Page 39 of The Business Trip

CHAPTER 31Bill

After the Conference

I hadn’t slept since Chief Newman called me in the middle of the night to tell me about Trent. I had known the chief for years, been at Rotary Club meetings and National Night Out events with him. We had a good relationship. In fact, I was the one who had pushed Trent to send a reporter to cover the police-community basketball game the previous week. That was not the kind of story my news director would have taken to naturally. Trent didn’t enjoy putting reporters on light stories, but I knew we needed a little balance from the sea of crime we offered up on the air. There were times I wondered if Trent was truly the person to lead us into the future, but then he would surprise me, like when he went to take care of Hannah in the field, or how he wowed the Mega Mattress people, and I’d be right back in his corner.

Being a heavy sleeper, I didn’t even realize my cell phone was ringing until at least the fifth ring. Fumbling for it groggily, trying not to disturb Maxine, I knew before I even answered that anything at that hour had to be bad news. My throat felt froggy as I croaked out, “Hello?”

“Bill, Chief Reggie Newman here. Sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night, but I have some news you will want to hear…”

My first thought was, how did he get my cell number? I guessed the police had their ways. My second thought was that the news must be even larger than a massive shooting or building collapse for the chief to be calling me, the general manager, in the overnight hours. This sort of thing should go to the news director. Why not bother Trent?

“Chief Newman, that’s OK, what time is it?” I asked, fumbling for my glasses.

“3:53. I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t urgent…”

And that’s when he told me. It’s nearly impossible to describe the emotions one has when hearing that the man running your newsroom is sitting in the police station accused of murder.

And that they have evidence.

I saw a karate chop cleanly dividing two parts of my world: the before this happened and the after. It would never be the same. This was clearly going to be one of the defining moments of my career, if not my life.

The hours after that were a blur of calling my boss and his boss and his boss until I reached the CEO of our entire company, trying to implore him and everyone else that people are still innocent until proven guilty; trying to soothe our newsroom when the news came out; having fellow GMs from around the country reach out with shock and sympathy;nothaving certain people reach out who I thought would (I guess you do find out who your friends are); having anchors like Leigh in my office sobbing and having to comfort them; still having a newsroom that needed to be run and pulling Jorge aside to tell him he needed to take charge; having HR up my ass nearly every hourtrying to get more information; having our PR people up my ass asking if we needed to put a statement out to the media; finally releasing that statement saying we were aware of the situation and would cooperate fully in any investigation; and spending every second not putting out an immediate fire in the aftermath trying to wrap my own head around how this could be possible.

And then one of the Mega Mattress people left me a voicemail.

“Bill, we have to tell you that we’re all shocked and horrified by this turn of events. As you know, we are a company that prides itself on our values. Before today, you were our number one choice. Although everyone in this country is entitled to a fair trial, we don’t believe NBC6 is the place for us to put our advertising dollars. We’ll be buying ad time with the other three stations in town, particularly Channel 2. Their belief system aligns much more closely with ours. Thank you.”

I tried to reach them three times to get them to change their minds, but they wouldn’t answer my calls.

Wednesday night, the police held their second press conference, where they named the two potential victims, women named Stephanie Monroe and Jasmine Littleton I had never heard of. Stephanie was said to have been at the conference with Trent. I didn’t sleep at all that night, pacing my home office. Maxine tried every trick in the book to assist me—cocktails, a sleeping pill, a shoulder massage—but nothing helped. She finally retired and I stayed up, stopping my pacing only long enough to look up any morsels of information people were reporting.

TMZ ran a promo teasing that they had interviewed people who worked at the conference hotel; a competitive outlet in Atlanta dug into Trent’s past and found speeding tickets, his divorce record, and a DUI; CNN had police sources telling themthe evidence was damning, even without bodies. An industry gossip website called GTV cited a “station insider” as saying many felt Trent had a wicked mean streak and a history of bullying subordinates and sexually harassing female employees. A friend of Trent’s ex-wife went on the air and said Katrina had almost filed a restraining order once after he got physical with her. This was all new information to me.

Despite my fatigue, I had to go into work Thursday and put on a brave face. Midmorning, I was walking to the vending machine area to get a Coke—my second of the day—when I saw one of our reporters, Hannah. She looked exhausted. I’m sure I did too. I stopped her for a moment in the hallway.

“Hannah, how are you? I saw your reports outside of Trent’s place. You’re doing good work in a very tough situation.” I always thought it was nice if the GM could say a few encouraging words to young reporters. It made them feel seen.

“Thank you,” she said softly, looking down. “This has been the hardest assignment of my career.”

“I’m sure it has,” I responded in my best soothing and calming voice. “Remember that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. But yes, this has to be especially difficult for you given what Trent did for you Tuesday.”

She looked back up and cocked her head.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“When Trent went out and met you in the field. You know, mental health is incredibly important to all of us at the company. We will do everything we can to help our team. We’re all in this together and my door is open anytime you need it.”

“Tuesday?” I could see wheels turning in her head. “Umm… could you have me confused with another reporter? I never saw Trent in the field.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He told me that he ran out to help you…”

“I’ve never seen Trent out in the field with us, ever,” she said, a look of confusion on her face. “And I don’t think mental health is very important to him. I heard him say once that it should be renamed ‘woman-tel health’ because men don’t get bogged down in it.”

“Oh, uh… I must have misunderstood what he told me then. I’m sorry.”

Quickly I turned away, my head now pounding with the possibility that Trent had lied to me. Why would he do that? Why would he make that story up about helping Hannah? Where did he go? Was this part of the timeline of the murders? Jesus God, what was happening?

Returning to my office, I saw I had a new voicemail. Hoping it was from Mega Mattress and I could make a last-minute effort to keep them, I picked up my desk phone and hit play. An unfamiliar deep female voice rang out.

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