Jason Pinter - The Darkness

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to step back. We don’t know how much damage there’s been to the structure of the building.”

“I understand that,” I said, taking my wallet from my back pocket. I slid my business card out and handed it to him. “My name is Henry Parker, and I’m with the Gazette. ”

He rolled his eyes and prepared to hand the card back to me. “Mr. Parker, I-”

“I spoke with Mr. Kaiser. Just minutes before this happened. I don’t know if I was the last person to speak with him but…I thought someone should have this in case they need to get in touch with me. If there are any questions.”

The cop looked at my card, understanding. He nodded, then slipped it into his uniform. “I’ll give it to the lead detective,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “And good luck.”

He nodded, turning back to the gaping hole in the brick building.

I walked a few blocks away, making sure I could hear right again and was away from the commotion that would surely envelop that area for the next few days. I took out my phone and called Jack. He picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, Henry, good timing. Brett Kaiser left about twenty minutes ago. I think he’s headed toward you. I didn’t get much, but if you-”

“Brett Kaiser is dead,” I said. There was a pause on the other end.

“Wait…what did you say?”

“I said he’s dead, Jack. I caught up with him about ten minutes ago when he pulled up in front of the building.

I talked to him for about thirty seconds, then he went upstairs. And less than a minute after that, somebody turned his apartment into a gigantic barbecue pit.”

“Wait a damn minute,” Jack said. His voice was uneven, shaky. I’d never heard Jack like this before.

Scared. It put a lump in my stomach, as the enormity of it all began to sink in. “You’re saying somebody killed

Brett Kaiser?”

“A few times over,” I said. “Somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t have a chance to talk to anyone. But I do know that he knows about 718 Enterprises, and if I’d had him another minute he would have spilled everything.”

“Jesus, be careful, Henry. It’s possible somebody saw him talking to you.”

“Wait, no way, how could they…”

“Don’t be stupid,” Jack said. “If someone knows he was talking to you, they might think he told you something.”

“But he didn’t,” I said, pleading my case with nobody.

“Whoever killed him doesn’t know that,” Jack said.

“Be careful. Meet me back at the office in half an hour.”

“No can do,” I said, unsure of why I was going to do this but sure that I needed to.

“And why the hell not?”

I couldn’t tell Jack. If he knew, it would toss our whole relationship into jeopardy. But we had the same blood, the same gene that refused to allow us a moment’s breath, that refused to give us rest if there was one unanswered question. But Paulina had nearly ruined his career. And he couldn’t know.

“I have to meet someone,” I said. “A source. I’ll be back in a couple hours. We’ll catch up then.”

“Fine, Henry. But watch your back.”

“I will,” I said, and then hung up to go meet the one person I was absolutely sure would never have my back.

I opened the phone back up, and called Paulina Cole.

The diner smelled the same as I remembered it. Diners never changed, but I had a history with this one.

Fried onions, eggs, hash browns, stale coffee. Today was only the second time I’d ever set foot in here, and once again my only companion would be Paulina Cole.

I wasn’t a big fan of diner food in general, with the exception of Sunday mornings when a late breakfast consisting of a mushroom-and-Swiss omelet with a cup of hot coffee was better than a Swedish massage.

Meeting Paulina was pretty much the opposite of all of that.

Paulina Cole was waiting for me in a back booth, a half-empty cup of coffee in front of her. There was no food, no condiments, just the coffee. She was wearing a flannel shirt over a tank top, her hair done back in a bun.

Her eyes, a fierce green that normally seemed to ache for you to put up a fight, were subdued. She wore a minimum of makeup, no perfume that I could smell. This was unlike Paulina, whose switch seemed to be permanently set to “on.”

“Thank you for coming,” she said as I sat down. I nodded, unsure of how to feel.

“The last time I was this close to you,” I said, “I was ready to hurl you in front of a speeding bus.”

“Understandable,” she replied.

“You tried to ruin his life,” I said. “Jack O’Donnell has done more for this city and for this industry than you ever will. And you try to throw it all away for what? To sell a few extra copies? To put a big old smile on Ted

Allen’s face?”

“Henry,” Paulina said.

“Don’t try and justify it to me,” I said. “You’re a coward.”

“If I was a coward,” Paulina said, her voice taking on a metallic edge, cold and lifeless, “I would have hidden a drinking problem for years. I would have mortgaged the futures of my coworkers and my employer by reporting with enough liquor in me to inebriate all of Green Bay. I wasn’t the coward, Henry. Jack was. If I’m the coward for telling the truth about Jack, you have a pretty warped view of what it means to be a reporter.”

“Jack wasn’t news,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Millions of people are losing their livelihoods. So what gets plastered on your front page? An old man and his drinking problem.”

Paulina laughed, and I felt anger rising within me.

“Jack is news, Henry, and it’s time you realized that.

Maybe right now he’s a broken-down old man, but he still has a name. A reputation. And a man with that kind of reputation is beholden to the public. You just don’t get it,

Henry. And you’d better soon, because even if Jack is back he won’t be around for much longer. And Harvey Hillerman’s paper is going to need someone else to step up and be the next golden calf. And if it isn’t you, like Wallace hopes it will be, then they might as well declare bankruptcy and use their papers for a grade school art class.”

“You called me, and you’re lucky I’m here at all. So if you want to throw mud, I’ll get up and leave. I’ll need a shower after this anyway.”

“If you had any intention of leaving without hearing what I had to say,” Paulina said, “you wouldn’t have come in the first place.”

I sat there, staring at her, willing my body to stand up and walk right out of the diner. But after what happened to Brett

Kaiser, after the murder of my brother, I needed something

I could control, something I could follow through to the end.

“Talk,” I said. “Why did you call me?”

Paulina sat back and took a long drink of her coffee.

I wondered if she’d had more than one in the time it took for me to get there. Then she looked at me and said, matter-of-factly, “A few days ago, I was kidnapped.”

My jaw dropped. “Wait…what? What do you mean, kidnapped?”

“Well, not kidnapped in the usual sense. It’s not like there was a ransom note and the whole thing lasted about an hour in total. Somebody posing as my driver took me to Queens and…” I heard a slight choking noise come from Paulina’s throat. I wondered if she was faking this, doing something to get me to sympathize with her, but deep down I knew it was real. Paulina Cole was never one to let anyone see her bleed, and the only thing worse than that would be to pretend. She wouldn’t allow herself to be seen that way.

And I knew whatever had happened to her a few days ago must have scarred her deeply. “He threatened someone I care about very much. And I believed him. I still do.”