Shunning Sarah (20 page)

I brainstormed about thirty seconds, then dialed Bryce. “Good morning, boss. There’s something we need to talk about.”

“I’m in a meeting, Riley. Can you call back in fifteen minutes?”

Sure he was in a meeting. “Believe me, I’d love to delay this, Bryce, but it’s pretty urgent.”

“What’s it about?”

“It’s about the camera. It’s missing.”

I heard him telling someone—probably Nicole—he had to take this call and would get back to them.

“What do you mean, missing?” he asked.

“It’s been stolen.”

Our back-and-forth dialogue was similar to the deputy interview all over again. Bryce seemed certain I was making up the entire scenario to avoid being a one-man band.

“If you think losing the camera is going to make me send photographers
out on stories with you, Riley, you are much mistaken. I’m more likely to suspend you for misconduct.”

He was serious. To TV stations, gear was everything. Some broadcast cameras cost more than a shooter might make in a year.

“It happened just like I said it did,” I replied. “Here, I can prove it to you. Check your computer.”

I shot a photo of my new haircut and emailed it to him. “So what do you think of my new haircut?”

There was a long pause. “I’ll have to get used to it. But this debacle is still going in your file. Call me when you know if our bear is dead or alive.”

Bryce didn’t sound convinced I’d been robbed. And I knew he didn’t really care one way or another about Walden’s fate. He liked the idea of animal stories, but not animals themselves.

When I hung up, I saw I had another text from Nicole: “thnx.”

•   •   •

Bear hunting season was officially over in Minnesota. During the final hours, one hunter in Fillmore County had shot himself and another had injured a friend.

But Walden was still very much alive, at least according to the North American Bear Center. Teresa’d gone from lobbying at the state capitol for the protection of research bears to taking her message to the people of Minnesota.

“How can you be sure?” I asked Teresa. “Is it possible someone just didn’t report the kill?”

Teresa reminded me that Walden was wearing a radio collar with GPS technology. “We know exactly where Walden is at all times. It’s our Big Bear version of Big Brother.”

“How about we track him and get some video proving to viewers that he survived the night?” I asked.

Without a camera, I’d have little to report on post–hunting season that would get Bryce excited. Guaranteed video of the
VIP bear would be enough for him to send Malik down to join me.

But Teresa said no. “The fewer people who know where Walden is, the safer he’ll be.”

“Don’t you think viewers will want to see him? What if I promise not to report his location?”

“Patience,” she said. “Soon the entire world will be able to watch Walden.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When the time is right, we will show viewers where Walden is hibernating. He will have his own webcam.”

She said the words quite casually, but I realized the overnight interest his webcam would draw. Walden might be just a bear, but online, he’d be a star. Even bigger than a circus bear. The only bears to outrank him on the Internet would be from Chicago.

She stressed the benefits studying hibernating bears could yield for mankind. “Putting humans in a hibernation-like state could help people survive heart attacks, or even travel in space.”

Those were all future news stories. I needed to focus on the present. “How soon before Walden will be dormant?”

Teresa confided that he was hitting that lethargic stage, probably because temperatures had been unseasonably cold. “He’s found a secure den and is sticking close.” She agreed to call me first before the webcam went live.

I was right that without fresh bear video Bryce was busting the story from live shot to set piece. I was also ordered to head back to the station prepared to pitch a winning story idea about food.

T
hinking about food made me hungry. Because of my hair disaster, morning was a rush at the farm. Mom sent me out the door with only an apple and a piece of bread. I was now on a stretch of road without any restaurant exits.

I tried to remember food stories I’d once done. My favorite involved testing fortified juices and finding they didn’t contain the amount of vitamin C their labels claimed.

Bryce probably favored stories that were easier to produce, like ones about food trends such as insects on Minnesota menus. If I could find an eatery that served crickets and worms, he’d probably promote that all day long.

And if hunting season hadn’t been over, I’d look for a story angle on bear meat. Combining food and unusual animals would likely score high with my new boss. The only downside was I’d probably have to eat the cuisine during a standup. Or live on set, with whoever was auditioning for anchor.

Even though bears and bugs were spoiling my appetite, a fast-food restaurant beckoned from the highway and I ended up ordering a chicken wrap off their healthy menu. While waiting for my meal, I scanned a wall poster that bragged about the low fat and calorie content of their nutritious choices.

For many diners, those numbers count more than dollars
and cents. And then the idea for my food pitch hit me. A consumer investigation on whether menu claims matched actual numbers.

“We’ll put ’em to the test,” I said to myself.

•   •   •

In person, Bryce really hated my hair. He called me into his office and ran his fingers through the bangs, pulling on the ends.

“That’s not going to make my hair grow any faster,” I said, shrugging him away. I’d forgotten to text Nicole for backup, but at least the door was still open.

“To keep our story straight, Riley, when viewers call to complain about your hair, we’ll tell them you donated it to that cancer kids group.”

“I don’t think lying is a good idea, Bryce.”

Luckily, my food-testing concept distracted him from my locks, but now he shut the door. “I like the sound of your food idea. I don’t want any interruptions.”

I considered complaining that the air in his office felt stuffy, but decided just to keep focused on the story. “It’s important we hire a respected lab, Bryce. They need to be certified. And we need to repeat the test to show a pattern.”

“How much is this going to cost?” he asked.

“Depends on how many restaurants we check. The tests run at least seventy dollars each, multiply that by two, multiply that by the number of restaurants or entrees …”

“Sounds expensive.” A predictable response from a boss who calculated a story’s value by its cost. I convinced him a lawsuit over sloppy reporting would be even more expensive.

To help him feel ownership over the project, I had him help brainstorm a list of ten popular chains that viewers would find familiar.

“We do all this work, and you’re sure we have a story, Riley?”

“Well, no, I’m not.”

That was the risk news organizations took with investigative reporting. Journalists can invest time and money and not always find what they expected. And if you can’t prove it, you can’t air it.

More than once I’d had to tell a boss that I thought my story might be falling through. “Not all stories turn into Watergate.”

“You mean we could spend more than a thousand bucks, plus all the time this will take, and wind up with nothing?” he asked. “This is starting to feel like your other stories. No bear and no killer.”

“Bryce, I’m not a hunter and I’m not a homicide detective. I’m just a reporter.”

He brought up the weaknesses of the Amish story being outside the viewing area again, but did admit the overnight ratings had showed a small spike instead of our normal drop-off.

I told him we’d use hidden cameras inside the restaurants so we could promote the story as Channel 3 going “undercover.” Bryce ended up approving the food-testing story mainly because nobody else in the newsroom had come up with a better idea since his mandate.

That was my cue to escape his office. So I told him I needed a few minutes to fix my makeup before the newscast.

“Not a bad idea, Riley.” As I turned to leave his office, he leaned over his desk and gave me a quick pat on the tush. “And counting a few calories might be good for you, too.”

Right then I missed my old news director, Noreen. I’d always considered her a bully boss, but compared to Bryce, she was the big sister I never had.

((RILEY CU))

AND SO … HAVING SURVIVED

HUNTING SEASON, WALDEN

WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF BEAR

RESEARCH ALL WINTER LONG.

Literally seconds after the director gave me the all-clear signal for my bear debrief and gestured for me to leave the news set, my phone vibrated. This was the call I really dreaded answering. Not my boss, but my hairdresser. She called whenever her critical eye determined I needed a trim or highlighting. My hair was her canvas.

“How could you go to such an amateur?” she said. “Besides, people know you’re a client of mine. They will think I styled that disaster.”

I didn’t want to tell her the truth, so I blamed my mother.

T
he next day was like a scavenger hunt. I started out researching menus for places that specifically listed calorie and fat content. Luckily, most had the info posted on their websites. If they didn’t, I called posing as a customer interested in bringing her book club to dine on healthy food while discussing fine literature.

“Please let this lead to news,” I said to myself.

I narrowed the list to six chains, and picked two meals from each menu. Because the restaurants were all in the Twin Cities, Bryce let me use Malik to help with the hidden camera. Four of the places had take-out menus, which made those trips easy. I dumped the entrees in plastic ziplock bags and put them in a cooler on ice in the back of the van.

At the other two stops, we were seated at a table and ordered the meals we wanted to test. Me, a garlic chicken dish. Malik, tilapia, a popular fish.

He was happy to catch up on our lives and insisted he was finished going on air himself. He was quite interested when I told him of the webcam the bear center was preparing for Walden’s hibernation and hoped he could shoot the story.

“That would be great,” I said. “But Bryce might just make us take it straight off the web to save money. He’s already sweating the bill on this food story.”

After hearing of all the happenings in Amish land, my photographer was no longer so eager to return to that corner of Minnesota for our timeless feature. “Sounds treacherous.”

I disagreed. “Normally they are a quiet and spiritual people. This murder, this whole thing, is so uncommon among them.”

“That camera they stole was one of my favorites, Riley. The lens was simply incredible.”

“For that, I’m sorry.”

Then our food arrived. Malik was hungry, and wanted to taste just a bite of his dish.

“No,” I insisted. “We need the entire serving, otherwise that will throw off the calculations. I’ll have them bring us bread sticks.”

Since bread wasn’t included in the advertised healthy meal section, we wouldn’t test them. I assured my work spouse he could order an appetizer at our next stop.

The lab we were using for our testing had instructed me to get every last drop of the serving, so I’d tucked a rubber spatula in my purse.

Malik shot video from his cell phone and kept an eye out for the waitress while I bagged the food. When she returned to check if we needed more water, she seemed startled to see our plates sparkling clean. She probably wondered if we had licked them.

“It was delicious,” I told her, declining dessert. Malik glared at me, but after all, I was on a diet.

By the end of the day, I felt more like a food gatherer than a news gatherer. We were hauling the cooler across town to a certified food testing lab when I got a call from Bryce. I put him on speaker so Malik could hear, too.

“Are you at the lab yet?” our boss asked.

“No, but don’t worry,” I said. “We’re close. We’ll make the drop before it closes.”

But Bryce had changed his mind. The calorie/fat testing story
was dead. “I’m looking at the budget and can’t justify gambling this much money on something that might not yield news.”

“But we’ve already invested time and money,” I protested. “And it’s sure to be a ratings hit. Remember what you said about viewers and food.”

I’d already started working on the script.

((RILEY SOT))

RESTAURANTS ARE APPEALING TO

DIETERS BY SERVING HEALTHY

ENTREES LABELED WITH FAT AND

CALORIE CONTENT. BUT ARE THE

MEALS WHAT THE MENUS CLAIM?

It didn’t matter. He ordered me to come up with a cheaper, no-risk food story. Then he hung up.

I had to scramble and call the lab to tell them our plans had changed and we wouldn’t be needing their services after all. A technician had been on standby to blenderize one of the meals when we arrived so Malik could get video of her pouring puree into a test tube. They sounded disappointed they weren’t going to be on TV.

“So what are we going to do with all this food?” Malik asked.

I told him he could take it home.

R
iley, Riley!” Someone was banging on my office door while I was trying to catch up on my emails and brainstorm another food story.

“Come in,” I called.

Nicole was breathing hard. “It’s getting worse.”

I knew what she was talking about, but was torn between curiosity and disgust. Did I want details? I decided not. After all, I’d just had my hair and butt touched by my boss.

“Whatever it is, Nicole, I hope you’re documenting it. Date. Time. Offense. Keep a record.”

She started biting her lip, and it seemed to be bleeding. I handed her a box of tissues and some lip gloss.

Softening a little, I said, “I’m on your side, Nicole. I’ll teach you how to use a hidden camera. We’ll prove he’s a jerk.”

She blushed, even under her layers of makeup.