Your Hometown Station: A Vermont Radio Mystery By Nikki Knight

 You need a local radio station. It could save your life.

Anybody who’s ever been sitting in the dark waiting for information, or just a friendly voice from a battery-powered radio can tell you that.

What you probably don’t know is the friendly voice on the other end is just as grateful for you. Or that we really save each other.

I’d known since the New York hurricanes…but it really hit home during a March ice storm in Vermont. By then, I was no longer a bigtime DJ surrounded by a full staff of production folks -- just one scrambling multitasker at the board: owner, engineer, producer, and talent for the all-request “love songs at night” show.

Despite everything I’d survived to end up in the studio that Saturday night, I was a little on edge. Ice storms scare me in a primal way my husband’s cancer, my layoff, and our divorce hadn’t. The sight of those glazed power lines and glistening trees made my gut twist like almost nothing else could.

It’s not that I’m a delicate flower; this is my second hitch in Vermont, and I’ve driven in everything. But no matter how good you are, you can’t control ice. Or your vehicle on it.

More to the point, there’s no good response to ice other than: sit there and wait for it to melt. Totally counter-intuitive for me. When my husband got sick, we found him a good doctor and treatment, and pulled him through. When my employer decided Jaye Jordan’s Light Rock at Work wasn’t nearly as good a moneymaker as The Bully Ballers Show, I went right out and got some extra voice work to keep going. And when my husband decided he wanted different things after the cancer – mostly bodacious and blonde – I found a fire-sale deal on WSV, the radio station where I started out almost twenty years ago and got on with it.

In an ice storm, though, all you can do is wait.

Well, wait, and keep the meters moving.

Most of the time, I have a satellite music service for off-hours, so when my show is over, I can just hook it up and go to bed. Satellite dishes, though, don’t work any better than anything else does with a half-inch-thick coating of ice. And while I’ll climb up on the roof and sweep snow out of the dish, I’m not reckless enough to try it in ice.

Which meant I got to spend the night at the board. Since my daughter was with her dad at his parents’ house in the next town over, I didn’t really mind. The good news was, I had all the requests I could handle, because everybody else was a little lonely and off-balance too. That much, I’d expected.

During the New York hurricanes, the staff was trapped at the station for days, and the phones rang off the hook with people calling in requests, questions, asking for information we might or might not have…sometimes just wanting to hear a friendly voice. Hundreds of thousands more people who didn’t call relied on our signal from their battery-powered radios. I went from friendly workday background noise to a lifeline.

It’s my proudest accomplishment on this earth, other than raising my daughter.

That night in Vermont, the calls didn’t surprise me.

Except for one.

At about two a-m, the calls had tapered off a bit, leaving me some breathing space.

I went out to the kitchenette and took the last cup of the pot of good coffee I’d made hours before. I’d had the presence of mind to turn it off when it was ready, so it wasn’t burned, and heated up nicely in the microwave.

Before I got back to the board, though, the phone rang again.

“WSV Storm Center,” I said, as I had all night in an attempt to sound like a bigger and more professional operation.

“Jaye?” a small, scared female voice asked.

“Yep,” I sighed. “How can I help?”
“I can’t get through to 9-1-1, and we need an ambulance.”

“You can’t get through?”

“I just get static – I’ve tried-”

“Wait.” Why was I suddenly the emergency call? “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“It’s my husband. He fell off the porch.”

“What…” Who falls off a porch at two a-m?

“He was letting the dog out and just—just-”

I heard the start of a panic spiral in her tone. Better calm her down. Doesn’t matter how we’re here. We’re here now. “Okay.”

“I-”

“It’s okay,” I said, slipping into my best soothing patter as I reached for my smartphone. “We’re going to get through this. You stay on the line with me. I’m going to see if I can raise the police chief.”

“Police?”

Later I would remember the way her voice went even more brittle on the word, but just then, I didn’t notice. I kept my tone steady, calming. I’ve been telling people what to do for a couple decades now, and I’m pretty good at it. “Yes. I have a good number for Chief Orr. Let’s see if I can get through.”

“Um, okay.”

“What’s your name?” I asked as I scrolled through the contacts with my thumb.

“Anne LaFontaine.”
“Nice to meet you, Anne. Where are you?”

“Um, 660 Quarry Hill Road.”

“Wow, that’s up there – our transmitter is 808 Quarry Hill.”

“Yeah.” Her voice wobbled. “Almost top of the hill.”

“Okay, let me call the chief.” I tapped Chief George-Office with my thumb. “You hang on with me.”

Chief George Orr is not just a retired NYPD Lieutenant, but also a fellow transplanted New Yorker, plus the husband of a good friend. Not only did I have his private cell, I knew he’d take my call. And he did.

“Hey, Jaye. You okay over there?”

“I’m inside and fine. But one of my listeners isn’t.”

“Tell me.”

“She needs an ambulance for her husband – he fell off the porch.”

A pause. A breath. “I’ll call the rescue squad, but it’s gonna be a while, Jaye.”

“What-”

“They’re scrambling. Big fire in Bellows Falls, because of course there is.”

“Ugh.” I sighed. “Can you radio them?”

“Yeah. Maybe I can get Mutual Aid from Ascutney. What’s the address?”

I gave it to him, and he whistled. “Of course it’s up on a hill.”

“Never rains but it pours,” I said.

“Look, did you say the guy is out there?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, tell her to go out and try to help him if she can do it safely. I really don’t know how long this is going to take, and maybe she can at least keep him warm and give the medics a fighting chance…”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Push her a little if you have to, Jaye. This is going to be more than five minutes.”

“Okay.”

Chief George hung up. I returned to the landline.

“Anne?”

“I’m here.”

“Good. The chief is sending help, but it might be a while. Your husband’s outside, right?”

“Um, yeah.” Ragged breath. “On the walk.”

“Is he conscious?”

“I don’t know – he’s not talking.”

“Breathing?”

A pause. A couple ragged breaths from Anne. “His back is moving a little.”

“Okay. Good.” Chief George was right. I had to push her if there was any chance. “Can you get to him safely?”

“Maybe…maybe if I climb down and stay on the grass…”

“Okay.” My first-aid certification was current because of my daughter, so I could talk her through some of the basics. Well, except that we were violating Rule #1: don’t help if you’re putting yourself in danger.

One reason: you don’t want to make things any harder for the rescue crew.

But the rescue crew wasn’t going to be there for a while, and meanwhile, Anne’s husband was lying on the walk in the freezing rain.

“What should I do?” Her voice came out as a wail. “Jaye?”

“It’s okay. I’m here,” I said quickly, keeping my voice steady and soothing. “Are you on a mobile?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Stay on the line with me while you get out there. I’ll stay right here and keep talking to you while you put on boots and a warm coat.”

“My slippers have grip soles,” she replied, her tone relaxing a bit, as she settled into the practicalities. “I should get my parka.”

“Good idea and real boots, too. You don’t want to fall trying to help. And get a blanket for – what’s your husband’s name?”

“Nate.”

“Okay, you and Nate are going to get through this,” I assured her. “Chief George is getting you an ambulance, but you need to do what you can for Nate till they get there.”

“Uh-huh.” A tiny, mewling reply, and the sound of rustling, probably her picking up a parka.

“You’re going to do this.” Time for the command voice. After two decades on the air, I can be very authoritative when I need to be. And Anne needed it.

“Okay.”

My song was running down.

“Hold on, Anne. I’m going to set myself up so I can help you for a while.”

“Um…okay.”

I grabbed the DJ’s best friend: “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” eight minutes of MeatLoaf that would hopefully allow me to at least get her started. Tossed another long song in the second CD player. Hoped it would be enough.

That something would be enough tonight.

I opened the mic. “Okay, folks, MeatLoaf is going to give us a little escape into retro drama. And it’s none of my business if the song gives you any ideas. But remember – anything that happens in a storm doesn’t count.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite true. I’d never looked at the news guy who made a pass at me during the hurricane the same way again. But the nice listeners didn’t need to know that.

“Okay, Anne,” I said, toggling back to the phone.

“Is it true?”

“What?”

“That things don’t count during a storm.”

“Sometimes maybe.” I managed a chuckle. “A lot of times, once everything’s back to normal people forget.”

“Back to normal.”

“Gotta get there first,” I said. Back to command voice. “Okay, let’s see what you can do for Nate. Where is he? Right at the edge of the porch?”

“Kind of.”

“The porch light is on, right?”

“Yeah –”

I didn’t hear the rest of what she said because my studio exploded. Red light flashing on the wall and a klaxon blaring.

My first thought was smoke alarm.

But it was much worse.

Emergency Alert System.

My cellphone exploded too, and I saw the bulletin pop up on the studio computer.

The real deal. As bad as it gets.

“Anne, I have to go for a minute or two. You stay right there.”

As I put her on hold, I took a breath. She could hear the air signal, so she’d know why. She’d be fine for now.

Not sure about me.

I’d never done a real one on my own. Sure, I’d done the tests. But this was no test.

At least not that kind of test.

Here we go.

I hit the big red button on the board.

The signal screamed through the studio. Through the town.

The mechanical voice intoned: “This is an Emergency Alert. Stay tuned for important emergency information.”

I opened my mic. “The National Weather Service has just issued a flash flood warning for the Black River in Simpson.”

Talking too fast. Slow down. Command presence.

“Waters are rising because of an ice jam at Chester Brook. People in low-lying areas are urged to evacuate immediately.”

As I read the bulletin right off the computer screen, I thought about the location. It could not be worse. The Green Valley Trailer Park was right by the water. One of my regular listeners, an older lady named Faith, lived there – at one of my first remotes, she’d come up, made a request, and told me how glad she was to have a live local station again.

She had no idea how glad she was about to be.

I finished reading the bulletin, relieved to be done with the canned verbiage for the moment.

“Okay, folks. What the National Weather Service doesn’t know, but we do, is that this means the Green Valley Trailer Park. If you’re there, get out, and grab your neighbors on the way. If you know anybody there, call them and keep calling. Nighttime floods are extremely dangerous because people sleep through the warnings. So let’s make sure that doesn’t happen here.”

I hit the signal again. Read the bulletin one more time.

“And again, the Green Valley Trailer Park is right in the path of this. Get out, get your neighbors out – and make sure you stay away from the area. Don’t make it any harder for the rescue squad.”

Time to finish up and hope for the best.

“This has been an Emergency Alert. Please stay tuned to WSV Radio for the latest information on this local emergency.”

Re-start MeatLoaf. Going to need those eight minutes.

Whew.

Hope I did it right.

The phone was lighting up, but, as I turned to the receiver, I knew I had one person to deal with first.

“Anne?” I asked as I punched the line. “You still there?”

“Yes.” Her voice was tiny.

“Good. Now, let’s get you out there to help Nate.”

“I did it, Jaye.”

Her voice was small and quiet, with that clear, grounded note that means pay attention.

“Did what?”

“I pushed him.”

“Do you mean literally or…”

“I mean I-”

The howl of a siren – the sweetest sound in the world at that moment -- cut her off.

“Oh, Lord. They’re here.” She was suddenly sobbing with relief. “Thank you – I –”

“Go,” I said, swallowing my concerns. “Just go.”

We could figure it out later. Both of us had other things to do.

My phone light was flashing furiously. For a good ten minutes, I scrambled to keep up with worried listeners asking where the alert was, and what they could do. Every time, I told them where and urged them to get out – or warn anyone they knew.

And please, please, stay away from the area. Last thing anybody needed was amateurs playing hero.

I’d lost track of how many calls I’d taken when I was greeted by a familiar voice:

“Jaye, honey, it’s Faith.”

Thank heavens. “Tell me you’re out.”

“I’m out, and so are my neighbors. All of us okay, because I woke ‘em up.”

“Great. Rescue trucks should be there soon.”

“We’re all in cars, staying warm for now. We’ll be okay.”

“You’re a hero, Faith.”

An outraged cat yowl in the background, loud enough that my daughter’s giant gray cat Neptune looked up from his spot on the old turntable cabinet behind me, glaring.

“Well, Niles doesn’t think so, but I’ll take it. Any chance you can play us something?”

“Oh, hell yes. You name it.”

“Can’t have anything else, Jaye. Gotta be ‘Rescue Me.’”

We shared a laugh. “You got it.”

I’d just brought up the song, for “My Green Valley hero, Faith,” and given Neptune a couple treats as a bribe, when my cell lit up.

Chief George.

“Got Ascutney’s rescue squad over to your caller on Quarry Hill.”

“Thank you. She heard the sirens and hung up.”

“Good news. I’m headed over to the trailer park to help with the rescue now. Expect an appeal from the Red Cross in a bit.”

“Of course. Maybe we’ll do a little fundraising remote for the victims once things settle down.”

“Great idea.”

A pause. A moment when maybe I should have told him what Anne said to me in that last call.

But just like people do things that really shouldn’t count in a storm, sometimes they say things that don’t. And he had enough on his plate.

Right?

“Thanks, Chief,” I said as the phone kept blinking.

“Quite a night’s work, Jaye. Gotta go.”

##

By noon on Sunday, the temperature had risen a couple degrees, so the satellite was finally back on, and I was getting ready to take a very hard-earned nap when Chief George appeared at the door, carrying two cups from the minimart.

“Think you’ve earned a really good fake-acchino.”

“What?”

A surprisingly boyish grin, the last thing you expect from a six-foot-three Black man in a leather trench and fedora. “It’s the same stuff they used to have at this bodega in my precinct in the Bronx. Used to grab one after a rough shift. So sweet and fake and terrible it’ll take the edge off anything.”

“Yeah?” I took the cup.

“Yeah. Caramel Mocha Cookie Dough Swirl. If nothing else, the sugar high puts off the blues for a while.”

“Self-medicating?”

“Don’t knock it til you try it.” The chief nodded to my office. “C’mon, sit down and I’ll tell you what you don’t know about the last few hours.”

In the office, the chief took the big guest chair, and I sat at my desk. Neptune had traded his favorite spot on the old turntable cabinet for the office couch, and nobody was fool enough to try to move him. Not that it would have been easy to move anything that big – with those claws. He opened one large orange eye, gave us a look of exquisite disinterest, and went back to sleep.

When the people were seated, and the chief took a sip of his drink, he finally made his move:

“What did Anne LaFontaine say to you?”

“She said she did it.” Even if I’d wanted to lie, I’m a terrible liar on a good day, which this definitely was not.

“Did she tell you why?”

“There wasn’t time.” I met his gaze. “And there wasn’t time to tell you.”

He nodded, clearly understanding I meant that our friendship and professional relationship was what really mattered here. The way it does in small towns.

“I figured.” He shrugged, downplaying the huge benefit of the doubt he’d just given me. “Anyhow, that wasn’t the whole story.”

“No?”

“No. She had fresh bruises. And a cut on her cheekbone that matched up pretty well with a bloodstain on his pinky ring.”

“Ugh.”

“Yeah.” Another sip. A sigh. “He’s touch and go with a brain bleed. Even if he makes it, he won’t be using anyone as a punching bag again for a while, if ever.”

“Will she be okay?”

“Probably, now. I’ve asked around, and folks knew something was up…and tried to help.”

“Small town. Of course they knew. And of course she was too proud to take help from her neighbors.”

“Got it in one. New Englanders.” He shook his head. “In the Bronx, she’d have gutted him like a carp years ago.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “A lot of women are still too proud, too scared, or too poor to get help.”

“I know.” Sip. Sigh. “I like to think New Yorkers are better than that, but we’re not.”

“So she has some support?” More important to focus on Anne.

“I called Linda from the Domestic Violence Center – she’s staying with her now and can get her what she needs later.”

“Good start.”

“It’s not perfect. In a perfect world, a woman walks out to a new, safe life when the guy throws the first punch.”

“Or he’s raised right so he never throws it in the first place.”

“I’d vote for that.” Grim smile from the chief. “But yeah, this is a decent outcome.”

So why didn’t feel that way?

I wrapped my hands around the cup. Helping save a life doesn’t feel so good when it’s a creep.

“Look, Jaye, a year ago, you’re not here. He dies. She probably gets charged, which isn’t fair either.” Chief George held my gaze. “And the emergency alert on the flood might or might not get through. Even if it did, the automation doesn’t know it’s the trailer park.”

“True.” I was too exhausted and sad to feel good about anything.

“However you’re doing your math, Jaye, don’t forget there are a dozen people, three dogs, four cats, and a rabbit who didn’t drown today because you knew that warning was for them – and made sure they got out.”

I took a sip of the fake-acchino. It really was wonderful. “That’s pretty good.”

“Take the win.”

“Yeah.”

“Get some sleep, Jaye.” The chief smiled. “Another busy day tomorrow.”

I tapped my cup against his. “I’ll be here.”

Nikki Knight is an Author/Anchor/Mom…not in that order. A longtime weekend morning anchor at New York City’s 1010 WINS Radio, she writes stories published in Tough, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Weekly, anthologies, and more, as well as novels including the upcoming Vermont Radio Mystery, LIVE, LOCAL, AND LONG DEAD from the Wild Rose Press. She and her family live in a Connecticut house owned by their cat.