The Last Journalist

by A. C. Fuller

  Burnside's stories used leaked financial records, company documents, and quotes from anonymous employees to show that Detroit Estates had engaged in decades of racial discrimination. They partnered with the government to build low-income housing, then did everything they could to rent that housing to white people, and only white people. The story wasn't as big as a lot of Burnside's stories, but it was just as good. He had Detroit Estates dead to rights. Soon after his first story hit the papers, state and federal regulators stepped in to investigate. By the time the last piece in his five-part series landed, the government was lodging fines and canceling contracts. A year later, Detroit Estates filed for bankruptcy.

  The Gunstott connection was thin, but it was there. One of the longest-serving members of the FMH board was Jack Clark, President of Clark Industries. As it happens, Clark Industries was the biggest competitor of Detroit Estates. And who got the profitable government contracts after Detroit Estates went down? Yup, Clark Industries.

  As night rolled in and the office cleared out, we ordered takeout from a diner—chicken salad for me and the appetizer sampler for two for Shannon, which she'd chosen after confirming I'd put it on our business account.

  Between bites of a mozzarella stick, Shannon looked up. "The Payton Rhodes story and the Detroit Estates thing, plus the other pieces, I think we have a clear pattern. Burnside breaks stories that benefit Gunstott or his friends."

  "You think Gunstott would have known about how the pieces Burnside wrote on Detroit Estates helped his pal Clark?"

  "Of course he knew. That's literally why rich people serve on boards. To get help rigging the system from other powerful a-holes."

  "I'd say that's overly general."

  "Not by much."

  I shifted my gaze from her jalapeño poppers to my arugula, hearing Greta's voice in my head. If you eat it now you'll thank me later.

  "Okay," I said, "I grant there's a pattern there. But a pattern doesn't necessarily mean anything."

  "It means exactly one thing, dumbass. It means there is a pattern. You can try to convince yourself the pattern is coincidental, but we've been on this for only a day and already found two major stories. If you assigned this to three good researchers, I bet we'd have ten by morning."

  "Maybe, but I'm not gonna do that. For now we have to hold this story close."

  "Agreed."

  She pointed a French fry at me. "But you gotta admit, you're thinking what I'm thinking."

  "I bet I'm not. I'm thinking about all the delicious, greasy, cheesy goodness you have over there while I eat a bunch of weeds with grilled chicken."

  She ignored me, clearly on a roll. "To me, there's really only one question left. If Burnside was doing Gunstott's dirty work, did he know it? That is, was he working stories that benefited Gunstott knowingly, or did Gunstott just take advantage of Burnside's natural appetite for stories? Was Burnside a full-on CIA asset as well? Gunstott's hired hitman in the media all along?"

  I threw my fork down in disgust. "Wait a second. That's ridiculous. You're reaching way too far. We only have a couple connections, connections there could be a dozen explanations for. And—"

  "I have—" She stopped herself mid sentence.

  "You have what?"

  "Nothing. Here." She tossed me a crispy potato skin covered in cheese and bacon bits. "Eat that."

  I eyed it warily. "You remind me of my old friend Camila. She ate like a lumberjack."

  I tossed the potato skin on top of my salad and pushed it away. A fog had rolled in off the water and the thick grayness outside the window made me feel claustrophobic. A whiff of panic crept in, a desire to take flight. My mind was taking me back to the box, the torture device in which I'd spent a day and a half.

  After a few deep breaths, the feeling subsided. Shannon may not have liked me, but I liked her—or at least I respected her work. She deserved the whole story. "There's something I didn't put in the article. Ever since that...series of events, I've suffered from PTSD. I had a mini panic attack just now. Thirty seconds ago. You may not have noticed. I need to tell you because I've tried to hide it from people and…I don't know. I think I've gotten too old to hide myself. I used to think PTSD was a bunch of fake symptoms. I mean, I didn't really believe that but I sorta thought PTSD only happened to people who were already messed up. Like it would never happen to me because I'd think my way out of it. Greta got me to go see someone about it and I'm doing better, but it's been rough. If we're going to work together, I thought you should know."

  I didn't know why I opened myself up to her, at least not at first. She'd mentioned reading the article, but had let it drop.

  "There's something I haven't told you, too." She walked a circle around the office. Returning to the chair, she moved like she was going to sit, but stopped and stood by the door, her back to me. "I've been impressed by you, more than I thought I would be. Impressed you didn't try to hit on me. Most men, married or not, do. It's like, even if they don't want to actually sleep with me, they want me to want to sleep with them. As the office cleared out, I noticed myself clenching up, like, 'Oh hell, here we go again. Working late and now the boss is gonna try and screw me on the desk.'"

  She turned toward me, arms crossed. "That's happened before. Many times. The attempt, I mean." She cleared her throat. "Second, I appreciate what you said about the PTSD. It's good you left it out of the story—wouldn't have worked there. But I'm glad to know. And I know that telling me about it couldn’t have been easy. So thanks."

  I can't turn the journalistic training off. She'd mentioned something important, and then digressed onto a different topic. "So what's the thing you haven't told me?" I asked.

  "You know how I'm a little more certain about the Burnside-Gunstott connection than you? About the CIA angle?"

  "Yeah. Why is that?"

  "Because I have Holden Burnside's notebook."

  Chapter 8

  We buttoned our coats against the stinging wind as we emerged from our office building into the bitterly cold night. The rain had stopped, and after hearing about the notebook, I needed some air.

  "Alex!"

  I recognized the voice of Carlson, a homeless man who spent most of his days in the neighborhood. He lay on a large piece of cardboard nestled between two low bushes in a curbside planter area in front of the building. He worked himself out of a sleeping bag wrapped in plastic as we approached him.

  He stepped onto the sidewalk followed by a small brown dog that must have been in the bottom of the sleeping bag.

  Instinctively, I reached for my wallet. "It's too cold for you to be out here tonight." I handed him a five dollar bill.

  He stuffed the cash in the pocket of his jeans. "Shelter's full."

  "Full? Tonight?"

  "Must be twenty degrees out," Shannon added.

  "My sleeping bag is rated to zero degrees. Got it from a dude who used it on Mount Rainier, man. Dude spent three hundred bucks on it, used it for a four-day hike, and gave it to me." He pointed up toward the high floors of our building. "I think he works up there with you. Brandon something or other."

  I shrugged. "We don't have any Brandons at The Barker. By the way, Carlson, this is Shannon Brass."

  "I know. I read her stuff."

  Shannon laughed. "What?"

  "Don't laugh," I said. "He reads everything. Knows more about politics than I do."

  Carlson pulled his long black hair into a ponytail, then shook it out—something he did constantly. He took an iPhone from his pocket, tapped a few times, then held it up to Shannon. "Dude, I got you bookmarked."

  She was genuinely shocked, but I wasn't. I knew Carlson had a cell phone, and he was one of the more interesting people in Seattle. From what I understood, he'd grown up on a reservation across the water—The Rez as he called it—had moved to Seattle, worked for the transit system for a few years, gotten married, and saved enough money to travel. He and his wife had traveled all around the country, living in a van but living well. Sh
e passed away from breast cancer when they were both around forty. The way he told it, he'd decided to continue the nomadic lifestyle without her. I'm not sure he was homeless by choice, but that's what he claimed.

  Carlson noted her surprise. "Program some Amazon people set up to get people to donate older model smartphones to homeless people. I sell copies of the newspaper to pay thirty bucks a month for service."

  "That's great," Shannon said. "I don't even have a phone that nice."

  "When you live in the richest society in the history of the world," Carlson said, "there are plenty of ways to get by without selling your soul to the man."

  "So you're good for the night?" I asked. "You sure?"

  "Sure I'm sure. I follow the weather on my phone. Should start raining again in a couple hours, at which point I'll move under the bus stop. Cops don't like me to use the bus stop before midnight." He gestured down the block. "I'll use this five spot on a late night Big Mac and a coffee. Life is good, dude."

  I turned down the block. "See ya later, then."

  "See ya," he called after us.

  Shannon and I walked in silence for a few blocks. I think she was waiting for me to say something. The chat with Carlson had been a nice interlude, but the notebook—the theft of the notebook—still contaminated the air between us. Now that I knew she'd had his notebook all along, her enthusiasm for the CIA angle made more sense. She had information I didn't.

  "I'm not sure what I'm more pissed about," I said. "That you stole the notebook, that you lied to me about stealing the notebook, or that you didn't let me see what was in the notebook." She glanced at me, but didn't say anything. "Why'd you lie?"

  "I didn't lie."

  "You lied. You said you didn't see a notebook. I asked you that specifically."

  "Well, most of what I told you was true. Like in the cafe, I thought you might try to steal the story from me. When I got to the scene, Burnside was dead, as I told you. The blood was running into the street. But his notebook was there. Like you guessed, it had fallen out of his pocket during the fall. Not all the way out. It was jutting out. I called the cops. I waited. Looked around. The whole thing was surreal. Then I just...grabbed it. Before I knew what I was doing I'd stuffed it in my pocket."

  "You lied to me."

  "Fine, I lied. I didn't know if I could trust you."

  "Lemme guess," I said. "You figured you'd use me after you knew I had the address, then you figured you'd use me to see if you could get in to see Gunstott. Then you were going to grab the story for yourself and run."

  "I considered that. Honestly, I didn't know. I…"

  She trailed off and I gestured toward a coffeeshop across the street. Despite the late hour, it was full of people reading, tapping away at their phones, and chatting. We paused our conversation to head inside and get coffee, both understanding that we should wait until we got back outside before continuing.

  I was pretending to be madder than I was. I think it made me feel ethical to be upset about her ethical breach. In truth, I was intrigued. Her certainty over the CIA connection must have come from the material in the notebook. I desperately wanted to see it, to read it. I wanted to know exactly what Burnside had been working on, and whether he'd written any notes about our dinner.

  "How about we skip past everything else and get to what's in the notebook," I said as we emerged from the coffeeshop.

  She nodded and took a tiny sip of coffee.

  "I assume you were so sure about the CIA connection because of something in the notebook?"

  "Not something, Alex. Many things."

  My phone rang and before I even looked, I knew it was Greta. I'd promised to call or text if I was ever going to be home after eight, the hour Cleo usually went to sleep for the night. It was well after nine.

  I took a deep breath and answered. "I'm sorry. I'm on my way home right now."

  "You promised you'd—"

  "I know… I lost track of time. Here I come."

  She hung up without another word. I ordered a Lyft before looking back up from my phone. "Sorry, Shannon. I have to go."

  She stood with one hand on her right hip, the other sipping her coffee, glaring at me. "I kinda thought this had an all-nighter feel to it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I would have thought you'd have wanted to see the notebook more than anything."

  "Five years ago I would have. Maybe even two years ago. Don't get me wrong, I do want to see it. Chances are I'll see some things there you missed. Not that you missed stuff but…two heads…ya know?"

  "Yeah."

  The Lyft pulled up and I opened the door. "Start fresh tomorrow?"

  "If I haven't already broken the story by then."

  That stopped me, but only for half a second. "That's a risk I'm willing to take."

  I read once—maybe in a self-help book, maybe in a fortune cookie—that every difficulty we've experienced has prepared us to flourish in the present moment. The difficult times are necessary. Even tragedy is necessary. Every struggle we have leads us to the place we are. Greta and I went through some difficult times. We lost a child. I shut her out and was unavailable emotionally. We split up. Then we got back together. Now we have Cleo.

  I don't know if the fortune cookie wisdom was right, but I knew when I walked in the door that night that all the difficult times we'd gone through did in fact prepare me for the moment. Not because there was any drama. There wasn't. It was as though all the difficult times had led me to a place where I could appreciate the little things I was so lucky to have.

  Greta met me at the door, held her finger up to her mouth to indicate that I should be quiet because Cleo was sleeping, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I whispered, "I'm sorry I didn't text. I got hooked into a story."

  She wasn't mad. Sure, I'd forgotten to call, but she knew me well enough to know not to take it personally. A simple apology goes a long way. This is something I didn't always know.

  I took her hand and we walked silently to our bedroom, where Cleo slept in her crib. I didn't tell her about the story Shannon and I were working on. I didn't need to. For much of our life together, whatever story I happened to be working on dominated the conversation, dominated the relationship.

  Now the relationship was dominant. Cleo was dominant. This is a good thing. I desperately wanted to read the notebook, but it could wait until tomorrow.

  Without another word, we changed into pajamas and nestled beside each other in bed. She turned off her bedside lamp. I turned off mine.

  The room was dark and quiet.

  Outside, the wind picked up and an icy rain lashed the window. I thought of Carlson, probably making his move from the bushes to the bus stop. I wished I'd given him a twenty.

  "I forgot to tell you." Greta's voice broke the silence and brought me back into the room. "You got a call from someone today, left a message on the home number. Myron...Gunstott, I think he said. Mentioned you could come by tomorrow to see his father."

  Chapter 9

  Friday, 7 AM

  The next morning I pieced together what had happened, then called Shannon.

  "H…hello…hello?" She sounded out of breath.

  I'd been pacing around my living room excitedly, watching Cleo roll around on our thick living room carpet. "Are you running or something?"

  "Boxing."

  "Boxing?"

  "I box…at the YMCA three mornings…three mornings a week. Get to it Alex. I gotta finish my workout."

  "Last night I got a call from Dewey Gunstott's son. He called my home number because he didn't want anyone at The Barker to know we were going to meet."

  "We're going to meet?"

  "He invited me over today and—"

  "You? Just you?"

  "Don't worry, I told him you were coming too, but he made me promise to keep you under control. Nothing recorded or even written down without permission. No quotes without permission. Just a deep background chat."

  "When?"

 
; "Text me an address where I can pick you up in an hour."

  We hung up and I sat cross-legged on the floor next to Cleo. She shifted her head slightly in my direction. Could she recognize me on sight or just by smell? I had no idea how babies perceived the world, and the thought made me slow down internally, made the whole Myron Gunstott thing seem less pressing.

  I touched her palm with my pinkie finger and she squeezed it, softly at first, then hard. She pulled it toward her mouth.

  "Hey, you can't eat my finger," I warned her, playfully.

  "If you value your finger, I wouldn't place bets on it." Greta had emerged from the bedroom. "She can eat anything these days."

  "Can she recognize me?" I asked.

  "Probably your voice because she heard that in the womb for months, maybe your smell. Maybe your face a little, but she can't see as far as adults yet. It's weird. I don't know. I haven't read many baby books."

  "You've got great mommy instincts."

  "Thanks. I love how you play with our girl."

  I stood, walked over, and pulled Greta in close. Her hair wafted the familiar scent of daphne and made me want to stay home. Then I remembered the notebook and our appointment. "I gotta go meet Shannon."

  She pulled away slowly, eyeing me suspiciously. "Do I wanna know why?"

  "Probably not."

  My driver stopped outside the YMCA to pick up Shannon. Her leather jacket was splattered with drips from her hair, which was still sopping wet, and her cheeks were flushed.

  "Good workout?"

  "Shut up with the small talk, Alex. How far away are we?"

  "He lives in Ballard, so we've got twenty minutes or so to prep. First—and this is non-negotiable—let me lead the way. It took everything I had to convince Gunstott's son to let you come. Dewey Gunstott has never given a real interview on the record. Not once. And he's not gonna start now. I don't even know why he called us back. I don't know exactly what this is, but we need to play it cool or he'll kick us out in half a second."