Crime Beat

by Scott Nicholson

  The waffle house did us right, except I discovered Spanish omelets had the same unfortunate effect on Lance as Mexican food did. Must be a Hispanic thing. He’d probably go off on a jar of olives or a Ricky Martin song. Perhaps any excuse would do for Lance to bathe the world in his odor.

  But the afternoon wasn’t a total dark cloud: Moretz had scored again while we were out. I was about to close my office door and enjoy the relatively wholesome air when Moretz rushed in.

  “Drug fatality, Chief,” he said.

  “Overdose?” Like most community papers, we downplayed suicides. It was too easy to trigger copycats and, despite the press’s reputation for wallowing in the worst of human behavior, we occasionally had respect for the grieving family.

  But most importantly, suicides didn’t sell papers. They just depressed people instead of enticing them into dropping quarters.

  “Better than that. A drug deal gone bad. Gunplay.”

  On his first story, I’d had to resist an urge to hug Moretz. Now I had to turn away before I gave the guy a full-fledged peck on the cheek. Drug deal gone bad. Murder investigation. Only one thing would make the story better…

  “Sweet,” I said, maintaining my editorial composure. “Is there a female involved? Or a puppy?”

  “Some college kid. A real Mister Nice Guy, according to witnesses interviewed by the police.”

  “County or town?” Sheriff was an elected position, so Hardison was more likely to pose beside the murder scene for a photograph. The Sycamore Shade police chief was appointed by the town council, and therefore pretty much had the job for life unless he managed to get caught in illicit business.

  Smart cops rarely got caught but they made golden copy when they did, guaranteeing increased circulation and press awards. I wouldn’t wish such a thing on any community but mine.

  “The body was county, but the kid lived in town.” Moretz didn’t show any flicker of excitement. Even veteran reporters got a rush from a potentially ace story. But Moretz was as cold as three o’clock ink.

  “Details,” I said. In a newsroom, you don’t waste words. You want them on paper instead of evaporating in the air before someone could pay for them.

  Moretz consulted his note pad. “Simon Hanratty, 22, 2753 Terrace Trace Apartments. Found dead at the scene from a single gunshot wound to the head. Looks like the body was dumped at a remote campground near the national forest. No murder weapon recovered. The vic was set to graduate from community college in May.”

  “Any leads?”

  “It’s pretty fresh. Sheriff said the case is officially under investigation and he can’t comment.”

  “Damn. He always says that, right up until the case goes before the grand jury.”

  Moretz grinned that lopsided grin of his, the one that suggested he’d been eating crow and had found it palatable. “I worked on him a little. Told him I respected his need for confidentiality but the public would want some answers. Plus I told him I’d be in trouble with my boss if I couldn’t feed you any details.”

  “You made a plea to his humanity? This is the sheriff we’re talking about.”

  “It worked,” Moretz said. “The murder apparently occurred at about 9 a.m. Cops got a description of the car from a neighbor. Looks like the murderer picked up Hanratty at his apartment, took him out to the woods, killed him, and drove away. The sheriff figured the press could help put out the word on the car.”

  “One hand washes the other.”

  “And they both end up red.”

  I frowned. Reporters who went in for poetic metaphors couldn’t be trusted. But Moretz had been a blessing so far. I just hoped our good luck would continue. “Okay, let’s get it together for Friday. Times like this, I wish we were a daily.”

  “I can get 20 inches out of what I already have. Chances are there will be more breaks by tomorrow, assuming the sheriff will return my calls.”

  The sheriff had mastered the trick of passive voice, which neatly deflected and weakened any possible action he might have to take. His was a world where mistakes had been made and consequences would be faced once responsible parties had been found. How could we resist making life hard on him by asking him for comments?

  “Go for the throat,” I said.

  Moretz started toward the door, heading for his desk.

  “John,” I said.

  He turned, hands in his jacket pockets. His eyes were dark and blank, empty as caves.

  “You’ve turned in two above-the-fold, front-page stories in your first two editions. Good work.”

  He shrugged. “That’s what you hired me for, isn’t it?”

  And out the door.

  3.

  By Friday, he’d gleaned a little more from the sheriff. The car had been discovered in a parking garage down in Charlotte. Out of our jurisdiction, but the case was local, so the car would end up back here eventually for tests. We got a photo of it from the Associated Press, which also ran Moretz’s photo of the body huddled under a blood-stained tarp as cops worked the crime scene.

  The edition that hit the street sold 6,000 copies. Not much compared to the Washington Post, but considering our circ had been sliding to the mid-fours, I called it a major step up.

  Saturday morning, I went down to the drugstore grill to bask in renewed respect. The Picayune had been formed in the ashes of the Civil War and had sprung up to rival a Union-leaning paper. In the old days, it wasn’t unusual for a small town to have three or four papers, each championing a different cause.

  More people read papers then, although fewer people could read. Go figure.

  At any rate, my paper had a proud tradition that had been tarnished in the era of media mergers, Internet start-ups, local cable advertising, and the inexplicable staying power of the town’s AM radio station, which mostly broadcast Rush Limbaugh and other pre-packaged shows mixed in with weather forecasts and the occasional pop tune.

  What none of those sources were able to deliver was Moretz’s in-depth insider information. Even the regional network news stations had come up short on the drug murder story because the sheriff had refused to go on record with them.

  At the drugstore, I sat with the mayor and a guy who’d made a fortune in real estate. The mayor, Patterson Wilbanks—a mayoral name if there ever was one—and the local developer, Andy Long, were fans of the paper, mostly because they each had a vested interest.

  The mayor counted on those ribbon-cutting photos steadily appearing on page 16 and Long was an advertiser, though most of his action these days came via Craig’s List. I suspected the Picayune ranked on the order of a mercy case with Long, but we would take all the mercy we could get.

  “I like that new reporter,” Mayor Wilbanks said. He was eating eggs and onions with toast and black coffee. Long, slightly more refined, had a blueberry bagel, a bowl of grits, and a glass of tomato juice.

  “He’s been a pleasant surprise.” Of course, I thought my discerning review of the job applicants had as much to do with the success as anything. The waitress came over, eyes purple from cigarettes and last night’s booze, and flipped a menu into the greasy swirl on the table before me.

  Long tipped his tomato juice at me. “I’ve been a subscriber for 35 years, and I used to read my parents’ subscription before that. The last couple of issues have been really strong.”

  “Thank you,” I said, fighting the urge to ingratiate myself to him. After all, that’s what the sales staff was for. Let them get a backache bending their spines to lick shoe leather. They worked on commission.

  Mayor Wilbanks spoke while chewing his eggs. “I guess your reporter heard about the collision last night.”

  “Collision?”

  “An ambulance was running back to the hospital from a heart-attack call and smacked head first into a Jeep.”

  I fidgeted with my napkin and the spotted silverware that lay on top of it. “Did anybody die?”

  “The radio said two people were critical.”

  Radio. W
hat did the radio know?

  I squeezed the menu, wishing I could get an edition out before Monday. When you were in the information business, nothing hurt worse than waiting. I had one hand inside my jacket, reaching for my cell phone, when it purred against my chest.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” I left them to their meals while I flipped open my phone and spoke into it. “Hello, this is Howard.”

  “Yo, Chief.”

  “Moretz?”

  “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything. I wouldn’t call on a weekend unless it was important.”

  The other reporters never called on weekends. For that matter, I could never find them when I needed them. Our Monday edition was usually soft because we tried to round up everything that morning.

  Not only was it the start of the week, and therefore sources were likely to be late getting to the office, but Monday was a favorite for holidays, sick days, and vacations. The chances of getting a return phone call were almost as bad then as on Friday afternoon.

  “I appreciate your calling, John. What’s up?”

  “You may have heard about the head-on collision last night.”

  “Yeah.” I said it as if I slept with a scanner by my bed, but in truth, I enjoyed my down time as much as anybody. I just didn’t have as much of it as my reporters did, so I cherished it more. Or so I told myself. Farmville, e-mail, and that novel I’d been tinkering with for a decade were such pressing responsibilities.

  “One of them died and the other is probably getting sized for a toe tag this very minute.”

  “Damn. Where are you?”

  “The hospital. I drove in to check on their conditions.”

  The waitress came over and refilled the mayor’s coffee cup. She frowned at me and tapped her order pad. She had a faint, middle-aged mustache that grew more prominent when her face creased. I ducked back to the phone. “How did you get past the front desk? With these new federal privacy regulations, they’re not supposed to give out any patient information.”

  “They will if you’re a family member.”

  I didn’t know whether to kick him for risking the Picayune’s reputation or put him in for a raise. “Did you get bedside?”

  “Close enough. I overheard the doctor talking to one of the real relatives. Massive head trauma.”

  I wondered how we would reveal the information without acknowledging we’d violated integrity standards. Wait a sec. What was I thinking, “integrity”? This was a newspaper, for Christ’s sake.

  “Okay, get the names and basics and we’ll go front page with it. Too bad we didn’t get crash scene photos.”

  “Chief,” he said, as if he were talking to a moron. Or, since morons no longer existed in this politically correct era, to a person of intellectual difference.

  “You got art?”

  “I was there within 15 minutes.”

  I wondered if Moretz had a scanner at home. I’d tried to get the other reporters to carry portable scanners that were the size of walkie-talkies, but they’d balked. They considered it to be a version of house arrest. “You’ve got a knack for this kind of thing,” I said.

  “I was driving down N.C. 16 when I saw two blue-light specials heading east. An ambulance right on the tails of the cop cars. So I figured it was pretty big.”

  “A Jeep, right? They throw bodies like hot popcorn.” The mayor and Long had abandoned their breakfast and were glued to my end of the conversation.

  “Yep, and they had the Jaws of Life out for the pickup. Opened the truck like a can of tuna and pulled the pieces out. I got rescue pics, not much blood but the suggestion of major carnage.”

  “Sweet.” I wanted to head to the office and start work on the package, but I didn’t see any advantage since we were 48 hours from the next edition. “Too bad we can’t keep the update off the radio.”

  “I’ll tell the front desk that the family wishes to keep conditions confidential until we’ve notified all next of kin. That might buy us a couple of days if we’re lucky.”

  “Damn, Moretz, are you sure you weren’t an editor in a previous life? Or maybe a Russian spy?”

  “If you want to outsmart a rat, you have to spread a little cheese.”

  I didn’t know what that odd little aphorism said about the state of the media. “All right, I’ll look for about 20 inches on it.”

  “You got it, boss.” Moretz hung up and I tucked my cell phone back in its warm pocket.

  Long pointed his greasy fork at me. “You know something, don’t you?”

  I calculated whether stroking an advertiser was worth the risk of his spreading the details before we could publish the exclusive. Hell, he wasn’t that big of an advertiser. And, like any advertiser, he would come running with the checkbook if the public was talking about us.

  “Just some leads,” I said. “We won’t have anything solid until Monday.”

  I almost dared him to listen to the radio for more details, but that would have been risky. Long had an account at the local AM station, and they let him in the studio for occasional interviews.

  All the Picayune could offer was free column space, but then he would have to write a column. You have to really dislike someone to impose a sentence of involuntary and uncompensated writing on them.

  Mayor Wilbanks grinned as if he were game to the inside joke, or maybe he had heartburn from the sausage gravy. Either way, I’d lost my appetite in my excitement.

  “Sorry, guys, I’d better head to the office. News never sleeps, you know.” Which was a weird thing to be saying just after breakfast, but they both nodded as if I’d just delivered stone tablets from Mount Sinai.

  Saturday in the Picayune office was like down time at a mortuary. The place was dark and dusty, and the air pump was shut down. Nobody had any business there, with the possible exception of a gassed-up Fred Lance dragging in with high school results.

  I enjoyed the peace and quiet. I had time to prep the basic layout of the Monday edition, check my e-mail and phone messages, and zoom a few of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition teasers.

  I’m not a keyboard drooler, I just feel it’s an important part of our First Amendment rights. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

  I was cruising a site based on keywords that can’t be printed in a general-audience publication when the entryway lights flicked on. I clicked up an innocuous Web page, something that would pass muster even with the prudish overlords, and pretended to be busy with paperwork.

  Moretz passed my glass window and flashed me two fingers, which would have counted for a peace sign a few decades ago but might mean scissors-cuts-paper these days. He sat at his computer and bent over the keyboard as if it owed him sexual pleasure. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything.

  I went through a couple of letters to the editor. Ruby Wallace had mailed her latest government conspiracy piece, so convoluted that you couldn’t tell whether she was for or against the current administration, only that aliens were probably involved somehow, because she had seen them posing with Clinton on the cover of The Weekly World News.

  By now, everybody knew that Clinton must have been under the influence of celestial powers, otherwise the stock market wouldn’t have soared so high during his terms in office, only to bottom out once he headed for the lecture circuit and eight-figure book deals. In the World According To Wallace, “big government is the enemy of J. Christ,” and beware to any who doubted.

  Luckily, the paper had a policy of requiring a two-week cooling-off period between letters, so I tucked Rudy into my “Hold” file and pushed on.

  Moretz came to my office door and stood like a military courier. Ordinarily, I like my reporters to keep the lines of communication open, because they tended to be lone wolves in a job that served the common flock and frowned upon individual expression.

  But Moretz was starting to bug me a bit. It wasn’t that he wanted approval or even acknowledgement from me; I got the feeling that he served a higher purpose, one uns
een by those of us who wanted a decent paycheck and maybe an occasional promotion.

  “Word up, Moretz?” I said, in corny, outdated slang.

  “Word is definitely up,” he said, peering at me beneath those Antonio Banderas eyebrows. “I’ve got your crash story in, plus a possible sex offense case.”

  “Sex offense?” I glanced at my computer screen, wondering if I’d deleted the history of site visits.

  “Get this—a Sycamore Shade man was just busted for statutory rape and exploitation of a minor.”

  “Great, but that’s not too unusual. We get one of those every few months.”

  “With video?”

  “What are talking about, Moretzy?”

  “The guy filmed himself with a juvenile. More than once, according to the warrant. The cops seized seven hours worth of tapes.”

  “Jesus Hemingway Christ, you’re not telling me we have us an amateur porno ring?”

  Moretz grinned as if he’d swallowed the cat that ate the canary. “The guy apparently is a major pervert. Better yet, you might recognize the name—Wilbanks.”

  “Wilbanks? The mayor?”

  “His son.”

  “No way. I just ate breakfast with the mayor, and he didn’t have a care in the world, except maybe getting reelected next year.”

  “That was then, and this is now. The warrant’s twenty minutes old.”

  I’d grown to admire Moretz’s newshound attitude in our short time together, and had planned to have him lead a workplace seminar on how to tap sources. I figured Baker and Westmoreland could learn a thing or two, or at least use their resentment as temporary motivation.

  Now I was actually viewing Moretz as a threat to my job. All I had over the other staff members, besides my receding hairline, was the ability to do page layout, and I fully believed any monkey could be trained to operate the software. “How did you hook up? That kind of bust doesn’t come in over the scanner.”

  “I was talking with the sheriff about the car crash when he dished the scoop. I think he likes me.”

  Moretz wasn’t all that likeable, but he did radiate a certain kind of disturbed charisma.