Free A Child Is Missing by David Stout Page A

acting in ways that were “appropriate”—appropriate not in a social sense but in a psychological one.
    He knew that some people thought of him as a “lifer” at the Gazette. Sometimes he thought of himself that way, although he doubted if his job was that secure lately. The publisher was too mercurial, and Will had committed the unpardonable sin over the years of finding out too much about the personal problems of the publisher and his family. It wasn’t that Will had tried to find out such things; it was just that inevitably he had. And he sensed sometimes that Lyle Glanford held it against him.
    Sometimes Will chided himself for not having had a sense much earlier of his own entitlement. He had gone to college on a scholarship provided by the Gazette for being a good delivery boy and, later, a good copyboy. He might not have gone to college at all (even if his father hadn’t committed suicide in the midst of his money problems) if it hadn’t been for the Gazette. So Will had gotten a job as a cub reporter, then as an editor—feeling all the while that he was paying back what he owed.
    In fact, he was a pretty good journalist. He knew that now—intellectually, he knew it, even if in his heart he still sometimes felt as if he was in debt to the Gazette —but he was on the wrong side of forty, and his wife was well established in the counseling she sometimes did in Bessemer, and his kids loved it, and they had a lovely comfortable house with a porch deck and a big backyard, and his life really wasn’t so bad.…
    Enough of those thoughts; they were the last thing he needed now. Should he call home? No; later would be better, when his mood would be mellower.
    First, he had to do some research.
    It is one of the paradoxes of newspaperdom that a paper in a poor, small town can not only survive but make a lot of money. The reason is simple enough: A lot of people still need a newspaper for something, whether to check the TV schedule, or the supermarket ads, or if any of the neighbors have died.
    Will knew that the Long Creek Eagle made money, although Will’s own paper had nibbled into its circulation with its Country Edition. Will knew, too, that he would get a cordial reception at the Eagle. Competitor or not, he was a fellow newspaperman.
    His pant legs felt damp as he went up the steps of the Eagle (Have to see about some laundry, depending on how long I’m going to be around, he thought), and the wind-driven sleet and rain seemed to chase him inside.
    In the lobby of the Eagle stood a globe perhaps six feet wide. It reminded him briefly of the globe in the lobby of the New York Daily News, except that the Eagle ’s was smaller and dust-covered and the lighting around it much dimmer.
    A small man in his sixties sat behind a wooden counter. He seemed to have his hands full with the switchboard and a tuna sandwich, so Will ignored him. Instead, Will followed the arrow that said NEWSROOM and that pointed to a winding staircase.
    At the top of the stairs was a door, and just inside a teenage girl sat behind a desk. She was wearing a Madonna sweatshirt, eating french fries, and carrying on a giggling conversation by telephone. She put down the phone and swallowed long enough for Will to introduce himself and ask to see someone in charge. The girl nodded, pressed a couple of buttons, mumbled something into the phone, pressed another button, and went back to the french fries and giggling chatter.
    Before long, a young man with a firm handshake and an eager manner came out and introduced himself. If he was surprised that the Bessemer Gazette had sent its executive editor to Long Creek, he had the tact not to show it.
    Will and the younger man traded small talk about what a terrible thing the kidnapping was and how busy everyone was on the Long Creek Eagle because of it.
    The young man led Will to a small, narrow room lined with metal file drawers, showed him how to work