“Carrie, where are we on the home-invasion segment?” he asked. He turned to Kristin. “Weren’t we looking to slot it at the end of the five o’clock next Thursday?”
Caroline didn’t hesitate. Her eyes flashed. “I need a tighter edit on the reenactment footage, and I’ve asked for it four times, even left my notes.”
“Let me look into the delay,” Kristin said. “We’ll get it turned around.”
I blinked. This was a side of Caroline McNamara I’d yet to see. Calm. Confident. Pointed. Gone was the overt on-air warmth I’d come to identify her with. This version was kind of a badass, and I liked it. I grinned as I took in the rest of the story meeting, feeling like one of the pack. It was a whirlwind of fast-paced planning and organization, and I couldn’t have been happier. When I arrived back at my desk, Carrie was just a few seconds behind me. I heard her heels clicking across the floor. She took a seat at her desk and looked over.
“Can I ask a question?” She didn’t wait for a reply “Why take the robbery story? It’s a dud.”
I thought on it, intimidated. “Just trying to be a team player.”
She nodded. “Admirable. But who is that going to benefit in the end?” She raised an eyebrow. “Not you.”
I opened my mouth, but she was up and moving already, having moved on from our interaction, probably off to see about that re-edit she needed. I felt silly now for laying up in the meeting. She was right. I had six months to make my mark or be shipped out and needed to step up more and back up the hunger I’d professed to Tam.
“Are you Ty?” I asked one of the camera guys hanging out near the editing bays.
“Nope. Over there,” the man said. I followed his gaze to a guy with an athletic build, a backward baseball cap, and a pair of cargo shorts. His hair was a mixed mop of blond, brown, and strawberry sticking out from underneath the cap in a variety of directions.
“What can I do for you?” he asked with a big smile.
“I’m Skyler Ruiz. New reporter.”
“Another one,” Ty said and exchanged a look with the first guy. “Revolving door of you guys around here. Luckily, you seem friendly. Do you like food? I’m a big eater.”
“I’m not opposed to it.”
“Awesome. We’ll be buds. What’s up?”
“Kristin said I should grab you. I’m headed out to cover an early morning robbery on Eighth. A 7-Eleven.”
“And you want me to tag along. Snag some shots.”
“I was hoping you’d be game. She said we’d be working together.”
“We will. Just wanted to make you ask.” He grabbed a backpack and car keys from the wall. “Let’s ride. Maybe I can score a midmorning Slurpee. They better have lime, man. Those places always have cherry and cola only, and I don’t get that. The world is bigger than that, ya know? We need the green. And not apple either. Lime.”
“I will hope for lime on your behalf.”
“Hey, I appreciate that.”
Ty meant it, too. Twenty minutes later, while I located the manager at 7-Eleven who’d been on duty when the place was robbed, Ty made a dash for the back of the store and filled up an obscenely large cup with a bright blue slushy drink.
“Tell me exactly what happened last night,” I said to the young guy who’d agreed to speak with me. Brown spiky hair and a nose ring. Once I got his story, we could record some B-roll footage of the store and get a few sound bites from him that could be edited into a short package later.
“Right. So a kid came in wearing a gray hoodie, closed up tight. I could barely see his eyes. No one was in the store but me.”
I jotted a few notes. “Tell me about your interactions with him.”
“He put a Snickers on the counter and then said that if I wanted to live I should give him all the money in the register.”
“He held a gun on you?”
“No, but there was one in his pocket. I thought he was faking me out, so I told him to go to hell. Next thing I know there’s a bullet in the floor, and I’m tap-dancing.”
I looked behind me at the very noticeable mar in the black and white linoleum. “How’d that happen?”
“Got me.” He scratched the back of his head. “Thing went off, I guess. Shit. I about jumped out of my shorts.”
Ty took a long pull from his straw as he sidled up next to me. “No lime.”
“I gathered.”
“Blueberry works, though.” He held it up to the manager. “Pumped you have more than cherry, bud. Good lookin’ out.”
The employee offered a fist bump, which Ty reciprocated. “I got you.”
I broke up the new bromance. “Okay, so the gun went off. There’s the hole in the floor. Then what happened?”
“Once he shot, the kid took off. I think he scared himself to death. Ran down the street like a little bitch. Didn’t even take the Snickers.”
“So a botched robbery. Anything stand out to you?” This was going nowhere, which was to be expected, but I was really hoping to come back with something for Kristin. Prove myself on my first time out.
“Other than the fact that his name was stitched on his damn backpack. Who does that? Robs a store with their name on their bag?”
Interesting. “What was the name?”
“Seth. Big letters. I bet he runs with a group of kids that are in here a lot. They don’t have much to do and get into trouble. It’s a fucked-up cycle that really speaks to the decline of our community in the face of near recession. Freakonomics at work.”
Huh. I hadn’t seen the insight coming. And Seth was such an innocuous name. Why couldn’t he have been Razorblade or Muppet Man or Mooch. Anything memorable. “Mind if we talk to you on camera now?”
He puffed up like a D-list celebrity who’d just been recognized. “Not at all. Think the other stations will be by?”
I didn’t. There was no story here. For a city the size of San Diego, an accidental bullet in the floor of a would-be robbery scene was not a big deal. Caroline was right. I should have fought for something meatier. That was on me. My only chance of salvaging this thing was to play up the emotion of the incident, get the manager to explain his fear, and focus on the happy ending tied in a neat little bow with a Snickers on top. Even then, the only chance the piece would see air was if it was the slowest news day ever.
“Anything good?” Mila from assignments asked when I called in. She’d be gathering up all potentials and helping the producers understand what stories they had coming in.