by Bill Evans
John’s head was spinning now. He hadn’t given any thought to who might have done this, why, or even if Steve had killed himself. But for a moment, John wondered what could have been so bad for this anchor that he would have committed suicide.
“I have no clue as to what happened,” John muttered as the noise in the newsroom started to pick up. Employees started pouring in. The horror of the newsroom being a murder scene was oddly a source of excitement for this news station. There is nothing more thrilling for a newsroom than a catastrophe. Even if one of their own is involved.
2
TODD AND JAKE arrived in separate cars, but at the same time. They tried to keep their relationship a secret, but newsrooms are small and everyone knows everyone’s business. Despite their discretion, everyone knew they were in a relationship.
Todd was a morning reporter out in the field, while Jake co-anchored the morning news behind the comfort of his news desk. Both had come into the station under different circumstances, but it wasn’t long before they discovered they shared the same secret. They became “roommates” to their outside circle, and according to them, everyone was on the outside.
Barry Burke started gathering the news team together in the parking lot to fill them in on what John had found this morning. There was discussion about what—if anything—about Steve Johnson’s death the station should report on its morning news. What if their competitors found out what happened and wanted to come over to start reporting on one of their own? The morning news would go on the air at five. They had a little over an hour to put everything together.
Lisa got with Barry as soon as she arrived at the station. “Has anyone called Steve’s wife?” asked the GM.
“I think she’s out of town,” Barry answered.
“Barry, what do I need to know about Steve Johnson before we get too far into this?” Lisa had enough experience with news talent and their extracurricular activities to ask that question. There were rumors about the station’s anchor and how he might have had affairs, a lot of them. She thought she better know everything up front so she could do damage control for the station and the station’s owner.
“Lisa, all I know is that Steve was found dead this morning. I try not to know too much of what goes on outside of the station with our people.” Barry was beginning to think about his own transgressions with interns. Newsrooms had their own casting couch and the news director always owned the couch. No one talked about it, especially if you wanted to continue to work in the business.
The conversation stopped when Detective Tracy and his partner, Skip Reynolds, walked up. Lisa knew both men. That’s how it was in a small town when you were the number one news station and had been since the first time you went on air in 1965.
“Detectives, Barry was just filling me in. You got anything you can tell me?”
“Too early to say. We’re going to need to talk to everyone, though. Can we set up in your conference room? Lisa, is there anything you can tell us? Anyone have a problem with Steve? Any threatening mail or emails from anyone? Stalkers? Right now we don’t have squat.” Detective Tracy let his partner do all the talking. He wanted to reserve himself for his buddy Barry.
“Are you saying he didn’t hang himself?” Lisa asked.
Detective Reynolds paused. “The coroner will have to tell us. I’m not sure he even died by hanging at this point.”
“I thought there was a rope around his neck,” the GM said.
“You’re right, there was. He was also sitting in his anchor chair, according to the kid’s story. How do you hang yourself if you’re sitting down? I’m not sure the rope had anything to do with his death. What about his family? Can you tell us anything that might help?” Reynolds asked.
“Well Barry was just saying that his wife might be out of town. I need to call her.” She turned from the detectives to face her news director. “Barry, see if you can get me a number?” Barry nodded and walked toward his office with Detective Tracy following.
“Look, Richard. Steve has always been a bit of a player on the side, but I don’t want to speculate on anything at this point. Let’s just say he wasn’t exactly shy around women in the past. But I thought he cleaned up his act and was working on his marriage, trying to make things work. I’m shocked. I don’t really know what to say right now.”
“We’re going to try and reach out to Steve’s wife. If you happen to talk to her before we do, let her know that we need to talk to her. For right now we need to start talking to everyone about what they may know or think they know,” Detective Tracy said to his friend.
***
The control room buzzed as it usually did every morning. “Roll the open. Standby to cue anchors. Cue anchors.” The words were spoken in a very controlled but strong voice from the twenty-six-year old director, Tom Bryson. Tom might have sounded in control, but there was no doubt that everyone was on edge this morning. The studio was a crime scene, so delivering the news needed to get done in a makeshift studio from the patio. Luckily, the weather was cooperating and the patio was a perfect setting looking over the Pacific Ocean.
“Good morning, I’m Jake Thomas,” the male anchored opened the news show. “And I’m Anne Swanson. Leading off our newscast this morning, a body was found here in the studio of our station, and the circumstances are currently under investigation. As the investigation is ongoing, there is not much we can say at this time. However, as we gather more information, we will be breaking in live to update you throughout the day. Police are here in the building and believe it happened sometime late last evening or early this morning. At this time, they will not be releasing any further details until next of kin has been notified.” Anne Swanson was smooth as the female morning anchor.
And with that, the morning news got under way. The station had to say something because newspapers and other TV stations would undoubtedly be asking for a comment. Barry was lost within his thoughts. They couldn’t not report on what is surely going to be the biggest story of the day. You have to stay true to being “the local news leader.” And just because you are now the news doesn’t mean you can stay away from it. It means the opposite, right? We need to be ahead of this story at every turn. Barry’s mind whirled as he sat in front of his computer screen, having typed the first story into the morning news teleprompter so the morning anchors could start their show. He wondered whether his boss had made contact with Steve Johnson’s widow.
***
“Janet, this is Lisa, Lisa Campbell from the station. Sorry to bother you so early in the morning.”
Just then the message on the other line continued, “Just kidding. I’m not available right now so please leave a detailed message and I’ll return the call as quickly as possible.”
Lisa was caught completely off-guard thinking she reached her anchor’s wife. Bullshit. I hate those stupid trick messages, she thought.
“Janet, this is Lisa at the station. Please call me as soon as possible. We have an emergency and I need to talk to you as soon as possible.” She hung up the phone, praying to hear from Janet before Janet and her three kids heard the news about her husband from the police or from a media source uncovering Steve’s identity, even though no names were being mentioned at this time in their stories.
Detectives Tracy and Reynolds came down the hall to the GM’s office. “Lisa, you have a second?” Reynolds asked.
“Come on in. Anything you can tell me yet?” Lisa asked.
The detectives sat. There wasn’t anything to tell at this point. The police department was now investigating and interviewing everyone at the station from the receptionist to the janitor. There were no signs of a struggle. No one knew how he died. Maybe by hanging, maybe not.
Reynolds looked over to Lisa. “Were you able to reach Steve’s wife?”
“I left her a message on her cell phone. She hasn’t called back yet. Maybe you should send a car over to their house and see if anyone’s home,” Lisa suggested.
“I thought she was
out of town?” Reynolds said.
“That’s what someone told us, but you never know. I can send Barry over there with you. He knows the wife pretty well.”
Tracy jumped at the opportunity to get out of the station for a few minutes so he could smoke. He also knew his friend Barry would appreciate a smoke break. “Why don’t I take Barry and go over to the house to see if anyone’s home?”
Everyone nodded in agreement. And off the detective went to find the news director.
The drive was two cigarettes and twelve minutes into a quiet neighborhood. The streets were littered with bikes, tricycles, and skateboards, and it was obvious a lot of kids lived on the block. The Johnsons’ daughters were ages six, eight, and eleven.
The conversation on the way over was off the record and pure speculation as to what the two friends thought might have happened to the anchorman. The two bantered back and forth asking all the questions they wanted answered. Did he hang himself? Or was the crime scene staged to look like he did? Why in the studio? Was someone else involved at the station? What’s with the chair? What the hell was going on? A lot of questions with very few answers, but this whole scenario was only hours old.
“Let’s knock on the door and see if she’s home,” the detective said in a very police-like manner.
Barry gave the door a polite three knocks. With no sounds coming from the inside, he knocked louder and not so polite, just in case Steve’s wife was in the back of the house. Reynolds noticed the doorbell and pushed it twice while Barry continued to knock.
Still, there were no sounds coming from inside the house. Reynolds suggested they go around back to see if they could see anything inside the house. Something wasn’t feeling right for the detective.
It was a typical residential track house with four bedrooms built in early 2000 along with the fifty-four other homes in the neighborhood. Most of the houses had cheap wood fences around the yards. The back gate had a simple latch—easily accessible to anyone who tried. There was one of those four-and-half-foot plastic pools in the backyard as well as a nicer hot tub on the patio off the master bedroom. The windows were all closed and covered with blinds, so the two men couldn’t see in. At first glance it appeared no one was home.
Detective Tracy tried the back door, which opened. This caused some tension for the two. They cautiously entered. The detective signaled with his hand for Barry to be quiet. Barry loved this sudden rush of adrenaline. It reminded him of when he would uncover a big story working as a reporter on the streets of Los Angeles.
Before entering the home, Detective Tracy drew his revolver. There didn’t seem to be anyone home. The house was silent. Not just quiet. It was silent. Making their way down the hall, the kids’ rooms were the first they cleared. The beds were made and rooms were picked up with no signs of the girls. Tracy seemed to relax a little and put his revolver back into his belt-strapped holster. Approaching the master bedroom, the door was open about three quarters. Barry was first to the door and lightly pushed the door open the rest of the way.
Someone was asleep in the bed, presumably Janet. Detective Tracy called out Janet’s name as he carefully approached the bed trying not to scare her. Janet didn’t respond. This time he was louder as he reached down to touch the back of her shoulder. Janet didn’t move and Richard knew by the little touch that she was dead. “Barry, we’ve got a problem here.”
“Let me check to see if she’s breathing,” Tracy murmured as he tried to get a pulse as well. But Janet was dead and probably had been dead for several hours, he speculated.
“What the fuck?” Barry couldn’t believe what was happening. First his news anchor was found dead in the studio and now the anchor’s wife is dead in their bed.
“Richard, what was going on here?”
“Not sure, but I need to call this in and get the crime unit out here. Look around and see if you can find the girls anywhere. Maybe they’re hiding somewhere in the house, but be careful not to move anything for the crime boys,” cautioned the detective.
Barry’s news instincts kicked in, and before he started looking around for the girls, he called Lisa, his boss.
“Lisa, it’s Barry, we found Janet. She’s dead. We found her in their bed.”
Lisa’s voice was cracking again. “Oh my god, Barry. What is going on here? What about the kids? Are the kids anywhere to be found?”
“The kids don’t appear to be here. There are no signs of a struggle and no signs of anything out of the ordinary, but the kids are gone, and Janet is dead.”
While Barry talked to Lisa, Detective Tracy was on the phone with his chief of detectives. He needed the CSI team to the house with a coroner. The problem was that most of the crime team was at the station with the only coroner in the county. Steve Johnson’s body was still on the studio floor.
“Look Lisa, I know this has everyone spooked right now, but I think we need to be on the air with this story. We need to own this story. We can’t let our competitors get ahead of us on a story that is happening in our own building. That would look like we weren’t covering the story because it’s happening to us.”
“Barry? This isn’t about covering a news story. We lost a member of our station family, and now his wife. Good god, have some compassion,” Lisa countered.
Barry wasn’t surprised by his boss’s reaction. He had seen this attitude from previous general managers. What he wanted was to scream into his phone. You can’t think like that or you will miss out on the biggest story of the year. You shouldn’t give a shit about compassion right now. That’s what he wanted to tell his GM, but he didn’t. In Los Angeles and New York, the bigger markets, they understood Barry’s hard news attitude and they could care less about compassion. He wasn’t sure that attitude would play well in a little market like Santa Barbara. But Barry knew he was right about this one. Why let anyone get ahead of you on a story that is happening to you? He pressed Lisa.
“Look, we need to do something. If nothing else we need to put out the information we know right now. It’s not going to be long before every news organization in town is on this and that includes the networks from Los Angeles.” Being only two hours away, and under the circumstances, this was a story worth covering for the LA stations.
“It’s your call, Barry. I brought you here to keep us the number one news station. But you better be careful and sensitive with what you do.” And with that Lisa hung up the phone.
Immediately, Barry dialed the assignment desk to speak to the newsroom. He wanted a live truck and a reporter to the house ASAP.
“John, I need you to call everyone in. Get the whole news team to the station as quickly as possible. Now let me speak to Jake.” Barry wanted to talk to his morning co-anchor, the person who had the most experience in the newsroom at this time of the morning.
“This is Jake.”
“Jake, this is Barry. I need you to send Todd out here with the live truck. I’m at Steve Johnson’s house. Get the address off the news roster on my desk. You and Anne need to be ready to do some cut-ins. We found Steve’s wife dead in bed. Get moving on this and keep it quiet. I don’t want to tip off any of the other stations.”
“Got it. I’ll get them out the door right away. We’ll get ready to do some cut-ins. What about the network? Do you want us pre-empting their morning show?” Jake asked a good question.
“I’ll call Tom and work out the cut-ins with him. Tell him I’m going to call him and to have the morning crew ready to go back to work.” Barry couldn’t help but feel good and excited about breaking this story, even though it involved people he knew very well. Relationships never mattered to the news director. That’s what made him a good at his job—and why he had three ex-wives.
Just as his call with Jake ended, his cell phone rang. It was Lisa, his boss.
“Barry, look, I’m nervous about us doing this story prematurely. It’s your call, but you better get it right. All eyes are going to be on our station and everyone is going to be watching when
this news gets out. Make sure you handle it correctly.” She hung up.
Barry found Tracy still in the master bedroom and hanging up from his call with the police chief. “Richard, what can I have my people report? We now have two suspicious deaths. I’m going to break this story as fast as my people can get here and get set up. You gotta give me something.”
Tracy was taken back by Barry’s attitude. It didn’t seem as though he was concerned anymore about these people. It was if they were strangers. Now it was about getting the story out first. “Barry, you gotta be careful here. We have two bodies. We don’t know if they’ve been murdered. Maybe this is a murder-suicide. Maybe it’s a double suicide. We don’t have any evidence of foul play. We don’t have anything but two dead bodies. We’ve got nothing to say.” The detective was giving his friend a reminder to proceed with caution.
Barry was lighting a cigarette. He didn’t care that he was still standing in the Johnson house. He passed one across to Tracy and without any hesitation the detective took it. They walked outside and both took long drags. The inhale seemed to relax them a little, if that was possible.
“Look, Barry, I know you want this story, but be careful with how fast you run with this. Right now all we know is that Steve and Janet Johnson are dead. We have to find the kids. What if this is a double murder and the kids have been kidnapped? We don’t know, and we can’t jeopardize the investigation.”
The news director’s head was spinning. At that moment he heard the live truck pull up. He could tell because the sound of the brakes the live truck made every time it stopped. He had wanted the chief engineer to get those fixed for the past two months, but it still hadn’t been done.
“Barry, they can’t park in the driveway. In fact, they need to be across the street. We’re going to have to set up a perimeter blocking off the yard and the house. This is an official crime scene now and we need to treat it as such. I’ve got some gloves for you to wear. Put them on.” Tracy held out the gloves.