Left Hanging

by Patricia McLinn

  “It’s my profession, Mom.”

  “That’s precisely the point,” she said in triumph. “It doesn’t need to be your profession any longer. Before, with Wes pushing you every step, that was one thing. But on your own, the way you are now, you can take something slower, more relaxed. You’ve been strained for so long, trying to keep up with that career Wes put you in. This will suit you better. Not to mention it will give you more time to have a normal social life. You’d be closer to home in St. Louis. You could come home for weekends—”

  So much for normal social life.

  “—and truly be a part of the family.”

  “Now, Cat, that’s not fair. Maggie Liz is part of the family.” The childhood nickname inverting and shortening my first and middle name always warmed me.

  “Of course she is,” she shot back, as if she hadn’t just said otherwise. “But how can she be, way out there by herself in that shack she’s living in?”

  It was early, but if I’d heard her right, my mother had contradicted her contradiction. Which, by my counting, still had me not being part of my family. In that case, why had she called me at dawn?

  I might be foolhardy at times, but I’m not an idiot. I didn’t ask. “Sorry, Mom, Dad—I have to get ready for work. Talk to you later.”

  I hung up before they could do the time-zone math.

  I made good on my fib by showering, dressing, eating breakfast, and putting out food and water for the canine shadow that had been materializing in my yard over the past weeks. In fact, I’d named him Shadow. Although, I appeared to be the only one who recognized that as his name.

  Ever since he’d sided with me against an interloper during the pursuit of Foster Redus’ murderer, the dog no longer disappeared at the sight of me. On the other hand, he didn’t come running when I called his name, either. Or when I put out his food and water.

  “Morning, Shadow,” I said.

  He watched from a safe distance, approaching the bowls perched on the stump in the barren back yard only when I retreated to the steps.

  I’d read a book about dogs last week that said some were praise-motivated while others were food-motivated or play-motivated. The first thing in training a dog was to figure out what motivated yours. The writer suggested paying close attention during all interaction for clues. Since Shadow avoided interaction, I was short on clues.

  Most mornings I was in enough of a hurry that I’d go inside at this point. Today, I sat on the back steps.

  He stopped. Stared at me, flashed a glance at the bowls, back to me.

  I sat and waited.

  Me, bowls, me. Then a shift. Not only was it bowls, me, bowls, but the looks at the bowls lingered.

  He took a step toward the bowls, shot me a suspicious look, which found me innocently sitting in the same spot as the previous check. Took another step, looking at me. A third.

  Then he turned away for several steps—presumably so he wouldn’t run into the stump. Because as soon as he reached it, he pinned me with a long, assessing stare.

  At last, he turned away and chomped on a mouthful of food. He watched me while he chewed. So went the entire meal. Although when the food was gone, he turned away long enough to lap up water. Finally, he turned to me again. His chocolate-brown eyes looking directly into mine, he belched.

  I laughed.

  Startled, he darted five yards away, stopped, and looked back at me, still on the steps, still chuckling.

  “Glad you enjoyed it, Shadow. Have a good day,” I called.

  He stared for a long moment, turned slowly and loped away. But we’d made progress, I decided. Real progress.

  Having been awakened early, I also had time to call Dex before I left the hovel, as I had come to think of this house. I timed the call to hit his morning break, knowing he’d be out feeding squirrels at the FBI facility in Quantico, Virginia.

  “Do you know a forensic pathologist in Montana named Grenley?”

  Most people would have responded to that opener with the conversational equivalent of an eye-roll: either “Good morning to you, too, Danny” or “I don’t know every forensic pathologist in the country, you know.” But I know my audience.

  Dex said, “No. What agency?”

  It was only part of why I loved him like a brother—better than a brother, since none of my brothers worked in the FBI crime lab. Best of all, although Dex worked at the FBI crime lab, he hadn’t given himself over to the FBI crime lab’s culture, which is why he’d talk to me. Most FBI crime lab types would rather drink every chemical in their arsenal than talk to a member of the media.

  Dex never treated me like media. Early on, he’d called me Danny to mask my identity from his coworkers—a nickname that caught on with family and friends—but now I’m not one-hundred percent sure he remembers I’m with the media. By completely protecting him as my source, I give him no cause to remember.

  “None. He’s a civilian as far as I know. But some Wyoming counties and other places use him.”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah what?”

  He ignored that. “Where?”

  “Billings.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  He hung up. There must have been a particularly hungry-looking squirrel. Good morning to you, too, Dex.

  Chapter Nine

  MY MORNING drive to KWMT was its usual uneventful self.

  After commuting for years in New York City, and before that in Washington, D.C., that was a fact worth noting.

  The uneventfulness allowed information about Keith Landry’s strange death to roll around in the back of my head, while the front chewed on another issue. I needed a “Helping Out” segment.

  I had a few in the can for my twice-a-week consumer affairs spot, but you never knew when you might need a few more. News Director Les Haeburn might start listening to me and add more slots each week. Or he might get the bright idea to use me for the kind of stories I’d done for nearly two decades before being exiled to KWMT after daring to a.) accumulate birthdays, b.) compound raises, and c.) call it quits with a news network-exec husband who knew the nasty pitfalls in my contract, because he’d written it and recommended I sign it.

  Okay, miracles were unlikely. I still needed a “Helping Out” segment to keep my hand in at what I liked to think remained my profession. Especially since I’d turned down the lucrative change-of-life talk show offer my lawyer/agent/relative Mel had secured.

  That reminded me of the Gift Card Burglars—don’t blame me, I didn’t name them.

  Reports came through the Better Business Bureau about thieves with a simple yet effective ploy. They called a home where someone lived alone and said the person had won a gift card at a local store. But the card had to be claimed that day at the store. When the unsuspecting resident drove off to claim the prize, the thieves drove in, assured the house was empty.

  The group had been working their way vaguely north, reaching northern Wyoming in these last days of June. This group concentrated on rural homes. The distance residents had to drive to get to town gave the thieves time to load a van with every valuable and semi-valuable item. No kitchen sinks reported stolen, but they’d taken TVs, computers, furniture, wine collections and refrigerators, complete with food.

  I had taken three steps into the KWMT-TV newsroom, when I encountered the first hint that something was going on.

  “Thurston’s here,” Audrey Adams, an assignment editor, said out of the side of her mouth as we passed in the hallway.

  It seemed an odd response to “Good morning,” but okay.

  Jenks sidled up when I was heating water for tea in the mini-break room. “A certain somebody doesn’t have an inkling of what’s happening.” He kept his side to me, to fool anyone who might suspect we were doing anything as nefarious as talking.

 
; Add in a meaningful nod and wink from two participants from yesterday’s sticky-note derby, and the superspy/espionage motif was complete.

  To keep my cover intact, I placed calls about the Gift Card Burglars. Mostly leaving messages asking people to call me back.

  A shadow cut the glare on my computer screen. I turned to find the pleasantly creased face and form of Needham Bender, editor and publisher of the Sherman Independence. While we exchanged greetings, I noted my fellow KWMTers’ nonreaction. In most cities I’d worked, TV and newspaper folks are casually cordial on neutral ground, but don’t visit each other’s lair.

  Mike detoured from the coffeemaker to join us. “Morning, Needham.”

  “I was about to tell Elizabeth that I dropped by to see if she—and you—are going to this news conference.”

  “And I was about to tell Needham we wouldn’t consider it, since Landry’s death is Thurston’s story. Every shot, angle, frame and word.” Needham’s shaggy brows asked the question. I answered: “Haeburn is on vacation and left Thurston in charge.”

  “That explains last night’s newscasts.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Mike murmured.

  Following his gaze, I saw Thurston closing in on us.

  “Did you see the rodeo queen release?” he demanded of me, ignoring both men. “Copies were to be routed to Les and me only.”

  It was less a question than an accusation. Apparently there was a big black market in rodeo queen news releases, and Fine suspected I was ringleader.

  “I saw it on Les’ desk during last week’s meeting—long enough to see that it informed all media outlets that the queen would rein—r-e-i-n rather than r-e-i-g-n—over the festivities.”

  “They do have to show horsemanship,” Mike murmured.

  Thurston looked blank. “You didn’t sit behind Les’s desk.”

  Since that would have required sitting on the news director’s lap during that meeting, I was happy to confirm. “Never did.”

  “So, you couldn’t have read it then,” he concluded triumphantly. “What I want to know is if you have the release now. Or know its current location.”

  I was tired of this game. “No.”

  “I’ll just—” He reached toward files in a rack on my desk.

  I stood and blocked him. “No, you will not.”

  We were six inches apart, close enough for him to see I meant it. Meant it with every degree of heat from a good dose of Irish temper. He stepped back.

  I relented. “It was almost certainly sent electronically.” Since he was notorious for screwing up the computer folder where such shared files were kept, I added, “Ask Jenny to print another copy.”

  “That is her job,” he said huffily and stalked away.

  Needham said, “You read the release upside down? Our TV star must have a deep, dark, secret newspaper past.”

  I nodded. “As a kid at our local weekly, run by the crustiest of old-time newspaper types. I learned to read upside down and backwards with old hot metal.”

  “Ah, sometimes in my dreams I smell the aroma of hot type. I kept the turtle with the Independence’s last hot metal front page.”

  “Explain, you two old fogeys,” Mike said.

  “This electronic generation, no sense of history,” Needham lamented. “You do know newspapers were produced before computers existed, don’t you?”

  Mike said, “Some gadget by Gutenberg, right?”

  “Roughly. Between the centuries of building each line of copy by placing letters one by one and today’s computer, typesetters used to type copy into a machine called a linotype, because it transformed liquid metal into lines of type. It took a while for the metal to cool, thus hot type.”

  I took up the tale. “A printer placed type inside a form on a wheeled table—a turtle. One per page. Everything was backward so when ink and type met newsprint on a press it came out right.”

  Mike’s frown cleared. “Like backward writing you can read in a mirror. But why upside down?”

  “The printer stood at the bottom to see the page right side up. That left the lowly office gofer—”

  “Or editor,” Needham inserted.

  “—standing at the top, reading upside down and backward to spot errors. I didn’t mind. It’s a useful skill for a reporter. Though it didn’t pay off this time. All the release said was a local girl won a beauty contest—”

  “Rodeo queen is not a beauty contest,” Mike said. “You tell her, Needham. You’re on the committee again this year, right?”

  “The newspaper editor’s on the rodeo queen committee?”

  “Small-town journalism, Elizabeth. Different kettle of fish,” Needham said. I wondered if he knew about the missing big shots. I doubted it. Or he’d have printed the story. It was telling that the county brain trust had included Haeburn but not Needham. The newspaper editor rose even higher in my estimation. “Each girl goes from collecting her horse, to full tack and saddle, then works calves. We ask questions all along—equine diseases, safety, grooming. Each girl also displays a talent associated with ranch work, western life or rodeo. This year’s queen is a champion roper. Most impressive I’ve seen. Hope she gets to show it. This news conference . . . I’ve got a feeling about it.”

  Mike and I avoided looking at each other or him.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “Not going to the news conference? Either of you?”

  “Have calls to make. Breaking consumer affairs story.”

  “I’m heading out on an assignment. Gotta go now,” Mike said, giving me a look over Needham’s head. Perhaps he should have kicked me, because I didn’t get the significance. He seemed to realize that, because disgust tinged his parting look.

  I offered Needham coffee. We chatted about the weather, the hay crop, tourists headed to Yellowstone Park, and how traffic would increase over the Fourth of July weekend. In other words, we covered all the top Cottonwood County news except yesterday’s death of a prominent rodeo contractor.

  Then Needham Bender sighed and shook his head. “I’m surprised at you, Elizabeth. Surprised and disappointed.”

  A burn in my chest jolted me. It took a second to register it as the burn of remembering my ex saying those words when I’d balked at a move. I didn’t remember which move. Perhaps, he’d said it more than once.

  Needham was still talking. “You did good work on the Foster Redus case, truly fine journalism.” That salve helped, but the burn remained. “I must have told my wife a hundred times that this county will sit up and take notice with you here.”

  I have accepted professional awards and fulsome compliments with far greater aplomb than my mumbled, awkward thanks.

  “I can only imagine Cottonwood County, Wyoming was not where you saw your career going. I wasn’t aware of your divorce. Thelma told me—my wife keeps up with those things. I’m sorry, Elizabeth. Sorry for the personal difficulty of divorce and sorry the son of a gun took it out on you professionally.”

  I didn’t manage even an awkward mumble.

  “But I can’t be sorry it brought you here. At least not if you practice the kind of journalism you did on the Redus story. However, if you leave stories like this death at the rodeo grounds to Fine, I will not be even a quarter as happy as I thought I’d be.”

  Needham Bender was the unvarnished truth kind of journalist I’d trained under. And he’d immediately treated me as a respected colleague, unlike much of the KWMT newsroom. I even rather liked his mix of barbs and compliments.

  “I can’t make promises about your happiness. Each of us is responsible for our own happiness,” I lectured primly. “However, I do suggest you go to the news conference now. You want a good seat, so no one misses you when you start asking questions.”

  He looked at me for a good ten seconds. Then he grinned. All over. Every
crease happy.

  “Hot damn,” he said. “Hot, hot damn.”

  THURSTON FINE swept from his private office across the newsroom toward the door. Diana followed, carrying her new camera—well, new to her. Haeburn had replaced some of the KWMT shooters’ most archaic equipment, but only with more recent used hardware.

  Diana did not look happy. I knew why. I’d seen the assignment board with her name marked in for Fine’s beck and call all day.

  When he stopped abruptly in front of my desk, he caught Diana off guard. Her lowered camera goosed him a good one. She raised innocent shoulders in response to his glare. When a few titters sounded, Fine spread the glare to the mostly empty desks.

  “I am leaving for the press conference at the sheriff’s department,” he announced. He always set my teeth on edge, but this was worse. I debated saying he wasn’t going to a press conference. Not unless Alvaro allowed only the print media (not a bad idea.) If Alvaro let Fine in, as well as representatives of radio or the Internet, it wasn’t a press conference. TV and radio don’t use presses, so it was a news conference.

  “And no one else goes,” he added. “That is my express order.”

  “What about Diana?” came a voice from off to my left.

  Fine twisted around to try to stab the speaker with his steely glare, but apparently couldn’t identify a target. “I and Diana alone. The rest of you are instructed to work on your daily assignments.”

  That drew no response. What could you say to someone ordering you to keep doing what you’d been doing before he interrupted to give the order?

  “Carry on!”

  Once he was gone, “Carry on!” passed from one staffer to another. An assistant answered the phone, “KWMT. Carry on!”

  The caller must have wondered why that produced laughter in the newsroom. I was too busy grinning to worry about confused callers. It was another small sign of camaraderie.

  Good newsrooms balance on a knife’s edge, with competitive on one side of the blade and collegial on the other. KWMT’s newsroom had been settled into a dull plateau of neither. Every little bit helped to change that. It was nice that Fine contributed something to that knife’s edge, little though he intended it.