She joined John as she passed his news desk cubicle, and they walked together into the managing editor’s glass-partitioned office space.
Two against one.
Rick leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his portly belly. He ignored Charlie, and looked at John. “What’s up?”
“I don’t have a clue,” the news desk editor said. “This is Charlie’s meeting.”
At this cue, Charlie told the men of her curiosity about the circumstances behind the truck hijacking hero story.
“Yeah, we got the state police news release about it,” John said. “We ran that in Region this morning, a few graphs on B-10, I believe.”
“I think there’s a lot more to it than what we’re being told,” she said. “I called the trooper who was involved. He didn’t want to talk about it.”
“You’d think because the trucker saved his life, and got a commendation for it, he’d be open to telling us more. So he’s holding back,” John said. “Could be he’s having a bad day, or it could be something interesting.”
“I’m convinced it has something to do with the accomplice mentioned in the news release. Probably someone known to the trucker. Maybe the trucker was even involved in the hijackings in some way, either directly or indirectly,” Charlie said.
She looked at the managing editor whose demeanor revealed nothing about what he was thinking. Maybe the old fossil had fallen asleep during her pitch.
With Charlie’s and John’s attention on him, looking to him for a response to her pitch, Rick finally spoke. “OK. John, if you agree, I say let’s go with it. You take care of the details. Give Charlie whatever she wants.”
At no point in the conversation did the managing editor address Charlie, or even look at her.
When the pair left Rick’s office and were out of earshot, Charlie whispered to John, “The old fart must be having a good day today. That was easy.”
“Yeah, but make sure this turns out to be a good one. Try not to come up blank,” John said.
The assignment approved, Charlie got to work.
It took a few minutes longer than usual to locate contact information for the trucker. He appeared to have an aversion to social media, along with having a more-highly-developed desire for privacy than most people. As a veteran investigative reporter, however, she had an enormous repertoire of resources for locating the curriculum vitae and contact information for the subjects of her investigative stories.
She couldn’t find a phone number for the trucker, but she remembered from the news release he was staying at his parents’ ranch in Northern Idaho. It was only a matter of a search on the Internet to locate a ranch called the Mann Ranch, owners Hugh and Martha Mann.
However, phoning there proved fruitless, as it would ring until the call dropped off. Nobody would pick up, and no answering machine responded.
She continued to search.
“Got it,” she said when she located an email address for a Hugh Mann. Few could evade her once she had started probing into their lives.
She composed an email to Hugh, explaining the newspaper was interested in doing a feature story about him. She wrote she would like to meet him, and asked for an exclusive. But she omitted any reference to the investigative angle of the story.
Charlie clicked on “Send,” and the email went off into the cybersphere.
She hoped the truck driver would get back to her quickly with a reply email, and that he would agree to the meeting.
Before leaving the office for the day, Charlie made several phone calls, and built up a thick folder of printouts from emails of police reports and other information about the hijacking incidences Hugh had been involved in. She learned the names of the hijack gang members. She also had a good timeline of all of their suspected hijackings, even those not involving Hugh.
That information wasn’t hard to get from the Idaho State Police, despite Trooper Donovan’s reticence in talking to her. She had long ago cultivated relationships among Idaho state police officials, and they had cooperated with her requests for digital copies of the police reports. She couldn’t help it if they got the impression her article would be a positive one about their commendation of Hugh as a life-saving hero.
The reports on the California and Nevada incidences took a little more schmoozing of the “she knows a guy, who knows a guy, who knows a guy” chain of relationships that leaped over regular channels to get the reports she needed.
It was the Idaho State Police news release that had started it all.
Truck driver Hugh Mann had endured the handshakes, the “congratulations,” the picture taking and the video recording when several Idaho State Police representatives had arrived at his parents’ remote Northern Idaho ranch.
He had still been recuperating from a concussion and other injuries when the state police had driven up to commend him for helping take down a truck hijacking ring, and for saving the life of one of their troopers.
Hugh was a reluctant awardee at best, but he was willing to give them what they wanted. The brief celebrity status he had endured was for them. They got their photos, they got their video. Then Hugh was happy to be done with it.
They weren’t. They wanted to tell the world about Hugh Mann, hero trucker.
The news release and the newspaper articles it generated were like a constant pain in the side during his recuperation. The ranch phone rang continuously. Everyone in the family knew not to answer if the caller ID displayed it was a media call.
Hugh didn’t have a social media presence, and kept online activity to a minimum. But he did need to occasionally boot up his laptop to check his email. When he did that
