The Last Journalist (An Alex Vane Media Thriller Book 5)

by A. C. Fuller

  I glanced at the TV, which was airing a segment called "Is the Note Real?" A host was interviewing a serial killer expert who was walking the audience through an analysis of the text.

  "Serial killer, plus dead journalists, plus the stature of some of the journalists," I said. "This story is going to dominate the world until it ends." Shannon didn't respond. "Which makes me think maybe we should get ourselves some clicks out of it."

  Chapter 19

  As wrong as we'd been about Burnside's death from the beginning, we had more information about it than anyone. We decided to write it. There was nothing we could do about the fact that someone was killing journalists, but we could, once and for all, put to bed any speculation that Burnside had been the first victim.

  Shannon headed for the shower while I called Burnside's wife. "Mrs. Burnside, it's Alex. Alex Vane."

  "Oh hello Alex. Good to hear your voice."

  The moment she answered, I was struck by an overwhelming desire to hang up. We hadn't spoken since our conversation in New York, a conversation that convinced me Burnside had been murdered over a story in his notebook. And, in a sense, he had. If Burnside had struggled with depression, and if depression can be thought of as a fatal disease, his research into his own past may have been what pushed him past his limit to bear it.

  "It's good to hear your voice as well," I said. "There are a few things I need to tell you, Mrs. Burnside. I'm sure you've been following the news, the murders out here in Seattle. Micah Baumgartner and Suki Takasago."

  "I have, and I saw the letter this morning. CNN read it live on TV. It's all so confusing. People are trying to say that whoever is killing these journalists also killed Holden, but it's simply untrue."

  "It is untrue, but…" I didn't know how to ask this, so I decided to just ask it…"how can you be sure? I mean, how do you know it was suicide?"

  "Because he was depressed, had been for years. He was dealing with it. We were dealing with it. He saw a therapist once a week on his own and once with me. We never wanted people to know. There's less stigma attached to it now but when we were growing up, people thought you must be strange if you saw a therapist. That was for crazies, not normal, churchgoing, successful people. Times have changed, but I wished they'd changed sooner. Maybe Holden could have gotten help earlier in life."

  I heard Shannon getting out of the shower. Our plan was to head back to The Barker where I'd go over what she wrote the previous night and we'd decide on a plan to publish something. But first I needed to tell Mrs. Burnside everything. "We found his notebook."

  "You did? 'We' who?"

  "I ran into another journalist at the scene of your husband's…his passing. She found his notebook. We know what he was researching in his last months."

  "Oh my, what?"

  As succinctly as possible, I summed up what we'd learned about Burnside's research. I knew Mrs. Burnside didn't track the details of his stories and never had. I doubted the significance of what I was sharing would be clear to her. I was right.

  When I'd finished, she said, "You think this is why he took his own life?"

  "We think it played a role, yes."

  "I don't understand a lot of what you said, but I doubt it. Holden and I learned in therapy that depression and suicidal thoughts are complex, often having more to do with chemistry than with external circumstances. We've been through tough times before. I can't imagine anything in that story would change much."

  "Like you said, much of the media is speculating right now about his death, wondering if it's connected to the murders. With your permission, we'd like to publish something that clears this up. Something that ends the speculation." The line was quiet for a few seconds. "Mrs. Burnside?"

  "Fine. It's fine. I was thinking about what Holden would want. If it were up to me I'd never talk to a reporter again, you'd all leave me alone, but Holden would want me to give you whatever you need. He would want people to know about the depression behind his reserved smile. He loved reporters."

  I let that sit for a moment, then pressed on. "Thank you. Can we quote you in the story?"

  "Sure, use anything I said. I can even put you in touch with his therapist."

  "You'd give permission for him to speak to us on the record?"

  "I don't see why not. I'm getting twenty calls a day to be interviewed. Reporters from The Post, The Daily News, and The Times are banging on my door at all hours. I got approached at church by someone from some blog. I want it to end. You were the last person to speak with him at any length while he was alive. If you're going to put this ridiculous speculation to bed, I don't see why you shouldn't get the access you need."

  The phrase "ridiculous speculation" hung in the air, and I decided to come clean. "Mrs. Burnside, I've spent the last week leading the charge on that 'ridiculous speculation.' Since the day of the funeral, I've been certain he was murdered over a story he was working on. I've never been more wrong."

  "Holden said once that he worried about journalism being too fast now, reporters jumping to conclusions and so on. Why didn't you simply call me?"

  I searched for an answer, but found only weak justifications. Truth was, my desire for an outcome had led my reporting, not my desire to follow the facts. And even though Burnside had been played by sources for years, I had to admire that at the end he was doggedly pursuing the facts even though they exposed harsh truths about himself.

  I mumbled something about not wanting to disturb her in her time of mourning, then she gave me the number of the therapist and told me to wait an hour before calling. She'd make sure to reach her and give permission to speak with me about Burnside's condition. I thanked her and said goodbye as Shannon emerged from the bedroom, dressed in her usual outfit and ready to go.

  "She gave permission for us to speak with his therapist. Like we thought, she didn't care much about the story, the CIA, his sources."

  "I guess most people don't navel-gaze about journalism the way we do, or Burnside did." Thankfully, the rain hadn't resumed and the sky had lightened. "Which makes me wonder," Shannon continued. "How are we going to get people to care about the story? Burnside himself said it might be the greatest scandal in American political history, but only if people know and care."

  We worked on the story all morning and into the early afternoon. Our first major decision was how much of Shannon's work from the previous night to keep. I read her story twice and we brought Bird in to read it as well. The problem was, she'd written it from the angle of Burnside being a murder victim, which we now knew he wasn't. So even though her work focused on the CIA angle, Dewey Gunstott's revelations, and our other research, all of which was accurate, it had the wrong tone and would have to be rewritten.

  This caused our first major disagreement. Shannon wanted to spend time to rewrite it all from the angle of his suicide. Bird and I argued that, for now, we should only run with the simple fact of his suicide, referencing his depression and my conversations with his wife and therapist, who'd been reluctant to speak at first, even with Mrs. Burnside's permission, but had revealed enough information to make the story work.

  In the end, Bird and I won. The final story focused on Burnside's suicide, leaving out any reference to the notebook, Gunstott, the CIA, or the memoir. In addition to the evidence from his therapist, we contrasted the details of his death to the badly-staged suicides of Baumgartner and Suki. In the end, we'd gotten Shannon to relent by promising that when it came time to publish the stories about the notebook, she could run them exclusively on Public Occurrences.

  By two that afternoon, the story was with the proofer and scheduled to go live on The Barker and Public Occurrences at exactly three, just in time to get picked up by the evening news programs, all of which had received an embargoed copy from Bird.

  I leaned back and put my feet up on my desk. "Feels good, finishing a story."

  Shannon was restless and dissatisfied. As I'd read her the final version of the piece aloud, she kept standing and pacing to the w
indow, then sitting again and thumbing through her phone. Now, her foot tapped the leg of my desk.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  "Feels crummy to have such a big story and not run it. I mean, we're basically running a story that says, 'Hey, you know how the police said this was a suicide from day one? They were right. The end.’"

  "Don't undersell it. This will be one of the biggest stories—in terms of clicks—you've ever run. We've got more details than anyone else. The therapist, Mrs. Burnside."

  "I'm not in this for clicks you sellout."

  She said it with enough irony to make it plausible that it was a joke, but I knew she meant it.

  "Look, Shannon. Cable news spent all day dissecting that letter, arguing about whether Burnside was murdered. Clearing up this story is no small deal. And you can still do the other story. But don't you agree it will take some time?"

  She ran both hands through her hair, stopping on the crown of her head and pulling the hair upwards. She was fried.

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  "Opening the follicles. Something about releasing tension. Read it online."

  "You need to sleep. You've been up—what?—thirty straight hours?"

  She didn't reply.

  "Are you upset about something else?" I asked. "Shannon, what's going on?"

  "You really don't get it, do you?" She stood and walked to the door, opened it halfway, then glared at me. "Alex, we’re sitting on the biggest story ever. We could have tied it to Burnside's suicide. After our piece hits, what will the press do? They'll chat about it for ten minutes before they move to the bigger story, which is who the hell is killing journalists? Who knows how long that story goes? Days, weeks, months? When it's solved, what juice is there gonna be for the CIA angle on Burnside? For the story that, in historic terms, dwarfs any serial killer?"

  "Murdered journalists are pretty important, Shannon."

  "But the results of the Burnside story are world-moving. Wars, famines, healthcare, presidencies, things that affected literally billions of people, were determined by a tiny group of powerful men who used Holden Burnside to get their way."

  "Maybe it's a story for a full-length book, I don't know."

  "Look, Alex, I've appreciated working with you. It's been swell, really. You guys have good coffee here, and fast internet, which I appreciate. But this thing has run its course. We blew our chance today. It's my fault. I should have argued harder. I shouldn't have let you and Bird talk me down. I shouldn't have let your damn love of short-term clicks get in the way of what was journalistically right."

  "Shannon, that's not why…we don't have the other story yet."

  "We have it. You wanted to play it safe. Just like back in Burnside's class. Take the easy story and live to fight another day."

  She put her hands up in a guard position, like she was about to challenge me to a fight, then swiveled on her heels and stormed out, leaving the door open behind her.

  Chapter 20

  I puttered around the rest of the afternoon, signing checks, approving Bird's editorial plan, and spending too long choosing between a four-thousand-dollar printer and a five-thousand-dollar printer for the office. What Shannon said on the way out the door lingered and left me distracted.

  When I got home, I wandered into the kitchen where Greta was blending a spinach smoothie. I set my laptop bag on the counter and opened the fridge.

  Greta shot me a look. "Hey, not there, okay?"

  A while back she'd made me promise not to leave my work stuff in the kitchen, which was her sacred space.

  "Sorry." I shut the fridge and moved my bag to the couch. "I'm distracted."

  "You need some sun." Greta handed me a tall glass of cold green smoothie.

  "It's Seattle."

  "There's a little today. Let's go." She was already on her way to the living room, where Cleo crawled around on the floor. "It'll help her nap," she called.

  Minutes later, the spinach smoothie sloshed in my belly and Greta and I strolled to a park near our house, craning our heads toward the thin sliver of sun as we passed between buildings. Greta had been right about Cleo, who fell asleep within a couple blocks. When we reached the park, we walked straight to a large grassy field, the best spot to soak up what would probably be the only sun we'd see this week.

  "I saw the thing you ran on Burnside," Greta said out of nowhere.

  "I thought you didn't read our site anymore." She'd accused us of publishing too many negative clickbait headlines, and she was right.

  "I still get alerts when your name is on a story. I read it. It was good. But what happened to the stuff you told me about? All the stuff in his notebook?"

  "It didn't work, okay?" It came out nastier than I'd intended. "I'm sorry. Shannon was grilling me about that earlier. Accused me of playing it safe."

  "Are you?"

  "Yeah, but mostly because you made me promise to be safer."

  We stopped in the center of the field. Greta slung her jacket over the back of Cleo's stroller and stretched her arms up to the sky. "You know, I learned something about myself today. Something that might affect you." She leaned down and put her hands flat on the grass. She still did yoga five days a week and was as limber as she'd been when she was twenty.

  "What'd you learn?"

  "You know how we would fight about the dangerous stories you used to get involved in?"

  "Yeah, a fight you won."

  "Sort of. I did go to Cuba with you that one time. That was a helluva dangerous story."

  "The most dangerous," I admitted.

  "Remember after we got back, we decided to try for a baby again right away, and then I was pregnant soon after, then I was consumed with being pregnant. Now Cleo has been out of me long enough that I feel I've got my body back, like I'm returning to myself a little. I'm becoming a separate person again. Does that make sense?"

  "It does," I said cautiously. Greta talked about her internal life the way I talked about journalism, and sometimes it unnerved me. I never knew where she was headed.

  "For the last couple weeks I've been journaling about our adventure in Cuba, reliving some of the trauma, and talking it out with my therapist."

  "And?" I braced myself for an attack. When she'd said we argued about the dangerous stories I got involved in, that was an understatement. We'd battled for years and, on some level, I probably still blamed her, blamed the relationship, for my move away from big stories and my embrace of clickbait.

  "I take back everything I said about dangerous stories. I see now why you write them, why they're important. Of course, I want you around for Cleo as much as possible. All the time and for a long time. But not if it means you being anything other than what you're meant to be. My hunch is you weren't meant to be a clickbait journalist. If I won't even read most of what your site produces, what does that mean?"

  I laughed. "The truth is, I won't even read much of what our site produces. But…am I hearing you right? What are you saying?"

  "Right now, Cleo is too young to know anything on a conceptual level. But she can feel things, she can soak up the tone in the room, can adopt certain attitudes toward the world from both of us. And in a few years she'll start to understand things better, in six or seven she'll be able to read what The Barker produces. I want to say, officially, on the record, I want you to take inventory of what you're doing. If you're happy with it, fine. I love you. If not, and if I had anything to do with your dissatisfaction, I want you to delete it from the record. You have my full support, whatever you do."

  Her change of heart left me speechless. I hadn't known it, but those were the exact words I needed to hear from her. I'd been criticizing myself for years over my shift from serious journalism to what The Barker usually produced. I watched in awe as Burnside and others wrote serious books and I managed a never-ending stream of "content"—some of it decent but most of it forgettable trash. I'd thought it was what Greta wanted—needed—from me. Maybe that was so, and maybe that's par
t of why I did it. But as she spoke, I was also back in Burnside's class, taking the safe route, and I heard Shannon's admonishment in the back of my head.

  The truth was messy. Maybe not as messy as Burnside's, but it had lived in my blindspot all my life. I'd taken the safe route because it's what I'd needed.

  A stream of clouds blocked the sun. "Awww," Greta said, putting her jacket on. "The fun is over."

  "Thanks for...what you said." The sound of my voice echoed in my head. I looked at the sky. "The fun isn't over. The sun will be back."

  That evening, cuddled together on the couch with Smedley lying across our feet, we watched Netflix and ate takeout sushi. I handed Greta a plastic tub of salty edamame. "Do you think the kids will still be saying 'Netflix and chill' when Cleo is old enough to say it?"

  She just looked at me blank-faced, as she often did when I said stuff like that.

  Our landline, which I'd almost forgotten we had, rang. "Who even has this number anymore?" I jogged to the kitchen to answer it.

  It was Shannon. "Why aren't you answering your cell? I need to talk."

  "It's Netflix and chill night," I said. "And I need to talk with you, too. I've been thinking about what you said and—"

  "Shut up, Alex. I've texted you like five times. I didn't know who else to call. I think the killer is after me."

  "Don't go anywhere," I said, walking to the couch and waving at Greta to mute the TV. "I'll send a car for you right now. Lock the doors and—"

  "I'm a few blocks from your house. I think I lost him but—"

  "Then get here fast."

  We hung up and I filled Greta in. A couple minutes later, Shannon was at the door, wild-eyed and sweaty. She wore her workout clothes, a simple gray sweatshirt and Adidas tracksuit pants.

  I locked the door behind her, then joined her in the living room. Greta left to make her a cup of tea.

  "What happened?" I asked. "What's going on?"