The Violence Beat

by JoAnna Carl

  “We don’t have to print it.”

  “No, and we won’t print his version. But if the story breaks all over the state, we won’t be able to ignore it. We’ll have to straighten it out. And just who is going to get that assignment? You’re our expert on the Grantham PD, Nell, so it’s going to be you. You can help Ace to begin with, or you can clean up after him.”

  “Hell’s bells!” I said.

  Jake didn’t say anything. He knew he had me.

  I glared at my tan loafers and decided to haul in my personal reasons. “Actually, Jake, I came to work today determined to ask for a major favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was going to talk to Ruth first. But since she’s not here, I’d better level with you. I’ve got to stop covering the Grantham Police Department.”

  Jake squinted at me. “Quit covering the PD? I thought you liked that beat.”

  “I do. But I’ve got to take a break from it.”

  “Why?”

  I lifted my chin. “I’ve become too personally involved with it, Jake. I realized that this weekend.”

  “It’s not showing up in your stories.”

  “Maybe not yet. But I need to take a break.”

  Jake and I stared at each other, and he twirled his pica pole a few times.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I can understand that. The violence beat tends to take over a reporter’s whole life, and that’s not good. We’ll put J.B. on the coverage dayside. We’ll get that Grantham State kid—Chuck—to take the nightside for a few weeks. And as soon as you finish overseeing Ace and his project—”

  “No!” I jumped up. “Jake, I can not work on the Grantham PD anymore! I could do the routine stuff better than I can do a major investigative piece.”

  “And just why?”

  “I’m too personally involved!”

  “Well, get uninvolved for a couple of weeks.”

  “I can’t!” To my horror, I realized it was true. I was so crazy about Mike Svenson that I really couldn’t see any way to live without him, even for a couple of weeks.

  Jake was glaring. “What is going on? You’re a highly competent reporter, Nell. But you’re acting like a Journalism I student.”

  I decided I had to level with him.

  “I know I’m being unprofessional, Jake. But I’ve fallen—into a strange situation. Believe me, I didn’t plan to!”

  “What’s going on?”

  I kicked the leg of the chair I’d been sitting in. “I’m sleeping—”

  I must have paused there, finding it difficult to choke out the words with a cop. This turned out to be lucky, because Jake’s face changed, and he held his pica pole up to his mouth. Did he realize he was using it to make a gesture that shushed me? I didn’t know, but I shut up.

  Jake was staring over my shoulder, and I turned to see what was there. It was Ace. He was leaning against the door frame, leering his stupid leer. I’d nearly spilled my guts in front of my worst enemy.

  “Hi, Ace. Come on in,” Jake said.

  But Ace was grinning at me. “Sleeping? Sounds sexy. What were you about to say, Nell?”

  If I hadn’t despised the guy so much, I might have blown it. But the anger and contempt that filled me at the sight of him kept me from making a complete fool of myself.

  “I’ve been sleeping very poorly, Ace,” I said. That was certainly true. Having sex three or four times a night and worrying about your job in between orgasms didn’t leave a lot of time for rest. “I was just telling Jake I want to take a break from the police beat.”

  Jake came in the office and sat down. “Aw, Nell. Don’t quit on me. I know you’ll love this story.” “I doubt it.”

  “But it could be the Grantham scandal of the century. The story of how the community’s idol had feet of clay.”

  “All idols have feet of clay,” I said. “Even an Intro to Journalism student knows that. What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the most believed-in man in the city’s history—Honest Irish Svenson. And how he took a payoff.”

  Aces’s words hung there, and Jake’s office seemed to turn into a carnival ride—that centrifugal force thing that pins you up against a wall.

  Ace had definitely gotten my attention.

  And he had acquired my reporting skills, too. I was whipped. Ace was going to go ahead with this project, whether I helped or not. But he was a grandstander, a showoff who was more interested in a sensational story than in an accurate report. For personal and professional reasons, I couldn’t allow him to skewer Irish Svenson without making sure he had his facts straight. I owed that much to my profession. And to Mike.

  I realized that the professional-personal conflict I’d foreseen when I fell for Mike Svenson had already developed. I was letting my feelings for him affect a professional decision.

  I sat down again. “Hell’s bells!”

  Ace rubbed his hands together. “We’re gonna have a great time, Nell! There’s plenty of glory in this story. Enough for both of us.”

  “You can have it all. Just what is the story?”

  He looked around, checked the newsroom through Jake’s glass wall, then closed the door. He lowered his voice when he spoke. “It’s the construction contract for rebuilding the Central Station.”

  “What about it?”

  “I have a source that says Irish Svenson took a kickback in exchange for a recommendation on which builder got the contract.”

  “That’s junk, Ace. The city council awarded that contract, not the police department.”

  “There’s a city councilman who may be involved, too.”

  “But Irish Svenson was noted for not getting along with the city council. Why would they vote the way he wanted?”

  “That’s what we’re gonna find out.”

  Jake cleared his throat. “I thought Ace could take that desk at the back, Nell. The one the sporties use on football nights. I’ll tell Ruth when she comes in.”

  Jake obviously wanted his office cleared. Ace and I left. I took him to the empty desk and showed him how to open the computer file the three police reporters shared, but I’m afraid I wasn’t very gracious about it.

  “I’ll lay you a bet, Ace,” I said. “This is going to turn out to be a mare’s nest.”

  He smirked. “I have a very good source.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone who knows someone in the contractor’s office.”

  “Who?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you everything I know, Nell.”

  “Then how are we going to work together?”

  We both knew the answer to that one. We weren’t going to work together. Ace would go one way, and I’d go the other. It was going to be a mess.

  “You’re going to have to give me an hour to do the Monday cop-shop routine,” I said. “And I’m not getting muscled out of the coverage of Bo Jenkins’s death. That briefing’s at four p.m.”

  “I’ll start by reviewing the stories on the contract for the substation,” Ace said.

  I led him to the library and found a librarian to help him print out stories. Then I put the police reporters’ pager in my purse and left the building. Still furious.

  I had to call Mike, but I didn’t want to take a chance that Ace would overhear. I stopped across the street at a pay phone and called his house. The answering machine picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Mike? Nell. Something’s come up. A new assignment I can’t duck. I won’t be in the office late this afternoon, because Coy’s called a briefing. I might not be able to talk there anyway. I hope I’ll be home shortly after six, and I’ll call you then.”

  I paused. “I’m very angry about this,” I said. I couldn’t tell if the answering machine got that comment or not.

  It
’s only three blocks from the Gazette to the Central Station, and I usually walk. But today I was going on to the fire department and other spots on my beat, so I drove the Dodge. I was lucky I didn’t get a ticket. I was still so mad I drove like a demon, speeding up and throwing on the brakes and cursing other drivers. After I got to the station, I tried to act a little more professional, making sure I smiled at the desk sergeant and spoke to the secretary. Those are key people when you’re gathering news. I went back to the little interior room marked media.

  A copy of every incident report made by the Grantham PD is supposed to turn up in a box in that room. That’s another one of Coy’s policies. The desk sergeant at the Headquarters Division is supposed to see that copies of all their incident reports are deposited there by eight A.M. each morning, and the division messengers bring them by from the other two substations after the seven A.M. shift starts. Another batch shows up at six in the evening for the nightside reports to pick up. They’re numbered consecutively, so we can tell if any are missing.

  The department uses a report form set by national standards. It lists time, date, place, name of victim, type of offense, suspects, vehicles involved, witnesses, and other details. After a little practice, a reporter can glance at a form and tell very quickly that a cab company is complaining about harassing phone calls made between midnight and three A.M. Then the reporter yawns and goes on to the next report.

  Obviously, harassing phone calls to a cab company are not worth a story. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the stuff that’s reported to the police isn’t worth a story, at least in a city the size of Grantham. So you learn to check the forms quickly for serious crimes or prominent names or unusual events.

  Some reports are stamped PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH. I understand this is another of Coy’s innovations. They used to be stamped DO NOT PUBLISH. Coy made it more polite.

  Most of these cases involve juveniles. The law in our state is quirky on juvies. The police aren’t supposed to release their names to the press, but if we get the name from another source, they can’t do anything if we print it. We don’t usually print names in juvenile cases, as a matter of policy. But we like to remind the cops that we can if we want to.

  We don’t print the names of persons who’ve been arrested until they’ve been officially booked. We want their names to appear in some sort of paperwork. There are lots of other names we leave out—rape victims, for example, and persons who are wanted, but who haven’t yet been arrested. Again, we leave them out as a matter of courtesy and policy, not because we couldn’t print them if we wanted to.

  I guess all the crooks in Grantham had stayed home Sunday evening, because there were only about forty forms in the box. I riffled through them as quickly as possible and pulled a half dozen for possible stories.

  A shooting in the parking lot at the Lone Wolf Club on the north side. That was getting to be a real trouble spot since the drug dealers began to hang out there. Victim treated at St. Luke’s Hospital and released. Worth three or four graphs.

  An armed robbery of a stop-and-rob convenience store at two A.M. Clerk had been bound and gagged, but she’d ID’d a semiregular customer and a warrant had been issued. I’d downplay it until they arrested the guy. I vaguely remembered that he was already a suspect in two similar robberies. If they cleared all three, it would be a pretty good story. A little pang of envy hit as I realized J.B. would probably be writing it up based on my legwork.

  A case of domestic violence had put a woman in the hospital, her husband in jail and her children in the county shelter. I’d talk to the detectives about that one. Our DA ran for office on a promise of getting tough on domestic violence, and so far he was sticking with it, filing charges even if the victim didn’t cooperate, even if he had to drop the charges later.

  I photocopied the reports I was interested in, put all of them back in the box, left messages with Coy for the detectives I needed to talk to, then checked the city court records. No filings on anything but traffic so far that morning. City court is usually only misdemeanors, so we don’t cover many things there. I don’t worry about the DA’s office because we have a separate set of reporters to cover that. They also cover felony trials and other happenings at the county courthouse.

  I drove over to the Grantham Fire Department then and picked up three more stories from their reports. A trailer fire around midnight. With luck the night photographer had gotten a shot. A gas leak at a school and a house fire in a snazzy neighborhood. I went by the fire marshal’s office to get a damage estimate on the house fire.

  As I was leaving his office, my pager beeped, and I called in and talked to the switchboard operator. Bear Bennington was the photog on scanner duty. There had been a three-car collision in the downtown area. Ambulances en route. Bear was on his way. “I’ll have to pick it up later,” I told the operator. “Busy morning.”

  She promised to pass the word on to Bear on the radio. That story J.B. or I could get from the traffic division after they’d had time to fill out their reports. I wondered if Mike would be involved in it. He was on routine patrol out of the central PD, and routine patrol includes first call on everything—shoplifters, fender benders, missing kids, little old ladies with cats in trees, speeders.

  It hadn’t been such a bad run, for a Monday. I was headed back to the office by eleven. I went in the Gazette’s main door and headed for the stairs. Now to get this little dab of stuff written up, so I could think about Ace and his asinine rumor about Irish Svenson. Which I didn’t believe.

  I tried to dash by the switchboard, but Ellen caught me.

  “Nell!”

  I screeched to a stop. “Oh, Ellen, please don’t tell me I have messages. I don’t have time to be calling people today.”

  Our phone system has voice mail at each extension, but if people call in through the central switchboard—which means it’s somebody who doesn’t have the number of the reporter’s personal extension—sometimes they leave a message with Ellen or her cohorts. The business manager hires Grantham State part-timers for that slot, so they come and go. Ellen’s the only one whose name I know.

  Ellen simpered. She’s able to do this because she’s nineteen and sweet-faced. “No messages, Nell. I just wanted to tell you you had three calls, all from the same person.”

  “Must be mighty eager to talk,” I said. “I’ve only been gone an hour and a half.”

  “She won’t leave a message, but she keeps calling back.”

  “No name? No number?”

  “She wouldn’t leave either.”

  “Then I guess she’s not that eager to talk to me.”

  I had two messages on my voice mail, from the detectives I’d asked to call, and for the next twenty minutes I was tied up talking to them. Ace was still in the library, I was glad to see. I didn’t need him in my hair right at that minute. I concentrated on getting the routine part of my job done.

  I was writing the second story, the armed robbery, when the phone rang.

  “Hell’s bells!” I said. I seemed to be swearing a lot that morning. But I picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Nell Matthews.”

  “Ms. Matthews?” The voice on the other end was breathy, timid. I could hear street noises in the background.

  “Yes. This is Nell Matthews.” I stopped typing. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so.” The breathy voice grew fainter.

  “What can I do?”

  “If I have some information—”

  “Yes?” I tried to sound encouraging, but I glanced at my watch. I didn’t really have time to fool with this. “What sort of information?”

  “About a murder.”

  “Which murder was this?”

  “Well, the police don’t know it was a murder.”

  I had a nut call.

  As soon as a reporter gets his or her first byline, he or she is fair game for the cra
zies of the world. Every newspaper, radio station, and television newsroom has regulars who call. Maybe they listen to the scanner, and they call to find out about some house fire. Maybe they’re sports fans who can’t wait until the morning edition for the latest scores. We have one who calls every night for the numbers in the Texas lottery. We could kill ’em all dead. Why can’t they simply buy a paper?

  But the police reporter draws a special kind of news nut. This is the one who’s going to give us the inside scoop on some crime and how the proper authorities are covering up. So I tried to sound brisk when my breathy caller said she knew the lowdown on a murder.

  “If you have any information about a crime which occurred in Grantham, you should call the Grantham Police Department,” I said.

  “Oh, I can’t call them!”

  “Well, despite what you see on television, reporters don’t chase around solving murders,” I said. “Basically, I cover the investigations of the Grantham Police Department. If they don’t think a case is murder, we probably won’t print a word on it.”

  “I’ve tried to convince myself I was wrong for two years,” the breathy voice said. “But now they’ve killed Bo Jenkins, and . . .”

  I must have gasped, because she broke off.

  “Sorry,” I said. “You touched a live nerve. I knew Bo Jenkins, of course. But I assure you, the Grantham police are well aware that he was probably murdered.”

  “I’m positive he was,” the voice said, “but that’s not the case I called about. I’m calling about the murder of Irish Svenson.”

  Chapter 12

  I’d had a lot of surprises in the past few days. Some of them—like Ace’s announcement that morning—had made my world spin crazily. But that one made it stand still.

  “I’m calling about the murder of Irish Svenson.”

  I stared at the top of my desk, taking in those words. I was quiet so long the whispy voice at the other end of the telephone sounded anxious when it spoke again.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  Was this one of the nuttier nut calls? Or could this caller know something? How should I react?