“Some guy with a gun at St. Joe’s, sniper maybe,” Tony Santella yelled across the newsroom. “Debbie, get down there. Move.”
She grabbed her pen and pad and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“Who’s going with me?” she called to George.
“Cappy.”
“Got it,” Cappy said. He walked toward the door to the garage, holding back the desire to run to the van and the story.
Throughout the newsroom reporters stopped their typing and phone chatter. Photographers moved into a listening position. This could be a big one. Cappy slammed out the door and the spell was broken. They all moved back to their work.
“He’s on the third floor or something,” Tony said.
“Okay,” said Debbie.
“I’m sending out the remote truck,” George called after her.
“What have we got?” she asked Cappy.
“Sniper, that’s all I know, and everybody in town is going to be there.”
She felt good again, alive, for the first time since the abortion. This is what she wanted to do, this kind of run-and-gun story. This is what she was proud to do for a living.
“Hell,” Cappy swore and made a quick turn. “They’ve already got the streets blocked.”
He had to get past the cops. He drove into an alley, across a side street and into an enormous empty lot.
“Over there, over there,” he pointed to a break between two buildings. “You can see the hospital but it’s a haul. Call George and find out what side the guy’s on.”
“George, which side is the guy on? North, south, which side?”
“What?”
“What side of the building, the sniper, what side?”
There was no answer.
“George, can you hear me?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Can you see anything?”
“Move,” Cappy yelled, and threw open the van door.
“Here, here.” He tossed her the box with the clip-on mikes and tucked an extra cord into the waistband of his pants.
“Let’s go.”
They walked quickly through the lot and, rounding a building, faced the flashing lights of a patrol car.
“Where is he?” she asked the officer.
“Up there,” he nodded to the hospital across another empty lot. “You can’t go any farther. This is as far as you go.”
“Right,” she said. “Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know. Hey, you, get back.” His attention switched to a newspaper photographer who had moved into his line of sight.
“You too,” he ordered Debbie.
“Everybody must be on the other side,” she said to Cappy who was trying to get a focus on the multi-storied building.
“If we could get up there,” she nodded toward a parking garage facing the east side of the hospital, “we could get a direct shot to the hospital.”
Cappy looked doubtful. They would have to walk back to the lot, make a wide circle away from this cop, staying along the back of the buildings, then break and run for the garage. They would make it only if the cop didn’t glance sideways and spot them when they made that run. Was it worth the effort?
“There has to be another door to that garage, the door for the stairs, one we can’t see from here,” she insisted.
“If we’re lucky,” he grumbled as they began their slow move away from the small crowd that had gathered.
They walked back toward the alley and began to make the wide half circle. They crept tight to the buildings before breaking for that run to the garage.
“Shit, it’s not even finished,” Cappy said, seeing the blue construction-site dumpster. Debbie disappeared around a corner of the building.
“Cappy,” she called, “there’s a door here. It’s open. Come on.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he grunted behind her as they climbed the stairs.
At the third level, she slowly pushed the door open and peeked out.
“I think this is good,” she whispered.
Cappy peeked out as well. “Looks okay to me.”
Like children, they tiptoed into the empty garage, the unfinished cement floors crackling beneath their steps. Cappy went straight to the far edge that faced the hospital. He stood and stared and then fell into a crouch, yelling. “Goddamn, get down. Jesus, I think that’s him. Right there. Do you see him? Over there, at that window. Oh God. Sweet Jesus God Almighty.”
“Where, where?” She stretched to see the wall of hospital windows level with the garage.
“There, the next floor up, middle window. Wait a second.” He lowered his head to the camera eyepiece. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not much light, not much,” he muttered, “but that’s him. Talk to George.”
He unhooked the walkie-talkie from his belt and skidded it across the floor.
“I need a better shot,” he said and, with the camera held like a rifle, he duck-walked forward, pulling the recorder behind him.
“George, Debbie. Do you hear me? George?”
“Go ahead, Debbie,” answered Tony Santella.
“We’ve got a shot,” she said, careful with her words. Every newsroom monitored every other newsroom’s frequency. If they figured out where they were, an army of reporters and photographers would soon be pounding up the stairs.
“Good.” Tony’s voice was calm. “Find someplace to go live. We want to do a cut-in.”
She didn’t answer as she stared at the windows. How could Cappy see so far? Suddenly, she gasped. She could see a man, not his face but the shadow of him. She believed she could see a rifle in his arms.
“Debbie, did you hear me?”
“Oh wow,” she laughed nervously.
“We need a live shot. Get some place where we can set up,” he ordered.
“I’ll be back.” She clicked off.
“Did you hear that?” she gave a hoarse call to Cappy.
The door slammed behind her. She jumped in terror.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” the man shouted and waved a gun at her.
“Reporter,” she shouted back, her arms raised. “Television reporter.”
“Damn it.” He shoved the gun back in his shoulder holster. “Get the hell out of here now.”
“Hey, wait a second,” she moved toward him. “We’re okay up here. Come on.”
She could hear the whirr of the recorder. Cappy was shooting and would not stop until he had what he needed.
The man hesitated. She saw the indecision.
“Please,” she said. “We’ll move back but let us stay up here.”
“Cappy,” she called, “move back.”
Cappy waved one hand but never took his eye from the eyepiece.
Feet pounded on the stairs. The door slammed open. Behind it, other feet pounded upward.
“What the shit’s going on here?” one of two uniformed officers shouted.
“Television,” the first man said. “They are leaving.”
“You get out of here now or I swear to God, we’ll take you in,” hissed one officer.
Cappy looked up and gave her a quick smile. He had it.
“No problem, officers,” he said and moved toward them, still in a crouch.
“I should arrest your ass,” someone shouted as they went out the door. “Arrest your sorry ass.”
Twenty minutes later, the station broke into regular programming with a live report on the sniper. Debbie stood in a parking lot near the hospital. As she spoke and helicopters whirred, they rolled the tape fed to the station only minutes before with its grainy shot of the man at the window.
They had an hour before the six o’clock. Tony told her to come back in.
“We’ve got Burton out there now, talking to the cops. We’ll go live with him at six. We need you and Cappy back here.”
“It’s my story,” she argued.
“No, we want you in-set. It’s going to be tight, so get back now.”
“Shit, shit,” she shouted at Cappy. “Do you believe that?”
“They want me too?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what they want.”
It was also what he wanted. This thing could last for hours. Going back in was fine by him.
“Good story,” Richard Ferguson called to her when she came into the newsroom.
“Yeah, but damn it, it’s my story. They shouldn’t have brought me in.”
“They got him. They got him,” Tony yelled from his position beneath the scanners. “Somebody find out who the hell he is. Get Benton. Debbie, get that copy into editing.”
Jack Benton kicked it off, going live from the scene with the cop lights flashing behind him. Debbie followed, reporting from the set. They used Cappy’s shots in the newscast intro and in Debbie’s voice-over along with other shots from the scene.
“Tight,” Tony sighed with pleasure during the commercial break.
“Woo,” Jim Brown exhaled. “Fantastic. We beat all of them.”
“Good work,” they all said to her.
*
That night she asked Ellen what she thought.
“It was a good story. Nice tape. I don’t think anybody else had anything like it. And, your in-set worked. I didn’t think it was going to, but it did. That one shot of Cappy’s of the sniper, that was something else. You were lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah, lucky to have that shot,” Ellen concluded.
“Well, I think it was more than luck,” Debbie stated.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I did a real good job, both of us did.”
“You did,” Ellen agreed.
“You didn’t say that. You said I was lucky.”
Ellen sighed.
“No, Debbie, I meant the shot Cappy got was lucky, that’s all.”
“I know, I know,” Debbie sniffed. “I guess I wanted you to tell me how good I was.”
“You were,” Ellen laughed.
“You know, I felt proud of myself, like I was on top of everything. I felt like this is what we are supposed to be doing. Get the story, tell the people the truth. That’s the reason I got into television.”
She heard the click of Ellen’s lighter and waited for the exhale.
“I thought television news was the one place where I could tell the truth. You are paid to find out the truth and report it and help people understand what’s going on.”
“I know, Debbie. You’ve told me that.”
“All right, but that’s how I felt tonight, like I did my job.”
“You done good.”
“You really think so?”
“Yes, Debbie, I do.”
“Okay, then, well, I better go. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yes, you will,” Ellen answered.
Two minutes later Ellen’s phone rang.
“It’s me again.”
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to say thinks, thanks for everything, listening to me and all that. I know I can be a pain.”
“No problem.”
“Okay then,” Debbie said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ellen stared at the phone, wondering, with a head shake of exasperation, how anyone could get so churned up over what actually amounted to about an hour of real work.