Prophet (39 page)

Tina took on the expression of a perturbed schoolteacher and asked, “Leslie, I think the crusader in you is showing. We’re talking about news here, not causes.”

A slap in the face. Leslie had had too many of those lately, especially from this . . . this . . . executive news producer. She tried to control herself, but knew her hands were shaking. Now her voice quivered as very quietly, very carefully she warned, “Please don’t try that one on me. I’ve been with this station for six years now, and you know me better than that.”

Tina let the warning go right past her, as if expecting it. “Leslie, I gave you the story. It’s still yours. All you have to do is finish it for the Five O’clock. There’s still time to get an interview with Mrs. Brewer, and we’ve rushed a crew to the Women’s Medical Center to get their comments. It’s nearly in the can. All you have to do is write it, voice it, do the package.”

Leslie knew, she just knew, that Tina already had another reporter lined up as she said, “Tina, I can’t do it. I can’t turn the story around like that. I couldn’t do that to the Brewers.”

Tina cocked her head in a carefree way and said, “Well, Marian Gibbons is ready to take the story if you don’t want it. Just give her your material and the video from this morning and let her do it. That puts you in the clear, okay?”

“Tina . . . that was my story!”

“It’s still yours—unless . . .”

“You know what Marian will do to it.”

Tina demanded, “I don’t have all day. Now do you want the story or don’t you?”

Leslie rose from her chair and backed toward the door, afraid she might get sick. “I can’t do it. I can’t have my name on it.”

“Then bring me the video so Marian can get going on it. We’ve got deadlines here.” Tina picked up her telephone. Leslie hadn’t moved yet. Tina glared at her. “Well? Let’s get moving. You’ve got Gullywump to do, and I need to see that video!”

Leslie got out of Tina’s office and hurried across the newsroom, weaving between the desks, bracing herself against a partition or a desk several times, afraid her legs would buckle under her. Then she dropped into her chair, sickened to the point of nausea. She had to think. What could she do? Did Ben Oliver know about this? Whose decision was it? She had to calm down before she talked to anyone else.

The little mailbox icon was blinking in the corner of her computer screen. She hit the keys that called up her messages. Deanne Brewer had called and wanted her to call back.

Leslie picked up the telephone and punched in the number. She had a pretty good guess what this would be about.

“Hello?” came Deanne’s voice.

“Deanne, this is Leslie. How are you doing?”

Deanne sounded hesitant and troubled. “Well, I don’t know. I thought we weren’t going to have anything on the news, and now it looks like we will, and so I guess I just wanted to talk to you and find out what’s going on.”

“I’m . . .” Leslie didn’t know how to sound or what to say. “Have you talked to any reporters yet?”

“I had people from Channel 8 and Channel 12 come by as soon as I got home, and now I just got through talking to somebody from your station.”

“Marian Gibbons?”

“Yes. She said she was a friend of yours—”

Leslie’s voice rose in volume despite her best efforts. “She’s already been there?”

“Yes. She left about an hour ago.”

Leslie needed a moment to let that sink in. “So you . . . you did an interview with her?”

“Yes, I did. She worked for Channel 6, so I was glad enough to talk to her, but I was wondering why she came here instead of you. Is this
going to be on the news tonight?”

What else could Leslie say? “Well . . . I guess it is, Deanne. I guess . . . I guess things have changed.”

“Well, I was surprised, but I guess it’s okay. Marian was very nice. I was glad to meet her.”

“So what did she ask you? What did you talk about?”

“Oh, just about everything. I told her about the Request for Medical Records and how we didn’t find anything, and she asked me how I knew Annie died at the Women’s Medical Center, and I told her about the autopsy report and what Mary said.”

No, no, NO, Deanne!
“You told her about Mary?”

Deanne got defensive. “I didn’t tell her anything about Mary herself. I just said that we had a witness but I couldn’t say who, and that the witness saw Annie at the clinic.”

“And how . . . I mean, did Marian seem . . . sympathetic? Did she believe you?”

“Oh, I thought she was very nice.”

As if that means diddly-squat
, thought Leslie. “What about the other stations? Did they ask about the same things?”

“Well . . . they said they’d heard we had some concerns about the Women’s Medical Center and they were doing a story on it, and they wanted to know what we’d been doing and what we knew.”

“And you talked to them on-camera?”

“Just standing on the porch. I didn’t let anybody inside—my house is such a mess right now, and I didn’t have a chance to clean.”

“What about Max? Was he there?”

“He’s still at work. I called him, but you know, he’s out in the shipyard and can’t come to the phone right away. He’ll call me when he gets the chance.”

“What did they ask you? Can you remember?”

Deanne got flustered. “Aw, Leslie, this day’s just been so crazy, I don’t know which end is up . . . I don’t know what I said.”

Leslie tried to calm her own voice for Deanne’s sake. “It’s okay, Deanne. It’s all right.”

“So when’s this gonna be on TV?”

Please, don’t watch it
, Leslie thought as she answered, “Five o’clock—Channel 6. I don’t know about the other stations.”

“Well, guess I’ll turn it on and see how I did.”

“Deanne . . .” Leslie stopped.

“Hello?”

“I’m still here. I was just going to say . . .”
Go ahead, Leslie. Tell her not to trust newspeople. Tell her not to trust Channel 6.
“Well, we’ll see how it turns out. But don’t expect too much. I’m working on another story, so I couldn’t do anything on this one. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

“Well, at least people are going to hear about it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, they’ll . . . they’ll hear about it.” Leslie hung up. So the story was well on its way, out of her hands before she even surrendered it, taking whatever form Marian Gibbons determined it should have. Tina Lewis was never one to waste any time with foot-dragging reporters. This shop seemed to be full of people like her.

Tina would be coming after Leslie’s video any moment if Leslie didn’t get it to her. Leslie reached into her carrying case and withdrew the cassette Mel had shot that morning, the story that could have been. Shots of the clinic, of Deanne walking up the sidewalk and up to the front door, of the pro-lifers holding their signs. Now Deanne Brewer would see pictures of herself on the Five O’clock, but Marian Gibbons would be voicing a different story.

Leslie held the cassette on her lap, feeling a strong sense of ownership. This was
her
work,
her
time,
her
effort. This was also a token of trust. It carried images of a dear lady only because that lady trusted Leslie.

Leslie hesitated. Oh, if only she could—But . . . no. She was a professional, and this job demanded painful decisions at times.

Tina wanted this cassette, and right away. Leslie could envision her patronizing expression and her outstretched hand.

And that image persuaded Leslie to at least explore the notion pressing itself upon her heart and mind. She took a pen and poked it into a tiny slot on the side of the cassette, pressing a release button so that the cover flipped open. Now the playing surface of the tape was exposed. Yes, she thought, it would be easy for something bad to happen to this tape.

Like what? Well, somebody could put their fingers right on it . . . and they could even pull it out of the cassette . . . and there could be
an unfortunate accident . . . and they could pull the tape out . . . like this . . . and like this . . . and like this . . . and like this!

The process started slowly, and she felt like a bad little girl who shouldn’t, but after the first ten feet or so she yanked and pulled with a vengeance, with a blind leap into angry, reckless irresponsibility. This one’s for Deanne, and this one’s for Max—oh, this was exhilarating!—and this one’s for me, and this one’s for John, and . . . and this one Tina can shove right up her nose!

“This story will not have my name on it!” she said to herself. “Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and . . .” She lapsed into words of fiery judgment.

“What are you doing?” came an alarmed voice behind her. She jumped, startled, caught in the act. But it was John Barrett, staring at her, his face full of questions.

She didn’t wait for him to ask. She just started reporting as she gathered the strewn tape into a brown tangle at her feet. “The story’s been hijacked!”

“What—”

“We were there at the clinic this morning and gave them the Request for Medical Records, and the files were clean, absolutely clean—no Annie, no Judy, nothing, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because that woman in that office over there, that Tina Lewis, tipped them off! She heard the whole story from me yesterday. I told her all about Annie Brewer, and I told her about Annie’s code name Judy Medford, and by the time we got to the clinic this morning they knew we were coming and they had the files picked clean and made us look like dumb pro-life idiots—just that easy, cut and dry, neat and clean, and . . . and guess what? Now we’re newsworthy!”

John pulled a chair over and sat close to listen. Leslie was too upset to slow down. “And you know what else I think? I think Tina leaked this story to the other stations, because now they’re on it, which is Tina’s way of making sure NewsSix is on it. But it’s not my story, no way! It’s not going to have anything to do with malpractice or what happened to Annie. It’s going to be about the . . . the vicious witch-hunt by anti-abortionists that failed, and it’s going to rub their noses in it, that’s what it’s about. And Marian Gibbons is going to write it and voice it and do the package because I won’t, and that means the Brewers
and Annie get used. Used, that’s all, and then dumped.”

“Marian’s doing the story? How did she get it?”

“Tina wants it run, but I won’t have my name on it! I didn’t go after this story to have this done to it.”

She could see John looking at the pile of tape on the floor and explained, “This is the footage from this morning.
My
footage. This is the story that never was, and it’s going to stay that way!” She got to her feet, her arms draped with loop upon loop of tape. “Excuse me. Tina wants this video right away.”

John stood just to keep from being run over. “Leslie! You . . . you can’t take her a ruined pile of tape!”

“Bump into me, will you please?” She didn’t wait. She bumped into him. “
Oof!
There, I’ve had an accident. She’ll understand.”

And with that, she was off for Tina’s office, dragging several feet of tape behind her, parading through the newsroom, drawing stares, questions, even a few laughs, heading for disaster, maybe the loss of her job.

“Leslie!” He had to stop her. He took three steps . . . And then he stopped. By now the whole newsroom was watching. He looked back at them.

“What’s going on, John?” asked Dave Nicholson, the consumer specialist.

John looked toward Leslie, still heading for Tina’s office, then back at his colleagues, still waiting for an answer. The roof was falling in on the Annie Brewer story, and if Leslie made it to Tina’s office with that pile of videotape, everything and anything was sure to hit the fan. His first instinct was to run, as if fleeing from a leaking gasoline truck before it blew.
Back off, get away, stay clean.

He went with his first instinct. He was still clean. He faced his colleagues . . . and shrugged, his arms upraised in befuddlement. He shook his head. He didn’t know. He went—fled, actually—to his desk to await the storm.

Meanwhile, Leslie stepped briskly into Tina’s office and without introduction, explanation, or invitation let the tape tumble and pour onto Tina’s desk. Tina jumped from her chair as if someone had spilled coffee in her lap, her arms upraised, her mouth and eyes at full width.

John could hear Tina’s expletives from his desk clear across the newsroom. His hand was shaking as he turned on his computer and
tried to get to work. A futile notion, of course. There was no way he could concentrate on his tasks, not with this going on. He had to get involved; he had to stand by Leslie and hopefully diffuse this explosion.

But he still sat there, strangely paralyzed, unable to move. If he went in there now and sided with Leslie . . . He could just see Ben Oliver bursting in and seeing the lines drawn, hearing the accusations, seeing that pile of ruined videotape. He and Ben had reached an understanding, and if John were to be associated with Leslie’s behavior . . .

What to do, what to do? Perhaps the best thing, the professional thing, would be to wait, to let the storm subside a bit, and then carefully and calmly step in—if invited—and help all the parties sort it out objectively, professionally. That’s what John Barrett, news anchor, would do, and John was sure Ben Oliver, news director, expected no less.

So he waited, working on nothing except justifying remaining in his chair, until a wise and rational endeavor occurred to him: he needed information. Yes, information. He couldn’t jump into this thing without all the facts, right? Remaining safely in his seat, he scrolled through the story lineup for the Five O’clock: the gubernatorial campaign, a body found up on Highway 16, an apartment fire on Magnolia Hill . . .

Oh-oh. “Abortion battle.” The story was slotted in the computer already. John looked around the newsroom but didn’t see Marian anywhere. She might still be on the assignment. She had called in the lead-in: “As if to underline the debate over parental consent, one family confronted that issue head-on today in an unsuccessful attempt to pierce the veil of privacy at a local clinic. Marian Gibbons is live in front of the Women’s Medical Center . . .”