—The county board had approved a downtown renewal project for Bronson Hills. The money would, the county supervisors hoped, bring new life to that economically challenged former mill town. Realistically? The cash would probably be gone in a year and the cosmetic changes would have drawn zero new businesses, residents or customers. Fitz interviewed spokespeople from both views. He was a reporter, not an op-ed writer.
—The charismatic and progressive New York governor—and presidential hopeful—was in Garner for fundraising rallies. Fitz would vote for John Heller but he hadn’t softballed the profile, asking about some #MeToo incidents and uncomfortable statements he’d made about women’s right to choose and gay marriage. Still, the boyish man fielded all the questions with grace and patience, downplaying pain from recent dental surgery.
—A coal-company executive died when his car plummeted into Henshaw Falls, an eighty-foot drop. Fitz covered the accident, but expanded the story and interviewed executives at the man’s company: What was he doing in Fairview County? There were some mineral reserves underground, Fitz knew. There’d been mining here in the 1800s. They denied they were thinking of an operation here and Fitz’s research found nothing to suggest that wasn’t true. He did, of course, raise the question of why the inadequate guardrails on Route 29 had yet to be replaced.
Several other pieces were in the works:
—The gift that keeps on giving journalistically: the opioid, fentanyl and meth crisis, particularly acute in the northern part of Fairview County.
—A sampler of domestic crimes, drug busts, DUIs, robberies. All fodder for the police blotter—one of the most popular columns among readers around the world since the newspaper was invented.
These stories were all his. He was virtually the only hard news reporter left on the paper.
Fitz rose stiffly and walked through the newsroom. I’m getting close to waddling, he reflected. But he didn’t straighten his posture or speed up his gait. At some point you just don’t care.
The Fairview Daily Examiner’s editorial offices occupied the second floor of an old building in downtown Garner. The windows overlooked Schoharie Park, a pleasant rectangle of hilly grass and gardens from which, on dark nights, you could see the lights of Albany.
Fitz’s office was in the paper’s original editorial department, all scuffed and musty and filled with dented and scraped oak furniture. If that side of the floor was early twentieth century (one might say nineteenth), the other half was entirely up to date; it was where the sister operation, ExaminerOnline, was produced. Fitz disapproved of making two words into one when there was no earthly reason to do so. This portion of the paper was glitzy, filled with glass and metal and walls with splotchy art in pink and red and purple. The online staff was small and its monitors were big.
Fitz walked into the EIC’s office, which was, tellingly, smack in the center of the newer—and posher—operation.
Gerry Bradford was not Examiner born and bred, nor suckled by any traditional paper. A year ago, the descendants of the family that had founded the Examiner in 1907 decided finally to get out of the money-losing operation and sold it to a large chain. National Media Group brought in Bradford, after careers in social media and companies that existed mostly for email but that also reported news.
Bradford was a handsome, dynamic fellow, sharp as could be. The tall, lean man, who could be a fashion model for athletic gear, was a decent and balanced administrator, even if he was too easily cowed by those up the corporate food chain. Still, Fitz, who’d never been cowed by anything in his life, cut Bradford some slack, given he’d been transported from Silicon Valley to Garner, a town of thirty-two thousand, where cows grazed within fifteen minutes of downtown and one could choose among competing pancake breakfast fundraisers every Saturday.
Bradford’s office was far less cluttered than Fitz’s. Understandable. He probably had just as many copies of newspapers and magazines, and clippings thereof, but they resided in hard drives the size of small Bibles.
“Fitz. Liked your pieces. The governor’s always newsworthy. And the guardrails? Need to get those fixed. I sent ’em on to Dave, as is.”
Theoretically Bradford had the authority to rewrite Fitz’s every word. He never had. Dave, the managing editor, occasionally did polish Fitz’s prose. He was an old newspaper man, and that had bought him the right to fiddle.
Bradford asked, “What’s up?”
“Got a story. Want to follow it,” Fitz said. His voice was raspy. “Put the drugs and crime pieces on hold.”
Bradford was squeezing a pen, though the only things here he could write on were Post-it notes and someone’s résumé. “What?”
“The Gravedigger. He got somebody here.”
Bradford ran a hand through his dark, trimmed hair. Frowned. “Sounds familiar.”
“That kidnapping outside of Baltimore ’bout three weeks ago.”
“Oh, he left a puzzle for the cops to solve. Jesus. He’s here? Garner?”
“Right.”
“Who’d he kidnap?”
“I don’t know yet. Just happened.” Fitz dropped into an orange vinyl chair across from Bradford. He’d once written a piece about a fast-food restaurant in a mixed-race neighborhood, a town nearby; all the furniture and walls were bright orange. That color, it turned out, tended to irritate people and, in a dining establishment, that meant they’d be less likely to stay long. Some restaurants did this to improve turnover of customers; this owner was unwisely vocal to an ex about wielding the hue to keep minorities (not the owner’s actual word) from hanging out. Fitz’s exposé earned him a statewide journalism award.
“And you want to cover it.”
Of course “I want to cover it.” He coughed once, then again. “Hate this pollen.”
“It’s bad this year. This is the third victim?”
Fitz said, “The second. Wasn’t a serial kidnapper until today. If it’s the same guy. There’re lots of copycat crimes.”
Bradford looked at his computer, typed. “Already on CNN, MSNBC, Fox.” He squinted. “Nobody’s saying what clue he left this time. You have any idea?”
Fitz shrugged. “There was a note at the scene. Don’t know the details.”
The pen got mauled a bit more. “That meth piece . . . It’s an important one.”
“The drugs aren’t going anywhere. It can wait.” Fitz sounded impatient because he was. The broadcasters were already on top of the Gravedigger story. Their antenna trucks would have landed on the beaches of the crime scene. Fitz wanted to get the hell there himself.
“Hm. You know, Fitz . . .”
Here it comes.
“They don’t really like independent coverage on stories that’ll run national.” The “they” being the Examiner’s new owners. “We can pick it up from the feeds.”
In Fitz’s day, when newspapers ran stories that somebody else had written they came from the wire.
It had been a cheat then, it was a cheat now.
“The big boys and gals’ll be all over it,” the editor continued.
“There’ll be local angles, Gerry,” Fitz pointed out. “The victim’s local. The turf is local. Witnesses’ll be local.” Fitz stifled a cough and mouthed a lozenge. Cherry. He liked cherry best.