Bylines & Deadlines. Kimberly Vinje

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 looked like shipping orders and some were memos that were obviously in some sort of code. She had something that looked like bank records and a couple of seemingly unrelated headlines that most likely came from news stories. The stories weren’t anything she had written. She scribbled a few notes in her notepad. She looked around the newsroom. A few more reporters had arrived. She ripped out the page of her notebook, crumbled it and threw it in her garbage can. Should she even leave it there? She reached in and pulled it out.

      “This is ridiculous,” she mumbled to herself. For all she knew this was a practical joke played on her by coworkers who wanted her to chase a bogus lead. Still, there was a line from the letter about protecting family that tore at her. She closed the disc so no one could see it on her screen. She slowly walked to the paper shredder and fed the notepaper through the little slit. By the time she got back to her desk, Burt had waddled in and plopped into his chair. Her mind was so preoccupied with the disc she forgot to be upset at his presence.

      “What’s wrong with you, Little Girl,” Burt asked. Kristine had complained to Human Resources about the names, but Burt was definitely an old dog and he wouldn’t learn the trick of civility. Kristine couldn’t manage to put the effort into being flirty with him - there was nothing in it for her.

      “It seems as though most of my problems involve sitting across from you, Newman,” she said in retort. She had to admit, she almost enjoyed their verbal sparring from time to time. It kept her on her toes, and she was often pleased when she came up with something so witty it shut up Burt.

      “Did the princess start the day on the wrong side of the bed? Maybe if you were prettier you would have someone in it to stop you from rolling that far,” Burt said with a snort of pride at his retort.

      “Write anything that actually made it into the paper lately?” she said in a superior tone as she picked up her cell phone and pretended to call someone. She had been called many things, but ugly wasn’t one. She dialed her home number and started talking before the machine kicked on to play her recorded message. She thought she heard Burt mumble the word “bitch” as he looked for his pencil.

      After her five minute,