Into the Night

by Herb Scribner

  The Starbucks sits at the end of the street, right on the corner. People are floating in and out of the cafe, carrying their venti cups and their small bags of purchased memorabilia. Others are leaving without anything, probably done with their in-house coffees.

  I hang around the wide window that shows the inside. It's hard to see far back into the room. But I imagine Ben and Minny are inside. They have to be. They have to be in there talking about, well, I'm not really sure. And whatever they're talking about, it's going to help us in someway. I know it. After all, she wanted to talk to Ben from the beginning.

  I slip inside the restaurant. The waft of Starbucks coffee overwhelms me a little bit, but I enjoy it thoroughly. I toss the coffee I just grabbed from the hotel into the trash. Why did I bring that here? I must have been nervous. I like to drink coffee when I'm nervous, which doesn't always help me lose my nervousness, you know?

  I walk up to the counter. The barista seems a little surprised to see me since she probably saw me toss out a coffee. I order a cafe misto, which is just coffee with warm milk. I stare across the room, I search for them.

  "Hey," I hear from behind me. And when I look behind me, Ben is coming up beside me.

  "Hey," I say a little surprised to see him. "What's up? When did you get here?"

  "I've been here for ten minutes. And she's here. In the back. In one of the plush chairs."

  My head immediately jerks in that direction. It's hard to see the plush chairs. But I imagine they're in the back corner toward the back window. A shadow overtakes that corner of the room.

  "Should I go over?"

  "I told her I'd grab her a scone. She says she hasn't eaten in awhile so I figured I'd help her out. Maybe you can come with me."

  "I don't know about that."

  "It's an easy shot. One of the only shots we have. We can't risk her running away. Just come with me and I'll introduce you."

  "I don't know, Ben. Wouldn't it be better if I just came over to her randomly?"

  "No. Please. Just listen to me on this."

  The Starbucks barista at the end of the counter shouts out my name as the coffee is delivered to me. I hurry over and snag it. If there were any elements of surprise, they're gone now. Ben and I walk over through the main cafe toward the plush chairs.

  The nerves begin to bundle inside of me. They're growing and buzzing. They're building and building and building. I haven't felt this nervous in a long time. But the feelings are real. There's a certain thrill with this entire experience. I haven't been so thrilled with a reporting job in a long time. And now here I am, back in it, back in the game.

  For a second, I try to understand the weight of everything that's about to unfold. Minny has the dots to connect my story. And it's time to see what details she might have, and it's time to see what she might have to say.

  We're about to finish this entire reporting experience for good. Hopefully this can put an end to my story.

  I slip my phone out of my pocket and open up the recording app. I flip it on. You never know when you might need to record something. And this is a perfect time to record a conversation.

  "Minny," Ben says as he comes around the table. "She's here."

  She's here? She's here? What the hell? Did Ben tell her about me before hand? The shockwave of nerves blasts through me and I feel like toppling over. My eyes grow wide and I stare at Ben, who is staring back at me with raised eyebrows and a gleeful smile.

  "Thanks Ben," she says.

  And as I come around to face her, I finally see her for the first time. Soft brown hair. Pale skin with a pretty face. Bright hazel eyes. A Burberry scarf covers her neck and a black jacket warms her body. She extends her hand outward and we shake.

  Here we are.

  Minny Swensen and Annette Gardner.

  Our paths have finally crossed.

  "Hi Annette," she says with a smile. "Please sit down. Ben, do you mind giving us a second?"

  "I'm sure you have a lot to talk about," Ben says.

  He raises his cup in a cheerful way and then disappears to the front of the shop. I have so much anger toward him I want to throw the coffee cup at him and let him feel my rage.

  But I hold back. And now I'm a little off put my being here with Minny. I was supposed to be the one to surprise her. But here she was, once again a step ahead, surprising me. How did this happen? How did she orchestrate meeting me here? I just don't understand why she and Ben had talked about me beforehand?

  "Don't be mad at him," she says, tapping her fingers against her own cup of coffee. "I asked him to meet up."

  "Really?"

  "I posted his bail, which I think he already told you about. And in exchange, I wanted him to make sure that you and I finally had a chance to talk."

  I smile. "That's funny because I told him to do the same thing."

  She giggles. "Sounds like we both owe this conversation to Ben." She raises her cup. "To Ben."

  "To Ben," I say.

  We each take a sip of our drinks. I set my cup down. And now, I have to begin. I pull out my phone and set it on the table.

  "I'd love to record this."

  "Go right ahead," she says. "I'm not afraid to speak."

  "You seem like you've been hiding."

  She shrugs. "Not hiding. Waiting. Waiting for the right moment to talk to someone about what happened to me, and help them understand what really happened, not just what's been reported."

  "I just have so many questions. I'm trying to link everything together, I'm just not sure if I have everything right."

  "Tell me what you've got. I'll see if I can help out anywhere."

  So I begin explaining to her everything I know about New Surge, Up Sync, and the ties to Senator Simmons. And I don't hold back. I tell her that I saw Senator Simmons murder Kayleigh by the monument. And even though the people at the police station say that Kayleigh was murdered beforehand by a poisoning, I swear to her that I saw Simmons kill her then and there.

  I tell her that Up Sync collects data on everything and everything. They send that data to New Surge, which owns a lot of properties. They use the data to influence the companies and properties. Up Sync signed an in-principle deal with the government so that Up Sync would send the data to the government. And from what I could put together, it was Senator Simmons who made the deal between the government and Up Sync, putting her right at the center of the entire deal.

  Now, with the tech regulations set to be in place, the agreement will go unnoticed and unknown. They can hide all paper work and reporting on it, giving them free reign to access all of Up Sync and New Surge data. The larger that data grows, the more information they can gather on the American people.

  It's a messy scenario, but it's one I believe in. I stand by my reporting.

  "And now I just need to find a way to link it all together," I say. "I need Senator Simmons' footprint, somewhere to make it all work together. You know?"

  She smiles and sips her coffee. She wipes away a drip that had fallen on the edge of her lips.

  "You're not wrong, but you're not completely right, either," she says.

  "Sorry, what does that mean?"

  "It means that your story is right, it checks out, it's probably what happened and what people would believe happened. I actually think the narrative makes a lot of sense. Don't get me wrong. But you're missing the larger picture."

  "Well, that's what I was hoping you could talk to me about? I thought maybe you would know more. I thought you would have something to link it all together."

  "I do," she says. "But it's going to sound crazy."

  "I've dealt with a ton of crazy this week so I don't mind hearing one more ridiculous thing."

  "You're sure? Once you hear this, you can't unheard it. And I mean that. Once you hear about this, it's going to change your world."

  "It can't be that big."

  "That's what I thought," she says, shrugging. "And look where I ended up."

  "Fine. Tell me." />
  "Okay," she says again with a shrug. She sets down her coffee and takes a deep breath. She steadies herself and then leans back again. She stares at the ceiling and contemplates what happened to her. She runs through the memories that she's going to share with me. I can see the wheels turning.

  "It was about three years ago. Something like that. And I was doing this reporting on soccer matchfixing across the world. I worked at the Washington Scribe and I was poised to win an award. It was a big time story and I was at the peak of my career. And at such a young age, I could have really gone anywhere. But then my boss, I still hate him to this day, he tells me that they're going to shuffle things around, and that included me working for a fake news website."

  "Fake news?"

  "Yeah, like, they decided to own some fake news websites to earn some more money for the company. And then their whole strategy was to build a site around fake, ridiculous headlines and then slowly weed in real stories so that readers wouldn't be able to tell the difference by the end, you know? It's sort of a ridiculous strategy but I didn't mind it too much."

  "Wow, that's bold."

  She shrugs. "I hated it at the time, but then my ex-boyfriend, Heath, who I think you met with before, he was gonna get the job and I really was competitive with him. So I took on the job and started doing the fake news. A little story here. A little story there. And then, oddly enough, things started coming true."

  Okay. She's lost me. There's no way that can be true. But it definitely fits the absurd nature of her story that she mentioned beforehand. I stare at her for a second, making sure that I heard it correctly.

  Our eyes meet and she's judging me to see if I can handle the story she just told me. And when she sees I'm just wearing confusing and uncertain features, I look back at her and nod.

  "Okay."

  "And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it did. Things really started coming true. A car accident I wrote about would actually happen. A fake new bill I wrote would come into law. Like, I'm not even joking with you. Everything I wrote about kept coming true. I don't know if it was just coincidence, and it totally could have been. But then there's this company that decides to buy the website. And they take over. And they want to use the website to make things come true. Like, seriously. They wanted things to come true. So they told me to write certain things that would come true to influence the world."

  "So they manipulated you to make the world, better?"

  "Not exactly."

  "So what did this company do?"

  I'm not sure I believe her. I don't believe her. This sounds crazy. Like super crazy and ridiculous. But she seems so confident in everything. She's confident in what happened to her that it's hard not to take her seriously. She can't be so deranged that she would make up such a fake story, right? She used to work at the Scribe. She must be reputable.

  "I know this sounds crazy. But stay with me. I'm pulling this from foggy memories so I am going to have to think about this. Senator Hicks, you know, from Maryland? He was working to become president. The company wanted him to become president. They like really believed in him becoming president. So they had me write articles that would influence all of this stuff. Like, stories about Senator Hicks and why he deserved to be president."

  She opens her mouth to keep speaking. It's almost like there's more to the story there. She has something more to say. There are more details she wants to tell me.

  But she doesn't. She bobs her head back and forth and then continues with the story.

  "But here's the deal -- I quit the company and I moved on. The fake news stuff shutdown, for lack of a better term. But all of this just fits into a larger narrative that we can connect between these companies."

  "Okay. Now you're talking."

  "Up Sync had been working on a big plan to develop artificial intelligence. That's what Mary told me. She's the CEO over there. I asked her a few questions and she told me the company was moving into that space."

  "She told me the same thing!"

  "And New Surge, as you can see, is trying to influence politics and the world. I can speak right to that. It's clear to me that they're working to influence the world and shape our country. In short, New Surge and Up Sync are working together to influence our country's politics. And they're doing it again."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "New Surge bought those fake news companies and asked me to write articles that would influence the country. Now, they're collecting actual, physical data that they can use to influence surveys, polls, the way we see things. Everything will be influenced by their data. They're reshaping the world."

  She's not wrong. If you take her story as true, it's not crazy to see the line being drawn. Up Sync and New Surge are working together to reshape the country. It's clear. Both of stories combined prove that.

  But there's no link to Senator Simmons. For my story, so much depends on Senator Simmons having killed Kayleigh. If I can link her to New Surge or Up Sync, or link her to the murder, then I would know for sure that all of this is true.

  "But, this doesn't explain why Senator Simmons would kill Kayleigh?"

  She takes a sip of her coffee. "Okay so you said you were at the national pool, hanging around on a run and saw the senator kill Kayleigh, right?"

  "Yes."

  She leans forward, "But, did you?"

  "Huh?"

  "Did you actually see her do it? You have to be sure about that."

  My mind flashes back to that night. A dark shadow moving across the pool, grabbing Kayleigh by the neck. Choking her by the pool underneath the waters of the national pool. Darting off into the distance. And then the next morning, watching CNN and seeing the senator on the screen.

  Did I see the senator? Was she really there that night? Did she really commit this crime?

  She told me she did. She told me to my face that she killed Kayleigh and that she helped choke her. She admitted that to me behind closed doors. She told me to break up with Ben and that she would hurt him if I kept reporting.

  And then there was our conversation in the hotel room. She told me she killed Kayleigh there, too. She told me to stop digging. She told me I couldn't keep doing all of this reporting work if I wanted to see Ben get out of jail.

  These little, tiny conversations with her that shaped the way I did everything. She manipulated the way I sought after more details.

  But there wasn't any evidence to connect her to the murders. Heck, there was no evidence to connect her to New Surge and Up Sync either. I was working off of stories. I was working off of secondhand stories. The Up Sync story from Mary, the CEO, was just a secondhand story. I didn't know if the senator was really there.

  "I know that look," Minny says, pointing at me. "That's the look of someone who is unsure about what they saw."

  "I saw her. I swear. I saw her that night and then I saw her on the television the next day and I swear on everything that it was her."

  "Okay. But Kayleigh was poisoned beforehand, right?"

  "Yeah, that's what the coroner said."

  "So why poisoned her before choking her?"

  "Well, it just links another killer to the murder."

  "Annette, I'm sorry. I'm sorry but you have to explain why a senator would physically kill someone. So much on the line. So many scenarios that could play out. Do you think the senator would actually do that on the national monument property? They would risk everything just to kill this Kayleigh girl?"

  "She was the final witness in the tech case. The senator wanted her dead so that she wouldn't testify and then they could rewrite everything. The senator doesn't want anyone to know about her links to New Surge and Up Sync."

  She shakes her head. "Why her?"

  "Huh?"

  "Why do you think it's Senator Simmons?"

  "I think it was Mary who told me she saw a senator with a tall, lanky frame. And that's the senator. It has to be."

  "Or," Minny says. "Maybe it's someone who is meant to look like the
senator."

  A thick and heavy rock drops down my body and crashes into my stomach. It's something that I've never thought of before. I have been so sure that it was the senator who killed Kayleigh and it was the senator who had been in the meaning with Up Sync that I never thought it was possible that someone else might have done all of the murdering and killing and dealing and that person had LOOKED like the senator.

  A Doppelgänger? No, probably not. But a plant.

  "You think this is staged?"

  She shrugs. "I have reason to believe so."

  "Okay, what is it?"

  She bends over to the right side of the table and lifts a manilla folder out of her bag. She slips a piece of paper and places it on the counter. It's face down so I can't read it.

  "I did some reporting a few months ago on New Surge and Up Sync. I wanted to link them together just like you after what happened to me. I thought I could find the true story." She gazes around the table like she's trying to decide which details of her story to tell me. "And here's the deal. I talked to this woman named Tiffany, you know her?"

  "Kayleigh's sister."

  "Kayleigh's sister," she confirms. "And she tells me about how her sister was working with New Surge here in D.C. But then she got relocated to New York."

  "For what?"

  Minny gently slides the paper over to me from across the table. Worried and confused, I pick the paper up from the table and glance at it. My eyes grow wide with surprise.

  I turn back to Minny, who smirks.

  "We're gonna need more coffee."

  Chapter 29:The Report

  I didn't think I'd like Minny when I first heard about her. She always seemed to be a step ahead of me. She always seemed to be one interview ahead of me. And it made sense. She had been working on the story. She had been putting her nose to the ground and doing all of the reporting that I was doing now. She had been on the trail for this report long before I was.

  We decide to head back to my hotel because it's game time, and we're about to grind our way to the finish line. The paper she showed me was beyond my belief. I didn't even think what it showed was possible. It totally changed the game. It changed everything. Now the story had to be rewritten.