Deadly News: A Thriller Read online

  “Tomorrow’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh. Well, hey, let me know if it’s something interesting.”

  Still looking at her screen, “If it’s something interesting, you’ll be the first person I tell.”

  “Okay, cool. See you.”

  She stared at the quotes and sighed. The Thin Man had red eyes, and he cast a hex at my red, the sign, you know, following left and which one is? But that’s besides. So anyway, we got to the back of the store, and the body was just standing there.

  Everything else aside, either this man saw a mannequin, or a dead body was standing on its feet. Abby wanted to go with the former, but that’s not what the man said, and her editor didn’t like her reporters to ‘improvise’, as she called it.

  Disgusted, right eye throbbing with the promise of a migraine, Abby got up to use the restroom. Standing, she moved the mouse to bring up the task bar to look at the clock. She’d now been up for—mental arithmetic was hard—twenty hours? Twenty-two? Eighteen?

  She had to use the ugly bathroom to avoid passing by Ecks’s desk. It had only one stall, and the door’s lock was broken. It always seemed dirty, too. It was used less than the other one though, so it probably just seemed dirty because of its state of frequent disuse.

  After washing her hands, she stared at her reflection in the hazy mirror. Over her right shoulder was a small window that looked out into the night. There was a light on in one of the windows in the building directly across from this one. As she watched, she saw movement, then the light went out and that window got lost with the rest of the darkened ones surrounding it.

  That she wasn’t the only one working late gave her some small comfort. She began washing her hands again, only realizing she already had when the waving of her hand under the automatic soap dispenser triggered the memory of having done the same thing seconds previous. She groaned, and tried to rinse the soap off without getting her left hand wet. It didn’t work.

  She just had to finish this report, then she could go home and sleep for the next week. She wiped her hands on her jeans as she exited.

  Out in the newsroom, the night shift was busy preparing for tomorrow’s news. This was a huge story, and that she had any part in it at all was lucky. A byline on a front-page story. Not bad. All it cost her was twenty dollars’ worth of Starbucks and a few years off her life from stress and caffeine. Ah, cortisol, my old friend, she thought. She’d likely end up like Becky: middle-aged, fat, and alone—if you didn’t count the cats.

  At least she was allergic, she thought as she sat down at her desk. She was so tired that out of habit she’d taken the long way back past the entrance, forgetting about avoiding Ecks, but he hadn’t been at his desk. Another lucky stroke in a day filled with them.

  The taped-up folder sat in front of her keyboard, and she frowned at it. She picked it up, shook it. The word ‘anthrax’ flashed in her mind, along with ‘incendiary’. She rummaged through her purse for the knife her ex had gotten her for Valentine’s Day.

  That was a short relationship.

  She flicked the blade open and cut through the tape carefully. It was just plain scotch tape, so she’d have seen any wires, she hoped.

  She set the folder back down on the desk, and flipped it open with the knife. Inside was a brown sheet of paper:

  Abby, I promised you I’d return the favor. I think we’re even. This is big, not Deep Throat big, but still. I’d almost say you owe me, but I won’t.

  P.S., act quick. I think your friend over at the times knows about this too.

  Under this were more sheets of paper, each with a picture in the top left corner, a few lines of stats in the right, then typewritten lines with hand written scribbles. She leaned in closer to see if the writing was photocopied, but she couldn’t tell.

  “Melcer.”

  Abby jumped and shut the folder out of instinct.

  “Jumpy,” Becky said. She raised an eyebrow. “How long you been up? You look like fuck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Ah, don’t take it so hard.” She gestured around the room. “You’re the most capable half-wit under my command.”

  “Thanks again.”

  “Abby, Abby.” She sighed. “So, how are my quotes coming? Able to work out anything that doesn’t sound…” she crossed her arms and tapped her bottom lip as she ostensibly searched for the right words, “so batshit crazy?”

  “God, I’m glad I’m not the only one.”

  She patted Abby on the shoulder. “I know it’s difficult. But you’re a journalist, not an actor. The facts and just the facts. This isn’t the Daily Mail.

  “Yeah? Listen to this.” Abby slid the mystery folder away and looked around for her notes. She found them and began reading:

  “‘I was about six or seven in’

  —Shots,” Abby clarified. “Six or seven shots in, okay?” She continued reading:

  “‘When a man with the biggest boobs I’ve even, even seen gets out of his car’”—Abby looked up at Becky—“Fun fact, they were in a bar, there were not cars in the bar, obviously.” She looked back down. “‘I think it was red. Coulda been black though.’”

  “Melcer,” Becky interrupted, “I get it. This is why you shouldn’t rely on your recorder. You should have been taking notes, not relying on a transcription.”

  “I—”

  Becky put a hand up. “I’m not your psychologist—I don’t get paid damn near enough for that. This story is going out in five hours and”—she looked at her watch—“oh, five hours on the dot. So you have three, four at most, to finish up and get it edited.” She began sauntering off. “If you want first billing, that is.”

  “What?” Abby shouted, unable to help herself. “Serious?”

  “Do I joke, Ms Melcer?”

  “I think I love you, Becky.”

  “Time’s wasting.”

  Abby turned back to her project with new vigor. Her lethargy vanished, and she began molding crap into something less crappy, and hopefully coherent.

  Four hours and some odd minutes later, with the first hints of the sun’s presence lightening the sky out Becky’s office window, Abby sat in the chair opposite, and leaned back. They’d finished editing the story with time to spare, and Becky seemed pleased with the way it turned out. This may have had something to do with the fact that she’d basically rewritten the entire thing, but Abby wasn’t complaining. It was Abby’s name that’d be on it, right under the headline.

  Back at her desk, a few underhanded compliments from Becky heavier, Abby gathered her purse and coat, made sure everything was saved in the office’s Dropbox and not on her desktop, then shut off the computer. As she was doing this last, she spotted the folder, and the still open knife. At the idea of doing anything else work related, even reading the contents of an intriguing mystery folder, a wave of exhaustion flooded into her, and she stuffed the folder into her purse, folded the knife before shoving it into her pocket, and headed to the elevator.

  She pressed the call button, which lit up electric blue: the work of an intern majoring in some kind of engineering. Abby kind of missed her. At the time, she’d been working on the server farm story, and it had been nice to have someone she could get explanation from about the more technical failures, and even simulate or figure out equations to model what might have happened had things been different.

  A minute passed, and the elevator still hadn’t come up. She looked up at the floor indicator. The number 1 was still lit up. She pressed the button again. A few seconds later, 1 still lit, the elevator chimed and the doors opened, letting out Ecks.

  “Hey,” he said, far too happily.

  “I’ve been up for over a day, haven’t eaten in nearly that, and I’m getting all too familiar cramps. I can’t deal with your vapid cheeriness right now.”

  His smile fell slightly. “Yeah, sorry. I’ll let you get some rest.”

  “How nice.” She got in the elevator, and pressed the ground floor button.<
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  “Hey, what was that thing about earlier?”

  The doors finally began to close. She prayed he didn’t try to stop them.

  “Don’t know, didn’t read it.”

  “Let me know tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Off.”

  The molasses progress of the doors was almost complete.

  “Monday then,” he said, and then was cut off from view as the doors sealed.

  He’d find out on his own she was off then too. She leaned against the back of the elevator. She wondered what Ecks had been doing, it was kind of late. Maybe he had a story. God she was tired. She closed her eyes, letting her head rest against the wall.

  A voice startled her. Her eyes flew open, heart thudding loud enough for her to hear.

  “Didn’t mean to frighten you. This your floor?”

  She looked around. A man was standing outside the open elevator doors. Past him, she saw the lobby, the two trees on either side of the elevator, one sagging in its death throes, the other healthy and an offensively bright green. Beyond that, the glass exit doors and through them the empty street beyond, with streetlights which would soon be shutting off as daylight took over.

  She pushed off the handrail. “Yeah, thanks. Tired.”

  He laughed. “I can tell. I’d say good morning, but I’m guessing all that’s on your mind is sleeping until the next sunrise.”

  “Damn right,” she said walking past him.

  She saw in the reflection of the exit doors the elevator slowly shutting, the man standing patiently inside. She wondered where he was going, but then she was outside and freezing. She clenched her jaw and sucked in air. After fumbling for a moment—her hands were still shaky from the coffee she’d had hours earlier—she got her coat on and headed home.

  By the time she reached the door to her apartment, she was so tired that she couldn’t even get it open. After several attempts, it swung inward and she fell into the darkness of her two room dwelling. She walked through the darkness, not sure if her eyes were even open. She dropped whatever she was holding—her purse?—next to her on the couch, and fell onto it. She groaned as the purse forced her back to arch uncomfortably, and after scooting and shoving for at least an hour, managed to free the purse from under her back. It thudded to the floor, and she was asleep even as she was sinking into the still compressing cushions.

  She awoke, several hours later, to a great beam of sunlight attacking her eyelids. She grudgingly got up to use the bathroom, pulled the curtains shut on her way, then got some water. In her kitchen, glass of filtered water to her lips, she stared at her front door, which stood open. She squinted at it, then frowned, head tilted. Water began dripping from the glass she still held to her mouth. She set it down and wiped her face, then her hand on her jeans as she slowly walked toward the door. Her hand brushed the knife still there in the pocket, and she reached in and clutched it. Had she left the door open last night—this morning? That was scary, anyone could have come in while she was sleeping, could have—could have done anything. She didn’t live in a particularly dangerous neighborhood, but still, there were drunks to consider. Only two weeks ago her friend Patrick had come home to find a strange man in his bed, asleep. The guy had been drunk or on drugs, but harmless, and had left after Patrick had roused him. But not everyone was so innocuous.

  She removed the knife, and with it still at her side, flicked it open. Her pulse was obscenely fast. She wouldn’t be getting back to sleep in the near future. Knife now slightly in front of her, she stood at the edge of the doorframe and listened. She heard nothing from the other side. Slowly, quietly, she pulled the door wide. Nothing. She listened. More nothing. She burst into the hallway, spinning so her back was against the apartment door opposite hers. There was a recognizable slamming—the stairwell door shutting—and she turned that way. No one. Then the elevator chimed. She dashed to the corner so she could get a view of the two elevators that served the building, but she reached it just as the doors shut; they were much faster than the ones at her work.

  Shaken up, telling herself it was just coincidence, she quickly walked back to her apartment and shut and bolted the door. She slid the safety bar into place as well. Then she turned to face her empty apartment, dark now that she’d drawn the curtains. Was it empty? She held her breath, listening for the telltale sound, that you sense more than hear, of other life. Of something in wait.

  All she heard were city sounds. She looked at the door again, contemplated opening it and going to one of her neighbors’. But then she’d feel stupid when it turned out there was no drunk pervert lurking in wait in her apartment.

  She shook her head and slid her hand along the wall as she walked. After three steps, she found the light switches and flipped them all on. She had a knife, and she knew kung fu and muay Thai. She could take on a lone perv.

  The light from the now banned 100-watt bulbs pained her eyes and she squinted briefly against it till her pupils got the message and settled the hell down.

  There was no one there. Of course. She checked her bedroom and her ‘office’—a converted storage closet, truth be told—and found exactly what she expected, which was nothing.

  Back at the couch, she tossed the knife onto the coffee table and sunk back down into a lying position, feet still on the floor, and threw her arm across her eyes.

  A minute of this, and she knew she wasn’t falling asleep again. She exhaled a long whine and sat up. Elbows on knees, eyes closed and brow resting against knuckles, she sat for another minute. Then with a groan pushed herself up and toward the bathroom, peeling clothes off as she walked.

  Naked, entering the bathroom, closed shower curtain looming at the edge of her view in the bathroom mirror, her heart leapt into her throat as she realized she hadn’t checked it yet. Then she remembered she’d used the bathroom earlier. If anyone was in there, they were either dead or passed out.

  She discovered, unexpectedly, no corpse or sleeping creep lying curled in the tub. She turned the water on, and when steam begin to fill the room, stepped in.

  Time passed.

  The cold water tap was off now, hot water on full, but only lukewarm water came out. She took this as signal that her shower had gone on long enough.

  She felt much better as she more gently lowered herself onto the couch, a clean fluffy bathrobe, freshly washed, wrapping her.

  Her purse was on the floor, contents spilled everywhere. She picked it up, along with the contents that were within her reach without moving from her spot, then put everything on the coffee table, next to the knife and her laptop. She pulled the latter onto its rightful place, and checked her email.

  She was shocked to see it was already five in the afternoon. Not bad, she thought, ten or eleven hours of sleep. She was still tired though. She didn’t really want coffee on her day off, but she might need it anyway.

  She had an email from Soren, who was her current prime suspect for giving her the folder. She clicked on it and began reading:

  I’m sorry. I fucked up. I can’t help you. I know I said I’d get you hard evidence, but I made a mistake. I put everything that I had on it into a folder, and burned the damn thing. It was crap and hearsay, and wouldn’t have held up anyway. Be glad I didn’t get you involved.

  Sorry. I hope you haven’t told too many people about the story yet, I’d hate to make you look like a fool. I’ll make it up to you sometime, promise. Just like I did that summer a few years back, remember? Yeah, like that. My minutes are used this month, so don’t worry about calling me.

  P.S., My mom’s invitation for christmas or thanksgiving or both is still good. She bugs me about it every year. Let me know, aye?

  Abby grabbed her purse from the table, her body closing the laptop’s screen as she did, and dumped it out next to her on the couch. She held it upside down and shook it, then peered inside. It was empty. She scanned the detritus on the couch next to her, then what she’d left on the floor.

  The folder wasn’t there. She found
herself staring at the front door.

  “Wait,” you say, interrupting her story. “Someone broke into your apartment while you were sleeping, and dug through your purse and stole the folder all without you waking up?” You pass the wine bottle to the doctor. You should probably not have any more.

  Abby looks away from the fire and at you. “I know, scary, huh?”

  This is not what you meant, but you just say, “Yeah.”

  “This is pretty good,” the thirteen-year-old says. She has just popped open the second and last bottle of wine—though there still remains a bottle of champagne—and passes it to the scruffy man. “The story, I mean. At first I thought you were like going to get on the subway when you got off work, and I was sad cause like, I knew what would happen since”—she gestures around—“you’re here and all.”

  “No,” Abby says. “I took a cab. That wasn’t today. Like I said, this started a while back. And the story’s not nearly over.”

  “Well go on,” the wife says, “let’s hear the rest.” Her husband passes her the nearly drained bottle. “You know,” she says to Abby, but fixing her gaze on her husband, “after you finish, I think you might want to hear our story.”

  Abby’s head snaps toward the wife. “Your story? What do you mean?”

  “Well, this business with the folder, the break-in. We’ve experienced something, not similar.” She tsks. “I don’t know, unusual.”

  Unusual, you think. You wonder if there’s a connection here.

  “Then go on,” the man with long hair says. “Finish up before we get rescued.”

  Everyone chuckles at this. You think you do too, though maybe not. Sound echoes funny in here. You draw a hand across your forehead. Whether the fire in here, the number of people, or the fire outside, you don’t know, but whatever it be, it’s getting warmer.

  Abby’s staring at you as she begins again, a line between her eyebrows. “So I was basically panicking at that point, but my door was locked, and I had a knife.” She laughs once. “I don’t know why, but it seemed to comfort me, that I had a weapon and wasn’t helpless. Anyway, I decided to get out of there before it got dark, so I called Ecks, who was there within minutes. He even came up to get me, which I appreciated so much I hugged him. That was my second mistake that day.”