He was blathering on about his glory days in network news, and I tuned out, having heard it all before. Instead, I was thinking of Evelyn Carney. I had to get her address. Maybe I could get an interview with her husband. If he wasn’t home, I’d check out the neighborhood, ask around about her.
Mellay had stopped talking and was staring at me.
“I’m sorry?”
“What do you think?” he said. “You help me get the ratings up, and when I go back to network, you get all this.” He spread his arms wide. “I can make it yours.”
I kept my expression blank.
“You don’t like my offer?”
“Of course I want the ratings up,” I said carefully. “I’ll work as hard as I can, whatever it takes.”
His head tilted to the side, and the overhead lights glinted off his glasses. “You want something else?”
I wanted what I had. Editorial control. Not only what stories to cover but how to cover them. A news director had the business of news, the endless chess match of ratings and demographics, lead-ins and audience share, courtship with advertisers. That wasn’t for me. I loved stories for their human foibles, their pulse and their heat, and in the best stories, their mystery. It was the unknowable that hooked me.
But I wouldn’t tell him what I loved. That’s when it was always taken away.
“I wouldn’t presume to know your job,” I said carefully.
“Then I really can’t understand your announcement in yesterday’s meeting.”
“What announcement?” I didn’t remember making one.
“You promised no layoffs.” He shook his head, mugging disbelief. “In this difficult economy? Particularly with the ratings your shows have been posting?”
“Oh, well, I did tell my staff—”
“Not your staff.”
“There’s word all over town about newspapers folding and television stations laying off employees, but I told them—your staff—that our shows are still number one. The budget’s in good shape, all things considered, but they worry about competition from nontraditional content providers.”
“By whose authority were you speaking?”
The authority I’d always spoken with. I was executive producer, second in command who oversaw day-to-day operations, the afternoon and evening newscasts, the person who made the shows happen. But I held my tongue.
“There’s going to be some reshuffling,” he said. “Some contracts won’t be renewed. Others might lose their jobs.”
My mind automatically went to the names and faces of the most vulnerable among my staff. And they were my staff. He didn’t love them. Not like I did.
But I said nothing. Showing emotion would get me nowhere.
“Now that that’s out of the way,” he said, “what have you got for tonight? What’s the lead?”
For a moment I considered showing him Evelyn’s missing persons poster, and then I stopped. I had this vague feeling I should protect Evelyn or my idea of what Evelyn’s story might be. Instead, I rattled off a handful of news stories probably every other newscast would have, and in the midst of it, mentioned the woman who hadn’t been seen since Sunday night. “Police aren’t saying much, certainly nothing to indicate foul play. If they don’t find her today, we can run her picture again.”
None of that was a lie, I reasoned.
“That’s the problem.” He stood up and leaned over his desk, his palms on the blotter. “None of those stories have any chance of increasing the number of viewers, which our survival depends on. Now I like you. I admire your work ethic. But I just don’t see the vision.”
And then he gave me a cool smile and his dimple appeared. That dimple gave me a bad feeling.
“Meantime, there’s inefficiency in upper management I’ve got to rectify,” he went on. “We don’t need two people overseeing content and production of the shows, right?”
“We don’t have two people,” I said warily. “We have me.”
“Starting today, the shows have me.” He came around the desk to me. “I need to get in there and see what’s going on. You’d only be in the way.”
He was demoting me, firing me—I wasn’t sure which—but certainly he was stealing my shows. I concentrated on my breath, my smile, how the act of smiling was supposed to change your inner chemistry. It didn’t change a damn thing. Still, I held on to that stupid smile.
He sighed. “I’m not firing you, okay?” He lifted his jacket sleeve and checked his watch, not even bothering to hide it. “Once I get us on the right track, maybe you get your shows back. Meantime, you won’t lose face. Keep your parking spot and your memberships we pay for. And at the correspondents dinner next week, I’ll seat you at the big boy table with me.”
“But if my shows are gone, what do I do?” It was my beggar’s voice, and I could’ve kicked myself, except he’d already done it for me.
He wasn’t listening. He was gazing over my shoulder. The blond beauty queen from the downstairs lobby was now posing in his doorway, her shiny black boots crossed at the ankle and one knee bent out provocatively. A yellow umbrella was swinging from her wrist. It was quite the look, all for him.
“Later,” he said, as he brushed past me to get to the girl.
————
I held on to my anger for as long as I could. It was my easiest emotion, all wrapped up as it was in virtue or maybe self-righteousness. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. I sat hunched over my desk, forehead resting on clenched fists, telling myself I’d find my way back to my shows. There was always a way. For now, what I could do was the work.
I called the Metropolitan Police Public Information Office, better known as the Lack of Information Office. The officer who picked up the phone asked if I’d gotten the press release about Evelyn.
“Did you send one today?”
“No. Yesterday.”
“I got yesterday’s,” I said. “What’s new today?”
“That’s all we got.”
“But investigators must be doing something. I want to report it.”
He didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure he was still on the line, and then I heard a yawn.
“Let’s start with the basics,” I said. “Who’s Evelyn Carney? What was she doing when she disappeared? Where was she going?”
“I don’t have that kind of information.”
“All right, put me on the phone with someone who does.”
“This office is handling all inquiries.”
Now I remembered the other reason I’d come in from the field. “You don’t know the answers,” I said. “Or you’re not doing anything to get answers? Maybe you have no one investigating the case?”
He hung up on me. I called back.
“Did we get disconnected?” he said.
“Very cute. May I speak with your boss? Captain Andrews?”
“He’s not in.”
“Then I’ll leave a message,” I said. “Please tell him I need concrete answers to specific questions directed to his office in time for my newscast.” I listed them, all simple and easy, the basic who-what-where type, and told him if I didn’t get a response by my deadline, I’d be asking the next logical question: why wasn’t the investigation moving forward? Or, as he seemed to suggest, was there no investigation? And I’d be asking those questions on air.
He cursed. “Give me a break, will you? We get at least ten thousand reports a year for missing people, almost all of them runaways. Tell me how this woman rates.”
“If she doesn’t rate,” I said, keeping my temper on a leash, “why’d your office put out the press release? You guys asked us to help you, remember?”
“Upstairs wanted it out, so it gets out. I don’t ask why. I just do what I’m told.”
Upstairs—now that piqued my curiosity. Upstairs meant the top floor of police headquarters, which housed the offices of the command staff, the chief, and all of her deputies. If it had been atypical for Criminal Investigations detectives to lead the inves
tigation of a missing persons case, it was much more so for the command staff to get involved.
After I hung up, my fingertips clacked across my computer keyboard as I ran more searches, this time for anything linking Evelyn Carney to the Metropolitan Police before her disappearance, particularly to its chief, command staff, or to any of the District’s community or neighborhood crime watch groups whose meetings police officials frequent. Nothing. If she had a footprint on social media, I couldn’t find that, either.
My fingertips tapped the desk as I thought it through: how did a young lawyer at a prestigious law firm that dealt in business and politics make an impression on a city police official? I’d covered political stories and crime stories, even the occasional political that became a crime story (usually over sex or money), but generally speaking, the two were worlds apart. So how had Evelyn Carney encountered a police official? Had she reported or witnessed a crime? A search on the databases for the DC courts came up blank. I left a message with a friend in the Clerk’s Office at DC Superior Court.
Through one of the pricey databases linked to public records, I typed Evelyn’s name with her age and came up with an address on the southeast side of Capitol Hill. A man named Peter Carney also lived there. I printed the information and tossed it into my satchel, along with a notepad and my phone.
And then I thought Mellay? Should I tell him? Or . . . ask him? I’d always found it more palatable to seek a man’s forgiveness than his permission. Then again, Mellay was a pretty unforgiving guy.
I went back and forth, worrying my lip with my teeth, until I decided: the answer was always the story. I’d help Evelyn and Evelyn’s story would help me, and by extension, my station. That was the calculation, anyway.
The hell with Mellay.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE SUN HAD come out and the air was crisp. To the east, the cathedral bells tolled noon.
From the underground garage, Nelson’s blue Chevy Tahoe rolled up. The thumping bass of alt rock strained the windows. I jogged over and banged on his passenger window, which inched down, blasting me with music before Nelson turned the radio off.
“Can you go with me to the Hill?” I said.
He put on his sunglasses and settled back in his seat, stretching his legs. “You asking or telling?”
“I don’t know if I have the authority to tell you.” I paused. “I think I was just demoted.”
His mouth dropped open. “You were what?”
“Mellay just—”
“Demoted you?” He pushed open the car door and I slid in. “Tell me everything,” he said with excitement. “Does anyone else know yet?”
“You’re the first.”
He hit the accelerator. As we crossed town, weaving in and out of traffic, running red lights and veering within inches of other cars and bicycle couriers, he peppered me with questions. If I was going to prevail against Mellay, I had to get my people together. I could count on Isaiah and Ben, and where Ben went, so went Moira. The beautiful people always stuck together. I’d hired Nelson, so maybe he’d side with me, too. I’d have to wait and see where the others lined up.
“So if you’re not still executive producer,” Nelson said, “what are you?”
I frowned. “Not sure.”
“You need to talk or anything, let me know. In my car, we observe Four Corners Rule. Nothing gets repeated outside these corners.”
We were driving through the residential side streets of Capitol Hill. Our pace slowed with the narrowing streets. Nelson’s hand beat the steering wheel to some rhythm in his head. “So what’s Ben say?”
“Hmm?” I said, absently, looking for parking. The cars were bumper to bumper, no spots.
“He must be steaming. No way he’s happy his woman gets the ax.”
I turned to Nelson, confused. “His . . . what?”
“No need to pretend. I admire how you guys keep it under deep cover, even though everybody knows.”
“Stop the truck.”
As the Tahoe jerked to a halt, I grabbed my bag and the two-way radio on the console between us, and then I was out of the truck and in the gutter. “Look at me and listen.” I pointed the radio antenna at him. “I am not one of Ben Pearce’s women. I belong to no one except myself. Spread that around, okay?”
I slammed the car door shut and stomped off toward Sixth Street. He called out: “You want me to shoot anything?”
I raised my two-way radio over my head and waved it.
————
Evelyn Carney lived on a street of two-story row houses with trimmed yards and gravel-lined driveways disappearing into alleys behind the houses. Thick black bars caged basement windows. The cherry trees were nice, though, with their tiny green florets shivering in the breeze. At the west end of the street, the Capitol dome peeked above the tree line, and to the east, the distant wail of police sirens. Here, the neighborhood seemed to hold its breath.
A man was working in the yard in front of Evelyn’s house. He was crouched down, pulling ivy from the base of a tree in a bust of angry jerks. The bill of his blue USMC cap shaded his angular face. I asked if he was Peter Carney.
“Who are you?” he said suspiciously.
When I told him, his eyes changed, as if they were windows slamming shut.
“I’m doing a story about your wife. I wonder if you’d talk about her.”
“My wife,” he spit out. He rose from his crouch and pulled off his cap, wiping a forearm across his brow. His blond hair was buzzed short and bristly looking.
“Police say she hasn’t been seen in several days. Do you know where she might have gone?”
“How the hell should I know?” He glared toward the Capitol dome as if it had done him wrong.
“But you’re her husband,” I said. “Why wouldn’t you know?”
He crouched over the ivy again. His hands were long and narrow and got lost among the leaves. He kept his back to me. I stepped out of my shoes and set them away from the ivy. My skirt hiked high when I kneeled next to him. We pulled ivy together.
“I’m not going to talk,” he said. “You’re wasting your time.”
“Maybe you could give me just one thing and send me on my way.”
“I’m the last person to know where she is,” he said. “And that’s a fact.”
“You had dinner together the night she disappeared. You were the last person seen with her.”
The tips of his ears flushed. “Miss—what did you say your name was?” When I told him, he said: “Miss Knightly, if I tell you one thing, will you get the hell out of my yard?”
“I will.”
“There’s no news here. She left home, that’s it.” He paused. His mouth was moving strangely, almost like a child’s moves when he’s trying not to cry.
I sat back on my haunches, my knees sinking in the cold, moist earth, and waited.
“She traded up, got herself a better man,” he said.
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. But you need to find Evie? Look for him.”
————
Nelson’s Tahoe idled on the far side of Seventh Street where I’d left him. Someone was bending over the passenger door and that someone straightened. It was Ben. He skirted the hood and ambled across the street to me. He wore his field clothes, a charcoal-gray suit jacket—Italian, no doubt—perfectly tailored to show off his wide-shoulders-to-narrow-hips ratio, the top button fastened over a white shirt as bright as his grin. His torso was camera ready, but his beat-up boots and faded jeans told you everything you needed to know about him: I’ll give you what can be seen. The rest belongs to me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“You roamed pretty far afield to make that call.” His dark eyes narrowed on my legs. “How’d you get all muddy?”
I told him about Evelyn’s husband, how he didn’t deny being at the restaurant with his wife minutes before she disappeared and that he believed there was another man. To my mind, this suggest
ed opportunity and motive, and I should’ve been suspicious of Peter. In truth, all I felt was sympathy. He seemed broken.
“Sounds like we’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Ben said. “Better get started.”
“What do you mean, we?”
“Meaning you and me. I’m your talent.”
This wasn’t a good idea for a variety of reasons, but I stuck to the most obvious: “The evening newscast needs its anchor.”
“I’m sick of being an anchor.” He folded his arms across his chest and raised himself to all his height. “It’s so damn boring being stuck inside and reading a teleprompter all night. I don’t know why I ever wanted it.”
“If I remember correctly, you wanted anchor money.”
He grinned. “Well, I’m not giving that up.”
“You can’t leave the anchor desk now. I can’t afford the ratings to fall.”
“Let them,” he said softly. “It’d be Mellay’s fault for taking you off the shows.”
So that’s why he was here. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Nelson had probably been sitting in his Tahoe all this time hitting rapid dial. Ben would’ve been his first call.
“I don’t want your sympathy,” I said.
“Good. I’m only offering my help. You might as well agree to partner up. I already persuaded Mellay to put me on the story.” He lifted an eyebrow. “It’s a done deal unless you refuse. I don’t partner up with the unwilling.”
He looked amused, as if this was a game to play, one he’d surely win. I could feel the inevitability of him working the story, and it didn’t make me happy.
“Make the deal,” he said, holding out his hand, and when I didn’t take it, he wiggled his fingers impatiently. “Come now, tempus fugit. Deadline’s approaching.”
When we shook, he said: “My source told me some pain-in-the-ass TV chick was saber rattling. His quote, not mine. Threatened to do a story on police incompetence if she didn’t get the information she wanted. Threw a real tizzy, again his quote, so police are holding a press conference at three.”
The Cutaway Page 3