Detroit Michigan
Chapter 6
Hallie

“I’m not the star anchorwoman,” she broke the silence she’d imposed at the start of their journey. “But they don’t have to rub it in by giving me a Boy Scout with a Brownie Starflash camera instead of a camera crew.”

“Gee, you’re not a big deal at WQIP?” Martin Fishbein looked at the woman beside him. She was old, at least thirty. “I never would have guessed.”

“Jennifer Chambers is the shining star, my boy. She gets a limo, and I have to drive myself. She just flashes her smile, bats those fake lashes, and swivels those–oh, I forgot. You’re just a kid,” Hallie said, giving him a sharp look. “Are you messing with me, son?”

“You seem bitter.” Martin avoided eye contact. His experience showed that satire paired with a good stink eye often led to a slap upside the head.

“They give me all the crappy stories—usually some grocery store short-weighing beef. Now I have to cover a reject from the glue factory that’s bought a ticket to that great ranch in the sky. Totally unfair.”

“Might be interesting,” Martin tried to spin it so her hysteria would die down.

“So what if Mr. Green buries Black Beauty in his potato field?” Hallie snapped. “Who cares?”

“I guess someone’s abilities don’t say much about their assignments. Image is everything, you know.”

“A deep thought from someone who likely started their morning by tossing papers onto front porches. What’s your name?”

“Martin Fishbein. I’m in the Internship Program,” he proclaimed as if he’d just earned a graduate degree. “I’m a senior at St. Charles. Next year I’ll have a full ride at Notre Dame.”

“I didn’t ask for your life story,” Hallie muttered. “Just like my girls. Always spilling more details than are called for.”

“You have daughters?” His interest grew noticeably. “How old are they?”

“Watch out, sonny. Hannah is twelve, and Ruth is ten.”

“Definitely jailbait.” He smiled, his braces blinding her.

“You need to keep your lips down, Marlin. I left my sunglasses at home.” Hallie watched as the terrain shifted from urban sprawl to rural countryside. “Call me Ms. Ruben; my friends call me Hallie.”

“It’s Martin, not the fish,” he said. “I heard they found this horse carcass buried in a field. Must be a slow news day.”

“It was actually a viewer who reported it,” Hallie explained. “They get things wrong all the time. It’s probably just an old hank of hemp. Usually, you wouldn’t see Jennifer Chambers going out on a story like this.”

“It’s a nice ride anyway,” Martin said. “Look up there. A bleeding donut. I’m hungry.”

Hallie saw the sign on a bright yellow Quonset hut. It had a large donut with red jelly oozing like a waterfall, and it read Momma’s Bakery. Her stomach growled.

“I’m going to grab something to eat. Is that alright with you, Marlin?”

“It’s Martin. I don’t have any money. Are you paying?”

“Not for yours, sonny. Maybe you could wash some windshields. Or better yet, sit in the car.”

Hallie pulled into the gravel lot. She had barely parked when a reckless driver in a fancy roadster splattered her car with gravel. Hallie opened her door, just missing the man’s custom Vette. She looked back at Martin.

“Marlin, is that who I think it is?”

“Looks like that dweeb from Channel Five, Lance Strong.”

“Maybe this isn’t such a dud, Marlin. He wouldn’t be out here to see his Aunt Tillie.” She looked at Lance, who was on his cell phone and didn’t realize she was alive.

“Alright, here’s the plan. I’ll go in and make some small talk to see what kind of scoop I can get. You don’t want to seem excited in front of another reporter.”

“Makes sense, some kind of way,” Martin said. “You want me to come with?”

“No. Stay here. I’m incognito,” Hallie said, turning and heading for the bakery. Lance Strong looked up, but he didn’t seem to recognize her. Of course, he didn’t; she was nobody.

Martin Fishbein watched his mentor. She was a middle-aged woman with attractive legs and wind-tousled hair. All she needed was a matching babushka for her denim jumper. But I like her, he thought. She seems so genuine.

Glass cases lined the worn linoleum floor, showcasing a variety of colorful donuts. A red-faced man stepped out from the back room, wiping his hands on his apron.

“Help ya?” The tone of his voice showed he didn’t want to help her at all.

“Yes,” Hallie said crisply. “I’ll have a grilled bagel with a side of fat-free cream cheese, please, and a cup of hot tea.”

“Got no bagels. No tea either,” he wiped a rag across the counter, rearranging the bacteria.

“Just give me any pastry you have, baked or fried—I really don’t care. I assume you have coffee.”

“No prob,” he said, waving the rag toward her. “Aren’t you a little far from Slickerville?”

“Pardon?”

“City slickers, I can sniff ‘em out, ya know.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. I think we got off on the wrong fried cake here, friend. I’m Hallie Ruben, a reporter for WQIP.”

“Ah-ha. I’d better get Gussie to toss another batch in the fryer. You gotta be here about the bad doings up north.”

“Yeah, they give me all the crappy jobs.” She accepted the glazed donut and a cracked mug filled with rich brew.

The baker gave her a puzzled look and moved down the counter to assist Lance Strong. Hallie chose the table by the window and took a bite of the pastry. It was heaven.

“What’s the fat content in those?” Lance examined the pastries as if calories could leap onto his waistline just by being near them.

“How should I know? I’d say they’ve got about as much fat as your wife’s backside.”

“Coffee, black—that’s it.”

He sat at the neighboring table, with his back facing her. The phone in his shirt pocket was playing some strange music.

“Lance here.” His voice sounded flat and canned. He looked smaller than on TV and a bit pale now that she got a good look at him. But smooth. Very, very smooth. “I want at least a ten-minute slot for this one, Sam,” Lance Strong barked. “And don’t screw this up. If we don’t nail this down, I will personally see to it that your aged mother dies picking remnants of your ass off the face of the moon.”

He slipped his phone into his pocket, turned, and looked at her. He looked like he was about to say something, then he was out the door before she could whistle Dixie.

“I’ll have two more glazed donuts, please,” she purred. The baker flashed a wide grin. Denture paste peeked above his bridge line, a pinkish pulp. Somehow, being single didn’t feel so bad.

“Around here, some say I’m the guy to see when you want info. Of course, I wouldn’t go spilling my guts to the likes of that one who just left.”

“I know what you mean, sir,” Hallie whispered. “That’s Lance Strong. From TV, you know?”

“Damn, I saw that fancy man from a mile away. I know his kind. I am not talking to someone like him. Now you,” he winked. “That might be a different story, if you catch my drift.”

“Ah, the dead horse. Glad you brought it up. What could be so newsworthy about a deceased horse that would grab a top news anchor’s attention across the county line?”

He looked around the room, then leaned over the glass case.

“Heard it on the scanner an hour ago. It’s not a horse–it’s a kid.”

“A goat?”

“A child. A little one. No one’s saying who it is, though. Just take the road north through town and continue on Cedar Creek Road until you reach Territorial. You’ll be looking for O’Bryan’s farm. Look for the two-track.”

“What’s a two-track?”

“A rut for each tire,” he chuckled. “Rumor has it that it’s a little girl. The cops, they stop for their complimentary, ya know, and I hear ’em. Elmo Carter was blowing off steam to another country boy. Seems a furner is nosing around like a hound dog on rabbit stink.”

“A furrier?” Hallie asked in confusion.

“You know, a furner, from some furn country.”

“Oh, a foreigner.” She smiled. It was like visiting Greece—a whole new language. She felt like she needed a Berlitz course in Backwoods English. “Now that’s very interesting!”

“Good luck to ya’.” He waved his greasy rag, and she imagined a thousand germs splattering on her unprotected face.

Martin Fishbein looked rather surly when she returned to the car. She dug through piles of old newspapers that hadn’t been read until she found the road map. She had frosting on her chin in the mirror.

“I see we had a nice, tidy little breakfast,” Martin’s voice cracked somewhere between bass and tenor.

“I’ve been working. This dead horse is really a kid. A very dead kid. This story could make my career,” she said, handing him the donuts and the road map. “Here, make yourself useful.”

“You’d better hurry. Once the word gets out, they’ll send the real crew.”

“The baker gave me directions, so we won’t need to stop at the police station. We’re going to get the drop on WCRP.”

The road hummed beneath the high-quality tires all the way to Cedar Creek.

“Look!” Martin shouted. “It’s the WQIP crew and WCRP, too.” The police station was the size of a gift shop, and a crowd of gawkers surrounded it.

“We can beat them,” she said and then stomped on the gas pedal. The rogue news crew arrived at O’Bryan’s farm fifteen minutes later. The shoulder was empty, except for one Cedar Creek patrol car. She parked next to it. The insignia was slightly crooked on the door, as if it had been put on as an afterthought. Or maybe it was one of those magnetic decals that peeled off at night and ended up being Bob’s Pizza Delivery.

Hallie opened the road map and figured out precisely where they were.

“Okay, Marlin. We’re going to walk through those woods and see how close we can get to those people over there.”

“You mean that policeman standing next to the guy on the horse out in the field?”

“No, I mean the lion tamer who’s whipping the big cats through the fire hoop at the circus.”

“I see why you’re assigned crappy stories,” Martin said as he packed up his gear. “And I know why you’re single.”

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