CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Laura
June 3
Laura watched as the crowd slowly dispersed. She was still onstage but off to the side sitting on a folding chair, trying to soothe baby Quinn, who was getting fussy. Laura knew attending this vigil would be a chore. She was just back from a short, six-week maternity leave. (Why oh why, she constantly asked herself, didn’t she take the full three months?) She was exhausted, yet Perry had said they needed representation from managers and she was the executive producer of the show and had to be there. Since Laura was nursing and parenting alone that weekend, she didn’t have much of a choice but to bring Quinn along. She had bottled pumped milk in a cooler in her massive diaper bag, nursing pads in her bra, and a headache brewing from the whole event.
What a horrid twenty-eight hours it had been since she heard the news. She had screamed when Perry had called her first thing Saturday morning to tell her that Faith was found dead, and she sobbed most of the day, upsetting baby Quinn, who cried along with her. She wished Elliott had been there to help, but hewas on a camping weekend with the guys and out of cell phone reach, so she was on her own. He didn’t even know the news yet.
Quite frankly, Elliott had not been the kind of husband or father she thought he would be since Quinn’s birth. He was constantly complaining about his lack of sleep although she was the one to get up and nurse all night; he didn’t like to give baths or even really to rock the baby. He just wanted to go golfing, fishing, and camping or watch shows about golfing, fishing, and camping. Because Laura worked nights and Elliott days, he had to be alone with Quinn after day care closed at six, but he would always try to rush Quinn to bed by seven, often neglecting bathtime and, Laura thought, causing Quinn to be up many times during the night due to the early bedtime. She wished Quinn would stay up later and sleep later to help her out. She didn’t get home until after 11:45PMand would be up multiple times during the night and then have to take care of Quinn all morning before dropping him at day care.
Elliott’s attitude, in Laura’s mind, was to think the baby was for her and he could mostly do as he pleased, as if both of their lives shouldn’t be upended. She was perturbed by him, and they had a few more fights recently, about baby duties but also about Faith, who had continued to text during the night at least once per week recently despite Laura’s pleas.
Yes, there were times she despised the way Faith was acting, but Laura was still in a deep sorrow over her death. How could any of this be real, she thought, as she pushed the nipple of the bottle gently into Quinn’s open mouth and looked out again over the departing crowd.
What a crowd it had been, hundreds of viewers, maybe thousands, all pulled together in such a short time. She hadn’t understood at first why Perry wanted to rush this vigil the very nextday after the death, but he said he felt it was important to do it on a weekend to get more people to attend and to “strike while the iron is hot.” It would be too long to wait for the following weekend, he said; mourners needed closure now. He set the time for elevenAMso churchgoers could still attend. So here they were. Yet, Laura felt she and others barely had time to process the death, so everything had a surreal and rushed feel.
Perry had instructed his assistant news director, who was good at planning things, to pull off the entire thing at warp speed: the music, the animal handler, the speakers, the umbrellas, even the free cookies and lemonade. Laura knew Perry had an ulterior motive, which was why there were so many cameras and a drone. He wanted to make a thirty-minute special out of it that they could run in prime time during sweeps to drive up ratings. She heard him telling the photographers and reporters what reaction shots to get and what questions to ask to evoke emotion—“Give me tears, lots and lots of tears.”
A prime-time special would be expensive real estate for any advertisers, and she knew he was licking his lips. It disgusted her but it didn’t surprise her. That was what TV stations often did, placing their big stories during sweeps or coming up with ideas for specials that would sometimes capitalize on someone’s pain, yes, for their own profit.
The irony was that Faith probably would have approved of both the vigil and the special. She knew how TV worked and she would want maximum exposure even about her own death.
Perry had all kinds of plans on top of the special. His goal was to have a “Faith Richards Day” in Detroit, with a declaration from the mayor. He asked the assignment desk manager to call some of the largest corporations to see if they wanted to go in on a scholarship fund in her name, and he even talked about a nightwhere all downtown buildings would turn yellow in her honor, the way they could light up silver and blue for the Detroit Lions or orange and blue for the Detroit Tigers.
Laura thought if Perry put half this much effort into finding Faith’s killer it might be a better use of his time. She was still stunned at what had transpired Friday night. A totally normal 6:00 and 6:30PMshow followed by dinner break. Faith usually took an hour or so, which wasn’t unusual. Other anchors were gone for much longer, to be honest. Producers complained often that Tom and Veronica took breaks so long that they barely read their scripts before going on the air.
At ninePM, Laura had walked back to the weather office to touch base with Faith about that night’s show. No one was there, but that wasn’t a big deal. She went back fifteen minutes later. Still no one. On her third visit, at 9:30, she began to really wonder what was going on and texted Faith with no response. Laura called multiple times and texted more. She was getting concerned. Faith had never been away this long and never not answered when anyone from the station needed her. For all of her jerk-like behaviors, she was a professional about stuff like the station calling her.
Laura pulled a few other newsroom leaders into a conference room so they could discuss what was happening. It was a Friday night and Perry didn’t like to be bothered at the end of his week, but she had to let him and the assistant news director know what was happening. Perry told her to contact the GM and the HR manager, and she did both.
Then she texted Faith that if they didn’t hear from her soon they would have to call in Matthew. They needed a met for the show. Tom, Veronica, and Roger couldn’t do the weather, after all. This wasn’t some tiny-market TV station where the anchorwas also the producer, editor, sportscaster, and weathercaster. They were Detroit, for Christ’s sake, a major market. Number thirteen in rankings of television markets in the entire US. New York was number one, followed by Los Angeles at number two and Chicago at number three, but Detroit was larger than Denver, Minneapolis, Miami, Cleveland, and Portland, just to name a few. Detroit’s designated market area had over four million people in it.
Someone had to do the weather that night. Someone who knew what the heck they were talking about. That left only one choice: Matthew. She knew he would be incensed—Matthew covered for Faith a lot—but they simply had no choice. Laura would figure out Faith’s sudden absence later; for now, she had a show to get on the air.
Matthew didn’t arrive at the station until 10:55PM, just five minutes before the show. He had been out to a late dinner with Tara when he got the call, he said. She could tell he had a drink or two in him, but he was good enough to go on air.
He didn’t have time to refresh the graphics or double-check the forecast Faith had delivered at 6:00 and 6:30, and Laura knew that he had to go on the air with Faith’s information and graphics to give viewers and that it likely bothered him to the core, but they needed someone on air, period.
Matthew stomped into the studio to get his microphone on, complaining loudly to anyone who would listen. When the show was over, he ripped the mic off and stormed out seconds after they signed off.
Laura continued to text and call Faith during this whole time with no response. She spoke on the phone to HR, the GM, and Perry again, but they all said they would deal with any discipline— if that’s what it required—Monday. If Faith went home and gotdrunk and passed out or something like that, she would be in deep trouble. No one was in a panic. A little worried, yes, but more pissed at her than anything. She was capable of too many shenanigans, as they had all seen, and there had been instances before where she suddenly said she felt sick and had to leave halfway through her shift and things like that.
So Laura had gone home, relieving the babysitter they had due to Elliott camping; she nursed Quinn for his midnight feeding and had gotten her usual bout of two hours of sleep here, nurse, three hours of sleep there, nurse, a few more minutes of rest before getting woken up by Perry’s devastating call in the morning.
He said they would do a push alert on their app around midmorning but he needed to call other people, send a note to the newsroom, and get a game plan going for the vigil. Later in the day he pulled together a conference call with all managers and main anchors to inform them of the plans—they were sending a reporter and photojournalist to the anchors’ homes for comments; they needed everyone at the vigil saying nice things about Faith.
Laura pushed down any negative thoughts she had ever had about her former friend. She could not speak ill of the dead. She thought of some kind, if not entirely true, things to say and rehearsed her part over and over in her head as she cried and rocked Quinn and cried some more.
Strangled? In an area near the station? How was this even possible? Fear began to overtake her as she wondered if this was random, a robbery or something, and the perpetrator didn’t even know who Faith was. What if that psycho had done this to a different woman from the station, like Laura herself? Her throat constricted, and she hugged Quinn and cried harder asthey rocked in the wooden rocker her sister had gotten her for the baby shower.
But the rational part of her knew it had to be someone who actually was acquainted with Faith, not just a random act, someone who had something against her. Strangulation was a form of anger. She had covered enough trials and crimes to know that. She wasn’t sure yet if there had been sexual assault; she only heard about the strangulation part from the medical examiner.
In television news, nothing was official until the medical examiner (which everyone shortened to “ME”) said it was. They were often waiting for the ME’s report before they would broadcast a death. Now that it had come out about Faith, she knew it was true. That, and the police report. That was also out.
She was thinking of all this as she sat on the stage with Quinn. When the final few viewers finished their lemonade and cookies, talked to Tom, Veronica, and the others (she noticed many people asking for pictures or autographs), and left, Perry came up onstage next to her. Quinn had finally fallen into what she called the “milk coma” and was breathing hard through his perfect little rosebud lips, his eyelids flickering.
“So how’d we do? Did viewers like the vigil?” Perry asked. Laura noticed that he didn’t even glance at the baby, nor had he ever once asked about him since his birth.
