Джеффри Дивер - Buried (Hush collection)

For an hour or so, Fitz wandered the kidnapping scene and interviewed anyone who would talk to him — mostly deputies he knew from his crime beat in Fairview. They didn’t provide much new information. He did, however, get one federal agent, speaking off the record, to say that the FBI’s behavioral experts had yet to come up with a profile for the Gravedigger. “On these facts, as presented, this individual does not fall into any of the generally recognized categories of serial perpetrators.”

Fitz loved cop-speak.

He then returned to the office to write up the piece. He hunt-and-pecked the twelve-hundred-word story and sent it to Gerry Bradford, who’d forward it to the managing editor. From there the story and the cuts (the photos were not bad) would go to the copyeditor for final edits, layout and writing the heds and cutline under the pictures.

No goddamn algorithms involved.

The copyeditor didn’t need to send Fitz the heds for approval but did this time.

“Gravedigger” Kidnaps Second Victim in Garner

Insurance Manager Abducted on Hawthorne Road

Clue Left at Scene Holds Answer to Victim’s Whereabouts

Fitz scanned the heds. The top line seemed to indicate that the perp had kidnapped two victims in Garner. He made the correction and sent it back:

“Gravedigger” Kidnaps Second Victim, in Garner

The comma meant that he’d taken a second victim, who happened to live in Garner, while the first was kidnapped somewhere else.

How Fitz loved the rules of grammar and punctuation and syntax. They were to him like pets, companions. Fitz thought of the dogs — the cairn terriers that he and Jen had for years. (He’d quietly slipped their collars into her coffin at the funeral home viewing.)

Out of his hands now, the piece made its way to production for printing and to online for posting.

Fitz gave it a few minutes, then turned to his computer and called up the ExaminerOnline . He hit Control-R to refresh the page. He was loaded for bear, to use a cliché he would never allow in his writing. To his surprise, his story appeared right up front. No influencers, no celebs. A few pop-ups but, in truth, he couldn’t complain about that; journalism had always relied on advertising for survival. Reader subscription revenue was never enough.

He was about to log off, but changed his mind. He scrolled through blogs and stories and posts. He reached into his lower desk drawer, found the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, poured himself some and tossed it down. Scanning the stories. Reading, sometimes quickly, sometimes in depth.

OOMC...

He stood up and wandered from the old part of the editorial floor to the new. Dottie Wyandotte was at her computer. She worked nearly as many hours as he did. His coughing fit startled her.

“Sorry,” he said.

She lifted a no-worries hand.

“I saw my story. Where it ran in the online. You overrode the algorithm?”

“The software wanted a banner on the front page, linking to page two. I thought the whole article should be above the fold.”

Fitz was surprised she’d used a term from traditional publishing — it meant the top half of the front page, where a story would be seen when the newspaper, folded in half, sat on the newsstand. The most important stories in any newspaper appeared above the fold.

“Thanks.”

“I had to move your other stories down,” she said. “The governor’s profile and the guardrails on Route 29.”

“Not a problem. Serial killers take priority.”

The young woman lifted a palm at this truism. She had a tattoo of Chinese characters on two fingers. Tiny, perfect letters. What did they mean?

Fitz said, “Have a question.”

“Hm?”

“The sidebar?” Fitz had written a short, boxed article to accompany the main one. It included the Gravedigger’s limerick and a request for readers to try to decipher it.

She glanced at the lower part of the screen. “That. Yes.”

“Can you get it to other places?”

“Places?”

“Other, I don’t know...” He coughed. Did the lozenge thing. He waved at her computer, irritated that he didn’t know the lingo. “Other sites, feeds, platforms... whatever they’re called. I want as many people as possible to see it. Not just us, not just CNN, Fox, the traditional media.”

“National Media’s part of ICON.”

Fitz had no clue, as he was sure his blank expression revealed.

“You know, the Integrated Content Outlet Network.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Think of it as reverse RSS and information aggregation,” Dottie said.

Blank just got blanker.

“How’s this? Imagine a really, really big mailing list to media — all kinds of media: traditional, alternative, blogs, websites, social media feeds, Twitbook, the whole shebang.”

“Okay.”

He watched her pull up his sidebar, copy it and load it onto a website. She hit a button.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

“You’ve sent it to... whatever you’ve said before?”

A nod.

That was easy. “How many people’ll see it?”

She replied. “Impossible to say.” Fitz’s face must have registered disappointment. She added, “But potentially forty, fifty million.”

He blinked. “What?”

She cautioned, “That’s monthly traffic, of course.”

Fitz had hoped for another fifty thousand views.

“Appreciate it.”

He read what was up on her screen, a piece about a rap singer’s “fashion statement.” The man — he believed it was a man — seemed to favor very high heels.

“You said ‘above the fold.’ You go to journalism school?”

“Northwestern.”

It was a good school.

“I read some of your blogs. You know your chops. You can write.”

She shrugged.

“You know the difference between ‘that’ and ‘which.’”

Without an instant’s hesitation: “‘That’ is restrictive and necessary for the sentence to achieve the writer’s meaning. ‘Which’ is nonrestrictive and adds parenthetical information to the sentence.”

“It’s like music, your writing. Your phrasing, your syntax are beautiful.”

Dottie said, “ Star Wars Yoda, a butcher of syntax is.” Drawing a rare smile from his bearded face.

He scanned the monitor again. A dozen windows were open. Made him dizzy.

She said, “I heard you’re retiring?”

A tip of his head.

“To do what?”

He thought:

Not writing a damn memoir, which would be like swimming in quicksand.

And not teaching students, because students irritated him.

And definitely not fishing, which was both barbaric and boring.

“Don’t know.”

His eyes were on the screen. “Is this satisfying?”

“What?”

“Writing this stuff.”

“Stuff.”

“Oomec. Or whatever you call it.”

“Me? I call them articles or pieces or stories or blog posts. I’m big enough to step over corporate crap.”

But not too old to kiss the ass of algorithms.

“One of your pieces? It was almost poetic. Really. It was about animal videos on YouTube. Monkeys in costumes. Baby goats in pajamas.” He’d tried to rein in his tone. He guessed he wasn’t successful.

Her eyes were cold. “You ought to check them out. They’re cute. Oh, and that piece had three hundred thousand views.”

He decided not to back down. Fitz noted other ExaminerOnline staffers nearby. The oldest appeared to be twenty-five. He leaned down so no one else would hear. “Don’t you want to do real reporting?” he whispered. “You don’t need this.”

“Oh, don’t know why I would, Fitz. After that YouTube piece ran? I got a gold star pasted on my forehead by my boss and an extra helping of kibble at dinner. The only thing I don’t need is your condescension.” She spun her glitzy chrome chair toward the monitor and began to keyboard at the speed of light.