Disturbance

SIXTEEN

I tried to console myself with the thought that if I hadn’t talked to Reed, Cade Morrissey might have remained missing, left in an unplugged freezer to rot. I told myself that the investigation had been aided by my work. It didn’t make me feel any better.

I sold two freelance stories about him, telling myself that I was helping to bring him some justice. By writing about his life, I was letting others know who he was, showing that he was more than a decorated corpse in a sensational murder-he had been an individual, there were people who loved him. And I still felt that the checks for those stories were forty pieces of silver marked up for inflation.

The backlog in the crime lab’s DNA section-they were hard-pressed to have tests done in time for trials-meant that it would be weeks if not longer before we knew if there was indeed a biological connection between Nick Parrish and Cade Morrissey (in this situation, I could not bring myself to use the words “father-son relationship”). The director of the lab pointed out that Parrish, in prison, could not have killed Cade Morrissey, so looking for a connection was not evidence from his killer, it was more a matter of curiosity-they might get around to it at some point.

The police investigation seemed focused in three areas-trying to learn more about the bloggers who called themselves “the Moths,” tracking down people who knew Cade, and trying to identify the woman who had been found in the trunk of Marilyn Foster’s car.

I sold another piece freelance-to a magazine that specializes in municipal government issues, on the changes already being felt in Las Piernas’s city hall now that the paper wasn’t around to keep an eye on it.

At that point, I was back to wondering if I should face facts and give up on being a reporter. I was rescued from dismal reflections about what other work I might be suited for when I got a job offer: a low-paying gig at a local radio station. The person who made the offer was Ethan.

To my surprise, Ethan had talked the town’s struggling public radio station, KCLP, into letting him run an experiment. He had done his homework, discovered the weakest show in the station’s lineup, and then shown up in the manager’s office, underwriters in hand, with a proposal to replace it with Local Late Night. The program would be a mix of news and opinion on all things Las Piernas and surrounding areas. He wasn’t unknown to the people he pitched it to-he’d taken a few classes in radio production in his unending time at Las Piernas University, during which he’d done his best to network with the people who were now running the station. They went for it.

Long before the first show aired, he had built an online following for himself-started in part at the Express-and made use of social networking sites and other tech that the paper hadn’t fully utilized, and as a result he was already something of a local celebrity. When he became the host of the show, that following increased, and he was now enjoying himself immensely.

One of the best things he did was to organize a Web site for the show that allowed those of his former print colleagues who worked with him now to write at length-any length-about the issues we discussed on the show. So while the part of the story that went on the air had to be kept short, the audience was always told there were more details on the Web. More underwriting and pledge dollars were generated from the site.

A few decades working as a journalist who focused on local politics didn’t hurt my ability to find stories for the program, but it took me some time to get used to the job, which differed in some important ways from print work. Learning to use the flash mike and the sound-editing software on my laptop were mechanics-they didn’t take too long, although I was nowhere near the artistry of some when it came to sound editing. I got used to carrying more gear and learned the hard way to always have an electronic Plan B (extra flash card, more batteries).

I tried to stop writing things down during interviews, a habit I couldn’t quite break, and tried to find humor in the fact that, in the press conference pecking order, my old colleagues couldn’t stop thinking of me as a newspaper reporter, which often allowed me to grab a better position than lowly radio reporters would usually get. On the other hand, I often caved in to the practical need to set aside my dignity and sit with my new colleagues on the ground at the feet of the television cameras for the sake of better sound quality.

Changes in my own thinking and writing had more to do with the nature of the medium. I found out how fast a minute could go by. I learned how much breath was needed to speak a long sentence on the air, so my sentences became shorter. I was expected to cover two to three stories in one day-that kept me moving.

While the on-air stories were shorter, the associated Web site allowed the reporters working with Ethan to develop our stories even more fully than we could have done at the Express, which had never made good use of its own site (failing to listen to the pleas of our computer guru, until she left in frustration for a much higher paying job). In the last few years, as the print edition’s pages had dwindled, the Express had kept most stories shorter than the ones we were publishing on the KCLP site.

The KCLP site wasn’t the equivalent of the Express in its heyday; it was going to be reached only by the computer literate who happened to be paying attention in the first place, and it didn’t compare to even a small daily newspaper in terms of the variety of items it could cover. We knew that people who read newspapers would often look through an A section and become engrossed in stories they hadn’t set out to find, while on the Internet the average reader might be picking up only one local story a day, and that as the result of a search. Still, it was at least one way to get the local news out and to keep some level of accountability in Las Piernas government.

Ethan had also hired Mark Baker, as well as a couple of people whose specialties were the local art and music scenes. We all got along well, and Ethan had us working together as a team in no time.

I was seeing a whole new side of Ethan. I had always known that his interests were wide-ranging, that he was bright and creative. Even in his earliest days at the paper, he had been ambitious and competitive, but-in large part because of problems of his own making-the Express had never allowed him a leadership role. KCLP, on the other hand, had given him major responsibilities and power. “All the rope I need to hang myself,” he’d say to me with a rueful smile.

So far, he was using the rope to climb higher. After a little more than a month at the station, he was offered the position of news director-KCLP had fired the previous one, who had resented the power Ethan had already been given to cover local news on his show.

Not long after that, he called me into his new office, which was small, but at least it was an office. He hadn’t had one before. Now he even had a narrow window that looked out onto the parking lot. He was standing behind his desk, looking through some paperwork.

“Yes, Mr. Shire?”

He looked up and winced. “You know I hate it when you do that.” He looked at my arm and said, “How’d you get that nasty bruise?”

“Rachel’s teaching me self-defense.”

He seemed ready to make the obvious retort but changed his mind. “Have a seat.”

I took one on the couch that occupied most of one wall, but he stayed standing. “I have a request,” he said.

I waited, and for once in his smooth-talking life, he seemed to have a hard time coming up with what he wanted to say. Finally, he said, “You know John and Stuart made it clear to me they want to stay retired.”

“Yes…,” I said warily.

“It kind of surprised me.”

“They were in the newspaper business longer than the rest of us. I don’t think they wanted to try to start over here.”

He paced the two short steps the office allowed him, then said, “You’ve been best friends with Lydia since grade school, right?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I’m thinking that you’ll be able to explain something to me. When I started the evening show, you and Mark were the only people from the paper that I wanted here and had budget enough to hire. Since then, about half the former staffers of the Express have asked me for jobs, but she hasn’t even stopped by to say hello.”

“You don’t take that personally, do you? You know she likes you-she probably just thinks you’re busy.”

“I’m more worried she was insulted that I didn’t ask her to work here.”

“No, not that she’s mentioned to me.”

“Do you think she wants out of the news business for good?”

I hesitated. “I don’t think so. But she knows that the chances of landing another job as a city editor are slim to none.”

He was silent for so long I figured we were done and started to get to my feet. He motioned me back down. “You’ve never taken an editor’s position?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve covered for people a few times, but I didn’t enjoy it. It’s not what I do. I’m a reporter. Lydia-she’s a good reporter, but writing and editing are where her real interests are. Can I ask where this is leading?”

“I have the title of news director now, but when they offered it to me, I didn’t accept it right away.”

“No? I thought you would’ve jumped at it.”

He smiled. “I wanted to, but I negotiated.”

I couldn’t repress a laugh.

His smile became a grin. “Yeah, I know. A little over a month ago, I was out of work. Now I’m making demands. Anyway, the conditions were that I could divide the previous director’s salary, take some for myself as a salary increase but use most of it to hire an assistant director.”

“Ethan-I don’t get it.”

“The deal is, I can hire an assistant, and if the station starts to get better ratings and support, they renegotiate my own salary in six months. Otherwise-well, otherwise, up to them.”

I just stared at him for a moment, then said, “I assume you have a plan?”

“I’m hoping Lydia will take the assistant’s job. She… she has skills I don’t have. Yet. I think if we all work together, we can pull it off. I know she’s getting married and all that, and the pay won’t be close to her old salary, but-do you think she’ll be interested?”

As it happened, she was thrilled. On her first day at work, she sighed contentedly and told me she had missed that feeling of being at the center of the flow of information that comes with being in a newsroom.

“I know,” I said. “The first week at home, every time I heard a fire engine-”

“It made you crazy not to know where it was headed and how big the fire was and if there were injuries and what type of structure-”

“Exactly.”

Not many days later, I was again sitting in my boss’s office, going over some possible stories, when his new assistant came rushing in, looking shaken-reminding me that when the news is especially bad, being at the center of the flow of information isn’t such a fine thing.