ANNAPOLIS, Md. _ An armored truck rumbled outside the Capital Gazette newspaper office in Annapolis. Police with assault rifles walked the street. Yellow crime tape cordoned off the newsroom where the journalists were fatally shot.
And across the street, their colleagues _ two reporters, one photographer _ were working to report the story of the day, the massacre of their friends and co-workers.
"I don't know what else to do except this," reporter Chase Cook said, the grief showing in his eyes.
A state politics reporter for The Capital newspaper, Cook had worked 16 hours on Election Day. So he was home Thursday afternoon when a gunman shot his way inside the Capital Gazette newsroom. Armed with smoke grenades and a shotgun, police say, the attacker killed five people and wounded two others _ reporters, editors, saleswomen.
Just that morning, assistant editor Rob Hiaasen had called Cook. A reader had complained about a headline.
"We worked it out," Cook said. "I haven't spoken to him since."
Hiaasen was among those killed.
Thursday afternoon, Cook's cellphone rang again. Editor Rick Hutzell called to say something had happened in their newsroom _ a shooting. Hutzell was hurrying back from vacation in Ocean City. Cook sped to the newsroom across from Westfield Annapolis Mall.
In the street outside, he saw photographer Joshua McKerrow, a 14-year veteran of the newspaper. The two embraced.
McKerrow had started his workday at sunrise, photographing the induction of the newest class at the U.S. Naval Academy. By afternoon, he was driving home to celebrate his daughter's birthday. He had promised her a snowball.
Hutzell had called him, too.
"He said he'd heard there had been a shooting," McKerrow said. "He couldn't get in touch with anyone in the newsroom."
While driving, McKerrow heard sirens.
"Literally, that same moment, I saw dozens of emergency vehicles. ... My heart sank."
Arriving at the mall parking garage, Cook and McKerrow met reporter Pat Furgurson.
Furgurson spent the morning at the doctor's office then decided to lunch at the mall before work. His cellphone rang with an editor at The Baltimore Sun warning him: stay away.
"He said, 'There's been a shooting in The Capital building,'" Furgurson said. But he was in disbelief, his mind racing back to a former newsroom a few miles away.
"The old one?" he asked.
Now, the three journalists had come together to begin reporting on the crime in their newsroom.
Those who escaped the gunman were at the police station and unreachable. Cook scrolled through their tweets, those glimpses of chaos: "Please help us ... gunman shot through the glass door ... opened fire on multiple employees ... nothing more terrifying."
Furgurson's pickup truck _ the one he had driven back and forth across Anne Arundel County in his 19 years with the paper _ became their makeshift office. There was a Jesus figurine on the dash, a blues CD in the radio, and laptops in the truck bed where McKerrow was filing photos from the scene. Leaning against the tailgate, and with a reporter's notepad in his back pocket, Cook was typing updates on his cellphone. They knew few details, and were tracking updates from police.
Before them, a swarm of national media had descended on their office, home to a pair of local newspapers tracing back nearly 300 years.
"Jeff did say we're putting a paper out?" Cook asked.
McKerrow adjusted the camera strap on his shoulder.
"He did," the photographer said firmly. "We are."
Between their news stories and photos, they texted messages to family, friends and colleagues. The phone calls poured in. Journalists who left the newspaper years ago offered to return and help. They asked, how are you?
Cook was OK, he answered. But what else does one say?
"The words 'OK' and 'good,' they don't really mean anything right now," he said.
His eyes turned back to his phone, and writing his next assignment _ biographies of his five slain colleagues.
Furgurson's wife arrived and they watched police work the crime scene across the street.
"How many of you are there to put out a paper?" Becky Furgurson asked her husband.
"We don't have any editors, except Rick," he told her.
When Hutzell arrived, they hugged in the parking garage. Then the editor left to speak with the police.
Hours passed, and at 8 p.m. police and reporters gathered for a news conference. Cook and Furgurson squeezed through the crowd of journalists from NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal.
In the barrage of reporters' questions to police, Cook managed to get one in. He wanted to know about his colleagues who escaped.
"Can you just tell us a little bit about the people who were not injured?" Cook asked police. "What their status is? How they're doing?"
"We have people here who have met with them," said Lt. Ryan Frashure, the Anne Arundel County police spokesman.
The reporter and lieutenant had spoken countless times at crime scenes, but never like this.
"It's very important that they're taken care of," Frashure said. "Our hearts go out to them."
Afterward, Furgurson found himself called out as a Capital reporter. In moments, he was mobbed by national news cameras.
He doesn't remember what he said, but felt his words were imperfect.
"I should have told them to buy a local newspaper."
