The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

“No, Mike!” I said. “I’m not leaving until I get the interview Bo promised me.” I looked up at Bo, doing my best not to look at the barrel of the pistol. “Bo, let Mike take Billy out to his mother. I’ll stay here, and you can tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Bo’s eyes were pools of misery. Somewhere in the back of my conscience, I felt like a rat for leading him on. Whatever Bo had to tell me probably wouldn’t be anything the public wanted to read. I tried to smile.

  “Come on, Bo. This may be the story of my life. It may make my career. I’m not leaving until you’ve told me the real reason behind all this. Mike can take Billy out.”

  Bo’s fingers gripped my shoulder. “I can’t let you hand Billy to him.”

  “I’ll carry Billy to the middle of the hall and put him down. You can go with me. Then you and I can come back over here. Mike can pick Billy up and carry him out.”

  Bo thought about it. Then he nodded and gulped. I scooped my car keys up off the bench and stood up slowly. “Okay, Mike?”

  Mike hadn’t changed position, but his body had grown tense. His hands, which had been open and imploring, had clinched into fists. “Okay,” he said.

  Bo and I moved halfway across the hall. I handed Billy the car keys, and I gave him a little kiss on the forehead as I sat him down on the floor. Then Bo pulled me back across to my bench.

  The car keys barely caught Billy’s attention. He held on to them, but he twisted around and looked after us, questioningly. Then Mike spoke, he looked toward the new voice.

  “I’m going to get him now,” Mike said.

  He moved smoothly, but rapidly, and he scooped the baby up with a quick motion. He went to the door to the foyer, but he didn’t go through it. Instead, uniformed arms reached around the corner and took Billy from him.

  “Straight to his mother,” Mike said. The phrase might not have had a subject or a predicate, but it was definitely an order.

  Then he moved smoothly back to his bench and sat down again.

  Bo gestured with his pistol. “You were supposed to leave!”

  Mike looked pained. “I can’t do that, Bo! I told you. I can’t leave a civilian in here.”

  I felt so grateful I could have cried. I didn’t have the slightest idea what Mike Svenson could do to help me, but it was great to have somebody around who was on my side. I could have kissed him. I suppose that right at that moment I would have kissed the devil himself, if he hadn’t left me alone with Bo Jenkins.

  “Bo, you’ve done what’s best for Billy,” I said. “Now you’ve got to do what’s best for yourself.”

  It was right then that we heard a bunch of yelling outside. Bo looked up. “What’s that?”

  “There’s a huge crowd outside,” I said. “You’ve drawn a lot of attention, Bo. I expect the police spokesman just announced that you’ve released Billy.”

  Bo let go of my shoulder and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’ll never see Billy again,” he said. “I’ll never see him again.”

  Not if the kid is lucky, I thought. I scooted down the bench and motioned to Bo. He sat beside me. Funny how he could cry and stand up and sit down and never stop pointing that pistol at me.

  “Listen, Bo,” I said, “if I’m going to interview you, I need my notebook. It fell in the floor when we ran into each other, and it got kicked way down the hall. I’m going to walk over there and get it.”

  Bo nodded. I stood up slowly and slowly walked down the hall, away from Mike Svenson, toward the notebook.

  This put Mike, Bo, and me in a triangle. Bo was about twenty feet from me and twenty feet from Mike, but Mike and I were around thirty-five feet apart. Bo really couldn’t keep an eye on me and on Mike at the same time.

  I glanced over my shoulder, and I saw that Mike was tensing again. Bo was looking at me. He didn’t see Mike gathering his muscles into bunches, figuratively scraping his feet in the dirt, getting ready to spring.

  I knelt and fumbled for the notebook, knocking it away, crawling toward it, picking it up and dropping it. I was shaking, and it wasn’t hard to put on a klutzy act. Maybe it wasn’t an act. And maybe because I’m a reporter—a member of the most curious class of people in the universe—I managed to scramble around so that I was facing Bo. I could see Mike, slightly behind him and to his right.

  Mike was obviously getting ready to do something. I expected to see his sports shirt turn into a cape and lift him through the air.

  “Bo!” I said. “You had a high-pressure job—responsible for the maintenance of police and sheriff’s vehicles. Lives depended on you. Was it work pressures that made you take these desperate measures? Or did something else happen? Something that made you feel—”

  The questions were stupid, but they kept Bo’s attention on me for the second it took Mike Svenson to take four long strides and reach him.

  He was at Bo’s elbow before Bo realized he had moved. Bo tried to turn the pistol toward him, but Mike was too close for Bo to stretch out his arm.

  “Hit the dirt!” Mike yelled.

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I dropped as flat as my billfold on the day before payday. I put my notebook over my head—fat lot of good that was going to do—and I peeked out from beneath it.

  Mike had Bo’s wrist, and he was shaking Bo’s hand, and the pistol it held, like a dust rag.

  “Drop it!” he said. “Drop it!”

  Bo was whimpering. He didn’t exactly drop the pistol, but it left his hand. It flew across the hall, hit the bench where Mike had been sitting and chipped a big chunk out of the oak.

  I might have expected Bo to give up then, but he began to fight harder. He and Mike grappled, and suddenly Bo twisted loose.

  By then the TAC team cops were pouring in from the foyer. Bo couldn’t get out that way, so he ran toward me. I made it to my knees before Bo reached me. He fell on his own knees in front of me, and he grabbed my shoulders. His lips were moving, but there was so much noise I couldn’t tell what he was saying.

  Then, suddenly, he pulled me against his chest, and his lips were right beside my ear. His words became clear.

  “They killed Eric,” he said. “They killed him!”

  Then the cops were on him, and they pulled him away from me.

  Bo yelled one more time as they took him away. Cops were holding his hands and his feet. He was struggling like fury, kicking and wrestling. But he looked over at me, and he screamed out one more phrase.

  “He made me help!”

  Chapter 3

  The foyer was crammed full of action then, but the crowd parted, and Mike Svenson plunged through.

  He grabbed me and swung me to my feet. He had to yell to be heard. “Are you okay?”

  “Weak with relief!”

  He shook his head. Our faces were so close we were almost rubbing noses, Eskimo style.

  “Woman, you are one class act! Cool and classy!”

  “You’re pretty cool yourself!”

  Then Coy-the-Cop appeared beside us, and Mike put me down. He began to beat Coy on the back.

  “Coy, we did it! Thanks to this lady keeping her head! Nobody hurt!”

  Coy beat Mike’s back with one arm and hugged me with the other. Chief Jameson appeared, and we all stood in a circle and jumped up and down in glee. The state cop joined the circle. For a minute I thought we were going to balance wine bottles on our heads and dance.

  Then I realized that Coy was trying to calm everybody down.

  “The media!” he said. “We’ve got to make a statement.”

  “Where’s my notebook?” I said.

  Coy laughed. “You’re on the other side of the questions this time, Nell. Everybody will want to interview you.”

  “Hell’s bells!” I said. “Let me comb my hair.”

  That remark sent Coy, Mike, the chief, everybody into hysterical l
aughter. We all knew it wasn’t really funny, but we were so high it would have taken antiaircraft fire to get us down. We were in the Alps. On trapezes at the top of the circus tent.

  Then I looked at my watch. “Sorry, Coy,” I said, “I can’t hang around for any press conference. I’ve got a deadline.”

  Coy was going to object, but Mike Svenson beckoned to one of the older cops. “Get Ms. Matthews out of here, Joe,” he said. “Take her out the back.”

  “Sure, Mike.” Joe motioned. We can get a car at the jail exit.” I scooped up my purse debris from the bench, and he led me out of the hall and hustled me down some stairs into the modern building which had been added to the back of the old school when it was remodeled for police use. We came out at the desk area that controlled entry and exit to the jail section of the Grantham PD headquarters.

  Of course, I knew all the guys on the desk, since I check the blotter five mornings a week, and they’d heard what happened, so I had to stop and be hugged and pounded on the back and join in some more exultation. I completely ignored my no-touchy-the-reporter rule.

  But I kept edging toward the back door. I was already writing my lead in my head, and I was getting antsy about the deadline for the state edition.

  Joe, my escort, told the jailer to open up. “She’s got to get to the Gazette office,” he said. “Mike Svenson said to take her out the back. Avoid that crowd in front.”

  “Sure.” The jailer started punching buttons. The door to the jail section opened, and Joe and I went in.

  The jailer yelled after us. “I mink they already got Bo Jenkins out of there.”

  Joe and I dashed down the hall, past the doors into the cell blocks, past the kitchen, past the exercise yard, toward the big garage used to load prisoners who needed transportation to courts or hospitals or other places prisoners need to go. We rushed out into a loading area, and we almost ran headlong into the side of an ambulance.

  The jailer was wrong. Bo wasn’t gone yet. He was wrapped up and securely strapped to a stretcher. Guys in white jackets that said GRANTHAM MENTAL HEALTH CENTER on the backs were loading him into the ambulance.

  At our sudden arrival, the cops surrounding the ambulance whirled around. They left a gap, and as I tried to stop my headlong rush I found myself teetering over Bo. His eyes rolled wildly. He was still completely hopped up on the pills he’d been popping and the candy bars he’d been stuffing down.

  He whimpered.

  I felt sorry for him. Exasperated, but sorry for him. Even when I remembered looking down the barrel of that pistol, Bo was a truly pitiful person. He had lost everything—his family, his job, his home. He was down and out. Strapped down and going away to be locked up for a long time.

  Everything was going great for me. I was alive, I was unharmed, I had a big story. And poor old Bo hadn’t even been interviewed, in spite of all his trouble.

  I felt so sorry for him that I leaned over his stretcher. “Bo! As soon as the doctors say it’s okay, we’ll have that interview!” I said.

  Bo lifted his head off the pillow. “They killed him,” he whispered. “They killed Eric.”

  The mental hospital attendants shoved him into the ambulance. His voice echoed from inside. “They made me cover it up! I had to do it! They lied to me!”

  Then the door slammed, and almost immediately the ambulance pulled out, escorted by two patrol cars.

  Joe was shaking his head. “That S.O.B. is plumb cuckoo,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “I’m sure looking forward to that interview. Which way’s that car?”

  Joe drove me into the Gazette’s parking garage, up to the back door, the door most employees use. There was a line of vans and pickup trucks at the loading dock, waiting for the presses to roll. A half dozen of the contractors who deliver out-of-town papers always come early and jockey around to be first in line for papers. Sometimes they sit beside their trucks in lawn chairs, watching portable television sets and arguing about sports and politics. They mostly stay inside the vans and sleep.

  As I got out of the patrol car, I saw the contractor we call “Redneck Hal”—because he’ll bend your ear for hours with a far-right brand of politics and outdated social theories if you let him—stand up and wave his Dallas Cowboys’ cap at me.

  “Hey, Nell! If you’d keep a pistol in your purse you wouldn’t get in all this trouble!”

  “If I packed heat I’d have shot you long ago!” Hal and I argue about guns all the time. He’s pro. I’m not exactly con, but I think guns should be carried only by people who really know how to use them. And I don’t.

  I ran toward the back door. The lineup of circulation vans and trucks had told me I’d probably missed the state edition. I checked my watch and realized that the presses were due to roll in thirty minutes—at ten o’clock. Would the city editor want to hold the presses for me?

  I used my electronic card to get in the back door, then ran two flights up the back stairs into the newsroom, a big, brightly lighted room dotted with pods of cluttered desks.

  My greeting in the newsroom was different from what had gone on at the Grantham PD.

  The few reporters on duty on a Saturday night gathered round, of course, but none of them yelled or pounded me on the back. That’s not our style. Tom Quincy, the city hall reporter, had the most typical reaction. “My God, Nell,” he said, “if I’d known you’d go to those lengths for a story, I’d have let you cover the planning commission.” Chuck Ewing, the weekend cop reporter, barely looked up from his terminal.

  The city editor, Ruth Borah, merely pointed at my video display terminal. Ruth’s the mother of three teenagers, and she treats the reporters the way she does her high schoolers. We’d better be in by deadline or we’re grounded. “Start hittin’ those keys,” she said.

  “Can I still make the state?” I asked.

  “State edition rolls at ten.” Ruth looked at the big clock on the back wall. She smoothed her sophisticated chignon, then ruined the effect by sticking a pencil through it. “We’ll save you a hole. See what you can come up with in fifteen minutes.”

  A hand firmly grasped my elbow, and I whirled around to face the managing editor, Jake Edwards. Jake rarely talked to mere reporters. Now I realized he was pushing me toward his office.

  “In here,” he said.

  “Jake, I haven’t got time to talk now,” I said. “I’ll miss the state edition.”

  “Forget that,” he said. “Chuck’s on the straight news story already. Ruth! Chuck’s story will do for the state.”

  He frog-marched me into his office and pushed me into the chair behind his desk. “What we want from you, Nell, is the real stuff.”

  “The real stuff?”

  “Yeah. What does it feel like to be grabbed by a guy with a gun? How did you keep your head? What did you think when he shoved that baby at you? How in God’s name did you think of cleaning that kid’s dirty nose? Did Svenson give you some sort of signal that made you hit the floor?”

  Astonishment paralyzed me. I gaped and gasped before I spoke. “How did you know all that happened?”

  Now Jake stared back at me. “Didn’t you know you were on television?”

  “Television?”

  “Yeah, that whole last episode happened right in front of the closed-circuit television that monitors the entrance to the chief’s office.”

  “You don’t mean it got out live?”

  “Hell, no! But Coy Blakely played it back for Jameson’s news conference a few minutes ago.” “Did you tape it?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want you to see it until you’ve written that story.”

  He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a box of Kleenex. “Come on, Nell. I’ve brought you in here where nobody’s going to bother you. Don’t worry about the deadline. We’ll let the state go and aim for the final home. Just start spilling your guts.�
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  I swung around to the VDT and stared at the screen. In Intro to Journalism they teach future reporters to leave their own opinions out of the stories they write. It’s an early and important lesson. Jake and I both knew that.

  “I’ve been carefully trained not to spill my guts in the newspaper,” I said.

  “Nell, any reporter can tell how long the standoff was, what the results were, what the cops say they did, where Bo Jenkins is now. That’s the straight news story. The real story is what happened to you. Being held at gunpoint has got to be the scariest thing that the average person can imagine happening. Admit it! It scared you shitless!”

  “God! Yes! I’d be a fool if I hadn’t been absolutely terrified.”

  “Great!” Jake stabbed his finger at the VDT. “And you’re a good enough writer to tell the tale. Get it down!”

  He left the office, and I began to write.

  “I could see the bullet with my name on it,” I wrote. “I was staring down the barrel of the gun, and—I swear to God—I could see the bullet at the other end. It looked as if it were twitching, ready to rocket out right into my right eye.”

  I read it over. Then I moved the cursor back to the beginning and took out the first sentence. Yeah, that had more impact. And it got rid of a cliche. I took “right into” out of the second sentence and replaced it with “straight at.” That was better.

  “I was staring down the barrel of the gun, and—I swear to God—I could see the bullet at the other end. It seemed to twitch, ready to rocket out, straight at my right eye.”

  Not a bad lead. Or should it be “straight into” instead of “straight at”? I kept writing.

  Jake was right about the Kleenex. After about ten minutes the excitement wore off, and I thought of Bo—pitiful, infuriating Bo—and of that snotty-nosed kid who’d have to grow up with the knowledge that his dad was a real nutcase—and I was bawling as hard as the kid had been. I mopped my eyes and blew my nose, but I kept writing. Thank God for almost-white eyelashes. Mine are so fair I dye them, so I didn’t get mascara all over my face.

  After thirty minutes, I saved my story to the main computer, then made a printout for Jake. He liked to edit hard copy. He made me stay in his chair while he read it.