[Alex Vane 03.0] The Mockingbird Drive

by AC Fuller

  Not to mention, the guy had an axe to grind. I found out that his contracting company had bid on the sprinkler and bleacher installation project, only to find out it had been pre-awarded. It wasn't even the superintendent's call. The state had negotiated a deal with a supplier in Oregon, then awarded the money. My 'source' had just read the budget report showing the costs of twelve grand for the sprinkler and eighty for the bleachers, and jumped to a few wrong conclusions.

  Just like Quinn, he'd started with a fact, then editorialized his way to a fiction.

  All that is to say that, as I turned to Quinn, I was nervous to ask the question, but even if she was only holding the tail, it was worth a try. "So, if Baxter didn't do the shooting, who did? Given your creative imagination, I'm sure you've thought about how it might have gone down."

  Quinn grunted, a new kind of grunt, which I immediately labeled "Type 3." Slightly softer, almost like she was saying "yeah" under her breath, but swallowing the word as it came out.

  I stared out into the darkness, watching the white lines in the center of the road and scanning what I could see of the shoulder, illuminated by the uneven headlights. Then she started to speak.

  "I know you're not gonna believe me," she said, "but here's what happened."

  Chapter 11

  "James was already on a lot of lists because of his naughty habit of leaking the truth to people. The kind of lists you don't want to be on. When he entered the offices—if you can call them that—of The Las Vegas Gazette, he was met by Benjamin Huang, whose record as a faker of stories is a matter of public record.

  "James was carrying the drive. Well, one of the drives. Until you showed up, I figured he'd taken the one with the sticker, the important one. He was there to tell Huang about what was on the drive, spill the CIA secrets it contains, maybe even ask for Huang's help to leak it."

  "That's not what Innerva said." As little as Quinn respected my opinion, I knew I had facts from Innerva's mouth that would get her attention. "Innerva said they didn't know what was on the drive, that they were there to ask Huang to help them extract the data. Plus, they never would have leaked to a paper like The Gazette."

  She grunted, the second kind. Reluctant agreement. "Fine, but if they still needed to get the data off, why didn't they come to me? I know ten times as much as Huang."

  I could think of a few reasons, but I didn't say anything.

  "Anyway," Quinn said, "even if you're right about that, it doesn't change the point. So James was there to get help with the data. You can bet that if it took me a couple hours to figure out what that sticker meant, it took Innerva half that time. Anyway, Huang called in Deirdre Bancroft, a Godly woman who did tech support. It makes more sense that she was in the office, if what you just said is true. They could have called her in to look at it."

  "That's what I assumed as well."

  "Here's where I'm guessing our stories will diverge. As the three of them sat or stood in Huang's office, a black SUV stopped in the alley. It had tinted windows and only four numbers on its license plate. Its doors flew open with choreographed precision and four masked commandos in urban tactical gear climbed out. Maybe your pals Kenny and Holly were two of them, maybe not. They had the standard H&K MP5s that all their kind seem to carry, but those were slung. In their hands, two of them had identical cheap pistols and two had identical cheap shotguns. One of them was also dragging a stumbling, semi-conscious man: Baxter Callahan. My buddy."

  She spoke steadily, matter-of-factly, like she was reciting the story from memory. And as we passed mile after mile of darkness on all sides, two things became clear to me. First, Quinn became more talkative when she was spinning a conspiracy theory. And second, she'd been thinking this through from the moment she'd heard about the shooting.

  "Baxter was a smart man," she continued, "a computer engineer, a database specialist. He fixed databases that had gotten corrupted or fragmented or just stuffed full of garbage. He literally ferreted out information for a living. He'd done a lot of work on a lot of very important jobs, many of them under the table. Some of those jobs involved access to classified information, so highly-placed people were aware of him, and aware of his bad habit of asking questions, and his even worse habit of questioning the answers. He wasn't willing to swallow what they fed him, not when he had the brains and the know-how to find out the truth for himself. I always told him that he was going to get himself killed if he didn't watch out, and he always told me that he was careful. I guess he hadn't been careful enough. Hell of a way to learn that."

  I grunted as if to say, not likely. Quinn's communication style was rubbing off on me.

  "He'd already been drugged when they dragged him out of the SUV," she continued. "Not that you'll ever see a toxicology report admitting that. It made him easier to handle as the commando stood him up next to the conveniently unlocked back door of The Gazette, and put a 9mm pistol in Baxter's mouth.

  "And the three of them—James, Deirdre and Huang—were just sitting there, yapping away about that ridiculous old drive, when they heard the first shot from the back door. That was Baxter.

  "James and the other poor bastards didn't even have time to react. This team had drilled for days in a perfect mockup of The Gazette offices, ever since they found out James would be there with the drive. They came through the hallway like a breeze of death, guns blazing, incidentally killing the paper's sole remaining salesman and the young woman they kept at the front desk to look pretty and keep out riffraff."

  "Gil Kazinsky and Esperanza Martinez."

  "Yes, them. Within seconds, the team burst into Huang's office. First, they shot the drive on the desk with a 12-gauge, destroying it completely. Just like that, a whole load of the CIA's dirty laundry disappeared, and you have to ask yourself why. They've already admitted to a lot of nefarious stuff, so what's bad enough that they'd kill to keep it secret?"

  To Quinn, it was perfectly reasonable that they'd killed six people just to destroy the drive, but I was growing more skeptical by the second.

  "The primary target being disposed of, the commandos pumped several more rounds into the three human beings in the room, a Godly woman, an honest man, and a failed liar.

  "Their job done, they scattered a few more 'random' shots around so it would look nice and plausible that a crazed loner had done this, because everyone vaguely assumes that crazed loners have lousy aim. Except when they have mysteriously perfect aim and magic bullets, but it's considered rude to bring that up. Then they marched out the back door in single-file formation, placed the appropriate weapons in the hands of Baxter's dead body, leapt back into their SUV, and vanished before any of the neighbors could even get to the alley to see what the noise was. The entire operation took less than a minute and left no traces they didn't mean to leave.

  "Of course, your made-for-TV version doesn't even mention the drive, which was the point of the whole operation."

  I let her story hang there for a minute, then asked, "Other than the sticker on the drive, do you have any evidence of any of that? I mean, the team of commandos, the use of the back alley, Baxter being shot first. Come to think of it, ballistics have already been released matching the bullets to his guns. How do you explain that?"

  "Maybe they took his guns from his house when they kidnapped him. Maybe they used his guns to kill everyone."

  We switched positions at a rest area after a couple hours, and now Quinn was driving. I told her I needed to get a little rest and think through her version of the shooting, so we'd moved the luggage to the trunk and I'd taken the back seat. I'd been worried about her driving, but she seemed to know what she was doing. Plus, it kept her distracted and gave me time to consider her version of events.

  In theory, I could see it going down the way Quinn had described. In theory.

  But there were some holes in her story. First, her assumption that James had been there to leak the contents of the drive to Huang had already been contradicted by Innerva. Second, I didn't think that
James would have set up the meeting with Huang more than a day in advance, so her theory that a team had trained for the mission didn't add up. Finally, I wasn't buying her explanation of how Baxter's guns had ended up on the scene.

  But the biggest issue was that I still believed my version of the shooting, the official version. Reporters were digging all around this story, talking to Baxter's neighbors and trying to piece together a timeline. If it had happened the way Quinn thought, someone would have found out. Or, at least, they'd have disproved some aspect of the official version.

  The truth was, I didn't want to think about the shooting any more. Every once in a while, I'd be hit by a wave of disbelief that James was gone, but I didn't even want to think about James.

  The only person I could think of was Greta.

  Crisis after crisis had kept me from thinking about her, about the letter. And now that I had a moment of downtime, I couldn't use my phone. I was stuck with Quinn for at least another day, so I figured I'd try to get to know her.

  I sat up in the back seat and leaned forward. "You married?" I asked.

  She grunted something inaudible, her eyes moving in a steady rhythm from the road to the rearview mirror. Four seconds on the road, one second on the mirror. Repeated endlessly.

  I wasn't going to give up that easily. "Married. I asked if you are married."

  "Do I seem married?"

  "No. I can't say that you do."

  We rode in silence as an eighteen-wheeler passed us on the two-lane highway.

  "Are you married?" she asked at last. She spoke robotically, like a computer inside her had just booted up the "small talk" program. But at least she was trying.

  "I guess you could say that. Greta and I got married in 2005, but we separated eight months ago." I watched her eyes to try to figure out if she was listening. Four seconds on the road, then one second on the rearview mirror. She'd added a new wrinkle to the routine, where every couple minutes she'd glance at the side mirrors. First her side, then the passenger side.

  "You've been married eight months?" she asked.

  “Twelve years. Separated for eight months."

  "Oh, sorry."

  She clearly wasn't, but I appreciated the effort. "We're working it out, though, sort of. We only live about ten minutes apart and I've been trying, I really have, to change."

  "Change? Why?"

  She seemed to genuinely not understand what I was talking about. As though the daily compromises and accommodations of marriage—or, really, any relationship—were entirely foreign to her. "Have you ever been married?" I asked.

  She grunted. The second, more-dismissive one.

  "Boyfriend? Girlfriend? "

  "No."

  "Not ever?"

  "I had a boyfriend once. And I've had men in my life, plus a couple women here and there. But I don't have anyone I'm itching to contact, like you do. Obviously, that's a good thing." She went quiet as a train of three cars passed us. She seemed determined not to go over the speed limit, which I assumed was to avoid a possible interaction with the police. "Most of the last fifteen years, I would have said it was a good thing, anyway. I knew one day I'd have to bug out, disappear. And if that's gonna happen, it's not good to be tied to someone."

  She paused again, this time for longer and I thought she might be talked out. I felt my phone pressing against my thigh. "But it's not a hypothetical anymore," she continued. "I'm living in the worst-case scenario here. It's a good thing I didn't have someone to leave behind, someone I need to call, someone who might be targeted with propaganda. I can see the headline now: 'Crazed Loner Tries To Kill CIA Agents With Arson, Boyfriend Being Investigated For Terrorism Connections,' or whatever. They'd staple his balls to his legs until he gave me up. So, like I said, it's a good thing I don't have someone."

  Her small-talk robot had turned off and she was speaking more quickly, growing irritated.

  "Who was he?" I asked. "The boyfriend you had once."

  She glanced at me in the mirror for a second, breaking her routine. "Jack."

  "When were you with him?"

  The lights of the car behind us hit our rearview mirror and I caught a glimpse of her eyes, which were quieter and sadder than usual. "Before 9/11," she said.

  I could tell I'd hit a sore spot.

  Quinn's eyes were now fixed on the rearview mirror and I felt the car drifting a little. We also seemed to be slowing down. I tapped her shoulder as the car behind us changed lanes to pass, but we were drifting into the center lane. I leaned over Quinn, trying to reach the steering wheel. "Quinn, the road!"

  Now that the other car was in the other lane, our car was dark. But she seemed to be blinking away tears. "Quinn!"

  I got a finger on the wheel, but couldn't control it from the back seat. We were about halfway across the center line and now the car behind us was honking its horn. I wedged myself between the seats and grabbed the wheel as the car passed, half in the left lane and half on the left shoulder. After I steered back into our lane, Quinn pushed me back and took the wheel again.

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Me, too," I said. "I mean about Jack. I don't know what happened, but…well…if you ever want to talk about it."

  After a few seconds that seemed like a few minutes, she grunted in ascension and I got the sense that she was back.

  A minute later, she turned on the radio and scanned until the static turned into coherent sound. It was light Christian rock. When the first song ended, she began her routine again. Four seconds on the road, one on the mirror. Something about 9/11 had set her off, maybe something about Jack, but my guess was that it was 9/11.

  I added "Jack" and "9/11" to my list of topics to avoid with Quinn. Already on the list: CIA, fire, and social media.

  And speaking of social media, I couldn't take the blackout any more. I said, "I'm gonna try to sleep for a bit. Just lemme know if you need me to drive." But instead, I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and powered it on, careful to press the screen into my sleeve so it wouldn't light up the back seat.

  Next, I opened up the Facebook app, figuring I'd just pop in for a sec to make sure the world was still turning. I get hundreds of Facebook notifications every day, and most days I scroll through them all, just to get a sense of what people are saying about me and The Barker. But this time, something was different. I had a few thousand notifications. Person after person was tagging me in posts. Even more were tagging The Barker, and it only took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on. I checked the news list and there I was, at #2.

  I was trending on Facebook.

  Chapter 12

  I angled my body so my head was right behind Quinn's seat, then stared at the headline for a few seconds:

  Alex Vane: Wife of The Barker CEO Files for Divorce.

  I tapped on the link and a little summary of the story popped up:

  Greta Mori, life coach and wife of Barker CEO Alex Vane filed, for divorce in Seattle Court today, claiming that the marriage was "irretrievably broken." The two married in 2005.

  I hadn't seen this coming, but I wasn't shocked. And I'm not gonna lie. My first instinct wasn't to call Greta or grieve the impending dissolution of my marriage. I just wanted to know what people were saying about me. How the narrative was playing out online.

  I clicked through a few of the links. TMZ, BuzzFeed, HuffPo. Most of the sites were treating the story respectfully. Greta had filed for divorce, a couple grafs of backstory, but no real detail and no narrative-shaping quotes. It was news because much of what I did was news. I was the public face of one of the most valuable independent sites left on the web, and I'd put myself front and center in many of the controversies that had hit The Barker over the last few years, rebuffing takeover attempts, winning some lawsuits and losing others. In short, I wasn't famous, but I was known to everyone in the media and a lot of people out of it. It didn't hurt that I looked like an intellectual Backstreet Boy. At least I had until the last few years when I start
ed packing on the pounds. Apparently, enough people cared about the end of my marriage to get it trending. But there was nothing incendiary in the first few articles.

  Then I saw it.

  A site called Media News Online had a slightly different angle on the story, and it was the quotation marks that made me stop scrolling long enough to read the headline.

  Alex Vane's Wife Files for Divorce, Cites "Scumbaggery"

  It gave much of the same information as the other articles, but also contained a few grafs detailing the reasons Greta had filed. I knew right away that Greta was the "source close to the story." Not only was "scumbag" her favorite way to insult me, but the piece had details only she knew. For an educated man, who tries to convince himself that he's a decent person, "scumbag" is one of the worst insults. It implies classlessness, possibly chauvinism, and a kind of immorality that brings to mind used car salesmen, strip club owners, or ambulance-chasing lawyers in cheap suits.

  The particular scumbaggery she was referring to was my tendency to publish articles that, to me, were on the margins and, to her, were "immoral, invasive, sexist, and offensive." She didn't mention a specific story in the article, but I knew the one that had pissed her off the most. You probably do, too. Remember the upskirt shots of Kelsye Sparks, the child star turned singer, turned actor? I bought those. I published them. And I'd do it again, too. It's not like I snuck into her bedroom or anything. In a reckless phase in her mid-twenties, Kelsye hit the L.A. club scene wearing a miniskirt and no panties. It just so happened that a paparazzo I know snapped a couple pictures as she got out of the limo.