As the Wicked Watch(7)

I got a text from Tracy. Jordan, how long before you guys set up the shot?

As Pam’s words played over in my head, I turned away from Masey’s ninth-grade picture to focus on Scott and the rush of urgency now snapping me back into the present.

“Jordan, let me grab at least one light,” Scott said.

The next text raised the stakes. Jordan, we need to see the shot as soon as possible.

“Jordan, get over here”—a rare command coming from Scott. “I need to set this shot.”

Where did the morning go? I have no time to write a script. I will just have to wing it.

I texted Tracy. Micing now. I don’t have a roll cue. When I pause, that’s when you will know to play the sound from Fawcett. I’ll wing it, but it will be obvious.

My words would likely send Tracy into a meltdown. An absence of control was not in a producer’s DNA. Not the good ones, anyway.

I took a deep breath to try to avoid the habitual scrunching of my eyebrows. I looked around to make sure there weren’t any cracks or rocks that could cause me to wipe out while walking and talking through this report.

“Five, four, three, two, action!”

“Diana, I’m at 35th and King Drive in historic Bronzeville. As you can see there are missing posters with Masey James’s school picture tacked up on just about every tree. There’s a similar scene a couple blocks west of here outside Chicago police headquarters. I spoke a little while ago with lead detective Mitch Fawcett, who shared that police no longer believe Masey is a potential runaway. The girl’s been missing three weeks, and investigators are starting to feel the heat from a community that is demanding answers.”

Video of my earlier interview with Fawcett played. He didn’t share any new information. But, as Ellen had reasoned, “just go and build the relationship.” I’m pretty sure, though, that by the time I had left, nothing between me and the pointy-headed detective had changed.

*

The next morning . . .

I took two sips of coffee and was about to make a mad dash out the door to the gym when my cell phone rang. I was going to let it go to voice mail until I saw who it was. My good buddy Justin Smierciak, a freelance photographer whose best friend was a police scanner. I came in second.

“Hey, sis, I’ve got something for you,” Justin said. He always got right down to the point. I liked that about him.

“Is it juicy? ’Cause I’m headed out the door,” I said.

“Oh yeah, babe, you’re going to want to hear this before you make any plans today,” he said. Justin was not prone to exaggeration. If he said it was big, then it was big.

Justin thinks he is so cool. He wanted to be a cop, but that didn’t work out. The thing that struck me when I first met him was his physicality. At five-five, Justin was small and scrappy but stereotypically cocky for a guy of his stature, not willing to back down to anyone. He would get right up in a guy’s face twice his size, and he was dogged, too. We were at a crime scene on a story once and I witnessed Justin climb a tree in under a minute to get a shot above the other photographers.

“I just heard that human remains have been found in a vacant field east of the Ryan. One of the officers mentioned the name Ida B. Wells. I checked Google maps and found an Ida B. Wells-Barnett playground on the Chicago Park District website at 45th and Calumet. Looks like the ‘L’ passes right over it.”

“Did they describe the body? Male or female?” I asked.

“Only that they found human remains. You know what that means,” he said.

“Yeah, the body must be in bad shape,” I said. “Are you headed there?”

“I’m here now! I’m waiting on you,” he said.

I hung up and immediately called Ellen.

“Dead body on Park District land? Damn, you just said a mouthful!” Ellen said, clearly now on ten. “Okay, get over there.”

“Yep, Scott is my next call,” I said.

I should’ve known Justin was already at the scene. Freelance photographers eat what they kill. But Justin seemed to enjoy the hunt. He was nothing like his brother, Jake, whom I met in college.

The Smierciak boys grew up in Calumet City, an industrialized suburb just south of Chicago. Jake was a buttoned-down wannabe newspaper editor. He would overly enunciate words to try to mask his Chicago accent. I used to tease him that he would do better if he adopted a British accent. It would make him less of a wannabe and more interesting. Justin by contrast was the missing member of the Beastie Boys who never got the call. Aside from journalism and their parents, the two brothers had nothing in common.

Jake got married about three years after graduating from J-school and started a family with a real estate broker. When he heard I’d landed a television gig in Chicago, he reached out and told me to look up his baby brother. Justin and I are as unlikely a pair as can be. But Baby Smierciak has proved to be quite useful to me on the crime beat.

I thought about Masey. Human remains. Badly decomposed body. Three weeks missing. I didn’t like the way that this series was adding up. My heart raced. I wanted so badly for it not to be Masey, but right now I just wanted to be the first reporter on the scene. Justin wasn’t the only photographer who slept curled up next to a police scanner. I’d seen a few others. They were easy to spot, especially in bars packed with journalists. They’re the guys having all their drinks bought for them but not actually drinking.