This story is true, from a long time back and I have to do some research on exact dates...so don't hold me to a damn thing. But it's fresh and now and a beginning.


The backdoor is an industrial gray number with a window that has wire in the glass. I've got a special key that gets me in and after tumbling the lock, I tuck the key back in my purse and walk the long dark hallway past a line of editing suites that are all dark now. The click of my high heels is the only sound.

It's Saturday morning, eight a.m., and the newsroom—as big as a pro basketball court—is twenty empty cubicles and that many desks. In the middle of the massive room, elevated in order to have a view over everyone and everything, is the assignment desk and Ava is already at her post with her frizzy afro poking up all over the place.

"Hey," I say.

"You're late," Ava says without looking up. Her voice is flat.

I reach over the top of the assignment desk with a cup of coffee the way she likes which is Seven Eleven fresh brew, three cream's on the side and two vanilla crullers with sprinkles on top.

"You're welcome," I say.

Ava's milk chocolate face is buried in the morning papers from local to national and behind her the police, fire and emergency medical service scanners, set on low, buzz with that sound that means nothing is going on, at least not yet. Against the wall, the electronic printers hammer out national news from the Associated Press and the United Press International and at her back are three TV's, suspended from the ceiling and set to our station which is ABC and the other two, CBS and NBC.

As the smell of coffee hits her, Ava smiles just the smallest of smiles but she doesn't look up and she doesn't say thanks. Ava isn't that kind of person. She doesn't show she's happy or even pleased but we've got it down, Ava and me. Saturday mornings, I bring her coffee and donuts—every single time—and she's halfway human to me the rest of the day.

I drop my purse on the back of my chair and put my own coffee by the typewriter, an IMB Electric Selectric with an automatic back up correction key. It's the same typewriter everyone else uses—from the weather guy to the sports guys to each anchor woman and man. We all use the same typewriters.

Ava and the news director, a guy named Steve Johnson, are the only one's who use computers and Johnson bitches about his all the time. Too slow. Too complicated. Give him an old fashioned typewriter every day of the week. Johnson is old school and even though I'm just in my twenties, I'm old school too. I prefer a manual typewriter to this stupid electric jobber. With a manual typewriter, you know you're whacking the keys and hammering out a story. The feel of those keys is powerful, active and alive. Staring at a computer screen is like having your soul sucked out your eyes. No thank you. That's what I think.

It's the late eighties. Technology is still a long ways off.

"Anything on the kid?" I ask.

"You haven't read the paper?"

"I read the paper," I say.

"Bullshit," she says. "You haven't read the paper."

"Okay, fine, I haven't read the paper."

I sit hard in my chair, a swivel number that goes up and down with a little handle pump on the left side. I'm less than five feet from where Ava sits and the only lights on in the place are over her and over me. Flood lights which bombs brilliant florescence down on our shoulders.

"Catch," Ava says.

A rolled up Spokesman Review is lobbed over the wall of her desk and drops down in a graceful arc, which I catch one handed. I snap off the rubber band and unroll the paper on my desk. I un-wedge the lid from my cup and the smell of coffee mixes with newsprint.

Front page, there it is. Missing kid. Son of abortion Rights Activist. Blah blah blah.

I already know the whole story. It's my story, which broke yesterday afternoon and we were the first ones on the scene. The kid, a high school senior, disappeared at a place on the little Spokane River called Bowl and Pitcher named for the way the rocks are formed into those shapes. The boy's wallet was found next to his abandoned car and that's all anyone knows.

KXLY (that's us) was on the scene early, got the video and even had an exclusive interview with the cops. Celebration happens when you can kick out breaking news and beat the pack. We did it. Ava at the desk, Allen as my cameraman and me as the reporter and best of all, it was my little victory since I got the tip off from a cop who is my personal source. Norm and I worked together a year ago, on an abduction case, which remains unsolved. When I called, just checking in like I do every week, Norm told me about the missing kid. "It could be another abduction," he said, off the record of course, and that was it. We were out the door.

"There's nothing new here," I say.

"Read," she says, "Jesus. Why don't TV people read?"

"I'm reading. It's a total rehash of last night."

"Go to the inside."

I flip the paper open and follow the story to the smaller print.

While I read Ava sits back from her papers and swivels in her chair—back and forth. She's got the lid off her coffee too and looks up at the ceiling the way she does when she's waiting.

Ava is a beautiful African American woman with wide hips, heavy breasts and strong shoulders. I'd guess she's in her twenties, like me, maybe a few years older. I'm twenty-six. She's probably thirty. But that's all I know. I have no idea where she is from, who her people are or even where she went to school. I have no idea how long Ave has worked at this station or if she has ambition to go anywhere else. I do know there is a resigned, low down quality to her though. Ava is worn out and that seems odd for a woman so young. What's got her down anyway? I'd like to ask except I don't know how and I'm too damn young and too damn serious about other things—like becoming the next Barbara Walters, working in New York or L.A. or maybe even in a war zone somewhere. At twenty six, I've been promoted to this station from the outback of Montana where I worked in a teeny tiny station covering cattle round ups and in this larger market, I'm all high-strung ambition and competitive about just about everything. And defensive. I'm defensive and argumentative and feel like I'm always trying to prove myself. Each exhale is an opportunity to validate my existence, each inhale is a way to try a little harder.

I push out of my chair and go to sit across from her.

"Okay, so the story says there have been tips. People are calling in sightings."

Ava afro shines under the spot light and she adjusts her glasses on her face, nodding like this was the new news she was waiting for me to find for myself.

"It's pretty common to get call in tips and sightings," she says, "it happens."

"Okay, so did we get any?" I say.

"Sure did," she says, smiling and I guess that's the magic question.

Ava swivels around and scoops up a handful of pink paper, notes she's taken in her odd little scrawl of letters and numbers and sure enough, the boy has been spotted along I-90 and out in Sprague which is a farming community west of Spokane.

"That's weird," I say. "These aren't random. I-90 is a pretty straight shot to Sprague."

"See, you're not as dumb as you look."

She's joking but it hurts. I brought the woman coffee and still, she's such a bitch.

"Jesus, Ava, what are you getting at? Just tell me."

"He's probably not an abduction at all," she says, in that droll, I've-got-it-all-figured-out tone of voice. "He's a run-away."

"Well that's good news," I say.

Ava tucks her chin and looks over the top of her wire rim frames. Her dark eyes, milk chocolate too, are bloodshot from how she never sleeps.

She shakes her head at me like I'm hopeless.

"I'm just saying it's good. He could be alive."

"That's not the point, Lauck," Ava says. "A run-away isn't lead news. Run-away isn't national news. No one cares about a run-away."

"Tell his mother that," I mumble under my breath.

Ava says nothing more.

Last year, I covered a story about a woman—a beautiful young woman with a fantastic husband, beautiful home and few horses she liked to ride—she was abducted and never heard from again. One day, she was working at her job as a sight inspector for Bonneville Power and then she was gone. Her vehicle was abandoned, her tools were on the ground and a whole year has passed without a clue as to her whereabouts. Her horses wait, her husband waits, her family waits. Even her co-workers wait and the police can find nothing.

We all know that poor woman is dead. She was stolen in the middle of the night. Gone to some unthinkable fate. I hate being a reporter of that kind of news even though it's exactly that kind of news that leads the show, wins awards and makes a career as a reporter—if you do a good job.

I've done a good job—the best I can and I've been nominated for an award for my stories on that poor woman but it's not an honor for me. Sometimes, I really hate this job. And deep down I just want this kid to be okay.

Ava says I'm too soft hearted to be on the hard news beat. She says I should have stuck to crop reports in Montana. She says there's no way I have the chops to make it to New York, L.A. or even a war zone overseas and deep down, I am afraid she's right. Another part of me—the ambitious part—thinks Ava can go fuck herself because I'm tough too. I can learn how to be like everyone else who works here—hard and uncaring and mean enough to chew metal. I can.

I go back to my desk, reading through the messages and formulate a plan for the day. I'm going to call all these people who sighted kid, go to the scene and video tape the search efforts and then—who knows. We'll see.

Ava says I'll have a cameraman—Allen—in about an hour and I pick up the phone to make my calls.