“And a Mur Cromuf to you, too,” I said. “Eating a late lunch?”
“Sorry,” she said. “Yeah, trying to finish up an article before I go home to eat my solitary supper. I was going to take your mother up on her invitation to see Michael’s show and stay at your house tonight and have Christmas dinner with y’all tomorrow, but it looks as if Mother Nature is going to interfere. The roads are impossible. I meant to call you so you wouldn’t worry.”
“No problem,” I said. I wondered, briefly, how many other people Mother had invited to stay with Michael and me, and whether any of them had four-wheel drive and would turn up on our doorstep in our absence. “Good call, not trying to make the trip. We don’t have power, and however bad the roads are there, trust me, they’re worse here. Look, while I’ve got you on the line—what do you know about a Trib reporter named Ainsley Werzel?”
“He’s a total jerk,” she said.
“I already know that.”
“And with any luck, he won’t be a Trib reporter much longer. No idea why they hired him in the first place, or why he’s stayed there as long as he has.”
“And how long is that?”
“About four months. Of course, you can’t just fire people these days, you know. Not in a litigious town like D.C. You have to prove they’re completely incompetent. Takes time, even when it’s true. Any day now, they’ll decide they’ve got enough ammo and they’ll kick him curbside. Meanwhile, they’re trying to minimize the damage he can do by assigning him to spin his wheels on nothing stories. How’d you run into him?”
“Apparently one of the nothing stories they assigned him to was the Caerphilly Christmas parade.”
“Ouch!” she said. “Sorry. Trib’s perception, not mine. So I guess he lucked out, stumbling on your murder.”
“It’s not my murder,” I said. Snapped, really, and then thought better of it. “Sorry. Touchy subject. And what’s the best way to complain to the Trib about him?”
“You sure you want to complain?” she said. “Some editors like it when their reporters hit close to home. Makes them feel they’re pulling no punches and being a thorn in the side of the establishment and all that. And they’ll never hang their reporters out to dry in public. They may read Werzel the riot act back at the newsroom, but they’ll defend him to you.”
“Even if he’s lying?” I explained about Werzel’s “unavailable for comment” line with a few acerbic comments about the character assassination he was trying to pull on Clarence and Caroline.
Heather thought for a moment.
“Okay, the no comment thing’s not fair,” she said. “But technically, it might be accurate. Maybe he was phoning in the story, and his editor asked him if he’d gotten a reaction from you. And he couldn’t reach you in the five- or ten-minute window left to get your comment. Me, I wouldn’t say someone was unavailable for comment unless I’d tried pretty damned hard over a reasonable period of time and thought they were deliberately unavailable, but Werzel’s a sleaze.”
“So your advice is to just ignore it?”
“No, my advice is to keep your eye on him. Sounds like he’s starting to flail. His editor’s probably pushing him. Asking for better quotes, more damning evidence. Werzel’s going to try to deliver, whether there’s anything to deliver or not.”
“Like making things up?”
“Maybe. Or at least making much more glaring omissions and misquotes. If he’s already starting to slant things and weasel, there’s always the chance that before too long he’ll be out without you doing anything. And if you do complain, be very businesslike and make sure you’ve got at least three real howlers he’s pulled. Clear, provable errors. Until then, if you need to vent, don’t call the Trib—call me.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I feel better, knowing that the Trib already knows he’s an idiot. Wish I knew what inspired them to hire him in the first place.”
“I heard he started with them as a stringer. They wanted to expand their coverage of Virginia state politics. And they probably remembered his one big story—the Emerson Drood case.”
“Emerson Drood?” The name sounded vaguely familiar.
“It was about ten years ago. That politician from somewhere near Charlottesville—was it Fluvanna County? Anyway, you remember—the one who pulled out of the House of Delegates race when they found out he’d spent time in a mental institution.”