There was still plenty of light at the Fulton County Fairgrounds, but there were lights going on all the rides, anyway. There was a crowd of people standing around Sally Parker and Shane Gritzmaker as they got set for the live remote, which would be in the second segment, still several minutes off. A nearby monitor was running Channel 5, with First to Know News at Five about to come on. “You want to see how Metheny handled that holdup story?” Shane asked.

“Not really,” Sally frowned. “It’d be his face, voice, and attitude I’d have to suffer through, but I suppose we’d better.”

“Yeah, it is the lead, and all.”

“Too bad Jeff couldn’t find any real news to lead with,” Sally said sarcastically. “I mean, there’s nothing important going on, like a school board having to make big cuts if they don’t get a millage.”

That still burned her to think about it. There hadn’t been a damn thing she could do about it, though. She was the junior full-time reporter at the station, only on the job at Channel 5 for a few months now after her break-in job reporting up in Battle Creek. After that, being able to work at home in Toledo had seemed like a treat. This wasn’t the first time Metheny had pulled something like that on her, dumping his work on her at the expense of her own beat. Not even the first time in a week! She’d known what was happening right from the first moment, because it had happened before. Why Ben couldn’t see what was going on was beyond her.

“Yeah,” Shane agreed. He’d spent a lot of the afternoon running around getting exteriors of restaurants with down-checks on their health department reports. He’d been in the business for a long time, knew what news was, knew how to tell a story with a camera, and thought the whole thing was pretty silly. Management didn’t think so, and he was just a peed-on, what did he know? “At least I didn’t have Metheny along, so that made it better.”

Sally just shook her head. Apparently, in Metheny’s mind, going down to the Health Department and picking up the weekly restaurant inspection summary, then taking exteriors of the buildings and sneering down his nose at minor violations was investigative journalism. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had to be glad they weren’t dead yet, because they’d have been rolling over in their graves at Metheny’s interpretation of either “investigative” or “journalism.” Metheny just polluted the whole pot for everyone. His idea of reporting was to show off everyone’s incompetence but his own. He didn’t much care whose reputation he ruined or how or why he ruined it. Their scalp on his résumé was necessary so he could make his escape from this potboiler TV station and get to a real market.

The newsroom came up on the little monitor. “Leading First to Know News tonight,” Dave Wells, one of the two regular night anchors said, “is the masked woman who broke up a holdup in north Toledo late last night. Our First to Know News reporter Jason Metheny has the story.”

“Thank you, Dave,” Jason said as the screen switched to him doing a stand-up report from the far side of the studio. “One of the more unusual crime stories in recent months unfolded late last night when police were called to a holdup at the Shop’n’Go at Dorr and Reynolds. When they arrived on the scene, they were surprised to find a masked woman, dressed in black, holding the alleged gunman at sword point.” The scene shifted to the security camera footage, run slowly, about one frame per second. “According to the cashier, Mrs. RuthAnn Richardson, while the alleged gunman held her at gunpoint and demanded money, the masked woman entered the store and told him to drop the gun. When he refused she disarmed him with her sword, allegedly cutting his right hand badly. The masked woman, who referred to herself as an Amazon, held the gunman at sword point until police arrived several minutes later.” The scene shifted again to the footage taken the night before of a semi-hysterical Mrs. Richardson saying, “She saved my life. She was real, Mr. Metheny! She was real!”

The scene switched back to the last frame of the store’s security camera footage. “The alleged gunman, Larry Ferguson of Toledo, was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he’s reported in fair condition with a deep cut to his wrist and hand. According to police, as soon as he’s released he’ll be arraigned for armed robbery and auto theft. Back to you, Dave.”

The scene switched back to Wells. “Jason, do the police have any idea of who this woman is?” he asked.

Metheny’s head appeared in a box in one corner of the screen. “No idea, Dave. They’d like to question her about the incident but apparently don’t have any good leads. She reportedly had a few words of condolence for Mrs. Richardson, then vanished into the night like a superheroine out of a comic book. When we find out more, you’ll know about it on First to Know News.”

“Evil-doers, beware!” Wells intoned with a grin as the scene switched back to him. “Somewhere on those dark streets, a masked Amazon with a sword could appear from the shadows.” It looked casual, spontaneous, and was supposed to, but it was actually previously scripted and carefully timed. Back in the control room, the director, Mandy Fredenberg, had one eye on the teleprompter and one on the schedule, somehow also watching the time. Seconds counted. If they were only a couple seconds off, she was capable of having a screaming fit and start throwing things while still yelling orders for the next camera move. Get more than a few seconds out of sync, and Jeff would have to make cuts on the fly later in the show.

The scene switched to Mary Herman, the other week-day evening co-anchor. “It’s not exactly a superheroine avenging evil,” she said, “But Daimler-Chrysler Corporation announced today that production of a new line of Jeeps is being considered …”

Shane frowned at the screen for a moment. “You know,” he said in a low voice, “I sort of hate to say it, but Metheny didn’t do too bad a job of handling it.”

“No, Jeff let the anchors be the smart asses,” Sally said with a sneer. “What do you want to bet that in a couple days it’ll be ‘Police are still seeking the identity of the masked Amazon,’ and so forth.”

“No bet. He’s got his teeth in it, and he’ll ride it till it gives out. He doesn’t hit his stride until he’s putting someone down.”

“Which sure puts me in the mood I want to be in to do a good-time story here,” Sally said sarcastically. “Guess I’d better go work this crowd a little so we can be ready for our own fifteen seconds of fame.”

Everybody has their little idiosyncrasies, Ben Ayers thought.

Break times around the First to Know newsroom were not scheduled, since there often was something going on at the time a break would have been scheduled. Being a smoker, Ben often headed out back to grab a weed when he needed a break or to think about something, and several staff members usually headed to the vending machines. But Sally … was different.

Ben and the rest of the staff had gotten used to her idea of relaxation by now. Sally’s idea of unwinding was to grab a double handful of small rubber balls from a desk drawer, slide back from the desk, and juggle them—not just three, either, but five, six, seven, or even more. She was good. At one time, there’d been an office pool on how long it would take her to miss, but it dragged on for weeks until people lost interest. That anyone knew, she had yet to miss.

“It relaxes me, helps me focus, get my mind off problems, and concentrate on one thing,” she’d explained when she first broke out the balls not long after she’d started at Channel 5.

Along with many of the staff, Ben thought it was a pretty juvenile way to relax, as well as being rather more distracting than some other activities she could have used. She could have gone and had a cup of coffee like anyone else, but she said that the caffeine screwed up her timing.

Could have been worse, Ben grinned to himself, remembering another newsroom long ago and far away, where a reporter had kept a dart board at about head height on the wall right next to the door frame. It was his habit to grab a dart without warning and let fly at the board while he was working the phones, usually without glancing up to see if anyone was peeking in the open door. No one ever did.

“Well, okay, folks,” he said, looking up at the newsroom, “we’d better get started with the staff meeting.” He glanced up at Sally, who had about six balls in the air. Flup, flup, flup, she gathered them up in two hands and stuffed them in the drawer, without a miss, of course. Not a bad analogy for a TV reporter, he thought, not for the first time. You have to be able to keep several balls in the air at once.

“Well, I think we more or less won that round,” Ben started out. “We were the only ones to lead with the Amazon story.”

“I didn’t check,” Jeff replied, leaning back in his chair. “What’d everyone else lead with?”

“Channel 24 had the new line at Jeep,” Ben frowned. “Both 11 and 13 led with the Sylvania School Board meeting. Sally, weren’t you supposed to cover that?”

“You and Liz told me to skip it, Ben. Then you sent Shane and me to the Fulton County Fair. We’d have been pushed to make it back to Sylvania in time for the meeting.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Ben admitted. “Guess I shot myself in the foot on that one. Do you think that you could run out and get an interview with the Board President or the Superintendent to play catch-up? We don’t dare lead with it tonight, but we should mention it. Maybe do a voice-over with a stock shot of the high school, or something.”

“Sure, can do.” Being right after the fact wasn’t as good as being right before the fact, but under the circumstances it was about all she could expect.

“Anyway, on the Amazon story,” Ben continued. “I think we held our own. Channels 11 and 24 had better interviews with the cashier, but they were taken yesterday morning, in daylight. Also, 24 went into a lot more detail, gave a description of the Amazon in an interview with the officer on the scene.”

“I talked to her,” Jason protested. “She was real snotty to me, and I couldn’t get enough out of her to do much with.” Stupid cops, he thought. There was no reason she couldn’t have given him a decent interview, rather than the brush-off. Somebody ought to do something about the kind of arrogance those cops display. They’re public servants, after all!

“Water under the bridge,” Ben said. “Anyway, unless we can come up with some new angle, I don’t think we’d better lead with it again tonight.”

“What else have we got?” Jeff protested. “A late school board meeting? There’s a lot of detail that Jason had to skip over since we had such a small slot.”

“Better than not covering it at all,” Ayres said. “Okay, anyone else got anything?”

“Are we going to do something on—” Dan, the day anchor started, but was interrupted by the telephone on Ben’s desk.

He picked it up, and it proved to be Cindy, out at the front desk. “Ben, we’ve got a couple of police here. They want to talk to Sally. Something about the Amazon story.”

“Sally?” Ben frowned. “Not Jason?”

“No, it’s Sally they want to talk to. They didn’t say why.”

“Well, send them back. Maybe we can learn something useful after all.” Ben hung up the phone. “Sally, what do you know about the Amazon story?”

“It’s Jason’s story,” she replied. “I really haven’t paid any attention.”

“Well, the cops want to talk to you, for some reason.”

“Why would they want to talk to her?” Jason frowned. “It’s my story.”

“Don’t know,” Ben told him. “Maybe we’ll find out.”

“Sally, it’s not your business to go poaching on my story. You have no right—”

“I’m not poaching,” she broke in with a protest. “And I don’t know what this is about either.”

The door to the newsroom opened, and Corporal Watkins walked in, followed by Officer Mattison, both in uniform. “Oh, hi, Janice,” Sally said brightly. “What brings you down to this end of town?”

“Trying to wrap up some loose ends for the report on that holdup last night,” the policewoman said. “You know how it is. Some hood can knock off a holdup in minutes and it turns into days of paperwork for the police. Do you know Rick Mattison?”

Sally looked up at the young officer and smiled—he was a couple inches taller than she, neatly turned out in his uniform, short dark hair. “I haven’t had the pleasure,” she replied, “though you look familiar. Are you new on the force?”

“Just out of my rookie year,” he said. “I did forensic science at Ohio State, then came here for the Academy.”

“I probably saw you somewhere around the campus then, as I was there at the same time. Anyway, Janice,” Sally continued. “What can I help you with?”

“Your brother suggested you might be able to help us out on something,” Janice replied, frowning at Jason, who was all ears to the conversation a few feet away. “Do you want to talk in private?”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Sally replied brightly, giving her colleague a freebie. “It’s up to you. We were just talking that we’d like to know a little more about that holdup ourselves.”

“We’ve been going over the tape from the security camera. The woman, Poleeta or whatever she said her name was, looks like she knows how to handle a sword. Your brother was wondering what your take on it would be.”

“Huh?” Jason said with a snort as he broke into the conversation. “Your take? You know anything about swords?”

“A little,” Sally said, with an interesting smile on her face.

“More than a little, from what Charlie told us,” Janice said. “According to him, you’ve got half a wall full of trophies from various fencing meets.”

“I was state champion in foil in high school. It’s just a club sport, not a regular school sport. Then I did pretty well in meets all the way through college. I was Great Lakes Champion in women’s sabre the year before last, and went to the NCAA meet. I made it to the fourth round, so I suppose you could say I was in the top eight collegiate women in the country. I was offered a chance at getting on a track for the Olympic team, but it seemed like a lot of work to me for such a long shot, so I didn’t do it. I mean I like fencing, but Olympic training is intense and very time consuming, not to mention expensive.”

There was a serious outbreak of dropped-jaw syndrome in the newsroom by the time Sally had finished her statement. “Sally,” Ben broke in. “I never knew that!”

Sally turned and smiled at him. “It’s in my résumé. The subject just never came up. I still work out some and compete a little, like some people play golf. When I took this job, I decided I’d better concentrate on it rather than on my hobby.”

“Yeah,” Mattison said, shaking his head, sounding somewhat in awe. “You probably know a little about swords.” He held out a VHS cassette. “Can you take a look at this tape, see if you can pick anything out?”

“Sure. Ben, can we use one of the editors? If it’s what’s off the security camera, we’ve already got that footage here on eight millimeter, so we won’t have to dub it again.”

“Go ahead,” Ben said. “Corporal, do you mind if we look over your shoulder?”

“Not a problem with me,” Janice said, noticing with delight the angry and confused expression on Metheny’s face. A couple minutes later, Sally was sitting in front of one of the tape editors, watching the scene the security camera had taken. Janice and Rick were standing behind her, while Ben, Jason, Dan, and a couple others stared in through the open door of the normally soundproof room. She ran through the brief scene twice at the normal jerky speed, then a third time, pausing several times.

“You picking up anything?” Mattison asked finally.

“Several things,” Sally said, frowning. “I don’t want to say that this woman is for sure a fencer or what. The sword looks sort of like a sabre, but it isn’t a fencing sabre.”

“How can you tell that?” Janice asked.

“First thing, it’s what we fencers call a ‘sharp,’” the young woman replied, “which is a real sword or maybe a replica. It had to have been to do the damage it did. Fencing sabres for competition are blunt and have no edge, and in fact are purposely designed so they can’t be sharpened. The hand guard on this one is way wrong for a tournament sabre, too, more like an old-style long sword.”

“Yeah, could be,” Mattison agreed. “Hard to say, the tape is kind of grainy. You get anything else out of it?”

Sally advanced the tape a few jerky frames, and paused it again. “Notice how she starts out at what we call ‘low guard.’ Sometimes that’s done in modern competition, but usually not. It’d be more likely in aikido or kendo or something. Low guard isn’t a bad place to start in her situation though.”

“Low guard? What’s that?”

“The sword held low, pointing downwards,” Sally gestured at the screen. “Against another fencer, that’d be considered a position of weakness, a defensive position, rather than an offensive one, and the blade of her sword about had to be sharp on both edges. In this case, though, that start was probably the better choice.”

“How do you figure that?” Janice asked.

“The guy was swinging the gun toward her,” she replied. “If she’d been in high guard, swinging downward, it would have taken the gun’s aim across her body, and he might have been able to get off a shot. Coming up like that took the gun out of the fight before he could get a shot off in her direction.”

“Yeah, I see that, now that you mention it.” Mattison nodded. “Gave her an easier target too. You’re saying that she was either lucky, or knew what she was doing?”

“Pretty much,” Sally agreed.

“Uh, Miss … it is Miss, isn’t it?” Mattison asked. She nodded, and he went on, “Miss Parker, do you have any idea who this woman could be?”

“The report said she was a redhead, right?” she replied, pointing at the big shock of curly hair that came out from under the hood. She frowned for a second, and continued, “I did see a woman fencer with hair like that, oh, two or three times, years ago, but the last time I saw her, she’d cut it short like mine. She was from, oh, St. Louis, or somewhere like that I think. It doesn’t matter; it’s not her. She was a real string bean, had to be over six feet, and she mostly did epee, as tall as she was. Your mystery woman is shorter than that, if I recall the story in the Daily right.”

“Nobody close?” Mattison asked.

“Oh, there’s a lot of people it could be,” Sally said. “I don’t know every fencer around here anymore. There are several clubs here, in Detroit, Cleveland, Ann Arbor, and Kalamazoo. I’ve mostly fenced there or in Columbus the last five years and haven’t had much to do with the local scene. Stan Warshawski, the university’s club coach, would know more—”

“We tried out there,” Janice interrupted, “but he’s gone for a couple days, so Charlie suggested you as backup.”

“There have been new people come in who I don’t know. But then, you don’t have to be a strip fencer to know how to use a sword, even use it pretty well. Oh, yes,” Sally interrupted herself after seeing a lot of blank looks. “A ‘strip’ is that long, narrow playing area that modern competition fencers use for practice and tournaments. Anyway, I know that kendo and aikido have a lot of the same moves. There are a lot of medieval reenactors around, too, like in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Some of them may know how to use a sword, but probably not all. Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

“Oh, you’ve been a lot of help,” Janice told her. “We just don’t have any leads on who this woman could be, and this narrows the field quite a bit.”

“Out of curiosity,” Sally asked. “What’s your interest in her, anyway? I mean, you already have the guy who did the holdup, don’t you?”

“The big thing is that she’s probably a material witness,” Janice said. “I can’t imagine this Ferguson character trying to fight this in court, but if it goes to trial, she probably would be called on to testify. In theory, she could be written up for assault and battery with a deadly weapon. On the other hand, there’d be a good case she could plead self defense, since the perp had already fired one shot and was trying to aim his gun at her. On the third hand, we’d look pretty silly if she’s seen as the hero of the day. In any case, we’d like to know who she is, and we’d like to talk to her, just on general principles.”

“I see,” Sally nodded slowly. “Crazy world, isn’t it?”

“Afraid so,” Janice agreed. “In my mind, she probably did the right thing. Maybe not the sane thing, going up against a guy with a gun, but if citizens don’t stand up to crime then we deserve what we get. Unfortunately, get a lawyer who’s too cute and a jury may see it otherwise.”

“I don’t know,” said Sally with some concern. “The way you talk, maybe it’s better if she just stayed a mystery.”

“You said it, I didn’t,” Janice replied. “This whole thing seems like it’s taken from a comic book, anyway. Remember all the troubles that the comic book heroes had dealing with the cops who didn’t like their territory invaded. The problem is that life isn’t a comic book.”

“I read a few of those when I was little,” Sally said and grinned back at her. “Hey, since you’re here, do you think you could do a short interview on this case?”

“No reason why not. We need to thank you somehow.”

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