Deadly News: A Thriller

by Zooey Smith

  “All’s swell that ends well.”

  “Don’t,” she said flatly.

  “Everything went fine.” He tossed his bag on the counter. “The boss man was as creepy as usual.”

  The woman shuddered. “It’s better that you deal with him.”

  “You would say that.”

  She glared at him. “Would you really want me working with him? Me?”

  He tried to smile, failed, just said, “No.”

  She clicked a headline that was flashing, accepting it.

  He sat down next to her. “What next?”

  “Pawn 2 is in place. He should be done soon.”

  “And then there’s just the cleanup round.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  “It will be a lot of things. But it will be nothing like easy.”

  …

  Fe had fallen asleep, and Abby had been awake but drifting, when shouts woke Fe and caused Abby to stand. She looked to Fe.

  “What’s going on?” Fe asked groggily.

  “Let’s check it out.”

  Fe grabbed Abby’s hand. “Wait.”

  “Come on.” She pulled Fe off the couch.

  “I don’t know.”

  But Abby was already opening the door. It was once again the disorderly station she’d come to unconsciously expect.

  She spotted Emily near a white board, drawing something, then making marks on a map stuck to the wall.

  “Fire is waiting for the bomb squad?”

  “Where are they!” the asshole—Mason, Abby corrected—shouted.

  “On their way,” someone answered.

  “No fucking shit. How long?”

  “They’re passing Market.”

  Mason looked at the map. “A couple minutes.” He turned to the people gathered around, and the room as a whole. “Any updates on their situation? How many are injured?”

  “All, as far as we know.”

  “No word from inside since Penter went silent.”

  “What’s going on?” Abby quietly asked Emily.

  Emily looked startled to see her. “What are you doing here? You need to be…” But apparently she didn’t know where Abby needed to be.

  “Is it the suspect from the park?” Fe asked.

  Emily shook her head. “No. Uh, we don’t know. Our guys went in and met a team from the ATF.”

  “What were they doing there?” Fe asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Look, if you want to help, get word out to the locals to be on watch for someone matching this description.” She pointed to a poster of a man stuck up on the whiteboard. “It’s already been disseminated, but you’ll be faster.” She shook her head. “Now, let me do my job.”

  Fe put her hands up and backed away a step. “Okay.” She gestured at Abby with her head. “Come on, you can help.”

  Abby didn’t think she could, but followed anyway.

  They went back into Emily’s office, and Fe put in a call to her lieutenant, who was a few floors below. Afterward, she said, “Let’s get down there.”

  “They said something about a bomb, the bomb squad,” Abby said as they rode the elevator.

  Fe nodded.

  “Do you think it’s another building? What if they did it anyway?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Abby gaped. “You’re sure it’s nothing?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “Don’t think it means anything. Don’t think that just because this happened, it’s related to Ecks.”

  Abby’s mouth hung open, and she looked at the elevator doors. “Well, I hadn’t been until you mentioned it.”

  “Good.”

  “But now that you have”—the doors opened—“that seems reasonable.”

  Fe put a hand on Abby’s back and ushered her out of the elevator and once again toward the lieutenant’s office.

  “What’s she doing here?” the lieutenant asked as the two of them walked into her office.

  “What do you mean?” Fe asked.

  “Forget it. I need you to coordinate this thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have already made inroads with her handler, right?”

  “My handler?”

  The lieutenant waved this away.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “Good. You’re gonna pair up with Masterson, I want you two to work together on this.” She shook her head. “Hagelin, her—“she gestured to Abby—“Sellwood, the building, the crappy evidence we’ve managed to gather. It’s too much to be coincidence, and I don’t like not knowing what’s going on in my city.”

  “The Hagelin case, wasn’t there a problem?”

  The lieutenant squinted at Fe. “Yeah.” She shuffled some papers on her desk. “Missing his file.” She looked up. “Would you know anything about that?”

  “Only what Masterson told me.”

  The lieutenant leaned back in her seat. She looked haggard, Abby thought. “There are two possibilities, as I see it. Either we are incompetent, and lost it, or…” She looked between the two of them. “Oh hell, or we have a fucking mole. I don’t like either option.”

  “I don’t think it’s anyone inside.”

  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “Do you have any evidence it’s not?”

  “Well,” Fe stammered. She looked as though she thought this was ridiculous. “I mean, no, but—”

  “So we are going to keep it as a possibility. You can look into that, too.” She rubbed her eyes. “Now get out of here and find Masterson. He’s probably in the kitchen, or buying donuts.”

  Abby laughed.

  The lieutenant waved them out.

  Masterson was not only in the kitchen making coffee, he was eating a donut while browsing a site with images of donuts.

  “Are you joking?” Fe said coming up behind him.

  He turned, a surprised look on his face. He swallowed. “Hey, don’t even start, this is for Bill’s retirement party.”

  “Donuts?” Abby asked.

  “Cake.” He clicked away from the current page. “I got distracted. Now what are you two doing here? You don’t eat, obviously, so it can’t be that.”

  “We can’t all be vacuums,” Fe said, slapping his shoulder. “Partner.”

  “Tell me that’s a joke,” he said, setting his donut down carefully.

  Fe just shook her head.

  Abby pauses.

  “Why’d you stop?” the girl asks eagerly.

  Abby shakes her head. She looks at you, then around the circle. “Nothing. Uh, so, yeah, they coordinated. They couldn’t figure out where the drones came from. Those things are expensive, something like ten million worth were destroyed, so there should have been a paper trail.”

  She looks around again. “Anyway, that led nowhere.” She pauses, looks at the fire.

  “Did you ever find out what happened to Soren?” the long-haired man asks.

  Abby looks at him. Then she laughs. “Thanks for the reminder. I still need to look in that folder.”

  “You got your stuff from the hotel?” the thirteen-year-old asks. “I thought it got blown up.”

  Abby shakes her head. “Nope, got it back. I’ll skip ahead to there.”

  “Don’t skip,” you say, before you can stop yourself.

  Abby gives you a strange smile. “Not skip really, it’s just nothing happened till then. Anyway, I was still in the station, as were the FBI and the female agent who had been guarding me. There was a briefing, and the other person who had been guarding me was up front.”

  “Okay,” Fe said, studying the board covered with everything they knew thus far. Abby sat in the back, trying not to draw attention to herself. She wasn’t sure she was supposed to be here, but no one said anything, so she wasn’t going to point it out.

  “We have a footprint, which matches the estimated shoe size of the driver in the surveillance video from Ecks Sellwood’s reside
nce, and whose height and weight match what’s on the bogus driver license on file with Uber.”

  “And shit else,” someone called.

  “We have DNA evidence courtesy of the FBI, and some partial fingerprints.”

  “Which don’t match anyone in our database,” Masterson said, his bulk settled precariously on a table that seemed ready to break under the weight.

  “But if we do get a suspect, it will help.” She looked around. “That’s all I have to add, everything else you already covered.”

  Masterson pushed himself up. “What ya’ll waiting for?” He waved a hand at the room. “Go forth, my children. Find me someone to arrest.”

  There was a chuckle at this, and the room emptied.

  Feeling daring, Abby walked up to Fe and Masterson. “What are we going to do?”

  “We? We”—he pointed at himself—“are going to go over the evidence again to see if we can find something we missed. You”—he pointed at Abby, tip of his finger poking her shoulder—“are going back to the FBI.” He frowned. “Wait, have you been here the whole time?”

  “Oh, no, I mean, just caught the tail end.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I can help though.”

  “Don’t even start.”

  “I mean it, I’ve spotted things, like, ten times now that you guys missed.” Saying this, she realized it might be an exaggeration. “And the FBI,” she added when she saw Masterson’s look. “Things they missed too.”

  “I—”

  “Come on, big guy,” Fe said. “Let her help. She’s involved in this as much as we are.”

  “Have you—” He stopped, staring at Fe. “Oh, I see.” He nodded, then looked back to Abby. “Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  Abby frowned, looking between the two of them. “I don’t plan on it.”

  As Abby and Fe were getting in the elevator to leave the building, Abby thought for some reason of cell phone signals in elevators, which made her think of her cell phone, which brought to mind the fact that her things from the hotel were still missing. “Hey, have you guys gotten the stuff from the hotel yet?”

  Fe paused entering the elevator. “That’s a good question. I had some stuff there too. I can’t remember what.” She gestured with her head for Abby to enter. “We’ll head upstairs first and ask your FBI friend.”

  Emily did not look happy to see them. Abby wondered what she had been doing. Judging by the sweat stains on her shirt, it looked like she’d just run a few miles. “You look tired.” Abby said.

  “Fuck you too. What do you need?”

  “Have you heard from the hotel? We—”

  “Yeah, yeah we got it. Good timing, it just came to us. Is there anything that might be evidence?”

  “Not unless something I had was the bomb,” Abby replied, thinking of the folder. There wasn’t really a way to frame that response except as a lie. Oh well.

  Emily shook her head. “No, the bomb was in the room across the hall from yours. Blew the door to your room straight out the window though. So if you’re missing anything, blame the wind, not us.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Emily had Fe and Abby follow her to her office. The plastic bag had both of their possessions mixed together. Abby’s coat smelled like smoke, but other than that, nothing seemed damaged. She subtly snatched her purse from the bag, then covered it with the coat as she set it aside and continued going through the bag to take attention off her purse.

  She hugged her laptop to her breast. “Oh, I have missed you. And you too, phone.” She kissed it.

  “I think she finally broke,” Emily said.

  “We all deal with things in our own way,” Fe said.

  “I’m right here, I can hear you guys.”

  A slight grin tugged at the edge of Emily’s mouth. “So, anything missing?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “Then I’m getting back to work. Don’t break anything in here.”

  “We were about to leave anyway,” Fe said.

  Emily stopped at the door. “Where to?”

  “Check out the crime scenes.” She shrugged. “Not many other leads.”

  “We have one, maybe.”

  “Really?”

  “Former agent, remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We picked him up.”

  “He’s here now?”

  Emily nodded. “We’re letting him simmer.” One side of her mouth frowned. “Not that it will do much good with him. But, human nature is human nature, might have some small effect. And really, we’re just too fucking busy right now.”

  “Do you think she should see him?” she gestured at Abby.

  “Yeah, I could tell you if it was the same voice.”

  “Thanks, but we have recordings and speech analysis software for that.”

  “But—”

  “No. I can’t, you are a civilian, despite what you may think. And evidence to the contrary,” she mumbled.

  “But—”

  Fe put her arm around Abby. “It’s fine. We have more promising things.”

  “Looking around a thoroughly investigated crime scene is more promising than interviewing the most likely suspect yet?”

  “When you put it like that…”

  “Like I said,” Emily said, “wait here if you want. I need to get back to work.”

  “Wait,” Abby called.

  “Jesus fuck.” Emily slowly turned back around to face Abby. “What?”

  “That flash drive you let me use. Is it…”

  Emily sighed. She walked over to her desk, and pulled the drive from the computer on her desk. She held it out, but then withdrew it when Abby reached for it. “What are you planning on doing with it?”

  Abby shrugged.

  “Because I don’t think it would be wise to write a story about this right now. It might even be considered obstruction.”

  “Seriously? You’re gonna use that to intimidate me?”

  “I’m a cop, I’m not trying to intimidate you.” Emily lowered her hand once more and allowed Abby to take the drive.

  Abby did.

  “All I’m saying is you don’t really know anything at this point, so it makes sense to wait.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Emily shook her head. “Whatever.” At the door, she turned back to them. “This isn’t a bedroom.” Then she left.

  Abby tilted her head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just stress, probably,” Fe said.

  Abby turned on her phone, and was inundated with voicemails from Becky. “Damn, let me just listen to one of these first.” She looked out the office door, then added, “In here where it’s quiet.”

  “Hurry up. You can listen to the rest on the way over.”

  Abby nodded and selected the most recent.

  Becky’s voice began playing in her ear: “What the crapfuck is going on? Are you alive? Call me. I guess if you’re dead, you can’t. But if you aren’t, call me NOW. I’m not paying you for this. Unless you have a good story I can run. Which you better if you want to keep your job. I hope you do. I’m guessing you do. I saw you on the internet. Or maybe you went crazy. Why do crazy people always end up walking naked outside or in a mall or whatever? Strange. Could be a column. You could write it. Call me! Okay, bye.”

  Abby ended the call, assuming that message would be representative of the others. She pressed her lips together and looked at Fe. “I should call my boss.”

  “Okay,” Fe said with mild irritation.

  “Can I?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  Abby shrugged, picked one of the hundred missed calls from Becky, and hit send.

  “This is Becky.”

  “Hey.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Who?”

  “Abby. You know, the one you were all worried about?”

  “Where are you? What’s going on? Have
you heard from Ecks?”

  “I am a bit busy right now.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe you could help me by making sure my latest work gets edited.”

  “Woman, are you kidding? What’s wrong with you?”

  “No, Becky, I’m not. I’m just saying, there’s pending work.”

  “Wait. You mean on what’s happening?”

  “Maybe you should double-check.”

  No response.

  “Hello?” She pulled the phone from her ear to check the screen. Frowned, then put it back. “You there? Hello?”

  “Yeah, hold on. I can’t multitask.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Here, let me call you back.”

  “Becky! No, what are you—” the line went dead. “What, the fuck!”

  “What is it?” Fe asked.

  Abby put her hands out, indicating no idea.

  “Okay then. Ready to go?”

  Before Abby could answer, her phone rang. I shouldn’t even answer it, she thought. Let her worry. She sighed and put the phone to her ear. “What?”

  “Please hold, Abby Melcer.”

  “What the hell?” She checked the number. It wasn’t Becky’s.

  “Now what?” Fe asked, frowning.

  “It’s a recording, but something—”

  A voice closed her throat. “Abby, how nice to see you.” It was his voice.

  “I—”

  “How good of you to answer. So nice to see you’re doing okay. Now, down to business, yes? That’s you, all business. Well then, let me oblige you. Here is what you are going to do, no, don’t interrupt.” He laughed. “You cheeky little monkey you. Right, so this is what you will do, as I said. In eleven hours and fifty-seven minutes from one minute and three seconds from now you will be at the north-east corner of First and Third. Once there, you will discover a folder. Ah yes, you like folders, don’t you?”

  “You’re fucking—”

  “Then,” a pause, to let the interruption sink in, “you will take this folder somewhere, which will be disclosed at that time.”

  “Why would I do anything for you? You haven’t kept any of your promises.” But even as she said this she scanned the room for a clock, noted the time. She could do the math later.

  “This is the last thing we will require of you. I promise.”

  “And why should I believe that?”

  “Oh Abby. Why should you believe anything? Nothing is certain. But I promise you this. Do this one thing, and you will be done.”