Insurgents

6

There were lots of hits for Amanda Porgett on Google. She was a journalist and had uncovered the Shoreston Aquarium's criminal neglect of Giggles, a dolphin that had died. Her story made national headlines, and was the largest scandal that Shoreston had seen in years. They'd said it was cancer, but she'd found no evidence of any treatment for cancer, and no record of any autopsy being done. She also had an informant inside the Aquarium who had documented Giggle's sad decline. The Aquarium's executive director and veterinarian both did time for cruelty to animals and criminal negligence.

There was a picture of her at an awards dinner in Cleveland, where she'd received a glass obelisk for her work on the story. She was wearing an ill-fitting black dress with rhinestones, and her brown hair was pulled up into a loose bun with two chopsticks sticking out of it awkwardly. There were also two articles about her murder, and a long obituary in the paper she wrote for, The Shoreston Crier. I printed it all out at ten cents a page for a total cost of two dollars and twenty cents.

I'd been home from the library for an hour or so when Jessie called. "They shot him." She said. "He's dead."

"What?"

"David. They got him outside of Reno sometime early this morning." She said. "They thought he had a gun so the cops shot him."

"Are you sure? Where'd you hear that?"

"My mom saw it on the America's Most Wanted web site. Leave it to my mom to be the bearer of bad news. What'd they have to kill him for? He's just a big dope. That fucking rich asshole is going to get away with murder now, David can't defend himself. He's dead." I could tell she was crying.

"I can't believe it-"

"I gotta go," she said, "some people just came in." I hung up and flipped on the TV, thinking the news channels might be reporting it, but it didn't even make the crawl. I watched all the way through a cycle and when they started repeating stories, I turned it off. I rested my head on the arm of the couch and put my feet up. My friend was dead and I had a sink full of dirty dishes.

My sleep was interrupted by the telephone a while later. I looked at it, thinking it was probably Jessie, but I didn't recognize the number on the caller ID so I let the machine pick up. Whoever it was didn't leave a message. I felt uneasy from a dream I couldn't quite remember, so I decided to stay awake. I watched TV for awhile and went to the supermarket and got dinner before going to pick up Jessie from work.

After we ate I showed her the papers I'd printed at the library. "Maybe it had something to do with Giggles the dolphin." She said after studying a couple of pages.

"How so?" I asked.

"I dunno, maybe there's some connection between the aquarium's executive director and Junior Pierson. Amanda Porgett might've been on to some shady deal between them. He might've killed her to keep her quiet."

"Yeah, but there's no money in mistreating a dolphin. It's just cruelty."

"Did you look up Junior Pierson too?" She asked. "I don't see any papers about him."

"You told me to look up Amanda Porgett, not Junior Pierson." I said. "I did exactly what you asked me to do."

"I wanted you to see if there was a connection between them. How would you do that just looking up one of them?"

"You wanted a connection between her and David. And what difference does it make? David's dead." I was going to continue but the phone was ringing. I picked it up and hit the button without looking at the caller ID. "Hello?"