“And?”
“Well, until there’s a body we can’t even say for sure she’s dead. Should I include her in all this?”
“She young?”
“Yeah.”
“She cute?”
“Yeah... yes.”
“Put a picture of her front a centre with the story. If anything sells better than hot young ass, it’s dead hot young ass.”
Don winced, then turned to reply, but Drake had already vanished from his doorway. He sighed, his grip on the page he’d been looking at tightening as he felt the urge to just rip it apart... then eventually stopped, letting it fall back to his desk. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself back from his desk and got up, his lips pursed and white.
He was going to break this story wide open.
Drake slid the key to the glass doors of the strip mall out of their lock, pulling twice on the handle to make sure it was sturdy as the setting sun offered one last glimmer of light from its reflection in the glass before ducking behind a row of trees and bathing Coral Beach in darkness. A mist had rolled in from the bay in the last few hours of twilight. The air in some areas of town would be thicker than molasses on a night like tonight, but here in the central city it just formed a neat little fog close to the ground, making it hard to see where you stepped as your feet paced along the sidewalks.
He turned around and looked out over the bare parking lot, not seeing one sign of movement in the dim of twilight. He shook his head and chuckled a little. There weren’t many people who still tempted fate by walking the roads at night. Beaming to himself as he started to walk toward his car, he took it as a compliment to his writing. His briefcase swung casually by his side, his collar was unbuttoned as an uncharacteristic heat whipped relentlessly at his skin. He took four swaggering, self-confident steps before his pace began to slow and his eyes began to study the deepening darkness a little more quickly. There was a group of teenagers huddled together on a corner a few streets over, neither of them paying him much heed as he shuffled by. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead and neck. He picked up the pace, his briefcase swinging much more rapidly now.
-TSSSH-TNK-TNK!-
He stopped, turning around quickly and running back to the mall entrance. He sighed as he came back around the corner and saw one of the glass doors he’d locked so carefully had been smashed in, the sound of heavy footfalls already fading into the distance.
“Fucking kids,” he cursed, bending over and picking up a brick wrapped in a newspaper. He unfolded it, letting the brick fall to the floor with a thud as he examined the crumpled, ripped remains of the paper. It was his front-page stories from a few weeks back about the deaths of two rapists that used to attend school at Coral Beach. There were two large photos of each of the men lifted from their high-school yearbook in the center, and a good eight columns worth of story. Along the side bar was a small, unaccredited insert on reaction from the different students involved. He recognized it quickly as one of Don’s, glancing down over it for the first time. “Kind of idiot uses his son as a source?” he scoffed, crumpling the paper back up into a ball and tossing it into the trash.
Cursing again, he tried to shake the glass from the bottom of his boot before walking back in the direction of his car. A few shards fell to the fog-covered sidewalk, bouncing along the pavement’s edge with a series of soft little -tinks-.
The teenagers that had been across the way were gone now, even though he hadn’t heard them leave. For some reason that made him nervous as the tail end of his car came into sight around the next corner, more sweat forming quickly on his neck and staining the collar of his shirt.
“Fucking kids,” he said again, huddling into himself as he began to walk faster, his legs blurring back and forth in the fog.
-tink-
He frowned, shaking more glass from the bottom of his shoe.
-tink-
Huffing in frustration, he sat down against the moist curb and lifted his shoe up so that he could see the bottom. There was nothing there but a cigarette butt stuck to an old wad of chewing gum – no glass. Still, he could see the glass all around him now from where it had fallen to his feet. There were three pieces right next to him, shimmering up at him like specs of gold in a prospector’s sift.
-tink!-
Suddenly, a forth piece of glass joined the other three, bouncing in from somewhere behind him. He stared at it for a moment, not having time to form any thoughts one way or the other before there was a blinding pain on the side of his face.
He brought his hand up to his ear quickly, and found that it wasn’t there anymore. When he brought his hand back he couldn’t even see his own skin, it was so laden with his own blood, dark crimson in the low light.
“Christ!” he yelled, trying to get up, but succeeding only in falling forward, falling face-first into the pavement. The tiny shards of glass that had been little more than an annoyance a moment ago dug into his face and gums, making his mouth fill with
