[Alex Vane 03.0] The Mockingbird Drive

by AC Fuller

  "Why not wait until James was alone to kill him?"

  "Well, two obvious reasons. First, James was going to a newspaper. They probably thought he was going to leak the contents of the drive. The ultimate disaster. Second, a mass shooting is the perfect cover. From their perspective, taking out six people as opposed to one or two is just collateral damage."

  Even when sober, Quinn's mind was like a drunk driver—full of confidence and bravado, but likely to fly off a cliff and crash on the rocks below. And, after four shots, she was moving way too fast for me. My mind wanted to sober up, slow down, and go step-by-step.

  "Okay," I said. "If I grant that. Here's a question: if the CIA somehow found out that a drive marked for destruction hadn't been destroyed, that would lead them to ARDS, then to Tudayapi, right? But she'd already traded it to Baxter. So how could the CIA have found Baxter, how could they have learned he had the drive, without contacting Tudayapi? She would have told us if they'd—"

  "How stupid are you?"

  "Fairly stupid, apparently."

  "Tudayapi would have posted about it on message boards, collector sites."

  "So the CIA just happened to be looking around on the message boards she happened to be posting on?"

  "They have search tools, bots. And they have hackers as good as James and Innerva working for them, combing the Dark Web and doing jobs for them as needed. This one would have been easy. 'Hey, Jimbo, we need to track down a 1968 IBM 2314 that was supposed to have been destroyed but wasn't."

  "And it just so happened that Tudayapi was posting about it, or selling it, at the same time? Okay, I buy it." I didn't buy it, but I wanted to hear the rest of her theory. "But how would the CIA have been alerted to the fact that it wasn't destroyed in the first place?"

  This stumped her, and Quinn rose suddenly to use the bathroom. Though she hadn't been slurring, I realized immediately that four shots were hitting her hard. At first, she seemed steady, probably a combination of sheer will and leaning her hip on the table. But the first step towards the bathroom caused her to stumble, then crash into the bar stools three feet away.

  I jumped up to steady her, but she waved me off and used the backs of the stools as props, walking sideways and crossing one hand over the other until she made it to the end of the bar. From there, she had the walls of a narrow hallway to prop herself up as she made her way to the restroom.

  I told the old man I was driving, paid him, and asked him not to serve her any more. He just nodded and frowned. I was guessing he didn't like out-of-towners.

  Quinn returned from the restroom on slightly more solid footing.

  "I splashed some cold water on my face," she said.

  "I paid. Let's get out of here, okay?"

  Her words were sloppy and she was exuding a quality I wasn't used to. Sweetness. A kind of flirtatiousness and openness I had never seen from her. She said, "Did you bring me here to get me drunk, Alex?"

  "You'll recall, Ms. Rivers, that I objected to each and every one of those shots."

  "Are you gonna try to sleep with me?"

  I didn't say anything at first. It was one of those awkward moments where a realization hits me faster than I can form it into words, and I have to translate it from my body to my brain and mouth. The realization was: I had never thought of Quinn sexually—not once—even though, by any standards, she was strikingly beautiful. It wasn't like me, either. Even when I was with Greta at our happiest, I thought about having sex with other women. And she thought about having sex with other men. This was the kind of thing we could talk about, though she was always more comfortable with it than I was. Thinking about something and doing it are two totally different things, she assured me.

  So, under normal circumstances I would have been sizing Quinn up from the moment I met her. But the combination of confusion, adrenaline, and fatigue had all taken precedence. Now, even though there was no piece of me that believed Quinn and I were a good match, I couldn't help but think about Greta and the fact that she might be in bed with some hotshot right now.

  Even if Quinn were interested, there was no way I was going to sleep with her after four shots. To be honest, even thinking about it kind of made me sick to my stomach. I felt protective of her, like I had about Greta and Rebecca during the pregnancy. It sucked to admit it to myself, because she drove me crazy, but I cared about her.

  "No," I said. "I am not going to try to sleep with you."

  I studied her face to see if I could read disappointment or relief, but she just looked confused, and I thought she might have forgotten her original question.

  "Let's go," I said.

  Chapter 22

  I paid cash at a cheap motel three blocks away from the bar. It was closer to the center of town and still within sight of the tracks, but the manager assured me there would be no rumbling.

  The room was small, but clean, and Quinn collapsed on one of the double beds as I stowed the bags and turned around to sneak Smedley up the external staircase. By the time I returned, Quinn was asleep, and snoring loudly. Even when Smedley jumped onto the bed, licked her face, and cuddled in next to her, she didn't budge. Not wanting to move her, I fetched an extra blanket from the closet near the bathroom and covered them up. Then I took off her shoes and tucked her feet into the blanket. Smedley poked his head out from under the blanket as if to check that everything was okay, then closed his eyes.

  On a whim, I called the non-emergency line of the LVMPD from the motel phone. When I asked for Captain Shonda Payton, I was told that she wasn't in—which I expected—then transferred to her voicemail. Though I didn't trust my read completely, when I'd seen her on TV I got the sense that she was a good cop, an honest cop. If Quinn was right that she knew something, I wanted her to know that someone else out there did as well.

  "Captain Payton, hello. This is Alex Vane from The Barker. A close friend of mine died in the shooting at The Gazette. The story that's being reported in the media is false, and I can't help but wonder if you know that. I can't tell you where I am or how to contact me, but please, when I call again, take the call."

  I just hoped that she would.

  I lay on the second bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Quinn's minor flirtation had me thinking about Greta. It had been three days since I'd left Seattle. Our anniversary was three days away, and it felt more important than the slow-motion chase scene I was in the middle of.

  When your life is threatened, or may be threatened, your survival instincts kick in right away and you act. You run. You swap cars. You drive 600 miles with a stolen hard drive and a paranoid recluse.

  But right after you land in a safe space, even temporarily, you start to think about what you're staying alive for in the first place. What matters. Of course, I wanted to get home. I wanted to figure out who killed James, but most of all, I wanted to get back to Greta. And get her back to me. Without her, I really didn't care.

  I must have read a dozen times that, when you lose someone you love, you're supposed to remember the good times. Better to have loved and lost, and so on. But that's not how my mind works. I was fixated on the period since she'd kicked me out, the dark times. The time she'd told me the truth about myself three months ago.

  She'd agreed to meet me for coffee and, after two postponements, I sat in a hip coffee bar near The Barker, planning to sell her on number five on my stupid list: Don't Be Lazy About Your Body. It was about how men get comfortable and lazy in marriage. Once the thought of finding mates passes from their minds, they just kinda give up. I'd lost five pounds since the last time Greta and I had met, I'd worked out that morning so I had that healthy glow, and I'd arrived early to order a cold brew with coconut milk, which, she'd been assuring me for years, was "full of healthy fats."

  She strolled in wearing a yellow spring dress and a smile that nearly melted me. She looked better than ever, like she could stop traffic or make the clocks run backward. My heart sank. As pathetic as that sounds, I felt unworthy. You have to under
stand, when she and I got together back in New York City in 2002, I was a bit of a playboy. We'd met at a bar, hooked up in what I thought was another one night stand, then reconnected and stayed connected. She was the first woman I ever lived with.

  She was beautiful, smart, and honest enough with me to keep me from becoming too full of myself. As much as I was into staying fit at the time, she always ripped me for not "inhabiting my body." One time she told me that I danced like the uptight white guy that black comedians make fun of. And she was right.

  Greta, on the other hand, was a bonafide dancing queen, a sex goddess. Whatever IT is, she had it.

  There are just people out there who spend their lives in their bodies, men and women both. Greta couldn't name the Chancellor of Germany, where her mother was from. And she didn't know the currency they use in Japan, where her dad was from. She inhabits her body. For her, being in her body all day was a good use of a day. At the time, she was a massage-therapist, working mostly with elite athletes, and I learned quickly that she knew things I'd never know.

  So, the sex was transcendent, of course, but it really wasn't about sex. She affected everyone the same way. Gay men and straight women at my office noticed it, too. When she walked into a room, everyone looked up from their phones or laptops. And they didn't stop looking until she was gone.

  Then there was the dancing. She danced like a slow-burning fire. I don't think she was an especially good dancer, technically, but you couldn't take your eyes off her. When she moved, it was like she'd sprung from the earth only to drag you into the central, molten core. Or maybe it was just me. Maybe that's how all men feel when they watch the woman they love dancing.

  But, on that morning, when she strolled in wearing the yellow dress, I felt she was out of my league. She spotted me, got a cup of water, and sat. I had a plan. I wasn't going to play it cool or act removed. I was going to explain how The Barker was buying a green lifestyle blog, how I'd been eating better and working out. Then I'd express my love from a position of strength, not desperation.

  But I didn't do any of that. When she sat down, the first thing she said was, "Alex, you look good. Are you finding out what happened to you these last few years?"

  It took me by surprise, and it wasn't as condescending as it might sound. She seemed genuinely concerned for me. "Kind of, I guess, what do you mean?" She just looked at me, but I knew that opening up was a big deal to her, so I said, "What do you think happened to me?"

  And she told me.

  I already knew about half of what she said. Another thirty percent I recognized as true as soon as she said it. It was the last twenty percent that hurt.

  The first eighty percent—the things I knew or kind-of knew—went something like this: about three Christmases ago, Greta and I had gone on a weekend getaway to The Cascades. Neither of us ski, but we rented a little cabin in the snow so we could reconnect. We'd had a wonderful weekend and, long story short, on our drive back into Seattle we'd decided it was time: we'd try for a baby.

  But The Barker had been hit by another lawsuit the next day, one that sucked me back into the site. And working on the lawsuit felt good. I'd been feeling down and it gave me something to focus on, something to win at. When we settled the lawsuit, we had a lot of ground to make up. I hired Bird. The site started growing again. We'd always been early adopters, but we got out ahead on social sharing, live video, and using memes to promote stories. I even got an army of interns who each had hundreds of fake Twitter handles so, when we wanted to, we could get a story trending quickly.

  At the same time, I let myself go a little. Remember how I told you that James had lost and regained the same twenty pounds over and over? For me, it was thirty. I also got less interested in sex, and, of course, in the thought of parenting.

  It's a cliché, I know, but work was something I could control. I'd sit at my desk with a bag of peanut M&Ms and watch the traffic spike after a big story hit. I'd compare the number of Facebook Likes our story on Ben Affleck's divorce got compared to TMZ's story, or I'd see how fast our team of interns could get something trending on Twitter.

  But, worse than getting out of shape, I got distant. According to Greta, not a day went by when I wasn't buried in my phone, darting from crisis to crisis, many of them self-created.

  The last twenty percent was a total shock, and I remember it perfectly. She'd tossed her long black hair back, sipped her water, and said, "Lately, Alex, you got sad. Some men get mean or bossy or controlling. You got sad. Like you were just done being a person. One of the things I loved about you was that you had a core that wanted to do what was right. A sense of fairness, a value for the truth."

  "What do you think happened?" I asked, trying my best not to sound as crushed as I felt. My head was stuck on her use of the word "loved." I could change actions and attitudes. But I knew I couldn't make her love me if she didn't any more.

  "Your work," she said.

  "It can't be all about how much I work."

  "No, not that. That's a little thing. I know I've complained about it a lot, but it's more about what the work did to you. To your values. To your sense of what's right. The Barker has corrupted your soul."

  She held the "L" in "soul" in her throat for a few seconds. She just let it roll. It had never been about how much I was working. It was about what I'd become.

  Quinn was snoring loudly now, and even Smedley was wheezing a little, so I balled up two shreds of tissue to use as earplugs and got under the covers, still thinking about what Greta had said. That day in the coffee shop, I'd been devastated, but mostly because what she'd said made it less likely she'd take me back. But now I was devastated for a different reason: I knew she was right.

  I didn't like what I'd become, either, and I fell asleep wondering whether it was too late to do something about it.

  Chapter 23

  Friday, June 16, 2017

  After walking Smedley in the pink morning light, we grabbed a continental breakfast and began driving west, toward ARDS.

  I'd come up with an idea in the middle of the night, and I figured I'd convince Quinn on the way, and we'd never actually end up there. So, as I drove out of southwestern Idaho into eastern Oregon, I laid out my plan.

  We'd go to a Copy Center and scan the contents of the binder, then send them to Bird to post on The Barker. He'd write a short accompanying piece, noting that the pages came from an authentic CIA hard drive from the late 1960s. He wouldn't make any attempt to synthesize the information or comment on it. And he wouldn't draw any special attention to Gunstott. He'd just post all the pages in their raw form.

  In a separate article, I'd have him post the audio from Innerva, citing "a person close to the investigation" as the source. I'd dictate a bare bones story over the phone, just pulling out the highlights from the audio that most clearly called the official version of the shooting into question. We wouldn't need to go into too much detail because, within hours of publication, an army of Internet researchers and police would be analyzing every second of the audio.

  Mark Twain said that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In the Internet age, a lie can travel much faster than that. But so can truth. The shooting at The Gazette had fallen off the front pages in the last twenty-four hours, but it was still being discussed on talk shows, and updates were still being run in many papers. The audio would thrust the shooting back to the number one topic of discussion in the country. In my view, this would keep us safer. The LVMPD would be mortified. Public pressure would force them to find out what really happened. In the end, it would lead to the real killers. To Holly and the other woman. To Kenny, if he was involved. Maybe they'd get called off our tail, if they were still on it.

  And when Internet researchers started poring through the contents of the drive, someone would find Gunstott's name within an hour. He'd deny everything, of course. He'd claim that the documents were fake, and no one would be able to prove him wrong. But it was also possible th
at the Chinese already suspected him, or that someone out there was sitting on more evidence. With stories like this, sometimes all it takes is a trickle of information to open the floodgates.

  And there was another reason I liked my plan. If I put out a story like this, Greta would respect it. Pitching it to Quinn, I liked it, too. Like I was returning to what I'd loved about journalism in the beginning.

  When I'd finished pitching her my idea, Quinn was staring out the window. At first, I thought she'd stopped listening, but I was wrong.

  "Your idea assumes three falsehoods," she said. "One: that we're not being followed right now, that they don't know that we haven't yet shared the information with anyone, that if they see us copying the binder they won't just shoot us, that—"

  "But—"

  "Don't interrupt. I let you talk. Let me talk."

  It was the longest she'd let me talk without interrupting, and I owed her a chance.

  She said, "I know your objection. It's that if they wanted us dead, we'd be dead. That if they were following us, we'd know. But you're wrong. Remember the Fremont Street Experience, Alex? They were following us, but they weren't trying to kill us. They were keeping us in their sights. You have to remember that people are sometimes more valuable alive than dead, as long as they're under control." She paused, waiting for me to object, but I didn't say anything. "Okay, two: you assume that leaking that audio wouldn't immediately get us killed. Think about it. They almost certainly don't know we have it. If we leaked it, that's like declaring war on them. On the CIA. You don't do that and live."

  "What if we leaked it to a different site, so it couldn't be tied to me?" It hurt me to say it. Even there, driving with conspiracy-theorist Quinn Rivers and her dog, Smedley, and possibly being followed by the CIA, my journalistic instincts had kicked in. I wanted that audio on my site. I wanted to break the story.

  "Doesn't matter," Quinn said. "If they wanted, they could have been in your email before it arrived, which is why they might already know we have it. The only reason I assume they don't is because we're still alive. If it leaked, they'd figure out quickly that it had been recorded over the phone. They'd likely end up at Innerva, who has disappeared. Eventually, they'd end up at you."