CROSS TALK: Sneak Peek
Chapters 4-6

Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 11

 

DAY ONE — MONDAY

CHAPTER FOUR

 

Back in my SUV, I traded the release for my phone.

First, I read a message from Mike saying Jennifer had told him what was happening. Anything I can do?

I texted back, Want to write Leona’s copy for the Five?

Then I hit a phone number, which was answered immediately.

“Walt? It’s Elizabeth Danniher. Anything new?”

“No official ID, if that’s what you’re hoping for. Gave Jennifer a specific address based on activity at the house, along with what the neighbors are saying about who lived there. Her name is Melissa Oxley, she drives a VW Beetle, and the age fits. If Jennifer confirms it from real estate sources, maybe we could use the name—”

“Nope.”

Not until law enforcement released the name, usually after notification of the next of kin, but sometimes longer if there were complications.

With a staff member being questioned, we would tread carefully.

“I know, I know. It’s just frustrating…” He sighed. “Looks like a single-family home, not as big as the others, but original. Neighbors say she lived there alone. No family in town. So it could take a while. Doubt official ID will come tonight, for sure. Shelton and Alvaro have gone. The scientists are busy doing their stuff. Certainly not taking time to talk to a lowly reporter. Otherwise, a single Cottonwood County deputy left to move along traffic, along with three Horse Creek County representatives, which must leave most of their county unprotected.”

“Have you picked up anything about a connection between Thurston and the victim?”

“Nope. Law enforcement’s being entirely closed mouthed. About to start on neighbors. But I won’t mention his name. Don’t want to muddy the waters. Just see if they bring him up when I ask about visitors, friends, associates.”

“Perfect. I just left the sheriff’s department. I’ll send you the release. Not much there, but you’ll have the official language, including unexplained death.”

“Anything about Thurston—?”

“No. They’re not saying much, which almost certainly means not charged. Yet.”

He whistled through his teeth. “Surreal. The whole thing. I was remembering when he started. Had the intro for a piece a young intern — back when we had such people — had done with a child behavior specialist about thumb-sucking. Only Thurston said that term wasn’t dignified enough for him. He insisted on referring to it as finger-sucking.”

I might have made a sound.

“Yeah, you can see where this is going. He said it right the first two times, then switched the first letters, just as he tossed it to the intern for her live set-up. She was horrified, but you could also hear her crew — back in the days when we had a crew out with the reporter — laughing their asses off.

“She got through it. Barely. After the piece, she had herself in hand for the toss back to Thurston … until he said it again, singer f— Well, you get the idea.”

“I hadn’t heard that one.” Though I had witnessed some Thurston screwups.

“But you didn’t call about Thurston stories.”

“No, I didn’t. Not enough time in the day for all of those. Audrey gave you the timeline of the deputies getting to the victim’s house, then almost immediately leaving? There’s definitely something in that. Confirmed here at the sheriff’s department, though not specifically what it was that sent them hot-footing to Thurston. Probably something in the house and not subtle. Maybe the neighbors will know.”

“Maybe. But I’m already getting a lot of that hardly-knew-her vibe. Fair number of these folks have bought recently and this woman — assuming we have the right ID — was away a dozen or more years before moving back earlier this year. Not an open-door kind of person, either. And not active in the community.”

“Darn.”

“What makes you think it’s something in the house? Sheriff’s department say something? Because they’re sure not saying anything here.”

“Nothing was said, but there was a reaction.”

He considered a moment. “Not Shelton. Probably not Alvaro. Ferrante? Something he picked up from the guys returning earlier from the scene?”

“Yep. And probably.”

“Gotcha. Okay. I’ll push it with the neighbors I talk to from now on, see what we get.”

~ * ~

The boilerplate release was as sparse as expected.

But it did give the approximate time and location of where the victim’s body was found. Also that she was in her thirties — less specific than what Jennifer picked up — and not a Native American. Sadly, that last detail was added because so many Native American women had gone missing or been killed. It had become its own category of crime.

With those few firm details, and weaving in a fair number of “according to the Horse Creek County Sheriff’s Department” or “the Cottonwood County Sheriff’s Department said,” or “the two departments, working in cooperation, indicated,” it sounded like we had more than we did.

A story about finding a body in these circumstances guaranteed an attention-grabbing headline. But rarely did you have the answers to the who, what, when, where, how, and — especially — why, that listeners wanted in the next breath.

The criminal justice system contends with the CSI Effect. Juries expect the level of detail — especially physical evidence, led by DNA — that is presented on fiction TV dramas of the ilk of the CSI franchise. Juries also expect cases to be resolved in less than an hour, since trials don’t have advertising timeouts.

I feel for prosecutors. On the other hand, the media has experienced the impatience of the public forever. They want all elements, neatly packaged, along with eye-catching video, while we’re scrambling to get to the scene.

Social media compounds the problem, including a segment of the population making up their own answers, not bothering with fact-gathering or multiple sources. Or any sources. They jump to conclusions, then shore up those shaky edifices with selected — or made-up — information.

Bad enough that some people indulge in the activity. Truly scary that others believe them.

I suppose the gullibility of mankind will keep me in a job as a consumer affairs reporter. I’d happily give up my beat in exchange for a higher rate of critical thinking.

None of those insights made it into the five o’clock report, of course.

~ * ~

In addition to Walt’s live standup report in the vicinity of a house he described as “a focus of law enforcement activity,” we had video by Jenks from where the vehicle was found.

The blue VW Beetle was identifiable in some of what Jenks shot, but not in what we aired, for the same reason we didn’t identify the victim.

It meant we’d have to wait to use an evocative shot of the vehicle sitting isolated in a semicircle of official vehicles from Horse Creek County, with a narrow band of deteriorating pavement forming a straight stroke through the brush, scrub, and rock that stretched endlessly under a dome of blue sky.

What we used wasn’t bad, but it hurt not to be able to use that footage.

One of the most noticeable differences from the usual KWMT-TV fare was the cross talk – that’s on-air conversation between the anchor and on-site reporter. In this case, Leona and Walt.

Leona’s questions and believable interest elevated their cross talk beyond anything our viewers would have seen in the rare times Thurston deigned to participate – he did his best to avoid sharing the screen or audio with anyone.

Though, I did hear a couple stories about Thurston’s early years here when his technical ineptitude contributed to another kind of cross talk – a voice from one microphone unintentionally bleeding into another.

After those incidents, the view was that the less of the desirable cross talk anyone asked Thurston to do, the less chance for the undesirable tech glitch kind.

Jenks came into the newsroom during the Five.

That was notable, though not as notable as it would have been eighteen months ago.

He had the quaint notion that even journalists should be home for supper with family. He’d managed it most of his time at KWMT-TV by aligning with Thurston, who didn’t believe journalists — or, more accurately, he — should work much at all.

When I’d arrived in Sherman, Jenks had been Thurston’s pet shooter.

That relationship deteriorated as Jenks’ journalistic instincts roused from hibernation. Now part of the general pool of photographers, he didn’t always get home for supper, but he maximized his opportunities and everyone else cooperated out of fondness and respect.

He was not alone in showing up at the station when staffers normally would have gone home.

After Walt’s bit, he and Diana came in and joined another half dozen staffers, who stood, looking up at Leona’s stalwart presence on monitors hung near the ceiling. No one spoke.

I’d been in newsrooms when monumental national and international stories broke. Every time there’d been a moment like this.

A breath between the first rush and the long-haul, a brief nod, acknowledging that shift and absorbing the import of what had changed in the world.

They’d be caught up in the rush again — shortly, with the prep for the Ten, or tomorrow. But for this breath, they stood. Individually, yet somehow together.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

“I’ve got new footage,” Jenks announced generally.

Leona and the production crew had come into the newsroom, receiving congratulations on the newscast. Now most of the lingerers headed out.

The rest of us turned our thoughts to the Ten.

“Let’s see it,” Audrey said.

As she moved to lead the way to an editing booth, Diana and I exchanged a glance, signaling our mutual satisfaction at her taking charge.

We followed them and our satisfaction shifted to what was onscreen when Jenks ran his video.

If you listed the elements in what aired on the Five and in this video they’d be nearly identical.

The effects were not.

The earlier video was fact. This was … more than fact.

The sky’s brilliant blue had faded and grayed. Across it, clouds could have been drawn by a grubby-handed toddler creating dots and dashes. Jenks shot from lower and closer this time, shifting the perspective and making the unidentifiable slice of a civilian vehicle solitary, dwarfed by the vastness. The road became a foreground stripe of rubble.

“Jenks, this is … this is amazing,” Audrey said. “It’s haunting.”

He went deadpan. “You can thank Diana for that.”

“Me? This is all you. I wasn’t there.”

“No, but a while back when I was griping about an assignment sending me to a scene with nothing but space in it, you said to make the space the shot. I remembered that after I sent the usual stuff in for the Five. So I waited a while and moved around. Deputies and the scientists thought I was nuts, but it took some doing to get an angle that caught the clouds, enough of the Beetle without the make being obvious, and none of the other vehicles.”

“Audrey—”

She cut me off. “I know. Change the stack for the Ten. Lead with this. Set the scene, then do the rundown. I’m on it. Can you rewrite Leona’s intro, Elizabeth?”

“Sure. After some sustenance.”

“Dale should be back soon with the order from Hamburger Heaven. Jenks, send the full and—”

Diana and I slipped out of the phone booth-sized editing area while she was still giving orders.

Walt caught us in the hall.

“Was looking for you. After Jerry resets, I’m going to do my bit for the Ten, edit the package, and then head home, make some calls from there. If I get anything hot…” He lived close enough to come back to go live. But we knew the chances were slim. “Want the little I got from the neighbors?”

“Absolutely.”

We settled in around my desk so I could take notes.

“The family’s been there in one form or another since the house was built. It was Melissa Oxley’s mother’s family. It’s not the biggest or fanciest house, but it never fell into absolute ruin like some did in that area.

“The neighbors knew the mother, a widow for a good chunk of the past couple decades. Didn’t talk to anyone who knew the first husband.”

I glanced toward Diana, but she didn’t return it and said nothing.

“They had one child — Melissa, the one we think was found dead in Horse Creek County. She moved out post-college, like normal kids do, which is the highest aspiration I currently have for my son. The mother — Barbara — married again a couple years after Melissa went to college.

“Unfortunately for us, the new husband wasn’t chatty with the neighbors. They said they’d wave and say hello but that was about it. Their main contact was with the mother, who died at the very end of last year. There is one tidbit — the second husband moved out and the daughter back in shortly after the funeral.”

“Huh.”

“Nobody I talked to knew details. They say the daughter’s the same as her stepfather — wave and say hello. None of them mentioned Thurston or any connection there. I nudged a bit, you know, asking about boyfriends. Nothing. But there is one possible thread for you to follow up.”

“Me? Why not you? It’s your story.”

“For all I got, it’s not much of a story.”

“You did fine on the Five.”

“Glad you think so, because everyone’ll hear about the same thing at Ten. Anyway, I was talking to Krista Seger, who owns that bed and breakfast.” He waggled his eyebrows, reminding us she was the niece of the station’s owner, Val Heatherton. “It’s a block and a half down from where Melissa Oxley lived. Didn’t have anything more for me than anybody else, but at the end she asked why you weren’t there. I got a vibe she might have been more forthcoming with you.”

“Interesting,” Diana said.

I wasn’t as enthusiastic. Krista was grateful we hadn’t dragged the B&B into the spotlight on an earlier situation. She seemed to feel she needed to say it every time we saw each other.

Walt headed to the studio to do his update for the Ten.

Diana and I remained at my desk in the bullpen.

In my case to be closer to the door when the news aide returned with our takeout dinner orders to refuel before preparing for the Ten.

It also gave us time for a replay of the Five.

A critical viewer might have spotted some arm-waving to retain our balance, but I do believe we successfully negotiated the big-story-not-much-info tightrope.

Before restringing the tightrope for the Ten, we had this brief respite.

I called my next-door neighbors, Iris and Zeb Undlin, asking if they’d look in on my dog, Shadow, because I’d be home late. They said it would be their pleasure. It would also be Shadow’s pleasure, because he’d probably get a meal cooked especially for him instead of kibble.

Diana called her children, Jessica and Gary Junior, both now in high school, who had schedules of academics, extracurricular activities, and social lives that spilled over the lines of any ordinary calendar. Neither was supposed to be home for dinner and Diana would only stay at the station another hour or so to help go through video, but she liked to check in with them to make sure nothing had arisen.

Nothing had.

I suspected this was a respite of sorts for all of them, too.

Amid the wrap-up of our previous investigation, there’d been some turmoil with the kids, Diana, and her love interest, Sheriff Russ Conrad.

“Not going to call Russ?” My question was a tiny bit of mild needling.

“Already talked to him. He completely understands about my schedule changing, because his did, too.”

“Did he have anything interesting to say?” As sheriff, he frequently came down on the opposite side of free and open access for the media. If he’d mentioned anything about the news story of the day…

“Interesting to me, yes. To you, no.”

I inhaled to continue the jousting, but put the oxygen intake to better use to say, “Dinner’s here,” at the sight of lanky news aide Dale returning with bags and bags from Hamburger Heaven.

We’d finished eating when a call came in on my phone. Identifying the caller as Needham Bender — first for myself, then aloud to Diana, I figured I’d soon learn if my assessment of our balancing act during the Five was justified.

He greeted me with a grumble. “It would happen when I’d just closed up the edition.”

No question of what it was.

Coming out three times a week, the Independence that he owned and edited sometimes struggled to get in breaking news that KWMT could with twice daily newscasts. On the other hand, it had the advantage over KWMT of time, space, and Needham to produce thoughtful and probing coverage.

“But you got something in anyway.”

“Barely. But you guys… Nice job on the fly, Elizabeth. Real nice job. More news than’s usually in three or four episodes of the Thurston Fine Show. Can’t wait for the Ten.”

“Be sure you catch the opening with new video from Jenks. As for the Five, that was Audrey Adams, who handled the assignment editor job she was scheduled for, and now producer for both newscasts because Thurston’s pet had a meltdown.”

“Good for her. With you the power behind the throne, I’m betting. You sure you’re not a newspaperman?”

I chuckled in response to his compliment — it definitely was a compliment.

“Leona sounded like the hardest of the hard-news junkies,” he added.

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Not a chance. I’m not stupid. Though it wasn’t quite as exciting as waiting to hear what Thurston would say.”

“Thurston Fine, the greatest living practitioner of churnalism.”

“Hah.” Needham barked out a laugh. “Great term for churning press releases into a poor substitute for news. Don’t know about him being the greatest, but certainly the most prolific. I remember watching his first newscast here and I had this strange sense of déjà vu. Didn’t make sense. Only thing I could think of was I must have seen him before. On a trip or something.

“When I got home, I asked Thelma if she’d recognized him. She hadn’t paid close attention, so I made her concentrate on the late news. At the end, she said she was sure she’d never heard or seen him before and she’d remember, because he was awful. So the familiarity wasn’t from stumbling upon him before.

“Next day’s early news, having the same déjà vu, a phrase caught me. Started digging through press releases—”

“News releases, please. Press releases refer to print, so applies only to you ink-stained wretches.”

“We’re the only ones who counts, which is why I was pawing through press releases and there was just about everything Thurston said.”

“I am steeled against the degradations he has imposed on journalism. I will not groan or cry.”

“We’ll see about that.”

It was a good thing I liked him.

“Never will forget him following up a story about protests by doing his version of cross talk — with himself — and he started speculating about why the incendiary devices the protestors threw were called mazel tov cocktails.”

“Mazel tov—?”

He laughed briefly. “Yeah. That old Soviet politician and all-around buzzard Molotov would be real sorry to lose his namesake. Though he’d still get credit for Molotov’s Bread Baskets. That’s what the Finns called the Soviet bombs in 1939 when the Soviets invaded, while Molotov said on the radio they weren’t bombing, oh, no, not them, only dropping food parcels to the Finns.”

“I’d heard of Molotov, but not the rest. The Finns developed them?”

“No. Gave them the name, but borrowed the idea of relatively easy-to-make and surprisingly effective incendiary devices used in the Spanish Civil War. You know that was all contemporary history for me.”

My mental math rejected that. “Baloney.”

He grunted. “You’re right, but it’s getting so people look at me and think I was around for the American Revolution. Anyway, I talked to a bunch of people who did live that history.”

A momentary pause had me suspecting Needham was remembering those conversations and that history.

Then he asked, “What next?” proving, he wasn’t only looking back.

“Rinse and repeat for the Ten and for tomorrow. Hope Les Haeburn takes hold of himself—” And returned to the station. Though I wasn’t prepared to feed that tidbit to a media rival, even Needham. “—and makes plans so the station can handle it, whether this is long-term or short-term.”

“I meant what next with the murder.”

“Don’t know it is a murder.”

He snorted. “Suspicious death for print. Murder between friends.”

“Not sure even between friends. They seem tied to unexplained death.” That backed down several rungs on the ladder from suspicious death and well down the hierarchy from murder. “That includes the possibility of suicide.”

“Shot herself? In the back seat of her car? What? She wanted to get more comfortable, have more elbow room and less leg room?”

“Back seat?” I asked before I could stop myself.

The victim — Melissa Oxley — had been found in the back seat of her VW bug?

He chuckled. “Like you didn’t already know.”

I should have. Would I have known if I’d asked Shelton more questions? Or if I’d gone to the scene where she was found and—

Needham continued, “A more likely setup would be that someone else was in that back seat with her.”

“Not in a VW Beetle.”

“So you do admit knowing that, huh? Officially, it’s a four-seater, so someone could’ve been back there with her. Or leaning over from the front or in from outside to pull the trigger.”

“Is that the official cause of death?” I asked, as if teasing.

“As if they’d share the official COD when they’re still futzing around with identification, even though half of Horse Creek County and all of Cottonwood County knows it’s Melissa Oxley. Doesn’t change that she was shot in the back seat of her vehicle, most likely by someone else who—”

“Or by her own hand after a disappointment.” That came out without my thinking.

His satisfied grunt told me I should have thought first. “Oh-ho. That’s what you’re thinking about Thurston’s involvement? That’s the direction you’re following with your investigation?”

I was at a real disadvantage, since I hadn’t realized the thought was anywhere in my brain until it blurted out of my mouth. I hadn’t been careful, because I’d been sure I wasn’t thinking about this from any aspect other than KWMT’s coverage.

I tried to recover, if not retreat.

“Not at all. There is no direction, because there’s no investigation. I’m sure Thurston is tangential to this whole matter. We — KWMT — will cover the investigation, of course, but the sheriff’s department isn’t being particularly cooperative. Can’t entirely blame them, since the body wasn’t found in their jurisdiction and they appear to still be thrashing that out with Horse Creek County.”

He chuckled. After a moment of my silence, it faded out. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

“You’re just going to report it, not investigate it?”

“It’s not my story, but, yes.”

“Really?” I heard not only skepticism, but a suddenly deepened interest. Not what I’d been going for. “Why? Do you think Fine really did this?”

“I have no idea. I’m leaving it to the law enforcement professionals.”

“Elizabeth—”

“I’ve gotta go. Another broadcast to get ready.”

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

Diana snorted from where she still sat at the next desk, sunk down in a chair, with her crossed ankles resting on the edge of the desk’s dinged surface.

In case I didn’t interpret that snort, her tone also conveyed scoffing disbelief. “You’re leaving it to the law enforcement professionals?”

“Yes. We don’t look into every murder — and especially not every death.”

“You’re thinking it’s suicide?”

“That’s certainly a reasonable explanation, and one that would not involve Thurston Fine being a clever murdering mastermind.”

“If he did murder her, it sure didn’t reach mastermind status, considering law enforcement is talking to him the day the body’s found.”

True. Though beside the point – beside my point, anyway. “Either way, this situation’s not something that calls for our talents. Law enforcement appears to have a handle on it.”

“What if they think it’s murder and it’s really suicide.”

“I’d expect you to have more confidence in Sheriff Conrad and his people getting to the truth.”

She certainly had confidence in Russell Conrad in other areas, not only her heart, but opening the relationship to her teenage children.

She’d taken that process slowly and carefully … until he recently used the L-word in front of the kids, apparently for the first time.

Men.

“I have all the confidence in Russ. On the other hand, with a different department spearheading the investigation and the possibility that said different department could land on Thurston as the killer when he wasn’t…”

“Doubtful. Besides, maybe he is. If it’s murder.”

“But you’re prepared to sit back and wait? That’s not like you, Elizabeth.”

Enough hedging. “Are you accusing me of something, Diana?”

“Like disliking Thurston enough to send him to the proverbial gallows by your lack of action even if he doesn’t deserve it? No—”

“You really need to tell Conrad — because they are involved — how little you think of him and his department that they couldn’t separate a murder from a suicide and would rush to judgment to convict someone you seem positive is innocent.”

“And you need to stop deflecting. As I started to say, no, I don’t think you’d do that. But would you avoid helping Thurston for another reason? Like, maybe, you’re feeling easily bruised with Mike in Chicago, Jennifer heading the same direction after the first of the year, and Tom keeping his distance.”

“I am not some hothouse flower who—”

“No. You’re human. And it would be hard not to feel the holes in your life from those— well, call them departures. Especially when something like this comes up, hitting closer to home, while also crying out for an investigation—”

“Crying out for? You do know I’m memorizing all this to repeat to our illustrious sheriff.”

“—and immediately after the previous one with all its reminders of who was gone and who would be soon.”

“Balderdash.”

“Really? Balderdash?”

“It’s a good word.”

She swung her feet down from the desk and stood. “If you say so. You certainly know how to use words.” She side-eyed me. “Especially to avoid acknowledging to yourself what’s going on.”

~ * ~

Before she could expand or I had to respond, we turned at the sound of the outer doors being opened.

“Oh, my God,” Audrey said, not quietly.

Les Haeburn.

His need to wrestle closed the wind-driven outer doors and get the inner doors opened gave us time to exchange looks across the bullpen.

“You,” Audrey said to me.

No mistaking what she meant. I wanted to say that as assignment editor and de facto producer for both newscasts, she had the official honor of informing the news director of what was going on, now that he’d finally shown up.

But the woman had been swimming as fast as she could in the deep end all day. No sense hitting her with a tsunami-like wave, too, when I could handle it.

I charted a path to intersect with him in the hallway outside his office. Diana followed me and Audrey met us. Leona, with Jennifer behind her, stood a couple feet away, where the hall turned to head back toward the studio.

“Les.”

He’d intended to walk past us without making eye contact, but my voice — backed by stepping in front of him — brought him up short. Fumbling with his phone in his pocket, still not saying anything.

“There’s something you need to know.”

I tried — really hard — to keep out of my voice the subtext that he should have damned well been here. What the you-know-what had he been doing all day? And a couple more you-know-whats could possibly explain his failing to contact the newsroom?

“Sheriff’s deputies from Horse Creek and Cottonwood counties came to the station to talk to Thurston about the death of a Sherman woman. Her body was found in Horse Creek County this morning. The deputies asked Thurston to go with them to the sheriff’s office here in town to talk with them.”

I waited.

For an exclamation.

For a demand to know if I was kidding.

For amazement.

For shock.

He continued to look down at his phone. I saw a string of unanswered calls from the same number.

Could Thurston have tried to reach him at some point today? Could that mean—?

I shut off the questions.

“Thurston hasn’t been back since. We haven’t heard anything from him. Audrey adjusted the stack and called in Leona to anchor. We’re working the story of the woman’s death. No official ID, though we have strong indications of who it was. She lived here in Sherman.”

I repeated that fact hoping it would trigger the all-news-is-local instincts that had to be in him somewhere.

“We used a short, factual statement about Thurston in the coverage for the Five. We can get you the tape and fill you in on the blocks for the Ten to look over—”

“No.” After the single, sharp word, he appeared to have trouble swallowing. “I have calls to make.”

“For Thurston? Elizabeth already—”

I interrupted Audrey. “The station’s lawyer went to the sheriff’s department to connect with Thurston hours ago. James Longbaugh will give Thurston whatever help he needs.”

If Thurston listened to sense. Not a given.

Apparently, I shouldn’t have bothered with the reassurance. Les didn’t appear to hear anything we’d said.

“A woman died in Horse Creek County. I have calls to make,” he repeated. “Keep on with what you’re doing.”

He scuttled into his office and slammed the door behind him. We heard a muffled sound from inside that I couldn’t identify. Could he possibly be in there sobbing? Over Thurston?

“A woman died in Horse Creek County? So we shouldn’t cover it?” Jennifer demanded. “Did he not hear the part about her being from Sherman?”

Then, from inside the office, we heard the distinct ringtone of Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.

The owner of the station was calling the news director.

Before we could react, much less scatter, his office door jerked open and he pushed past us on the way to the outside doors.

He had been summoned.

And he had left.

For a second there, I’d thought it might be like an ordinary station, with ownership chewing on the news director’s tail about coverage and the news director taking hold and turning up the heat under the staff and…

I cleared my throat. “Okay, let’s get back to it. We have another newscast to put together.”

 

To Be Continued

Read Chapters 7-8 here!

 

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And in Air Ready, Book 12 of Caught Dead in Wyoming, the Tom or Mike question will be resolved.
Along with another murder mystery! Air Ready also is available for pre-order, for a 2023 release.