Shooting the Messenger

The paper transcript of the email conversation was walked directly to the office of the Assistant Director. A balding man with caterpillar brows, he frowned as he read through the first two pages of the report and then motioned for the young agent to take a seat. Picking out a pen from the flowering cup of writing utensils, he scribbled a message in the margins: He’s entered the red zone. Take care of it.

A banner scrolled along the bottom of the large flat screen TV: “Breaking News: Five dead, six wounded at Keller High School after shooting rampage.”

            “False flag operation.” Andrew Copper looked from the television screen to the man joining him at his table for lunch, Glenn Sumner. Close cropped haircut, neck tats, tight black pants an inch too short, Glenn would probably be picked out of a crowd as a conspiracy fan based on nothing more than his aura. He pulled a sandwich and bag of chips out of his bag and nodded toward the TV. “They pull this kind of shit all the time.”

            “Who’s they?” asked Andrew, a sinewy, handsome, introverted man in his late twenties. He ate a spoonful of chili as he waited for Glenn to stop chewing.

            “The government. Who else? Pushing through stricter gun control is on their agenda, so they stage these mass shootings to sway public opinion. Same type of thing with 9/11, except that was about oil.”

            “But they’re carrying out bodies and—“

            “Paid stooges are carrying out something in a body bag. Probably somebody’s dirty laundry.”

            “You’re saying the people I’m watching here with blood on them and the sobbing parents are all actors? Glenn, you’ve got to move out of your parent’s basement.”

            Wearing a confident smirk, Glenn picked up his iPhone, tapped it several times and then turned the screen triumphantly toward Andrew, who leaned in.

            “What am I looking at here?” asked Andrew.

            “Your government at work. See that woman there? This was taken a year ago at the Akron Elementary School shooting. Now, here’s the same woman at the Boston Marathon. Oh, and what do you know? Here she is at Sandy Hook.”

            “Looks similar, but—“

            “Same thing with this guy. Here he is, a grieving parent at the Iowa State Fair shooting and, viola, here he is dressed as a paramedic in Boston. These are only two of dozens of photos that have been taken of the same people showing up at multiple tragedies all across the country.”

            “That’s just a little too much for me to swallow.”

            “The truth can do that to a person. Take 9/11­—“

            Andrew stood up abruptly. “Almost forgot. I’ve got a conference call at 1:00 so I have to blast. Sorry.”

            Back in his cube, the data analysis summary he was working on and the ever present “after move to-do” checklist helped him quickly forgot about his paranoid partner until a shadow grew and hovered over his left shoulder. He spun his chair around. Janet Kilmer stood in the threshold, another data analyst who worked a few cubes down. Andrew considered her smart and attractive in an unglamorous way, with a subtle, sultry foreign accent that no one could identify. She was also one of those women whose every body movement said, “I’m not interested.”

            “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

            Andrew smiled awkwardly. “No problem. Head’s buried too deep in work.”

            She brought her voice down a level. “I was sitting right behind you and Glenn at lunch and I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. Can you believe him?”

            “Yeah…I mean, no, all that stuff is way too out there for me. He thinks if the coffee machine breaks down it’s a conspiracy.”

            Janet laughed then caught herself. “Yeah. You’re right. This is D.C. and we draw our share of crazies.”

            “He’s harmless. I think.”

            She tilted her head as if studying him. “My refrigerator is bare, as usual. Want to get lunch with me tomorrow?”

            “Yeah. That would be great.”

            “I’ll grab you about noon.”

            Wow, he thought as she smiled and turned away, I should buy a lottery ticket.

He’d been in his new apartment for three days now and it still looked more like a storage locker than a home with boxes stacked three high in almost every room. Priorities were quickly determined and the TV and stereo system were up and running amid the boxes of pots and pans and dishes. He sipped on a beer as the ten o’clock news came on, leading off with the latest in the seemingly endless chain of mass shootings across the country. This one happened at Keller High School in Elko, Nevada. Angry student brings guns to school and opens fire. Angry somebody brings guns to somewhere and opens fire. Fill in the details.

            Light from the TV pulsated throughout the dark room like a failing strobe light. Andrew woke up and checked his phone. It was 12:30. On screen, the Hindenburg was exploding in some type of History Channel documentary on American disasters. His first thought was Led Zeppelin and not the spectacular death and destruction involved in the accident. Did that make him a callous person? He wasn’t sure. As the air ship was engulfed in a ball of flames, he could only imagine the horror experienced by the small black dots on the ground, the sparse crowd watching the event. This reminded him of his discussion with Glenn that morning in the break room. Professional disaster actors? How do people come up with this shit? Glenn was the only person he knew who wore his tin foil hat proudly and wasn’t afraid to express his unpopular views to anyone who would listen. The reaction of most was to keep the intense geek at arm’s length, but despite the social implications, he occasionally hung with Glenn, secretly entranced by the conspiracy crowd’s latest fixation. But then there was Janet. He knew where she stood on the topic, and if the relationship was going to go anywhere, he needed to be a good little status quo guy. Not a problem, he assured himself.

            The next morning, Glenn stood impatiently in the doorway to Andrew’s cube waiting for him to finish a call. Andrew finally set the phone in its cradle.

            “Hey, what’s up?”

            Glenn glanced around the room. “Come to my cube.”

            “I’ve got—“

            “It’s important. Come on.”

            Andrew followed Glenn through the grey labyrinth defining the cube grid until they reached Glenn’s cluttered digs. He lifted a stack of folders off of a chair so Andrew could sit down, and then started tapping on his keyboard.

            “I got the photos a couple of days ago but this morning was the first time I really had a chance to study them. Some online friends of mine are into…well, the same things I’m into. One of them sent me this.”

            There was suddenly a split screen image on the monitor taken from a newscast. On the left, was woman, an FBI agent, helping lead a line of children out of a school. The image on the right was of a woman being interviewed by a reporter standing near a crowd of people.

            “The picture on the left was taken at the Rosemont Elementary School shooting a-year-and-a-half ago. The photo on the right was taken at Sandy Hook.”

            Andrew leaned in. “Okay, the two women have long dark hair.”

            “Hold on. Let me zoom in.”

           As the woman’s face grew larger in each photo, Andrew’s skin grew warmer. The woman in both shots looked very much like Janet Kilmer. “That…that can’t be right.”

            “Still think I’m a nut job?”

            “I never said you were a nut job, but this is impossible. Those are women who look like Janet, but they can’t be her.”

            “Seeing is believing to me. Can you believe it? We’ve got one working in the same office as us. It’s insane.”

            Andrew’s productivity took a nosedive as he spent the morning pondering the remote possibility that Glenn might be right or that he was being drawn into Glenn’s paranoid world of conspiracy theories.

            Lunch was at a busy Deli a block from work. Janet ordered a Greek Salad and Andrew had a pastrami sandwich on rye. The conversation was light and chatty until it swung back to Glenn and his crazy ideas.

            “I read somewhere on line that there are people who think the Bush’s are really reptiles from outer space.”

            Andrew smiled as he chewed. “Now that one doesn’t seem so far-fetched.” Unable to contain himself, Andrew brought up his meeting with Glenn that morning. “I mean, there was some resemblance, but—“

            “He thought it was me?” she interrupted in a voice just slightly louder than the conversational hum of the store.

            Andrew felt a bit embarrassed now. “Well, yeah. He’s convinced it is you, but that’s impossible.”

            A brief shadow crossed her face but quickly morphed into an eye-rolling scoff. “The guy is nuts, Andrew. How’s the pastrami?”

            The conversation veered away from Glenn, which was fine with Andrew, and they parted to their respected cubicles vowing to do lunch again soon. Andrew wasn’t sure if she meant it or was just being polite, but he did sense a very subtle chill in the air once he mentioned Glenn’s photos.

            Instead of going to his favorite porn site that night in bed, Andrew broke with tradition and Googled the Rosemont Elementary School shooting. All the major news stations were represented with shooting details and photos of the wide-eyed, clearly deranged shooter, Carter Silverman. Andrew watched several videos, and then found one with the dark-haired government agent leading the frightened students out of the school to the parking lot. He replayed the video a few times and each time he did, the woman looked more and more like Janet Kilmer. He looked intently for differences…a tattoo or a birthmark or a scar, but there was nothing that he could see that would clearly distinguish this woman from Janet.

Irritated and unable to sleep, Andrew poured himself a generous Jack Daniel’s at midnight and sat in bed scanning images taken from other recent mass shootings and bombings in America. Few disasters had been as closely covered by both amateur and professional videographers and photographers as the Boston bombings. There was almost too much to wade through. As he sipped, he clicked from image to image of the scene moments after the bombs went off, the chaos and confusion, the blood and heroics. Then, in a stop-motion video, he saw her. His heart raced as he zoomed in on the figure just on the perimeter of the bomb blast, a thin woman wearing a baseball cap looking disoriented. It was without a doubt Janet Kilmer.

            The night washed over him in waves of fevered tossing and turning as his subconscious tried to make sense of the nonsensical. Janet’s face grew as big as the moon and it laughed at him, which made the stars laugh and soon the sun was bellowing and belching furnace blasts of hot gasses. He ran across a bridge of bones, chased by Janet dressed in a black robe. She drew closer and closer, her white gloved hands reaching out, until the only escape was for Andrew to throw himself over the bridge railing into the ocean. He woke up screaming. The clock said 3:20 a.m. The sheets clung to his damp body. Too shaken to go back to sleep, Andrew made coffee and took a long medicinal shower.

            Arriving at work a half hour early, Andrew noted the office had a quieter, more subdued vibe than usual. He maneuvered the grey alleyways between cubes and was about to walk into Glenn’s cube when he realized someone else was sitting in his friend’s spot, a hyperkinetic young woman tapping on her keyboard like a court stenographer.

            “Excuse me,” he interrupted. “Did Glenn move to another cube…?”

            The woman looked disappointed that she didn’t know the answer. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. I just started today and they said, ‘Here’s your cube,” and that’s really all I know. I’m Tracy.”

            Confused, but not wanting to make a scene, Andrew leaned in. “There was another man in this cube just yesterday. Glenn Sumner. Was there anything in here when you moved in?”

            “No. Sorry. It was completely bare. I even had to search around for a chair.”

            “Thanks.” Andrew made his way to his cube, sat down and stared at his blank laptop screen trying to understand what was going on. He was startled to action as Janet walked by.

            “ Janet,” called out Andrew.

            She stopped and turned toward him with a smile. “Andrew. How’s it going?”

            “Hey, what happened to Glenn? I mean, one day he’s here the next, gone.”

            Janet’s smile weakened. “Why would I know where Glenn is?”

            “Uh, right. You wouldn’t. Sorry.”

            “Okay. Take care.”

            “Yeah. Sure.”

            Janet walked off leaving Andrew wondering if he wasn’t falling prey to his own bizarre conspiracy theory. He searched his phone for Glenn’s number. He was immediately dropped into voice mail. He remembered that Glenn had at one time sent his girlfriend’s number to him, although he couldn’t remember why. Several taps later, he’d found it. The phone rang, and a slurry woman’s voice answered.

            “Hello?”

            “Uh, hey. My name’s Andrew Copper and I work with Glenn Sumner. I was just wondering if he’s okay? I mean, he didn’t show up today and…”

            “Who? Who is this?”

            “Glenn Sumner. Do you—“

            “Sorry. You got a wrong number.” The connection ended immediately.

            Andrew’s world was imploding. He started to feel a panic attack coming on and had to consciously slow down his breathing and take his mind to another place. Glenn had disappeared or been disappeared. What the hell was happening, he wondered as he stared at the nonsensical arrangement of letters on his keyboard. His shaky hands were poised to begin striking those letters when he jumped at the crack of a gunshot nearby. Like groundhogs on alert, people’s heads popped up above the cube walls instinctively searching for danger. Another painfully loud shot rang out, this one closer to their large open room. Heads turned, fear swept through the office like a flash fire and now a voice could be heard coming from the hallway. Someone was begging for his life, then there was another sharp explosion. The door leading to the hallway opened and a man dressed in green entered pointing a rifle, with screams following every swing of the barrel. Andrew couldn’t see what the man was doing, but there was another shot and everyone flinched and looked helplessly at their neighbors for some kind of instructions.

            Panicked, helpless, Andrew drew a breath and decided that there was nothing to be done about the situation, as there was literally nowhere to run. He sat in his chair and took the photos of his parents and brothers and sisters off his wall and cupped them in his hands and waited. This would be his final image. He heard sobbing and pleading and then another jarring, muscle clinching explosion. Out of the corner of his eye he watched a shadow crossing his cube’s threshold and he knew he was about to die. He took a deep breath and held it. Milliseconds passed, then seconds and there was no shot. Andrew opened his eyes and turned around. The top of the man’s head was moving away from his cube. He’d been spared for some reason. Another blast echoed through room. Then another. Shortly, a man shouted, “He shot himself. He’s dead.” Silence, then shuffling noises as colleagues warily crept out from under their desks. Someone shouted, “Oh my god,” and, still in a state of shock, Andrew zombie-walked to join the growing crowd hovering over the dead shooter. He pushed people apart and moved closer, finally having a complete view of the blood-spattered scene. A young man in fatigues lay face up on the carpet, a gaping wound in his head still draining blood. A few feet away was another body. It was Glenn Sumner.

            He wasn’t sure how long it was between that moment and the moment when the police arrived and helped evacuate everyone from the building. Men and women he’d worked with for years walked about in dazed silence amid the swirling lights and shouting responders now swarming the scene. Ears still ringing, he stood next to a row of graffiti-covered self-service newspaper machines, unable to process the events of the past hour. People had been shot to death. One of them happened to be Glenn Sumner, conspiracy theorist. What are the chances…the implications? Why had the killer passed by Andrew? He’d never faced violent death before. As Glenn’s dead body overwhelmed other thoughts, he felt his stomach start roiling. A voice called out.

            “Excuse me. Sir? Sorry. Can we talk to you?”

            Pale and weak, arms held across his stomach, Andrew turned and was approached by a television reporter with wide, aggressive eyes and blood red lips, accompanied by her lumbering cameraman.

            “Please, I…” he couldn’t pull together a complete sentence.

            Disregarding him, she positioned the sweating cameraman and put the mic up to Andrew’s lips. “Lauren Cosby with Channel 7 City Beat. Can I get your name?”

            “Andrew. Andrew Copper.”

            She motioned for the cameraman to roll. “I’m talking to Andrew Copper, a DataStar employee. Can you tell me what happened in there?”

            Sirens wailed and paramedics ran back and forth in the background. He could hear a woman sobbing nearby and a man angrily shouting at someone. Andrew tried to focus and cut through the distracting fog, he was on TV.

            “I…I remember hearing the first shot…”

            The reporter smiled, instinctively knowing she’d found the gold nugget in the river of tears. “Go on,” she said, her voice dripping with ambition.

            “It all happened so fast. There was a shot, then another, and then…I saw a shadow and he was approaching my cubicle.”

            “Oh my gosh. What did you do?”

            “There was no where to run. I felt like it was just my time to go, so I sat down and…prayed to God.”

            “Yes, of course you did.”

            An animating energy started circulating through his body. “Don’t ask me how or why, but my prayers were answered and he passed by my cube. It was…a miracle.”

            Lauren pulled the mic away and cued her cameraman to focus on her expression of astonishment. “An absolutely amazing story here. In the midst of a horrendous shooting spree where we now think four people were murdered, this man found the courage to pray, to ask God to spare him, and he was spared. Miracles do happen. Back to you, Fred.” Once the feed was cut, the woman put a hand on Andrews arm and whispered a heart-felt “thank you.”

            He’d lied to the reporter, but he knew that what he’d said was what people wanted to hear. What he would want to hear. How did he know that? Emergency responders were still running in and out of the building as sirens and blinking red and blue lights wrapped the disaster in frenetic immediacy and high drama. Needing a shower and strong drink, Andrew turned toward the parking lot on the side of the building. Before he could move, someone called out his name.

          “Andrew?” It was a familiar woman’s voice behind him. “Can we talk?”

A Revolutionary Act

He’d never been thrown out of a bar before. Asked to leave more than once, escorted to the sidewalk a time or two, but never physically tossed out the door. He had been punched in the face many times in his life and was once again reminded of what an unpleasant experience it was as he sat on the damp cement and held his coat sleeve to his nose. Feeling sufficiently debased, he struggled to his feet under the icy glare of a bouncer wearing a shirt shrink-wrapped around his bulky, chaotically tattooed body, standing under the bar canopy making sure the little piece of the planet he was hired to protect was not violated again by the most toxic reporter, ex-reporter, in the Chicago area, Joel Happling. Staggering down the street through the cool evening mist and cacophony of car horns, Joel kept a swollen eye out for a cab.

            A bag of frozen peas with an expiration date in Roman numerals lay draped over his battered face. The bleeding had stopped, but his head throbbed and he was waiting impatiently for the five ibuprofen to finally kick in. He lifted the peas long enough to check for new calls, but saw they were all from the strange area codes where only debt collectors lived. He stopped for a moment, his gaze lingering on his background photo of the snow-tipped Elkhorn Mountains in Montana, and he sighed longingly before gently laying the bag back down. He’d been fired that day from the Chicago Tribune for insubordination, and was admittedly grumpy when he entered O’Grady’s Tavern at three in the afternoon. Who should come in a few hours later but Thomas Castle, the Commissioner of Transportation who was under indictment for taking kickbacks as a result of Joel’s three-part series? Words were exchanged, punches flew, and he now lay in his bed unemployed, bruised and bloodied and probably facing a civil suit for assault. Before dozing off, he called his sister and left a message.

“Hey Sis, it’s Joel. Listen, give me a call tomorrow. Okay?”

            Shadows were long the next evening as Joel followed GPS instructions through winding streets of opulent homes in Lake Forest. At thirty-two year’s old, it was clearly embarrassing to be asking his big sister if he could take up residence in a small room of her very large Richard Romanesque mansion until he landed another job. He had no choice. If he wasn’t at his apartment, they couldn’t serve him with an eviction notice. He stopped at the front gate and announced himself. Moments later the ornate iron barrier creaked open and he drove to the front door. Tina greeted him at the top of the stone steps. Nearing forty, the woman was tanned, toned and perfectly tailored, looking as if she was prepared for a visit from the French ambassador rather than her brittle, angry brother. They hugged, then she held him at arm’s length.

            “You look like shit, little brother.”

            “You should see the other guy. Jesus, how many times have you heard me say that? You’re sure this isn’t a problem?”

            “You’re kidding. Right?” she said, leading him up a wide central staircase. “We’ve got five empty bedrooms that do little but collect dust. Come on. I’ll show you your room.”

            The bedroom was huge and perfectly decorated, with two large windows letting in a comforting golden haze of late afternoon sun. Hands on his hips, Joel couldn’t stop himself from gawking.

            “Wow. It’s incredible,” he said.

            “It’s the largest guest room. There’s the TV, mini fridge, and Wi Fi, of course.”

            “Of course.”

“When we’re here, we usually eat dinner around 6:30. Feel free to use the kitchen or ask Chef Aaron to fix you something.”

“You have a chef?”

“Doesn’t everybody? Sorry. Just kidding. We do have one live-in person, Karen. She really runs the house. I already let her know that you’ll be staying awhile, so don’t be surprised if she comes in to clean or check on you.”

“Tina, I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”

“I’m glad I can help you out, Joel, and keep you off the streets. Feel free to roam around. There are a few locked doors, but they’re just storage rooms. So come down for dinner in an hour. Chuck’s looking forward to talking with you.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Joel unpacked his carry on bag and collapsed on the bed. Only moments after his head sank into the pillow, he was sleeping noisily.

Knocks came from somewhere. Joel’s eyes flittered open and he quickly got up on elbows. His attention was drawn to an open closet where he thought he heard something or someone thumping against the walls. More knocks. He got up and went to the closet and turned on the overhead light. The large cedar-infused space was empty and still. Then knocks came from his door. Karen called out letting him know that dinner was ready.

Ten minutes later Joel joined Tina and Chuck at the dining room table, where Karen was serving everyone from covered dishes.

“Joel,” said the purple-nosed, balding patriarch, grunting to his feet and extending a hand. “It’s been almost a year since we’ve seen each other. How are you?”

“I’m sure Tina’s filled you in. Not my greatest moment, but I’m trying to make the best of it.”

“Good, good. That’s the spirit. Be positive. That’s half the battle. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you need. Just don’t write any exposes about me.”

“Never,” assured Joel with a broad smile. Chuck smiled too, but it didn’t seem to convey the same enthusiasm of a good-natured jest as Joel had understood it.

After eating more in one sitting than he normally consumed in a day, Chuck and Joel retired to a sitting room with large windows looking out on the nursery for a brandy. Tina excused herself and went upstairs.

Joel took a sip. “Wow. Spectacular.”

“Glad you like it,” responded Chuck, tipping his snifter toward Joel.

“I took a short nap after I got here and had a weird dream. I thought I heard thumping on the closet wall, like it would sound if you hit the wall with the pad of your fist. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you told me this house was haunted.”

After years of observing human behavior and especially facial cues, Joel was aware that Chuck’s first reaction was alarm, his gauzy brown eyes giving him away, but he quickly transitioned to a wry smile. “Actually, I do believe the house is haunted. Tina thinks I’m growing senile, but I have heard some strange things in this place, especially at night. I mentioned this once to one of my managers, and the next thing I know I’m getting calls from the Chicagoland Paranormal Team or some such nonsense wanting to spend a night here to look for ghosts. No thank you.”

“Interesting. I thought I was awake when I heard it, but….”

“There’s just something about big old houses like this one that triggers our minds to see shadows move and hear eerie noises. Before I bought the place, the previous owner rented the house out as a set for a horror movie.”

“What?”

“Back in the 70s. It was called ‘Castle of the Damned.’ I’ve watched it a couple of times on TV and it is truly one of the worst movies ever made. I think it was an Italian production company. Lot’s of blood and sheer nightgowns.”

“Sounds like an Italian horror movie or one of my evenings on the town.” Joel finished his brandy. “Dinner was fabulous and your brandy is excellent, but I think it’s time I head up stairs. Thanks again for your hospitality,” he said as he stood up.

“Our house is your house, Joel. Good night.”

In his room, Joel went to the closet and inspected it again, but nothing seemed odd or out of the ordinary. It was three walls, some shelving and hanger rods. He gave up, opened a new fifth of bourbon and sat on the edge of the bed. He had never spent much time with Chuck, but when he did he always felt as if he was talking to someone wearing a mask. It seemed something was always going on well below the surface that didn’t have a direct relationship with what was being talked about in the present. And he learned years ago to never bring up politics, one of Chuck’s passions, as the ideological chasm that existed between the two men was wide and deep.

Soft thumps on the wall awakened Joel. It was 2:30 in the morning. He waited in the darkness for any more sounds that might help him zero in on the source. Finally he turned on his light and inspected the room through achy, swollen eyes, but again saw nothing. The closet was just as it had been earlier. He took more ibuprofen, ritualistically chastised himself for drinking too much, and climbed back into bed.

The next morning he was in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee with a shaky hand when Tina made her entrance, already primped and polished for the day. “How did you sleep?” she asked.

“Fine, except I did hear that thumping sound again.”

“Really? This is an old place and we’ve had our share of pests over the years. I’ll call our person and have him come over and spray or do whatever it is they do.”

“Sure. Didn’t sound like a rat.”

“Chuck is flying to Toronto for a few days on business this afternoon and I’ll be out the rest of the day, so relax and enjoy.”

“Thanks. I’ll be on my laptop trying to find another writing gig. I’ve got a few friends I can tap. Chicago’s a big place. Something will come up.” Optimism was not one of his strong points and it came out a bit forced.

“I know it will. Good luck,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek. As she breezily gathered up her purse and keys, Joel caught just a hint of an odd odor. There was perfume, hair spray and something else a bit more musty and acrid. The aroma of coffee quickly overwhelmed it, and he carried a cup to his room to begin the online job search. An hour later he’d sent out two resumes and talked to a friend at the Trib who had a lot of contacts in the city. He felt reasonably good about his progress, enough so that a celebratory dram of bourbon in his coffee was surely called for. It burned like bleach going down, but not enough to stop him from repeating the action. A vacuum cleaner hissed up and down the main hallway of the second floor, piloted by the pale, demure Karen. No need for a last name in this old world, class-conscious time capsule, he thought. She was pleasant and reasonably attractive, but the dark brown haze around her eyes made him think she was not a sound sleeper. Finally the whining appliance stopped. Thump. Thump, thump.

Joel hopped off the bed and went to the closet. Thump. His heart racing, he ran to his door and out into the hallway, eliciting a surprised squeal form Karen.

“I’m sorry, but…uh, would you come in here for a minute?”

Karen’s tired eyes widened and her creamy cheeks turned rosy. “I don’t think I should.”

“No,” insisted Joel. “I just want you to hear something. That’s all. I promise.”

Reluctantly, Karen followed Joel into his room. He had her stand by the closet threshold. “Now, just listen,” he insisted. Confused, Karen stood awkwardly, rubbing her hands together. After several seconds there was a distant thump.

“There. You heard that right?” he asked.

Karen smiled. “It’s an old house, Mr. Happling. I hear strange noises from time to time.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but—“

“It also has an ancient and noisy water heater we have to get fixed all the time. It makes weird sounds like that.”

Joel wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t want to make Karen any more uncomfortable than she already was. “Right. Okay. Thanks for humoring me.”

“No problem. Let me know if I can get you anything.”

Her willing servitude was so far outside of Joel’s daily reality that he had an urge to grab her by the hand and help her escape the house, release her into the wild. It was, he knew, her job. “No, thanks. I’m fine. I am going to take my sister up on her invitation to explore the house, just in case you see me wondering around.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she said, turning and hastily making her way out of the room.

He didn’t know what she was thanking him for, but he left shortly after and began his investigation of the musty, largely unused mansion of a true one precenter. There were four other rooms along the second-floor hallway besides his, each leading to a bedroom decorated in idiosyncratic colors and furniture, all of it from past eras and decorating styles. On the third floor there was another bedroom and a sun drenched sitting room adorned with plants and shelves of hardcover books. It was a comfortable but dusty niche, and he used the opportunity to sip from his flask as he contemplated having a house with dozens of rooms that are never occupied. Then it was down flights of stairs to the first floor. He caught site of Karen entering what he guessed was the kitchen. He turned and walked in the opposite direction, down the light-starved main hallway past another sitting room, the formal dining room, and library. A brooding grandfather clock stood guard at the end of the hall, keeping watch over a locked door to his left. Curious, Joel leaned in and put an ear to the wood. He pressed harder as he was sure he could hear twinkly music coming from somewhere far beyond the barrier. Eensy Weensy Spider?

“Excuse me, Mr. Happly?”

Joel jumped and put a hand to his throat. “Oh, god. Karen, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
            She held out a glass of brown liquid. “Sorry. I thought you might like a glass of freshly made iced tea.”

 He took it with a jittery hand. “Thank you. Very nice. Uh, what’s in this room?”

“Storage. That room and the basement are always locked.”

“The basement?” said Joel. “You’ve never been in the basement?”

“No. Haven’t needed to either. I have to get back to the kitchen. Enjoy your tour.”

“Thank you,” said Joel, taking a sip of tea to show his appreciation.

Turning back to the door, he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of a creaking floorboard.

Cocktail hour began in earnest around four. By six, Joel was s blurry-eyed blimp floating and bouncing between hard objects as he made his way downstairs for dinner. The large dining room was unexpectedly quiet and empty. As he stood leaning against the bare table for stability, Karen entered from the kitchen.

“Mr. Happling. I’m so sorry. Mrs. Hartwick decided to spend the night in the city and I…well, I just—“

“No, no, no. Karen, there’s no need to be sorry. It’s no big deal. I’ll just fix myself a sandwich.”

“Oh, I can’t let you do that. You go back to your room, and I’ll fix up a dinner plate for you. Okay?”

“Really, you don’t—“

“Go. It will only take me ten minutes or so.”

“Okay. On one condition. You join me.”

Karen blushed. “I don’t think….”

“My sister’s gone for the evening. Chuck’s out of town. Look, I promise you I will be on my best behavior.”

“It’s just that—“

“Did you have a boyfriend in middle school?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he ever come over to your house and hang in your bedroom?”

“I guess.”

“I’m just going to make a wild guess here, but I’ll bet your mother made you keep your door open. Am I right?” Karen looked down and smiled despite herself. “I promise I will keep the door open.”

            Ten minutes later Joel let Karen into his room carrying two plates of rich, expensive leftovers and, to Joel’s surprise, two flutes of pale Champaign. They sat awkwardly on the side of the bed sampling the food and drinking, trying to keep the conversation benign.

            “The pate is to die for,” said Joel. “You haven’t tried any.”

            “I’m not a big meat eater”

            Joel looked at her. “Ah, now I understand. A protein deficiency.”

            Karen looked confused. “I’m sorry?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” said Joel, finishing off his Champaign. “Mmm. Very nice, but why would I expect anything less?”

            “I’d get fired if they knew I was doing this.”

            “No one’s going to…” Joel looked around the room as if confused.

            “What’s wrong, Mr. Happling?”

            “I don’t know…”

            “Are you okay?”

            He suddenly felt flush and the flowers on the wallpaper started dancing. “No. No, I’m not.”

            Surface. Breath in. Blink. The interior of a theatre materialized before him, and he was sitting in the audience. It was dark. The chair was uncomfortable. A curtain began parting slowly, allowing a thin shaft of light to escape that grew more intense until he was squinting at the brightness. The spotlights were on him and not the stage. A shadowy figure surrounded by white light stood above him.

            “Mr. Happling. Are you awake yet?”

            “Awake?’

            “Are you with us, Mr. Happling?”

            “Who the fuck are you?”

            “Ah, that’s the Joel Happling we all know and loathe.”

            Although the clouds were slowly lifting, the dark figure in front of him came in and out of focus. His head banged like a church belfry with pain. “What the fuck is going on here?”

            The hazy figure stood still. “Now I think I have your attention.”

            Joel fought back the urge to vomit. “Fuck you.”

            “You like that word. Fuck.”

            “I do, fucktard.”

            “No wonder you get beat up so often. Let’s move on. We—“

            “Who’s ‘we’?”

            “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you listen carefully to me right now. You have two choices. I am going to make you an offer. If you accept that offer, life is good. If you do not….”

            “What?”

            “Mmm?”

            “You’re such a fucktard you can’t say, ‘If you don’t accept it, we will kill you.’ So now I know you’re from a government agency. NSA, CIA, FBI?”

            “Please concentrate on what I am going to explain to you right now. The newest Democratic senator from Minnesota, Paul Keenan, is very close friends with the Vice President. That means he has the VP’s ear. Now this senator is not on script with the intelligence community’s needs, and this is causing concern at some very high levels. He’s starting to sway the VP to push the President for reforms that are unacceptable to us. So this is where you come in. We know you were recently fired from the Tribune, but you also have high credibility as an investigative reporter.”

            “A Pulitzer wasn’t enough to save my fucking job.”

            “Right. Anyway, we want you to freelance for the Tribune. Your relationship with the paper has already been taken care of. You write a few articles over the next two or three months. Then, in September, you will write an expose of Senator Keenan that will destroy him and his political career. We will supply you with all of the information you’ll need to write the piece. All you need to do is to craft the article in your characteristic voice and submit.”

            “How am I supposed to survive all this time? My effervescent personality?”

“Once the Keenan piece is accepted, I will transfer a substantial sum of money into your bank account as a “thank you” for your efforts from a grateful government. Questions?”

            Head still throbbing, Joel rubbed his temples. “And if I refuse?”

            “I thought we just went through that.”

            “So my sister and her husband and that little bitch maid are in on this.” The man stood silent, hands clasped in front of him. “What choice do I have? Okay.”

            “Wonderful,” said the man, walking down steps toward Joel. He was pale and thin with probing brown eyes. “Do you know Alice Grumman, a senior editor at the Tribune?”

            “The Iron Bitch?”

            “She will be your contact at the paper. All of your correspondence and articles must go through her.” He extended his hand to Joel, but was met with an icy indifference. The man turned away and pulled his jacket from the chair back. “Mrs. Grumman will be expecting a call from you tomorrow.”

            The next morning, stomach churning, a head full of rocks, Joel poured a glass of orange juice with a shaky hand while waiting for the coffee maker to finish. His phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but decided to take it.

            “Yeah?”

            “Joel, it’s Alice Grumman from the Tribune. You were told to contact me, weren’t you?”

            “It’s 9:30 in the morning.”

            “I’m emailing you background on your first story. Deadline is two weeks. If you have questions about anything after you read the documents please call me.”

            “Okay,” he said.

            She disconnected immediately.

            He checked his email a short time later and found that the article would be a pretty routine piece on waste by a city department. He could write it in two days, so he went back to bed and slept until noon.

            Downtown. Dusk. Joel followed a well-worn path from the Tribune building down side streets and alleys, finally landing at the entrance to Kurt’s Liquor Lounge, the façade consisting of a scuffed green door and a large cracked black window. Inside, the air was an ancient musky mix of beer, body odor and despair. It wasn’t on the map of hangouts for most Tribune staff, but Joel knew the man he wanted would be here on a Friday after work. He found him in a booth, tapping on his iPad, a ravaged plate of nachos and half glass of beer in front of him. The bearded man pushed back a shoulder length trail of greasy brown hair and set his iPad screen down as Joel approached.

            “Kevin.”

            “Joel. What’s brings you to my favorite dump?” He was guarded, but not hostile.

            Joel slid across the cracked vinyl seat. “How you been?”

            Kevin leaned back and cocked his head. “Great, Joel. Absolutely peachy. And you?”

            He ordered two fingers of Jack Daniels neat and another beer for Kevin. “Couldn’t be better. Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

            “Okay.”

            “You sound as if you don’t believe me. I guess that’s to be expected.” Joel picked up a nacho and inspected it. “Interested in some freelance work?”

            “Always.”

“I need to tap into your network for a few things.”

“You know the price. Let me know what you need.”

 “One thing about this project. Communications need to be old school. Really old school, verbal and paper only. No phones, emails, texts. Nothing.”

            “You must be in some deep shit, my friend.”

Joel drained his drink in a single movement. “It’s getting deeper by the minute.”

Three weeks and three articles later, Joel came back from an errand to find a manila envelope stuffed with damning information about Senator Mitch Keenan on his bed. It was documentation that could get the Senator some jail time, on the other hand, you could fill an envelope with similar nastiness on at least half the reps on the Hill. He set the envelope on a nightstand and made himself a drink. Joel stared at his monitor for several minutes, willing himself to start writing the story that would alter his life forever. Finally ready, he began tapping on the keyboard, picking up steam as he wrote, a flurry of words, sentences and paragraphs soon filled up the white page. He stopped to sort through documents, grabbing pieces of information from here and there, and then he’d start tapping again. Three days later the article was ready to send to the agent and Grumman for review. Back the next day with only minor revisions and a “Nice work” note from someone, Joel made the changes and sent the finished piece back to Grumman on Friday afternoon. It would run in the Sunday edition of the paper, he was told. He checked his savings account and was pleasantly surprised to see it had gone from the low four figures to the high six figures.

            Later that evening, he took a walk around the neighborhood. While eyes were on Joel, a man in dark clothing slid along the shadows of the oaks that encircled the large back yard, tucked a plastic bag under stairs leading to the door of a tool shed, and left the same way he entered. Joel returned to the house at 8:30 dying for a martini. Under cover of darkness, he pulled out the bag from its hiding place and took it inside, and set it next to his computer.

            Saturday morning was a gloomy mess with drenching rains separated by a depressing grey mist. Joel had been awake since six propped up in bed tapping away on his keyboard, increasing his word count into the thousands. His concentration was broken by a text. All it said was “Meet me at your apartment,” but he knew it was from Mr. X, and he picked up his keys and left the mansion.

            “Generic G-man,” said Joel, letting in the man into his apartment, who if anything, looked sicklier than the first time he had been there. “What a…surprise.”

            “I smell bourbon.”

            “I sold my soul to write, not become a monk.”

            “It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

            “It’s five p.m. somewhere. What do you care?”

            The man stopped in the middle of the living room and turned to face Joel with a tense smile. “Actually, I just came by to thank you. You wrote an excellent piece. By tomorrow evening, Sen. Keenan will be in the fetal position under the dining room table.”

            Something was off. The man’s words and expression weren’t matching up. The posture was wrong, his fingers were curled, not relaxed. Of course, the job was over and so was his usefulness. He’d been lured here to be killed. Joel smiled broadly and looked over the man’s shoulder. “Megan, glad you could make it.”

            The man turned his head and that was all it took for Joel to lunge forward and knock his smaller opponent to the ground. They grappled on the floor for a few seconds, but Joel was able to rise up over the prostrate figure and rain several fist hammers on his face, finally knocking the bloodied G-man unconscious. The first thing he did was find the man’s gun and slip it into his own jacket pocket then he located his phone and kept that. He tied the man’s hands together behind his back with an extension cord and for added peace of mind bound his feet together with an old electric guitar cord. It was a little bundle of government agent ready to put under the Christmas tree.

            Five minutes later, Joel’s phone rang.

            “It’s happening,” said the man’s voice on the other end.

            Joel put his phone away and dragged the slowly recovering agent into a downstairs bedroom. Moans for help were quickly silenced with a washcloth in the mouth. Checking his watch, Joel ran upstairs to his bedroom and began packing a carry-on bag.

            At eight o’clock that evening, Joel clicked the “send” button on his laptop. At nine o’clock that evening the Chicago Tribune’s main server was hacked.

            As part of his regular morning routine, even on a sunny Sunday morning as beautiful as this, CIA Deputy Executive Director Glenn Donnelly scanned national and international newspaper headlines on his iPad. He raced through a series of disaster and sky-is-falling marquees anxious to see the morning’s Chicago Tribune front page and the take down of the traitor Keenan from Minnesota. The masthead popped up and his eyes quickly darted over the page, then grew large with awareness and rage. The headline at the top of the page read: “Massive Midwest Pedophile Ring Busted.” The byline was Joel Happling.

Chicago — A pedophile ring based in Forest Lake with clients stretching from Denver to St. Louis to Washington D.C. has been broken up, say law enforcement officials. The FBI and Forest Lake and Chicago Police raided the home of Tina and Charles Hartwick early this morning where they found twenty-one children being held prisoners ranging in ages from seven to 12 in a highly fortified basement at the Hartwick home. Charles “Chuck” Hartwick, owner of Hartwick Industries and a former congressman from Illinois, was arrested along with his wife and an employee of the Hartwick’s. Computer equipment was taken from the home that officers say contain client names and addresses.

Heart beating dangerously fast for a 74-year old man, Donnelly fished his phone out of his bathrobe pocket, turned it on and saw he had 23 missed calls. Two were from the Director. One was from the White House.

The rusty SUV creaked and complained as it crawled along the rutted gravel road off of highway 12 west out of Helena, Montana. Joel finally pulled the vehicle to a dusty stop, got out and unlocked a heavy metal gate, then drove deeper into the tall, shadowy pine stands reaching up to a crystalline blue sky. Another half mile and a log cabin came into view, built in a clearing with fences of trees on three sides. It was rustic, isolated and lacked electricity, which was exactly why he bought it, and it would be home for the foreseeable future. Like a giddy groom, he carried the case of Jack Daniels and his fly rods across the threshold, ready to start a new life off the grid.