Shunning Sarah

by Julie Kramer

Soon, she noticed a trail of footsteps on the ground—mostly beast, but definitely some boy feet had passed this way, too. She was relieved the dog stuck to the path of tracks in the snow.

  The last signs of her son.

  CHAPTER 6

  Josh woke cold, scared, and hungry. He had been dreaming of breakfast when he realized he was still trapped in the pit. The thought of another day underground with a dead body was unbearable.

  • • •

  Michelle heard a gunshot.

  The noise seemed to come from the direction the dog was headed. Her heart pounded as she moved faster, uncertain what she would find.

  A few minutes later, she grabbed Bowser’s collar and pulled him back before either of them slid down the hole where the tracks ended.

  So while the dog woofed their arrival, she dropped to her knees hysterically screaming “Josh!” “Hello!” and “Are you down there?”

  It wasn’t until her throat grew sore and she grew quiet that she could hear his small voice.

  CHAPTER 7

  My name is Riley Spartz and I’m a television reporter in Minneapolis—one of the most competitive news markets in the country.

  The tip about the trapped boy came from my mother.

  She was always calling with local gossip she hoped might qualify as news in a bid to get me on the phone for a long chat. I almost ignored her call because most of the time her ideas were more of a nuisance than they were news.

  But not this time. This time she had something good. “A kid the next county over fell in a sinkhole.”

  A phone call to the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office confirmed they were trying to rescue a young boy, but provided few other details.

  I was supposed to be reporting about why so many Minnesotans—Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Harold Stassen, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann—have run for the White House. That idea came from my new boss during the morning news huddle. Even though I thought the assignment lacked originality (every four years the station seems to broadcast a version of it) I had volunteered for the story to try to get off to a good start with him on his second day as news director.

  There was still a risk, though, that I could work my butt off and he might still think my story sucked. A career in news had taught me that bosses never think their ideas suck, just the execution of them. But I had enough confidence in my reporting skills to take the chance. I was supposed to be picking the brains of political analysts from various universities when my mother called about the trapped child.

  News value has to be high these days to merit Channel 3 sending a crew more than a hundred miles. Media is in a recession meltdown and cost of coverage is a real factor on what events make the news. I had to sell my boss on a game change. That happens all day long in the news world; better stories come along and push others out of the lineup. But he balked over me hitting the road.

  “I’m not convinced yours is the better story.” Bryce Griffin was overseeing the redesign of his news director’s office—making it his own turf. “By the time we get there, the news could be over.”

  That was a risk for any story. Talk like his made me miss my first news director. He ran the station under the Child Struck Directive—meaning anytime anyone hears a report of a “child struck,” they run. “I don’t care if you’re interviewing the governor,” he used to say. “Drop the mic and race to the kid.”

  “We have a child in jeopardy, Bryce, and if we wait, he’ll be someone else’s lead story. Don’t you remember that little girl who got trapped in that well in Texas?”

  Bryce didn’t react. And I realized he was probably no older than “Baby Jessica” herself when the live video coverage of the well that almost became her tomb mesmerized a nation for fifty-eight hours and made CNN a household name.

  I tried a more recent example. “Don’t you remember the Chilean miners?”

  That example got his attention. Every news manager in the business knew that covering that particular life-and-death story was sixty-nine days of ratings gold.

  “Do we have this alone?” he asked.

  At least he appreciated the value of an exclusive. “A local source tipped me. And the sheriff gave no indication that any other media had been in touch.”

  Bryce chewed on his lower lip before nodding affirmatively. “Bring me back some news.”

  He held his hand up for a high five and even though the gesture seemed cheesy, I obliged. Mostly because no one else could see us and roll their eyes.

  Previous news director Noreen Banks had insisted on keeping a close eye on all that happened in the newsroom, so she had her office walls replaced with glass. With such a transparent policy, we could observe her as well, but that often proved demoralizing as we watched her intimidate our colleagues over perceived news-judgment lapses.

  Bryce’s first act as boss was to order the office walls boarded up. Clearly he preferred to keep those kind of conversations private. And having been verbally beaten down numerous times in Noreen’s fishbowl, I saw some benefit to this change.

  While her departure was most cruel and unfair, Bryce had nothing to do with her being gunned down on the job. So I was willing to give him a chance to repair our battered morale following the recent shooting spree by a wacko pissed over our news coverage.

  Bryce was much younger than me. He’d come with a hotshot, whiz-kid reputation for turning around a foundering TV station out west. The network had snatched him up to perform the same magic with us.

  I suspected more changes were coming to Channel 3, but I figured he couldn’t be any worse a boss than Noreen. Of course, I’d only worked for him a couple of days. I hoped Bryce would take things slow and get to know the market—and us—before unveiling grand ideas while we were still emotionally walking wounded. But I also knew—and so did he—that the average tenure of a television news director was about eighteen months.

  So he was up against a deadline of his own.

  CHAPTER 8

  My photographer, Malik Rahman, slept most of the drive south. I could have woken him to chat, but I had plenty to think about these days and didn’t mind pretending I was alone for a couple hours.

  My mind kept flashing back to the newsroom horror. As journalists, we’d all covered breaking news of rampage killers opening fire in schools, post offices, and shopping malls. We just never thought it would happen at Channel 3, but the target of a story made us targets of his rage during a surprise shooting spree. He’d made news after leaving his dog locked in a car on a hot day. It wasn’t my story that made him come after us, but our anchor’s live interview about his dead pet.

  I’d urged Noreen not to let the man in the building. Not because I suspected him capable of murder, but because I thought meeting with him would be a waste of time. “Let him sue,” I’d said. “Tell him we’ll see him in court.” Because of my negative attitude, I’d been banned from the meeting. And that decision probably saved my life.

  The police labeled the killings as one of those cases in which the perpetrator apparently “snapped.” But I disagreed. Our assailant didn’t surrender to impulse, but came armed and ready for revenge in the guise of threatening legal action over a story gone wrong. Minutes later, bodies on the floor gave fresh meaning to the TV term “dead air.”

  If I hadn’t been on a highway going nearly eighty past farm fields just then, I would have closed my eyes to shut out the memory of him shrieking outside my locked office door, while I cowered behind a desk, trying not to confirm my presence by breathing too loud.

  I didn’t pull the triggers that killed anybody that day, but I felt plenty of survivor’s guilt. As did all my colleagues who lived through that fatal afternoon. The dead were dead physically; but the rest of us were dead emotionally. Especially the guy who stepped in and executed our attacker. Once upon a time, he and I were in love. But that seemed so long ago.

  The first week after the station rampage, Channel 3 had broadcast the news from its State Fair building us
ing a remote truck to transmit the signal. The Minnesota State Fair functions like an entire city for twelve days a year. Each of the local media outlets—newspapers, TV, radio—has its own building on the fairgrounds. The station retreated there, broadcasting newscasts on schedule, until the network managers could determine how best to react to the shoot-out.

  Police had cleared the murder scene almost overnight. There was no “whodunit” drama surrounding this triple homicide. Crime scene decontaminators were brought in to remove all forensic traces of my coworkers and their attacker.

  But still, business couldn’t possibly run as usual. As long as any of the staff working that dark day continued to be employed at Channel 3, hints of the ambush would linger. I still remembered the shots and screams vividly. And nobody wants to stand over the spot where a colleague bled to death, even if the carpet has been replaced.

  Physically altering the newsroom might be the only way to begin to help us repair emotionally. So the floor plan was remodeled, and the anchor desk where Sophie Paulson lay, a bullet in her brain, was thrown out. A new one was designed and moved to the opposite end of the space. Noreen’s news director’s office was also torn down and her formerly prime office space became a copy center/storage closet that no one liked to enter.

  If we needed copies made, we asked an intern to perform the task.

  Some of the newsroom remained unchanged. The assignment desk, where Ozzie had crouched on the floor with a telephone and a 911 operator tight to his ear, looked just the same.

  Maybe because my office is down the hall from the murders, there are moments when I forget the violent assault. But each day, when walking into the newsroom for the morning huddle, it still feels like a chamber of death.

  CHAPTER 9

  By the time Malik and I arrived on the scene with a camera, the little boy was safe.

  My first reaction was that in missing the rescue shot, Channel 3 had made a long drive for nothing: my new boss would be pissed, and I would be toast.

  Then I was ashamed of myself. It wasn’t that I wasn’t rooting for a happy ending. But a happy ending this early in the news cycle decreased suspense, and hence viewership.

  Audiences love stories of lives in peril, but they need to get to know the victims before they begin to care about their fate. Right then, neither they—nor I—knew anything about Josh Kueppers.

  It had taken a while to find the location. Unlike in cities, where addresses are precisely marked with street signs and house numbers, out in the country, drivers must rely on landmarks like a red barn or a broken windmill.

  A large brown sign in the small town of Fountain caught my eye. It read: Sinkhole Capital of the USA. I pulled over on the side of the road and shook Malik awake, then pointed the unusual slogan out to him.

  “Weird,” he said. “Are they bragging or warning?”

  We used the opportunity to grab thirty seconds of video for the story and switch places in the van. I knew we were getting close to the action and wanted to be free to take notes. For the next several miles we veered from one country road to another, slowing once to pass an idyllic scene of a horse-drawn Amish buggy, driven by a bearded man with a boy wearing a matching straw hat beside him.

  The area has one of the fastest-growing Old Order Amish communities in the country—a population of more than a thousand plain folk. The public was very curious about their conservative faith and quaint customs; thus a successful tourism industry was helping the region economically.

  A farm girl myself, I was familiar with the simple ways of the Amish, and had long envied them their peaceful lives … especially now that my own life was beyond complicated. If not for the edict that women part their hair in the middle, going Amish was tempting.

  Malik was Muslim and had never encountered Amish before. He wanted to stop for video. I nixed that idea, explaining that Amish do not like being photographed and further had nothing to do with our story at hand.

  “Someday we’ll come back and do a timeless feature on the Amish,” I promised. “But right now, we need to concentrate on this trapped kid.”

  Just then we spotted several emergency vehicles with flashing lights and determined we were in the right place. And that we were the first media on the scene.

  A yellow backhoe loader—a piece of excavating equipment—was parked near some trees, away from the road, its bucket extended as far as the arm would reach. I noticed it because my parents kept one on their homestead. Backhoes came in handy for carrying, digging, or reaching.

  While Malik sprayed the scene for video, I chatted up Sheriff Ed Eide, who delivered the news that we were too late. I immediately concluded the worst. “I’m so sorry.”

  But he quickly corrected me. “Not that. Got the kid out more than an hour ago. Story’s over. You might as well move along and head on back to the Cities.”

  I pried Josh’s name out of him, but was surprised the law wasn’t more enthused to see us. Sheriffs, as elected officials, are generally congenial to the media. They appreciate their voters watching them on TV doing their job. Especially when they’ve apparently done it well. Sheriff Eide seemed almost reluctant to gloat about his successful rescue.

  And that seemed odd.

  Malik started moving toward the clump of trees—and backhoe—but was ordered to keep away from the action.

  “How about telling us what happened here, Sheriff?”

  I purposely referred to him as “Sheriff” because professional and personal experience has taught me law enforcement types appreciated being called by their title—our way of acknowledging that they outrank us. Even if he had asked me to call him Ed, I never would. And he didn’t.

  “Soon as we get the story, Sheriff Eide, we can be on our way.”

  Another problem with rural news events is that fewer witnesses are generally available to interview out in the sticks than in the city. And the sheriff made it clear no one on site except him was authorized to talk to the media. And he wasn’t in a very talky mood.

  “We can wait while you finish up.” Malik set up a tripod and smiled like we had all the time in the world. Only he and I knew we didn’t. I purposely kept from checking my watch to avoid appearing impatient.

  The sheriff looked peeved that we weren’t packing up. “All right, media miss, let’s get this over with.”

  I clipped a wireless microphone to his uniform, not bothering to ask him to run the cord up under his shirt. I just draped it over his shoulder and down his back, figuring, good enough.

  Being so near his holster made me nervous. I didn’t like being around guns anymore after the newsroom massacre. Even though I knew the sheriff’s weapon was part of his uniform, the steel on his hip made me tense.

  Meanwhile, Malik continued fussing, framing the shot, and holding a reflector to improve the light. I was anxious to get the interview under way, but he wanted perfect visuals.

  We’d argued about this numerous times. I’d say, “In color and in focus. Let’s go, Malik.” And he’d say, “Patience, Riley.”

  Finally he signaled ready.

  “So Sheriff Eide, what happened here today?”

  The sheriff swallowed before speaking, almost as if he was uncomfortable being on camera. “A local woman called to report that her son was trapped in a sinkhole. By the time we arrived, she had moved that piece of equipment to the scene.” He pointed to the backhoe and Malik followed his gesture by panning with the camera.

  “Did she dig him out?” I asked.

  The sheriff shook his head like I was crazy for even asking. “The ground is too unstable. It had started to collapse around the boy. We tied one end of a rope to the scoop and made a loop on the other. She lowered it into the ground. The child grabbed onto the line, she pulled him up, and we untangled him.”

  Fast thinking and smart. I looked forward to interviewing the mother. Our female demographics would be torn between cheers and tears. “Sounds like a team of heroes.”

  The sheriff nodded, but gave me
nothing verbal.

  “Not too many people can be that sharp in a crisis,” I said. “You must see a lot of cases that end badly. How does this one compare?” I was trying to get him to elaborate on the mom hero angle.

  He shrugged and said, “Sometimes we get lucky on the job.”

  And some people just aren’t very good interviews. I wondered how Sheriff Eide had ever gotten elected. So I stopped going for color and went for nuts-and-bolts questions that would help flesh out the tale.

  “How deep was the pit?”

  “At least fourteen feet. Maybe more. Some of the walls caved in.”

  “Tell me a little about the sinkhole, Sheriff. Was it already there and did Josh slip in? Or did it open up suddenly and trap him?”

  “It appears to have been there for some time, but was overgrown. Locals apparently once used it to dump trash. The boy fell in while chasing his dog.”

  Viewers love dogs. I made a mental note to get a shot of them together. “How did Josh seem when he got out?”

  “Scared. Real scared.” That was the most emotional I’d seen the sheriff. He almost seemed scared himself. The camera does that to some people. “And cold. He spent the entire night in the hole.”

  He filled in some details about why Josh wasn’t reported missing until morning.

  “Which hospital was he transported to?”

  I wasn’t sure if Winona or Rochester was closer. I hoped Rochester, because that particular highway was on our way back to Channel 3 and would save us time.

  “No hospital.” Apparently the mom was a nurse and the family had waived all medical attention. “The kid just wanted to go home.”

  That wasn’t a half bad sound bite, I thought to myself. We all want to go home. Viewers would relate. “Where’s home for Josh?”

  The sheriff glanced at a farm in the distance before quickly shutting down the interview. “That’s enough here. We need to get back to work. We have to secure the scene.” He started to walk away, but Malik stopped him to unclip the mic first.