Scott Nicholson Library, Vol. 4 (Boxed Set)

by Scott Nicholson

  A yawner even for the people whose names were in the articles. Sex and death, those great marketing tools for the ages, were entirely absent. We didn’t even have a dog photo, for heaven’s sake.

  I always arrive late on Tuesdays. That’s my “me” morning, when I do things like sleep in or go to the waffle shop and pump the locals. I’m a football fan, Tennessee Titans, and they had played on “Monday Night Football” and lost by just enough points to keep me up until one. I’m not a big drinker but football and Budweiser go hand in hand. Must be that media brainwashing we all hear about.

  When I strolled into the Picayune’s sheet-metal, prefab walls, Moretz was already at his desk. The surface was clean except for a single notepad opened beside his telephone. The police scanner sat on the cubicle divider, broadcasting its hiss across the building, occasional cop-speak cutting in.

  Baker and Westmoreland were late as usual, even later than I was. Let’s face it, they were alkies. The tradition of journalism is that reporters keep a fifth in their bottom desk drawers. My guys kept theirs in their hip pockets. But we’re family, at least until the bottom line requires the elimination of a position.

  This Moretz guy, though, he was on the ball. It’s easy when you’re fresh meat, not worn down by salary, but he had a sharpened pencil and a cup of coffee and his computer wasn’t logged into his online-dating Web site. Good signs, all.

  “Morning, Johnny Boy,” I said, though I usually try to refrain from fraternization. First day, I figured we’d be equals.

  “Hi, Chief,” he said. “I got a bead on a potential drug arrest.”

  I nodded. Drug arrest. Big whoop-dee-doo. Crime brief, page two, maybe three column inches. I needed front-page stuff. “Anything else?”

  Moretz turned to me, and his black eyes flashed just the faintest flicker of red. Must have been those three extra Buds I’d consumed after my two-drink limit. Or else the latent effects of contamination from the morning’s sausage biscuit.

  “Deadline’s tonight?” he asked.

  “We can hold the presses if it’s something good, except the press operators will piss and moan. Otherwise, you can e-mail it so I’ll get it in the morning.”

  The scanner crackled and the communications op, who sounded like a 40-year-old smoker who’d failed in the phone-sex industry, broadcast a 10-50 P.I. In human language, that meant a car crash with personal injury. Moretz jotted down the address, checked the map on the wall, and was out the door before I could ask if Serena Fitz, the photographer, should tag along.

  Not that it would have done any good. Fitz was one of those artsy types, probably out trying to catch a squirrel burying a nut or some old woman digging in her flower garden. She thought “art” while I thought in squares.

  No wonder Fitz rebelled against me. But she won the Picayune a press award almost every year and showed up for high school sporting events. What else could you ask of a photographer in the digital age?

  I settled in at my desk and started to update the paper’s Web site. The scanner spat static and erupted in chatter. The 10-50 P.I. turned into a four-alarm call, with the police requesting the fire department, rescue squad, and ambulance service. Above the sirens wailing in the background, a panicked voice broke in: “Request WINGS, airlift transport.”

  Airlift transport. Serious business.

  Nobody wanted to go to the local hospital if the injury was life-threatening. Better to ride a chopper to the regional medical center a half-hour away. Much as I hated to admit it, the possibility of head trauma enthralled the editor inside me.

  2.

  Moretz came in two hours later, one of his shirttails out and his collar rumpled. My other two reporters had yet to clock in.

  “The victim was a young female,” Moretz said.

  “Victim?” I would have said “Vic,” while the perpetrator would of course have been “Perp,” but this wasn’t a lousy TV crime show, this was reality, and my eyes were killing me and my pulse was a bag of nails in my temples.

  “She died en route.”

  “En route?” Don’t tell me Yo-hann was French. They didn’t like French here in the North Carolina mountains. My readership was Freedom Fries and church socials and obituaries and animal-shelter fundraisers and the occasional gruesome, sex-related carnage.

  Moretz checked his note pad. “Serena Whitley, 22, address given as 1332 Swamp Box Road, Sycamore Shade.”

  Whitley. A name I could forget. But not Serena. The blonde journalism major with the flashy calves. The one who should have been sitting at Moretz’s desk, and with a lot more attractive bulges under the armrests, if I do say so myself. Now she was the headline instead of the byline.

  “A fatal?” I used the industry slang for “fatality” to let Moretz know we knew the language. My lips were numb but I was already picturing the layout.

  “I got a few snapshots with my digital,” Moretz said. “I didn’t focus on the body.”

  I’ll bet he didn’t. Either he was gay or he had a lot more journalistic distance than I did. “Download them and put them in the photo files.”

  “Alcohol may have been a factor.”

  “Hmm. Might be a follow-up on substance abuse later in the week.”

  “I’m all over it, Chief.”

  Chief. I liked the sound of that. I’d helmed three papers, none of them dailies, but I had this image of myself as Ed Asner in the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the tough but fair crusader for truth and justice.

  A career spiced by a healthy rise in pay along the way, even as my hairline receded. Until one day I achieved the top of my profession. Whatever that was.

  I’d always pictured a heart attack and ten column inches of cold copy, because your paper was always obliged to make the editor a “community hero” despite the fact that few people outside the Chamber of Commerce would recognize me on the street. But so much for the future. In the newspaper business, the future is already past deadline and yesterday’s news is yesterday’s news.

  “The trooper working the scene gave me a copy of his report,” John said. “They won’t have the toxicology until next week, but he said, off the record, her blood would have burned with a blue flame, the alcohol content was so high.”

  “The Picayune has a policy of never letting public officials go off the record.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have known alcohol was involved.”

  “How can we run with it? Was it in the accident report?”

  Moretz smiled, a crooked, ghastly, jagged thing, kind of like the one I saw in the mirror when I brushed my teeth. “I saw them taking beer cans from the car. Let the reader make the next logical leap.”

  I patted Moretz on the back. I usually don’t go in for male bonding crap, especially with people who work for me, but I was beginning to like this guy. Besides, throw a dog a bone once and it will come sniffing around your hand for the rest of its life.

  That day went well. My other two reporters turned in solid copy, late as usual but clean. I started work on the Wednesday edition, comforted by the knowledge of a front-page death. As the newsroom cliché goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

  The good got better, though I’d never have guessed it at the time. In my six years at the Picayune, we had struck red gold for the front page about once every two months or so. Usually it was a traffic fatality, but unless we were lucky enough to hear about it on the scanner, our coverage was spotty.

  The State Highway Patrol had a habit of letting the troopers carry accident reports around with them for days before turning them in to the communications office. Often we’d end up with nothing more than a photo of the mangled wreck hooked to a tow truck while emergency responders packed their gear.

  Learning the victim’s name was an exercise in blood-pressure management, and the chore had only gotten harder with the passage of federal privacy laws that allowed everybody to avoid giving out health-related information.

  Privacy laws were just an excuse for cops, crooks, and politicians to
hide even more stuff from the public, but the laws were packaged as “civil liberties,” so the poison pill went down sweet.

  But this time truth and justice carried the day.

  In his first trip to the plate, Moretz had scored not only the name and police report, he’d been on the scene of the crash while everything was still fresh. His copy was full of those tiny details that really bring a story alive for the reader: the University of North Carolina coffee mug that had flown from her Subaru sedan upon impact, an anonymous eyewitness who suggested Serena had been exceeding a safe speed, a photo of the sedan’s interior showing the empty beer cans.

  He even had a shot of a single white hand fallen softly open in the twisted wreckage, as if Serena had been asking a higher power why she’d had to die so violently.

  I probably wouldn’t run the beer or corpse pictures, but it was nice to have them just in case. I usually stayed within the bounds of good taste whenever possible, even though bad taste sells more papers.

  We wrapped it up and the Picayune hit the street by early afternoon the next day. The reporters sometimes go out for lunch after the paper is done, especially since they’re nearly cross-eyed from proofing and aren’t ready to stare at their computer screens yet. Fred Lance, the sports editor, was up for Tres Hombres Mexican Restaurant, but then Lance was always up for burritos and imported beer.

  The trouble was that his notorious and chronic flatulence tended to clear the office within two hours of our return, so I subtly suggested a trip to the Waffle House instead. Moretz blew us off, saying he had to check on something at the courthouse.

  I had a crime dog in the making. A reporter who would pass up a meal for a story was a definite keeper.

  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. What 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.