“Slow day without that dead hiker,” he said to the few people who sat in his newsroom. He went back to his typing. He’d get whatever they had, eventually. He’d get it.
49
“Can’t get Carter,” Scott told Nancy Patterson as Jim Brown came through the door and marched to toward her.
“No Carter,” she told him as she got up from her chair.
“Keep trying,” he said and put his arm around her shoulders.
“We’ll make it,” he said softly. “It’s bad but we’ll make it. Let’s get this newscast together.” He hugged her. “For Debbie,” he said. “We’ll do it for Debbie.”
God, that was it. He nodded. That was what this day and this night were all about.
“Get Tony in here,” he ordered as he took the chair at the producer’s desk. “Use that phone.” He pointed to the assignment desk.
“Does anybody know what happened? I’ll get Martinez at DPS. We have to have that confirmation.”
In the time it took Jim Brown to walk through the newsroom, wrap his arms and his words around Nancy Patterson, they had the news Across the Street.
“It was Debbie Hanson, the body Rafferty picked up, Debbie Hanson,” the weekend producer yelled.
“Who the hell is Debbie Hanson?” the sportscaster asked as he walked through the newsroom. A photographer shrugged.
So, that’s why Brown was on his way in, the producer nodded to himself. Well, he had some footage from the mountain and the rescue, but how the hell was he going to get anything on Hanson, even a photograph, for his newscast? He’d have to call Brown. Good grief.
At The Best, Brown was talking to his people.
“It was our Debbie,” he said, looked at each face, searching for the shock, the sadness.
“Our Debbie’s dead and we don’t know exactly what happened but we’ve got to pull this one together. We’ve got little more than an hour but we’re going to do it. We have to.”
“Tommy?” he called to Tommy Rodriguez who was running toward editing.
“No time,” Tommy yelled. “Gotta find tape.”
“Cappy?” Brown turned to the photographer who stood in front of him, his arms folded across his chest, “you gonna make it?”
“Sure, Jim,” Cappy said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay then,” Brown said to no one in particular. “Let’s move.” He reached for the phone.
“Jean Ann, this is Brown. We need you in right now. Right now for the six o’clock. Don’t ask any questions. Come in now.” He hung up.
That would burn Carter. Well, it was his own fault. He was the one always yelling that no member of the news team should ever be out of contact, day or night.
He made the call to the media liaison man at the Department of Public Safety.
“Sam, this is Jim Brown. I need some help.”
“Go ahead,” said Sammy Martinez. He knew what Brown wanted, but how did he find out so fast? Who the hell told him?
“Let’s not kid around, Sam. We know it was Debbie Hanson you brought in off Padre, but we need your confirmation.”
There was no response.
“We’re going with it, Sam,” Brown warned.
“Jim, we just got it ourselves,” he lied. “We don’t even have next of kin. I was getting ready to call you about that.”
“Public figures, Sam. This is different.”
“A reporter is a public figure? Not in my book,” Martinez told him.
“Look, I’ll get you what you need, family names, numbers, all that. Her father is a judge or something up in Oregon.”
“Oh, shit,” came the groan.
“I’ll have that number to you in five minutes,” Brown promised. “Do you call or what? I mean, do you do this?”
“We get somebody up there to take the message to the family or we call direct. Nobody wants that job.”
“Sam, we have to go with this. You understand. She’s got no family here except us. We’re her family. So, it isn’t going to matter if we announce it on the six o’clock, is it?”
“You gonna contact the family before we do?” Sammy Martinez wanted to know. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“If that’s what you need to do, do it. I’ll get you the information, but we are going with the story on the six.”
“That’s your call.”
“It’s rough,” Brown sighed. “It doesn’t get any rougher. What happened to Debbie, I mean. A fall, right?”
“We won’t know for some time. That’s up to the medical examiner.”
“But it looks like a fall, right?” Brown insisted.
“Can’t say,” Martinez told him. He won on that point, at least.
Brown sent Nancy over to his office to find the personnel file with the contact information and started rearranging the paper lines on the long table.
Jean Ann slammed through the newsroom door.
“Dear Lord, what’s the matter?” she demanded.
“Debbie Hanson is dead,” Brown told her. “She fell on Padre Peak.”
“Oh, my God,” she cried, one hand clutching at her throat. She swayed backwards.
“Whoa, hold on.” Brown reached for her.
“Sit down. Somebody get Jean Ann some water,” he yelled.
“You have to pull this together for us,” he told her. “We can’t find Carter. You’ll go in-set with Scott.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do this.” She shook her head as she rummaged through her purse.
“I know, I know,” he soothed. “It’s bad but we have to do it. For Debbie,” he said. “You can do it. I know you can.”
“Yes,” she said and dabbed at her eyes with the crumpled tissue. “This is horrible. I really loved her, you know. I really did.”
“We all did, Jean Ann. That’s why we have to do this right.” He was almost overwhelmed with the emotion he felt, “It’s her last story, Jean Ann, her last story.”
It hurt him to say it, to hear it. It was that goddamn beautiful. He knew he would say it again.
Jean Ann raised her eyes to his face. She nodded.
“I’ll get ready,” she said.
*
Fifteen miles away, Rick Whalen waited impatiently on the players’ bench. He had an hour before he would be on air. The engineer moved around him, carrying cables back and forth across the floor.
“I can’t do anything without a camera,” the engineer told him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rick Whalen chanted. They’d get him on the air somehow, cameraman or not. And where the hell was the photographer? He’d give him five more minutes and then he’d call the station.
He patted his jacket pocket to assure himself the round of pancake makeup was there.
Now, how was he going to get into it? He liked starting with a smile and a joke. He’d have to think of something funny to say to Reynolds.
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He had nothing to worry about. He was a natural, everybody said that. He was a natural.
*
At the station, another engineer began to sweat. He had no tapes for the newscast, not even a fucking rundown. What the hell was he supposed to do without tapes?
“Where the hell are the tapes?” he called into the control room. “Is anybody there?” He tapped on his headset microphone.
“Jesus H. Christ, is anybody listening?”
He tore off the headpiece. He knew about Hanson. They all knew about Hanson. But, what the hell was he supposed to do? He didn’t have the tapes. How the hell could they get a newscast on the air? Nobody sent over any tapes.
Down the hall in the dressing room, Jean Ann Maypin started into the mirror. She did not judge her beauty or lack of it. She did wonder, for a few seconds, if she should have her ears pierced. They would let her wear those small button earrings. It was the big dangling ones they didn’t like.
50
Thirty-five minutes before the six o’clock newscast, the weekend producer from Across the Street
called.
“All I can say is that we’re really sorry,” he told Brown.
“Thanks, fella,” Brown said. “We appreciate that. We really do.”
“Is there anything we can do?” The producer tried to match the low and emotionally drained tone of Brown’s voice. As he spoke, reporters and editors stood around him making frantic hand motions.
“No, I think we can handle it,” said Brown. “Hey, guy, thanks for asking.”
“You’re going with it, of course?” the weekend producer asked.
“Have to. She was our baby,” said Brown.
So, thought the producer, the bastard was going to make him ask. He wasn’t going to give him a break.
He asked. “Next of kin notified?”
“It’s being taken care of. That’s the tough part, isn’t it?” said Brown.
Did that mean next of kin had been told or not? Smarmy bastard.
“That means we can all go with it,” he stated. “That’s the way I see it.”
“Guess so,” replied Brown.
The producer gave a thumbs up to the people around his desk. They broke away in a run.
“Look,” he said to Brown, “I know this is hard on your people, but I’d like to put something together about Debbie, something short, maybe pull something from one of her stories, some background on her.” He waited.
“I think that’s great,” said Brown. “Why don’t I send a tape over with some of her work. It will take a little while,” he warned. “And we don’t have any still photos of her.”
Prick, he wasn’t going to give him even a shot of her for the lead. Well, what the hell. They had Rafferty’s pick-up on the mountain, the body coming up. Get something from Brown for the end of the newscast and they had more than enough.
“That’s okay, Jim. Anything you’ve got will be fine,” he told him. “Don’t worry about sending it over. I have somebody on his way right now. Should be there any minute.” He smiled to himself. The guy he was sending would kill to get that tape.
“And listen, we’re sorry about this. Real sorry.” And, they were.
*
The Best kept the story at one minute fifty-five for the Saturday six o’clock. Re-edited for the ten o’clock news, it ran two minutes. The story ran a third time on the Sunday six o’clock.
The other stations had complete packages for their Saturday ten o’clock newscasts, with footage and information supplied by Jim Brown. The Sunday newspapers carried the story on the front page. A picture was added for the Monday edition, but the story was now front-page. second section.
Jim Brown spoke to Judge Hanson at eight o’clock Saturday night. He assured him the station would do anything they could to help him during this terrible time.
“You know,” Brown said to the father, “we thought of Debbie as a member of our family here. We all loved her. She was the best.”
Brown wondered if he should organize a memorial service in town. They had a minister they used for stories on religion. He could put together something uplifting. Wait. Did he really want to do that? It would have to be soon, within a few days, and who could make time on a weekday? Not in this business. Next weekend would be too late. People move on, they forget. Only natural.
What mattered was what they did for Debbie right now, and they did it well. Yes, they did. They pulled it together. There had been only one problem, and that one he expected.
*
Tom Carter flew into the newsroom ten minutes after the six o’clock ended. He was purple with rage.
“Why the hell wasn’t I told?”
All right, he was out of contact for the first time in years, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour. He needed to pick up his new Jeep. On Monday, they would outfit it with all the radios and scanners, but he wanted it home this weekend. He liked driving it, nodding to the people who recognized him and waved. The open Jeep gave him that rugged, in-charge look.
Then, he gets home and turns on the news and look who’s there, that dumb bitch practically bawling on the air. She actually had a piece of Kleenex in her hand when the newscast opened. He saw that, that quick wipe at her eyes one second before she was full on camera. Like she didn’t know she was on camera. Right. That bitch.
Almost as bad was that son of a bitch Reynolds right next to her. Couldn’t wait to get his job. What the hell was going on?
“I should have been called!” he shouted at Jim Brown. “Why the hell wasn’t I called?” He waved an accusing finger in Brown’s face.
Brown waited until the finger and the hand rested flat on the desk.
“We tried calling you, Tom, every way possible. We tried every five minutes.”
“Yeah, I just bet.”
“We thought it was important that one of you be in-set so we called Jean Ann,” Brown said, his voice calm.
“Oh, yeah, I saw her weeping and crying. I saw that,” Carter spat back.
“We’re all broken up about this, Tom. We had to think about getting the story on the air. That was our first concern, Tom,” Brown reminded him.
“You should have gotten to me no matter what you had to do. I’m the one you call first, and don’t you forget it.” The finger was back up again and pointing.
*
On Sunday police climbers confirmed that from what they could see, and it wasn’t much, Debbie Hanson fell.
They saw no signs of a struggle. Nobody was reporting any problems, no note or a goodbye phonecall. Anyway, she wasn’t wearing the right shoes for hiking. Sneakers, come on. She slipped, fell, hit her head, and died. People did. All the time. If there was anything else going on, the ME would figure it out.
“Why did they even send us out here?” one of them asked, kicking a piece of broken glass off the trail.
“You know, television reporter. They want to make sure they close it down nice and clean.”
As they hiked back down the mountain, an old blue and white Volkswagen van with Indian print curtains on the windows was being towed from the parking lot.
*
On Monday morning a call from a Dr. Stanley Waddell was transferred to Jim Brown’s phone. Mary took the message and left the pink slip on his desk. It was only a name, a date, and a phone number. Jim Brown did not return the call that day but he did plan to get to it, and all the others, when he had the time.
51
She stood in the doorway staring at him, arms folded across her chest. He couldn’t read any emotion on her face, only eyes staring, a slight downward turn to the mouth. He wondered about that short hair of hers. Why didn’t she let it grow? It had been long when he hired her.
“Come on in,” he said.
He smiled and nodded as she sat. He felt good about her. She may not have been there for the nightmare of the past few days, but he knew that she too had suffered. Of course, she had.
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds. He waited for her. She seemed to be searching for a comfortable position in the chair. Finally, she leaned forward, resting her arms on his desk, hands folded, and he saw the beginnings of a smile.
“Tell me,” she said. “What happened?” It was a gentle question, friendly.
“With Debbie?”
She nodded.
She got the news Monday night. She had only been home a few minutes and had reached for the phone to call Debbie. This was a night when she wanted to talk to her. She wanted to tell her about the decision she made. She wanted to tell her that as much as she loved New Mexico, and she did love it, she wasn’t going back. She was going to make the phone calls to those big cities of Joan McBain’s. Debbie would be happy for her. Yes, she would.
The call to Debbie went unanswered. Ten minutes later her own phone rang. It was Chuck Farrell.
“She must have been hiking or something,” he told her. “She fell about forty or fifty feet. They say it was a head injury. Must have been immediate. At least, I think so. I hope so.”
So did she.
Brown’s deep sigh
brought her back to her question.
“Yes, Jim, what happened to Debbie.”
“Gosh,” he shook his head, “it’s been rough. I wish you’d been here. We needed you. I didn’t know where you were, nobody did. Not until Monday, anyway.” He paused.
“She was quite a gal, quite a gal,” he said and rubbed at the corner of one eye.
She nodded pleasantly.
“Have you had a chance to see the stories we did? We did our best.” He raised his gaze above her head.
What was it she wanted? She did want something.
“So?” He opened his own hands wide and shrugged.
She shook her head, making a tisking sound with her tongue.
“Hey, you know, we want to make some sense out of this, make some good come out of it. And, you can help us.” He could see the interest in her eyes.
“What we need to do is some sort of series on the dangers of living here. But,” he stopped, searching for the right idea, “but not everyday dangers. We’ll do it on the dangers of things that seem like fun, recreation.”
He nodded sagely. This was a good idea.
Her slight smile and nod signaled her agreement.
“You know, the dangers of swimming pools and going out on the lakes.”
“Exploring,” she added. “Camping.”
“Right, right, you’ve got it,” he exclaimed happily. “People going out in the desert. We’ll tell them the dangers and how to avoid them. A desert-survival handbook sort of thing. Maybe we’ll even put together a booklet. People can call in and get one.”
He liked it. He liked it a lot.
“Of course, we wouldn’t get rolling on it for a month or so. We’d run it around summer vacation time, but we should be thinking it now.”
“And, we have some great footage,” she said.
“Hmm.” He nodded.
“We have all that footage of people being hurt while they’re out having fun in the sun,” she offered with a wry smile.
He didn’t like that smile or the tone of her voice.
“We have some footage, yes,” he said with a warning note of his own, “but that’s not the point.”
The Best in the West Page 25