone else fired up the prickle of my guilt-o-meter.
Feet came crunching through the grass.
I jumped back from the window, heart pounding. This place made me more nervous than it should have.
“Strike out,” Ainsley called in his version of a stage whisper. “The super is only around in the evenings, according to the neighbor. What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“Looking for what?”
“Don’t know until I see it.”
Ainsley came alongside me to look.
Tom Jost kept a simple studio apartment, furnished in late-century garage sale-one folding chair, one Formica table, one lumpy recliner. The place was damn tidy. His small single bed was made up with brown blankets and military care. White walls. No posters. No art. The only personal item I could see was a photo of a couple in a paper frame, the kind you pay five bucks for after you get off a ride at the fair. I’d seen several of Jenny and her mother around the house.
“Go get my camera case from the van, would you?”
“Would that be legal?”
“Not for pictures, Mr. Worrywart. I want the telephoto.”
It worked better than I expected. With my camera against the door and a polarizing filter, I could read the faces in Tom’s photo. It took a second before I recognized her. Fairy-tale Rachel looked quite a bit different wearing modern dress with her hair down.
“Got him. This is our Tom, all right.”
“Are you done yet?” Ainsley was doing the college boy’s version of furtive: hands sunk deep in his pockets, head bobbing, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon as he glanced back and forth. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Wait. Yes!”
“What?” Ainsley tried to peek around my shoulder.
Tom had hung a bag of dry cleaning from the top of a door. Focusing on the suit, I caught a glimpse of the patches on what seemed to be a uniform. “Our boy was a public servant.”
“Police?”
“Nope. Firefighter.”
“So those guys at the tree yesterday…”
“Knew him.” Some instinct told me to scan the surroundings again. That crawly feeling someone was watching tiptoed up my spine. “Farmer Lowe hinted as much. Good news for us, College.”
“What?”
A shadow passed in front of the super’s apartment window. I gave Ainsley a happy, distracting shot to the biceps, urging him to walk toward the van. “It means he’s got a decent head-shot on record somewhere.”
“Right! But how do we get it?”
We climbed in the van and I used my elbow to casually trigger the automatic locks. “I’ll bet my new best friend at the Clarion might be able to help. Mr. Melton Shotter.”
Ainsley’s face bloomed with relief as he started the engine. “Can you call from the van? There’s a DQ right around the corner and I’m dying for lunch.”
“I watched you eat three bagels in the staff meeting.”
“They were minis,” he said indignantly.
“Fine. You eat; I’ll call.” Oh, to live the metabolism of a college kid again. I watched the building as we pulled out. Even though I couldn’t see them, I was sure someone was watching. “Get us out of here.”
“With pleasure.”
By the time Ainsley’d scored his Dairy Queen happy meal-with a large diet pop for me-we were miles from Tom Jost’s place and I was deep into the newspaper’s phone system trying to hook up with a real, live Melton.
“Clarion. Metro desk.”
“Melton, my friend. You rolled over on me.”
“Umm…who is this?”
“You’re funny.” My day had not been very productive so far. Easy enough to punch a little Irish temper into the words. “This is Maddy O’Hara, Melton. Sheriff Curzon was at the station before I was this morning.”
“Uh-sorry about that.”
“What’d you do, draw him a map after you gave him my name? Whatever happened to protecting a source, Melton?”
“I figured you, well-” He squirmed. “I’m sorry, all right?”
“Yeah sure, because I got a great idea how you can make it up to me, Melton. I need some research help.”
“What kind of research?”
“Easy stuff. Everything you can find on a guy named Tom Jost-where he went to high school, adoption records, if he had a girlfriend, what he did on weekends besides whack off-”
Ainsley coughed his chocolate shake all over the steering wheel.
“It’s that dead Mennonite!” Melton’s lightbulb blinked on. “You got an ID?”
“Maybe. We think the guy was a public servant, a firefighter.”
“No way,” he said with glee. Salacious mysteries are meat and potatoes to reporters. “Where? What town?”
“Not sure. His apartment’s in Warrenville. One thing, Melton, everything stays out of the paper until after I air on Wednesday.” I heard a grumble. “Did I mention there’s a possibility of credit in this for you? National, on-air credit. ‘Research by.’ Look mighty sweet on your resume. Not that you deserve it after ratting me out to Curzon like that.”
“All right,” he whined. “Fine. I’ll try.”
“Great. Tomorrow morning good for you?”
“Jee-zus. Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Don’t go getting religious on me yet, Melton. The fun’s just getting started.”
We agreed on an early afternoon deadline before he hung up.
Things were getting done. I was feeling good. “Next item on the agenda: expert head.”
“Whaaat?”
Without looking up from my notes, I continued, “Get your mind out of the gutter, College. We need a specialist. A doctor. A psychologist. Someone we can get to say ‘autoerotic asphyxiation’ fast enough to work into a ten-second promo head-shot. That’s an expert head.”
“Right.” He sounded embarrassed.
The parking lot of the DQ was filling up. A couple of teenagers in a rusty Volvo circled for the third time, hungry for our parking place.
“Use your phone. Try the biggest hospital in the area. I’ll try the community college.”
Ainsley took his phone in one hand, chocolate shake in the other, and bounced his thigh against the steering wheel to the beat of oldies rock, while I entered my own phone purgatory. Pressing. Holding. Pressing. With my free hand, I dug through both gear bags and realized I was low on important stuff.
“You got any aspirin?” I asked.
College nodded toward the glove compartment. “We’ve got our choice,” he reported between phone-mail-to-live-human maneuvering. “Do we want an expert on suicide, an expert on sexual deviance or someone who studies Amish psychology?”
No question. “Sexual deviance.”
“Okay.” More conferring, then he says, “Guy’s out of town and won’t be back for a week.”
“Suicide?” I asked, hopefully.
“…Uh, that guy can only be reached on Mondays and Wednesdays. But she’d be happy to leave a message with the service,” Ainsley added.
“Shit.” No matter how much I tried to turn this into something that would look like ratings-happy TV, it seemed the Amish were my destiny. The sad thing was I found it pretty intriguing. “Amish psychology is our winner. But ask her to leave a message for the suicide guy, to be safe.”
After three and a half more minutes of listening to him try to pin down an appointment, I held out my hand. “Gimme the phone.”
“What?” he complained. “She keeps asking me to wait.”
The standard whiney operator came on the line. “Who you holding for?”
“This is Maddy O’Hara from WWST and I’m trying to reach the doctor for a television news interview.”
“An interview? On TV?”
“That’s right. We’d like to use the doctor in an investigative report we’re doing on a local public suicide.” I hit that detail hard. Nothing wins over a gatekeeper like a juicy nugget of gossip. “Unfortunately, I’m having trouble getting through to someone who can schedule us. Can you help?”
“Oh, I’m sorry you’ve had to wait. Hold just a moment.”
I had the doc on the line in under sixty and we were cleared to interview in less than that. Ainsley shook his head slowly, part admiration, part disgust.
“Dues you must pay,” I intoned in my best Yoda imitation. “Eat much shit, then you, too, can use the force over secretaries. Let’s go.”
3:09:13 p.m.
We followed a major strip-mall route all the way to the western edge of the universe where the county hospital barely held the line on civilization. From what I’d heard, this hospital served a clientele that included everything from the average yuppie heart attack to the pavement drunk with a tire-track headache.
My sister worked there for years before she died. There.
I’m not fond of hospitals.
“Your aspirin bottle is empty, College.”
“It’s not mine. Somebody left it in there.”
“Right. Add this to your critical equipment list. Pain reliever-we don’t leave home without it. We should be stocking ibuprofen, extra-strength Tylenol and Tums, oh and breath mints-in the glove compartment. Got it?”
“Why?”
That got a laugh. I hope that’s why he asked.
It took us as long to park the van and wind our way through the Escher-like interior of the hospital as it had to drive to the edge of the county. Of course, I had no reason to complain. Ainsley did all the hauling. Our doctor’s office was tucked in a dead-end hallway. There were plastic chairs along the wall, a small side table and eight copies of the same 1998 issue of Prevention magazine, all labeled Do Not Remove.
The inner sanctum receptionist greeted us and buzzed the doctor.
“Ms. O’Hara? I’m Dr. Graham. Please come this way. We can talk in my office.”
Dr. Graham was in her late forties. She had a cap of silvery brown hair, thick wire-rim eyeglasses, and wore a shapeless sack dress, but she had a voice like an angel-resonant, modulated. Perfect V.O. material. She could sell anything in a voice-over.
She shook my hand, then Ainsley’s. “Please understand, Ms. O’Hara, most of my practice is family therapy. My qualifications as an ‘expert,’” she smiled as she drew little finger quotes in the air, “regarding Amish psychology are tenuous at best. If you want a referral, I can direct you to people in Pennsylvania and New York who are much more qualified.”
“Whatever you can tell us will be a great help, Doctor,” I said. “The hospital PR people told us it was your specialty.”
“I’ve done some research that involved Amish subjects. I organized several studies on the effects of family size on individuals and society. The Amish make an excellent reference group, very homogeneous.”
“Really?” I said, meaning, keep talking.
“Yes. The average Amish family has seven children. Almost a quarter have ten or more.”
“Ten kids?”
“That’s right. Quite a difference, isn’t it? The birthrate in the U.S. still hovers around two children per family.”
“One seems like more than enough to me,” I tossed out, but didn’t get the laugh. “Tell me more about your study.”
She fussed with her desk drawers, opening and closing, peering inside as she spoke.
“‘Effects of Large Families on Self-Actualization and Community.’”
“Oh.” It came out as one of those stupid-sounding oh’s. Doctors make me nervous. I never get my best interviews out of doctors. I rallied with another, “Really?”
She seemed prepared for that kind of response. “I have it right here, if you’d like to read it?” From out of the desk came a stack of paper four inches thick and bound with a paper cover. She tossed it onto the desktop with a whump that rang of challenge.
“Great. Love to.”
“Take it with you. I have other copies.”
“Terrific.” I passed the brick to Ainsley. He slipped it in my camera bag.
I looked around, concentrating on how we would shoot the interview. Her office was small and not exactly the visual background I wanted. There was the requisite book shelf or three, chairs and a small couch. No diplomas or plaques boasting her credentials on the walls; only one large print of the dunes and Lake Michigan.
She must have noticed me frowning. “I do most of my work over at the university. I’m only in this office twice a week to see clients.”
“Sounds like we were lucky to catch you. Thanks again for agreeing to the interview.”
She tipped her head and the curvature of her eyeglass lens distorted her eye. She looked a bit like a cartoon character peering through a magnifying glass. “What is it you’d like to discuss?”
“As I said, we have a local death possibly involving autoerotic asphyxiation. We’d like you to explain the condition. Any insight you might be able to offer would help.”
“All right.”
I signaled to Ainsley to start setting up and he grinned, happy to be useful. He popped open the titanium suitcases that held the gear and started to rig for an interior interview. Once I was certain he was on the right track, I took out my notebook and flipped to my questions.
“Oh, wait. I’m sorry.” Dr. Graham looked apologetic. “You seem to have misunderstood. I can’t speak on camera on that subject, Ms. O’Hara. Definitely not.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m happy to answer your questions, but not on record.” She made an effort at earnest eye contact. “In fact, I plan to encourage you to reconsider or at the very least, address the topic with extreme discretion.”
“This is network television, Dr. Graham. Not YouTube. We can be discreet.”
Her earnest look sharpened into incredulity. “Perhaps our ideas of discretion differ. The fact is, it could be extremely dangerous to flash this syndrome across the media.”
“Why?” Ainsley chipped in. He hunkered down into one of her upholstered chairs, all ears.
“For one thing, we don’t know enough about how the practice initiates. The available data indicates death is most prevalent among young men-teenagers and young adults-a population likely to be sexually active, as well as developmentally prone to risk-taking behaviors. If they hear about something like this, they may try it simply because it’s new and dangerous.”
“Increasing awareness should also help doctors learn more about who’s doing it and why,” I countered.
Ainsley frowned. I couldn’t tell if he was unimpressed with my logic or miffed over Herr Doctor’s dim view of his peer group. “I don’t get it. I mean, what’s so sexy about choking to death?”
Dr. Graham masked her face in clinical calm. “There are two physical mechanisms at work. The transient cerebral hypoxia combined with autoerotic manipulation create a very distinctive physiological sensation.”
Ainsley created a distinctive facial expression.
I whispered, “I think she said, lack of air to the brain while whacking off feels weird.”
“No doubt,” he said.
“Of course, human sexuality is never purely physiological,” the doctor continued. “This syndrome is a paraphilia-”
“A what?” Ainsley was barely keeping up.
“-a socially prohibited sexual practice,” she paused to define, “of the sacrificial type. The sense of physical helplessness and self-endangerment enhances the sexual gratification.”
“Yee-ech,” he replied. Hard to argue with that.
The doctor tried. “Quite ubiquitous, actually.”
I gave College a subtle backhand to the biceps. The more he squirmed with repulsion, the more obscure the good doctor’s vocabulary seemed to get. If he kept up with the Mr. Yuck routine, she’d be speaking Latin in a minute.
“The practice has been noted across cultures and throughout history. There’s some evidence it was practiced by the ancient Mayan culture a thousand years ago. And of course, literary references occur in de Sade-”
“Big surprise there,” I noted.
“-as well as Melville and Beckett.”
“Beckett?” Ainsley repeated.
“Yes. In the play Waiting for Godot.”
“I read that freshman year of college.” He shot me a bug-eye look.
“An accurate estimation of incidence is difficult to establish because the behavior is almost always conducted in absolute privacy. Most practitioners seem to make arrangements for self-release mechanisms.”
“Really?” I stopped her. “Such as?”
“They pad the rope, use quick release knots, carry knives, those sorts of things. Of course, it’s important to remember these are the things which have been noted at death scenes.”
“So they’re failed self-release mechanisms.”
“Precisely.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But they are the clues that help rule out suicide as the cause of death.”
I had to think for a minute. Our Tom hadn’t padded the noose, as far as I could tell. Had he managed to rig his rope in such a way he believed he’d walk away?
“What other elements would you see at a typical death scene?” I asked.
“Generally, pornography is noted,” she ticked off a mental list, “partial or complete nudity of the genitalia and an absence of a suicide note. There are complex physiological, and emotional, contributing factors here. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s not something easily pared down and digested for network television.”
“What if it aired on Frontline, Doctor? Or CNN?” I tossed back. “One of the programs where you get your news. Would that make it acceptable?”
She pulled upright, as if I’d insulted her. “No. You miss my point. We need to limit all mass media exposure of the topic. Those most at risk for death due to experimentation are young people whose access to information is inversely proportional to their capacity for good judgment. Teenagers are going to take risks. The risks associated with imitative behavior, in this case, are quite simply, life and death.”
People always have such sensible reasons for censorship.
“What about those adults who need education on the subject? The opportunity to raise awareness and prevent further suffering?” Dr. Graham was starting to get on my nerves and I could hear it coming through in my voice. Not the best interview technique.
“Unfortunately, I know of no television forum in which adults can speak with other adults without the risk of children listening, Ms. O’Hara. Do you?”
“Thought all you psychological types knew the story of the elephant in the living room,” I parried. “It isn’t going away because we pretend not to notice.”
“Interesting,” she commented softly, as though she were talking to herself.
Suddenly, I was very aware of her attention honing in on me specifically.
“Are there no circumstances under which you would consider keeping something out of the public eye, Ms. O’Hara?”
“There are no circumstances under which I wouldn’t be damn suspicious of any such request, Dr. Graham.”
“Really? How would you feel about your son or daughter watching your program?”
“I don’t have a son or daughter.” The words flew out of my mouth.
Ainsley’s head turned. I ignored him.
“Exactly.” The word resonated in her lovely voice as a sort of challenge. She looked down at her watch and said, “I’m sorry. I have another appointment coming in a few minutes. You’ll have to excuse me.”
Ainsley interrupted with some polite noises and smoothed the moment over. Interview over-and I was three for three. Strikeout.
We wound our way out of the place as fast as I could follow the signs.
“You okay?” Ainsley said.
“Fine,” I lied. My face felt hot. The curse of fair skin is transparent emotions. The doctor’s words had shaken something that my sister’s death hadn’t even managed. I’d spent my whole life alerting adults to the trouble ahead-behind, everywhere.
I’d never doubted that work.
“Now what?”
I put my sunglasses on before we stepped outside. “We make some more calls. See if someone else is willing to do an on-camera.”
Ainsley looked confused. “But the doctor said it could be dangerous.”
“There’s always somebody who doesn’t want you to tell the story, College.” The artificial cold of the hospital lingered in my voice. “Always. Sometimes they sound so reasonable.”
The doors swept open and we walked out, shoulder to shoulder. Cold, hospital-scented air-conditioning evaporated into the dusty afternoon heat. I sucked in a lung full and tried to warm myself inside.
The boy didn’t give up. “But…what if she’s right?”
4:35:29 p.m.
By the time we returned to the station, I’ll admit, I was looking for an excuse to drop on somebody. Two days on the job and I had barely ninety seconds of air time covered. No photos, no sources, no cooperation from anyone-except my Boy Wonder.
I sent Ainsley to get us an engineering booth so we could load my stills in the computer and went to find out about my new office.
Barbara, Gatt’s opposable thumb, greeted me with the carefully neutral face of someone who knows a lot more than she’s telling you. I stood still for another once-over and she showed general approval of the absence of leather. When I asked about my office, she blinked her Raggedy Ann eyelashes, frowned and unwrapped herself from her phone headset.
“Follow me.”
Swear-we walked three and a half, four minutes, tramping all through the building until we finally arrived somewhere deep in the old tape library. She pointed her finger that away. Crammed in a niche between two eight-foot tall stacks, at the farthest end of a corridor, was the ugliest work cube in the Midwest flatland. No chair. No computer. Oh, and no phone.
“Mr. Gatt said you needed something private. They’ll install the phone next Monday or Tuesday,” she assured me, all practicality. “PC should come in the week after.”
“Great. Sure they will. You want to lead me back to Gatt’s office, or was I supposed to drop a trail of bread crumbs?”
She looked at the ground, got the smirk under control and executed a sharp turn. “Right this way.”
I banged Gatt’s door wide while knocking, and called out over his voice, “I got a problem here.”
The door rebounded shut behind me.
“I’ll call you back.” Gatt slammed the receiver down. It didn’t ring again, although the lights started twinkling frantically; Barbara must be holding the line, so to speak. “What the hell’re you thinking? You don’t knock?”
“I knocked. What the hell are you thinking? I told you, I need an office.”
He did a quick paper shuffle. “I told them to set you up.”
“Yeah, they set me up, all right. Whichever wise-guy had the idea to make me Bob Cratchit in the tape dungeon gets a big hee-haw, Gatt. I need a desk and a phone and a door I can fucking close.”
“Oh, Christ, not again,” Gatt whined. “I’ll try and talk to operations.”
Both palms flat on his desk, I leaned in toward him. I could feel the grit of spilled sugar under my hands. “You do that.”
“You get me anything to look at today?” he asked.
“No.”
“You want to be a pain in the ass, O’Hara, you’d sure as hell better come across with something I can sell.”
“No pain. No gain.” I stood up and brushed my hands clean. “I’ll get you a story. You get me an office.”
Climbing your way up television’s mythical ladder of success to the point you are-ta da!-someone is a hell of a lot of work. The effort it takes to hold your ground, continue being Someone, is worse. I wanted an office to get my job done, but I needed the office to rate some respect.
Flashbacks of Schmed’s killer handshake and the good doctor’s voice and Sheriff Curzon’s death-ray eyes all spliced into one lousy day, and the paranoia started kicking in. Was everyone in this suburban backwood salivating at the thought of my crash and burn?
Barbara was doing some life-or-death typing as I passed her desk. I noticed the extra-large jug of ibuprofen sitting beside her elbow.
“You mind?” I asked, reaching for the bottle.
“Help yourself.” She opened another drawer and passed me a packet of soup crackers. “I like four on a saltine this time of day.”
“Tasty. Thanks.”
She raised her hand to wave away my gratitude.
So. Not everyone was rooting against me.
All right then. Back to work.
The minute College and I finished logging photos, my cell phone rang. Jenny’s teacher, a Mrs. Horner, was calling to ask if I would stop by her classroom. “I’ll be here at school until six tonight. I’m very concerned, Ms. O’Hara. Please make sure to stop in and see me this evening.”
Of course, I told her.
Ainsley must have seen me blanch because he chucked me on the arm and said, “It can’t be that bad. It’s Friday, remember?”
“And what exactly does that fact mean to you, College?”
“Beer.” He shrugged. “All night videos. All day nap.”
The blue glow of the monitors in the darkened room made it harder to read facial expressions. I leaned back in my chair to make sure he didn’t miss mine. “We have ninety seconds of usable material, to fill six minutes of national air time, on a story I don’t even know is gonna work.”
“No problem. It’s not due ’til Wednesday-that gives us both Monday and Tuesday to work on it.”
“And Saturday. And Sunday.”
“Oh.”
“That’s right, College. Beer and video all night if you want, but I want you in the truck, in my driveway by-” he looked so horrified, I decided not to ruin both our days completely, “-noon tomorrow. We’ll start by picking up Melton’s research on our mysterious Amish fireman.”
5:46:60 p.m.
School was the one place I didn’t have to worry about Jenny. Or so I thought.
“The art teacher didn’t take attendance. Jenny wasn’t missed for almost an hour. I think she was sitting in the girls’ bathroom the whole time. Jenny refused to talk to me about it.”
“I don’t get it.” My sigh was embarrassingly loud. “She ditched art?”
Jenny’s school was a bright white labyrinth of wide halls and darkened classrooms. I’d found her teacher, Mrs. Horner, before collecting the kid from the after-school gig. Had to leave my driving gloves on to shake the woman’s hand; my palms went slick the minute I walked through the front door. Catholic school didn’t leave a parade of fond memories through my elementary education.
“I don’t really understand either, Ms. O’Hara. She told the art teacher she didn’t want to make pictures. This kind of defiant, secretive behavior isn’t like Jenny. She’s always been a pleasure to have in class.” Mrs. Horner was a third-grade teacher straight from central casting: the careful coif, the Talbot’s wardrobe, and the friendly, direct manner-sort of a cross between Martha Stewart and a Zen Buddhist-a rigorously satisfied, female perfectionist. She offered me another pained smile. “Is everything at home…all right?”
“Her mom died a few weeks ago. I don’t see how anything could be right.” I rubbed my forehead where the pounding was the worst, mostly talking to myself.
“Ah. Yes, of course.” Mrs. Horner discreetly studied her hands. “Is she getting any kind of counseling?”
“Counseling?”
“With a therapist. Grief counseling can be so helpful.”
“Uh, no. Not right now.”
The woman nodded, her expression so concerned and earnest, I felt like sticking out my tongue at her.
“I appreciate the head’s up. I’ll talk to Jenny.” I pumped reasonable-ness into my voice, until it was thick as sugar syrup. “Believe me, Mrs. Horner, Jenny is priority-one right now. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right.”
Maybe if I kept saying it, somebody would start believing me.
She nodded again and finally agreed to lead me through the school to find Jenny.
The after-school program was held in the gymnasium. It didn’t look that bad. The kids had games and craft supplies. There was a low din of hustle-bustle to the place. Nobody was making them sit in perfect rows with their hands folded and their heads on their desks or anything.
We found Jenny sitting by herself at one of those plastic mini-picnic tables, watching the other kids play. I still couldn’t understand the problem. The kid ditched art?
“Hey, Jen. Time to go.”
She dug her backpack from the bottom of a sloppy pile against the wall and trailed me out of the place without making eye contact once.
“Heard you had a bad day.”
I got the slantwise nod. We walked to the parking lot and I tried draping my arm over her shoulder. She was so small. I expected the gesture to pull her closer, but it felt like I had too much arm to make it work.
“Thought you liked art.”
Jenny sighed. “We were making flowers.”
“Huh,” I said, as if I knew what the hell she was talking about.
“Caryn said she had to have the pink paper because that would match her mother’s wallpaper. She just like, took mine.”
“Yeah?”
“Caryn was like ‘’cause you don’t need it.’”
Little bitch. “Huh,” I grunted again.
“I didn’t care,” Jenny tossed at me, her voice clear and fragile as glass. “I didn’t feel like making flowers anyway.”
We’d walked all the way across the parking lot before the girl managed to spill those five sentences. I handed her a helmet and balanced the bike between my legs, while Jenny scrambled onto the buddy seat.
“Watch your legs.”
“I know.”
The pipes were still hot. I’d burned myself plenty of times riding behind my dad, but my warnings were redundant to Jenny’s cautious soul.
The neighborhood got pretty lively this hour of the day. Kids screaming all over the place with the joy of Friday’s freedom, driveways suddenly sporting Dad’s shiny four-door beside Mom’s dinged-up van, and drifting on the breeze, the hungry smell of barbecue grills firing up the last of summer’s feast.
I took the long way home, feeling Jenny’s hands wrapped around my middle, her helmet pressed hard between my shoulder blades. It’s too noisy to talk while riding. The kid’s head barely clears my elbows.
“Hang on,” I shouted, as we leaned into the last turn. “Hang on tight.”
What else was there to say?
6:19:42 p.m.
Jenny followed her aunt into the house and went to hang up her jacket. She noticed what was wrong right away. It made her feel creepy. “Aunt Maddy?”
Her aunt popped her head around the kitchen door. She’d gone straight in there to pull something from the freezer for dinner.
“The door’s open.”
“Yeah? I unlocked it.”
“No. Mommy’s door.” Jenny tried to say it loudly but her throat was too tight. “Mom’s door is open.”
“Lasagne or chicken?” Holding two boxes of Lean Cuisine, her aunt walked into the hall. She saw Jenny staring.
The door at the end of the hall, the one that led to her mother’s bedroom, was standing wide open.
“That’s weird,” Aunt Maddy said. “Did you go in there?”
Jenny shook her head no. “Did you?”
“No,” Aunt Maddy said.
They both stared at the open door. Her aunt frowned.
“It must have blown open or something. I left a window cracked in my room today. That’s probably it. Pull it shut for me when you go down there, would you?” Her aunt went back to the kitchen.
Jenny walked down the hall toward the room. She stopped in the doorway. Her heart was beating fast. She looked around. Empty. The room looked…ordinary in the daylight. Not the way it did at night. She took hold of the door knob, feeling calmer.
As she turned her head, she noticed it. The drawer was open.
Her mother’s picture drawer in the bedside table was hanging open. Empty. All the pictures were gone.
“What’s wrong?” Aunt Maddy asked. Like magic, her aunt was suddenly standing right behind her.
Jenny felt her body fly out in all directions at once.
“Whoa.” Aunt Maddy touched her shoulder. “Easy, kiddo. I didn’t mean to scare you. What’s up?”
Guilt stuck in Jenny’s throat. Where did the pictures go? If she told her aunt about the pictures, she’d have to tell her about being in the room. She didn’t want to talk about that.
“You haven’t been messing around in here, have you?”
“No. Not me,” Jenny answered.
She wasn’t lying. It was more like a wish.
(DR. GRAHAM ON SCREEN): “Tom Jost’s suicide might not be so surprising considering the statistics. There are patterns of inherited depression among Amish. There are patterns of depression in emergency service workers as well.”