Last week I was reading “Deadline” by John Sandford. This is
one of the Virgil Flowers mysteries and Sandford delivers a great story mixed
with action, intrigue, greed, evil and more plot twists than you can imagine. Sandford
is an expert at mixing in humor along the way, often at the expense of his
protagonist.
One scene near the end of the story has Virgil in the midst
of all kinds of craziness when a female TV reporter, who happens to be an
attractive blonde, tries to get him to agree to an interview on camera. Flowers deflects her attention and steers her
toward his pal Johnson, who got Virgil involved in the case in the first place.
Johnson not only agrees to the interview but attempts to get
a little friendly with the reporter. And it’s his girlfriend that calls him out
on it!
This scene came to mind because I was interviewed by a local
TV reporter this week to discuss my role in another business. While it’s not
directly related to my writing efforts, it does allow a certain amount of
creativity. During the interview the
image of Sandford’s characters were right there with me. Unlike Johnson, I kept my hands to myself. I didn’t want to push the envelope where life
was imitating art imitating life.
Since I’m writing about interviews, here’s an excerpt from “Why
319?” In this scene, the squad gets
caught up in a deadly exchange with a suspect while trying to serve a search
warrant. The action drew the attention of the local media.
The bomb squad did their job well.
As Kozlowski expected, the garage was rigged with a couple of homemade devices,
ones that were easy enough to deactivate by Myers as he entered the building.
Naughton and his team disarmed them and cautiously checked the rest of the
property. Inside the house, they found two small devices in the bedrooms, taped
in a corner of the window where they would do the most damage to any intruder.
Naughton also found a stash of weapons. There were two shotguns, several
handguns, and an extensive collection of knives. Everything was meticulously
recorded, tagged, and bagged by the team.
Cantrell watched as Fen worked
without comment, moving with precision over the bodies. It was one of the few
times I could remember Pappy going longer than five minutes without a
cigarette. Eventually, he walked down to the street and fired one up. He took a
call, then motioned me to join him.
“That was McDonald. They found
nothin’ at the shop. Guy didn’t leave his tools there, just brought his gear
with him. She’s going to the hospital. Ah told her to go home after that. Ain’t
no need for her here.”
I nodded in agreement. Pappy seemed
to be waiting for me, but I didn’t know what to say.
“Y’all had no way of knowing this
would happen, Chene. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“We came to question him and to
search the property. But a cop died because of me, Pappy. I must have missed
something.”
He fixed me with a stare that shut
me up. “Y’all can’t miss what ain’t there. He died saving that Bloomfield
girlie. He knew what this job was about. Y’all do.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Y’all keep digging. Find sumthin
that will make sense of this mess. Ah need to talk to the damn media.”
At the end of the street, I could
see several of the local news vans, their antenna towers jutting out into the
darkening sky. There were enough harsh lights from the camera crews to guide an
aircraft in for a landing. As Cantrell trudged up the street, I turned back to
the house.
This last Friday was the funeral service for Aretha Franklin. Here's one of my favorites from the Queen of Soul.
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