The Killing Room

EIGHTEEN

In the world of broadcast television news there was one God, and His name was Nielsen. Stations lived and died by Nielsen ratings and, for reporters, you were judged not by your clothes or your face or your hair, not by your silky smooth delivery, your engaging and topical segues to sports and weather — although these things, more often than not, got you the on-air job to begin with, especially if you were a woman — but rather by one all-important number.

Your market.

Markets were determined by the number of television households in an area, and the deeper the penetration, the higher the market number, the higher the station could adjust its ad dollars.

At the yearly conventions most conversations were buoyed by the understanding (usually unspoken) of what market you were in. The top three tiers in the US were all but chiseled in stone, those being New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Philadelphia consistently ranked number four.

To say you were an on-air personality in one of these major markets carried a lot of weight because, in the strata of the Nielsen ratings, which ranked more than 200 markets, it was a constant challenge and struggle to reach bigger and bigger markets. If you were in a feeder market — so-called because it was a smaller market that fed a larger market — all you thought about was how you could eat your way up the food chain. Any reporter who claimed anything to the contrary was full of shit.

I decided to stay in my home town of Weehauken so I could be near my family.

I’ve gotten comfortable in this sized market. It’s about the people.

Bullshit, Shane thought. The truth is you’ve been sending out your reel for six straight years and even Wheeling turned you down. You’ve put on fifteen pounds, your crow’s feet are taking over your face, you’ve whitened your teeth, and it still ain’t happening. Save your boosterism for those idiotic station promos that show you flipping pancakes, hugging three-legged poodles, and wearing a hat shaped like a fucking radish.

In terms of the nation, these rankings were easy. But that’s just where the bloodshed began. The real battle, the in close knife fighting, was for ratings within a market.

Philadelphia, of course, had three network affiliates on the air, ABC, NBC, and CBS, in addition to the Fox affiliate and the stations for WB, PBS, and UPN.

Although a bit before his time, Shane knew that the game changer, as far as broadcast news went, was Entertainment Tonight and its hybrid of news and entertainment to which straight news had to respond. Instead of covering a dozen stories in a half hour, local news now was compelled to cover thirty or more. And fast. In this day and age, more than ever, the headline was the story.

When it came time to pick a professional name, Shane gave it a lot of thought. It was not a decision to be made lightly. He studied the names of the giants in the business.

Most had two-syllable last names. Murrow. Cronkite. Huntley. Brinkley. Brokaw. Jennings. Rather.

Shane was his choice for a first name. A little bit of the outlaw, a little bit of the hero, though just about no one under the age of fifty was familiar with the Alan Ladd film, unless you were a film buff.

The last name was harder. It had to be two syllables, had to convey trust, had to roll off the tongue, and look good on the lower third of the TV screen. He considered a lot of names, but arrived at Adams. When he’d chosen it, he’d had no idea he would end up in a top ten market — no less a market than Philadelphia, where the name of a founding father would be perfect — but he figured a name like Shane Adams would carry him anywhere.

So far, so good.

And while the pioneers of broadcasting were iconic, there was one name that mattered, a man after whom Shane had patterned his career, if not his life — except for the part about being raised a Vanderbilt — the man whose face adorned the only poster in Shane’s tiny apartment.

Anderson Cooper.

Whenever Shane was faced with a decision, he asked himself: WWACD.

What Would Anderson Cooper Do?

When Cooper’s book Dispatches from the Edge was released, Shane scoured the trades, hoping for a book signing tour, and was rewarded. He stood in line at the Borders on South Broad Street, waiting nervously. Every so often he’d sneak a peek at Cooper who was dressed casually in denim, his silver hair glowing under the fluorescents. Shane had practiced what he might say when he got up to the table, but instead of anything witty, urbane, or clever, he just said. ‘Hi. I’m a fan.’

Cooper smiled. He said: ‘I saw your report last night. Good work.’

Shane was flabbergasted. He floated on those words for the next week or so. Who was he kidding? He was still floating on those words.

What Shane revered most about the journalist was Cooper’s phrasing. Shane had studied with two voice coaches and an acting coach, trying to get the perfect TV voice. It was called standard stage, a melange of upper-crust, Mayflower New England and midwestern housewife. Heightened language, some called it. A style of speaking with which you pronounce … each … syllable. Complete and unaccented.

It wasn’t kah-fee or koh-fee.

It was coffee.

Shane had spent thousands of hours reading newspaper articles aloud, ridding his inflection of any trace of his accent.

But as good as he got, there was always someone younger coming up behind him. And that person was usually female.

The new threat at Shane’s station was Dawn Reilly. Twenty-six, petite and perky, Dawn was the new face. Or, more accurately, the new boobs. She had just moved up market from the CBS affiliate in Cleveland (currently ranked #18).

From the moment they met sparks had flown. Dawn was every bit as ambitious as Shane, but she had arrows in her quiver Shane had not. Although he couldn’t prove it — not yet anyway — he knew she was sleeping with the quite-married news director, and therefore getting the plum assignments. He had twice shadowed her to the clubs on a Friday night, and twice gone through her trash. He had nothing tangible, nothing he could use.

Yet.

Shane looked at the footage from outside St Damian’s. The place was right out of a gothic horror novel. Cyn had gotten some low angle stuff, the spire of the church against dark, moving clouds.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again …

Shane had to laugh. He loved old movies, especially Hitchcock, especially Rebecca. He’d seen the film at least ten times with his mother. He often thought that one day, in his dotage, after retiring from CNN with a den full of Emmy Awards, he would like to write a gothic novel.

He brought himself back to the moment, turned to the short piece that had appeared in that morning’s Inquirer. His eye flew down the page, absorbing the details. He had long ago stopped believing anything he read anywhere was fact. Today’s media was all about first, not accurate. It was accurate until it was disproven, then an apology was issued and life went on.

Shane sensed someone nearby, turned around. Cyn was standing behind him. He pointed at the screen.

‘This is great stuff, Cyn.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I’m not buying you lunch.’

‘So, this church was abandoned?’

They had tried, unsuccessfully, as had every other station in town, to get inside St Damian’s, but were turned away. It was still an active crime scene.

‘Not abandoned,’ Cyn said. ‘I don’t think the archdiocese just walks away from a building, unless they sell it. It was closed. The parish merged with another parish.’

Shane had put in three calls to the archdiocese, and each time had been told that there was not, nor would there be, any comment.

‘So someone broke in and just left that baby?’ he asked.

‘Looks like it.’

‘And it froze to death?’

‘Looks like it,’ Cyn said. ‘And it’s a her, not an it.’

Whatever, Shane thought.

‘Do we know if there was any trauma? Like if the baby was strangled or anything?’

‘You are one twisted fucker, you know that?’

‘That’s why you love me.’

‘I haven’t heard or read anything about that. So far, it’s just a baby who was found frozen inside an old aluminum washtub. That might have to be enough for you.’

Bullshit, Shane thought. Nothing was ever enough.

Thinking about the story, Shane got the feeling, almost sexual in nature, of where this story might lead. He knew this had all the makings of a lurid, scandalous tale, which was his lifeblood. Something that might turn into a ratings winner. Something that might get him a few on-set pieces, which were the kind of stories that vaulted you from roving beat reporter to one who got to sit next to the anchors. Not that you wanted to. He’d yet to meet an anchor who wasn’t a world class narcissistic asshole.

You had your Church involvement (in Philly, anything involving the Catholic Church had the potential to explode), you had the possibility of some sort of ritual killing, and you had a dead baby. Talk about a hat trick! He could see the graphics now: pentagrams, crosses, baby shoes.

Blood.

He had to stop, or he’d give himself an erection.

‘Any of the other stations on this?’ Shane asked.

Cyn gestured to the monitors across the room. ‘No one’s breaking in with it.’

‘Where’s Dawn?’

Cyn looked under the news director’s desk. ‘I don’t see her at her usual lunch spot.’

Shane laughed, then started the B-roll footage Cyn had shot. In it, a man and a woman got out of a PPD detective car, and walked down the alley next to the church. Shane ran it back and forth a few times. He only saw the cops from the side momentarily, then from the back as they disappeared down the alley.

‘Do you know these detectives?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Cyn said. ‘They’ve been involved in some pretty high profile cases since I’ve been here. Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano.’

‘Are they accessible?’ Shane wanted to ask whether or not Jessica Balzano was accessible, but Cyn would have seen right through that.

‘As accessible as any of them,’ Cyn said.

Shane knew what she meant. It was rare that a detective, especially a homicide detective, would talk to the media about an ongoing case. Unless, of course, they needed the media’s help in finding a suspect. Then they were all sweetness and light. It was truly a love/hate relationship, as well as symbiotic. Shane always thought of it in terms of rust needing oxygen.

‘But Kevin Byrne is a hard case,’ Cyn added.

‘How so?’

‘Well, he really plays it all pretty close to the vest. Even things he’d be allowed to talk about, he just keeps walking. If you press him he always just refers you to the media relations officer.’

‘Yeah, well, he’s never been exposed to my highly persuasive charms.’

Cyn barked a laugh. ‘Did you see how big this fucking guy is? Your persuasive charms might end up putting you in a bed with an IV drip.’

We’ll see about that, Shane thought.

While Cyn went off to dump the footage and get started editing, Shane sat down at a computer terminal, got online and began to look up background on the two detectives. For any number of reasons it was always wise to learn as many of the names as you could if you wanted to work the crime beat. Detectives, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys. You never knew what you would need in the future.

What Cyn had said — that these two detectives had been involved in high profile cases — was the understatement of the year.

Shane started with Jessica Balzano and discovered that Philadelphia Magazine had done a profile on her a few years earlier. He learned that she was a South Philly girl, that she was married to a narcotics detective named Vincent, that they had a daughter named Sophie. He learned that her father, Peter Giovanni, was a much-decorated officer in the PPD, retiring with the rank of lieutenant.

Kevin Byrne was a little tougher. Shane learned that he had been involved in the Rosary Killer case — Shane had been working in Zanesville at the time, and the story had gone wide enough for him to have learned about it — and that the detective had been nearly mortally wounded in that case.

Shane wrote down the names, even though he didn’t have to. He remembered every person he ever met.

He then got onto the white pages database, and tried to look them up. There was no listing for a Jessica Balzano, or Vincent Balzano. There were a few hits for Kevin Byrne, but Shane doubted any of them were the detective. This made sense, of course. Why would a detective have a listing? It was bad enough that the psychos out there knew where they worked, why let them know where they lived?

Of course, this never stopped Shane Adams from trying.

He did an image search on Jessica Balzano, and all of them were the accompanying photo from the Philadelphia Magazine piece. In it, she stood in the foreground of the Roundhouse. Her lustrous brunette hair was long, a little windswept. She had dark eyes, a smooth complexion, full lips. She was slender, but not skinny, not by any means. It mentioned in the article that she had boxed, and in this photograph she looked very toned. She was beautiful.

Shane wondered what she was like. He wondered if she ever cheated on her husband. He wondered what she ate, drank, drove.

He had every intention of finding out answers to all these questions.

He had the feeling this case, this story, was going to be big. Dead babies and the Catholic Church. It didn’t get better than that. Forget the whole abortion issue, this was a murdered child. And Shane Adams was at the tip of the sword on this one.

He opened his laptop, put in the password to open the encrypted folder, opened the database file. He started two new entries:

Jessica Balzano

Kevin Byrne