Thanks so much for sharing your day with us, LynDee Walker and good luck on BURIED LEADS! Excerpt 2 from BURIED LEADS: Bob started the rundown with sports. “It’s September.” Spence tapped a pen on his notepad. “I got baseball winding down and college football gearing up, a Redskins injury report that ought to make the fantasy diehards cry into their Coors, and a great column from Parker on that foundation the Generals set up in Nate DeLuca’s memory.” The meeting flew by. My feature on an inner-city family and part one of the baseball season wrap-up led as the big stories for the coming weekend. When the international desk chief started arguing ideology with our political reporter, Trudy Montgomery—who had more big D.C. names in her phone’s favorites list than I could count on both of her perfectly-manicured hands—I pulled out my Black- berry and checked my email. “Politics is perception,” Trudy’s words faded into background noise as I clicked an email from Aaron White, the police department’s public information officer. “This election isn’t going to come down to the economy or the schools or the roads or any of the things people should give a damn about. It’s going to come down to the guy who looks best on camera or the one who doesn’t say something stupid in the next seven weeks.” She went on about the senate race, hotly-contested for the first time in almost two decades, and I tore my eyes from the “loading” icon on Aaron’s email. Covering politics was my dream job, and Trudy was one of the best on the east coast. “Trudy, polling shows voters are more concerned about the environment and foreign relations than ever,” Edwin Caruthers, who’d been covering foreign affairs in Richmond since The Bay of Pigs, objected. “People don’t always tell pollsters what they really think,” I said. “Sometimes they say what makes them sound smart.” Trudy winked at me. “Thank you, Nichelle. My point exactly. The polls are close because they both look good on TV and they’re both suave. Add that to the uproar in DC, and of course it’s tight. But Ted Grayson’s smart. He’s also got a well-oiled campaign and a gift of charisma I haven’t seen since Clinton. He’ll pull it out.” I nodded, and Bob thumped a paperweight onto his desk to re- call order. He quizzed the business editor, and I returned to Aaron’s email. Hot damn. The coroner hit on the dental. My dead guy was Daniel Amesworth, twenty-nine, of Henrico. By the time Bob dismissed us, my fingers itched to hit the keyboard.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 21:00:01 +0000