by Kit Frazier
“Why does everybody keep saying that?” I said irritably. “You’d think it’s a wonder I show up for work at all.”
After I caught my breath and got my heart rate below three hundred thirty, I said, “While we’re on the subject, what are you doing here at this time of the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d come in and try out a program I’ve been working on. I made the finals in the Game Geeks Competition, and I might even get a contract.”
“Game Geeks?” I said.
“Yeah, you’ll have to play it. The prototype is Hard Target. Sharpens strategy and shooting skills.”
There were lots of things you could get away with at the satellite that you didn’t dare at the main office, but I wasn’t buying it. Ethan didn’t get much sleep anyway on account of him having an even more abysmal unsocial life than I did.
“Who is she this time?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter.” He sighed, plopping down in the swivel chair next to my desk.
I waited.
He pushed the wheeled chair back and forth with his feet. “Hey,” he said, not meeting my gaze and trying to sound disinterested, “how come girls don’t like me?”
“Oh, come on. Girls like you,” I said. “I’ve tried to set you up twice with that girl in Web Design.”
He toed the burgundy carpet with his ratty red Converses and twirled his chair. “Yeah, I know. But she’s a geek.”
I almost laughed out loud. This from the guy who had a Star Fleet Academy bumper sticker on his Volvo and the entire cast of Star Wars III action figures Velcroed to the back dash.
“You could go out with me,” he said, and I smiled.
“Oh, Ethan. As flattering as that almost is, you say that every time you break up with someone.”
“We don’t have to go out out. We could talk on the phone.” “Every time we talk on the phone you ask me what I’m wearing.” He grinned. “Can’t get slapped if you don’t try.”
“Well, E, maybe you need to meet people outside the office,” I offered, but I had to question his judgment. He was asking me for relationship advice?
I was staring down the barrel of my twenty-eighth birthday, and I already had one disastrous marriage under my belt. And due to Logan’s absence, I was fully engaged in situational celibacy, in deed if not in thought.
“I have a life outside the office,” he said. “Gaming conventions don’t count.”
Ignoring my comment, he spun the chair. “You working on an obituary?”
“Just trying to get caught up on some work.”
“Who’s the stiff?” he said, leaning toward my computer.
My first instinct was to leap forward and switch off the monitor, but I shrugged and said, “Just some guy. Actually, I’m, um, working on a new design layout, and this obit was at the top of my inbox.”
Ethan’s face lit up. “Let’s see.”
Oh, hell. Showing a new page design to a guy like Ethan is like dangling a rib roast in front of a Rottweiler.
Logan had asked me to keep Puck’s fake death notice under wraps. But it was an obituary, and I was an obituary writer. If I played it right, I could pass it off as just another part of my job, which was supposed to be the whole idea, anyway.
No time like the present to see if I could pull it off. Taking a deep breath, I rolled my chair out of the way and gave E full view of the screen.
“What’s this?” he said, pointing at the archived article flickering on the screen.
“Just some background. You know. For the obituary.” I was aiming for cool and casual, but my voice seemed unnaturally high.
Ethan’s eyes narrowed as he skimmed the obit. “Dirt-poor widowed mother…Kimmie Ray Puckett…Cullen Ainsworth II…sale of the family ranch…surface mining for clay products…feline refuse pellets?” He shook his head. “Strip-mining for kitty litter? You going to include that little gem?”
“No,” I said evenly. “I only get twelve inches a week for a lead obituary. I’m waiting to make sure we don’t get a dead celebrity.”
“Too bad.” Ethan frowned and bumped me out of the way. His gaze flitted from the archived article back to the obit.
Double hell.
Ethan leaned more closely to the monitor. “If you really want to change the layout, you could always run wider gutters and use a different font.” His long fingers zipped over my keyboard at warp speed, and I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“There, see?” Ethan said with a ta da! in his voice. “Just run it to the printer and you can get a good look at it.”
“It’s great! I can see it from here there’s no need to run it to the printer,” I stammered, reaching over him to close the archive page. I’d already printed a copy of the fake obit and it was laying in Cronkite’s tray. I needed to get to the back office, get it off the printer, and call Logan to take it off my hands before anybody else got wind of the damn thing.
I was racking my brain for a way to get Ethan away from my computer and out of my cubicle when a bright voice beamed from a distance, “Hey, Cauley, what are you doing here so early?”
My left eye twitched it was way too early for beaming. Ethan and I turned to see Marina Conchita Santiago bouncing into the pressroom, her ubiquitous Nikon bobbing from a neon strap around her neck. Mia was wearing eyeball-burning orange, from her short, swingy skirt to her strappy sandals. She looked like a dark elf disguised as a sunbeam.
“Why does everyone keep saying that? Y’all act like I’ve never been early in my life,” I said.
Mia rolled her eyes and Ethan ignored me.
“Come look at this,” he said to Mia, tugging her toward the monitor. “Cauley’s doing a new style sheet for the Death Page.”
“Oh!” Mia said. “I always thought that page could use a little pop.”
I gritted my teeth. I was in serious danger of blowing it for Logan. Swinging around in my chair, I kicked the switch on the surge protector under my desk, inadvertently clobbering Ethan in the knee. The hard drive made a wilting noise and abruptly powered down.
“Yow!” Ethan howled.
“Oh, Ethan!” I said. “Jeez, I’m sorry! Are you okay?”
“Screw my knee! My knee is fine! You never, ever shut a computer down like that.”
“It was an accident.” Part of it was. And I really was sorry about his knee. “Probably lost the whole morning’s work.”
“You didn’t back up your work?” he said. His voice was unnaturally high, and his eyes bulged dangerously.
I shrugged, and he stared at me with a look reserved only for the very young and the very stupid. I didn’t care to venture a guess as to where I stood in that scenario.
He sighed and shook his head. “Well, don’t worry about it,” he said, turning to the hard drive and lowering his chin. “I can fix it.”
“Yeah, I figured,” I said, and as Ethan and Mia set to work getting my computer back online, I slipped out of the cubicle and down the hall, cell phone in hand. I had a fake obituary to save and an FBI agent to call. Life just didn’t get any better than that.
Chapter Five
Logan must’ve had his hands full with Puck because he didn’t answer his cell and I had to leave a message. After my third attempt at a message that sounded cool and breezy, I hit send.
Ethan had recovered Puck’s obit, and I promptly dumped it into the unrecoverable Dead Copy file before anyone else laid their eyeballs on it. I folded the newsprint into a manageably sized square and shoved it into a manila envelope, along with the printouts of Logan’s notes, Puck’s pictures, and the CD Logan had given me. I shoved the whole thing under the teetering pile of detritus in my inbox. If anyone wanted to sneak a peek at that bad boy, they’d need a Sherpa and a GPS tracking unit.
With the fake obit done and tucked safely away, I turned back to my computer, presumably doing the job I get paid to do, when a wall of weariness hit me so hard I could have fallen asleep standing up.
; I glanced up at the clock. Eight thirty. Great no time to go home for a short nap.
The dayside crew was already trickling in, carrying big go-cups of coffee and wearing sleepy expressions on their faces.
I knew how they felt. I was daydreaming about snuggling back in my big four-poster bed and hitting the snooze button for the thirteenth time when a voice bellowed, “Cauley! What the hell are you doing here?”
I jumped and knocked a stack of funeral home death notices out of my inbox as Mike Tanner scowled over me, looking almost as intimidating as Hugh Grant with a head cold.
I shrugged. “Jeez, can’t a girl come in early to get some work done without everyone acting like it’s the first sign of Armageddon?”
Tanner eyed the blizzard of unfinished paperwork fluttering back down to my desk.
“See?” I pointed to the mess. “I’m getting caught up.”
He grunted, heading into the glass-enclosed office we call the Cage. He set his coffee precariously on his own pile of unfinished paperwork, turned, and crooked his finger at me. Oh, good. A summons from the home office.
Sighing, I trudged through the open door and said, “What?” It came out a little crankier than I meant it to.
Tanner motioned for me to shut the door.
Great. I was about to get my ass handed to me on a silver platter.
He crossed his arms, leaned against his desk, and stared at me. The man couldn’t possibly be old enough for the big purple vein that bulged on his forehead, and I wasn’t in the mood to defend myself.
“All right. Give,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows, trying to appear charming and innocent. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re here for a reason. Spill.”
Apparently I need to work on my charm and innocence. I hedged, trying to come up with something that was close to the truth without spilling the beans about the fake obituary. Tanner looked tired, more tired than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes made him look far older than forty.
“Logan’s back,” I finally said.
Tanner’s eyes rolled back in his head. While he hadn’t officially met Logan, he knew I’d been involved with the FBI agent during the federal sting on Selena Obregon and El Patron, and that I’d been carjacked, kidnapped, robbed, and stabbed in the rear. But Tanner was a sharp guy, and I think he suspected there was more to the story with Tom Logan than me just horning in on a federal investigation.
Tanner pressed his thumb against his temple, dropped into his chair, and reached over the picture of his wife for his jar of licorice whips. “Am I going to have to start smoking over this?”
“I don’t think so.”
Gnawing on the red, rubbery stick, he fished through the paperwork on his desk. “I’ve got an assignment for you,” he said and handed me a folder. “You see the front page of the Journal today?”
I winced. But then I always wince at the Journal. I learned everything I know about journalism during my brief stint at the Journal. I also learned what happens when you sleep with the boss.
I turned my nose up at the paper. “I avoid that rag like you avoid carbs.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just look at this.”
Scowling, I snatched the paper. The front page story above the fold had a byline “by Miranda Phillips.” And story was the right word for it.
The headline read El Patron and Texas Syndicate: Gang War Imminent as Obregon Goes to Trial? in bold, fifty-point Helvetica type.
I skimmed the article and shook my head. “There’s nothing new in this article, and we have no idea there’s going to be a gang war. This is pure speculation.”
Tanner nodded and took one of those profound breaths he takes when he’s planning strategy. He looked out the wide window that framed the ever-spreading suburban sprawl devouring the Hill Country. He turned and leveled his gaze on me. “They still having you testify before the grand jury?”
“Next week,” I said warily.
Tanner grunted. “You doing that demonstration thing tonight?”
I nodded. “The police department’s hosting a demonstration of different branches; SWAT and forensics will be there. This is the first time search and rescue volunteers have been invited.”
“Place’ll be crawling with cops. Keep your eyes and ears open. See if there’s anything they haven’t released. The Journal may be all bleeds-‘n-leads, but Mark Ramsey’s no fool. There may be a gang war on the horizon, and if so, it’s going to get bad.’
Tanner booted up his computer and swiveled to look at me. He must not have liked what he saw. “I’m not asking you for state secrets just find out what’s going on. Keep track of it.”
“You’re giving me an assignment?” I said suspiciously. “Research,” he said. “Shiner’s got the story.”
“Of course he does,” I said, trying not to grind the enamel off my back teeth. Paul Shiner is the tall, blond sports reporter climbing his way up the Sentinel ladder on the rungs of my story on El Patron.
“Come on, Cauley. You’ll get your chance. He needs this now. He’s downtown three days a week now and he’s in over his head.”
I felt little puffs of steam coming out of my ears. “I’ll get right on it.” “One more thing.”
I was already at boiling point, and Tanner always saves the big whammy for the finale. “What,” I growled.
He fished a folder from his desk drawer. “Clear your schedule. You’re going to a Press Association conference this summer.”
My mood lifted about eleven feet. “Me? Going to a national conference?”
“It’s for obituary writers.”
I froze. If I attended a conference full of other Dead Beat reporters, it would be admitting that I’m probably going to be stuck writing obituaries until cobwebs grew over my cold, dead fingers.
“Tanner,” I said, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin, “send somebody else. I hear there’s an intern downtown dying to get on the Dead Beat.”
He stared at me.
“You said I had a shot at City Desk. All I had to do was bide my time, pay my dues, and get in line. If I go to this conference, does this mean I’m stuck on Dead Beat?”
Tanner shook his head. “City Desk is still there, and you’re still in line. But like it or not, you’re on obits until it comes open.”
He rubbed his eyes with more force than necessary. “Cauley, you’re good at what you do. You get grieving families to open up. They talk to you tell you stories they wouldn’t tell Shiner or even me, for that matter. You’ve got a way of telling stories about stiffs that makes their lives seem like they really meant something.”
Tanner was giving me a compliment? I eyed him suspiciously. “Tanner, are you okay? You don’t have a twenty-four-hour brain tumor or anything?”
His face went ashen, and he reached for another licorice stick. “There’s nothing wrong with me except insubordinate staff. Take the itinerary on the Dead Beat and Shiner’s research, and go do what you get paid to do.”
I tried not to slam the door on my way out of the Cage, but I didn’t try very hard, and the breeze from the sharp smack of door against frame felt good.
I was tired and getting crankier by the minute. I had the sum total of three hours of sleep, Logan was back in town and we couldn’t see each other, I helped get a guy “dead,” and now I was doing research for someone else’s story that may or may not damage my relationship with the police department the only tie I had left with my father. And to top it all off, I may or may not have just received a life sentence manning the desk on the Dead Beat.
The day was taking a definite nosedive.
But Tanner was right. The Dead Beat was my job, and I took it seriously. Last month I started a new series on Austin natives, people who were born here and died here—no easy feat, since more than half the population wasn’t even here ten years ago.
I’d actually started getting fan mail. The accolades were nice, but I really enjoyed listening to people talk about their loved ones and then telling tho
se stories in the newspaper. I especially liked the little old ladies, who weren’t “little old ladies” at all. Most of them were good old-fashioned tough Texas gals, the kind of women who could stave off attacking Apaches, plow their own fields, and make babies by the dozen. Many of them had been beauties in their day not unlike my own mother and my great aunt Katherine. I smiled a little. The last of the big-shouldered broads; I hoped to take my place among them someday.
Resigned to doing Shiner’s footwork for now I plopped down in my chair and glared at the folder, sending Shiner a legion of unkind thoughts. Flipping through the pages, an eight-by-ten shot of Selena Obregon stared back at me. I felt that familiar, nauseating jolt. She was preternaturally beautiful, with sleek blond hair, luminous blue eyes, and a fair, fine-boned face. She also had the heart of a rattlesnake.
She’d been the brains behind El Patron, an Argentinean smuggling ring notorious for settling disagreements by chopping off ears and shoving burning Bridgestones around shoulders. I’d spent a week in the hospital after a run-in with Obregon and her thugs.
While I was thinking about El Patron, I called the downtown cop shop and asked for Dan Soliz, the gang guy. I didn’t know him but I’d seen him in passing, and he knew I was a friend of Cantu’s. As credentials go, you can’t get much better than Jim Cantu.
“Soliz,” he said, answering his phone. His voice was gruff, but his slight Latino accent made it sound musical.
“Hello, Detective Soliz. My name is Cauley MacKinnon, and I was wondering if you were going to be at the demonstration tonight?”
“You the blond girl that hangs out with Cantu?”
I cringed a little at the “girl” part, but maintained my stiff upper lip. “That would be me,” I said, all bright and sunny.
“The one that works for the newspaper?” “And volunteers for Team Six,” he said,“and why would you be wanting to know if I was going to be there?”
I thought about making up some preposterous story but decided to tell the truth. “Look,” I said. “The Journal’s been printing a lot of crap about some looming gang war, and I’d like to get your thoughts on that. I noticed the Journal didn’t bother to talk to you.”
