The Whisper Box Read Free Page A

to the senator. It had to be. The “now go make your speech” comment was unlikely to be a coincidence. He wished he had gotten the license plate number of the Lincoln. Like all good reporters, though, he had a contact in the local sheriff's office. Officer Robert DeLuccia, another of the few Italians in Alabama, tipped Jason off occasionally. Every now and then he had leaked a story to him that was still under investigation. They were friends and Jason thought about calling him first. As he was walking through the crowd mulling it over, a hand firmly grabbed his left shoulder. Spinning expecting to see the angry cameraman he’d recently bowled over, he saw Jake.
    “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jake grumbled ignoring the bloody face, “How the fuck could you do this to me?”
    “Did you get any tape of him talking Jake? Shut the fuck up and turn your camera on! I'm the one that had to do the intro. Me! Not you! Your job is to get the footage of him talking! So shut up and shoot.” Jason pointed at the stage.
    “You were also my responsibility. We came here as a team and the station is going to look at it that way. No reporter commentating for our station makes us look bad. It makes it look like a feed from the A.P. You know they'll be pissed. You know it!”
    “Just shoot man, just shut the fuck up and shoot.” Jason's volume tapered off. He walked away holding his head, knowing Jake would lose his job. He was only a reporter for a newspaper; this was only an opportunity. His regular job would still be there.
    Trying to figure out how all of this transpired in fifteen minutes, Jason kept going back to the phone conversation he had overheard. With Jake's pending termination from the television station looming, this was not the time to share what he knew.
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    He always slept with his television on. The loud volume woke him the following morning. The base and electric guitar of the CNN news bulletin theme always caught his attention, even while sleeping. The news about an overnight one-car accident, approximately four miles from the sight of the senator's speech, cleared the cob-webs. The driver, a newspaper reporter from Auburn, Alabama, ran off the road and hit a tree. With no witnesses to the accident, an empty twelve pack of beer practically convicted the obviously drunk driver. Police still had some questions about the reporter's notes from Farnsworth's speech. He never returned to his office after the assignment.
    Every reporter in the United States would have run right back to the office after the speech. Why a reporter would be found intoxicated eight hours later only four miles from the area had baffled authorities. A few bars in the area, and only one grocery store that sold beer, none of the employees recognized the dead man. Not likely he would have kept the beer in his car and then drink it all after the event, detectives were left clueless. He left behind three beautiful little girls and a young wife. Nothing at the scene made sense.
    Out of bed now rubbing puffy eyes, he walked through the small entertainment room of his one bedroom apartment. The local paper, the one he abandoned yesterday for a shot at television, was sure to have reported on it. As he turned the gold metal knob on the wooden door, the first wave of nausea hit him. The initial thought almost knocked the wind out of him. The conversation in the woods about a planned murder, the next day a reporter covering the story dies in a suspicious accident four miles from his make shift bathroom. Picking up the newspaper, he stood for a moment staring down the hallway. Sweat rolled from his hairline, across temples and down his cheeks. On the cover, in the bottom right corner, the article's title: “REPORTER DIES IN MYSTERIOUS CRASH” caught his attention. Feeling his way with eyes locked on the story, he found the kitchen table.
    Any thoughts of this being a coincidence faded. Recognizing he may have