The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,28
to those. Her writing style was grammatically correct and not very conversational. She used words like conjecture and contemplate.
And she ended each of her letters the same way—”Take care and be safe,” followed by her full name.
It was about eight P.M. as Lucy sat at her desk, trying gently to convince her county reporter that her opening paragraph on a story about trash fees was too long. But after twenty minutes of talking, Lucy’s patience was wearing thin. Her phone rang and she jumped at it, grabbing it before the first ring was over. She hoped that the phone call would give her an excuse to put an end to the conversation.
“Hey, boss, I’ve got something interesting.” It was Tommy Martinez, who was still out gathering info on the Melissa Baca story.
“Hang on just a second, Tommy.” Lucy covered the mouthpiece with her hand and, as politely as she could, got rid of the county reporter.
“Okay. Go ahead,” she said to Tommy.
“Listen to this. I got it from three sources that Melissa Baca was doing heroin.”
“Sources from where?”
She heard him hesitate before he said cautiously, “Law enforcement.”
She wondered if one of the sources was Detective Montoya.
“Sources we can name?” she asked.
“No way.”
Lucy had expected that answer. “What did these sources tell you exactly?”
“That the state cops found heroin in her abandoned car and that she’s an addict.”
“And so they’re saying she got killed in a drug deal gone bad?”
“Yeah, or she OD’d and someone tossed her off the bridge to make it look like a suicide,” Tommy said.
“When do we expect the toxicology reports back from the OMI?”
“Not for a couple of days.”
Lucy thought for a moment. The last time they’d had an anonymous tip like this, they had waited until the autopsy was done to report it, worried that if they were wrong, it would hurt the family. But the Santa Fe Times hadn’t waited and reported it in their story the next day, scooping the Capital Tribune. In journalism, there’s no such thing as being second. The Capital Tribune’s publisher had come down to have a long talk with John Lopez. Lopez had never said anything directly to Lucy, but she knew she had screwed up. And she knew not to make the same mistake again.
“And how reliable are these sources? Are they in a position to know?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Tommy said.
Whenever a new beat reporter came to the paper she gave him the same speech—she wouldn’t ask reporters to reveal the names of their confidential sources unless it was absolutely necessary. Her policy wasn’t a popular one. Her fellow editors didn’t share it; they wanted to know exactly who the anonymous sources were before they would allow them to be quoted in a story. Lucy understood their concern—if an unnamed source said something that wasn’t true, they could get sued. Using a source’s name protected the paper.
But Lucy had learned the hard way to not reveal her anonymous sources. When she was at her college newspaper, a fraternity started a list that it called The Romeo Roster. On the list was the name of each sorority sister and the number of drinks it took her to pass out. After she passed out, the girl would get raped. A fraternity brother gave Lucy the list, after making her promise not to use his name. The only other person who knew the name of the frat brother was her editor. A year later—after the fraternity had been suspended and sued—her editor talked about it at a party, even mentioning the name of the frat brother who had given them the list. A week later, the frat brother ended up in the hospital from the beating his former fraternity members had given him.
She wasn’t about to force her reporters into making the same mistake. She told the reporters loudly and often never to reveal their sources, not even to their bosses. She trusted her reporters to make the right decision about whether a source was believable.
It was a touchy subject in the newsroom and the editors had eventually come to a truce. Each editor would enforce his own policy when he was on duty. In her case, she wouldn’t ask who the sources were unless it became necessary.
The reporters knew that they had to have three separate unnamed sources confirm the facts before she would put it in a story. That was a common newspaper rule. Tommy had the necessary three.
“Have you talked to the state cops?” she asked him.