That story marked my fall from the highest of highs, and yet I learned to love producing. For me, it has always been about telling stories, no matter where you do it—in front of the camera or behind it—and it’s the best gig going. You hold on to it for as long as you can, knowing that one morning you can wake up at the pinnacle, and by nightfall, you’re clinging to your career by your fingertips. In a snap, just like that.
————
The next morning, I cut across the cathedral grounds on my walk to work. At Wisconsin Avenue, someone had taped Evelyn’s missing persons poster onto a bus-stop enclosure. The edges of the poster were already curled in the cool, moist air. Another poster hung in the window of my favorite coffee shop. I opened its door, assaulted by the strong coffee smell. You could get a buzz just standing there.
The barista, Alonzo, was a tall guy with dreadlocks. I’d been coming to his coffee shop for years. When he greeted me from behind the espresso machine, I ordered my usual—a black coffee, the biggest cup they had.
“That poster in the window,” I said. “Do you know her? Evelyn Carney?”
“Yeah, actually, I do. She’s a customer.” He talked as he worked the espresso machine. The line behind me began to swell. “Her friend handed out posters yesterday and asked us to hang one up. I said, sure, I’m happy to help.”
“So Evelyn lives in the neighborhood?”
“Probably works in an office around here,” he said. “She and her friend come in for a coffee from time to time, always with a stack of files they’re going through. They’re all about the work. Her friend Paige”—intoning her name so you could tell what he was thinking—“she can wear a suit, believe me.”
I laughed. “You got a number for your Paige?”
“She gave me her business card. Give me a minute to clear the line. I’ll get it for you.”
I moved over to the bar and sat, my heel resting on the rung of the stool, and warmed my hands on the cup. The coffee was deliciously hot and bitter as always. A well-thumbed City Paper was spread across the bar. I flipped through it while waiting for Alonzo’s break. Finally it came. He strutted out of the back room, waving a little card.
“You don’t think something bad happened to her?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’d like to find out.”
He hesitated, saying, “Paige didn’t say I could give her number out. But you’d be helping, right? Put her picture on the news, do a story or something, then she comes home?”
“That’s the idea.”
I copied the phone number onto my notepad, double-checking the spelling of the law firm, then handed the card back.
“You get the story and find the girl, be sure to make me the hero,” he said, smiling. “Paige gives me her digits, and I get my just desserts.”
————
Our newsroom and studios were housed on the top floors of a square building erected during the ugly era of American architecture. It sat atop the highest point in Washington, a hill shared by other news stations to the south of us.
A delivery cart blocked the building entrance. Some boxes had fallen from the cart and into the automatic door, jamming it. The delivery guy was struggling and people behind him complaining, but no one stepped forward to help the guy. I didn’t, either, distracted as I was by my expanding list of priorities for the morning: the video search for Evelyn, follow-up calls to police for the latest in the investigation, and now this contact number for Evelyn’s friend Paige Linden. I’d assign my best reporter, Alexa Lopez, to call her. Alexa had a softness that disguised her tenacity and a wonderful way of making people talk.
Once the deliveryman cleared out, the guard waved me through, saying, “Good morning, Ms. Knightly.” His attention went to someone behind me.
A woman stood in the entrance. She wore boots the way a cat arches its back, her face was something you’d see touched up in a magazine—big eyes, small nose, cheeks curved like a Ming vase—and her blond hair swung in the light. She had TV written all over her.
The elevator doors opened, and inside, Isaiah stood slack-jawed. I got in and pushed the button. “You might want to close your mouth before the drool runs out,” I joked.
He looked at me over his horn-rims. “Do they get younger every year? It’s a terrible thing to grow old in a young person’s business.”
“You are not old. You are experienced, respected, and skilled. You are necessary.”
He gave me a gentle smile. “Your affection blinds you.”
The elevator arrived at our floor. We stepped into the cold air made for machines, not men. Across the newsroom, Alexa Lopez was rapid-fire cursing in a way that sounded like beautiful Spanish poetry, if you didn’t know what she was saying. I didn’t habla, but in a Washington newsroom, you picked up gutter words in many different languages. I moved quickly for damage control.
Alexa was waving a camera media card beneath Nelson’s chin. “He shot me fat,” she said.
Nelson leaned into her, his mop of black hair falling over unshaven cheeks. His checkered scarf wafted against her. It looked like the beginning of an embrace except for those two sharp chins pointing at each other and the card she used to slash at the scarf.
“I shot her,” he said, “She’s—”
“Don’t you say it.” Her face was flushed, her dark eyes wild.
“I was going to say—”
“Don’t even think it,” she said, and then to me: “This is how he gets back at me.”
“I’m an artist,” he sneered. “Not a plastic surgeon.”
“Chinga tu madre.” We all understood that one. The newsroom went silent, except for the chirping police scanners and ringing phones, which no one answered.
“No arguing in the newsroom,” I said, trying to push Alexa along. She wouldn’t budge. I said, “Show me your stand-up in my office. I’m sure you look great. If you need a retake, we’ll get someone to do that, but it has to be fast. I have a more important story for you.”
“It’s killing him,” she said. “He still hasn’t gotten over me.”
Great red splotches colored Nelson’s cheeks. “Gotten over you? You dumped me last night.”
They were shouting now. My efforts to come between them had failed miserably. Several writers lifted their heads from their desks, and there was a grin or two but no help. At the far side of the newsroom, Ben came out of the elevator, pushing his mountain bike. I walked as quickly as I could without appearing to run to him.
“Alexa and Nelson are fighting,” I said. “Get your buddy out of here before I haul them both up to personnel.”
“No kidding.” He pulled off his helmet and ran his fingers through his hair. “Look at this newsroom. They look like prairie dogs poking their heads out of the ground.” He pushed his bike leisurely past the cubicles. “On Sundays my grandma used to get all gussied up in her church hat and grab her favorite rifle and go prairie dog hunting. Hell of a shot, my grandma. Too bad we had to take away her gun.”
We crossed the newsroom. Ben leaned his bike against his hip as he pulled off his gloves. “You guys fighting?” he asked Alexa.
“He’s trying to kill my career.”
“No one can kill your career,” he told her. “You’re a great reporter.”
She gave Ben a disbelieving look. “Don’t let him shoot you. He’d turn you into a hunchback. The great Emmy Award–winning Nelson Yang who shoots women—”
“Lower your voice,” I warned her.
“—and turns them into pigs.”
Nelson gasped. “She thinks she can wear white,” he told Ben. “How can she not know it makes her wide as a billboard?”
Ben whispered into Alexa’s ear. She blinked up at him from beneath thick lashes and sucked in her cheeks, biting the folds. It was a wicked, knowing look that had Nelson kneading his scarf. She walked away with a pronounced swivel in her hips.
“Nelson,” I said in warning.
He ignored me.
“Nelson,” I
repeated. “Let her go.”
He chased after her.
“It’ll blow over now,” Ben said. He pointed across the room where Nelson had caught up with Alexa. Soon they were huddled in a corner.
As we strolled down the corridor toward my office, I told Ben about the phone number in my notepad, how I’d planned to assign the story to Alexa and Nelson.
“You could ask me to report,” he said. “I’m still pretty good in the field.”
“Try not to be absurd. You’re the anchor now.” A superanchor, if truth be told, as damn near celebrity as you could get in Washington, and it embarrassed the hell out of him.
“I’d take a field assignment if you ask nicely,” he teased. “You could produce for me, like back in the day. Write all the boring stuff I’m no good at writing.”
“You mean, like your script? Do your work?”
“Why not?” He grinned. “But I’d need you in the field with me, not stuck here. I may not be the deepest-thinking man on the planet, but even I understand you shouldn’t hole yourself up here day and night.”
“I can’t go out in the field,” I said in a cool voice. And I couldn’t. There was too much to do here at the station.
“Lost your nerve, didja?”
“My—nerve?”
“Settle down now. It happens.” He gave me his Anchor Ben look, his smile wry and dark eyes crinkled in the corners. “You used to be great in the field, but that was years ago, and now you’re not so sure of yourself. You’re afraid you’re rusty.”
“I am not—” And then I stopped. Hell, I probably would be rusty, now that I thought about it.
“We can shake off the rust together. All I’m saying.”
“I have responsibilities to the shows,” I said, hesitating. “And there’s the video of Evelyn I have to find.”
“Isaiah can cover the shows. He’s more than capable. Assign the video search to a couple of editors. Let them do what they do best.” His voice went low and slightly mocking, but of whom I wasn’t sure. “Come out and play. We can bust the story wide open. You know you want to.”
The idea was tantalizing.
I thought about the press release of Evelyn with those strange white spots for eyes, Evelyn who might need someone to help her, and this feeling crept up on me, catching me by surprise. It made no sense, and yet I couldn’t shake it. It was the loneliest damn feeling.
CHAPTER THREE
IN MY OFFICE, I pulled out my reporter notebook and Googled Paige Linden’s name with that of her firm, and bingo, her portrait was staring back at me. Bright smile. Direct gaze. Ash blond hair and darker blond eyebrows that slanted upward, giving her a shrewd look.
Her bio was impressive. Extensive bar and court admissions, good-sized list of memberships and boards, half page of representative experience. She’d graduated magna cum laude from law school and clerked for a federal appellate judge. Midthirties, I guessed, and already a partner at a firm that billed itself as one of the most experienced and respected practices in Washington, providing counsel to political candidates and elected officials, nonprofit and ideological groups, as well as major corporations.
Paige Linden was listed as Lawyer of the Year by Best Lawyers magazine. She was an up-and-comer, the one to watch.
I expanded the search with Paige’s name and found several blogs mentioning her. A snarky posting referred to Ms. Linden by her courtroom nickname, “Ana,” as in anaconda. Lovely and charming she may be, the blogger wrote, but stealthy. You don’t realize she’s crushing you until the air leaves your lungs. Jocular comments followed, many in the vein of: Sour grapes? and Paige trounce your sorry ass in court again, did she?
A City Paper blog described Paige as a whisper candidate to replace the retiring delegate to Congress. Other blogs went further, shaking the Magic 8 Ball: Would she run or wouldn’t she? And more seriously, who might back her? Whether she wanted to be the DC delegate was immaterial if she didn’t have the money to run.
From a news search of the Post’s archives: DC lawyer saves drowning boy, with a dateline from several years ago. A young boy from the Midwest had wandered off from his tour group near the Jefferson Memorial. He had been playing along the granite ledge when he slipped and fell into the Potomac. Bystanders wrung their hands. Paige Linden had been jogging on a nearby path and heard the commotion. She jumped in after the boy.
Our coverage of the rescue included a taped interview with Paige, her hair slicked back with river water and a gray blanket tossed like a cape over her shoulders. When asked if she’d been afraid to jump into the Potomac, a treacherous river known to claim lives every year, she shrugged. “I didn’t want the boy to be swept away,” she said, her modest words at odds with her defiant stare.
I dialed the number written in my reporter pad. Paige’s secretary put me on hold. After a short wait, Paige picked up. I told her I was producing a story about her friend’s disappearance. She didn’t say anything. I explained how the story could assist searchers by broadening the reach for potential witnesses. She didn’t want to talk.
“The police said I shouldn’t.” Her voice was like a tuning fork, resonant and pure pitched, and what she said perplexed me. She had to know how important it was to find a good witness. She was a lawyer after all. And then she explained, “The investigators said the media would turn it into a circus.”
My news ping went off. A circus to police equaled Big Story to us.
“But you understand the police are talking, right?” I paused for effect. “What they’re saying makes little sense. How does a woman go out to dinner in the heart of Georgetown on a Sunday night—” I flipped as noisily as I could through the blank pages of my notebook. “I’m sorry, who was she dining with?”
Her lovely voice became defensive. “Her husband, of course.”
“The police said she left the restaurant alone. Why would she leave without her husband?”
“You’re not going to report he did something wrong?” she said in a hard voice.
“Why don’t you tell me so I get it right?”
There was a long pause I didn’t fill. Most people were uncomfortable with silence, but not Paige. Finally, I prodded gently: “If Evelyn were my friend, I wouldn’t be concerned with helping some detective avoid a circus. I’d do whatever it took to bring my friend home.”
“Let me think about it.”
I told her about confidentiality and off-the-record sourcing. She could tell me anything, even what she didn’t want me to report, all to get a clear picture. “The clearer the picture, the more we can help Evelyn and her husband. What’s his name?”
“Peter. Peter Carney.”
“How can I get in touch with him?”
“I could give him your number. Maybe he’ll call. He might be too upset.”
“Lots of upset people talk,” I told her. “It’s the best way to find their loved ones.”
She wanted to check with detectives. I knew where that would leave me, but I let her go. I hadn’t been so long from the field that I forgot you couldn’t push. You had to let the game come to you. Before she hung up, she took my phone numbers and agreed to let me check in with her.
But I was puzzled. For one thing, investigators seemed to be acting against their best interests. Paige Linden seemed the perfect spokesperson for her friend Evelyn, so why hold her back? How could this become a circus?
Alexa hurried into my office without knocking. She had the media card in her hand again. “Need to chat,” she singsonged, coming around my desk and handing it over to me. “Listen, I adore Nelson, I do.”
“Less I know about that, the better,” I said dryly.
“His talent is amazing,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Same time, he’s too emotional, and all those emotions get in the way of my work. Now, I don’t want to upset him more than he already is.”
“Meaning, you want me to separate the two of you.”
“Yes.”
“Reassign him without lookin
g like you’re behind it.”
She huffed out a breath. “Take a look at what he’s put together. You’ll see.”
It was an audition reel of Alexa’s stand-ups. These kinds of reels were usually sent with an accompanying résumé to prospective employers, people other than me, maybe my competitors. She was prowling for another job. I tried not to feel betrayed.
As she sped through the images, one clip caught my eye.
“Stop,” I told her.
The frame froze on Alexa talking into a microphone in front of a historic stone building now used as a community center. Police cruisers were parked in the background. “What’s the story here?” I asked.
It was from her report of last summer’s Big Story, a serial rapist stalking the jogging paths of Rock Creek Park. One of the victims had died from her injuries, and the police set up a task force with undercover female police officers jogging the paths. No one had been arrested. The attacks had stopped with the cold weather.
“Where’s the rest of the video?”
“I don’t know,” she said, dismissive. “This is the stand-up reel Nelson put together for me. But it’s the perfect example of how great he makes me look when he’s not trying to sabotage me. Wait until you see the next one.”
My phone rang. I was being cordially summoned to a meeting with my boss, the news director. I tried to buck it—pressing issue with a reporter, I said—but his secretary said he wasn’t having excuses. Mellay was in a mood, she warned.
————
Nick Mellay’s office had swallowed the sun-filled side of the newsroom. He’d had a wall removed, cutting into our conference room, and filled his cavernous space with extravagant furniture, a ridiculous expense for a station struggling to stay on budget and for a news director who probably wouldn’t last.
He was a small man behind a big desk, his chair raised to its highest notch. He always seemed to be bursting with something. With Mellay, you never really knew what that something was. He was often brilliant, sometimes lacking judgment, but most of the time he wasn’t around, which was fine by me. In my eight years at the station, I’d survived five news directors. One had been very good. Naturally, he’d gotten fired. The rest had neither helped nor hurt anything. They’d gotten fired, too. Two months ago, we got Mellay.
The Cutaway Page 2
