Sam cancelled his Texas trip. They all remained at the station for the rest of the day, following the news as it slowly arrived. The network’s affiliate in Pittsburgh had two reporters on the scene within an hour of the shots being fired. Hays was identified by one of the local cops. They found his mother’s body shortly thereafter. The beagles too.
By six o’clock the media scrum on the scene was enormous. Reporters, knowing that the police wouldn’t be releasing much information this early on, had taken to canvassing the neighborhood, looking for stories about the shooter Hays. Anybody within five miles who wanted to be on TV that night got their wish. All they had to say is that they’d once had a conversation with Arthur William Hays, or knew him in passing. If they’d had a confrontation with the man, that was even better. Or if they knew his mother, they were in. If they had a corresponding anecdote, not matter how benign or irrelevant, they were going to get airtime. The bartender at McPhee’s Country BBQ was portrayed by one interviewer as a folk hero and by another as the elitist catalyst who set things in motion. A man who had purchased a beagle pup from Hays eight years earlier got to tell his tale, as inconsequential as it was. The networks were going to run with the story almost non-stop for the next couple of days, if not longer, and there were only so many ways to say that twenty-two children and two teachers were murdered in a small Pennsylvania town. This time, the devil truly was in the details.
Renata sat with the crew at the station, watching the monitors on the wall. She was shocked and angry and nearly immobile with grief. Her daughter, Amy, was still in Australia and Renata found herself texting her every half hour, gripped by an irrational fear that the insanity in Pennsylvania might suddenly spread itself across the globe.
Sam had been in and out since the news had arrived, and now had been gone for lunch for ninety minutes, apparently the only one in the building with any appetite. It was mid-afternoon when he returned, just as Matt Shepherd from the network arrived at the school with a camera crew. Shepherd stood on the street, with the blanketcovered bodies as a backdrop, and repeated what everybody else had been saying for hours now. Twenty-two children. Two teachers. One madman.
Sam watched the monitor for a moment. “Isn’t that Shepherd a handsome man,” he said. “Like a movie star.”
Renata glanced at him briefly and looked away. He’d been drinking and he had the aura about him, the way he got when things weren’t going his way. When the spotlight was elsewhere.
“Looks like we’re going to have to shelve the Welles piece,” he said after a bit. “We have months to hoist that little bastard on his petard.” He laughed. “Let’s hope he doesn’t get cleared by a DNA test in the meantime.”
Renata indicated the monitor. “This is a fucking tragedy, Sam. This is Biblical.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “And we’re going to have to run with it tonight. We’re going to need somebody from the NRA because you know where the left’s going to go with this. Anti-gun editorials are being written as we speak. Outraged liberals are bawling like newborns. We can get the movie star there on for a segment. He can look pretty and tell us what we already know. His stock in trade.”
“We’re pre-empted,” Renata told him.
“What?”
“The national news team will be on all night,” she said. “I assume all the other networks will do the same.”
“I don’t get pre-empted.”
“We just did. So let’s try to figure out what we’ll do tomorrow.”
He fell silent then, pissed off and internalizing it. Twenty-two children lying dead in a Pennsylvania schoolyard and all he was thinking about was how he’d gotten shafted by the network.
“I should have the lead on this,” he said after watching the coverage a while longer. His voice was calm. Not necessarily a good sign.
“I know,” Renata said.
“There was a time,” he said. “There was a time when it would have been automatic.”
Renata watched him as he shifted his weight from one foot to another, a man who fervently needed to do something. But had nothing to do.
“Let’s get ready for tomorrow night,” she said. “We’ll kick ass on this. Come in twenty-four hours later and show them what we could have done tonight. What they should have allowed us to do.”
He nodded silently.
“Okay,” she pressed. “Make a list. Who do we want?”
“No lists,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going there,” he said. “This calls for boots on the ground. Get me on a plane. Tell the Pittsburgh affiliate I’ll be using their crew.”
“What are you going to do in Pittsburgh?”
“I’m not going to Pittsburgh,” he said. “I’m going to Laureltown.”