Despite the cold wind, Alison Greene undid the top two buttons of her overcoat. She flicked back her long, straight blond hair and held the mic up below her mouth, the way she’d been trained. She nodded an okay to Randy Krevolin, the cameraman standing in front of her, and waited for the green light on top of his camera to go on.
A moment later it lit up.
“Good morning. This is Alison Greene from T.O. TV News reporting live from the edge of the Humber River Valley, where for the second time in just two days the body of a homeless person has been found in what police say is a possible homicide.” She turned from the camera and swept her arm to her side. “As you can see, they’ve set up a barrier to protect the crime scene.”
She looked back at the camera. “Local residents tell me they have been complaining for years about the tent cities housing the homeless that have sprung up in this river valley. They say the situation keeps getting worse. Down the road from where I’m standing is the Humber River Golf Club, which has had well-documented fights with these homeless people. The police have told us that they will be making a formal statement soon. We will cover it as it happens. Reporting live from the scene, this is Alison Greene.”
She put on her sternest-looking face and waited for the green light to turn red. The moment it did, she unhooked her mic, passed it to Krevolin, and buttoned her coat back up.
“Not bad for a rookie.” He was a crusty old pro and Alison knew that from him “not bad” was a real compliment.
“Thanks for driving me out here so fast.”
Half an hour earlier, she’d been finishing the Sunday-night graveyard shift back at the TV station. Standard grunt work for a new reporter. She’d been up all night, her fifth boring night in a row, and predictably nothing had happened. As she was about to pack up, she’d scrolled through the computer one more time, and the alert popped up: “Police have received an anonymous 911 call. Person found VSA in Humber Valley near local golf course.”
Wait a minute, Alison thought. The alert rang a bell. What was it? There. The Humber River Valley was the same place where a homeless man had been killed in what sounded like a drunken brawl two days ago.
She’d hustled up Krevolin and they rushed out to the station’s mobile unit van. He was a good driver and even though by the time they arrived the police tape was up, they’d beat out the competition and parked the van in the best location, closest to the scene. The police were tight-lipped, but all the commotion had attracted a crowd of local residents, and Alison was the first reporter to talk to them.
They told her about all the trouble the homeless people in the valley had caused them. The noise. The litter. People being harassed on the street. Their children finding needles in the nearby park.
“We used to love going down to the river,” said a middle-aged man who said he’d moved there twenty years ago. “No one dares go down there anymore.”
“The murder on Saturday morning really scared us all,” a young woman holding a baby in her arms said. “Now this? We keep calling the cops about the problems but no one does anything about it.”
An old woman, who said she’d been born in the house across the street she still lived in, told Alison that a bike rider had been hit by a car and fallen into the valley and found the dead body.
“Where’s he now?” she asked.
“The ambulance has already taken him away,” she said. “My goodness. Imagine riding along here in the dark. I saw them bring him out on a stretcher. Can you believe it? The fool wasn’t even wearing a helmet.”
Three other TV vans soon showed up, as well as a radio journalist and a handful of print reporters. They were swarming the scene trying to get an angle for their stories.
Even though she was inexperienced, Alison had one advantage over her competitors. Her father, Detective Ari Greene, was the new head of the homicide squad. She’d been a reporter for more than a year and had never asked him for any inside information on a case. But she’d never been the first reporter on the scene of a possible homicide.
This could be quite a story. With the second murder of a homeless person in such a short time in virtually the same location, she wondered, could there be a serial killer on the loose?
“I’ll be back,” she told Krevolin.
She slipped through the crowd, ducked down into the valley, and secreted herself behind the trunk of a large tree. The riverbank was steep and she heard the sound of the rushing water roll up from below and smelled the sweet scent of pine trees. Something she’d never smelled back in England where she’d grown up.
She pulled out her cell phone and pushed the pre-set speed dial number. Her father picked up on the first ring.
“Greene here.”
She was taken aback. She knew that her name came up on his cell display, and he always answered, “Hi, Allie.” A few months ago, she’d told him that Allie was her nickname and now he used it all the time.
The fact that he answered her call like this must mean that he wasn’t alone.
“Hi,” she said, not calling him Dad the way she always did. “I’m on assignment at—”
“I saw you on TV a minute ago. Good work.”
“Thank you.”
She waited for him to respond, but he didn’t. In the year and a half since she’d moved from England to live with him in Toronto, Alison had learned that her father could be silent for long stretches of time.
“Police have everything cordoned off,” she said.
“I can see that.”
“None of the cops will talk to me.”
“Not yet.”
His speech was taciturn, even by her father’s sparse standards. She tried to imagine who was standing near him. Other homicide detectives, maybe the chief of police, would be gathered at Police Headquarters to figure out how to deal with this.
“You’re not alone, are you?”
“Right.”
“You can’t talk.”
“True.”
“But I can ask you questions.”
“Go ahead.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have called. Was he angry? Was she putting him in an impossible position? She knew he’d want to help her, but could talking to his daughter the reporter this way jeopardize his investigation? She didn’t want to do that, but he’d said go ahead.
“Is there a connection between this murder and the murdered homeless man found here two days ago?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Do the police think there’s a serial killer at work?”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Part of the problem? What was the other part?
“Do you know the identity of the man who was killed this morning?”
“Not exactly.”
Not exactly? What was her father hinting at? They would either know or not know.
“Was he one of the homeless men living in the tent city near the golf club?” she asked.
“No, he wasn’t.”
The inflection was slight. She caught it because she knew her father well enough to hear the change of tone in his voice. No, he wasn’t. Emphasis on he.
What did her father mean by that? Could it be—? “Are you saying the dead person found this morning was a woman?”
“Yes, that makes sense. Got to run.” Then in a whisper. “Love you.”
He hung up before she could say her usual “Love you” back. But he’d delivered the message.
What a scoop. She called her boss, Sheena Persaud, and told her that she’d learned from “a confidential source” that the dead homeless person was a woman.
“Amazing,” Persaud said. “We’re on commercial break for two minutes. Set up, and we’ll go live.” She hung up before Alison could tell her she had ducked away from the crowd and didn’t know where Krevolin was.
Alison ran back to the street, her coat flapping in the wind, her hair askew. There were people everywhere. But where was Krevolin? She couldn’t see him in the crush of the crowd. Maybe he’d gone back to the van. She checked it, but he wasn’t there. She looked at her watch. Sixty-five seconds to go. Darn it.
She yanked open the door of the van and stood on the step to see over people.
There he was, off by the trees filming, getting cutaway shots that they could use later. Smart move, but she needed him now. She charged into the crowd. A group of teenagers were huddled together directly in her way. As she pushed through them, she smelled a wave of marijuana smoke.
“Hey lady,” one of them yelled at her. “Where’s the fire?”
The rest of them laughed.
Her phone rang again. It was Persaud. “We’re ready in about forty-five.”
“Ready,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.
She got to Krevolin and tugged on his arm.
He pulled his camera from his eye and whirled around.
“Quick,” she said. “We’re going live in less than thirty. We have to find a spot away from the crowd where none of the other reporters can hear me.”
“Behind there,” he said, pointing to a nearby hedge while he clipped on his earpiece so he could also hear the producer back at the studio to get his cue.
They both ran.
“Twenty seconds,” he said, handing her the mic.
She stood still, straightened her coat, undid the top two buttons, and stared at the red light on the top of his camera.
“Ten, nine, eight,” he said.
She took a deep breath. Exhaled. Then another one. She lifted the mic. This was a big scoop. And it was hers.
“Three, two, and one,” Krevolin said.
The light switched from red to green.
“Reporting live, this is Alison Greene with an exclusive update on this breaking story.”