six-two onetime linebacker for a third-string minor-league football team strode over to the woman he followed around with his camera a good part of each day, sometimes successfully, sometimes only to see his footage ignobly die on the cutting room floor.
“Up and at ’em, Ellie,” he coaxed. “We’ve got ourselves an assignment.”
Ellie had just begun to sit down but instantly bounced back up to her feet again. She was more than ready to go wherever the assignment took them.
Two years ago it would have been because each story represented a fresh opportunity to put her stamp on something that was unfolding. Now it was because each story necessitated her having to abandon her private thoughts and focus on whatever the news report required from her. The first casualty was her social life, which she more than willingly surrendered. She really didn’t have one to speak of now that Brett was no longer in her life.
“Where to?” Ellie asked.
Jerry held up the written directive he’d just received for them. “Blake wants us to do a story about this police detective at the police station.”
“Blake?” she questioned, puzzled. She fell into step beside her cameraman as he went out of the building and to the parking lot where their news van was waiting for them. “You mean Marty, don’t you?” Marty Stern was the one who handed out their assignments, not the station manager.
“No,” Jerry insisted, “I mean Blake.” It had struck him as odd as it did her, but he’d learned not to question things that came from on high. “This assignment came down from Edward Blake himself.”
She hurried down the steps into the lot without even looking at them. “Why?”
Reaching the van, Jerry shrugged as he got in on the driver’s side. He glanced over his shoulder to check that his equipment was where he had put it earlier. It was a nervous habit of his since there was no place else his camera and the rest of his gear could be. The cameraman always packed it into the van first thing on arrival each morning. But checking on its position was somehow comforting to him.
Satisfied that it was there, he turned forward again. “That’s above my pay grade,” he told her. “I’m just relating the message and telling you what he said he wanted.”
After putting the key into the ignition, Jerry turned it and the van hummed to life.
“All I know is that this detective had just swung by Los Naranjos Elementary School to drop off his kid—a niece, I think Blake said—and he almost tripped over the thief. Who cut him off as he raced by.” Jerry told her with disbelief. “Anyway, when the detective followed the guy, he wound up cornering him in a storage unit. Guess what else was in the storage unit.”
Ellie was watching the cluster of residential streets pass by her side window. The tranquil scene wasn’t even registering. She felt more tired than usual and it was hard for her to work up any enthusiasm for what she was hearing, even the fake kind.
“It’s Monday, Jerry. I don’t do guessing games until Tuesday,” she told the cameraman as if it was a rule written somewhere.
Undaunted, Jerry continued his riveting edge-of-her-seat story. “The detective found a bunch of other paintings stored there that, it turns out, had been stolen over the last eighteen months. It’s your favorite,” the cameraman pointed out. “Namely, a happy-ending story.”
“Not for the thief,” Ellie murmured under her breath.
Jerry heard her. “That’s not the lede Blake wants us to go with,” he told her. “Turns out that this isn’t this detective’s first brush with being in the right place at the right time.”
“Oh?” Ellie did her best to sound interested, but she was really having trouble raising her spirits this morning. She’d resigned herself to the fact that some mornings were just going to be worse than others and this was one of those mornings. She needed to work on that, Ellie told herself silently. Jerry didn’t deserve to be sitting next to a morose woman.
Maybe coffee would help, she reasoned.
“Yeah,” Jerry was saying as he navigated the streets, heading for the precinct. “I didn’t get the details to that. Figure maybe you could do a follow-up when you do the interview.”
She nodded absently, still not focused on the story. Out of sheer desperation, Ellie forced herself to make a few notes. Something had to spark her. “What’s the detective’s name?”
Jerry shrugged. “Blake said we’re supposed to ask the desk sergeant to speak to the detective who uncovered the stolen paintings.”
“In other words, you don’t have a name,” she concluded.
The curly-headed cameraman spared her an apologetic look. “Sorry. Blake seemed in a hurry for us to get there. Said the story had already been carried on the radio station. Wanted us there before another news station beat us to it.”
Well, that was par for the course, Ellie thought. She sighed. “Why is it that every story is the story—until it’s not?”
She received a wide, slightly gap-toothed smile in response. “Beats me. All I know is that all this competition is good for my paycheck. I’ve got a college tuition to fund.”
“Jackie is only five,” she reminded him, referring to the cameraman’s only child.
Jerry nodded, acting as if she had made his point for him. “Exactly. I can’t let the grass grow beneath my feet.”
Jerry stepped on the gas.
* * *
The police department was housed in a modern-looking building that was barely seven years old. Prior to that, the city’s core had been domiciled in an old building that dated back to the ’50s and had once contained farm supplies. People still called the present location the new precinct. Centrally located, it was less than five miles from the news station. They got there in no time flat, even though every light had been against them.
Ellie got out first, but Jerry’s legs were longer and he reached the building’s front entrance several strides ahead of her.
“Ladies first,” the cameraman told her, holding the door open for Ellie.
She smiled as she passed him and headed straight for the desk sergeant’s desk. She made sure she took out her credentials and showed them to the dour-faced man before she identified herself.
Even so, the desk sergeant, a snow-white-haired man whose shoulders had assumed a permanent slump, presumably from the weight of the job, took his time looking up at the duo.
The moment he did, Ellie began talking. “I’m Ellie King and this is my cameraman, Jerry Ross.” She told him the name of her news studio, then explained, “We’re here to interview one of your detectives.”
White bushy eyebrows gathered together in what seemed to be a preset scowl as the desk sergeant squinted at her credentials.
“Any particular one?” he asked in a voice that was so low it sounded as if he was filtering it over rocks.
“Detective,” he said a bit more loudly when she didn’t
