by Dave Balcom
“I’m not worried about it; you shouldn’t be either.”
4
Tuesday was running normally in the newsroom, but at nine, Doug buzzed me and asked me to come to his office.
I knocked on his door and went into his office, “What’s up?”
He had his copy of the daily news budget in front of him, “Jim, are you certain you want to play this missing girl story on the front page again today?”
I smiled at him, and sat down, “If we don’t, we might be the only newspaper in New York today that doesn’t. That story made the NBC Nightly News last night; Sandy’s folks in Maryland watched it.”
“Did it make them afraid to have their daughter and granddaughter living here?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious. You heard the guys yesterday. This is exactly what worries them. They’re concerned that you’re going to pound this story on the front page with little or no regard as to how it reflects on this town’s reputation.”
“Protecting Lake City’s reputation isn’t something the newspaper should concern itself with, Boss. It’s like the old question about whether the newspaper should report the addresses of burglaries, and the reality is that we should because the knowledge of a burglary in your neighborhood is more important than the tiny bit of unwanted notoriety the victim might feel.
“We have a responsibility to our readers and to the police to keep information flowing on the progress ...”
He interrupted me, “I guess we just disagree on that.”
“Well, it’s your newspaper, Mr. Read, but I know that there are very few professionals in our business who would disagree with me.”
“I’m not interested in losing you over this, but I’m taking a lot of pressure from my friends.”
I nodded. “I understand that, but at the same time, you don’t pressure them on how they run their businesses.”
“I don’t pretend to know much about their businesses...”
“Exactly. We need to know our business better than well-intentioned friends and family. And I’m confident if you bounce this question off newspaper people you respect, you’ll find a way to deal with those good intentions without losing friends in the process.”
He sat back in his chair. “I’ve never slept as well as the publisher as I have since you came on board, Jim. But I’ve never felt this kind of pressure, either. Moving around as you have, you probably don’t think about what your friends or neighbors think of you, but I’m rooted here, and it matters to me.”
“You’re right, I might not think about what outsiders think of me, but I’m very interested in what readers think of my newspaper. I care deeply that people who read the newspaper and come to know me develop some level of respect for me even if they don’t like what I write.
“I couldn’t write the editorials you love so much if I was worried about making everyone happy.”
He smiled, and leaned forward again. “I’m going to find out what people in our business think. Can I share your week’s plan with some of them?”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t with any local outlets, they might like the plan so much they’d steal our thunder by breaking those stories ahead of us.”
“I’ll be talking to people who are in other states.”
“No problem.”
“Go get ’em, tiger.”
“Thanks. Talk to you later.”
I walked back to the universal desk, thinking about what had just happened. I stopped at the door to the morgue, “Louie, can you make a copy of the week’s plan and deliver it to Mr. Read?” I asked quietly.
She looked at me funny, and then nodded. “Right away.”
“Thanks.”
I made my way to the desk, and checked the queue where we filed stories for the front page and found everything for today’s edition was there, and all of them had Randy’s initials in the slug line. I checked my watch and knew I wouldn’t have any time to waste if I was going to get this out on time.
5
An afternoon newspaper is on time in the morning of publication day only if the staff makes sure deadlines are met the afternoon before.
When I first arrived at the Sentinel-Standard, the concept of deadline was hazy at best. Late press starts were the circulation department’s top concern – having the newspaper available for the lunch crowd is a real dollar and cents issue for the newspaper.
I had made on-time performance a key element of my initial weeks; I didn’t talk much about change, people don’t look forward to change. So I talked about on-time performance, and praised every met deadline loudly and proudly.
In just a few short weeks, I heard a real change in the staff’s awareness of and pride for on-time performance. “The best story in the world is worthless if the paper isn’t delivered when the subscriber expects it,” became almost a litany in our newsroom.
When I returned from lunch, I had a voice mail from a detective Max Hennessey of the LCPD. He wanted a call, and I gave it to him.
“Hennessey,” he answered.
“Jim Stanton of the Sentinel-Standard returning your call.”
“Thanks. Is there any time in your afternoon for you and me to talk?”
“What do you want to talk about? If it’s about coverage, I’d want Cindy to be involved, or Randy Patterson, the city editor.”
“No, it’s not about Cindy or coverage. I just have some questions; I’d like to get to know you a bit.”
I looked at the phone as if what I was hearing was the instrument’s fault. “How much time do you need?”
“Half hour?”
“Here or your place?”
“Let’s have coffee at the diner; is that okay?
“Sure, name the time.”
“Two?”
I looked at the clock on my desk, it was just one. “That’ll work, see you then.”
“Thanks.” He hung up.
I had written an editorial for the next day’s paper before lunch, and I opened it on my screen and started working on it. The editorial page went to bed the afternoon before, and that page was my responsibility.
I would send a hard copy to the publisher, and I’d have Randy copy edit my writing. We practiced “two read” editing on all local copy. This made sure that two editors read each story. The first read was for content, balance, accuracy and style; the second read was pure “proof reading,” and I was a firm believer that great proof reading was done verbally. When we were in full production mode in the newsroom, there was an audible background buzz as editors read the stories out loud, but under their breath.
I hit the send button at one-fifty; put the layout and the syndicated political cartoon I’d selected in the “out” basket at the universal desk. “Mary, let Randy know that I’m going to a meeting, be back in a half hour or so.”
She nodded and I left by the back door for the quick walk to the diner about halfway between the newspaper and the police station.
I arrived just as a guy in an unmarked city car parked at the curb. “Detective Hennessey?”
“Hi, you must be Stanton.”
We shook hands and he led the way into the diner. There were no patrons in the booths, and just one at the end of the counter. We took the booth farthest from the guy at the counter.
The woman behind the counter called out, “Anything other than coffee?”
“Not for me,” Hennessey said, looking at me.
“Just a little cream,” I said.
She brought a carafe and two cups, the solid heavy cups that you used to see in every diner. She pulled three creamers out of her apron pocket and dropped them on the table.
Hennessey poured the coffee and I studied him. He was younger than I had expected, probably in his late thirties or early forties. He was tall, not as tall as I, but in much better shape. He had the bronzed and bleached look of an outdoorsman. He had deep blue eyes, wore his hair short and trimmed. I saw a wedding band on his hand, and he wore his watch on his
left wrist.
Lately I had been having some regrets that I had let myself go in terms of physical fitness. I had just recently purchased new pants in a waist size that embarrassed me.
“You work out?” I asked him as he carefully sampled his coffee.
“I’m not a gym rat, but I go to the Y three times a week. I work on cardio – swim and the stationary bike – and play basketball if there are enough older guys around.
“You don’t look like you do; having regrets?”
I nodded, wondering if I was that transparent.
He smiled, and I felt for a second he was reading my mind. “Been there, did that,” he said. “How old are you, thirty, thirty one?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Well, it won’t get easier as you wait on age. I started getting serious about fitness when I was in my early thirties. Up until then I had thought my hunting, walking the golf course, hiking, they’d all keep me trim enough, but then I started losing the battle of the bulge... I got busy, and I have no regrets beyond not getting to it sooner.”
I looked at my watch, and he laughed. “Right. I didn’t think I had time, either. But if you’ve got time enough for everybody else, you can find an hour a day for you.”
I was embarrassed, and said so.
We shared our “how did you end up here” stories for a few minutes, then he brought us back to the purpose of our meeting, “So what do you want to know about Suzanne?”
“Just everything.”
He smiled for a second, and then he got real serious, “I think you have that already.”
“We do?”
He nodded. “We don’t know if she ever made it to that dance. We can’t find anyone who remembers seeing her there, but the place was packed with kids. She’s real popular with her high school classmates, but only a couple of them were at the dance and they didn’t see her.”
“So what’s the likelihood that she didn’t make it there in the first place?”
He shrugged. “As likely as a hundred other scenarios. Do you know how many teen-aged girls go missing in this country every day?”
“Not a clue, but I’d bet it’s a staggering number.”
“You’d be right. Kids go missing for a number of reasons. They run away, they get lost, or they’re abducted by family members, usually in the case of a custody battle.
“Abductions by people they don’t know are very rare, but when that happens, it is rarer still for those children to survive, especially if there is no ransom demand.
“The scary thing for Grace Czarnopias and the McAvoy family is that none of the common reasons are considered likely at all for Suzanne...”
“That leaves abduction by someone unknown or at least unrelated to her, right?”
He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on mine. “When you live this close to an Interstate highway the criminal abduction possibility jumps up the list quite quickly.”
“How so?”
He sat back a bit, and looked around the diner. He kept his voice low, “At any given time there may be as many as a thousand serial rapists, killers, and perverts roaming this country. They have no home address; they just wander around. They stop off at a place like Lake City, see a woman or girl walking alone, stop, pick her up, take her out into the countryside, rape her, kill her, bury her, and then just get back on I-ninety or I-eighty-one, and off they go.”
“That’s terrifying,” I said.
“And three quarters of the time in that scenario, the youngster’s dead within three hours of the abduction.” I shuddered, and he went on, “It’s a terrifying thought for a cop. How does a guy like that get caught?”
I suddenly understood the reason for this meeting. “It takes a witness, and the only way you’re going to find said witness is to spell that possibility out in the newspaper and hope somebody saw something on Saturday night at the time didn’t seem unusual, but might be the link to Suzanne’s whereabouts.”
He nodded, “But before I can do that, Jim, I have to make damn certain that her family is ready to deal with all the possibilities.”
His words and tone sucked the wind right out of me. “They have to give up on her first?”
He finished his coffee and started to get up. “I’ll call Cindy if I can finesse it with the family.”
“I’ll let her know.” We shook hands and left separately, me to get back to the paper, him to go tell a loving family that they might have lost their precious girl. I wouldn’t trade jobs with him at that moment for anything. I just wanted to go home and hug my own.
6
After dinner, I went to my first Ducks Unlimited committee meeting. DU is an organization born during the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Through local banquets and other events, DU volunteers and members raise millions of dollars for the express purpose of ensuring adequate habitat exists for breeding, migrating, and wintering waterfowl.
Most of the wild ducks and geese we see in this country are born in the northern tier of Midwestern states, Canadian provinces, and Alaska.
The lesson learned during the 1930s is that unless man steps in and develops projects that will retain necessary water during extended droughts, the birds that often turn the sky black in the fall won’t be there.
I had grown up shooting grouse, woodcock, and pheasants over pointing dogs. Duck hunting was what we did in early October before the bird seasons opened in Michigan.
We jumped those birds off the river or country ponds, shot them on the rise just like the other birds we hunted.
While I was in the service, one of my friends had found some old mallard decoys in a boat house at his grandfather’s cottage. He cleaned them up and started reading about how a guy could put decoys out in the right place, and the ducks would come to him.
By the time I returned home from the war, he was an expert, and couldn’t wait to show me the ropes. I was too busy with school to take up a hobby seriously, but I joined him a few times and loved the action.
Hunting waterfowl over decoys is a bug that bites deep. It’s a lot like golf, but for some of us it’s worse because in most places the season only lasts sixty days or so, and in northern climates that can be cut short by early freeze up.
After college, I started hunting ducks with a vengeance just before I moved to Upstate New York.
The Finger Lakes region of New York has a rich waterfowling tradition. There had been a notice on the outdoor page that the local DU committee was planning its annual banquet and inviting interested parties to help with the project.
I wanted to meet local waterfowlers, so I called the number in the item, and he told me where and when the committee would meet.
I rang the doorbell at a beautiful home with a great view of the lake, and a tall, balding man dressed in a tan shirt bearing the DU insignia greeted me with a smile. “Jim Stanton?” I nodded. “Come on in. I’m Bart Ward.” He extended his hand, and I shook it. “You’re the first one here, but I expect the rest any minute. We’re not very military in our meetings... most of us work very disciplined careers in business or, in my case, medicine, so in our volunteer work we tend to be more relaxed.”
He said all this as he led me through the expansive living room to a three-season porch off his kitchen. There was a large table surrounded by chairs and even a couple of stools. “We hold our meetings here when the weather permits. There’s no smoking in here, but my wife does allow people to smoke outside if they must, and they can still hear what’s going on.
“Do you smoke?”
I shook my head.
“Good. I’m a doctor, and my practice is oncology; I hate tobacco – especially cigarettes and snuff – with a passion. I try not to sermonize too often. I tell my friends that they’re writing checks they don’t want to cash later, but the addiction is very difficult to break.”
“Hardest thing I ever did.”
“How long had you smoked?”
“Eight years or so, but I was really hooked. It took every ounce
of my will.”
“How long have you been off them?”
“Seven years, and I still want one every day.”
“Keep up the fight. You just have to want something else more... like playing with your grandchildren.”
The doorbell chimed, and while he was off to attend to that, three guys and a woman walked into view from the direction of the driveway. They came into the porch before they noticed me. One of the guys stuck his hand out with a smile, “I heard we had a new recruit. I’m Lenny Crawford; this is my wife, Cheryl. Cheryl is treasurer of our committee.”
The next guy was just as friendly. “Todd Wright and this is my brother Frank.”
Bart came into the room ahead of three more guys. He introduced each with a nod, “Wayne Crosby, Mark Johnson and Andy Tittle.”
They were all old friends, and I listened to them chatter away about what they all knew as common knowledge, everything from the latest report on the Wrights’ mother who had been ailing to Cheryl wanting to know if Bart’s wife, Trish, was going to be home before the meeting broke up.
Then another member came around the corner of the house and made his way up to the screen door. It was Max Hennessey.
They all greeted him and Bart called the meeting to order without any reference to me.
They dealt with the business of arranging this annual fund raiser with a practiced nonchalance that bespoke of their experience in this project.
When the topic came to publicity, Hennessey looked surprised when Bart said something about the need for a better plan for getting the word out to the general public. “We have to come up with some way that we can make the non-hunter who loves wildlife aware of the work DU does that enhances habitat for all kinds of animals. And we need to turn that awareness into attendance at the banquet.”
Hennessey started to laugh.
“What’s so funny, Max?” Bart asked.
“I thought you knew you had the solution in hand, but maybe you better introduce your new recruit and let us all get to know him a bit?”
