Crime Beat (4 page)

Moretz came to my office door and stood like a military courier. Ordinarily, I like my reporters to keep the lines of communication open, because they tended to be lone wolves in a job that served the common flock and frowned upon individual expression.

But Moretz was starting to bug me a bit. It wasn’t that he wanted approval or even acknowledgement from me; I got the feeling that he served a higher purpose, one unseen by those of us who wanted a decent paycheck and maybe an occasional promotion.

“Word up, Moretz?” I said, in corny, outdated slang.

“Word is definitely up,” he said, peering at me beneath those Antonio Banderas eyebrows. “I’ve got your crash story in, plus a possible sex offense case.”

“Sex offense?” I glanced at my computer screen, wondering if I’d deleted the history of site visits.

“Get this—a Sycamore Shade man was just busted for statutory rape and exploitation of a minor.”

“Great, but that’s not too unusual. We get one of those every few months.”

“With video?”

“What are talking about, Moretzy?”

“The guy filmed himself with a juvenile. More than once, according to the warrant. The cops seized seven hours worth of tapes.”

“Jesus Hemingway Christ, you’re not telling me we have us an amateur porno ring?”

Moretz grinned as if he’d swallowed the cat that ate the canary. “The guy apparently is a major pervert. Better yet, you might recognize the name—Wilbanks.”

“Wilbanks? The
mayor
?”

“His son.”

“No way. I just ate breakfast with the mayor, and he didn’t have a care in the world, except maybe getting reelected next year.”

“That was then, and this is now. The warrant’s twenty minutes old.”

I’d grown to admire Moretz’s newshound attitude in our short time together, and had planned to have him lead a workplace seminar on how to tap sources. I figured Baker and Westmoreland could learn a thing or two, or at least use their resentment as temporary motivation.

Now I was actually viewing Moretz as a threat to my job. All I had over the other staff members, besides my receding hairline, was the ability to do page layout, and I fully believed any monkey could be trained to operate the software. “How did you hook up? That kind of bust doesn’t come in over the scanner.”

“I was talking with the sheriff about the car crash when he dished the scoop. I think he likes me.”

Moretz wasn’t all that likeable, but he did radiate a certain kind of disturbed charisma.

“Wilbanks,” I said, still in disbelief. They say journalism makes you a cynic, and politics ups the ante and calls your bluff. But Wilbanks was such a cheerful, imp-faced fellow, the sort who could play Santa Claus if given a cotton beard.

I couldn’t picture his offspring being anything less than civic-minded and square. Then again, they said a preacher’s daughter never waited until marriage, and I’d known at least one who’d lived down to that reputation.

“I’ve got it nailed,” Moretz said. “The only question is whether I’ll get access to the videos that were seized. They should be considered public record if they’re described on the warrant.”

“We can’t publish anything like that.”

Moretz cocked a Banderas eyebrow and said, “It’s not for the paper.”

“Oh. Okay. How many inches can you give me?”

“Fifteen, and probably a mug shot. I’ll try to round up a backstory, maybe interview one of the girls’ moms.”

A vic family interview. A gold mine for any media outlet. Facts were facts, but nothing spoke to the public like an outraged person who didn’t have a clue. Just look at the popularity of so-called “reality shows.”

We needed the frame to tell us what part was the entertainment. The real point was, “Give me your pain and your tears.”

I clicked through the stories that the other writers had filed. Humane Society rummage sale, local Democratic Party fundraiser, arrival of Girl Scout cookies. Without Moretz, the paper would be oatmeal without the sugar.

The mayor, perversion, and self-righteous indignation issued from every pulpit and public agency in the community ensured an ongoing story with lots of angles.

And so it went. Every few days, it seemed a new atrocity occurred. On Thursday, Moretz filed a story on a case of autoerotic asphyxiation that the cops weren’t sure was so “auto,” but were merely calling a “suspicious death” for now.

Though we didn’t report suicides, there were only so many terms you can use to couch “accidental hanging,” and we could report the sheriff’s quote that the death was “under investigation.”

It’s the kind of copy where you avoid titillation and prurience at all costs, knowing most of the audience will strain their necks reading between the lines and talking about the things they know they shouldn’t talk about. Makes for cheap thrills and higher circ.

On Saturday, two drowned teenagers were found in the Unegama River. The speculation was the first was swept away and the second died trying to save the first, though no one was willing to say which victim was which.

In such a circumstance, there was only one thing to do: declare both of them heroes who no doubt died valiantly and nobly trying to save each other.

And once the toxicologist’s report came back with no drugs or alcohol involved, then the story was golden and gallons of memorial ink flowed. Moretz was on the scene both for the body search and the subsequent mourning ceremonies at the high school.

Other crime increased as well. Smash-and-grabs, lock bumping, shoplifting. The crime report had crept from page two into a jump to page eight each week. Though crime stats peaked, arrests were down, and Moretz bled a few great interviews with the sheriff, complete with a hangdog mug shot that simultaneously glowered from the page at any would-be perps and reassured voters that everything possible was being done and that, possibly, mistakes had been made and procedures would be reviewed and officers would be held accountable.

We were riding the mayor’s case with every issue, and our editorial section expanded to three pages because of all the outraged letters from readers. The mayor was under pressure to resign because of his allegedly perverted son, but so far he’d resisted, issuing a statement that he couldn’t abandon the office while crime was rampant.

We even ran a special series on our little crime wave, with the church page full of rants about the breakdown of the traditional family and some sidebars comparing our death rates to those of surrounding counties.

The parent company had to upgrade the press because we were rolling out twice as many copies. Ad sales were booming. The publisher, a walrus-faced guy who had married into the company, emerged from his corner office like a bear emerging from hibernation and promptly bought a new Porsche.

4.

Just when things couldn’t get any better, Moretz brought in the Rebel Clipper’s first corpse. No one knew it was the first victim of a serial killer, of course, and the Clipper moniker came later, after a certain grooming implement was linked to the crime.

The body was found under a canoe at the state park, near the dock where rangers rent boats by the hour for tourists who want to skim the lake. The corpse was female, early 20’s, partially nude. Raccoons had nibbled at some of the soft bits. Apparently someone had beaten her with the business end of a paddle.

Moretz captured the horror in all its pixilated glory. He must have gotten there shortly after the 9-1-1 call, before the wall of yellow tape shut the public off from its Constitutional right to be nosy.

In a stroke of luck, he’d been out on assignment in that end of the county, covering a storm-water violation where a farmer had dug in the creek without a permit, turning the water brown and annoying the summer tourists who demanded a pristine view from the safety of their motor vehicles.

“An early Hanukkah present, Chief,” said the e-mail that accompanied the attached story file. Moretz knew I was a lapsed Catholic masquerading as a Taoist. At that moment, though, I would have become a Satanist if the Big Red Dude would keep me supplied with front-page dynamite.

We had to downplay the gruesome details, of course, which was a blow to my ego because the sensational nature of the story brought reporters from several of the regional dailies. They had no such shackles, and somehow the fact that they were delivering news to tens of thousands of people made them less responsible than the
Picayune
, which purported to care about its community.

The cynic in me, which runs about half an inch beneath the surface no matter where you scratch, would call it the cheeseburgerization of media, the sizzle without the steak, the ratings rush.

The murder was big enough that I visited the scene myself, but there was little left to see besides a few investigators working the scene. The park was state property, so the SBI had a couple of agents complicating things.

The lake was ringed by forest, creating a wonderful spot to kill someone, even if I did say so myself. Simply slash-and-hack, gouge, or strangle, and then you could either row along the shoreline into one of the little coves, hop on a mountain bike and head down one of the rugged trails, or simply slip into the dense woods and hoof it to the highway three miles south.

It was cold and the regional reporters only hung around long enough to get a useless quote before heading for the warmth of the local bar. One of them stuck around, though, buried in a coffee-stained trench coat.

Her name was Kelsey Kavanaugh, clearly a name fit for an on-air television reporter, except she wasn’t cute enough. Her face was like a block of wood that had received a few half-hearted hatchet blows.

I’d met her at a press association awards banquet, back when I’d earned a third place for a feature on literacy. My story was about an eighty-three-year-old woman who’d learned to read and had finally gotten her community-college degree. It was the kind of feature that tugged heartstrings and helped us all overlook the unfair, patriarchal society that had so long prevented her from getting an education.

Kavanaugh had nabbed both a first and a second in spot news, which usually meant crime or disaster coverage. We’d sat at the same lunch table and she’d spoken of her ambition to work for Fox News.

Ambition is ugly in anyone, especially a reporter. Or maybe I was just jealous, because she might just pull it off.

Kavanaugh was smoking a cigarette well away from the scene, tapping a little composition book against her sturdy hip.

“So, Howard, you got some action in the sticks,” she said.

“People are people everywhere. And a certain percentage is psycho.”

One thick eyebrow lifted. “You think this is a psycho?”

I backpedaled fast. “Probably a domestic. Jilted lover, somebody cheating, the usual.”

“Ordinary murder, huh?” Kavanaugh grimaced. The setting sun through the trees made her teeth orange, and the air was heavy with October mist.

“Sure. We get them here in Sycamore Shade, same as the big city.”

“I noticed. Lots of other stuff, too. I flipped through the reports down at the station.”

“A rash, for sure. Plus we’re doing a lot more investigative reporting, so from the outside, it looks like there’s something in the water and our people are going bonkers.” I was freezing but didn’t want to appear wimpier than her, so I left my jacket open. I turned and watch a couple of cops circling the perimeter.

“This reporter of yours. Moretz. He’s got a lot of hot clips.”

“With good editorial direction, reporters really have an opportunity to shine,” I said, a line I’d heard in journalism school that sounded like I was patting myself on the back.