“There’s no doubt,” Ben said at the staff meeting the next morning. “Sally, you are definitely the butt-kicker of the week. You burned the other stations so bad that it wasn’t funny. Then, to top it off, you burned the Blade just about as bad. Nobody had as much as you had.”

“Thanks, Ben,” she said a little sheepishly, but still proudly—and yes, proud of what Hippolyta had done the previous night too, though there was no way she could say anything about that. “If that stupid sergeant hadn’t shown up, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good for us.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “But we’ll take the breaks any way we can get them. Good work, Sally.”

“Yeah,” Jeff snorted. “But we’re going to get burned even worse when the Daily comes out. Jeez, why did Sally’s brother have to be right in the middle of the whole damn thing again?”

“Seems pretty obvious to me,” Sally said. “He was the go-between in setting up the meet in the first place. I didn’t even know about the meet until after it was over and Hippolyta was gone.”

“And you can’t find out anything about how to find Hippolyta from him?” Jason snorted.

“Haven’t been able to so far. The only time I got to talk to him so far there were others around, so I couldn’t get near the subject.”

“And damn it, he’s going to steal the whole story,” the reporter said in a snotty tone. “Can’t you do any better than that?”

“Jason,” Ben said firmly. “We wouldn’t have had anything more than the other stations if Sally hadn’t been on her toes and jumped when the breaks went her way. I look at it that she stole his own story right out from under his nose.” He turned to Sally. “I did like the way you kept him in the background, didn’t mention that he’s from the Daily.”

“I figured he had his police hat on, at least when he tackled the perp,” Sally said. “Corporal Watkins was the senior officer present at the time of the rescue.” There’d been another reason she’d concentrated on Janice in the interview: she wanted to make up what she could for the screwing over Jason had given her in his interview a few days before.

“Yeah, well, no point in selling more papers for them,” Ben said with a grimace. “The thing is, we need to stay on top of this. I understand the Spanglers are making a statement later this morning, I need you to take a cameraman and get that covered. Maybe get some reaction shots from the neighbors. Before you head over there, see what you can find out about the perp at police headquarters.”

“Sure, Ben, can do.”

“Hey!” Jason protested. “I’m supposed to be covering the police headquarters!”

“This one is Sally’s story,” Ben pointed out. “She did the interview with the family yesterday evening, and then after what happened last night, she probably knows more what to ask. Why don’t you slide over there after her and pick up the rest of the daily take?”

“That’s going to screw up my whole morning,” Jason protested. “Besides, what am I supposed to do for a cameraman?”

“Do without,” Ben said. “Face it, this is going to be the story of the day.”

“But Ben!” Jason said hotly. “I need a cameraman! I’ve got another angle on the Shop’n’Go holdup.”

“Stale,” the news director snorted. “After last night, it’s old news. Sally, when you pull your story together, you might want to use two or three seconds of the security camera tape, since we don’t have a better picture of Hippolyta available, but other than that, let’s drop the Shop’n’Go.”

“But Ben!” Jason protested again. “I put a lot of work into it.”

“Water under the bridge,” Ben said. “Jason, this afternoon, head up to west Lenawee County. They’ve got some sort of hassle brewing over dairy farms releasing manure into streams. I don’t know what it’s all about, but the weeklies up there are full of it. Find out what’s going on there, and if it’s worth the effort you can go back with a cameraman sometime. I was going to have Sally do it, but she’s likely to be tied up with the Spangler story.”

“So you give me the bullshit story, right?” he snorted.

“Well, cowshit, actually,” Sally couldn’t help but say.

“Smartass,” he said angrily. “What makes you think you can poach my story?”

“Your story?” Ben frowned, getting a little tired of Jason. “I already said it’s her story.”

“I mean the Hippolyta thing,” Jason protested. “I’ve been busting my ass on that all week.”

“Goes with the territory,” Ben said. “Granted, Hippolyta was involved last night, but that’s secondary since we can’t talk to her. Like I said, Jason, water under the bridge. Shit happens, like up around those dairy farms. Don’t wear your good shoes.”

Dan let out a laugh. “Back when I was in the army, Jason,” he said after a snicker, “that’s what they used to call a shit detail.”

There was a round of laughter around the desks, except that Jason wasn’t laughing. He was good at handing it out, but not very good at taking it. “Guess that’s about it for this morning,” Ben continued. “Oh, one other thing. Vicki was supposed to do the co-anchor Saturday and Sunday evening, but she had something come up.”

“No problem, Ben,” Jason said. “I can do it.”

“Yeah, except I’m asking Sally,” Ben said pointedly, enjoying seeing his main prima donna squirming. “Sally, any chance you could fill in this weekend”

“Sure, Ben,” she said with a big grin, thrilled at the offer. Filling in at co-anchor, even on a weekend, was a big deal for someone with her low seniority. Jason usually grabbed it whenever he could—it helped with the résumé—and this would be her first shot at it here, though she’d done it up in Battle Creek. “I’ve got a date Saturday afternoon, but I can break it off in time to come in.”

Even after five months, it still seemed strange to be living at home again. Sally’s parents were now used to the empty-nest syndrome of her being away, and Charlie had been long gone years before. She’d spent four years at Ohio State, working part time at the station in Columbus. Then she’d been living on her own for almost two years, with her own little apartment in Battle Creek, only about as far away as school had been, but really on her own, a wonderful freedom that really made her feel grown up at last.

Then the job at Channel 5 had come up. It was a better job in most respects, in a bigger market, a real step up. What made it neat was that she had the option of moving home again, living cheap while she made a dent in the college loans. She figured a year, maybe two, and she’d be moving on again, but with a lot of those college bills cleaned up.

People in local TV tend to move around a lot, especially the reporters. It’s hard to put down roots, but hard to stay in one place, too. It was an issue she knew she would confront in the next few years.

In the years that she had been gone, her father Tom had gotten in his thirty on the Toledo police force and hung up the badge, then he’d been asked to take the job of police chief for the village of Whitehouse a few miles away. That was a lot less stressful and it left him a lot of time to mess around with his collection of old cars. Her mother Sarah managed a car rental office at Toledo Express airport, a few miles away.

Even so, it was sort of back to the old days, though this time it was different. She wasn’t a kid any longer, but an adult, twenty-four now, had lived on her own and had a good job, even though the hours were long and sometimes weird. But the option of having friends in was limited, only partly because there weren’t many kids she’d known from high school still hanging around. The local fencing scene had changed a lot too. Even her old cat, Riposte, was now buried out in the small orchard behind the barn. Not having her kitty around made life a little lonely, but with a move probable in the next year or two it didn’t seem worthwhile to get attached to another animal—and the same thing went for boyfriends.

As a result she hadn’t done much real dating since she’d been back in Toledo. Realistically, it was hard to tell if Rick was a date or it was just getting together for an afternoon of fun, maybe more of a fencing demonstration. While he seemed pleasant enough, it was hard to tell if this even had a chance of going anywhere. Police are civil servants and it’s a lot harder for them to move around than it is for TV reporters. Getting serious with Rick would be hard and require thought, because she should tell him up front about her probable mobility affecting any potential suitor who hoped to make it long term.

That was one of several things she was thinking about as she ran the lawnmower around the yard late Saturday morning. Mowing the lawn was not one of her favorite things to do, but she figured that as long as she was living at home, she might as well pitch in with the chores. She was just finishing up and riding the mower back to the barn when she saw a white Pontiac Grand Am pulling into the driveway. The car stopped and Rick got out. She waved to him, parked the mower, and headed over to his car. “Ready for your date with destiny?” she asked with a grin.

“About as ready as I’m likely to get,” he said and smiled back at her. “I caught your report of Missy’s reunion with her parents on the six o’clock news last night. Boy, she’s one lucky kid.”

“She sure is. what you saw was only a brief clip of what the whole news conference was like. It was pretty teary, and the Spanglers had every right to be.”

“Yeah, really,” Rick told her, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but the talk around the cop shop is that this Coulter character your brother and Janice and Hippolyta captured burped up an admission that he’s responsible for the Graber killing too.”

“No official word?” she asked, pulling on her Channel 5 hat for a moment.

“Not yet. You’d have to go to Lieutenant Turner or someone,” he replied, scratching his head. “But I thought you’d like to know.”

It would be nice if it was true, Sally thought, and even nicer if she could get official confirmation. She thought for a moment about calling the station and letting Liz or someone know about this—then stopped as she remembered that Metheny was on duty this afternoon, and if it was the case, he would be the one trying to find out about it. He’d screw it up for sure, so maybe it would be best to sit on it till she could get there later in the afternoon. “Sure Rick, always glad for a tip. Have you been busy otherwise?”

“Couple car accidents, nothing real serious. Actually, we spent a lot of the day yesterday going over the scene from Thursday night. Boy, your brother knocked out a heck of a story, didn’t he? Even worked in a couple quotes from Hippolyta.”

“He sure did,” she said and then explained, “He can do that at a newspaper. We almost always know just as much about a story, but with only a minute or two air time to cover it, we can’t go into those kinds of details. You about ready for me to go and carve you up?”

“Yeah, I want to see what this is about.”

“Well, come on. Let’s head out to the barn and I’ll show you some moves.”

They walked out towards the big steel barn behind the house. “Interesting place your dad has,” Rick said. “How’d he wind up with the barn?”

“Long story. This place was originally my grandfather’s. When they wanted to put in the housing development behind here, he wouldn’t sell the house or the barn and the area right around it. We’ve got a couple acres here, right in the middle of the suburbs. The old barn was falling down, so he had it torn down and a new, more fireproof one built a few years ago. Daddy wouldn’t want to be without the barn.”

In a few seconds, Rick saw why—much of the floor of the building was covered with old cars. In a bay off to one side there was what appeared to be as much a junkyard as anything with noise coming from the back. Sally led Rick into the area, which proved to be a shop. “Daddy,” Sally called. “Can we clear off the main floor so I can do some fencing?”

“Sure thing, Kiddo,” came a gentle voice from the back. “Found another chicken to pluck, huh?”

In a minute, there was a face attached to the voice, one who looked like an older Charlie Parker, with a few more wrinkles to his face. “Daddy, this is Officer Rick Mattison,” Sally said by way of introduction. “He’s on the city department and usually works with Janice. Rick, this is my father, Tom. He retired from the department and is now the chief down in Whitehouse.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Rick said formally. “Janice has told a few stories on you, and Charlie has, too.”

“Janice was my last regular partner, before I became a desk jockey. She was just a rookie then. She sure had a big night the other night didn’t she?”

“Yeah, I was off clock, but helping out, riding with Mike Sanchez, and we were about the third car on the scene after the call came in.”

“How’s Mike doing these days?” Tom asked. “Had any more kids?”

“I don’t know about more, but he seems to have enough,” Rick replied as he looked around the pile of rusty junk. “What’s all this?” he asked.

“1938 Lincoln V-12 Phaeton. A friend of mine found it up in an uncle’s barn in Michigan after he died. Near as anyone can tell, it’s been collecting bird shit since early in World War II. Got it for a song, but there’s a couple years work before it’s ready to show, maybe more.”

“Janice said you had quite a collection.”

“Got a few, mostly Fords. Let me show you around.”

“I’d like that,” Rick said. “Looks like some interesting cars.”

Oh, shit! Sally thought. The Shay is out back! Rick and Janice and the clerk at the Shop’n’Go were the only ones who had seen Hippolyta driving it last Sunday night. Why the hell didn’t I think to throw a tarp over it or something? I’ll just have to keep Daddy from taking Rick out there! After all the time he and Janice put into looking for white ’30s roadsters last week, he’d recognize it in an instant!

But there wasn’t much she could do but go along with the guided tour of some really well-restored cars. There was the classic ’32 Ford coupe—the “deuce coupe” that the Beach Boys once sang about—a ’48 Ford woodie station wagon, another escapee from surfing songs, a 1919 Model T flatbed, the ’51 sedan, the ’64 Mustang convertible, and several others. “Couple more out back,” Tom explained. “Stuff I’ll get around to sooner or later.”

Now was her chance, if there ever would be. “Daddy, do you think you could help us roll out the deuce and the ’51? That’ll give us some space on the floor.”

“Sure, no problem. Rick, neither of these have batteries in them. Six-volt batteries, and they don’t stay up well, so I only put a battery in them when I really want to drive them. I try to run them once in a while, but they’re mostly show vehicles, and I trailer them to events.”

It took a few minutes to roll the two pristine old cars outside. “This is mostly my practice area, otherwise known as Sally’s Salle,” she explained. “The ceilings in the house are too low. When I had my apartment in Battle Creek, I couldn’t practice there, and had to run over to the salle in Kalamazoo if I wanted a workout. I’ve gotten a little rusty since. Daddy, do you have your gear out here? Can Rick borrow it, please?”

“Sure thing. It’s in the office. I’ll go get it.”

“Do you fence, too? Rick asked.

“A little, sort of. Actually, a better term is mostly Sally’s moving target once in a while. I thought I’d gotten past it when she moved to college, but when she came home, here we went again. Glad she’s found another pigeon.”

Made it, Sally thought. Sometime this weekend—it’ll have to be tomorrow—I’ll drive the Shay a bit, then put a tarp over it when I bring it back. Or sometime real soon. Why didn’t I tarp it when I brought it back last weekend?

She frowned at herself. Because you were still thinking about how wonderful it had been to be Hippolyta for a couple minutes, you idiot, she thought.

“Oh, I’m just going easy on him today, Daddy,” she said with a big smile. “There’s no point in scaring him off early. I’ll get him interested, get him hooked. Then I’ll turn him into a pincushion.”

Since Sally was often on camera, she almost always dressed nicely when she went to work, but as this was her first shot at the anchor desk at Channel 5, she pulled out a few stops. The idea was to dress conservatively but well, so she was wearing a short, dark, pinstripe, spaghetti-strap dress with matching jacket when she walked into the relatively quiet newsroom later that afternoon.

Sally knew that filling in at anchor, even on a one-shot on a weekend newscast, was a big deal, since people recognized the anchors. But she also knew that in a way, anchoring was not the big deal it seemed, since anchors were mostly presenting the work of others, regurgitating the words of others. There was even less room for developing a story and telling it than as a reporter, and that irked her, a lot. At Channel 5 First to Know News, the anchors still did some reporting, still covered some stories—even Ben grabbed Shane once or twice a month and went out and did a feature piece, usually something sensitive, well-photographed, and well written—but there was seldom time for a feel-good piece that might run a couple minutes.

“Looking good tonight,” Jeff said as she set her briefcase down on her desk, several spaces away.

Even though tonight she was to be a well-dressed, well-made-up anchor, she was still primarily a reporter and she had a bombshell of a story lead to announce. “Thanks, Jeff,” she replied as she switched on her computer terminal. “What’s it look like tonight?”

“A zoo,” he snorted. “We’ve got Ohio State and Purdue. They’re running late, so the five o’clock is ripped to shreds. I’ve got a queue of pickup pieces if we have to pick up, so we’ll just do the main local at six.”

“Do we have much local?” she asked.

“Looks kind of flat,” he said, typing furiously at the keyboard at the same time. Jeff was a high-strung kind of guy with a bad temper at the best of times. “Jason’s doing a remote from Rally by the River, and that looks to lead.”

“I’ve got something we might want to use. John Coulter confessed to the Michelle Graber murder.”

Jeff frowned. “That’s the story we’ve been hearing, but we can’t get confirmation. I don’t think that we want to go with speculation.”

“This isn’t speculation. Bill Turner told me, and said it was okay with him if I used it on the air.”

“Turner. He’s the go-to guy at the PD, right?” Jeff asked, eyes wide. “What’d you do, hold a sword to his throat? Get something written. Can you do with thirty seconds?”

“I’ll make it fit,” she said with determination, pulling up the editor section of the program and starting to write. It took a few minutes, since she had to dig back into the scripts from weeks before to get a few of the details of the Graber case, and tie it in with the Spangler abduction a few days earlier. At least there, she could do all the detail she needed from memory. But she had always prided herself on being a fast writer, and she had the story on the computer in a few minutes, then took some time to review what Jeff had up for the news. Pretty soft and loaded with sports, not unexpected for a Saturday evening.

“Sally?” she heard Jeff call. “Any video available with that piece you have?”

“Nothing much,” she said. “I figured just head shots of the Graber kid and Missy Spangler, and we’ve got Coulter’s mug from yesterday.”

“How about that shot you got the other night of Coulter being loaded on the ambulance?”

“Maybe a few seconds,” she replied thoughtfully.

“Work it in,” Jeff snapped. “We need more than just mugs if we’re going to lead with it. I need a teaser, too.”

It took Sally a few minutes of digging through tapes to find the edited copy of the tape she’d taken the other night, and then she extracted about five seconds of video from that. In the next few months, the station was going to digital video, which would have the cut right on the server, but it wasn’t that easy yet. Once she was done with it, however, it didn’t take much effort to work it into the story. The teaser, the five-second piece that could be inserted into the station breaks during the game, took less work, and it was barely written before Jeff had her step into the studio to tape it.

Fifteen minutes to six, the football game was into its final two minutes, but both teams had several time-outs remaining. “They’re going to run right up to the hour with it,” Jeff reported. “May go over, may not. There’s half the afternoon’s work shot in the ass.”

A few minutes later, Sally checked her makeup and headed into the studio. It wasn’t her first time before a camera, not even her thousand and first. She’d even been a weekend co-anchor for a while in Battle Creek. She’d done a couple stories from the anchor desk here, the most recent just last Thursday night. Still, there was always just a bit of nervousness she couldn’t quite overcome.

Dave Wells was already at the desk when she came in, leafing through the script. He was an old-timer around Channel 5, had been there twenty years and more. At one time or another, he’d done everything on the air: reporting, sports, weather, and had been the weekday anchor for years, before a heart condition had caused him to seek a less stressful schedule. He was an old pro, with a lot to teach someone relatively new to the business like Sally, and she was glad to learn from him. “So how was your date?” he asked, just to help put her at ease a little.

“Oh, all right. We had a good time. Good enough that I wished I didn’t have to break it off early to come in, but it was in a good cause.”

“What’d you do?” Dave asked, showing some casual interest. “Anything interesting?”

She smiled and replied. “I took him out to the barn, we got out foils, and went through some drills. Then we went live for a bit, and I carved him to shreds.”

“Better watch that stuff,” Dave said and grinned as Mandy’s voice came over the headset, announcing two minutes to air. “That’s a hell of a way to treat a first date.”

“Oh, I’ll give him a chance to make up for it,” she replied. “We’re going over to the gym tomorrow and he’s going to show me some karate moves.”

Dave shook his head. “Guess things have changed. Back when I was your age, a first date meant going to dinner and a movie.”

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