Sign Off

by Patricia McLinn

  First, I snagged the beefy boy’s arm. The others had taken off.

  “Hanley?” The face he turned to me was not friendly. Was his reaction about Rog? Or was the fact he knew I’d been to Burrell’s ranch significant? Was he another of Burrell’s loyalists? “You were a friend of Rog’s, weren’t you. Wouldn’t you like to know what happened to him?”

  “I know what happened. He hung himself. And I’m not giving you tabloid journalists a story.”

  “Tabloid?”

  But he’d insulted and run.

  I hadn’t found out much, except that perhaps there was something to find out. I considered that as I headed across scrubby grass toward the parking lot.

  “Look out!”

  The shout from behind me didn’t mask another sound, a rushing, like a localized windstorm. Instinctively, I ducked to the right. My ankle went sideways, and the duck became an all-out tumble, as a sixteen-pound ball whizzed past where my left ear had been a moment before.

  The earth seemed to shudder under the feet that ran toward me. Odd, I thought, lying there, I wouldn’t have expected them to be heavy enough to have that kind of impact, except maybe Hanley.

  I sat up as the first youngsters reached me.

  “Did it hit you?” one asked with an eagerness that sounded ghoulish.

  “No. I’m okay.” I brushed dust and grass off my jacket and pants, while more arrivals joined the circle.

  “Are you all right, Miss?” A hand took my elbow, hoisting me to my feet. A wrinkled, weathered face frowned from under a gray buzz cut. “You walked right across the shot put area.” Before I could answer that indictment, he glared over his shoulder. “How many times’ve I told you to be sure the area’s clear, Hanley? How many times? Now, you apologize.”

  The coach’s hold on my arm spun me around to face Hanley, his face blood-red from his chin to the roots of his hair.

  “Sorry.” His eyes came up from the toes of his shoes, and met mine for an instant. “You gotta watch where you’re going around here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Having nearly gotten shot-putted in the head, I was in just the mood to be greeted the minute we walked into the station with word that Les Haeburn wanted to see me.

  He smiled when I stepped into his office after a perfunctory knock.

  “Elizabeth, come in. I know you haven’t felt that Thurston’s lead-ins to your pieces were precisely what you were looking for.” If I bit any harder on my tongue I’d taste blood. “And he’s been so busy this week . . .” I coughed, relieving the pressure on my tongue, but drawing a frown from Haeburn. With an effort, I smoothed my expression to bland interest. “So it seemed an ideal solution to have you do your lead-ins live.”

  That explained both Thurston’s mood and his comment about the lead-ins.

  Actually, it was a good idea. Such a good idea, I wondered who’d thought of it. The only drawback was I had only twenty-three minutes to airtime.

  The segment was all set, and I’d written the lead-in, so I knew it. But I’d written it as fool-proof as possible for Thurston to read. Now I could play with it.

  Also, there was the matter of getting camera-ready. On screen, the black and beige houndstooth check blouse I’d worn would look as if the camera had the DTs. Not to mention the salad dressing on it. There wasn’t time to go home, and KWMT only had a couple men’s jackets and white shirts for such emergencies. I borrowed a blue blazer from Diana, clip earrings from the receptionist and used one of the men’s white shirts.

  By the time I’d untangled my hair from its afternoon at the track and applied makeup, the news was starting. My segment came fifteen minutes into the half-hour broadcast, just before the weather, so I had time. I slipped onto the set during the first commercial to look over the set-up.

  Thurston Fine sat in the exact center of the anchor desk.

  Well off to the left, in front of a montage of sports stills, was Paycik’s empty chair; he didn’t come on until twenty-three minutes into the show. The only other chair, at the far right of the curved anchor desk, was a clunky plastic model built on a continuous aluminum frame.

  I should have thought of this. Warren Fisk, the weatherman, stood throughout his segment, never joining Fine at the anchor desk as most did to close the forecast with chatter. On KWMT, Fine did all the chattering.

  “This chair won’t turn,” I objected.

  “No need for it to turn,” Fine snapped. Not a happy camper, our Thurston.

  “It has to turn so Jerry can get the right angle.”

  Even years ago, the other stations I’d worked on had at least three automated cameras, operated electronically from the control room, with no need for a cameraman. KWMT had two old cameras and one operator. He would set up the shot on one camera and leave it running while he moved to the other. The director remained with the first camera until Jerry reached the second one. It was like tap dancing on spring ice.

  “He’ll just have to move to the other camera.” It would be a tricky and quick change from the time Fine introduced me until I started my live intro, and chances were excellent that my first seconds would be heard with the camera still on Fine.

  “Then he won’t get the background.”

  “He won’t get my background.” The lighting wouldn’t be as good and Jerry would have to work twice as hard, because Fine didn’t want anyone else associated with the KWMT logo behind his anchor desk.

  The director and producer, along with other technical people in the control room, could hear all this. No one said a word. I sat in the chair, hard. It protested. “This chair squeaks.”

  “Then don’t move,” Fine said with a smirk.

  “Coming back,” Jerry said. He also doubled as floor director.

  I got up and moved off set, catching a sympathetic look from Jerry.

  It was only standing behind the cameras that the full extent of Fine’s deviousness hit me. The weather was shot against a special blue wall that is transparent to the camera and lets the maps and satellite shots show up behind the announcer on the TV screen. In the studio, all you see is the weatherman gesturing to a blank, blue wall. He gauges his motions by checking monitors at either end, which show the maps as they’re seen at home.

  My problem was that not only does the wall become transparent, so does anything blue in front of it.

  Like the blazer I wore. My white shirt would look like a disembodied dickey and the rest of me would look like Casper the ghost.

  “You’re up,” Jerry said as we went to commercial again.

  As I stepped on the set, debating between moving the chair, squeaks be-damned, after Fine started his spiel and standing, which would make it tougher on Jerry, but had the benefit of making Fine look up to me, the studio door opened, and Paycik wandered in. Squinting against the lights, I saw Jerry say something to him, then Mike strode to his side of the anchor desk.

  He grabbed his chair and rolled it behind Fine.

  “What are you doing?” Thurston demanded, his head whipping around. “Are you nuts? We’re back on any second.”

  “No time to waste, then,” said Paycik. “Have a seat, Elizabeth.”

  I grinned at him, Galahad with a desk chair. I slid six inches closer to Fine, positioned the chair, got a nod from Jerry and a glower from KWMT’s anchor, an expression caught on camera, I was happy to see later.

  Perhaps feeling off balance, he stuck to the script. When my piece ended, he said only, “Interesting,” in a tone that meant the opposite. By then I didn’t care. I knew it had gone well.

  At the next commercial break, I returned the chair to Mike.

  After the close, Fine stalked out without a word. I insisted on taking Jerry and Mike to dinner. Mike was a little distant, apparently still miffed that I didn’t consider him a man of mystery, or at least hidden depths. Having Jerry there filled in any gaps.

  At Hamburger Heaven—their choice, honest, I said anywhere they wanted—I had the adrenaline of deadline mixing with the cama
raderie of a small operation that I’d missed in recent years. I’d done a good story, and done it under less than ideal conditions. Mike and Jerry treated me with hilarious stories of how Fine ran roughshod over Les Haeburn.

  That resurrected my question about why, then, Haeburn had allowed me do my own intros, when Fine so obviously disapproved, but they had no answers. Back at the station, I fielded calls from Cissy, her cousin, her sister-in-law and the travel agent, all thrilled with the segment. I suggested they encourage their friends to send more stories to “Helping Out.”

  After reworking my second intro from its original Fine-proofing, it was time to go on again. An appropriate chair had magically appeared, with a hint of its origins coming from the wink I got from Jerry, and everything went smoothly right through my piece and my segue to return to Thurston Fine.

  “Elizabeth, you said these trips are often to foreign destinations, making it more difficult for local consumers to check up on their reservations.”

  “Yes,” I said as confidently as I could. This wasn’t scripted.

  “Don’t you think the U.S. government should be looking out more for our residents when they’re abroad?”

  He had jumped the tracks. Completely. But that didn’t matter. I had to answer. I had to fill the dead air. I had to hand the show back to him in one piece—or I would look like the incompetent.

  If I said Yes, I was making a political statement, practically a damn editorial. No, and I could sound as if I were all for leaving Americans to the nefarious wiles of ferriners.

  “As Jean Chalmers of Chalmers Travel said so well, Thurston, it’s not so much the destination, as the means you use to get you there that you have to be careful of. If you would like a sheet of travel tips, please send a self-addressed envelope to ‘Helping Out’ here at KWMT-TV. And if you have any consumer problems, contact ‘Helping Out.’ Thank you, and good night.”

  Not even Fine dared battle the finality of that closing.

  * * * *

  Still steaming, I pulled into my driveway faster than usual, barreling along to where it curved behind the house. If the brakes hadn’t been good I would have plowed into the back end of a pickup truck parked to one side of the garage.

  In the seconds my headlights strafed across the dusty blue of tailgate and side panel, they also flashed across a tall figure in jeans and dark T-shirt.

  I had the lights and engine off and had exited the car with a temper-venting slam in seconds. Another handful of breaths marched me up to where Thomas David Burrell hadn’t budged from resting his rear end against the front door of his truck.

  “That’s a damn stupid place to park that thing, Burrell. What are you doing back here?”

  Out of sight of the street and witnesses? And if so, for nefarious reasons?

  On the other hand, if he’d been looking for a place out of sight and with no witnesses, the encounter at Burrell Construction would have been a whole lot better.

  “If I’d known you used your drive as a Formula One course, I wouldn’t have parked here while I waited for you.” My eyes had adjusted enough to the moonlight now to see the white of his teeth in a faint smile. “You should be more careful. You could’ve hit your dog, too.”

  “He’s not my dog. And why didn’t you wait out front?”

  The white grin evaporated. It was the reverse of the Cheshire Cat, the body remaining and the smile disappearing.

  “You know what they say about the company you keep,” was all he said.

  He was trying to say that staying out of sight was some gallant gesture to avoid sullying me by association? Talk about barn doors after the horse has departed.

  “The word already seems to have gotten around about the company I kept—and the places I’ve been. I didn’t tell anyone, yet I had someone mention it earlier today. So, who did you tell?”

  His Lincoln eyes considered me a moment. “I had a talk with Tamantha.”

  Somehow I didn’t see Tamantha chatting with the high school shot-putter about such matters.

  “The kid who tried to bean me was considerably older than Tamantha’s pals. You sure it wasn’t some of your troops in the Burrell Guard spreading the word?”

  He shook his head once. It had the feel of a commentary more than an answer to my question, an impression backed by his next words.

  “It didn’t need telling from Tamantha for the whole county to know. And any who didn’t know about you coming to the ranch, do know about today by now. You park in front of Burrell Construction in full view of the highway, and you don’t think everybody in the county’s going to hear about it?”

  So he’d parked out of sight tonight—to avoid word getting out that I was talking to him, or that he was talking to me?

  No time to ask, because he was giving more orders. “Leave those kids alone, E.M. Danniher. Leave it all alone. You already know it can be dangerous.”

  “What can be dangerous?”

  “Asking all sorts of people all sorts of questions.”

  “If I got answers, I wouldn’t have to keep asking so many people so many questions.” His skeptical brow rose, but I took his silence as permission. “Foster Redus is the one missing, presumed dead. But Tom Burrell is the one everybody talks about. Why is that?”

  He looked at me from under his brows. “A fall from grace is always interesting.”

  “What about Redus’ fall from grace? I have leads that he was abusing his position, bullying some people, letting up on the ones from well-connected families.”

  “Any hard proof?”

  “If there’s something there, I’ll find it.”

  “Maybe it’s better left unfound.”

  “I’d think you’d want that dug up. It would open a whole range of motives for other people to have killed him.”

  “You don’t know that he’s dead.”

  It was chilling, that subtle reminder that the man in front of me, the man I was talking to alone in the dark, the man with the log-splitter forearms just might be the only person who knew for certain if Redus was alive or dead.

  “Neither does the rest of the county, and I’d think they’d be more interested in knowing. Being missed so little—isn’t that a fall from grace? Shouldn’t that be interesting?”

  “He didn’t have far to fall.”

  “He was a deputy,” I argued.

  He gave a snort. “You met our sheriff?”

  “So you don’t think much of Sheriff Widcuff and his deputies.”

  “This county had more arrests and fewer convictions than any other in the state last year, by far. We were—” He stopped, then restarted in his usual calm monotone. “I don’t think much of Widcuff and some of his deputies.”

  The commission looking into the sheriff’s department that Paycik had mentioned. Judge Claustel had said Burrell ran it and was finding fault with Widcuff. A situation Redus might have hoped to take advantage of to squeeze out Widcuff and take over. Now both of Widcuff’s headaches were gone.

  “But nothing came of that commission, did it? Not with you so occupied with accusations that you killed Redus. Now, that’s interesting . . .”

  He stepped toward me, close enough to cut off the wind. The absence of that buffeting felt like heat. And into my mind popped the most incongruous of thoughts. He’d seen the dog. You could’ve hit your dog, too, he’d said, so he had to have been close to the animal when I drove in. Maybe he’d been close enough to tell if it was starving or sick or . . .

  “Leave it alone, E.M. Danniher.”

  I looked down to his big, raw-boned hand, dark on my arm, up to his eyes. They’d gone nearly black.

  “Or what?”

  He jerked his hand back and strode away.

  * * * *

  “Call for you. Line Four,” Jenny said as I reached my desk Wednesday morning.

  Good. I needed to stockpile more “Helping Out” segments.

  After a quiet weekend of paint-scraping, family phone calls, and two possible sightings of the
phantom dog, I’d spent Monday with the goat lady and her neighbor. An older cameraman named Jenks had been out with me. He didn’t say much, but what he’d shot and I’d started editing would make a nice story about two long-time neighbors finding a workable compromise.

  The quiet weekend had reached downright silent on the Paycik front. Only when he returned on Tuesday did I learn from Jenny that he’d been in Chicago, combining a charity event with reports for future use. I suppose that was one of the things I didn’t know about him.

  I’d been so busy Tuesday with preparing last night’s report on the nomad roofers, we still hadn’t said more than hello.

  “‘Helping Out,’ Elizabeth Danniher, may I help you?”

  “This is Gisella Decker.” The name didn’t click. “Mike’s Aunt Gee. They said Mike’s in a meeting, and I have news. Foster Redus’ body has been found.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mike was right. There were spots in these mountains you could hide a body until some future explorer came across the dust and bones and wondered at an ancient civilization that left individuals to die so alone.

  Diana and Mike knew where I meant when I said Aunt Gee told me a road crew laying gravel to fill winter washouts found Redus off Three-Day Pass Road. We drove past the Burrell Roads trailer, then north on the more western of the roads to O’Hara Hill. About a half mile past the entrance to Tom Burrell’s ranch, Diana turned the van west on a gravel road that ran shortly through rising pastures then started climbing between walls of pine green.

  “Anybody else at the station know?” Diana asked as she steered expertly through a switchback.

  “No. The scanner was turned off.”

  “Fine,” Mike mumbled.

  Right again.

  After finding Mike in an editing booth, and telling him to snag Diana and meet me in the van, I’d checked the police scanner in its door-less closet outside Thurston Fine’s office. The scanner was off, and a rumble of snores came from beyond Fine’s office door.

  For forty seconds, I debated notifying someone that Redus’ body had been found. Then I decided to let sleeping Fines lie.