The Last Journalist

by A. C. Fuller

  I hadn't yet read the new version of the piece, but the easy bet was hers was the second type. "Usually I have a good sense of how a story will play," I said. "I've been in this game long enough to have a good barometer. Not on this one."

  "Me neither." Her index finger shook as she held it over the trackpad, cursor over the "Publish" tab on her blog. "I broke the piece into five articles, each about three thousand words. So I can—"

  "You wrote fifteen thousand words in the last two days?"

  "Twenty," she corrected. "I cut a lot."

  "What were you saying?"

  "If the reaction is bad, I can always unpublish, bury the other four pieces."

  I wished I could agree, but I'd been involved in enough big stories to know there were no take backs, especially in the social media age. "If the story is what we know it is, you won't be able to take it back. I conjured a confident smile. "You won't need to."

  "Maybe no one will notice."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "No."

  I shook my head slowly. "Then what's the issue?"

  "I don't know. I've never felt like this. I'm a fearless, badass reporter. I could literally break your face right now with a single punch. I've just never felt like this."

  I placed a hand on her shoulder. "Go for it. I'll be here with you. Whatever comes up, it's your piece, but you'll have the full backing of The Barker. Legal issues, whatever."

  She looked away and I think she closed her eyes, but her finger pressed down. I watched the screen work for half a second, then pop up with a confirmation message.

  Your blog post titled, "Holden Burnside was a CIA Operative—That's Why he Killed Himself," has been published.

  After a long moment, she opened her eyes and turned back to the screen. "No take backs."

  Carlson's loud laughter rang out from across the office as he returned from the bathroom. Our receptionist, Olive, was signing for a package and saying something to him. He waved at her and took a big swig of cold brew from a tall glass stenciled with the logo of The Barker.

  I felt immensely grateful for the man. He'd eaten my sushi at lunch, but our dinner order was due to arrive at any minute. I looked forward to sharing—sharing this time—a meal with him.

  I smiled and stood to greet him as he approached the door.

  Then he was launched forward through my office window by the loudest explosion I'd ever heard.

  Chapter 23

  A dead body is always a surprise. No matter how many I see, the feeling is the same every time. Unreal, like it's not possible for life to end. I felt it when I identified Burnside's body and I felt it as I stared at Carlson's lifeless form before me.

  "Alex!" Shannon jumped up from behind the large wooden desk, where she'd been knocked to the floor. From my seat, I'd been sprayed with glass, but I'd been shielded from the blast.

  Carlson lay face down, head flecked with glass, blood pooling beside his lacerated neck. "He's dead."

  "Alex, look!" She pointed through the empty space where the window used to be, toward the front desk. Bird was huddled over a body. Snapping back to myself, I leapt across the desk and checked Carlson's pulse. The pool of blood rapidly reached my shoes. He was gone.

  Sprinting across the office, I tried to make out the body Bird was trying to revive. There was a lot of blood coming from it, too. No, the blood was coming from Bird. As I reached him, he collapsed next to the other body, which I now saw was our receptionist.

  "Call 9-1-1," I yelled to no one in particular.

  Shannon grabbed the receptionist’s phone, but it was blackened and charred. She bolted back to my office.

  "Bird, what's wrong?"

  "Thigh," he groaned. "Something hit my thigh."

  I adjusted him so he lay flat on his back next to Olive. "Olive, where are you hurt?"

  She opened her mouth but nothing came out. "Keep breathing," I said. "Keep breathing. Both of you."

  One of our tech guys slid up beside me. "Move, Alex. I'm a volunteer EMT." He was a redhead whose name I didn't even know, might've been one of the recent hires. He seemed to know what he was doing, because he immediately pulled off Bird's pant-leg and tied off his leg to slow the bleeding.

  I gently touched Bird's shoulder, then stood.

  "Police are on their way," Shannon called.

  For the first time, I allowed myself to scan the wider office. A small perimeter of staff had formed around Bird and Olive, giving the nameless tech guy plenty of room to work. Others were still crouched behind desks. As far as I could tell, no one else was hurt.

  "Did anyone see anything?" I called to the room.

  No one responded.

  "Did the explosion start at the elevator, at reception? Did anyone see anything?"

  The nameless tech guy shouted, "Bird says it was the delivery guy."

  That was enough for me to act. I raced into the office and dialed the lobby. "Explosion at The Barker. Don't let anyone out of the building."

  "We have people on the way up there now."

  "We called the police, too. Don't let anyone out. We think it was a bomb left by a delivery guy."

  "Did anyone see him?"

  I shouted to the room. "Anyone get a look at the delivery guy?"

  "I think he had a brown uniform," someone shouted. "And a hat. Brown."

  "Brown uniform and hat," I said into the phone.

  "Anything else?"

  Again, I called to the office, "Anything else? White guy, black guy, Asian? Was it even a guy? Somebody gimme something."

  The tech guy was still crouched in front of Bird and Olive. He turned and called to me. "Bird saw him. White guy, medium height and weight. Mid forties."

  I scanned the office one last time to check for more injured staffers. Everyone seemed okay, so I raced for the elevator and slammed the "L" button to go to the lobby.

  The damn thing couldn't move fast enough. I stared frantically at the descending numbers on the screen. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen. I closed my eyes tight. Everything went black for an instant, then Carlson appeared, smiling as he popped a tuna roll into his mouth. I opened my eyes to escape the image. Thirteen, twelve, eleven.

  My cell dinged with a text.

  Greta: What happened!?

  Eight, seven, six.

  Me: I'm okay. Don't come here. More soon.

  Three, two, one.

  As the elevator door opened, I bolted toward the security desk. The lobby was surprisingly calm. "Did you see him?" I called, still in a full sprint.

  "Nothing," one of the guards said as I got to the desk.

  "Anyone leave? Brown uniform and hat. White guy?"

  "No one has left through that door since you called but—"

  I ran through the front entrance and out into the street. I hadn't grabbed my jacket and was immediately struck by a wall of icy rain. I cocked my head left, then swiveled right. Life in Seattle was proceeding as though nothing had happened.

  People walked by in nice suits and hipster jeans carrying coffees and umbrellas. Ubers and Lyfts came and went. A bus passed. I stepped into Carlson's favorite spot between the curbside bushes and peered up at our office a few hundred feet above. Everything looked normal.

  Sirens wailed from around the corner. A fire truck, an ambulance, and two police cars. The next thing I knew, I was whisked back inside by a police officer.

  It was midnight when the nurses finally let Shannon, Greta, and me see Bird. I'd spent the last two hours with the police, who'd been more than a little pissed that I published the story that confirmed Baumgartner's killer was the man Carlson saw at our building. I gave them all the information I had, which wasn't much.

  Olive was still in OR, but Bird was back from a shockingly minor surgery to remove a nail from his thigh.

  "How you feeling?" Greta asked as we formed a half circle at the foot of his hospital bed.

  "Alex, remember when you interviewed me before promoting me to number two?"

  I said, "B
est decision I ever made. I'm so sorry this happened. I—"

  "Shut up, man. Remember I said I'd take a bullet for The Barker?" He smiled, and I smiled, too. "I take it back."

  He laughed, which made him wince. He rubbed his chest. "What the hell happened?"

  "Doctor said you got hit with a nail. It was a nail bomb."

  He closed his eyes. "Olive?"

  "In surgery but I overheard a nurse say it was a neck wound. That's all I know." I stepped forward and took his hand. "Carlson is gone."

  "Damn. I thought I saw him in your office…damn. What about suspects?"

  "Nothing. Security's checking the cameras in the freight elevator. Olive accepted a package and set it on the upper ledge of the desk next to the candy bowl. It detonated a minute or so later. Nail hit you, maybe it was a piece of the desk that hit your chest."

  "And Carlson?"

  "Don't know for sure."

  Shannon said, "They said something about blunt force trauma. Half the desk was gone. Maybe it hit him. We don't know yet."

  "I know I shouldn't be thinking about this," Bird said, "but...how's it being covered?"

  Greta sighed. "Really? You and Alex are way too much alike. They pulled a nail out of your thigh an hour ago and you're worried about coverage?"

  Bird straightened and took a small sip of water from a plastic cup. "I created a whole multimedia tick-tock story on the bombing while I was under anesthesia."

  "You're incorrigible," Greta said.

  "I haven't seen a TV," Shannon said, "but the online narrative is all over the place."

  "Let's think about this," I said. "What actually happened?"

  Shannon pondered this. "He started following me soon after we published the story proving that Burnside was a suicide. Which—"

  "Which is odd," I interrupted, "because we actually validated what he'd said in the letter. Why would he—"

  Bird raised a hand and scooched himself up in the bed. "It's how you did it. What was the line?"

  "Oh crap," I said. "We wrote that he'd done a terrible job staging the suicides."

  Shannon frowned. "Could that have set him off? Really?

  "I don't know," I said. "Why else would he target us?"

  Bird closed his eyes. He looked to be nodding off.

  "Bottom line," Shannon said, "this was an escalation. He went from coldly killing journalists one by one to trying to blow up The Barker. He's getting desperate."

  Eyes still closed, Bird smirked. "Alex is the only one who deserves killing."

  I smiled. "I'm glad you can joke, but I can't." I glanced at Shannon, then back at Bird. "Don't worry about the coverage, or the office. Worry about healing. Greta can help, maybe. She's a wizard. We'll stay here tonight—there's security in the lobby—but first thing tomorrow we need to work on catching this guy."

  Chapter 24

  Tuesday, 5 AM

  Shannon and I slept on stiff plastic chairs in the hospital waiting room and woke before dawn. I'd slept fitfully, my mind oscillating wildly between sadness over Carlson and pure, blind fury. One look at Shannon made it clear she was in a similar place.

  "Last night I was in shock," she said as we sipped coffee from paper cups. "Now I'm pissed. This bastard is going to kill someone else, possibly today."

  "We need to put ourselves inside this guy's mind." I stood stiffly and did a slow lap around the waiting room. "Somehow we pissed him off with our story, so he started following you, then tried to blow up The Barker. Up until that point he'd been taking steady, methodical action. When he learns we weren't killed in the bombing…wait, has he learned that?"

  "I'm sure he has. News that Carlson was the only casualty hit the local blogs around two in the morning, after you fell asleep."

  "What about Olive?"

  "That's right! You were asleep. She's out of surgery. She's gonna be fine."

  "Get any sleep last night?"

  "Dozed off a couple hours after you." She rubbed her neck and stretched. "Anyway, if I were a serial killer I'd probably be smart enough to check the blogs. My guess is he knows he failed."

  "The first time he failed, out front of The Barker yesterday morning, he doubled back and tried again."

  Shannon pulled out her phone, swiped, then held it up, posing for a selfie.

  "Really?" I asked. "A selfie?"

  "Get in the picture. I have an idea."

  I sat beside her and brushed a wisp of hair from my eye as she trained the phone on us and took a picture. We looked like crap, but this photo wasn't for vanity. She texted it to me, then opened Twitter. "Put it on all of your social media, with something defiant, something about Bird and Olive and The Barker and journalism. Something that would piss that bastard off."

  I posted the image to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with a simple message: Two beloved staff members were injured in a bombing at The Barker yesterday. A man named Carlson was killed. He was known to regulars of the downtown area as witty, tech savvy, and full of life despite difficult circumstances. The coward who took his life did so while, we believe, intending to kill us. He failed.

  Shannon posted a similar message, even more defiant, on her social media as well. Her idea was that taunting him would bring him out of the shadows, make him attack us directly. I didn't think he'd be stupid enough to come at us again.

  "Now what?" I asked.

  "Now, we wait."

  I refilled my cup from a press pot of burnt, lukewarm coffee. "I just remembered. Your Burnside story. What happened with that?"

  "It's a slow burn. I set up the second piece to be published at four this morning and it was. It automatically goes out to my small mailing list and my social media channels."

  "And the first piece, any legs?"

  "Like I said, slow burn. It got about eight thousand unique views. Not much for a site like yours but for me that's pretty good."

  "Wait 'til it all comes together," I said. "It's gonna catch. I'll have Bird get our social media interns on it. They can amplify almost anything to get it trending. From there, if a network picks it up…"

  Her eyes closed. She was even more exhausted than I was. I said, "You can lay on me if you need a pillow. I'm gonna read your piece."

  "That's right, you still haven't read it."

  She lay her head on my lap and swung her feet up on a nearby chair. "If you catch any typos, don't wake me," she said sleepily.

  I opened her story and read it slowly. Shannon was a good reporter, but she was an excellent writer. Better than me, at least at long pieces like this. My style was more direct and to the point, while Shannon used the opening paragraphs to hook the reader, then stepped way back into the early stages of Burnside's career. Most of the story rehashed his biggest scoops, and the piece ended with a cliffhanger, a line I'd given her from my dinner with Burnside. She'd quoted it.

  Burnside told a friend less than twenty-four hours before leaping from the seventeenth floor of a posh downtown apartment building, "My career may be the biggest political scandal in American history." Our investigation at Public Occurrences—which will be published as a five-part series over the next forty-eight hours—shows he was right.

  Like everyone else, I was ready to click to Part Two when Shannon's phone rang. She'd been snoring lightly but shot up as though she'd been wide awake.

  "Hello?" she barked into the phone. "Yes, this is Shannon…Yes…Okay…Thank you for…Yes, I'd absolutely be interested. Seven? Yes I can be there by then….See you soon."

  "Who was that?" I asked.

  "Either a source who loved my Burnside story and has further information...or the killer."

  I gawked at her.

  "Either way. I'm about to find out."

  Chapter 25

  A hundred and twenty years ago, a fire devastated Seattle. Back then it was a young city built almost entirely of wood due to the cheap and seemingly endless supply of lumber in the area. Thirty-one blocks were destroyed. Local ordinances were changed, requiring future buildings be
constructed from stone and brick. Retaining walls were added and the city was raised. Streets were built ten feet up, leaving some of the remains of the old storefronts below. New sidewalks were added next, leaving portions of the original city's remains underground for opium addicts, criminals, and prostitutes.

  Greta and I paid ten bucks each to take a walking tour of the underground when we first moved to Seattle. It was pretty cool, but I never wanted to go back. The ceilings were low, the smell was musty, and the whole place gave me a dark, uneasy feeling.

  From a block away, I aimed the telephoto lens at an entryway to the underground city.

  Shannon stood under a red umbrella next to an arched stone opening, waiting. "Alex, can you still hear me?"

  I leaned forward to get closer to my phone, which I'd put on speaker mode and stuck in the sun visor of the front seat of my car. "I can."

  "Don't say anything unless you have to." Shannon turned toward the wall slightly and shielded her face with her hand before she spoke. Smart. She assumed her "source" might be watching and wanted to make sure he didn't catch her speaking into the phone, which she'd also put on speaker and taped flat against her upper chest under her shirt.

  The rain had come and gone all morning. A steady drizzle turned into a downpour, then cleared suddenly. Then the steady drizzle was back. Now the sky was a light, silvery gray, giving me a clear view of Shannon through the camera lens.

  After Shannon received the call, she reported it to the police. Problem was, every journalist in Seattle was on high alert. Every source who wanted to meet was a potential killer. Of course, most conversations with sources these days happened via text or secure messaging apps, not through dark-alley meetings. But still there were enough calls to the police that their response was, "Don't meet any sources you're not certain of, and certainly don't meet them anywhere other than a crowded public location."