Now You See Her

by Paul J. Teague

  He looked at the list he’d made on his notepad. Officially, Bianca was entitled to the same induction process as any other employee. But it was a long time since someone new had joined the ranks of The Shallow Falls Tribune. It was mostly an exit-only establishment these days. As staff retired or left, they weren’t replaced.

  The paper had been reduced from a broadsheet to a tabloid, the fonts changed to jazz them up and make the paper more edgy, as Mitchell had explained it. The number of pages had been reduced to a level which could be sustained week-in, week-out by a small team of three reporters, two freelance photographers, one sports writer, two ads reps and a receptionist. Such was the diminished importance of a journal which had once won awards for its coverage of a huge political scandal in the sixties and had been bought religiously by readers within a radius of thirty miles of Shallow Falls.

  Cory took the job as seriously as if he was still working in those halcyon days—lost dogs, broken plant pots, and all.

  Bianca had been particularly impressed by the printing press.

  ‘You still print on the premises?’ she’d asked.

  It was a pertinent question. Most printing was now outsourced, and traditional printing presses were in greater demand in countries like India. Mitchell Kane was old-school enough to want to hang onto the press, in case they might generate more income by printing third-party publications.

  He’d separated the press from the newspaper, to make it easier to sell off, should the need arise. The need had arisen, sooner than he’d expected. The press was up for sale; it had received interest from around the world, and the staff who operated it knew they were on borrowed time. Not only were their jobs at threat, they had no transferable skills to take into the modern world.

  ‘If worse comes to the worst, I’ll start a blog,’ Cory would joke with the other reporters. ‘Or maybe even a YouTube channel.’

  ‘I can just see you as the next Zoella,’ Oliver Vasey quipped.

  Oliver Vasey was the man who’d published Vasey’s People column in Shallow Falls for nearly thirty years. When he retired, he’d take the Tribune’s history with him. After Mitchell, he was the longest remaining member of staff.

  It was four o’ clock; not much more was likely to happen that day. For a moment, Cory wondered if he should send Bianca home. She’d had the grand tour—that had used up ten minutes of the day. She’d been introduced to the other staff—that was another five minutes. The press had burned up almost half an hour and the canine population at Shallow Falls was all present and accounted for, in readiness for that week’s Missing Mutts column. He ticked off the items on his list. That was it—nothing else to show her.

  ‘Anything else you want to ask me, Bianca?’ Cory said. ‘Or have I covered all the basics now? Hopefully I’ll be able to take you out on a story tomorrow.’

  The phone began to ring in the office. Cory looked over to see that Oliver was picking it up, so he carried on his conversation with Bianca.

  ‘I think that’s pretty well it.’ She smiled, still looking as fresh as she did when she’d walked through the door at ten o’clock that morning. ‘I can’t wait to do some reporting, and I’ll read these style guide documents when I get home tonight.’

  ‘Cory.’

  Oliver Vasey called across the office.

  ‘One moment, Oliver, I just need to finish up here with Bianca…’

  ‘It won’t wait,’ Vasey replied.

  Cory stopped, raising his eyebrows at Bianca to convey as much of a sense of intrigue as he could muster. He suspected he’d just made himself look constipated, but hopefully Bianca would get the gist of what he was trying to achieve.

  ‘There's a big story kicking off in town. You’ll want to take this—what extension do you want it on?’

  ‘Put it through to 205,’ Cory replied. ‘This is promising,’ he said to Bianca.

  The phone rang at his side and he picked it up.

  ‘Got it,’ he said, initiating the baton transfer in the daily version of a phone call relay that punctuated office life. The calls never seemed to come to the right person.

  ‘Hello, Cory Miles speaking. How can I help?’

  He noticed how Bianca was watching him, sensing that something important was about to kick off.

  ‘Uh-huh, yes, where? Shallow Falls Elementary. What time? Over an hour now? Poppy, age four. Damn, that’s not good. Hearing impaired. Damn, that’s really not good. Okay, got it. Thanks for the tip—I’ll be over right away.’

  Cory replaced the receiver and took a beat to gather his thoughts.

  ‘What is it?’ Bianca asked. ‘A news story?’

  ‘Yes, it’s what we call a breaking story in the reporting business,’ Cory replied. ‘We’ve got a missing child at the elementary school. The police are already there. They think she might have been snatched. I hope you weren’t in a rush to get home. It looks like it’s going to be a long evening.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Are you sure you want to come inside? Police stations are best avoided, in my experience.’

  Bianca had unbuckled her seat belt already. Cory took that as a yes.

  The Shallow Falls Police station was nothing like the well-oiled, law enforcing machines seen on TV. Its drab appearance reflected the lack of crime in the area, as if it had given up all hope of anything more significant than a parking ticket. The peeling paint of its window frames and the weed-scattered asphalt of the parking lot gave every indication that the building was longing for retirement, even if the local criminal fraternity were not.

  Like it or not, though, this was one of the most important buildings in Cory's job. The relationships and connections that were forged here were what oiled the wheels for a successful local journalist.

  ‘Why are we going to the station first, rather than the school?’ Bianca asked.

  It was a very good question, and it was encouraging that Bianca had thought to ask it.

  ‘When a news story breaks, the press guys know as little as everybody else does—at least at first,’ he’d explained as they drove through the town. Two police cars had passed them already, traveling in the opposite direction. It still felt counterintuitive to him to be going to the place they'd just rushed from.

  ‘It's the same for the police; they know nothing at first, not until they've had some time to gather information and get on top of the basic facts.’

  '‘But isn't the school where all the action is?’

  ‘Yes, and we dispatched our photographer before you and I left the office. Did you see Oliver doing that the moment he transferred the call to me? The photographer needs to be getting pictures as soon as possible. But I can't report the story on the basis of a tip from the store opposite the elementary school, especially if a child is involved. I have to get the facts right, which means I need to validate the information before we publish anything. Imagine if I got the name of the child wrong? It could cause all sorts of problems.’

  Bianca nodded.

  ‘I'd never thought of it like that. I just assume the press knows everything.’

  ‘No, the police and then the press get on top of the story before anyone else, then we become the main sources of information. The police know most, of course, and sometimes they won't share everything. That's when we have to use our skills to extract the information from them. And sometimes we end up discovering something even the police don't know. Then we have to decide if we're going to share information with them. We can't ever put our sources at risk, or else they might dry up.’

  Bianca nodded again. She took out a small notebook that she'd concealed in her pocket, then pulled a pen out of her shirt pocket and jotted down some notes.

  ‘You're making a great start as a journalist, Bianca. A reporter is never fully dressed without a notebook.’

  She smiled at him, clearly pleased that she was passing as a professional already.

  ‘I'm going to leave you in reception for now. It's best if I speak to Chief Tarrant on my
own at first. I don't want to spook him with an unfamiliar face.’

  Cory walked over to the desk and introduced himself to the officer in charge. He was a well-known presence in the offices, so he was shown through immediately. Cory walked through the open-plan office space, noting the gray tape that was holding the torn carpet together and the brown staining on the ceiling tiles which suggested there was a leak in the roof that somebody probably needed to attend to. He arrived at a dark wood office door and knocked. Its occupant was on the phone.

  ‘Come in,’ came a sharp and snappy voice, already stretched for patience.

  If chewed pens could be people, that would be Chief Lance Tarrant, the man in charge of Shallow Falls Police Department. He looked gnarled and weathered, as if his whole life he'd been battered by unrelenting storms. His thinning gray hair was hanging onto his scalp for dear life, as if at any moment it might give up all hope and slide off his head into the metal trash can at his feet, tired of the world and eager to end the struggle.

  His portly frame suggested it was some years since he'd had to give pursuit in the field of duty. Chief Tarrant was in management, and his policing duties these days involved the hot pursuit of purchase order numbers and requisition slips. As his waist expanded, so did his worries.

  As Cory entered the room, Tarrant waved him over to a chair at the side of his desk while he concluded his call.

  ‘So, you want to know about the child?’ Tarrant asked, slamming the phone down and clearly irritated by whoever he'd just been talking to. Cory was used to this dismissive attitude; it was water off a duck's back to a reporter.

  Cory ran through the information he'd gotten from the tip. Although it was always a brief experience speaking to the chief, it would at least confirm the basic facts and allow him to publish the bones of the story online. He'd typed up a holding headline and published it before he left the office. He'd need to add to it as soon as possible. If not, the Twitter machine would get ahead of him and start spreading all sorts of misinformation.

  ‘Here's what we've got,’ Tarrant began. ‘School ended at 3pm, and the child was reported to us as missing at 15:42…’

  Cory watched as Tarrant checked his notes. The call time would be in twenty-four-hour-clock format and to the precise minute. The press would accept nothing less, and the chief knew it.

  It was tempting to jump in and ask questions, but he knew better than to interrupt Tarrant in briefing mode.

  ‘Age and name of child unconfirmed at present. My officers will release that information as soon as we clarify if this is a missing child rather than a lost child…’

  Cory ventured a question.

  ‘What's your gut reaction?’

  ‘The truth? And off the record?’

  Cory nodded and lifted his pen away from his notebook to confirm it.

  ‘The mother is Reece Norman. Do you know her?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Cory replied. ‘Should I?’

  ‘Not particularly, but I'll bet you know her place. She lives in that ugly trailer right at the edge of town, just on the boundary by the Shallow Falls sign.’

  ‘Yes, I know the one. I don't know who she is, but I know where you mean.’

  ‘Well, I think it's fair to say that her mothering skills are to be questioned by the local population. She's got three kids, all by different fathers. None of them are still on the scene. If you ask the locals, they'll say she looks like she's on drugs all the time or that she's got some new man in tow. Either way, she turned up late at the school gates and one of her kids was missing. We need to confirm the age of the child and her name before we release it to the press.’

  ‘Can you give me anything off the record?’

  ‘It's a child, Cory, you know that. We can't scare the locals and we have to get it right. These are vital minutes after a child goes missing. She'll probably turn up somewhere stupid or at a friend's house. But until we know for sure, we treat her like a missing person, and we follow the drill.’

  Cory knew that, but as a reporter, he always had to push. There was a constant love-hate relationship between the press and the newspaper, like a bickering couple, never completely happy with what the other was doing, but knowing that they depended on each other entirely.

  ‘When will you escalate to missing person status?’ Cory asked.

  ‘Already have,’ Tarrant replied. ‘Reece Norman's credentials as a mom might be a subject for debate, but the welfare of a child is not. I've dispatched as many officers as I can spare already, and they're scouring the town looking for her. It'll be getting dark soon; hopefully we'll find her by then. In the meantime, that's all I've got. Scribble your number down on this pad. I'll let you know ASAP if there's a breakthrough.’

  Cory thought the chief would just throw the sheet of paper in the trash the moment he left, but he went through the motions anyway and left his cell phone number.

  Tarrant's phone rang, as if perfectly timed to dismiss Cory from the room.

  Cory stood up, gave a wave of thanks to the chief, and made his way out into the office. Tarrant was right—the office was all but empty. At least he'd got straight onto it; any parent would insist on the same response if it was their child who’d gone missing. If it was his own son, he'd be going out of his mind until he'd been located.

  Bianca stood up as soon as she saw him walk through the connecting door from the main office. She still had her notebook in her hand, looking pleased with herself.

  ‘What did Chief Tarrant say?’ she asked. ‘Have you confirmed that the child is missing?’

  ‘Not necessarily missing—they're hoping she may just have wandered off. I have a name, though. Do you know Reece Norman, who lives in the trailer at the far end of town?’

  ‘I know her a bit, only from saying Hi in the store. I used to work there before I… before I left school.’

  ‘It's one of Reece's children. Tarrant won't give me any names, not until it's all confirmed.’

  They stepped through the double doors into the parking lot of the police department. The light was beginning to fade; Cory knew this was a crucial time in the search.

  Bianca stopped and studied her notepad.

  ‘I think I can help you there,’ she grinned. ‘I got talking to the officer at the reception desk. It seems she's not quite as cagey as Chief Tarrant. Apparently, it's Poppy Norman, the youngest child. She's four years old—just started school recently. She has a severe hearing impairment, too; she wears hearing aids in both ears. I've seen her, she's a cute little kid, but lives in a world of her own, I think.'

  Cory looked at Bianca, astonished that in less than one day on the job she'd succeeded in finding out more information than he'd managed to secure from his most senior source.

  ‘Wow, great work, Bianca—well done. Let's get down to the school now, and see what else we can find out about Poppy Norman.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘I know you've only seen her in the store, but how would you describe Reece Norman?’

  Bianca waited until she’d clicked the seatbelt buckle into place before she answered.

  ‘I felt sorry for her and the girls, if I'm honest with you,’ she began. ‘I don't like to use the p-word, but if you pushed me, I'd say they looked poor.’

  ‘That's the impression I'm getting so far. Is there a father on the scene or is she on her own with the kids?’

  ‘I saw her with some guy a couple of months ago, but I haven't seen him around recently. She seems to keep herself to herself. The kids are nice—you never hear her screaming at them or anything like that. And there's something really different about them…’

  She paused a moment.

  ‘What?’ Cory probed.

  ‘The kids never asked for stuff in the store. I used to see the other children rushing straight for the candy, demanding that their parents buy this or that for them. I never saw that with Reece's kids, or I didn't ever notice it if they did. They seemed to understand that they couldn't have stuff. It was sad, re
ally, like they'd had that expectation knocked out of them so young.’

  ‘I need to call home.’ Cory changed the subject, glancing at the clock on the dash. ‘Will you excuse me one moment? I must check in with my own son before we head over to the school.’

  ‘Sure,’ Bianca said. ‘I'd better let my mom know where I am. I may be eighteen now, but that doesn't stop her worrying.’

  Cory stepped out of the car to make his call, not yet ready to let Bianca into the details of his personal life. He called the number at the top of his contacts, one with a hashtag added to make sure it always rose to the top. It used to be labeled with the name of his wife—Nadia—but it had become less painful to edit the entry in his phone to display the name of his son, Zach.

  He always felt trepidation when he listened to the dial tone, not because he didn't want to talk to his son, but because he felt an impending sense of crisis with his wife. It was like the faraway drums in a Tarzan movie, a distant beat that never resulted in good news.

  ‘Hey, Cory, nice of you to call.’

  He was on the defensive already. He'd only wanted to check in on his son.

  ‘Hi, Nadia, I hope it's not a bad time?’

  ‘It's never a good time for you to call, Cory. I'm busy, what do you want?’

  Cory couldn't quite put his finger on when things had started to go off in the marriage. One minute they'd been a tight little family unit, and the next they seemed to be arguing all the time and were now separated. It didn't help that Nadia had been promoted in her law firm. Sure, the money was very useful, but the stress it placed her under didn't appear to suit her. She started to take it out on Cory, telling him if he was more ambitious, she wouldn't have to work such long hours. But Cory's passion was in providing local news; he had no aspirations to move any distance away from Shallow Falls.