The Enemy Inside Read Free

any bad blood between you and her?”
    “Not on my part. It was just a story. Nothing personal,” says Ives.
    “What is this story about?”
    “You don’t really think I killed her on purpose?”
    “For my part, I don’t. But I can’t vouch for the D.A.,” says Harry. “So why don’t you fill us in.”
    “It’s big. It’s a very big story. At this point there are a lot of leads. What we need is confirmation.”
    “Confirmation of what?” Harry is getting hot.
    “That’s what I can’t tell you,” says Ives. “It’s not my story. I don’t have any personal stake in it. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t have any reason to harm Serna. I never met her. She was a name. That’s all.”
    “But she was involved?” I ask.
    “Her name kept popping up during the investigation,” says Ives.
    Alex is what passes for an investigative reporter in the age of digital news. The changing tech world has dislocated everything from journalism to jukeboxes. It has untethered us from the world we thought we knew and left us to swim in a sea of uncertainty. Like primitive natives, we are constantly dazzled by shiny new stuff, smartphones that respond to voice commands and mobile hot spots the size of a thimble that connect us to the universe. But like the native jungles of the New World, the industries in which we work may disappear tomorrow, victims of the shiny new stuff, the treasures that have seduced us. Where newspapers once existed, now there are blog sites. More nimble, faster, some of them blunt-edged partisan weapons for dismantling a republic. Alex works for one of these, a blog site headquartered in Washington. He is their West Coast correspondent.
    “I’m not sure how much I can tell you. We’ve been working on it for about a year now. Mostly in D.C., but also out here on the coast. It’s the reason I know her name.”
    “If you want us to represent you,” says Harry, “you’re going to have to trust us.”
    “I do. But you have to understand the story is not mine, it belongs to the Gravesite .” Ives is talking about the Washington Gravesite, the digitized scandal sheet owned by Tory Graves, Ives’s boss and the purveyor of the hottest political dirt since the days of Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. What TMZ is to celebrity news and entertainment gossip, the Washington Gravesite is to those who work in politics. It parcels out breaking news to the various cable stations, which feed upon it depending on their particular partisan political bias. It is unclear how Graves makes his money, whether he gets paid for exclusive stories or is funded by various interest groups with an ax to grind. Either way he seems to be surviving in what is by any measure a political snake pit of Olympian proportions.
    “Did you ever talk to Serna, interview her, have any direct contact with her at all?” asks Harry.
    Ives is shaking his head.
    “Did you communicate with her in any way?” I ask.
    “No. And I can’t tell you anything beyond that, not until I talk to my editor.”
    Harry and I look at each other. I give Ives a big sigh, shrug my shoulders, and slowly shake my head. “We’re just trying to help you.”
    “I know you are and I appreciate it,” says Ives. “But I can’t talk about my work. That’s confidential. It’s off-limits.”
    “Let’s hope the court agrees,” says Harry. “But I can tell you it won’t.”
    “Let’s leave it for the moment,” I tell him. “I assume your parents are good for the bail bond?”
    “I think so. How much do you think it’ll be?”
    “No way to be certain until we get in front of the judge. It’s a bailable offense, at least at the moment. But the D.A. will probably try to up the ante. Make it expensive. Have you done any recent international travel?”
    “For work,” he says.
    “How long ago and how often?”
    “Europe, twice in the last year.”
    “Where?” says Harry.
    “I went to Switzerland with my boss, Tory Graves.”
    “We can assume