The Woman in the News

by K. N. Casper

  “She sprained her ankle this morning and is using crutches. Clark’s scheduled to do a feature interview with Coach Hillman next week, so he figured this trip would give him a chance to discuss it with him.”

  She frowned. “What are we doing to cover the story?”

  Renn offered her a rundown of the assignments he’d given out. She paused, her eyes measuring him. “I’ll be in my office. Let me know as soon as you learn anything more.”

  He nodded. She gave another cursory glance at the busy newsroom, then entered the stairwell to the second floor. She’d barely disappeared from view when Sal Bufano, the general manager, arrived.

  “What’s the latest, Renn?” he asked.

  Renn repeated his report.

  “Why is Clark with them?”

  He explained about Marlee’s sprained ankle.

  “This is terrible. What can I do to help?” Bufano asked.

  “Renn,” Peggy called out, “I have the mayor on the line.”

  “How about handling some of the high-profile calls? Peggy can deal with the ones from the general public, but if you could help her with—”

  “Glad to. I’ll take that, Peg.” Sal hastily poured a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner, parked himself at the desk behind the receptionist and picked up the phone. “Good evening, Mr. Mayor.”

  Mickey Grimes waved from across the room. Renn hurried over. The news anchor finished scribbling a note, thanked the caller and hung up. “That was my contact in the sheriff’s office. They’re pretty sure there have been fatalities.”

  Renn pressed his fingers to his temple, as the image flashed through his mind of teenage boys’ dead bodies lined up side by side on the cold, wet ground. “Any names?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t want any speculation on the air, not about life and death.” Renn looked over at the switchboard, which was all lit up. “The community is tense enough.”

  Grimes nodded. “The police are bringing the parents of team members to the high-school auditorium so they can all be briefed together about developments.”

  “Good. We can report that in our next bulletin.” Renn tried to imagine the agony the families of the victims must be going through. As a reporter, commentator and news anchor himself, he’d covered many tragedies over the years, but he’d never found words that made it easier to deal with the death or injury of loved ones, especially children. At least in this case, the next of kin wouldn’t be alone.

  “We need to get a team over there to cover the human-interest angle. Who’s available?”

  “Just Marlee and me.”

  He peered over, not for the first time, at the editing booth where she and Wayne Prentice were reviewing tapes. She was sitting at the moment with her leg up on the end of a work table, but in a minute she’d stand and walk to another shelf of cassettes. Judging by the way she adjusted the foot, her ankle was killing her. He’d send her home if he thought she’d go, but he knew she wouldn’t. Clark was more like a father than a colleague. Renn envied her that. Close friendships were exceptional in this business, which thrived on competition. To have someone you could completely trust was rare. If Clark was one of the fatalities, how would she handle it? He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

  “She’s in no condition to go over there,” he told Mickey. He wasn’t thinking as much about her physical limitations as the emotional shape she’d be in if Clark turned out to be among the dead. “Take Wayne and file your report live from the auditorium. Marlee can handle things at this end.”

  The newsman nodded. “If Clark is—”

  “She’ll be better off here. Now, get going.”

  The ten o’clock broadcast was devoted almost exclusively to the mishap. Mickey Grimes, reporting from the high school, repeated the story they’d broken earlier and followed it with interviews of friends and family members assembled there, tensely waiting for word of their loved ones.

  From the studio Marlee showed highlights of the game against the Del Rio Devils that Wayne Prentice had put together earlier. Coyote Springs had won, but the victory now seemed unimportant.

  MARLEE COULDN’T stop trembling. Notes she wrote to herself were illegible. When she stood up on her good foot, she was so weak she nearly collapsed.

  Clark would never have been on that bus if it hadn’t been for her. She’d been the one scheduled to go to Del Rio to cover the game against the Devils, but on her usual three-mile run this morning she’d tripped and twisted her ankle badly enough to send her to the emergency room. Nothing broken, as she’d feared. The medics had bound the swollen joint and given her crutches, with instruction to stay off the foot for the next week. Even with the Tylenol she was taking, the pain throbbed mercilessly when she didn’t keep the leg elevated.

  Clark had been upset and solicitous about her when she’d hobbled in at two o’clock, her regular time. Since the basketball game was the last of the regular season and would determine if Coyote Springs got to play in the statewide finals, his first impulse had been to send Wayne Prentice, the photographer, by himself to shoot video. Not an ideal solution, especially if Coyote Springs was victorious, but at least Marlee would have something to show on the late news.

  Then, at the last moment, Clark had decided to make the trip himself, saying it would give him a chance to discuss his upcoming interview with Coach Hillman. He and Wayne had taken the station’s van to the border town, but Clark had sent the cameraman back after the first half, in time to edit footage for the ten o’clock broadcast. Clark himself elected to hang around and return home with the team on the school bus. If Marlee had gone as planned, she would have come back with Wayne, and Clark would still be here. Instead, because of her clumsiness, he’d been caught in a flash flood. If anything happened to him, how would she ever face his wife, Audrey, and the rest of the family?

  Marlee wouldn’t even be here if not for Clark. He’d been her broadcast journalism professor at Texas University at Coyote Springs and the person she naturally gravitated toward for help and encouragement, like the father she wished she had. They’d kept in touch following her graduation, after she’d moved to Austin with her new husband to start her own career. Three years later her contract as a sports producer ended about the same time a sports reporter job came open at KNCS-TV. Clark had urged her to apply for it. Coyote Springs was a smaller market than the capital city, and some people might see her coming back as a sign of failure. But, as Clark had pointed out, it was an excellent opportunity to expand her experience and get on camera. She’d learned so much under his tutelage. He’d also taken her into his family and made her feel a part of it.

  She had tried to call Audrey to find out if she’d heard from Clark, but the line was always busy…except the last time. She’d gotten the answering machine, probably because, like the parents of all the team members, Audrey had gone to the school auditorium. Marlee had become angry enough to yell at Renn when she found out he’d sent Mickey Grimes there instead of her. She wanted to be with Audrey and the other families, but Renn had pointed to her injured foot and insisted she stay at the station, ready to go on the air with the next breaking news.

  An excuse. That was all it was. He’d already made it abundantly clear he didn’t think much of her as a sports reporter. Now he was saying she couldn’t handle this situation because it was too personal. She was a professional, dammit, not some flighty schoolgirl. Even if…if Clark was one of the victims— No, she wouldn’t go there. He was safe. He had to be.

  IT WAS NEARLY midnight when Renn received official word and the full story could be released. Grimes was still at the assembly hall, so Marlee took his seat on the news set, while everyone, including the executives, crowded into the studio and stood behind the camera in total silence.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she began soberly, “the Texas Department of Public Safety has just informed us that three people were lost and are confirmed dead in the flash flood that capsized the bus bringing the Coyote Springs
High School basketball team home from Del Rio. They are James Brookshire, seventeen, Mamoud Stone, sixteen, and—” she paused for a second “—KNCS-TV’s sports director and television anchor, Clark Van Pelt.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  FAYE WARREN CLIMBED the carpeted stairs to her office, surprised when she realized her knees were shaking. Clark’s death was a shock she’d never anticipated. Life was so damn unfair. The sports director had been the one person at KNCS she’d genuinely respected and admired, the one man she felt she could trust to be true to his word. He was only a few years her senior, yet she’d looked up to him the way she’d looked up to her father. Like her father, he’d left abruptly, without a word of farewell, without ever giving her a chance to tell him how she felt about him.

  That was probably part of her attraction to Taggart. He was the least likely candidate for father figure she’d ever met. More like a bad-boy kid brother, except she didn’t have any brothers, and she and Tag were having sex. Very hot sex.

  She crumpled into her chair, took a deep breath and picked up the phone. He answered on the third ring, his voice muffled from sleep.

  “He’s dead, Tag,” she said. “Clark’s dead. Did you see the special bulletin?”

  She’d called him earlier in the evening with news of the bus accident, half expecting him to come into the station like almost everyone else who worked there. But he hadn’t. Probably just as well. She suspected most people at KNCS knew about their relationship, but it wouldn’t have helped her image if she’d cried on his shoulder when they’d received word of Clark’s death.

  “I fell back to sleep,” Tag said. “He drowned?”

  “Trying to save a couple of the kids. God, what must his wife be going through.”

  Faye’s own marriage, when she was twenty-two, had lasted only four years. She’d dreamed of growing old with Clayton Abernathy, surrounded by children and grandchildren, but when he found out she couldn’t have kids, he’d promptly divorced her. She’d loved Clay with all her heart, but it hadn’t made any difference. Love didn’t conquer anything—not in her life. It just left her vulnerable, and she was tired of being hurt by other people. Dreaming was a mistake, she’d learned, because eventually you had to wake up.

  Taggart didn’t respond to her comment, but then, what could he possibly say? Platitudes didn’t change anything, either.

  “Where are you now?” he asked after a long pause.

  “Still at the office.”

  “Instead of going home, why don’t you come on over here?”

  The invitation was tempting. She wanted to be held, needed a man’s body curled up against her to assure her she could feel something besides the pain of loss, the agony of loneliness. The men in her life all disappeared—her father, her husband, not to mention the guys who had followed for various lengths of time. And now Clark. Each left her to grieve and ask the unanswerable question: why? That could be another reason she’d hooked up with Taggart this time. He was young—six years her junior—and strong. Realizing she wanted to experience his virility tonight shamed her.

  “You don’t have to be alone,” Taggart added.

  He understood. Maybe what she was feeling was normal after all.

  “Besides,” he added, “we have to work out a strategy, start planning.”

  “Strategy? Plan? What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Faye. With Clark gone, the sports director job is open. I want it. You shouldn’t have any problem giving it to me now.”

  A good man was dead and Taggart was only interested in the spoils, the opportunity it opened for him.

  “You bastard,” she snarled. “He hasn’t even been buried yet, and already you’re—”

  “Whoa, sweetheart. Calm down. Sorry if that makes me sound callous—”

  It’s always about him, she thought, and immediately reprimanded herself. She was being unfair. He’d lost a colleague, too. To see things objectively in the face of tragedy and death was hard for anyone.

  “But you can’t tell me,” he continued, “that you haven’t thought about what you’re going to do now that he’s gone.”

  What he said was true, which only reinforced her sense of guilt. Clark had been a legend at KNCS-TV long before she got there. Ensuring his shoes were properly filled was now her responsibility. Taggart was the logical choice.

  “I don’t want to talk about it tonight,” she told him, without denying the truth of his statement.

  “Come on over anyway,” he said. “You don’t have to sleep alone.”

  Did that make her some sort of monster? A colleague had just died, and she was fixating on sex, as if it alone could prove she was still alive, still desirable. Is this what they called a midlife crisis? Maybe if she focused on work, on hiring Taggart as the new sports director…

  “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.” Maybe she could make this man stay, faults and all.

  Wednesday, February 12

  UNLIKE THE ROOMS downstairs in the sprawling two-story TV station, the general manager’s office on the second floor had windows. Also unlike the work spaces below, with their commercial-grade carpets and cheap wall paneling, the executive suites were elegantly appointed.

  Sal Bufano waited until Renn and Faye had taken seats across from his massive desk. “I thought Marlee’s eulogy for Clark was beautiful,” he said.

  Faye had suggested Taggart give it for the station, but Audrey Van Pelt had adamantly refused.

  Renn wasn’t quite sure how Marlee managed to keep from breaking down during her emotional tribute, one that had most of the women audibly sniffling and a few of the men tearing up, but she had, and he admired her for it.

  “I hate funerals,” Faye Warren muttered, as she removed a blond hair from the sleeve of her black suit—a sharp contrast to the soft colors and pastels she normally wore.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” Renn said sympathetically.

  “We’re going to miss him,” Sal added. “Who would ever have imagined he’d drown in a school bus. I mean—it’s so unlikely. He certainly had a lot of friends and admirers. There must have been over a thousand people at the church, and the cortege to the cemetery held up traffic for miles.”

  “It’s time to move on,” Faye said, obviously uncomfortable with the discussion.

  “The question now,” Sal said, “is whether we bring in someone from outside to replace Clark or we promote from within.”

  “We move Taggart into the anchor slot,” Faye said, as if the answer were obvious.

  Renn cringed. As the news director, the sports department came under his immediate supervision. Theoretically, the decision was his, and there was no way he wanted the opinionated sports analyst—whose personality traits ranged from temperamental self-importance to smug condescension—taking over the sports-director job. Anyone would be better than Taggart.

  “He doesn’t have the journalism background,” Renn offered.

  Faye crossed one shapely leg over the other, not bothering to tug down the hem of her skirt, and stabbed Renn with a sharp glare. “Taggart knows more about sports than anyone we’re likely to hire.”

  “How about Chris Berman or Al Michaels?” Renn suggested, his expression deadpan. No way would either of the two nationally known sports commentators come to modest KNCS-TV.

  “Get real,” she scoffed.

  Sal nodded. “We also have a budget.”

  Renn suppressed a smile. The general manager was an all-right guy, but he was essentially a bean counter, used to dealing with numbers rather than personalities. Subtleties of humor tended to slip past him.

  “Do you have anyone else in mind?” he asked.

  Renn had been mulling it over since the day after Clark was killed. Six months earlier he would have recoiled at what he was about to propose, but if nothing else, it would buy him time to find someone better qualified. “Marlee Reid.”

  Faye’s mouth curved down in exaggerated disdain. “As I said before, get real.”

/>   “Our surveys and focus groups give her high marks for viewer recognition. Audiences identify with her. She’s also got camera presence.”

  “I suppose Taggart doesn’t?” Faye scorned. “Anyway, she’s too young.”

  Renn crooked a brow. “I didn’t know we practiced age discrimination.”

  Faye shot him a withering glance, while Sal shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The D word was an absolute no-no.

  “I’m not referring to her age,” Faye replied with condescending patience. “I’m referring to her years of experience.”

  “Actually, her credentials are better than Taggart’s.” Renn counted off on his fingers. “A degree in broadcast journalism with a specialty in sports, three years as a sports producer in Austin and two years here as a reporter and weekend anchor under the direct supervision of Van Pelt, not to mention her filling in for him when he hasn’t been here.”

  “Why did she leave Austin, anyway?” Sal asked. “They’re a bigger market than we are.”

  “She wanted airtime and couldn’t get it there. Moving to a smaller market early in a career isn’t unheard of, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.” Renn turned to Faye. “Van Pelt was smart to hire her. She’s good and she’s getting better.”

  “This isn’t The Learning Channel. Let her hone her skills on her own. We’re not a school for amateurs but a commercial television station with a responsibility to our viewers to put our best assets on display.”

  An obvious comeback was on Renn’s lips, but no use wasting a cheap shot or stirring up a hornet’s nest with personal attacks.

  “We also have an obligation to our owners,” he said, “to produce in the most economical way possible.”

  “Are you saying if we hire Reid for the anchor slot we can pay her less?” Sal asked, interested but leery of the proposition, especially after the spector of prejudice had been introduced.

  “I’d offer her a three-year contract with a substantial initial pay raise and annual pay increases after that. Taggart, I suspect, will demand as much or more than Clark was drawing simply because he considers himself a celebrity.”