by A. R. Licht
over before approaching her.
“Hi.”
The woman looked at Kate and became nervous. “Hi.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m alright.”
“Did you see this whole thing happen?”
“No. I was in the last car.”
Kate introduced herself and the network she was from, then asked, “Do you think you’d feel like talking about your experience on camera?”
“Uh. Yeah, okay.”
Kate asked a few questions before she realized where she’d seen the woman before. “Are you a paramedic?”
“Excuse me?”
“I remember you. From before. In Alkin.”
“Me? No. You must have me mixed up with someone else.”
“No, you were a paramedic. At the hospital where the shooting happened.”
Kate nearly grabbed the woman’s arm to drag her back to the van where her laptop sat so she
could show her the ten second video.
The woman had an odd expression on her face that Kate couldn’t read. Suddenly, the woman
bolted.
“Hey!” Kate said, surprised.
“Look at that, you scared her off,” Waylon said.
“Why’d she run?” Kate said.
“You don’t have time to go after her, we have to get back,” Waylon said, as though he’d read her
mind.
What was the paramedic doing in Los Angeles of all places?
Chapter 14
Essex, Maryland - April 18th
She can’t sleep. Tossing and turning, Kate finally gives up in a huff. She flings the blankets off
and makes a cup of coffee. The flight back to Alkin, and the subsequent drive home had been exhausting.
For what felt like the hundredth time, she checked the inbox of her email. Still no response from
the mystery sender.
She hated to do it, but like an obsessive girlfriend that can’t take a hint, she emailed them again. “If you are concerned about revealing your identity, you have a legal right as my source not to be
identified. No one will find out.”
She hit the ‘send’ button and watched it shoot off into cyber-space via an animation.
She pulls up the video again, freeze-framing it on the woman paramedic.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Kate made a list of all of the things that troubled her about Alkin. After having seen two separate accident scenes, having stood or walked through them, Kate listed the first as the concerning lack of blood. At the airplane crash site and the seventy-car pileup, she had seen not only blood but tasted it on the air.
Number two: The organized way in which the event was carried out. Everything was almost too
perfect, beginning with the way media had access to the site at the right times, ending with the ease of information and sound bites. Even the interviews could be called into question. The way juicy tidbits had been revealed at the right moment.
Number three: The Facebook pages being created a day before the mass casualty incident. The Facebook pages actually gave her chills. Why would all of the victims with a social media page have created them on the same day? She'd even gone back to James Rondstat's social sites and blog to find that all posts had been generated the day before the event.
Number four: The anonymous sender of the video, and the video itself. Not to mention, the fact
that she’d run into the paramedic in Los Angeles, California. The paramedic seemed to have
recognized Kate as well, possibly hoping Kate would not recognize her.
What happened to the anonymous emailer? Had they played a joke? Had they wanted to see if
she would make the drive? Had they chickened out?
Most of all, what was the significance of the video? It was disturbing to see the paramedics
laughing, not carrying themselves in a solemn manner or frenzied as they rushed the bodies away, but then again they were hidden from the view of the family members in the front of the building.
And, finally, number five: The flash drive. The footage she had tried to show her boss. The one
thing that would bother anyone who saw it, having known the situation.
She pulled up the footage now, re-watching what had made her question her sanity. Footage
Waylon had filmed unknowingly. He had set the camera up and walked away. Someone bumped the camera, because she saw the image jerk violently, then, it had stayed facing off to the right, capturing something no one was supposed to see.
Terry Berkus and the man with the clip board, Nathan. Terry has been informed that his wife,
Joleen, and his unborn child are dead. Nathan tells him that he is going to be interviewed by
CNL, Sienna is in the background checking her appearance.
Terry cracks a joke. “That one has a pretty mouth.”
Nathan nods, claps Terry on the back, “Break a leg.”
Next, Terry stands very still, his body rigid, eyes closed. He goes through what appears to be a
breathing exercise. Sienna puts on a jacket that complements her suit and runs her tongue over
her teeth.
“Are you ready?” She asked Terry.
Terry shook out his limbs and said, “Ready.”
Immediately after, Sienna begins her live broadcast and Terry is the dutiful husband who barely
survived a horrific event, his wife and unborn child didn’t make it. He even squeezes out a
few tears.
His act appears genuine, his demeanor perfect.
Kate had goosebumps on her arms even though she’d watched it already a number of times at the
station.
Alone, each of those things on her list might be explained away, but together... She could not
give it a reasonable, logical excuse.
Was the hospital massacre a hoax?
She tried to wrap her mind around this, but couldn’t. If it was, it was elaborate, complex. It
would have involved the police and the FBI. The paramedics would be in on it.
The paramedics! That was it. Kate pulled up her iCloud account on her cell phone, selected the
video and cast it onto her big screen wall-mounted TV.
Grainer, but much larger, she let the ten seconds play out. The paramedics, laughing, chatting.
Holding coffee. Closing the doors on the back of the vehicles.
She paused the screen and rewound the clip. Just before they closed the doors again, she paused
it.
That was it! There are no bodies in the ambulances. The ambulances are empty.
Hadn’t it been the point of bringing in the ambulances, parking them so no one could see, to keep
the amount of gore from being video taped? To, not allow the families in waiting to see the body bags then, or even later on television?
What Kate and several others had assumed was that the ambulances would be the vehicles which
transported all twenty-seven victims to the nearby hospital morgue where forensics would order
an autopsy and continue their investigation on the bodies.
But no bodies had been loaded into the ambulances before taking off, turning on the flashing
lights as though they had an important task to fulfill, drawing attention to themselves.
She added to the list a number six, no bodies.
She sat back in the chair, a sort of sick dread in the pit of her stomach.
“What now?” Kate asked herself.
She had to bring this to Jack. She had the story of the century in her hands. There is no way that
Jack wouldn’t hear her out now.
She assembled the video and the raw footage onto the flash drive, along with an enlarged photo
of the interior of the ambulances. She had one last thing to add to it, but, she would have to add it
at the station. Th
e paramedic she’d run into at the pileup.
She sat in the lobby waiting for the okay to head into Jack Cassel’s office. When it finally came,
Kate thought she was going to be sick.
“What do you want?” Jack said by way of greeting.
“Hi, Jack.”
“Get to the point, I have things I need to get to.”
Kate handed him the flash drive.
“What’s this?”
“Please put it in your USB and open the file.”
“What’s on it.”
“You’ll find out.”
Kate was too afraid to give him any background information before he saw it for himself. He might shut her down without even listening to her, and she knew that would end badly.
Irritated, he inserted the flash drive and did as she’d asked. She heard the videos play out.
Wordlessly, he stared at her when it was finished, his face white, his eyes narrowed.
“I have reason to believe that the Susan Anderson’s Women’s Hospital event was a hoax.”
“On what grounds?”
She listed her six concerns, citing the videos he’d just seen.
She thought he would praise her. Ask her where she came by her knowledge, or who her source
was. She thought he would, at worst, tell her it wasn’t enough evidence but to keep digging.
She thought wrong.
“I told you not to investigate this. I told you to drop it. Did you listen? No. Now I have to fire you, because, that is what I told you would happen if you didn’t listen. Why didn’t you listen, Kate?”
She was taken aback. He not only sounded upset, but afraid.
“But, I-“
“You’re fired. Hand in your badge at the security desk and leave the grounds immediately.”
Kate reached for the flash drive and Jack smacked her hand away. “That’s ANB property.”
“But, I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I highly suggest that you drop this thing like a hot potato. Leave it alone. Now get out.”
Kate was stunned. She left his office in a daze. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry until she
was safely ensconced in her car.
Chapter 15
Essex, Maryland - April 18th
“Kate!”
Kate groaned inwardly.
“I wanted to ask if you still planned to sign that contract? I have a couple coming in later and they might be interested in your apartment; if you want to give it up, I mean. I don’t want to lose you. You always pay on time and you’re very quiet. But, you know how it is? I need to know soon.”
“I thought I still had time to decide.”
“Of course you do. I just hoped you would know by now.”
“Not yet, I’ll get back to you.”
Her landlord made a show of disappointment as he watched her collect her mail. She overheard
the gossip hounds talking about some lookie-loo still hanging around the apartments. Kate
thought the older one might like it if he was watching her. It’s probably been a while since
anyone has shown interest.
That was a mean thought, she chastised herself, and as punishment she forced herself to smile
and wave as she passed the ladies on her way upstairs.
She put on a pair of pajamas, because, where would she go now that she was no longer waiting for a call to go anywhere in the continental United States? She plopped down on the sofa she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep now that she was out of a job, and allowed herself five more minutes of being outraged and weepy.
Then she called Sienna.
“Fired! But, why?”
“Because I was looking into something Jack wanted me to leave alone.”
“Why didn’t you stop when he told you to?” Sienna said, slightly distracted.
“Because it kept finding me.”
“That’s cryptic.”
“I’m so heartbroken, Sienna. I don’t even know what to do with myself.”
“I’m off on some downtime, want me to come over? Keep you company?”
“Would you?”
“Give me your address and I’ll be there soon.”
When Kate answered the door, Sienna had a bottle of wine and a bag of donut-holes in her hands.
“How do you know me so well?”
“I told you, we’re the same person. Where’s the bottle opener?”
“Second drawer on the right.”
“Your eyes are puffy.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been crying," Kate admitted, "I promised myself it was the last time but then that was five times ago. It's really annoying.”
“It's like going through a breakup. You fall in love, can’t envision your life without racing around
the country like a fool, then its over and you didn’t get to have closure.”
“That is exactly how it feels,” Kate said, grateful that someone understands what she’s going
through. Anyone in her family would just brush it off and tell her to move on.
“It’s a vicious business. Show me what got you fired.”
So, Kate did. She showed her everything, even Sienna’s interview. Sienna gasped and admitted
that she hadn’t see that exchange, or the hyperventilating Terry did just before taking on a
different persona.
“That is so weird!”
Kate then explained her suspicions and how she’d taken all of this to Jack.
“What was his reaction?”
“He looked scared, then got angry. He said he’d warned me, like, I was an errant child,
that he had no other choice, but to fire me.”
“Did he keep the flash drive?”
“Yes, but I have copies.” Kate left unsaid that she’d also made copies of all of the raw footage from all of her jobs before she’d gone in to talk to Jack. She had intended to review all of it, just in case there were other strange unexplainable things.
“What? Like on a flash drive?”
“That, and my iCloud account.”
“Girl, I’m telling you now that you should let it go. If Jack was upset enough to fire you over it,
there might be a reason.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Kate said, frowning.
“If you don’t, you’ll never get a job anywhere else. I’ll tell you what, my network will be looking for a replacement after I leave. I could put in a good word for you! But, that means no more investigating something that got you fired. I don’t want to help you get the job and then have it backfire on me.”
“You’d do that for me?” Kate said, tearing up again.
“What are friends for?”
Sierra left after one in the morning, Kate’s head buzzing from all of the wine and sugar.
She needed fresh air to clear the fuzz from her brain, she had a lot to think about.
Sierra might be able to get her a job at the number one ranked network in the country based out
of Baltimore, which meant she’d be able to stay near Abby. It also might mean better pay.
On the other hand, she is a reporter for a reason. Her nature to get to the root of the problem, to
keep digging up the dirt until she found the bone of truth, not letting go until it was in the right
mouth. Kate knew she would not be able to give up this thing she’d stumbled across.
When she thought back on it, how perfect had it been that a green, naive correspondent cut her
teeth on such an easy case? She wouldn’t know that it wasn’t real, wouldn’t even think to ask the right questions that would reveal it as a fake.
Even Waylon had been suspicious, but he doesn’t have the same drive she does. He noted it, filed
it away, and forgot about it.
The other thing that kept nagging at her was why send that video to her, of all people? Was it
because she was naive and gullible and thus had less to l
ose than someone who had invested years upon years in the industry?
From now on, she would continue to dig and probe, but, she would do so quietly. In the meantime, it might be wise to make backups of the backups.
For the next six hours, she sits in front of her laptop, transferring files, labeling them, uploading
them. When she ran out of space in her own iCloud account, she created new ones. Then made
duplicate accounts as a back up in case the first accounts failed. In the end, she had thirty new