Truth Be Told

3

“Go. Go. Get closer.” Jane almost pushed TJ forward, guiding him across the short driveway and toward the postage-stamp front porch. The Boston cops had dashed inside, radios crackling. Suit guy had slammed himself into the front seat of his fancy Lexus, punching buttons on his cell phone the whole way. “You’re rolling, right?”

“On it,” TJ said. He held the camera steady, targeting the door, but glanced over at her. “And I got this, you know, Ryland? Chill. I’m white-balanced, I got batteries, I’m up on sound. You don’t have to keep checking.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Ignore me.”

Would she ever lose her fear of failure? Her mom used to tease her-probably half tease, half worry-each time Jane predicted certain disaster. She’d fail the test, miss the cut, come in second, lose the story. It never happened. Hardly ever. Maybe fear was good. Maybe fear’s what kept her in the game.

Now, the game was clearly on. The cops were freaking. Whatever that deputy found inside 42 Waverly Road was more than some broken piece of furniture. No other reporters were here-as far as the TV stations were concerned, this was just another eviction. Probably not even on their daybook radar. Jane was only here because of her story on foreclosures. Now, whatever this was felt like a headline. And an exclusive.

Jane hovered behind TJ’s shoulder, on tiptoe in her flats, trying to balance without touching him. She shoved her sunglasses onto the top of her head, stabbed her pen through her almost-long-enough ponytail, wished she could look through his viewfinder.

“Anything?”

“Nope. Jane, listen. I’ll tell you. Soon as there’s something.”

TJ’s once-pressed cotton shirt was limp with the heat, his own RayBans perched on his dark hair, the Register’s Nextel clipped to a belt loop on his jeans. A talented guy, her age, a couple years of experience. Seemed tight with the new city editor.

It was a pain, Jane knew, for TJ to keep rolling on nothing. But the minute they stopped down, whatever was going to happen would happen.

The front door was open, but the screen door closed. No matter how much she squinted, Jane couldn’t see inside. “Can you make out anything? Maybe we can get closer.”

“Nope,” TJ said. “Screen door’s messing with the video, and-”

“Hear that?” Sirens. “Somebody’s called the cavalry.”

“Ambulance. Or more cops.” TJ’s camera lens stayed on the front door. “You want me to switch to the arrival?”

“Quick shot of whoever shows up, then back to the door,” Jane instructed him. The story was inside.

Two car doors slammed. Jane risked a look behind her, saw the ambulance. Two EMTs, navy shirts, black Nikes, ran past her toward the front door. One carried a bright orange box-defibrillator. The other a black medical bag.

“Someone’s hurt,” she whispered.

“Duh,” TJ whispered back.

The screen door opened, then slammed.

“They’re in,” TJ said. “Rolling. But can’t see a damn thing.”

“Clock’s ticking now,” Jane said. “They come out running, we’ll know it’s bad.”

The door stayed closed.

The house had been empty when the deputies arrived, Jane knew that. She and TJ’d gotten shots of the two of them clicking open the padlock on the front door. No one had come out. She’d only seen water bottle guy since.

The deputies’ job was to clear out the stuff the Sandovals had to leave behind. With no place to store it-and no money to do so-their leftover possessions were so much trash. This was the third eviction Jane had witnessed in the last three days. At Fawndale Street, one deputy had let her and TJ get some shots inside. She’d watched the blue-shirts-as she mentally called them-sweep through the rooms without a moment’s hesitation, scooping clothing from forsaken closets, emptying drawers into plastic bags, dragging furniture across the floors, gouging the wood and bashing the painted walls and then sweeping piles of dust and litter out the door with a huge push broom.

Now she counted her blessings every time she returned to her Brookline condo. She’d tried to explain to Jake-she smiled, remembering their last clandestine meeting at his apartment-how it’d changed her whole appreciation for “home.” Her little place, and her little mortgage, and all her stuff, saved and collected from high school and j-school, her Emmys, and Gram’s pearls and handed-down Limoges dinner plates, her mother’s last quilt, and even the always-hungry Coda, the now-adolescent stray calico who had selected Jane’s apartment as her new domain.

That night Jane had sipped her wine, fearing her happiness could evaporate any second. “What would I do if someone tried to take Corey Road from me?” she’d asked.

“You’ll never have to worry about that,” Jake assured her.

“That’s what the Sandovals probably thought, too,” Jane said. Jake’s snuffly Diva placed a clammy golden retriever nose on her bare arm. “Then the bottom fell out of their lives.”

“Yo, Ryland.” TJ interrupted her thoughts, pointing to the front door with his chin. “You seeing this?”