It was four minutes to eleven when Sally came racing into the Channel 5 First to Know newsroom, the cry, “Breaking news!” on her lips.

“We heard,” Liz said, unwinding a bit from behind the assignments desk. “We’ve been picking it up on the scanner. Apparently the Spangler girl has been rescued. We’re leading with it.”

“I know!” Sally yelled, heading for a tape editor. “I’ve got footage! An interview with Melissa and the officers who rescued her.”

“My God,” Liz said in awe, excitement picking up rapidly as she grabbed the phone to call Kevin, the producer in the control room, who was already overseeing the teasers for the evening. “Sally, how did you get that?”

“Got lucky, and then I had to drive like hell to get here. There weren’t any other stations on the scene when I left.”

Kevin raced out of the control room an instant later as she was popping the tape into the nearest editor. “Sally, you got what?”

“An interview with the Spangler kid,” she replied, hurriedly checking the tape. “I checked the tape in the car on the way here. It looks good, and I’ve got it cued to the start of the best part of the interview. It’s kinda long, but it’s dynamite.”

“We’ll lead with what you’ve got,” Kevin said, already mentally reorganizing the show as she brought the tape up on the editor and adjusted the cue a little.

“That’ll have to do, no time to edit,” she said, popping the tape out of the editor and handing it to him.

“How’s the kid?” Liz asked in her booming voice.

“Fine, shaken a little, but pretty calm, considering.”

“Get right to the anchor desk. Take Mary’s chair for this segment,” Kevin told her. “I’ll have Dave hand off to you. Take what time it takes.”

“Okay,” she said, breathing heavily. “Does my hair look all right?”

As she headed for the studio, Liz rushed over with a comb and a mirror. She ran the comb through her hair three or four times as she glanced in the mirror. Good, the strap marks were gone, as there was no time for makeup. She raced into the studio and plopped down in the chair beside Dave, as Mary helped her rig a microphone and earbug, then scrambled out of camera range. “Ten seconds,” the director said.

“Pull yourself together, Sally,” Dave said as the prerecorded intro began to roll. “Slow down, take a deep breath.”

“I know,” she said, pulling herself together, remembering Hippolyta inside of her.

“Good evening,” Dave said professionally into the camera. “I’m Dave Wells, for First to Know News. There’s good news in Toledo tonight. Melissa Spangler, the little girl abducted from her babysitter’s yard earlier today, has been rescued, alive and apparently well. Our First to Know News reporter Sally Parker was first on the scene of her dramatic rescue and has just returned with this exclusive report. Sally?”

The camera moved over to Sally. She was calm and professional, though it didn’t take much imagination to think how frantic the scene must be in the control room. Right now she was the consummate professional, and telling the story from the script in her head rather than off the teleprompter was the most important thing on her mind.

“Thanks, Dave. Police have been searching all over the city this evening for the missing six-year-old Melissa Spangler, who was abducted earlier today. Then, less than an hour ago, she was rescued at an industrial site near Lewis and Jackman by off-duty Toledo Police Corporal Janice Watkins, Swanton, Waterville, and Whitehouse part-time Police Officer Charles Parker, and the mysterious masked Amazon Hippolyta, who was instrumental in breaking up a holdup last Sunday in West Toledo.” Out of the corner of her eye, Sally could see Dave’s jaw drop to his desk at that last statement, but she continued professionally. “The alleged abductor has not yet been identified, but he was captured and taken from the scene by ambulance with a serious cut wound to the hand, allegedly from the Amazon’s sword. Melissa Spangler is apparently unharmed and in remarkably good spirits, as you can see in this footage recorded only minutes ago.”

There was a slight pause—Kevin hadn’t known exactly when to roll the tape, and her comment was the only cue—but in seconds the scene came up. It was dark, eerie almost. The only lights Sally had been able to come up with were the high beams from the Mustang, and the headlights and spotlight from a patrol car. The color balance could have been a lot better, but it was enough to clearly make out the little girl riding on Janice’s hip, with Sally next to her, and Charlie standing behind the three of them. Red and blue lights flashed on the scene in an erratic flicker, and in the background an ambulance, also with lights going, could be seen with EMTs working on someone. Sally glanced at the monitor and could see herself ask Missy, “Melissa, are you all right?”

“I thought that man was going to hurt me,” the little girl’s image said in a small voice. But she brightened and continued, “Then Hippolyta took his knife away with her sword and saved me.”

“You’re a brave girl, Melissa,” Sally’s image said. “The whole city has been praying for your safe return, and I’m sure everyone is happy to know that you’re all right.” Sally’s image held the microphone out in front of Janice. “Corporal Watkins, how is she really?”

“She seems to be in good shape,” Janice said. “We haven’t had time for a full survey, but aside from some minor cuts and abrasions suffered from riding around in a car trunk all evening, and some from the scuffle when the suspect was captured, she seems fine.”

“Corporal Watkins, can you tell me what happened here tonight?”

“Officer Parker and I were off duty in civilian clothes. We were here to have a meeting with Hippolyta to discuss last Sunday’s incident and to deliver a notice from the prosecutor’s office notifying her of immunity from prosecution stemming from that incident. The meeting had just ended, and Hippolyta was walking away when we heard Melissa cry for help. Hippolyta was closest to the scene, and she got there first, just as Officer Parker and I rounded the corner. We observed the suspect holding Melissa to his chest, waving a knife to threaten her. He ran off into some trees and led us all on a bit of a chase in the dark, but we all popped out of the woods again at about the same time and not real far apart. As it appeared he was about to stab Melissa, we observed Hippolyta disarm him with one stroke of her sword. Officer Parker and I then tackled the subject, while Hippolyta went to assist Melissa.”

“So there really is a masked Amazon superheroine walking Toledo’s streets?” Sally’s image asked.

“There is, and tonight we’re all very thankful for her. The subject had Melissa held up to shield his own body. Both Officer Parker and I had weapons drawn, but neither of us had a clear shot with the low light conditions. Hippolyta and her sword kept an ugly situation from being a tragic one.”

“Did you get to talk to Hippolyta after the incident?”

“Only briefly. She spent a couple minutes consoling Melissa and making sure she was all right. I was still trying to cover the subject, while Officer Parker went to call for assistance. I thanked her for her help, and she said she was sorry she couldn’t stay, but had to return to the shadows.”

“She really doesn’t want her identity known, does she?” Sally’s image asked while the real Sally said into the mike to the control room, “She thanks Hippolyta next exchange. Cut when I take the mike back from her.”

She heard Kevin’s agreement in her earbug as Janice’s image said, “Apparently she doesn’t. That doesn’t mean that we’re not all thankful to her.” Janice turned and looked at the camera. “I’ll say it again,” she said. “Thank you, Hippolyta, whoever and wherever you are.”

The scene on the monitor switched back to Sally and Dave, side by side at the news desk. “There you have it, Dave,” she said. “There’s still a lot we don’t know, like the identity of the alleged abductor or the extent of his injuries. But the most important part is that Melissa Spangler is alive, apparently well and unharmed, and will soon be back in the arms of her family. Her alleged abductor is in police custody. Back to you.”

“Sally,” Dave said, totally winging his response. “Has there been any speculation that the alleged abductor may also be involved in the murder of little Michelle Graber three weeks ago?”

“I did hear some questions about that at the scene, but it’s too early to tell. I imagine the police will be ‘discussing,’” Sally adding emphatic air quotes with her hands, “the Graber case with the suspect.”

“Well, thank you, Sally, for one of the best breaking news stories we’ve seen in this newsroom in a long while,” Dave said, then turned to look at the camera as it zoomed in on him. “And we here in the First to Know Newsroom would like to join Corporal Watkins in sending our thanks to Hippolyta, whoever she is and wherever she is. We’ll be back with the rest of the news after this message.”

While the commercials were rolling and Sally was getting up to let Mary have the seat again, Dave turned to her and grinned. “Damn, Sally, I’m glad the camera was on you when you said the word ‘Hippolyta.’ You about knocked me out of my chair. So she’s the real deal, after all.”

“Well, I didn’t get to see or meet her, but she’s got to be some woman. Hippolyta, you go, girl!”

Liz appeared in the studio door, and waved Sally to her from across the room. Sally hurried over, and Liz whispered, “Ben’s on line one for you.”

Sally headed back out into the newsroom and picked up the phone. “Yes, Ben?” she said.

“Terrific report, Sally,” he said expansively. “You knocked ’em dead! How’d you get that?”

“I was visiting some friends out that direction. On the way home, I saw a whole wad of police cars running hot heading into the place and thought I’d better check it out. Just lucky, Ben.”

“No, just smart on following up and good reporting. Who did the camera work?”

“I did. I used my personal camera, set it on a tripod, and set some marks. I didn’t know when or if a van might show up.”

“Then not bad, under the circumstances,” Ben said in praise. “Is there any other good stuff on that tape?”

“Nothing else like that. A couple minor scenes could be used as clips, like the perp being loaded on the ambulance. What you saw is the best of it, right there. I told Dave I left before any other stations showed.”

“Look, I know you’re off clock, but can you isolate those minor clips for use? Isolate that whole section you showed—we’ll use it again—but see if you can pull out the best ten or fifteen seconds of it for the morning show.”

“Sure, Ben, no problem,” she said with a wan smile. The meet as Hippolyta with Charlie and Jan had gone off fine, but her adrenaline had built up during the rescue and then the race to the studio to get this segment on the air, and she could feel it beginning to crash, now. But damn, it felt good. All of it.

“You did good, kid,” Ben said. “Real good. I better let you get to work, so we’ll talk about this in the morning. Sleep in for a couple hours and show up late. You deserve it.”

Sally was just finishing the editing when the phone rang. The adrenaline shock was getting to her now. She was having a hard time holding her head up and a hard time concentrating. The scenes from the night kept replaying in her mind and were getting harder to sort out which ones were Sally and which were Hippolyta. She desperately wanted to get some sleep, but she knew that with the turmoil in her mind sleep wouldn’t come easily. With resignation, she picked up the phone, figuring it was Ben wanting another cut.

To her surprise it was Charlie. “Hey, Sis. You know a place called Sluggy’s up on Talmadge, a couple miles from your shop?”

“Been by there,” she said through her exhaustion. “Never been in the place.”

“Janice and Rick and I decided to stop off and have a couple to unwind. I thought you might like to drop over.”

“I figured you’d be on the scene till dawn.”

“Naw, some sergeant I never saw before showed up, declared himself scene commander, and told everybody off clock to get out of there. Jan decided it was our chance and we’d better leave before he figured out who we were or we’d never get away. If he hasn’t already, he’ll be sorry when he finds out who he kicked out of the on-scene investigation, but it’s his problem. That’s why we’re at Sluggy’s, not one of the regular places, trying to lie about as low as Hippolyta.”

Sally wasn’t much of a drinker, never had been, but she knew well that cops often took the opportunity to have a few beers when they got off a tough shift. And, right then, a beer or two would taste like Zeus’s ambrosia. Charlie obviously knew she needed to unwind after her prominent part in the rescue. The incident was undoubtedly going to come up, and she’d have to remember to stay Sally, and not let Hippolyta’s memories wander in, but she’d been on the scene and had picked up enough talk at the time so she should be able to fake it if she had to. “Sounds wonderful. I was just heading out. I’ll be there in a few minutes. If they have a grill and it’s still on, please get a burger started for me.”

Sluggy’s proved to be a small neighborhood bar, nothing special, fairly quiet at this hour—just what she needed to unwind. Janice and Charlie were sitting in one side of the booth. Rick was alone on the other side, and she slid in beside him. She remembered him from his visit to the station a few days—hell, a lifetime—before. Good-looking guy who had seemed interested in her fencing then. Maybe she’d better try to keep the subject in that area if she could. “Everything under control at the scene?” she asked.

“Probably isn’t now,” Janice snickered. “At least not if they realize Charlie and I left. You sure lit out of there like Mustang Sally with her tail on fire. Did you make air?”

“Just barely,” Sally replied. “About two minutes to spare. I was lucky that all you cops in that part of town were out at the scene. I hit ninety on the freeway heading over to the station, and I don’t think I ran more than three or four red lights.”

“Now you tell us,” Rick laughed. “We’re gonna have to look out for you the next time we hear you’re onto a story.”

“You got out of there just in time,” Janice said. “But then so did we. Channel 13 was just setting up when we got told to split.”

“Oh, ho!” Sally laughed. “I’ll have to tell Ben that in the morning! He likes nothing better than to see 13 get burned, and the primaries—you two—weren’t even there for them. I better bleach my hair blonde, ’cause I’m going to be the fair-haired girl around there in the morning. But, Janice, that was a hell of a story. I used that interview with you and Melissa for most of it.”

An older waitress came over, carrying a big draft beer. “Here you go, miss,” she said. “One of the gentlemen here said you like Miller Lite.”

“Right now, PBR cheap would be just fine,” she said. “It’s beer, that’s what matters.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve had days like that, too. Your burger will be along in a couple minutes. What do you want on it?”

“Load it up, whatever you’ve got. I didn’t get much dinner.”

As the waitress turned to go away, Charlie held up his beer and spoke in a serious voice. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I’d like to propose a toast to one helluva lady, Hippolyta.”

“Absolutely,” Janice said, as glasses clinked and Sally’s mind raced faster than she’d driven the Mustang across town to make air with the video she’d shot. Damn it, Charlie knew, of all people … oh, that’s why he did it! He snuck it in under Janice’s and Rick’s noses. Had he told Janice? Maybe, probably not, and I hope he didn’t. Maintain cover, Sally, because at least Rick likely doesn’t know.

“You know the neat thing about the whole deal?” Janice said after the glasses were downed. “She scares the hell out of me to look at her, especially after what I’ve seen her do, twice, now. I mean, I didn’t think about it at the time, but I was just so damn sure we were going to have a frantic kid on our hands for hours—hell, Melissa spent hours by herself locked up in that car trunk!—but she heard her, took one look at her, and she knew everything was all right. To her, Hippolyta was a superhero like she’d seen on TV, and it made sense to her.”

“I caught a bit of that,” Charlie agreed. “It’d be nice to be that young and truly believe like that. It wouldn’t surprise me if Hippolyta didn’t put that kid back together in five seconds better than all the psychiatrists in this town could do in years. Missy was just so damn cool.”

“She’s made a believer out of me,” Janice said. “There’s something I didn’t tell you people, and don’t let it go any further than just us. Charlie, when you were off calling in, and Hippolyta was settling Missy down, she called me no less an Amazon than she was, and she called me ‘Sister.’ By God, I want you to know I felt about ten feet tall.”

“She’s got to be something else,” Rick agreed.

“That’s what I hear,” Sally agreed noncommittally, filing the praise for later playback and review. “Wish I’d seen it. She sure seems like she knows what to do with a sword,” she added innocently, hoping to change the subject.

“Yeah,” Janice said, coming back to earth. “I wanted to talk to you about that, but we didn’t have time at the scene. Put on your fencing hat. Do you have a good mental picture of what happened?”

“Fair, I think.”

“I’ve replayed it in my mind a dozen times or more,” Janice sighed. “The more I think about it, the more incredible it seems.” She held her right hand up high, like she had a knife in it, like the perp had. “After we all came out of the woods, he had the knife up and coming down like this, with Melissa held across his chest, like he was aiming at his own heart, the kid in the way. Hippolyta was coming up from what you called low guard. She had to swing that sword right within a couple inches of Melissa’s chest to hit the perp where she did. No more than six inches. God, what a gutsy move.”

“Not guts, reflexes,” Sally said, trying to come at it as Sally the fencer, rather than from the mind of Hippolyta the Amazon. “I can’t speak for Hippolyta, but if it had been me in that situation, I wouldn’t have thought about it, I’d have just reacted. A fencer is always very aware of where the point is and where it’s going, and that’s as true in sabre as it is in epee or foil.” She frowned for a minute. The verbal picture she’d just gotten from Janice didn’t quite match up with Hippolyta’s memory, but how to ask it? “Don’t I remember you saying that the perp was holding her over his chest, with his hand over her mouth? That seems pretty awkward.”

“Well, yeah,” Charlie said after thinking about it for a moment. “I guess she was kind of off to one side.”

“If that was the case,” Sally replied, knowing that it was, “Hippolyta was at low guard and if she was standing a little to the side, not right out in front of him and the kid, she was less likely to injure Melissa. I’d want to game it out with a foil or something, but it could have been that Hippolyta was swinging her sword arc past Melissa, sliding it along beside her, not cutting across her. But yeah, any way you cut it, it was a risky move.”

“Any way you cut it,” Janice said. “I’d say she cut it about the best it could have been done. A hell of a lot better than I could have done with the Glock. I had it up and ready, but God, I didn’t have a clear target. I’d rather shoot myself than hit the kid while trying to hit him.” She let out a sigh. “Thank God Hippolyta was there. Just at that instant, her sword was a hell of a lot better weapon than the Glock. Hell, a baton would have been a better weapon than the Glock.”

“It can’t be easy to learn to use a sword like that,” Rick commented. “I’ve done martial arts for years, and I’m a black belt in karate. You don’t think; you just do. It’s just reflex and you react to training.”

“That’s it,” Sally agreed, grateful for the slight change in subject where she didn’t have to guard herself so carefully. “Same thing on a strip. Oh, you may know strengths and weaknesses of an opponent and you may not. That’s strategy, and you use what you know, but you don’t think about it when the match begins.”

“Just curious,” Rick asked. “But how did you get into fencing, anyway? It seems like sort of a strange thing for a girl to take up.”

“One of dad’s friends was into it,” Sally told him. “I thought it sounded like fun. That was back when I was in fifth grade, after Charlie went to college. Dad got me into a novice class down at the Toledo Salle, and I just stayed with it because I liked it, and after a while, I got fairly good at it.”

“NC-Double-A top eight,” Rick nodded. “That strikes me as fairly good.”

“To be honest,” she said modestly, “I sort of sandbagged my way into that NCAA meet. Women’s sabre hadn’t been a collegiate event for long, so there weren’t a lot of women doing it. I’d done some sabre before just for fun and liked it, so I got in on the ground floor. I did a couple training sessions with a guy from the French Men’s Olympic Team once. I got carved up like a turkey too.”

“Yeah, but you said down at the station that you had a shot at the Olympics!” Rick said with awe. “That’d be worth a lot.”

“Too much. It’d mean at least five years of training four and five hours a day, minimum, finding the money to travel all over the world to find opponents of a reasonable level to train with, and trying to hold down a job to pay for it and to live on while doing all of this. Then, it’d just be a long shot. You know that Olympic medals are never guaranteed. I figured I was good, but I’m not dedicated enough to get that high in the sport.”

“You still must be pretty good.”

“More than a bit rusty. Since I’ve been at Channel 5, I haven’t had time to get to meets. I do workouts and exercises some, and get down to the salle once in a while. I do want to stay with it, but I’ve been sort of busy starting in the new job. Now that I’m getting my feet under me there, maybe I can get out a little more. I kind of look at it like some people do golf, it’s something I want to keep doing for fun and exercise.”

“Sounds interesting to me, and I’d kind of like to try it out sometime. What’s the chances you and I could get together and you show me the basics?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Sally said with a smile. Now that the idea had been suggested, she realized that she didn’t mind at all. She didn’t know Rick well, but he seemed nice and a lot less of a hard ass than some other young cops she knew. “We could go out to the barn sometime and I could show you a few of the basic moves and exercises to see if it works for you. If it does, I’ll take you down to the salle and get you started right.”

“Sounds like fun. You doing anything Saturday afternoon?”

“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “I’ll have to check the station’s assignment board tomorrow, but give me a call along in the afternoon.”

“It’s a date. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Don’t think you’re just going to fall into it. If fencing had black belts, I’d be one, probably at least third or fourth degree.”

“I know you’ll carve me up like a turkey,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have to get you in a gi and out on a mat sometime to even things up.”

“You know,” she said thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t mind knowing a little bit about martial arts and karate.”

“Oh, boy,” Janice snorted. “Swords and karate. Charlie, doesn’t that sound like the start of a beautiful friendship?”

Charlie broke out laughing. Not just a light laugh, but a pound-the-table helpless roar. “Charlie, what’s so damn funny?” Janice finally managed to get through to him.

He shook his head, tears rolling from his eyes. “I really shouldn’t, but damn! Just for a second, imagine these two married in a few years, and you get a call for a domestic disturbance at their place. Swords, karate, both good shots with a pistol. What do you take?”

“Uh, yeah,” Janice replied with a grin. “Maybe the National Guard.”

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.