Fifteen Minutes of Fame

By Gary Watson

Should a journalist ever become a participant in the story he is covering? Thats the ethical dilemma facing Clint Stockton in Fifteen Minutes of Fame, the exciting first novel by Gary Watson.

Clint, top reporter for the Advocate, a second-rate daily newspaper in Atlanta, is already at odds with his wife over his job when he begins following two murder investigations - the beating of a homeless man on a downtown street, and the shootings of three big-rig truck drivers. As his workload mounts and his personal life becomes even more stressful, Clint uncovers information about the killings that brings him to a choice. Does he remain merely a reporter who covers the news, or does he get involved and end up making the news? His career, his relationships, resolution of the crimes and even life and death are on the line as Clint struggles to make his decision.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 28, 2004
• ISBN: 9781468510157

Gary Watson

Gary Watson is the author of four mystery/suspense novels. He has been writing since fifth grade, including twenty-fi ve years as a small-town newspaper editor/reporter.Since retiring from the real world in 2020, Watson has stayed busy writing, hunting down antique shops with his wife Suzanne, talking sports with two grown daughters and trying to keep up with three grandchildren, ages 11, 10 and 6.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The phone rang, causing Clint Stockton to instantly lose his appetite. He knew he wouldn’t get to touch the chopped steak his wife had just set before him.

Cindi Stockton stopped pouring sweet tea into her glass. She put down the pitcher and sighed, ordering her husband in a barely audible voice of resignation, You get it. You know it’s for you.

Damn! Clint blurted out in frustration as he shoved his chair away from the table. Glancing at Suzi, his six-year-old daughter who was sitting at the supper table slurping down a glass of milk, he regretted using profanity. I’m sorry, he apologized meekly, not looking directly at the little girl. He walked into the adjacent kitchen to answer the phone.

Clint, this is Bill, was the unnecessary identification from the caller.

Man, can’t this wait? Cindi’s just put supper on the table. Clint asked the question even though he knew whatever Bill Wallace was calling about couldn’t wait.

Blood and guts on the west expressway. An 18-wheeler played pinball with several cars. There’s fatalities.

Don’t you have anyone else you can send? Clint begged, knowing full well Wallace didn’t have anyone else to send, or he wouldn’t be calling. I’m exhausted. I haven’t been home for supper a night this week, and my wife is royally hacked off at me.

I know she’s pissed. I had a wife once. But tell her to look at it this way. At least you’ve still got a job.

Clint gave in without any more fight. Tell me where, he said, his voice tailing off. He tried to open a counter drawer for a pen and piece of paper to write the directions his editor was about to give but the handle came off. The loose handle was one of several minor repair jobs needing attention at the Stockton house. Pulling the drawer open with his fingers, Clint grabbed a pen and note card. The pen was out of ink. Clint tossed it back in the drawer and took another as Wallace started with the directions. Traveling east on Interstate 20 into Atlanta, the big rig had plowed into several cars before ramming the bridge supports at Westlake Road, just inside the city limits.

Familiar with the location, Clint didn’t bother writing down directions. The wreck was on his side of town. All right, I’m on my way…and yeah, I know…get the story done in time for the morning’s first edition.

Thanks. We’ll see about some time off. I promise.

Have you ever seen a pig fly?

Uh, no, Wallace replied, a pause reflecting his confusion about Clint’s question. Well, yeah. I did fly to Las Vegas once with this woman who was about as fat as a pig. I still don’t know what possessed me to go off for a long weekend with that porker. But what the hell has that got to do with this wreck tonight?

Well, I’m from south Georgia. I’ve seen a lot of pigs, and none of them have ever flown. And I know I’ve got a better chance of seeing a pig fly than you keeping your promise of giving me some time off. Wallace could make promises all night, but Clint knew survivors in the Atlanta Advocate’s newsroom had seen very little free time since the company started its cutbacks four months earlier. A sagging economy, declining advertising revenue and more and more electronic sources for free news had put the city’s number two daily newspaper in a struggle for survival.

Clint bit at his lower lip as he hung up the phone. He kept his hand on the phone for a moment, as if he was expecting Bill Wallace to call back and say he was sorry and that Clint didn’t have to go out after all and could sit down and enjoy supper and conversation with his wife and daughter. But the reality was Clint was going to cover the assignment, and knowing the response he was going to get from his wife, he was slow to go back into the dining room.

I’ve got to go, he said softly as he walked back to the table and placed his hands on Suzi’s shoulders. She was taking the first bite - too big a bite - of her supper. Don’t save my plate. I’ll be late, he said, kissing the child on the cheek and taking one last swallow from his glass of tea.

Without looking up, Cindi cut a small piece of steak. She was hesitant to say anything because she was angry and because she knew Clint fully understood how she felt. But the words popped out any way as Clint started to walk away from the table. "I’m sick of this, Clint. I’m sick of how your life - our life - revolves around that newspaper. Things have got to change."

With his own frustrations about to boil over, Clint, having no desire to rehash the argument they’d been through a hundred times, looked apologetically at his wife and walked out of the dining room without saying anything. Their daughter continued eating her supper, stuffing another piece of catsup-coated meat into her mouth. At times Clint and Cindi spoke sternly to each other in front of Suzi, but they never had a major shouting match in her presence. No matter how angry, irritated or frustrated they were with each other, they didn’t show it in front of Suzi.

As Clint left, Cindi realized she had not bothered to ask where he was going, but what did it matter? She could read about it in tomorrow’s Advocate. All that really mattered to her was that once again, there was an empty chair at the table and a plate of food that was getting cold.

Stepping out of the garage that was filled with seldom-used exercise equipment and Suzi’s discarded toys instead of the family‘s two vehicles, Clint quickly realized the temperature had dropped considerably since he arrived home 90 minutes earlier. It was still no colder than 40, perhaps 38 or 39, pleasant for 7 p.m. on a late February day in Georgia, but too chilly for cold-natured Clint. He went back inside and got a brown leather jacket, Cindi’s present to him the past Christmas, and a red and blue Atlanta Braves cap.

Inside, Cindi continued eating even though suddenly she wasn’t very hungry. Settling into another night with Clint not at home, she began talking to Suzi about her day in first grade. Looking at the child was like looking at the mother. They had the same shoulder-length blonde hair, long slender figure and sparkling blue eyes, although Cindi’s blue eyes had not sparkled much lately. Suzi was eager to rattle off details of her class field trip to the circus at Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta, and after going through the long list of things she had eaten - popcorn, cotton candy, candy apple and soft drink - she announced to her mother she was going to grow up to be a lion tamer. Cindi smiled at her daughter. Better a lion tamer than the alligator girl or the bearded woman, the mother thought to herself.

As mother and daughter continued their recap of the day’s activities, Clint pumped the accelerator of his Ford Explorer before backing out of the driveway. The eight year old red SUV, which had been Cindi’s before her father surprised her with a new Expedition, chugged and sputtered for 100 yards down the street before finally picking up speed. It was in great need of a tune-up and some other repairs, but like the kitchen drawer, had been neglected. Everyone at the Advocate was putting in extra hours in an effort to save the paper and their jobs, which didn‘t leave much time for home repairs or spouses. Some staff writers had been laid off, and others had bailed out for other jobs before they were let go. Clint had elected to stay. He liked what he was doing, and felt a sense of loyalty to Bill Wallace, who had hired, or more appropriately, rescued him two years earlier from the Beacon, a little weekly newspaper in Clint’s southwest Georgia hometown of Hayleyville, which Clint often explained was halfway between nowhere and east nowhere. His description usually drew laughs, but his geographical explanation was close to the truth.

Clint’s dream to leave Hayleyville to work for a big newspaper in a big city had been sidetracked by a series of events that started when he was five years old. Channing Stockton was killed in a trench cave-in at a construction site, leaving Louise Stockton with no insurance, no money and Clint and three year old Jeff to raise. Louise worked hard, supplementing her inadequate pay as a grocery store cashier with odd jobs ranging from baby-sitting to baking cakes. Her red velvet cakes were particularly popular. Always smiling, never complaining, Louise made sure her boys were never lacking, sent them to church, taught them manners and demanded they do their best in whatever they tried. The boys made their mark at Pine County High School. Clint was studious, finishing third in his class, and he loved to write. All through high school he made spending money by covering sports and fluff assignments for the Beacon. With an academic scholarship, Clint headed off to the University of Georgia intent on becoming a writer whose words, sentences and paragraphs would right wrongs, end corruption and solve all the world’s great problems. And if he won a Pulitzer doing all of that, well that would be just fine. Jeff loved sports, especially baseball. He pitched the Pine County Pioneers into the state semifinals his junior year, and his 89 mile an hour fastball and knee-buckling curve were good enough for Georgia Southern University to offer him a scholarship in the fall of his senior year. Jeff was certain about their future. He would pitch the Atlanta Braves into the World Series, ending the team’s years of frustrations of excellence during the regular season and flopping in the post season, and Clint, the big city famous journalist, would write about his little brother’s heroics.

Early in the winter semester of his sophomore year at Georgia, Clint got a call from home. Jeff, who had refused to tell Clint the had not felt well for months, had been diagnosed with leukemia and faced a long, difficult stretch of chemotherapy. Clint didn’t think twice about his course of action. He dropped out of UGA and went home to help. Jeff’s treatments were brutal, but Clint was there to see him through all the gut-wrenching nausea, weight loss, hair loss and depression. The depression was hardest. Georgia Southern promised to hold the baseball scholarship, a good-hearted gesture, but Clint wasn’t blind. He saw the emptiness in Jeff’s eyes, an emptiness that came from realizing he would never play college ball. Clint saw that same emptiness in his mother’s eyes, but it wasn’t from the mere loss of a baseball scholarship. She was fighting for her son’s life. Keeping their spirits up became a full time task for Clint.

Slowly, Jeff started feeling better, regaining strength. With doctors optimistic for remission, Clint enrolled at 1,000-student Southwest College, a 20 mile commute from home and a million miles from the University of Georgia’s glitz and prestige. That didn’t matter to Clint. At Southwest he could resume his writing studies while continuing to help the family. He started working for the Beacon again as well. The assignments were never controversial - nothing in Hayleyville ever was - but Clint was getting great practical experience writing about a myriad of subjects to compliment his classroom work.

All went well for the Stocktons for almost two years, but everyone, especially the doctors, knew Jeff was still sick. They started more chemo, and for two more years the younger Stockton brother rode the roller coaster of good days and bad days until he got tired of the ride. Clint and his mother were at Jeff’s side when he passed. In his last coherent conversation with Clint, Jeff said, If you can’t write that story about me, write it about some other kid who makes good.

Clint’s and Louise’s grief was great, but was tempered by their faith that Jeff was in Heaven, probably playing baseball. Trying to mask his grief, Clint often joked that with Jeff’s competitive nature, he likely wasn’t cutting Jesus any slack, pitching him high and tight with that good fastball and then buckling His knees with a late-breaking curve.

They buried Jeff in the city cemetery, not that far from the high school ball field, and went on with their lives. Six months later Clint graduated with honors from Southwest and was getting ready to find that great reporting job, and Louise, always smiling, was still checking out folks’ oatmeal and bacon at the Piggly Wiggly and baking those red velvet cakes.

Clint put away his resumes’ the day his mother told him she was feeling particularly tired and achy and was going to see the doctor. It took awhile, but the diagnosis was finally made - lupus. Clint wasn’t about to leave after he was descriptively told what was ahead for his mother - a long, progressively worsening illness that would be painful, debilitating and likely eventually lead to heart failure or kidney failure or both. His mother had done too much, made too many sacrifices for him and his brother for Clint to abandon her. Instead of chasing his dream in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston or Los Angeles, Clint continued at the Beacon so he could care for his mom. He was there for a decade before Louise went on a heavenly road trip to watch Jeff play again.

Clint never harbored any remorse or bitterness for being back home to care for his brother and mom. It was his place, his duty and their time together and fighting the battles only strengthened their family bond. While his original career ambitions had been sidetracked, working in his hometown had provided another type of life-changing experience for Clint. He knew of Cindi Abbott - she was a freshman at Pine County High when Clint was a senior - but their first real meeting and conversation took place when Clint went to her father’s farm supply store to research an article on the increasing costs of operating a family farm, a significant issue to Hayleyville and the little surrounding towns. In one of those relationships where opposites inexplicably attract, Clint, the serious, bound for bigger places, goal-oriented writer, and Cindi, the content homebody, hit it off. Cindi was a source of strength to Clint during the illnesses of his brother and mother. She became his confidant, his shoulder to cry on, his pick-me-up when he was down. They became inseparable, the talk of the little town. Everyone knew they would get married. The only question was when. Clint wanted to wait to get married, believing all his energy should be channeled toward his mother, whose health was steadily declining. Cindi pushed for a wedding, reasoning his mother was a strong woman with a strong will to live who deserved to see her remaining son start a family. She proved to be right. Their marriage was powerful medicine for Louise, as was the three years she got to spend with her precious granddaughter Suzi.

Clint was 34 when his mother died. Marriage and fatherhood were wonderful, but his mother’s death had Clint at an unhealthy emotional low. The years of caring for Jeff and Louise had sucked away all his emotion, his passion, his energy. He needed a change. It was time for him to do something for himself, to follow his dream. The problem was, not many big-time newspapers were willing to take a chance on a mid-thirties reporter who had spent his entire career in a south Georgia speck of a town, writing as many articles on home gardening and rattlesnake roundups as homicides, budget deficits and political corruption. But old Bill Wallace, who had gotten his start at small papers four decades earlier, saw some potential, and perhaps a lot of himself, in Clint, and offered him a job at the Advocate, which had been started six years earlier by a group of deep-pocketed businessmen and former politicians unhappy with their decreasing influence on the editorial decisions for the nationally known Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Despite its decent job covering the news, the Advocate had never really caught on in the city and was still far behind in readership and acceptance and the owners’ determination to keep the paper running was eroding.

The 250 mile, five hour family move from Hayleyville to Atlanta had been made with considerable anguish and conflict. Clint knew he had to leave southwest Georgia. At his age, he realized if he didn’t make the move, he would likely be there forever, writing about Mrs. Smith’s third grade class project when he was 60 years old. On the other hand, Cindi had no desire to leave. An only child who had enjoyed every indulgence, her dream was to stay in Hayleyville and enjoy life with a large circle of lifelong friends while Clint took over the Beacon and became one of the most prominent men in town, like her father. Her career plans? To raise two or three kids and work as needed in her father’s store, which wasn’t very often. Naturally, Mr. And Mrs. Abbott were not thrilled about their only child and coddled grandchild moving so far away. After many, many discussions, some of them not very pleasant, Clint finally persuaded Cindi, saying the move was a trial, and if things didn’t work out in Atlanta, they would move back. When Irv Abbott gave Cindi the Expedition when she and her family moved to Atlanta, he suggested she use it for frequent of trips back to Hayleyville.

After two years in Atlanta, nothing had been settled. Clint liked his job, despite the Advocate’s tenuous status and the long hours, and Bill Wallace’s faith had paid off. Clint had adapted well to the city and was well-respected among his peers and news sources. And Wallace was keeping a secret from Clint. He would have a job with the Advocate until the presses stopped running. He had become the newspaper’s best reporter, the point man who got the assignments that meant the most. While Clint was thriving, Cindi was struggling. Too many people, too much traffic, too much crime, too hectic a pace. As a concession, Clint had not located his family in the heart of Atlanta, instead settling in a quiet middle class subdivision in Lithia Springs, a small but growing community 15 miles west of Atlanta. It was nice, but for Cindi, it wasn’t Hayleyville. It didn’t have the easy-going hometown, everybody knows everybody feeling of Hayleyville. Not even Atlanta’s grand shopping malls and infinite cultural opportunities could take Cindi’s mind off wanting to go home.

Clint realized he had not helped matters by working so much, especially lately. He tried not to neglect Cindi and Suzi, but there always seemed to be one more big story to work on. Just like tonight. Yes, he was tired and worn-out and got frustrated and angry when Bill Wallace called, but Clint offered only token resistance. He couldn’t say no to his editor.

Steering his Explorer along back roads through the February darkness to the scene of the accident, Clint admitted Cindi was right. Something had to change, but what? He didn’t want to leave Atlanta and she didn’t want to stay.

CHAPTER TWO

Clint stood frozen on the Westlake Overpass, stunned by the devastation below. It reminded him of several little south Georgia towns he had seen after a tornado ripped them apart. Debris was scattered everywhere and cars had been tossed and bent in shapes that didn‘t seem possible. Puffs of smoke drifted into the dark sky from several small fires that didn’t want to burn out. People were running around, dazed, confused and not sure what had happened.

No traffic was moving in either direction on this stretch of Interstate 20, the major artery linking Atlanta with Birmingham and New Orleans to the west and Columbia and Charleston to the east. The early evening, made very dark by a heavy cloud cover, was illuminated by thousands of pairs of headlights, reminding Clint of the long jet runways at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. The occupants of all those cars might as well turn the lights off, Clint reasoned. They weren’t going anywhere for a long time.

Clint took off his Braves’ cap, ran his fingers through his hair, put the cap back on his head and walked off the bridge to slowly make his way down a deep embankment toward the chaos. He lost his balance once and almost fell, as his foot slipped on the thick dew-covered grass. As he reached the shoulder of the road, a chill shot down his spine, and it wasn’t from the falling temperature. This was one part of reporting he had never been able to accept. He got no satisfaction, no sense of accomplishment from writing about wrecks, accidents, and acts of violence that suddenly take the lives of innocent, unsuspecting people. In Hayleyville and the small neighboring towns, Clint had covered his share of tragedies, mainly traffic accidents and house fires, but it never got any easier. If anything, it had gotten more difficult since marriage and fatherhood.

He surveyed the mayhem in front of him and another chill ran down his back, followed by a quick involuntary quiver in his arms and shoulders. The spasm seemed to release his tension, allowing him to focus on the job to be done. The charred tractor-trailer, which had flipped on its side and been crushed like a soft drink can, was 30 yards in front of him. The big double doors at the back of the rig had popped open, and the contents, hundreds of boxes of canned and jarred foods, had burst or broke and were scattered throughout the maze of stalled and wrecked vehicles. Firefighters were still shooting water on the crushed ruins of the tractor-trailer which was so twisted and blackened Clint couldn’t make out the company name and logo that once identified it. One mid-size white car, its back crushed and crumpled up into the front seat, was a few feet in front of the rig. That’s all Clint could see for the moment, because countless emergency and rescue personnel were still feverishly working all around it. The buzz of generators being used to provide light and power for extraction tools was a constant background noise for the vacillating shouts of the rescue crews and shrill sirens of ambulances that were struggling to make their way through the unintentional giant parking lot.

Walking past the heap of wreckage, Clint noticed paramedics opening the doors of an ambulance parked in the emergency lane. They were lifting a gurney draped in a white sheet spotted with blood. He slowly closed his eyes and silently prayed that was the only poor soul who had been killed in this awful mess. The paramedics shoved the body into the ambulance, shut the door, and disappeared back into the crowd. Clint started searching for Stan Oliver, the Advocate’s chief photographer and world class ambulance chaser who lived for this kind of carnage and was never hesitant to stick his camera lens where it didn’t belong. Clint and Stan had clashed often. Stan accused Clint of being a south Georgia softie who didn’t have the balls to fight and dig for a blockbuster story, while Clint considered Stan an insensitive vulture who would do anything, go anywhere and break any rule while in pursuit of a good photo opportunity. To Clint, Stan Oliver was only slightly higher on the scale of indecency than the photographers for the grocery store tabloids.

Clint stopped to talk to a frazzled motorist who seemed eager to describe what he had seen and whine about the crushed back bumper of his silver BMW. His car had been in the middle of what looked like a chain reaction of 15 or 20 cars that had all swerved or braked hard and immediately to avoid the 18-wheeler that had suddenly gone out of control and started weaving all over the westbound side of the expressway. The BMW owner, a middle-age, full of himself financial advisor with a