She took a second to consider what that white stuff was…never mind, she thought. She didn’t want to know. Burt’s belly lapped over the top of his pants, and his shirt gapped between the buttons over his midsection. His ties were always too short and didn’t match the rest of his attire, which usually consisted of a cream colored, short sleeve shirt, which in the past decade had most likely been white. Yellow arm pit stains accessorized the shirt. She considered the stains proof Burt rarely, if ever, bothered with antiperspirant. He must have either had a closet full of brown, polyester pants with a thick waistband absent of belt loops, or he wore the same pair over and over. She shuddered at the thought.
It gets worse. Burt was crowned with gray, greasy hairs. Well, maybe there was just one long hair he wrapped around his head over and over again. His black, thick-framed glasses had a coating of gunk on the lenses that probably impaired his vision. These were the trademark fashions of Burt Newman. If that wasn’t bad enough, his personality wasn’t exactly congenial either.
If there was a group of people about whom Burt could be intolerant, he was. He said America was being taken over by foreigners. No amount of arguing about how anyone who wasn’t Native American was a foreigner, or how one of the strengths of the USA was the fact it was built on the blending of so many different cultures could convince him otherwise. The only thing Kristine had in common with Burt was a stubborn streak and a dislike of each other.
Perhaps even more annoying than his lack of hygiene and perverse attitude about people was the way he pounded on a keyboard as if the added pressure on the keys would give his words more emphasis. He mumbled to himself as he beat up the alphabet. Kristine couldn’t hear herself think when Burt’s words flowed. She was convinced people went on the record with Burt simply to get rid of him. If she was correct, that would be the only plus side to being that repulsive. For all the turmoil Burt brought to her life, his stories usually ended up buried deep inside the paper or held over for a slow news day.
She put her bag and coffee on her desk and noticed a bulge in the front pocket of the bag. Reaching in, she pulled out a disc. There was nothing written on it, which meant it wasn’t hers. She always labeled her discs. She took out the laptop and clicked it into the docking station. She leaned back in her chair and waited for the computer screen to go through the flashing it took to get to her main screen.
Suddenly she noticed a pungent smell. She felt her face crinkle as she sat upright and looked around.
“What the hell is that smell?” she said out loud to no one. She looked across her neat, clean desk over to the piles of chaos. It had to be Newman. No one irritated her quite like he did. She stood and walked around to his desk. She took a pencil from one of the stacks and used it to move some of the debris. There it was - a half eaten tuna salad sandwich. The only thing that smelled worse than fresh tuna was tuna salad that had been sitting out for God knows how long. She didn’t know what shocked her more; that Burt had left half a sandwich uneaten or that he was just that much of a slob. She put the eraser of the pencil on the paper holding the sandwich and dragged it to the edge of the desk where she had Burt’s garbage can ready to catch it as it fell. She dropped the pencil in with it and took the garbage can down the hall to the Sports Department. Most of those guys traveled, and the rest wouldn’t be in until later in the day. Plus, they may not even notice it, she thought. She stopped by the ladies’ room to wash her hands just in case she caught any Burt cooties.
When she got back to her desk, she pulled out the can of disinfectant she kept in her top drawer and sprayed Burt’s desk and chair and then her own. She shook her head and considered what it would be like to sit across from someone who didn’t require you to decontaminate your work area on a daily basis. She put the can back into the desk drawer and closed it. She sat back down, picked up the disc and looked at it. Could someone have mistaken their bag for hers last night?
She thought back to the previous evening. She had been finishing a story about city workers drinking on the job and the dangers to the public and then filed it from home. The disc wasn’t in her bag last night when she arrived at her apartment, because she remembered removing a business card she had received earlier in the day. She had to have gotten this disc somewhere between her apartment and the office this morning. Maybe someone in the coffee shop gave it to her, but she was still too tired to remember sliding it into the pocket. Then she remembered the lady in the crosswalk. She closed her eyes to remember what she looked like. She looked like she was in a hurry, which didn’t set her apart from any other New Yorker. “Think,” she muttered to herself. “You get paid to notice details.” She shook her head. The only other things she remembered were the woman had brown hair, wore sunglasses and seemed anxious. Again - not unlike most of the population of the city. Her cell phone rang. She looked at the number and recognized it as Derrick. He was her closest friend.
“Hey, what’s up?” she asked.
“Girl, I just got off the late shift. Meet me for breakfast and a facial - my skin looks like hell with these bags under my eyes.” Derrick was a nurse and usually worked the emergency room. Kristine had met him while working stories - waiting for patient updates and trying to talk to family members of victims. Derrick was gorgeous and gay.
“Can’t. Sorry. Gotta work,” she said staring at her screen. “Meet for dinner?”
“Can’t. Gotta date.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Feelgood,” he said triumphantly. Kristine smiled and sat up in her chair.
“No you don’t.”
“Oh yes I do.”
“I thought he told you he was straight.”
“Turns out he couldn’t resist this.”
“Well, congratulations! You have to tell me all about it. Where’s he taking you?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m outta here. I’m giving myself the spa treatment today. I may even get a bikini wax,” he said.
“Don’t let them wax your eyebrows again. Remember the last time? You looked like an idiot.”
“Impossible,” he said laughing. “See you later, my dear!”
“Have fun and call me later,” she said disconnecting and putting her phone on her desk.
She put the disc into the computer and clicked open the drive. There was a document at the top that read, “1 Read me first” along with several other files all numbered. Kristine double clicked on the first document.
Ms. Larkin,
I took your name from the newspaper stories you’ve written. I don’t know if I can trust you, but I know I can’t trust anyone else. That’s why I can’t tell you who I am. I also need to protect my son and his family.
This disc has information you can use to start an investigation. I can tell you’re ambitious, so I know you are the right person to do this. This information may get both of us killed, so you need to be very careful.
I hope to live long enough to see the story in print.
The note wasn’t signed. Kristine read it three times. Her heart was beating fast and her mouth was dry. Without taking her eyes off the screen, she reached for her now cold coffee. As she put the cup back on her desk, she started clicking on the documents and read them in order. She wasn’t sure what she was hoping to find, but she knew what she had didn’t make sense to her. Some documents had what looked like code names and numbers next to them, some
