Beginning of Book 3

Hi, folks,

Below is the very beginning of my third Skeeter Hughes Mystery, yet to be titled. I'm taking a huge risk throwing it out there for you all to see this early draft, but I figure all of publishing is risk-taking, ya know? And, well, the mantra of what we do is "show, don't tell" so I figure this is about as telling as I can get.

All opinions gratefully accepted. 

By Judith Yates Borger

Rachel Rand James left happy hour a little early and headed home on the light rail. She was up for reelection and didn’t need headlines that she’d been arrested for drinking and driving. Besides, she needed to be seen on public transportation, which had been one of her campaign issues.

She’d been downtown with her best friend, Skeeter Hughes, and their buddy Buzzy Brewster. Skeeter, Rachel and Buzzy had started working at the newspaper within a month of each other, and soon began going out drinking after deadline. Over several pitchers of beer they’d argue about everything, politics, body image and men. Skeeter always took positions on the left and Rachel on the right. Buzzy usually landed somewhere in the middle, always the arbiter. By last call they were still best friends even if neither had convinced the others of anything. Now, Skeeter was a newspaper reporter,  Buzzy was a copy editor and Rachel,who had always had higher ambitions, was mayor of Minneapolis. 

The mayor liked to document how taxpayer money was spent. She pulled out her iPhone and snapped a couple pictures of the scene on the train: Office workers heading home. Moms shushing babies. Young folks dressed in the black-pants-and-white-shirts uniform of the evening shift at the hotels. Travelers on their way to the airport, tugging wheeled suit cases. The Hiawatha Light Rail, which the mayor had championed, was packed. Maybe one of the shots would be good enough to use in her new campaign literature, she thought. 

As the train pulled into the Cedar Riverside stop Rachel glanced at the platform as people disembarked. A guy in a gold and marroon  University of Minnesota hoody and jeans, a couple of giggling Somali girls covered head to toe  in jeweled-colored hajibs, an older white man in a blazer and tie talking to a young Somali man in black pants and a tan zipped jacket. A picture of diversity, she thought, and  snapped another shot. Then she sent an email to Skeeter and Buzzy.

“Love ya,” she wrote in the subject line, and, “Had a great time tonight” in the body of the email. 

They were her last words. 

Chapter 1

Rachel had called it quits on her third beer and headed home. I was nursing my second and swapping newspaper gossip with Buzzy, my all-time favorite copy editor who, like me, had the night off. We were talking about ordering a pizza when our cell phones sounded simultaneously.

“Uh Oh,” Buzzy said. “This can’t  be good.”

The messages went to all staff: “Light rail bombed. Everyone to newsroom.”

“I’m heading in,” Buzzy said. 

“I’m not,” I said. “If I go to the newsroom they’re just going to send me right out. I’m closer to the tracks now anyway.”

We had been slogging down the beers at the Loon, a zillion-year-old watering hole kitty corner from the First Avenue light rail stop in downtown Minneapolis. Buzzy stood, gave me a quick nod, threw money on the table and left. I did the same.

 I ran to my little red Honda Civic del Sol, which I had parked at a meter, and roared away until I was within a half mile of the Hiawatha Light Rail line. Road construction had traffic backed up, so I ditched my car in a no-parking zone. I grabbed my personal iPhone, the newspaper’s piece-of-crap issued cell phone and my notebook and took off running. I ran up a pile of dirt then did a face plant running down the other side. Damn, I wish I were in better shape, I thought as I wiped grit from my eyes, nose and mouth.  Nearby construction workers were so busy watching the smoke billowing to the sky that no one noticed as I pulled myself up, brushed off, and kept running. 

The smell of the disaster hung in the air. Acrid. Electrical. Like a hair dryer that’s been working too hard. Then the overpowering stench of burning oil. Fire engines wailed as flames shot to the sky. I figured it would be minutes before the police set up a perimeter impervious to everyone, especially reporters. I had to get as close a possible to see what was going on before the boundary went up. 

Half a dozen pickup trucks were parked on a residential street  a block away and well within sight of the disaster scene. They probably belong to the construction workers, I thought. Figuring no one would notice me, I climbed into the bed of the black, mud-spattered Ford Ranger and kneeled on top of a blue tarp that covered something hard and lumpy. 

The heat from the explosion hit me like an ocean wave. Even though smoke obscured the scene I could see that both cars on the light rail had been destroyed. I needed to get word to the newsroom.

Barely catching my breath, I whipped out my iPhone and hit the speed dial for what the newsroom calls “the Bat Phone,” a dedicated line that the editors monitor twenty-four/seven. Circuits must have been overloaded because l kept getting a busy signal. Same with the piece-of-crap phone. I tried to text. That didn’t work either. I sent an email to content@Citizen.com, a general address monitored by many editors. But emails can be slow. That left Twitter. 

The tweet needed to be worded carefully. I didn’t want to tip off the TV stations. I knew they monitored Twitter to keep tabs on the competition because we did the same to keep an eye on them.

“I’m here. Talk to Buzzy.” I tweeted directly to my editor, knowing Buzzy would tell her I had taken off toward the train.

By now the distance between me and the burning train was swarming with cops and firefighters. Sirens wailed. A Hennepin County sherriff’s helicopter whoop, whoop, whooped overhead. But I didn’t see any other media. 

“Ours alone, I think,” I tweeted.

The rule on a breaking story like this is you don’t take the time to write full paragraphs. It’s better to shoot just one sentence back to the newsroom as soon as you have a detail. An editor will pull it all together, hopefully taking out all the typos. Keep it comin’, they say. So I did.

“Counting 20 trucks from all firehouses. Sheriff chopper overhead. City, county cops everywhere.”

“Two cars on train fully engulfed. Smells like hair burning.”

“Pop, pop, pop. Don’t know what. Electrical something?”

“Ads on train for Citizen and Metro Transit bubbled, melted on sides of cars.”

I hope someone in the newsroom, our newsroom, is getting all this, I thought, and kept texting.

“Cops set up command center. ”

“Hear no cries for help from train; only rush of fire.”

“Windows pop out on train.”

“More sirens. Maybe 6 ambulances pulling up.”

“They’re not hurrying. Doubt anyone survived.”

Just then one of the half dozen cops at the command center turned in my direction so I ducked under the tarp in the truck bed, finding myself nose-to-nose with a giant wrench. When I poked my head up seconds later I found myself in the steady gaze of Minneapolis Sgt. Victoria Olson, her feet planted like the roots of an oak, her face as impassive as bark. She gave me a slight nod, then said something to one of the other cops at the command center. 

“Busted by Sgt. V. Olson.”

Someone was going to roust me, and soon, I figured, so I had to send back as much detail as possible because, as far as I could tell, I was the only representative from the public on the scene. 

“Smoke clearing a bit. Most damage in 2^nd car. Front of train seems only scorched.”

“Grass around train burned for about 30 feet.”

“Looks like cops evacuating nearby houses. ”

Finally I saw that my tweets were getting through.

“U R doing good. Keep it comin,” came a reply.

I couldn’t tell who sent it but it didn’t matter. Someone in the newsroom was receiving. Thank God.

Another explosion. I ducked under the tarp again, this time to protect myself. Good thing, too, because I felt the ping, ping, ping of shards of glass and metal raining down on me. Unfortunately, I moved so fast that I banged my noggin on a pile of hammers. As I rubbed my forehead someone snapped the tarp away.

“What exactly are you doing, Ms. Hughes?” said the white guy with the close-cropped haircut and the FBI badge hanging around his neck. 

After My Car Was Firebombed While I Covered a Riot...

by JudithYates Borger

It was a hot August night in 2002 when I was a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press dispatched to Minneapolis because it looked like a riot was erupting. Police had tried to issue a warrant on a drug house when someone unleashed a pit bull on the officers. They shot at the dog, the bullet ricocheted off the sidewalk and hit a youngster in the arm. Word went out in the neighborhood that cops had shot a kid.


I normally covered the Minneapolis mayor's office and city council. I'd never worked a police beat in my life and didn't have a clue how to handle a simple burglary, let alone an explosive situation. Nonetheless, the paper wanted all west-of-the-Mississippi reporters on the scene. I got lost on the way, and by the time I arrived, the cops had pulled out, leaving a TV van with a damaged antenna dangling like a broken arm, some torn down yellow police tape and a lot of broken glass. People stood around in groups talking in low murmurs.


I pulled my red Honda Civic del Sol, a gem of a two-seater convertible, into the parking of a convenience store, which was lit up like a surgical suite. Wearing shorts, a T-shirt and my 15-year-old Birkenstock sandals, I got out of my car, locking my purse in the trunk. Several people standing around eyed me, the only white person in sight, with curiosity. I looked like a lost soccer mom, except for my reporter's notebook, pen and cell phone.


I seldom worked nights and my first thought was to wonder what time was deadline. Clearly I wasn't going to have time to write a story, so I called the newsroom and started to dictate what I saw. I was in reporter mode and it didn't occur to me to be frightened.

I saw someone run away from a car and moments later a fire kindled inside. The crowd saw it too, and began to gather around while the fire grew. Soon the car was fully engulfed and I was afraid the branches of a huge maple tree the tree would catch fire, and then the house behind it. People watched like it was the Fourth of July as the car exploded. Fortunately, the fire burned out without touching the tree.
 


As I stood in the parking lot the manager of the convenience store walked up to me and asked, "Who are you?" Then he told me he had dragged a man who had been beaten into the store. Mohamed Somebody, the manager, had called 911 a couple of times to say the man needed medical attention, but no one was coming.


We were standing under the bright lights of the parking lot when we heard gunshots. Bang, bang, bang. It sounded like they were feet away. That’s when I realized I was in danger. I looked at Mohamed, he looked at me, and we both hustled into the store, careful to stand away from the windows. I envisioned spending the night surrounded by Blue Bunny Ice Cream.

Inside the store, I met , a StarTribune reporter, a competitor who had taken a brick in the back of his head. He was incoherent, asking me over and over again, "Who are you?" He asked where he was, and how he had gotten there. I answered his questions and then he'd start them all over again.

After what seemed like a very long time, three or four police cars pulled up in front of the store, blue and red lights flashing. Officers with shotguns and a big dog poured out like the cavalry coming to the rescue. One came to the door of convenience store, talked to the manager, looked at incoherent reporter, then asked me, "Who are you?" I was beginning to get used to the question.



She escorted the two of us to the back seat of the patrol car and shut the door. I looked out the window and saw my car parked next to the convenience store. I'd already seen one car firebombed that night and knew mine was next. When I knocked on the window to get the officer's attention — you can't get out of the back seat of a patrol car — she told me to forget about my car for the night.

"Get it in the morning," she said. I'll just bet, I thought.

The next morning, I got another reporter to drive me to the lot outside the convenience store to pick up my car. When I got there, the bricks on the side of the store were scorched, and a man with one tooth was outside with a broom and dustpan. I learned later that the fire department had already hauled away the husk of my car, including the charred remains of my purse, which had held $200 cash, a spare cell phone and all my credit cards.

"That was my car," I said to the man who was sweeping up the last bits of metal.

He reached into the pile, pulled out the "H" hood ornament, wiped it off on his pants and offered it to me.

"I'm sorry," he said.



KnightRidder, which then owned the Pioneer Press, refused to replace my car, saying it paid reporters 36.5 cents a mile to cover gas and my insurance. Besides, I was told, if it paid for my car it would have to pay for every car that got firebombed. I wonder where else that happens. Miami?

The Pioneer Press paid for my deductible on my car and homeowners insurance – for the cash, cell phone and other stuff toasted in my purse – and an airline ticket to Chicago, where I bought another cute little convertible identical to the one that was torched. Because the cause on the claim on my homeowners’ insurance was fire, I got a letter from our company telling me to be sure to check my home’s furnace.

Ten months later I resigned the paper, not because my car was firebombed, but because it was clear management did not have my back.

Like the fiction I write these days, this story has a satisfying conclusion. My protagonist is … wait for it … a newspaper reporter whose car is firebombed. Superb detail in that passage, if I do say so myself. She has lots of adventures while juggling career, family and her passions for both. I love making this stuff up.

Where’s Billie? and Whose Hand?, both Skeeter Hughes Mysteries, are doing very well in trade paperback and ebooks, available at all bookstores, Kindle and Nook. I’m working on the third mystery right now, title to be determined.

I’m deliriously happy and feeling safe in my work. Life is good.

When reseach becomes more than research

One of the bonuses of writing for a living is a flexible schedule. We writers can be working at midnight and swim or bike at 3 o'clock if we're so inclined. It's a great life, especially if it pays in dollars.

But even if the income is, shall we say, unpredictable, the writing life also can pay in other ways: the freedom to be part of the neighborhood. A couple years ago I volunteered to read to kids waiting to see their doctor at HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center) in downtown Minneapolis. On Thursday mornings I walked about 10 minutes, past the Mall of America Metrodome, to the center, grabbed a bag of books, and sat in the lobby reading to kids, or their siblings. Most of the kids loved hearing about Clifford's latest escapades, or searching for Waldo. I suspect their parents liked the respite. Then, as kids left their appointment they were allowed to choose a book to take home. The idea was to encourage literacy, and in a tiny way, I think it worked. But last spring I dropped the gig because it didn't give me a chance to get to know any of the kids. It felt like shift work. Plus, I was worried I'd get caught up in the latest measles epidemic.

Then, one day, I walked into the Somali Resource Center in Riverside Plaza (known to the University of Minnesota students who live nearby as Crack Towers)  and volunteered  as an aide to an English as a second language class one morning a week. It has turned into exactly the activity I wanted. I get to see the same people every week. Habiba. Dube. Hussein. Hua. I work with them in small groups as they struggle to learn English, which I've come to realize makes no sense. Most of the students are well over 60, and many never learned to read in Somali. Yet they keep working. I take two or three aside and help them read sentences such as "The shower is leaking. Call the manager."

I look forward to each Wednesday morning class for the chance to be with people, for the stimulation, for the change of scenery from my computer.   I'm also learning about customs, mannerisms, habits of Somali women, a community where I plan to set my next book in the Skeeter Hughes mystery series.

Have you ever turned a work or volunteer opportunity into a mystery?