Metsy Hingle - Deadline

Tess almost laughed at Ronnie’s frustration with the station manager’s nephew whom they had been asked to hire during the summer. An aspiring television reporter with a communications degree, Kip Edwards was pleasant enough and eager to be a part of the news team. Unfortunately, the man was a total klutz who could—and had—wiped out hours of work by just walking across a room. Whenever he was assigned to a story, the engineers safeguarded their equipment and the reporters their persons. Kip also came up short in the personality department—a fact that was apparent whenever he was on camera. As a result, no one was eager to work with him, and Ronnie was stuck with the unpleasant task of using him.

“Anyway, Stefanovich asked for a copy of the assignments and decided Kip should do the piece with you. I’m sorry, kiddo. My hands are tied. I’m afraid you’re stuck with him on this one.”

“I understand. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. I need some time off. There’s something personal that I need to take care of.”

Ronnie seemed to relax a bit. She sat back on the couch, some of the stiffness leaving her shoulders. “Well, I don’t see where that should be any problem. David seems to be working out fine, and now that Angela’s back from her baby break, I can probably clear you for a few days at the end of next week.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to need more than a few days. Actually, a lot more.”

Ronnie narrowed her eyes. “How much more?”

“I’ve got a month of vacation time and sick leave due. I’d like to take it.”

“A month!” Ronnie whipped off her tortoiseshell glasses, pitched them to the table. “You’ve got to be kidding! You can’t honestly expect me to approve a month’s vacation for you. Not even the anchors get that much time off all at once.”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Ronnie stood up and began pacing about the room. “It’s out of the question. You’re my best reporter. I can’t have you taking off for a month.”

“It’s not impossible,” Tess argued. “You said yourself that David’s on board now and Angela’s back from maternity leave. So you’re fully staffed again.”

“We won’t be fully staffed if you’re out.”

“You’ve also got Kip,” Tess pointed out.

Ronnie glared at her and sat down again. “You’re not helping your case here, kiddo.” She shook her head. “No. There’s no way I can spare you for a month. A week maybe, but not a month.”

“Then I quit.”

“You can’t quit. You have a contract.”

“My contract’s up for renewal at the end of next month. I’ll ask the GM to release me early,” Tess told her, hating that it had come to this. She liked her job, liked Ronnie and the people she worked with, but she had to find out the truth. And to do that she was going to need time to go back to Mississippi. She stood. “I’m sorry, Ronnie.”

“Oh, stop with the dramatics and sit down.” Once Tess had done so, Ronnie said, “Now tell me what in the hell is going on and why you’re threatening to quit on me.”

“I don’t want to quit,” Tess told her. “But there’s something I have to do, something personal, and I need the time off to do it.”

“That’s it? That’s all the explanation you’re going to give me?”

“I told you. It’s personal.”

Ronnie leveled a “give me a break” look at her.

Tess sighed. “It has to do with my mother, about when she died. And about my father’s suicide,” Tess said finally.

“So that’s what’s been bothering you,” Ronnie said, and Tess suspected the remark was more to Ronnie herself. “Which I suppose is understandable. I mean, it hasn’t been all that long since that stuff happened with your father. I’m sure that whole suicide thing brought up some bad memories for you.”

“Yes.”

“But, kiddo, instead of taking off you should be keeping busy, and trying to put all that stuff out of your mind.”

“I can’t,” Tess told her.

Ronnie narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Have those dirtbags from the tabloids been hounding you again? Because if they have—”

“No. You know how this business is, everyone’s moved on to the next scandal and forgotten all about me and my family.”

“I would hope so,” Ronnie told her. “You poor kid. All that mess, then breaking up with Johnny and me loading you down with work. No wonder you’ve been having trouble sleeping. It’s a miracle that you haven’t been having nightmares.”

But there had been no nightmares. At least not in a very long time. That hadn’t always been the case. For months after her mother had been murdered, she did wake up screaming, unable to get the image of her father kneeling over her mother’s body, blood on his hands and shirt, the bloody bookend in his hand, out of her mind. But with time, the nightmares had grown fewer, the memories less sharp. Thanks in large measure to the psychologists her grandparents had insisted she see when she first came to live with them in D.C. Also, it had helped that she’d been so close to her grandmother, a bond that had only strengthened when she had feared she might lose the older woman to cancer. Thank heavens Grams had beaten the disease. But in those months and the years that followed they had clung to each other.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Then they talked about it. Tess began by telling Ronnie about the phone call she’d received claiming that Jody Burns’s death hadn’t been a suicide. She told her about her own inquiries at the prison, about the questions that had been running through her mind since then. Questions that she found she could no longer ignore.

“I don’t know, Tess. It all sounds pretty far-fetched to me, you getting a call out of the blue like that. I’d be willing to bet that woman was a reporter working for one of those supermarket rags. She probably told you that garbage hoping to get a story out of you,” Ronnie reasoned.

“I thought so, too, at first. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more convinced I am that she was on the level. I can tell you for certain that her accent was real.”

“A lot of people can fake a Southern accent,” Ronnie pointed out.

Tess shook her head. “My grandparents are from Mississippi and I’ve met enough people from there over the years to recognize a Mississippi drawl when I hear one. Hers was genuine.”

“That still doesn’t mean she was legit. You and I both know it wouldn’t be the first time a tabloid has used an out-of-state stringer to pull a fast one in order to nail a story.”

“I know. But my gut tells me she was telling the truth.” Tess recalled the fear she’d heard in the woman’s voice when she’d mentioned calling the police. “She wasn’t acting, Ronnie. She was genuinely afraid.”

“Of what? You said the report from the prison ruled your father’s death a suicide.”

“I know what it said. But after talking to that official at the prison and reading the report, I don’t know, something just doesn’t feel right.”

“Is that the reporter in you talking, or the child who’s lost her father?”

“Probably a little of both,” Tess admitted. “All I know is that if the woman was telling the truth and Jody Burns was murdered, then I have to ask myself why. And why try to make it look like a suicide?”

“You’re making some pretty big leaps on the basis of one anonymous phone call, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. But what if she was telling the truth? What if he didn’t hang himself in that cell? What if someone else did it for him? Think about it, Ronnie. He was coming up for parole in a few weeks and he stood a good chance of being released. So why, after all these years, would he decide to kill himself? Why now, when he was so close to gaining his freedom? It just doesn’t make any sense.”