The Pulpit Bully

Chapter 1

April 9, 2012

At four o’clock in the morning, Kelly Allen sat at her desk, staring at the various screens around the TV studio for a good five minutes while the news crawl rolled past. Cold, lonely, and seeking motivation, she listened to the ticking of the wall clock, buzzing lights, and someone across the room tapping a keyboard. Around her, there was the usual bustle of the crew making sure the set was ready.

The headlines and jumble of words that she had been half-hearing in the background rose to her consciousness. There had been a shooting at a local church yesterday, something she had entirely missed having done nothing but streamed Netflix all day. The police report had yet to be issued, and the theories had run amok all day Sunday with reporters shaping the story to provide the best possible entertainment. The crawl “broke” and “updated” the same news every five minutes or so. Her station’s reporter, Lara Chan, had already given the initial chunk of data to the writers and researchers to make the determination of what and how to air this news. It seemed like something she should pay attention to, yet her heart wasn’t in it.

At thirty-seven years old, she was tired of the business. She was both bored and angry with her profession for manipulating the news to generate viewership and ratings. This was not why she had studied journalism, not what she had envisioned nearly fifteen years earlier when she was fresh out of Columbia Journalism School, MA in hand. She had entered the field with all the enthusiasm, idealism, and confidence of a new graduate who believed she would make a difference. She hadn’t.

She accepted her assignments, did her homework, and performed as expected. She made good money—more than she had ever expected. Somehow her career had taken on a life of its own. Her long, lean, fit body, her startling blue-green eyes, and attractive toothy smile had not been what she wanted to build her reputation on. About five or six years after following the typical starting career path—newspaper newsroom assistant, researcher, and writer of a few features—she switched to TV. As a research analyst, she was sometimes allowed to contribute to the script for the anchor. A year or two later, someone noticed her. She was handed a script—a news report—and was asked to read it. The reading was taped. The powers that be liked how she looked and how she sounded. Now, as the morning anchor and host of her own morning talk show, she was somewhat of a local celebrity. She was asked to introduce guest speakers at local political luncheons, and she attended charity auctions. She was called on to be the spokesperson for various women’s health issues, and she did promos for her own station. She was one of the faces of local TV.

But forty was just around the corner; of late, she had been forced to take stock of her life. What had happened to her dreams? Had she reached the pinnacle of her career? Was it too soon—or, for that matter, too late—to make a change? She was approaching the moment when many women hit their stride and became mentors. But she wasn’t done learning. She hadn’t accomplished what she thought she would have. She didn’t yet know who she was.

Her personal life was a wreck on the order of the Titanic, having recently caught her fiancé, the intended father of her nonexistent children, in an affair. The tough cookie she had prided herself on being crumbled, but her behavior said otherwise. She immediately wiped her hands of him and moved on. No looking back, no second-guessing, no forgiving—just moving forward with supreme determination.

Now that her brain was fully booted, she turned her attention to the story at hand. She learned that essentially there were two people who were directly involved in the shooting who allegedly struggled over a gun. One of those people was shot. A third man was collateral damage, or so it appeared, and was killed. At this juncture, there were no verified facts. The stations showed video clips of several church members, along with one of the minister who made a brief comment lamenting the events of the day.

As Kelly listened, something in her was sparked—something visceral, recalling something like a past-life memory, not that she believed in that sort of thing. Deeply entrenched in the event, she made no effort to figure out why the story intrigued her. In fact, she was not even aware that she was so caught up in it until Zack, her producer, spoke.

“Kelly, what on earth are you staring at? I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last five minutes.” His impatience showed as he raised his hand to comb through his ash-blond hair. His usually expressive dark eyes were hidden in a squint, barely seen under his furrowed brow.

She slowed her speech as she regained composure, saying, “Something … happened … yesterday at this church. Something’s not right.” It was an ambiguous yet obvious reply, incongruous with the usually tailored, articulate, in-charge woman she had become.

Feeling an enormous sense of unease along with a surge of energy and willpower, she announced, “I’m taking this on. This is my story.”

Zack ignored what she had said and called her to the set. Her morning news show was about to air. By five, the report of the shooting was simmering, waiting for the news writer to add any last-minute updates to yesterday’s on-site reporter’s copy.

Kelly didn’t want to read the script from Lara’s reporting on this event, but once the cameras started rolling, she was in performance mode. She read with the appropriate amount of dismay, concern, and titillation to engage the audience. She wasn’t altogether putting on an act. She felt it for real, even the need to stir the emotions of the public, which, up until then, had been a maddening part of the job. Now she wanted her viewers to maintain interest in the story. She needed time and fodder to make her case for why she should be the one to follow it. It was whispering to her somewhere deep inside.