Dead Last

by Amanda Lamb

  “Okay. But just today. When is Keri coming back?”

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!” Janie’s words flowed out on the tide of a deep exhale. “Dex would have my ass if I couldn’t talk you into it. We’ll put zebra lady off a day or two. Keri is back tomorrow. At least, I’m pretty sure. Like ninety percent sure. I’ll check and let you know for sure.”

  “She’s only been here for a nanosecond. I can’t believe she’s already off.”

  North Dakota? Maybe that was it. A long way to go for a wedding.

  “I hear you, girl. I’ll send you the address of where to meet Buster. And of course you already know this, but you’re live in the noon show.”

  I swallowed hard and felt the old stress flooding back into my body. On my animal beat, I only had to do one story a day, but on the crime beat I could be live in every show without a moment to breathe, let alone a moment to eat or go to the bathroom. It was a level of stress I didn’t miss and didn’t want to experience for even one day.

  “Of course.” I hung up as she was still trying to tell me something else. I had inherited Kojak’s bad habit of hanging up on people while they were still talking when I was in a hurry. I was in crisis mode again. I could feel every muscle in my body tense. I sped up my getting-ready routine. I then realized that I had not even read the latest Body Found email. I scrolled down the email list on my phone and pulled it up.

  White male found face down in a ditch, partially covered with brush in the western part of the city. A single gunshot to the head. Foul play is suspected. No one in custody. No identity on the victim yet.

  The whole mess with Juan, Tanner, Maria and Suzanne moved down a few spots on my triage list. They would all have to wait, because I had a dead body to attend to.

  11

  Red Clay

  The first thing I noticed was the thick red mud caked to everyone’s shoes. It had rained over the weekend, and because we were on the edge of a farm, there was a lot more soggy churned-up ground under our feet than pavement.

  A familiar sea of Oak City uniformed officers milled around, each with their own well-defined roles. Most of them were assigned to keep people from going past the yellow police tape tied from tree-to-tree as a perimeter around the crime scene. There was also a truck from the local CSI unit for Tirey County parked next to the taped-off area. They sent analysts to collect physical evidence for investigators. In a way, it felt surprisingly comfortable to be back in this place, in this role I was so used to. At the same time, it felt wrong to be so comfortable at a murder scene.

  “What’s up?” I tapped Buster on the shoulder, trying not to startle him.

  He was hunched over his camera which was perched on the tripod next to him. I could tell by his level of concentration that he was shooting something in the distance far beyond the yellow tape.

  “Well, look who the cat dragged out here. Miss I’m-done-with-that-crime-bullshit reporter. No rescue dogs or singing parrots here, just muck and murder.”

  Buster gave me his mischievous smile to let me know he was joking. Still there was always a grain of passive-aggressive truth in everything Buster said. He truly liked the crime beat but had reluctantly transitioned with me to the animal beat, because I think he felt sorry for me after Adam died.

  “What’s the deal? Do we have an identity on the body yet?”

  “Nope. Chief is supposed to have a presser in a few minutes. Just late enough to screw us for noon. I’m going to send it back to the station on the LiveU so they can stream it on the website and the editors can pull a soundbite there. I won’t have time to turn it around for noon.”

  A LiveU was a portable transmission device the size of a backpack that allowed us to do live television anywhere we could get a cellular signal. It meant that we no longer had to work out of cumbersome live-trucks with huge masts that needed a flat surface and a generous amount of room to operate safely. They were also rolling billboards that gave us no anonymity, like our unmarked news cars did.

  “This looks like a pretty swanky neighborhood next to this old guy’s farm. Homes starting in the $800,000’s.” I gestured to the stately houses in the distance, behind a big sign near the entrance.

  “Yes, even rich people get murdered sometimes. That will make it an even bigger story,” Buster said, without looking up from his camera’s viewfinder.

  “We don’t know it’s a rich person. Someone could have dumped the body here. He could have been meeting someone here for a drug deal. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Whatever.” Buster glanced back at me and then returned to his viewfinder.

  I scanned the crowd of police officers for a friendly face, someone I not only knew, but someone who might tell me something. I wished Kojak was here, but I didn’t see him. He rarely came to crime scenes anymore since he was a supervisor in the Major Crimes Unit. Instead of coming himself, he sent his detectives to get their hands dirty, and then waited for them to bring back the evidence. I decided I would give it a little while and then call him to see if he knew anything yet. Information had a way of flowing to him quickly after a body was found.

  “Folks, the chief is ready to do the press conference. Is it okay to have her right here?” The police department’s public information officer, Fred, motioned to a spot at the edge of the crime scene tape.

  When no one answered him, he went ahead and ushered Chief Lydia Blankenstock up to the edge on the other side of the tape. Unfortunately, Fred wasn’t well-respected by the media because he was often late getting out information to reporters, usually just after their deadlines had passed. When you called him to ask when the information would be released, he could be difficult. He was one of those communications officers who just didn’t get it. The media was so easy to manage. If he would just give us something in a timely manner, we would all leave him alone. But he always dragged the process out and made it difficult for himself.

  The photographers leaned in to clip their wireless microphones on the chief’s starched white collar, while Fred stood by her side, looking annoyed, as if he were doing us a big favor by making the her available. Even though it was daylight, photographers turned on their lights to illuminate her because the sun was behind the chief, making her look like a silhouette on camera.

  Lydia was a tough talking chief from Pittsburgh, who had landed in North Carolina after an exhaustive search when the previous longtime chief died of a heart attack during the city’s annual Christmas parade. He was on a float in a big red armchair, all wrapped up in a heavy blanket, wearing a Santa Claus hat and sunglasses. The rumor was that he was dead for a good mile before anyone realized it.

  While the former chief was a tall, lanky good-old-boy, Lydia was a petite fireplug with short blonde hair peeking out beneath her snug blue police cap. She always looked professional in her crisp white uniform shirt, her dark blue pressed pants, and her shiny black combat boots. Many local police chiefs preferred to wear business suits, but Lydia was always in her uniform. I always felt like she was trying to send a message to the rank and file that she was one of them. For this, and other reasons, I had come to respect her. She was a straight talker with the media and usually made herself accessible, despite Fred’s consistent interference.

  “Okay, we’re going to get started, people,” the chief said in a baritone voice, far below the registers of most women her size. Fred looked hurt, like he wanted to be the one to start the press conference. One photographer had just pulled up and was frantically setting up his tripod, but the chief was not going to wait for anyone. Buster, as usual, was in place and had been ready to go for several minutes. Lydia looked into the center of the gaggle of cameras and began without referring to the small white piece of paper in her left hand that appeared to contain handwritten notes.

  “A woman walking with her baby in a stroller this morning came upon what she thought was possibly a homeless man passed out in a ditch at the edge of Johnson’s Farm. She noticed him because there were vultures
circling the location.” The chief put her right hand up in a stop motion as one of the reporters from the back of the group tried to ask a question. “Let me finish. Then I will take questions.”

  “As she got closer, she realized, given the position of the body, it was face down, and because he was partially covered with brush, that the man was most likely deceased. Fearing for her safety and the safety of her child, she immediately turned around and started walking towards her house while calling 911. We will be making a recording of that call available to you later this afternoon.”

  The reporters were holding their phones up and capturing the press conference live on Facebook. The photographers were also streaming the press conference back to their stations on their LiveUs so it could be used on the air and on their news websites, simultaneously. The news war was no longer confined to the television set. It was twenty-four-seven on every platform. Winning meant owning every battle—on television and online. Today I was back in the fray, fighting for a distracted world’s attention just like everyone else.

  “Do you have an identity on the person yet?” I said, and raised my hand when the chief took a breath.

  I figured it was time to intervene. We had fourteen minutes until the noon news.

  “No, we have not identified him at this point. He was not carrying any identification on his person. There are some things on his person we believe will help to identify him fairly quickly. All I can tell you right now is that it is a man. We are having our composite artist draw a picture of him to release to the media to help us with identification and to figure out if anyone witnessed him in this area in the past twenty-four hours. We hope to have that completed later today and to release it to the media.”

  The chief scanned the group of ten or so journalists for more hands. I raised mine again and jumped in. I wasn’t trying to monopolize her, but the clock was ticking.

  “Was this a self-inflicted gunshot wound, or are you treating this as a homicide?”

  “Based on several factors which I cannot discuss right now because they are part of the ongoing investigation, we are currently treating this as a homicide. If anyone in this neighborhood last night or this morning and heard or saw anything, please call us. Thank you, folks, for your attention. That’s all I have for you right now.”

  With that, Lydia turned and walked into a circle of detectives in suits, who looked like they were waiting impatiently for her undivided attention. During the press conference, they kept looking over at her as if they were willing her to finish. It was no secret that a lot of cops distrusted the media, even hated us. I didn’t take it personally. I figured they could get in line behind all the other media-haters.

  I now watched Lydia lean in with her ear, cupping it with her hand so she could listen more closely to what one of the investigators was whispering to her. She tugged on her police cap with her hand, pulling it tight on her head. Then I saw it, it was imperceptible unless you were watching closely—a small shake of her head. Even from behind I could tell the chief was in disbelief about what she had just been told.

  O

  While I was still on the air, answering the anchor’s questions, I started thinking about what my next move was going to be.

  “Do they have an identity on the person yet?” the anchor, Marti said.

  “Not at this point,” I said, slightly annoyed.

  Was she not listening? I had covered this at the top of my report.

  “They plan to put out a composite sketch of the victim later today to see if the public can help identify him.”

  I needed to find the witness who found the body. That was my logical next step.

  “Did they say how the person died?” Marti asked, a little too cheerfully.

  “A preliminary report indicates that he was shot, but of course an autopsy will determine the cause definitively.”

  The witness must live close by if she had a baby. She wouldn’t be walking that far.

  I had to admit I was energized by the assignment in a way that I hadn’t been by my work since Adam’s death. Sure, I had a lot of fun with the animal stories and got to be more creative than I did with my crime stories, but they didn’t light a fire under me like the one I was experiencing today, the slow-burn that made me want to find answers. It made me feel guilty, like I was going back on a silent promise I had made to myself and to Adam.

  I was out of practice, that was for sure. As soon as I got off the air, my head was ticking through the list of things I needed to do to get my job done before my next deadline—the four o’clock news. Triage, triage, triage.

  Finding the woman with the stroller would be on everyone’s agenda. Would she talk to me if she was already scared for her safety? My gut told me probably not, but I had to try to find her. That was my job. My forte was making people talk in difficult situations. I had knocked on many doors over the years, where Buster had told me there was absolutely no way a person was going to talk to me.

  “Not going to happen,” he would say, as I hopped out of the car.

  “Watch me work,” I’d say.

  After a few minutes, I would come out of the house and motion him to come in and bring the camera. It happened more often than not. It involved a little bit of persuasion and a lot of luck.

  In the best-case scenario, I figured the woman who found the body might talk to me on camera, with her identity hidden. We could shoot her from behind and promise not to show her face or reveal her name or where she lived. Since this was an upper-class neighborhood, chances were slim these assurances would provide enough privacy to encourage her to go on camera.

  “Buster, there are only six houses on this street. The woman with the stroller must live in one of them. She certainly didn’t cross that busy road at the front of this neighborhood to take her baby for a walk.”

  As usual, Buster rolled his eyes. As much as he loved the crime beat, he hated knocking on strangers’ doors. Most of the time, he stayed in the car facebooking while I went door to door. I tried to explain to him that if people were willing to go on camera in a compromising situation, they might change their minds in the time it took for him to grab his camera and come inside. When I did get someone to agree to go on camera, I often had to text him repeatedly or call him because his head was buried in his phone.

  In this situation, I was also aware that all the reporters would be trying to do the same thing. There was no time to mess around. Triage. I started walking toward the houses while Buster got in the car and drove along next to me so he could stay in the air conditioning as long as possible. He reminded me of a parent on Halloween that followed his children from driveway to driveway, waiting for them to return with their candy.

  I looked down at my cute black flats and realized they were now coated in the thick red mud from the crime scene. I half-heartedly scraped the bottoms of them on the pavement to no avail. They were caked with the stuff. I decided if I was invited into someone’s home, they would have to come off.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another reporter behind me, heading towards the same row of homes. I forgot about the mud and started hustling toward the houses, making sure I was more than a few steps ahead of him.

  I rang the bell at each house, listening for footsteps, looking for a rustle of the blinds. It wasn’t unusual for people to peer through the blinds at us and then decide not to open the door. There were no cars in any of the driveways, but they all had garages, so it was still possible someone was home. I also listened for dogs. Most of the people whose homes we approached had dogs, dogs that went wild when I rang the doorbell. If the dogs were loud and no one came to the door, it meant either no one was home, or they were ignoring me.

  The other reporter was not far behind me now. He was going to each door, one at a time, right after me. He stood back a few feet and patiently waited until I shoved my business card in the door jambs. He then approached with his own card. At least he wasn’t trying to jump ahead of me. He probably knew that if I got my p
roverbial foot in a door, he could probably come in behind me and get an interview as well. I was the warm-up act.

  I was getting ready to give up on getting anything, when a door on a large Craftsman home opened just a few inches. I could barely see the young woman through the crack between the frame and the open door. Her dark eyes darted back and forth nervously, looking past me, over my shoulder. Without turning around, I knew she was probably looking at my shadow—the other reporter.

  A small dog hopped and yipped at her feet, barred from escaping through the narrow opening, by her legs that were blocking the way.

  “No, Rascal, no.” She looked down at the dog and then turned her gaze back to me.

  “Ma’am, I’m Maddie Arnette from Channel 8 News. I’m looking for—”

  “I know what you’re looking for, and I know who you are,” she replied with more concern than anger. “I can’t help you. You need to understand, this is a very scary situation for all of us here in this neighborhood, and I have a baby. I can’t risk talking to you.”

  “I get it. I really do,” I said, thinking about how lucky I was that she was still talking to me. She could have easily slammed the door in my face. Many people did slam the door in my face. It came with the job. But when someone kept talking to me, it was always a good sign that I might be invited in.

  Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the other reporter loitering at the end of the driveway, just in front of Buster’s SUV, waiting to see if the woman would let me in. It was exactly what I would be doing if I were in his situation. I couldn’t blame him. Pressure to get the interview made us all desperate at times. It was this desperation that often made me feel dirty.

  One time I was sent to get an interview with the parents of a woman who had abandoned an infant on the subway in New York City. They lived in a small North Carolina town several hours away from Oak City. We went on a fishing expedition, hoping we might get them on camera. Most of the time, we couldn’t afford to gamble on a possible interview, given the need to meet constant deadlines and fill the newscasts. But in this case the network, CNN, and our network affiliates, were also very interested in us getting this interview and sharing it with them. So we went.