“Enderby shot up her laptop and phone,” Peter said. “Very convenient.”
“I guess he didn’t want the cops looking at her files.”
“Did she keep anything online?”
“I’m sure she did, but she didn’t share her passwords. KT was my friend, but she didn’t always play well with others. I did get her tickler list, a half dozen story folders, and another folder with a bunch of interview audio and transcripts.”
Peter knew the terminology because June used the same system, which she’d learned from KT. A tickler list was a document listing every story she was working on, whether nearly finished or still in development, along with every other idea she was considering developing, no matter how small or unlikely. A story folder held the collected background notes, audio interviews, emails, images, and web links already accumulated for a given story. It also included a master document withan ongoing summary of key details and links to the other items in the folder for easy reference.
“I’ve already been through her tickler list and story folders,” June said. “Her current projects seem pretty straightforward. There’s a CEO profile for theJournal, a postmortem on a failed device startup, something about startups that get bought by big companies, and early reporting on OpenAI’s huge spend on data centers.”
“Is there anything on the whistleblower she was supposed to meet yesterday?”
“Just a few lines,” June said. “She didn’t know the whistleblower’s name or what he wanted to talk about. Apparently he sent something to her PO box, but either she hadn’t gotten it or hadn’t updated the list.”
“None of that seems worth killing for.”
“Maybe, maybe not. With that failed device startup, a lot of VC money went down the tubes. A whistleblower can cost companies millions or billions, and their information can lead to criminal prosecutions. I could see Enderby having some investments he was trying to protect, or secrets he wanted to keep. But Reed barely had a pot to piss in. What’s his connection to this?”
“Good question,” Peter said. “Did you get through the folder of audio transcripts?”
“I did. More than a hundred interviews conducted over the past nine months for at least a dozen different stories. Which was strange, because usually an interview would land in a particular story folder, not be thrown in with all the others. It took me a while to find the common thread. Which was another strange thing, because KT was usually very direct. If she wanted to know something, whether you worked for a tiny startup or ran one of the Big Five, like Apple or Google, she always went straight at you. It was part of what made hera legend, that fearlessness. It also made her a lot of enemies. Her reporting actually helped tank multiple companies. But this thing she was looking into, whatever it was, she’d wait until the end of the conversation, then drop in a question out of the blue. She did it in a whole bunch of interviews on a whole bunch of topics over the course of maybe a month.”
“What was the question?”
“ ‘When did you get involved with Gun Club?’ Kind of like, when did you stop beating your wife? Which was also a classic in-your-face KT question.”
“Huh.” Peter remembered KT mentioning this to Durant. Something about tech bros with an interest in guns. “What kind of answers did she get?”
“Straight denials, all the way through. Denial of the premise of the question, in fact.What gun club? I don’t even own a gun. You can’t get tone of voice through a transcript, though, right? So I went back and listened to that part of those interviews. I believed almost all of them.”
“Almost?”
“Except for three guys. Each of them paused just a little too long. As if they had to think through their answer. But in the end, they didn’t say what everyone else did. Instead, they said,I’m not involved.”
“Like they knew what it was. But didn’t want to say.”
“Exactly. So those guys are the first people we want to talk to. One is relatively small-time, but the other two are serious industry players. Maybe asking those questions is what put KT on the killer’s radar.”
“Are you following up with those contacts?”
“Emails already sent,” she said. “If one of them had something to do with KT’s death, I’m going to put his head on a spike.”
Peter got it. He felt the same way. But there was a problem withJune taking over KT’s stories. “You’re putting yourself at risk,” he said.“If you touch a nerve with one of those guys, they’ll come after you next.”
“I sincerely hope they do.” He could hear the fierce smile in her voice. “Because my boyfriend’s gonna kick their ass.”
15
When Peter got back to the house, Ellie was still sacked out. He put the pastries on a plate and fired up the coffee maker. At five to nine, he was sitting at the kitchen table with his second cup and the foil-wrapped phones when a big Ford pickup with a ladder rack and a Semper Fi Exteriors logo on the side rumbled up the driveway. He’d already returned Stella’s SIG to the desk drawer.
Manny walked in without knocking. He was average height with thick, sloping shoulders and legs like tree trunks. He wore clean black duck Carhartts and a red North Face hard-shell jacket with a fresh shave and a high fade sharp enough to cut. He carried a crumpled brown paper grocery bag in one hand. “What, no hug?”
Peter rose and wrapped his arms around his friend, feeling his calm, steady strength. “Good to see you, brother. Thanks for coming.” Manny’s cool head in a firefight had saved their lives many times over. Peter had always thought that, in a major earthquake, with houses toppling and bridges collapsing, Manny would be the only thing standing still.
“Carlotta’s here, too, she wanted to see you. But she’s on the phone with a client.” He handed Peter the bag. “Semper fi, Ashes.”
Peter sat back down and dug inside. He found a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with two speed loaders and a box of fifty rounds. “Nice. How much do I owe you?”
