The Mockingbird Drive

by A. C. Fuller

  Quinn was a little bit behind on the facts, so I began correcting her in my posts. Not that she could see it, but I liked to think that she would have appreciated the end result, which was the two of us having an argument in real time. It was a multimedia, live-streaming, breaking news story the likes of which the world had never seen.

  When she got to the end, her eyes grew wet, and she said, "I doubt I'll make it back to Las Vegas."

  The video now had over a million viewers and had been airing for forty-five minutes. The entire staff at The Barker was watching, while sharing our page everywhere they could. Bird's listicle had already surpassed a million page views, and was being retweeted a thousand times a minute. It was the definition of viral. And he'd updated the list to include a link to the special page he'd created, so a quarter million people were now watching Quinn's feed on our page while reading my posts.

  #TheBarker was trending on Twitter, and so was #QuinnRivers.

  In the silence, I thought of Tudayapi and called her from my cell. She picked up after one ring and said, "Alex, I'm already doing it."

  "What?"

  "Are you calling me to see if I'll route your page and Quinn's video through my servers to China?"

  "How'd you—"

  "I'm telling you, Alex, I know you. From your articles."

  Five minutes later, I got a text from Tudayapi. "It's up in China."

  The Dissident Blog was mirroring our page, carrying it live so their Chinese readers could see Quinn's video and my comments, neither of which would be visible on regular Chinese platforms.

  Then the sirens started, and I started fearing for Quinn's life. Getting all the facts out in the open was one thing, but I still didn't believe this could end well.

  "Sirens have started behind me. I'm not sure who it is, but I intend to keep this video live as long as I can, to make you see how non-conformists are treated in this country. Luckily, I am a woman, so they might not shoot me immediately. But since they know I killed the two back in Owyhee, they might anyway."

  Bird had been running around the office, checking stats and making sure the page was as viral as possible. He glided in and leaned over my shoulder. "The thing has exploded, Alex. CNN just broke in with live coverage. They mentioned us and are trying to get permission to carry the video live across their network, but for now they're just showing screenshots. If Facebook won't give them the permission to air it live, we are going to get absolutely reamed for what we're doing. We—"

  "Don't have time to consider it now. Bird, look." I pressed my finger into the screen. Quinn was crying, lightly and almost imperceptibly.

  I wracked my brain, trying to figure out how to help.

  Suddenly, I lunged at my desk phone and buzzed Mia. "Can you find me the number of Captain Shonda Payton of the LVMPD right away?"

  I only had one card left to play.

  Chapter 37

  As she often did, Mia over-delivered.

  After being told that Captain Payton wasn't on duty that day, she did a quick Google search and learned that she had been put on temporary paid leave, for undisclosed reasons. Two minutes later, she'd found her home number and connected us.

  "Hello?" I recognized Captain Payton's voice from her appearances on TV just after the shooting.

  "Are you watching the news?"

  "Who is this?"

  "Sorry, this is Alex Vane. CEO of The Barker. My friend is about to get shot about five hours north of you. I'm the guy who had the audio. The one of the shooting."

  There was a short pause, then she said, "I shouldn't be talking to you."

  "Captain Payton, ma'am, please. Turn on the news, open up Facebook. The woman in that car is about to be killed because she leaked the audio of the shooting. I have the rest of it. Now, I don't know exactly what happened, and neither does she. But I think you do."

  She was quiet for a moment, then spoke again, her voice weaker. "I've been watching. I…I've been trying to figure out what to do. I—"

  "Please," I said, "we don't have much time. I need you to help me keep her alive. Do you have a camera on your computer?"

  Captain Payton went live on Facebook about ten seconds before she dialed the Nevada Highway Patrol. Bird shared her Facebook stream on the official Barker page, and had his army of interns share it to their personal pages as well. By the time she got connected with a staff sergeant, Bird was posting the full audio recording to our site, and 5,000 people were watching her call live.

  "Colonel McGuire," she said. "I need to tell you now that this call is being broadcast live on Facebook. This is Captain Shonda Payton of the LVMPD. Are you aware of the chase on Highway 45 right now?"

  "I took this call as a courtesy to a fellow officer," he said, his voice gruff and irritated. "I'm getting calls from news networks as we speak."

  "Please, Colonel McGuire. I swear to you, I'm not trying to embarrass you or your troopers. The woman who is being followed down Highway 45 right now is mentally unstable. She also has evidence regarding the shooting at The Las Vegas Gazette. I've been put on temporary leave for questioning the official story of that shooting. That story is false. Please, step in, call your men or women in uniform. Make sure they take her alive."

  "Is she armed?'

  "Yes."

  "Did she kill two people?"

  "Yes, but they were not police officers, and she says it was self-defense."

  "My troopers are well trained, and I'm sure they will do everything they can to end this safely."

  He hung up without another word.

  Within minutes, Bird had updated our page to include an archive of Captain Payton's video. He'd also added a mirror of her live stream, which she was continuing.

  I was going back and forth between her video and Quinn's, muting one while listening to the other. Quinn had slowed down to fifty miles per hour. I could see that she was thinking—walking that little square with her eyes—but she'd been silent for over fifteen minutes. The sirens still wailed faintly in the background.

  Meanwhile, Captain Payton was ending her career.

  Over the course of five minutes, she displayed eight different photos in front of the live video. The first four were of bullet holes in the walls of The Gazette. As she displayed them one by one, she explained how the kill shots on each of the five victims had been perfectly placed. "Death on impact," she said. "The kind of shots a professional executes. But then there are about five holes in the walls, in spots not very near victims. Either the shooter was perfectly accurate, then wildly inaccurate, or the shooter—or shooters—were perfectly accurate, then added a few random shots around the office to make the shooting look more amateurish. If you've listened to the audio leaked three days ago, these four bullet holes correspond with shots eight through eleven in the recordings."

  The next two photos were of the drive. Or the remaining pieces of the drive.

  "There was one more bullet fired, twelve shots in all. And this is what tipped me off to begin with. I found these fragments next to the body of James Stacy on the floor of the office where three of the bodies were found. At first, I made nothing of it. Just some old piece of junk that got caught in the fire. But further inspection uncovered a one-ounce slug embedded in the floor under Benjamin Huang's desk. My theory? The shooter shot the drive separately, the bullet passed through the desk and lodged in the floor."

  She showed pictures of the desk and the floor.

  "I will lose my job for this, no doubt. But when I brought these facts to the attention of my superiors, I was told to move on. 'We have the killer,' I was told. 'No need to go over what he did with a fine-tooth comb.' Now, let me go through these again."

  I switched off her video and turned on Quinn's. Her head was tilted slightly back and I could hear noise from outside her car. "They're saying something to me," she said. "Through a bullhorn. They want me to pull over. To throw any weapons out of the car. They say that they have a tire slasher set up ten miles ahead, and this is my last chance to
be taken safely."

  I wanted her to live, but, at the same time, I didn't think she'd make it in jail.

  "Pull over," I whispered to myself. "Pull. Over."

  Quinn said, "I don't believe they will take me peacefully. They'll torture me, to find out what I know, and I'm not going to let that happen." She moved out of the frame, and seemed to be turning the wheel. A light screech of the tires, then the phone wobbled. "I've turned off the road, onto the desert flats."

  Just then Bird burst through my door, waving for me to come out. "They've got a live shot."

  I grabbed my laptop and followed him into the open area of the office. Every screen in the place was playing CNN, which had a shot of Quinn's red truck from a helicopter above, but muted so we could hear Quinn's audio.

  Over three million people were watching her live stream, and now millions more were watching the view from above on TV. One way or another, Quinn's story was going to be told.

  The CNN shot panned out and showed the area around the truck. Quinn had turned onto a patch of flat, cracked desert that seemed to go on for miles before ending at some craggy hills.

  "I don't see any way out," she said. "There are low mountains a few miles away, and this patch of land is getting bumpier. I don't…I don't know what to do. And I'm almost out of gas."

  I started thinking about suicide by cop. I don't pray, but, in that moment, I started asking a higher power I don't believe in to please not let her get killed on TV. I figured that different parts of her brain must be fighting one another. The part that so desperately wanted to believe that everyone was out to get her would want to get shot, would want to have the cops end it. I just prayed there was another part. A part that wanted to survive.

  She drove on for another couple minutes, slowing as the land got rougher. Her phone jostled up and down, causing her to come in and out of the shot. The CNN helicopter was still showing the truck, and Quinn seemed to be nearing the hills.

  Then, just like that, her truck stopped.

  She slammed on the brakes and her head shot forward, so, for a moment, all I could see was the seat. On the overhead shot, I watched the truck stop, dust swirling behind it.

  Quinn grabbed the phone, turning it on her face as she got out of the truck. She spoke quietly. "I have a friend named Alex Vane, who is part of all this. I already mentioned him, I think. I did, right? He has more faith in the system than I do. If I get shot, I'll blame him. If I get tortured, I'll blame him."

  She turned her head and let out a quick whistle, then crouched down. "Good boy," she said. The video caught a quick shot of Smedley running to her side. "And if anything happens to Smedley, I'll find Alex and kill him."

  The helicopter camera was locked on her now, slowly zooming in as the dust settled and the police cars raced toward her.

  "Put your hands up," I said to myself.

  Quinn trained the phone on the police cars, which were only a hundred yards away. The last thing she said before she stuck her arms up was, "Take care of Smedley, Alex."

  She dropped the phone and her live stream went light blue, but didn't end. Just a static shot of the sky. But from the helicopter camera, we could see what happened next.

  Four police cars rolled up, two on either side of her, stopping about thirty yards away. Smedley was running in circles around Quinn, dust flying everywhere, as eight officers jumped out and drew their weapons.

  "Don't shoot," I said to myself.

  For a full minute, the standoff continued. Quinn's hands up, officers pointing guns at her, Smedley running circles around Quinn as if to protect her. Both Quinn's phone and the helicopter camera were too far away to pick up audio, but I could see Smedley snarling as the officers shouted at Quinn to drop to the ground.

  Then Smedley stopped circling Quinn and lay down at her feet, brushing her left leg. Quinn lowered her left hand, reaching for him like she was going to pet his head, to reassure him. But to one trigger-happy cop, it must have looked like she was reaching for a gun. He fired, and Quinn collapsed like a rag doll alongside Smedley, face down in the chalky desert.

  I thought she was dead, but no.

  Holding her right leg, she inched in the direction of the truck as two officers ran toward her.

  Then I realized that she wasn't crawling toward the truck. She was crawling toward her phone. The static shot of the light blue sky switched suddenly to a close-up shot of her face, covered in dust. "They shot me, Alex. Right leg. Come get me."

  Her live stream ended and, from the helicopter shot, I could see her throwing the phone aside as the two officers reached her. I never would have imagined that I'd be relieved to see a friend carried off in handcuffs.

  Chapter 38

  Thursday, June 22, 2017

  Greta and I landed at the Boise airport the next morning and drove straight to the jail where Quinn was being held, which was the city jail of Jackpot, Nevada.

  I'd love to tell you that we held hands on the airplane, that this whole ordeal brought us right back into each other's arms. But you and I both know that things don't work out that easily. Because we'd booked last-minute flights, we didn't even sit next to each other on the plane. In the rental car, she complained about "new car smell," and we almost got into an argument when I assured her it couldn't possibly be "new car smell" because the car had 60,000 miles on it. We agreed that it must be the air freshener, and moved on. But I could tell she'd enjoyed the spat, and so had I.

  I spent most of the ride from the airport on the phone with my lawyer, who had flown in from Seattle and was already at the jail where Quinn was being held. I told her to spare no expense to get Quinn paroled.

  It turned out that the two people she'd shot were Holly and Bonnie. My captors, my torturers. After releasing me, they'd tracked her to Owyhee, and she'd gotten the drop on them.

  Her video had been the biggest in the history of Facebook Live, and every news station in the country was talking about it. Side-by-side, time-synced videos of the aerial footage and her video were already popping up on YouTube. Message boards were debating Quinn, her background, and her mental health.

  But even more, people were discussing the shooting. The full audio, combined with Captain Payton's photos, had forced the LVMPD to admit its errors in the case. It had also gotten her fired because the crime scene photos had been copied illegally and displayed to the public even more illegally. I'd called to offer her a job as a crime consultant for The Barker, figuring we could launch a new crime blog and a YouTube channel discussing the big cases of the day. But she'd turned me down, saying that she was going to fight her firing through the police union. Once the whole thing quieted down, and assuming she was proven right, she thought she might be able to get reinstated.

  Bird's listicle had gone more viral than anything we'd run at The Barker. As he'd predicted, the fan base of Star Wars responded loudly to his headline. Bird was pissed that we'd cost ourselves about $200,000 by running the story ad-free. But our app had been downloaded a half million times in the last day, which would more than make up for the loss.

  IFMH itself was catching heat from all angles. Various petitions to boycott the company's media properties had sprung up online, and rumors were swirling in the business press that a combination of pressure from consumers and the Chinese government would derail Gunstott's deal. According to Tudayapi, The Dissident Blog had been shut down overnight, but the journalists involved had escaped and managed to remain anonymous, their data secure in her loft on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation.

  By the time Greta and I reached the jail—a one-story brick building that looked like it belonged on a postcard for a Nevada ghost town—the press was swarming. They'd driven in from Las Vegas, Boise, and Salt Lake City, and flown in from California and New York. Rumor was that a handful of Chinese journalists were flying in as well.

  I parked across the street from the jail and checked my phone. My lawyer had texted me.

  Inside with the police. They will not let you see
her. I tried. More when I know more.

  Seconds later, a guy with a microphone recognized me and ran across the street, accompanied by a guy with a TV camera.

  "Alex," Greta said. "Can we get out of here?"

  I pulled away from the jail without another word, and we drove to the edge of town, stopping on a dusty side road surrounded by distant brown hills. Greta got out and sat on the hood of the rental. I followed and perched on the hood alongside her.

  It was only ten in the morning, but already in the high-eighties. I was happy to be alive, and sitting with Greta.

  "Do you want to tell me about what happened?" she asked.

  I did. I wanted to tell her everything. To go through the last week and a half moment by moment, to cry about James and tell her about Quinn. I wanted to see the look on her face as I took her through Vegas, Duck Valley, and ARDS. I wanted to display my storytelling chops and weave the whole thing into a narrative that would make her love me.

  And I wanted to apologize for the fact that she'd gotten wrapped up in it, and to ask for her help in undoing the damage done to me in that box. In that room. And, for the first time, I felt ready to talk about Rebecca.

  I opened my mouth to tell her everything, but, instead, I said, "Can we just sit in quiet for a minute? What I really want to tell you is…just thanks for coming. For coming with me."

  My cellphone rang, but I didn't move to get it.

  Greta smiled. "It could be your lawyer."

  I slid off the hood of the car to grab it from inside.

  "Alex, it's gonna be okay." It was my lawyer, calling from her car. "I'm on my way back to the airport."

  "Wait, aren't we going to meet? We're just outside of town. Can you get me in to see Quinn?"

  "Alex, listen. You're not going to get in to see Quinn. No one is getting in except her lawyer and direct family."