This particular one, a quiet but sunny young woman with white blonde hair and morning-person eyes, hadn’t been half bad. She’d caught on quickly to the tasks Hugo needed performed and hardly ever ran late or forgot to complete something. She did, however, seem to lack a few basic social skills, but Hugo could manage personality disorders as long as they didn’t interfere with his job or show up on camera.
She handed him his coffee, doctored to perfection. That was one thing that was really growing on him: she seemed to want to serve him in every way. She was old-fashioned in that sense, didn’t seem to have the women’s lib thing going on. Plus, she managed a smile every day, which was nothing short of miraculous in this business, especially without the presence of a red glowing light atop three cameras.
Hayden Hazard. That was her name.
“Good morning, Ms. Hazard,” he said, stirring his coffee. He watched as she went straight to the out-box that held all of her morning duties. As she was gathering the folders and papers, Hugo Talley suddenly had a good idea. A great idea. Quite possibly the best idea of his career. It could solve what he previously thought was an unsolvable problem. How small of him to think there were problems that couldn’t be solved. All problems had a solution, if you just thought hard enough and didn’t mind getting your hands a little dirty now and then.
He watched the young woman shuffle papers as the plan grew inside his head, detail by detail.
Gilda Braun sat on her stool in front of a mirror with so much glaring light it made her makeup lady squint. Gilda was used to light. She’d been in front of lights for thirty-five years.
And even after all that time, sweeps week was still a thrill. She loved the challenge. It was one week away, and she could already feel the buzz in the newsroom. The news team was at the top of its game, and she was the leader. She’d taught the infant Tate Franklin how to turn it up a notch for sweeps week. Before his contract update prevented him from doing anything that threatened to mess up his face, Tate used to be into extreme sports, so Gilda used words such as “rush” and “free fall” to talk on his level. The guy never knew he could be so charming. And she also let him in on her little secret: there was nothing wrong with using a little bit of sex appeal to get people to watch. That’s how she’d done it all these years. Nothing over the top, nothing you could really put your finger on or stare at. It was a subtle flirtation with the camera—the way she joked with the weatherman about how she hated to water her petunias, the way she begged the sportscaster for good news about her alma mater—these were the things that gave her lasting power. It wasn’t a plunging neckline. It was a familiarity, a calmness, a sense of wisdom and whimsy, all wrapped up in small, highly scrutinized sound bites.
A tap on her door caused her to spin on her stool. “Come in, Tate.” Tate liked to check in with her every day, the poor lad. She’d never met a man more insecure. And he had reason to be. He had some nasty little idiosyncrasies that would shame him if they ever came to light. But Gilda would never let that happen. She was seasoned enough to handle him, and she couldn’t deny that it made her feel powerful. Something about the idea that he was unable to anchor alone appealed to her. Hugo had found this out by mistake when Gilda was sent on special assignment. Tate fell apart on air, his eyes bouncing all over the place, his words streaming out like nonsense. During a psychological evaluation the next morning, he confessed that his mother had abandoned him as a child and that he now had codependency issues. That was putting it mildly, Gilda thought. But whatever the case, Hugo didn’t allow Tate to anchor by himself anymore. This was the first of several strange tics that Tate Franklin, with his pretty brown eyes and his fancy smile, began to reveal. Gilda couldn’t help revel in the idea that “young and sexy” had come back to bite Chad Arbus on the butt. And that made Gilda feel very, very powerful.
The door opened and a young woman entered. Hugo’s new assistant. Gilda had seen her flitting around the newsroom with gust and glee. There were few times Gilda felt compelled to smile. This was not one of them.
“What is it?”
“Um, Ms. Braun,” the girl said, fumbling several attempts to state her reason for coming into her dressing room. Gilda Braun was the only anchor who actually had her own dressing room, but then again, nobody else had been there thirty-five years.
“What’s your name again?” Gilda asked.
“Hayden. Hayden Hazard.”
“Hayden Hazard. Odd name.”
The young woman blinked and smiled feebly.
“Okay, we’ve got that much out. Now, what are you here for? You’re Hugo’s assistant. Does he have you running little errands for him?”
The girl took a deep breath and stared at the carpet for a moment, shaking her head and mumbling to herself. Gilda grew a little nervous.
“Are you okay?” Gilda finally asked. She slid her hand next to the phone on her vanity, just in case she had to call security.
Hayden finally looked up at her with a worried, no, sad expression on her face. “May I sit?”
Gilda glanced at the stool her makeup lady usually used and nodded, but the young lady didn’t seem to notice that it was with a great deal of apprehension. Instead, Hayden seemed caught up in the conversation she was having with either herself or some imaginary friend. Either way, it was disconcerting.
Finally, she looked directly at Gilda with a smile more confident than anyone should wear who has just been talking to oneself.
“I’m having a little bit of an internal conflict,” Hayden said.
Gilda replied, “Well, it should probably stay right there inside yourself then.”
“It involves you.”
Gilda raised an eyebrow.
“There’s a party. And you’re invited.”
“A party?”
“Yes but, Ms. Braun, I’m going to have to tell you that I’m not going and I don’t think you should either. You see, I feel compelled to tell you the truth. There’s a lie going around this country about women and aging, and it has to stop. The only way a lie stops is to smack it down with the truth.” She slapped a hand against her knee. “That’s what my dad used to say, anyway.”
Gilda felt her lip quiver … her top lip, in a weird Elvis sort of way. It hadn’t twitched that way since she lost her voice on air eight years ago. In a moment of unexpected honesty, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this imminent truth. Maybe she should just take the lie and deal with the consequences later.
But it was too late. The truth came tumbling out.
Chapter 3
The chill against Ray Duffey’s cheeks could be felt all the way through his skin and into his teeth. He walked briskly along the dark, wet street, Doug Beaker, his cameraman, a few steps behind him growling about how they were probably going to get shot.
“Shut up about it, Beaker.”
“Your buddy Roarke says the police won’t even go down this street without backup.”
“Well, Roarke knows too much and lives for the thrill of telling people like you about streets like this.” Ray knew Roarke had a lot of fun playing on Beaker’s fears.
“It screams murder. How many murders do you think took place on this street last year?”
Ray kept walking. Hoover Street was quiet under a bright, clear sky. Beaker was annoying at times, with a chip on his shoulder that left little room for the camera that was supposed to be there. But in this case he was right. They weren’t in the safest of neighborhoods. They’d been in worse, but those were crime scenes lit up by police cars’ strobing red and blue lights.
Only three times in his career as a reporter had Ray refused to carry out an assignment for fear of mortal danger. He didn’t really fear for his own life. His dream was to be an investigative reporter for a national network, and in that line of work, you’re going to make a few enemies. But he felt a certain responsibility for his crew.
Ray made his way up a crumbling sidewalk toward a dilapidated house. The screen door hung on one hinge, and a couch sat
on the porch. A dog barked next door, causing Beaker to scuttle closer to Ray.
These were the days he hated, the assignments he hated. He told himself it was a means to an end, that he had to serve his time doing this in order to get the experience to do what he really wanted to do.
But it just made his stomach sick. And it wasn’t even the nonsense of it all. He had real internal conflicts at times. Maybe the internal conflict came from the fact that he’d gotten so good at it.
Behind Ray, Beaker said, “I’d sue my neighbors if they ever let their houses get like this!” The cameraman was an enigma. Among the delicate balance of Beaker’s personas was a lawsuit-happy one. He had sued a major fast-food chain because his burger didn’t resemble the burger in the restaurant’s advertising. He won the lawsuit, and ever since then, suing had been like a gambling addiction. He’d lost most of the money he won in the settlement paying court costs for his new lawsuits.
But he swore up and down he was going to get rich off of it. And then, “I won’t have to do this dangerous job anymore.” Ray figured the guy had a better chance of being shot by someone he sued than being a videographer, but he kept his thoughts to himself.
Ray knocked and waited for the face that would soon greet him with bewilderment or anger. As he stood there, his mind wandered back to the face of Janet Bixby. Janet’s son had killed another driver. He was seventeen, coming home from a party, and driving drunk. He was also the star quarterback at his school. Hugo had sent Ray out to the Bixby home to try to get them to make a statement on camera. It was gritty, disgusting work, but it was what people wanted to see, and so he went.
At first Mrs. Bixby refused the interview, begging for privacy so the family could deal with the tragedy.
“But ma’am,” Ray had said, in his most polite, trustworthy voice, “others could learn from your experience. You could save someone else from this horror.”
The woman’s face, puffy with distress and drawn downward from grief, looked up at him, and tears pooled in her eyes. She believed him. She believed that telling her story on the news might keep some other teenager from drinking and driving.
Ray wanted to bury himself alive. It was the lowest moment of his career.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe that Janet’s story might make a difference. Maybe it could. But he had crossed a line to get what he wanted.
Their show had gotten the highest ratings of that night because he had landed the only interview with the grieving family of the drunk teenage driver. Ray couldn’t even remember what she’d said on camera, and probably nobody else could either. What was permanently branded into his and everyone else’s mind was the image of this grief-stricken mother trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy.
Over the years Ray had learned to read body language as well as the basic needs of people. A lot of them were easy. Very rarely would the station have to go to the trouble of shadowing somebody’s face, because most everyone in the world wanted his moment of importance. “This is your fifteen minutes of fame” brought out the kinds of confessions that a priest would envy. “Don’t you want to tell your side of the story?” was usually a sure bet for people involved in some kind of dispute. In more difficult circumstances, he would play to someone’s personality. If he was in a rough crowd, he’d lose his manners and try to blend in. If he wanted a quote from a politician, he’d put on a tie and even a jacket, throw out a compliment about the job he or she was doing, and in the same breath, tag on a question that somehow related. Once, when he was trying to break a story about cockfighting, he’d actually put on cowboy boots and a fake Hank Williams Jr. tattoo when he interviewed the men who believed cockfighting should be legal. When he interviewed the lawmakers who were trying to ban it, he donned regular shoes, a starched white shirt, and plenty of knowledge about the repercussions of the practice.
Now standing on this porch, Ray could hear a television and a few words of conversation as someone passed by the front door on the other side. Cold calls like this one were the worst. He hated knocking on the door of someone’s home. And to make matters worse, this was a ridiculous story. He’d said so in the afternoon meeting.
“Aren’t there more important issues we should be covering?” Ray had asked. Trent Baker, a newbie reporter, had agreed. Of course Trent would agree. He had to cover worse stories than Ray. Last week, he was given the splendid task of following the story of a man whose “gut-wrenching” decision involved participating in clinical studies for an alternative to hair plugs. Yet it looked as if the weeklong report would have a happy ending; the man said he was seeing “favorable results.” It was horrific to watch Trent try to report this as if nobody at home was snickering. No one could look past the fact that Trent’s own hairline was receding like the shores of a drought-stricken lake.
“What are you waiting for? A gang to show up?” Beaker asked, tilting his head away from the camera to look at Ray. “Knock again.”
Ray sighed and knocked on the door. Footsteps shuffled closer, and the door cracked open slightly, a safety chain taut in front of the eyes and nose of the person looking out.
“Mrs. Elva Jones?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Ray Duffey from News Channel 7.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed with scrutiny. “From the tube?”
“Yes ma’am. From News Channel 7. May I talk to you about your pet pigs?”
“I watch Channel 10.”
“Yes ma’am, but I just wanted to talk to you about your pigs.”
“The police already done that.”
“We wondered if you had anything to say about the law regarding pet pigs on private property? Would you mind coming out to speak with us for a moment?”
She turned her attention to Beaker. Ray assumed he was smiling pleasandy behind him, like he should be, and trying his best not to draw attention to the large camera on his shoulder. In tough interviews, Beaker would often carry the camera at waist level until the person was ready to be interviewed.
“Whaddya want me to say ’bout it?”
“Just your side of the story, ma’am. We want to report the whole story, and that includes what you have to say about it.”
She released the chain, pulled open the door, and pushed open the lopsided screen door. She didn’t seem to notice or care that she wasn’t exactly dressed for the camera. She was wearing a housecoat of some sort, and her hair was wound up tightly in curlers.
Ray hoped Beaker already had the camera rolling. Mrs. Jones looked around and then gave an angry nod toward her neighbors house. “Petey over there turned me in, and I know it. He’s been complaining about the smell for a year now.”
“The smell doesn’t bother you, ma’am?”
“They’re pigs. ’Course they’re going to smell.”
“So you understand why your neighbors complained?”
“No. I don’t complain about Petey’s mailbox leaning to the left, do I? Or the fact that he’s always screaming at his dog. I mind my own business, and Petey should mind his.”
“Do you agree with the law?”
“That you shouldn’t kill your neighbor?”
Ray bit his tongue and kept a straight face. “Uh, no ma’am, the law about owning farm animals on city property designated for homes.”
“What good is it to own your own home if you can’t do with it what you want? This land was passed down from my daddy to me. And we were here long before all these other houses came around. What we want to do with it is our business. We rightfully own it, and my daddy paid good money for it. This is America. If I want a pig in my yard, I should be able to have a pig in my yard!” She gathered her housecoat and said, “Now I gotta get inside because Wheel of Fortune is ’bout to start.”
“Thank you for your time,” Ray said. He and Beaker turned and walked back toward the news truck. Beaker was suppressing one chuckle after another.
“I don’t complain about Petey’s mailbox leaning to the left, do I?’”
Beaker let out a laugh. “It was all I could do to hold the camera steady.”
Ray opened the van door. “Don’t you find that the least bit sad?”
Beaker loaded his equipment into the van. “What?”
“That. Back there I mean, she does have a point.”
“A point? She’s got a literal pigsty in the middle of her backyard, Ray. The smell about knocked me over, and we were on her front porch.”
“She really believed in her right to own her property. There’s something to that. Maybe there’s no common sense in raising pigs in the middle of a neighborhood, but it’s the principle of it.”
“So you’d want to live next door to her? I’m sure Petey would sell you his house.” Beaker rolled his eyes as he wrapped the cords around one arm. “She’s an old woman who doesn’t have a clue about the real world, Ray.”
Ray sighed and Beaker crawled into the van’s compact editing bay.
Jim, the live truck operator, glanced back and said, “They want this live from in front of the house.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Ray groaned. He checked his watch. He had thirty-five minutes to edit and memorize his notes.
Chapter 4
In a quiet corner of the control room, with everyone abuzz, Hugo reviewed the anchors’ script for smirk pitfalls. Nobody quite understood how important this task was, but then again, nobody knew Tate Franklin like he did. Chad had believed that Hugo had scored big by landing this playboy-looking anchor at a busboy price. But the other price he was paying for the good looks and the charming smile was probably going to send Hugo to an early grave.
Tate looked the part and certainly practiced all the skills of a well-established anchor. Hugo had never seen anyone perform the eye-bounce as well as Tate. While many people didn’t see how this detail mattered for an anchor, Tate understood. He never cut his eyes sideways to his coan-chor or to another camera. He always looked down, then looked up and focused on whatever it was he was supposed to look at. Anything other than that makes an anchor look awkward, even shifty.