Missing Mark (3 page)

As he continued his briefing, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a large black-and-tan German shepherd straining his leash, held by a pudgy cop with a receding hairline.

Police were asking for help from the public—perhaps someone noticed something unusual prior to the shooting, perhaps a description of the assailant or a suspicious vehicle. The PIO was running out of steam and content so the producer in news control gave me a wrap in my ear, then instructed me to toss to our reporter standing by at the hospital, so he could also regurgitate what had been said minutes earlier.

I didn’t hear the stunned scream from the control booth because my own scream drowned it out. When I watched the air check later, the scene would have been funny if it were happening to another reporter. Just as the camera switched from the PIO to me, and I opened my mouth to speak, I flew out of frame.

My photographer panned down to me on the ground, flat on my back, a big dog sitting on my chest, licking my face.

n TV news, they love ya till they don’t love ya anymore. They can be the bosses. They can be the viewers. They can be the advertisers.

Occasionally that love can last an entire career, but more likely by the end of a contract, a ratings book, a newscast, or even a live shot, the love is gone.

Noreen clearly loved me less at the end of tonight’s newscast than at the beginning. With her jet-black hair, luminous skin, and business-chic wardrobe, she looked prettier, as well as younger, than me. I hate that combination in a boss.

She muttered something about me being “amateurish on air” a couple of hours later when I walked into her fishbowl office in the middle of the newsroom. Only glass walls separated her from her subjects. This office design cut into her privacy, but also ours.

“Another way to look at it,” I responded, “is that I landed an exclusive with the partner of the wounded cop.”

The big dog was Shep: a German shepherd who had been my roommate and bodyguard last fall when a serial killer was tracking my investigation into dead women named Susan. Shep’s attitude and performance made it clear that he was better suited to being a public servant than a household pet. He even had the scars to prove it, including a torn ear. He’d since become a legend in the police K9 world—Minnesota’s top drug-sniffing dog.

With his police partner felled by a bullet, Shep latched on to me like old times. The St. Paul cops reluctantly gave me temporary custody since he refused to go home with anyone else. Police departments don’t house their K9 troops in kennels. They live with their human partners and are trained to work only with them.

Noreen didn’t actually mind Shep being in the newsroom: she was a big animal lover, and even had a dalmatian of her own named Freckles. She was the kind of news tyrant who wouldn’t take shit from anybody but would pick up her pup’s poop unflinchingly.

“Shep better not distract you from May,” she said.

“No, he’ll be a ratings attraction,” I countered. “He can sit beside me for my set piece tonight at ten.”

“Well, Riley,” Noreen considered, “I guess there’s some promotional value in that.”

“Absolutely,” I used my best suck-up-to-the-boss voice. “You’re always telling us how viewers love animals and children.”

“That is true.” She nodded as if there was no disputing facts. “But your hours are so unpredictable, this can’t be a long-term arrangement.”

I couldn’t tell if her concern was for Shep or me. Probably Shep.

“It won’t be. I’ll put in a call to Toby Elness. Shep likes him best.”

Toby was Shep’s previous owner. He had a big heart, but a small house filled with an eclectic mix of dogs, cats, birds, and fish. He had noticed Shep’s potential for law enforcement and had donated him to the K9 unit. Turns out, Shep was a natural-born police dog.

“Toby’s very proud of what Shep has accomplished,” I continued. “I’m sure he’d enjoy a reunion with him until Officer Flying Cloud recovers.”

The latest word from the hospital: she’d survived surgery. Doctors removed a nasty bullet from her lung.

The latest word from the cops: no leads on the investigation. They theorized a sniper shot her from the top of a parking garage down the block.

“As long as you’re here, Riley,” Noreen said, “let’s talk about May sweeps.”

The problem with being a television investigative reporter is sweeps. February, May, and November are major ratings months in which viewership is measured and careers made and lost. These months carry a different pressure than daily news. General-assignment reporters can knock off a story a day and count down to the weekend. For investigative reporters, each day of researching for the next blockbuster usually brings them another day closer to deadline, but still no story.

“I’d like to turn a piece on the meth cartel, Noreen. Remember?”

“I thought we already canned that.”

She was referring to the dead body I’d found while house hunting. Ends up, the murder victim was a drug dealer. His buddies stopped trusting him. And in those circles, when the trust is gone, so is your life.

Channel 3 aired twenty seconds about the homicide on the early news, but Noreen had nixed my suggestion we delve deeper, calling the corpse an unsympathetic character.

“Viewers don’t relate to murder victims with lengthy rap sheets. Bring me a dead drug dealer people will care about,” she said, “then we’ll talk.”

Now that cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine is no longer available over the counter without identification, dealers are bringing crystal meth up from Mexico instead of making it themselves in rural Minnesota farmhouses. Crank, glass, speed, ice, zip, by whatever name it’s called, the potency of methamphetamine makes it America’s most addictive drug.

Visually the harm is easy to demonstrate. Addicts lose their teeth and sometimes their minds. I wanted to show meth flourishing in unexpected neighborhoods. Like the one I almost bought into.

“If I could just get some additional resources to help me on stakeout,” I said, “I think it would lead somewhere.”

“Not in time for May it won’t,” Noreen responded. “Besides surveillance-intensive investigations are hugely expensive. You don’t have enough evidence to merit that kind of expenditure.”

We’d be aiming to track people with eyes in the back of their heads. That meant three chase vehicles, always trading position, sometimes following in front of the target car, sometimes on parallel streets. Noreen was right about the resources required for successful surveillance.

Money stood on the front line of most story discussions these days. Across the country, television stations were losing news viewers to the Internet and still hadn’t figured out how to fight back beyond cutting staff.

Channel 3’s February viewership fell double digits from the previous year, but the drop couldn’t be blamed on the network’s leading prime-time lineup. Noreen recently balanced the newsroom budget by axing a beloved million-dollar meteorologist whose contract was up. The audience reacted by boycotting his replacement, furthering the ratings slump.

Bosses usually prefer canning off-air personnel to on-air personalities, but they can only slash so deep in that direction. Keeping newscasts on the air requires a legion of producers, directors, photographers, video editors, tape-room engineers, and others. Rumors were circulating that unless the May numbers were good, our network owners would demand our budget be trimmed another 10 percent.

And while I wistfully contemplated the days of a 40 share—the equivalent of a TV grand slam out of the ballpark—industry consultants proclaimed those news numbers gone. Only the Olympics and perhaps an
American Idol
scandal stood a chance of scoring a 40.

Under the current media meltdown, 30 was the new 40.

Newspapers were sinking even faster. The Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
and
St. Paul Pioneer Press
had cut staff with buyouts and layoffs. Both papers now seemed to be putting their energies into suburban stories they’d normally reject as too soft or too local.

“We need to turn investigations faster and cheaper.” Noreen’s voice had an “or else” tone. “I need more face time from you, Riley.” That meant she wanted me to turn more stories—to get my face on the news more often.

“I understand,” I answered, not exactly agreeing but not wanting to argue, either.

Sometimes a reporter’s value is judged not just by rating points but by the quality of their work. Whether their stories create community buzz; whether they land major journalism awards.

More recently, reporter worth comes down to a basic math formula—story count. Because newsrooms are computerized, those numbers are easy to run. Simply type in a reporter’s name and search through the last year’s story archives … then call them in for a job review.

Noreen had done her math.

“Here’s your story count for last year,” she said, handing me a piece of paper.

I didn’t need to see the number in black-and-white. I already knew I’d had a bad year by that measure. But I also knew that I had a strong finish in terms of ratings. Channel 3 had won November on my back. But I knew better than to bring that up. The previous sweeps are old news.

“I’ll crash on May, Noreen,” I said. “I promise.”

She looked skeptical.

Large-market TV newsrooms from Miami to Phoenix to Los Angeles were slashing expensive investigative units to improve their bottom line. And just because viewership is in decline doesn’t mean station owners are willing to sacrifice profits. A TV station aims for a 40 percent profit margin; a grocery store survives on 1 percent.

“Okay, Riley, I’ll bite, what else do you have for May?” Noreen demanded.

Our conversation was not going well for me. Shep rubbed against my leg and gave me an idea about how to curtail the discussion.

“It’s complicated, Noreen,” I stalled. “And Shep needs to go outside. How about if we sit down tomorrow when we have more time?”

Noreen glanced at the clock. “How about if you just talk real fast.”

So I threw out the wedding-dress story because I really didn’t have much else beyond a rehashed consumer investigation about food manufacturers reducing package sizes to avoid raising prices and hoping consumers wouldn’t notice.

“Let me get this straight.” Noreen leaned over her desk so she could look me in the eye. “The groom vanished more than six months ago, and no one ever filed a police report?”

Hard to believe. And harder to explain.

“That’s how it looks so far. I need to do more research. Everybody seemed to figure he got cold feet and would show up eventually.”

“It’s odd, Riley,” Noreen continued, “but I’m not sure it’s a news story.”

“You’re just saying that because the victim is a man instead of a young woman.”

“I think it’s a little premature to call him a victim.” Noreen paused, weighing the possibility, as unpleasant as it might be, that I could be right.

“If a bride disappeared the night before her wedding, we’d be tripping over network crews,” I said. “The story would be so 24-7, there’d be wall-to-wall satellite trucks.”

It’s a media fact. Missing women get much bigger news play than missing men. And missing white women get the biggest play of all. I knew better than to bring that up with Noreen because it’s a statistic that newsroom managers are quite sensitive about. According to the FBI, more than 50,000 American adults are missing. Almost none get the household-name status of Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, and Chandra Levy.

“Even if something did happen to this guy,” Noreen said, “we’re a little late in the game.”

The media, particularly 24-hour cable news networks, like to jump in early on missing person cases and ride them to their happy or unhappy endings.

Crimes that are solved immediately don’t garner the ratings that an ongoing mystery does. Anytime there’s a fresh tip on missing Iowa anchorwoman Jodi Huisentruit, the cameras swarm. And it’s been nearly fifteen years since Jodi’s red pumps were found scattered near her car after she failed to show up for her early-morning news shift.

“Any evidence of foul play with this missing groom?” Noreen pressed.

“Not so far,” I answered honestly, “but I haven’t looked yet. It does feel suspicious that this much time has passed.”