Secrets: Chapter One

Secrets: Chapter One


WARNING: This series may contain –
- Graphic descriptions of violence
- Romance
- Criminal activity
- Angst
- Alcoholism
If any of these things cause negative reactions in your insides, please don’t read this story.
If they don’t, then ONWARD!!

Chapter One
No Promises

“I need another story,” Mike said, running his finger across the top of my computer. It came away grey and fuzzy with dust. Rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, he pushed his salt-and-pepper bangs away from his forehead. “Do you ever actually use this thing?”

Without looking up from my notebook, I answered, “If this is going to turn into a crack about women and computers, I’d seriously rethink how close you are to me right now. Well within my range, I think.” I glanced pointedly at the Taser sitting on my desk before circling an important piece of information. I put my pen down and looked up at Michael Jeffries, my 50-something boss. “What kind of story?”

“Something like the Kast piece you broke back in April. Sensational. Terrifying. Guaranteed to draw traffic to the site.”

“I’ll do my best to get another serial killer released from prison for you,” I said dryly. “In the meantime, I do have a lead of sorts.”

“Make it six hundred words by four p.m., Rawles, and you might still have a job come tomorrow morning.”

His traditional empty-threat spoken, Mike patted the top of my lifeless computer and walked away, sending a swirling cloud of dust into the air. It settled back down on and around the monitor, making the state-of-the-art piece of equipment look like a thirty-year-old artifact.

“A lead?”

I grabbed one of the wadded-up scraps of paper on my desk and threw it in the general direction of Kenny Overstreet, my second-in-command, which was a ridiculous title because we were the only two full-pay employees of The Daily Beat: LA crime division.

The Daily Beat was the largest online daily news provider in the world. We had 57 offices in the US alone, with 10 in Europe and 2 opening in Asia and Australia. Daily was huge.

Of the 365 crime-related stories the LA office published every year, about 280 belonged to me. Kenny wrote most of the rest, with occasional input from one of our two paid-with-experience interns. Journalism majors, they were our fourth pair in one year. The other eight kids decided about two weeks into their internships that journalism, or at least crime reporting, wasn’t exactly their cup of tea.

Kenny unfolded the wad of paper and gave it a once-over. Then he crumpled it up and threw it back to me.

He preferred instant messaging, but it’s incredibly hard to IM when the other person never turns her computer on.

“There’s nothing there,” Kenny said flatly. “The crimes aren’t related. The PD might actually kill you if you publish something like this without talking to them.”

He wasn’t exactly exaggerating. My relationship with the police department was so far from stellar that it could have been considered subterranean. They didn’t like journalists to begin with, since my predecessor managed to snap and assault one of the boys in blue, sending him to the hospital with a broken arm and a concussion.

Pair that with my innate ability to piss people off, and what you end up with is a journalist who relies on interns to communicate with the local blue-bloods. Not exactly a recipe for success. Not even by my standards.

“Ken, could you…”

“No,” he said, cutting me off. He pointed at the two wet-behind-the-ears interns. “They are the phone monkeys. I am a writer.”

I am too, I wanted to protest, but Kenny wasn’t going to listen to me, and I didn’t trust the interns not to botch the job. That left me with one sorry option.

Contact the PD myself.

I glanced over at my monitor and pulled of a myriad of multicolored stick-notes off the screen. Yeah, I know that there’s a program now that makes it look like you’ve got sticky notes on your screen, but using it requires turning the computer on. It’s not that I can’t use my computer, because I can. It’s just that I don’t like it. It’s too… impersonal. I like my notes and notebook because they seem more real and alive than a word processor or pixel groups on a screen.

I sat there with Lieutenant Miles Hummel’s phones number in my hand while I thought about my lead. Maybe Kenny was right and it was nothing, but I needed a piece for Mike by four. I could have had Kenny “the writer” write a post, or even push it off on one of the interns and watch his eyes light up like it was Independence Day inside his head, but I didn’t. I wanted my lead to be a story.

May 17: Grace Robinson was seventy-five and she lived alone in a little apartment in a quiet neighborhood. Her husband had died of heart failure three years earlier.

She died of blunt-force trauma when someone broke into her flat and pushed her off the balcony. The intruder took a box set of Harry Potter DVDs and left before law enforcement could arrive.

June 12: Grey Mallory was a fifteen-year-old high-school dropout who dealt drugs to his friends to fund his own addiction. He was a member of the Crips and his rap sheet took longer to read than most Senate bills.

He got hit by a car in an alley, breaking both his legs. To finish the job, whoever hit him put two 9mm bullet in his occipital lobe. The killer took his cellphone and left 6oz of cocaine in Greg’s pocket, along with over $300 in cash.

July 20: Sarah Baker worked as a teller at a local credit union. Fresh out of college, she was filling in for a sick friend one day at work.

A masked man walked in and shot sixteen people non-fatally, once each. Then he walked up to Sarah and put five bullets in her chest. He took her iPod and left.

August 15: Aaron Cumnick owned a landscaping business. He had just gotten married to his high-school sweetheart and had started making plans to move to Nevada.

He was found dead in the bed of his pickup truck, beheaded with a metal shovel. The killer left Aaron’s two cellphones, radio, MP3 player, and PDA in the cab and took the $20 Timex watch off his body.

September 17: Pierce Mackler, CEO of a small stock trading company, was out for dinner with his daughter Elizabeth. He did this every Friday night, at the same restaurant, at the same time.

A waiter slipped a piano wire around his neck and killed him in front of his daughter and 60 other diners. The waiter took his pager and vanished.

Maybe Kenny was right and the deaths weren’t connected, but I thought differently. They were too weird. I mean, who takes a phone and leaves cash? And it wasn’t just the odd thefts. All the murders happened around the same time of the month.

One more thing ties them together. The police hadn’t solved a single one.

I dug my cellphone out of my pocket and punched in Lieutenant Hummel’s number. It rang three or four times and I was beginning to think that I’d be able to leave a message when I heard a click and a strong, clear voice say, “Hello?”

“Hummel?” The question escaped before I could stop it. The lieutenant always answered my calls with a gravelly “Whaddaya want, Rawles?” definitely not a polite hello.

The mystery man on the other end made a noise that sounded disturbingly like a chuckle. “No, ma’am. Lieutenant Hummel retired two weeks ago.”

“Retired,” I repeated, knowing it sounded moronic but at the moment I was more concerned with the fact that my PD contact was gone. “Well, uh, great. I work for The Daily Beat. Hummel was my PD liason.” I threaded my fingers through my hair and rested my head on my hand. “Can you put the poor bastard who replaced him on the line?”

This time there was no mistaking his laugh. “Done and done, ma’am. Lieutenant Jack Bowler, at your service.”

I felt myself shift into reporter mode. “Peter Rawles. I need to arrange a meeting at your earliest possible convenience.”

His pause was a touch too long and I grinned smugly. It generally threw people off when I, an obviously female journalist, introduced myself as Peter. They assumed a whole variety of hilarious things, but almost never the truth.

Lila Peter Rawles went by her middle name because she didn’t like the stereotype attached to female writers.

“Uh, right.” Bowler paused again. “How does forty-five minutes work?”

I glanced at the watch on my wrist. “Fine by me. See you then.”

I hung up. Grabbing my notebook, I straightened and looked at Kenny. “Did you know that Hummel retired?”

He shot me a look and pointed at the interns. “Everyone knew. Even they knew.” He grinned. “Jack takes his coffee black with a pink sugar, the one that’s got the music notes or whatever on it.”

“Jack?” I repeated. “Jack? You’re on a first-name basis with him? Where have I been?”

Kenny made a scribbling motion and laughed. “He’s cute, too, Petah.” He always pronounced my name like that, as if it actually ended in ‘ah’ instead of ‘r’.

My phone beeped. Glancing down, I said, “I’ll be sure to tell Gina you said that.”

“That’s low. I’m just trying to help you.”

I looked back up and grinned. “See you later, Ken.”

Taking the stairs two at a time, I read the text from my boss again.

Stop bickering with KO and get me a story. And if you get arrested you’re fired.

It was, I supposed, a good enough reason as any not to get arrested.

No promises, I texted back.