“I’ll be there in ten,” Brown said and clicked off.
“Scott, call Carter,” she ordered, “and don’t tell him anything over the two-way.”
“What do you want me to do?” Adkins asked.
“Get the rescue piece together with Steve.”
Cappy’s face fell. What about him?
She turned to him. “You work with Tommy on the retro about Debbie. And move. We’ve got about an hour and a half.”
“And,” she instructed all of them, “no phone calls out on this. None. You got that?”
Fat chance, she thought, fat fucking chance.
*
Across the Street they had been listening to the calls. The weekend producer sat back in his chair, tapping on his chin and wondered why Jim Brown was on his way into the station. Something was breaking. Christ, what the hell was it? He sure didn’t have anything except the body Rafferty brought in. A good lead story, but nothing major without more info.
“Slow day without that dead hiker,” he said to the few people who sat in his newsroom. He went back to his typing. He’d get whatever they had, eventually. He’d get it.
49
“Can’t get Carter,” Scott told Nancy Patterson as Jim Brown came through the door and marched to toward her.
“No Carter,” she told him as she got up from her chair.
“Keep trying,” he said and put his arm around her shoulders.
“We’ll make it,” he said softly. “It’s bad but we’ll make it. Let’s get this newscast together.” He hugged her. “For Debbie,” he said. “We’ll do it for Debbie.”
God, that was it. He nodded. That was what this day and this night were all about.
“Get Tony in here,” he ordered as he took the chair at the producer’s desk. “Use that phone.” He pointed to the assignment desk.
“Does anybody know what happened? I’ll get Martinez at DPS. We have to have that confirmation.”
In the time it took Jim Brown to walk through the newsroom, wrap his arms and his words around Nancy Patterson, they had the news Across the Street.
“It was Debbie Hanson, the body Rafferty picked up, Debbie Hanson,” the weekend producer yelled.
“Who the hell is Debbie Hanson?” the sportscaster asked as he walked through the newsroom. A photographer shrugged.
So, that’s why Brown was on his way in, the producer nodded to himself. Well, he had some footage from the mountain and the rescue, but how the hell was he going to get anything on Hanson, even a photograph, for his newscast? He’d have to call Brown. Good grief.
At The Best, Brown was talking to his people.
“It was our Debbie,” he said, looked at each face, searching for the shock, the sadness.
“Our Debbie’s dead and we don’t know exactly what happened but we’ve got to pull this one together. We’ve got little more than an hour but we’re going to do it. We have to.”
“Tommy?” he called to Tommy Rodriguez who was running toward editing.
“No time,” Tommy yelled. “Gotta find tape.”
“Cappy?” Brown turned to the photographer who stood in front of him, his arms folded across his chest, “you gonna make it?”
“Sure, Jim,” Cappy said. “I’m fine.”
“Okay then,” Brown said to no one in particular. “Let’s move.” He reached for the phone.
“Jean Ann, this is Brown. We need you in right now. Right now for the six o’clock. Don’t ask any questions. Come in now.” He hung up.
That would burn Carter. Well, it was his own fault. He was the one always yelling that no member of the news team should ever be out of contact, day or night.
He made the call to the media liaison man at the Department of Public Safety.
“Sam, this is Jim Brown. I need some help.”
“Go ahead,” said Sammy Martinez. He knew what Brown wanted, but how did he find out so fast? Who the hell told him?
“Let’s not kid around, Sam. We know it was Debbie Hanson you brought in off Padre, but we need your confirmation.”
There was no response.
“We’re going with it, Sam,” Brown warned.
“Jim, we just got it ourselves,” he lied. “We don’t even have next of kin. I was getting ready to call you about that.”
“Public figures, Sam. This is different.”
“A reporter is a public figure? Not in my book,” Martinez told him.
“Look, I’ll get you what you need, family names, numbers, all that. Her father is a judge or something up in Oregon.”
“Oh, shit,” came the groan.
“I’ll have that number to you in five minutes,” Brown promised. “Do you call or what? I mean, do you do this?”
“We get somebody up there to take the message to the family or we call direct. Nobody wants that job.”
“Sam, we have to go with this. You understand. She’s got no family here except us. We’re her family. So, it isn’t going to matter if we announce it on the six o’clock, is it?”
“You gonna contact the family before we do?” Sammy Martinez wanted to know. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“If that’s what you need to do, do it. I’ll get you the information, but we are going with the story on the six.”
“That’s your call.”
“It’s rough,” Brown sighed. “It doesn’t get any rougher. What happened to Debbie, I mean. A fall, right?”
“We won’t know for some time. That’s up to the medical examiner.”
“But it looks like a fall, right?” Brown insisted.
“Can’t say,” Martinez told him. He won on that point, at least.
Brown sent Nancy over to his office to find the personnel file with the contact information and started rearranging the paper lines on the long table.
Jean Ann slammed through the newsroom door.
“Dear Lord, what’s the matter?” she demanded.
“Debbie Hanson is dead,” Brown told her. “She fell on Padre Peak.”
“Oh, my God,” she cried, one hand clutching at her throat. She swayed backwards.
“Whoa, hold on.” Brown reached for her.
“Sit down. Somebody get Jean Ann some water,” he yelled.
“You have to pull this together for us,” he told her. “We can’t find Carter. You’ll go in-set with Scott.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do this.” She shook her head as she rummaged through her purse.
“I know, I know,” he soothed. “It’s bad but
