Strangled - Brian McGrory [74]
I said, “I haven’t seen that, but it sounds exquisitely ridiculous.” After I said this, I wondered, nearly aloud, why it was that I always have to throw in an extra adjective. Or is exquisitely an adverb? Either way, not the point. I continued, “Look, I’m just doing what you guys would all do, and that’s report news. If someone sends you something in the mail or has a message delivered identifying where a murder victim might be, you contact authorities and you report this in your newspaper or on your network. Maybe you try to get a look yourself, to make sure the investigation is proceeding as it should. That’s exactly what the Record has done in all three instances. I’m not sure why the police would have a problem with that.”
A door to an auditorium behind the scrum opened, and a uniformed police officer announced, “Commissioner at the podium in two minutes.” The reporters surged as one toward the opening, pushing their way inside, leaving me alone in the hallway. When they were all inside, I went in as well, notebook in hand, ready to do what I do best, which is report news rather than make it.
What a business, what a life, what a world.
Commissioner Hal Harrison, the man who would be mayor, strode to the podium as if he was about to attack it. He was in the hushed, carpeted media center, the place awash in the soft color blue — royal blue carpet, pale blue walls, men and women in navy blue uniforms, aging newspaper reporters in the frayed blue blazers that count as couture in the realm of words and news.
The gathered media had followed the universal, perhaps natural order of things. The better-dressed television reporters — the women in expensive suits, the men in Brooks Brothers and ties — dominated the front of the room, with the occasional newspaper reporter who hadn’t yet learned of his or her proper — or as is more often the case, improper — place. Behind them, the bulk of the disheveled print reporters in open collars or jean skirts sat with noticeably less practiced postures. Behind them still were the unshaven men in unintentionally low-riding jeans peering through the lenses of a couple of dozen television cameras, often flanked by similar-looking men wielding the aforementioned boom mikes. And behind them were the photographers, known in campaign parlance as the stills. The commissioner’s many police advisers and campaign strategists sat in chairs along the two side walls of the room, their shoes as shiny as the bathroom mirrors at a Holiday Inn.
I took a position, standing, pen and legal pad in hand, in the back of the room, off to the side, with a clean vantage over the masses. The whole thing had the feel of something large, not least for the reason that as Harrison took center stage, a CNN reporter stood on camera in the middle of the room, announcing, “Boston Police Commissioner Hal Harrison is ready to address the issue of whether the Boston Strangler, the most notorious serial killer in the history of the United States, has reappeared after a forty-plus-year absence; we’re carrying this to you live.”
“I’d just like to make a couple of brief comments and announcements, what have you, and then I’ll take a few of your questions,” the commissioner began.
“I’d like to start by saying this is a trying time in Boston, and certainly a challenging time in the Boston Police Department. We don’t like to see one single innocent person killed, never mind three of them, all women. I would like to take a moment to assure the public, particularly women, that we have every available resource dedicated to solving these prior three murders and preventing any future ones, and we are confident on both fronts that that is exactly what will be the case. I would encourage women to exercise appropriate precautions until the perpetrator is identified and apprehended. But as long as people use basic common sense, the city is safe. I repeat: Boston