Resident Evil 6: together #Piersherry

Chapter 4

"You're welcome to stay with us for as long as you like," he said. "We're heading up to the cabin this weekend. We'd love it if you'd come with us. I hear it's supposed to snow in the high country."
"Thanks. I might take you up on that." She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then, stepped out of his Jeep and turned to face the scene that had haunted her all night.
It looked different in the morning light—small, dingy, desolate. The shattered doors and windows of the little store were boarded up. The building was cordoned off with yellow police tape. The interior was dark apart from one flickering fluorescent light.
How many times had she driven past this place? How many times had she stopped in to gas up or get coffee? Now she wondered if she'd ever be able to walk through its doors again.
It struck her as strange that if she'd made it to her favorite coffee shop on time, she wouldn't have witnessed the killing. It would have been just another press release, just another news brief—girl killed in drive-by, investigation ongoing.
But she had witnessed it. She'd seen a young woman live out the last moments of her life in terror before being cruelly murdered. She knew she would never forget it.
A red SUV pulled into the parking lot and stopped at a pump, and a man in a suit stepped out, yammering on his cell phone. It took him three swipes of his credit card to realize the place was closed. He drove off in a huff.
Sherry fished her car keys out of her purse, unlocked her car, and slipped behind the wheel, determined to pull herself together. She drove home, tried to revive herself with a hot shower, and did her best to hide the dark circles under her eyes with makeup.
"You look like hell, girl," she told her reflection.
Her reflection stared back through eyes that were red and puffy and full of shadows.
A part of her wanted to call in sick and crawl into bed, but she was done crying. She knew she wouldn't be able to help anyone—most especially the girl who'd been murdered last night—by hiding. Besides, she probably wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. It was best to stick with her routine and face the day head on.
Seeking the comfort of the familiar, she dressed in her favorite black silk suit—the color seemed fitting—and headed first to the local coffeehouse for a cup of salvation and then to the paper. By the time she'd had a few sips and made it to her desk, she felt almost human.
She checked her phone messages and e-mails and then rummaged through the stack of press releases she'd grabbed from her in-box. Ketamine stolenfrom another vet clinic. An allegedsexual assault. A fatal crash on 1-70.
Surprised not to find any mention of the shooting, she picked up her phone and dialed.
"We're not releasing the police report." Larry from Sheriff's Records was grumpier than usual. "The incident is still under investigation. You know the drill."
Across the newsroom, Sophie Altonpointed at her watch and held up three fingers. They had an I-Team meeting in three minutes.
Sherry nodded, gathered her notes for the meeting, and reached for a sharpened pencil. "Is Chief Irving going to issue some kind of statement?"
"You'll have to call the press office for that."
She forced sugar into her voice. The least she could do was try to make him feel guilty. "Thank you, Larry. You've been so helpful. I know your time is very valuable. You have a good morning, and I'll be in touch."
She hung up. "Bless his heart."
"Larry being a dick again?" Matt Harker, the city reporter, stood and smoothed his hopelessly rumpled tie—the tie he put on every morning and threw on his desk every afternoon. "Someone ought to investigate why city employees are so obnoxious. Does the city train them to act that way? Did someone steal their Prozac? Do they drink too much coffee?"
"Don't knock coffee, Harker." Sherry picked up her latte and followed her coworkers toward the conference room. "It's not right to insult other people's religions."
Sophie, her straight, strawberry-blond hair done in a sleek French braid, held back for her, notepad and water bottle in hand. "Are you all right? You look tired and upset."
"Thanks." Sherry willed herself to smile as if she'd just been given a big compliment. 'Tired and upset was exactly the look I was going for this morning."
Sophie frowned. "Okay, don't tell me what's going on."
Sherry saw the concern in her friend's eyes and wanted to tell her, Sophie was perhaps her closest friend. They'd shared the travails of working for Tom Trent, being perpetually single, and working in the male-dominated field of investigative journalism. But Sherry didn't think she could tell Sophie about last night—not without crying again.
She would rather face a firing squad than cry in the newsroom.
Tom was waiting for them by the time they reached the conference room, tapping his pencil impatiently on his notepad. He was a big man—over six feet and probably close to three hundred pounds. With a mop of gray curls on his head, he'd always looked to Sherry like a cross between a sheepdog and alinebacker, but his personality was pure pit bull.
On his left sat Syd Wilson, the managing editor. It was her job to make the news fit, and doing so under Tom's direction had turned much of her spiky black hair white. Joaquin Ramirez, the sexy photographer who reminded the women at the paper of a young Antonio Banderas, was talking over photo possibilities with Syd, while Katherine James, the newest member of the team, read through her notes. Handpicked by Tom to take Kara's place, Kat had come to Denver from her hometown newspaper in Window Rock, Arizona, on the Navajo reservation, where she'd broken a big story about toxic uranium mining. Petite with waist-length dark hair and hazel-green eyes that revealed her mixed heritage, she kept mostly to herself.
Sherry took her seat, jotted down some notes, and tried to tell herself this was just another Wednesday morning, just another I-Team meeting.
Tom never bothered with small talk. "Alton, what's the latest?"
Sophie had barely taken her seat. "I got a tip yesterday about a woman who filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Corrections. The suit claims she went into premature labor in lockdown, asked for help, and was ridiculed by the guards, who didn't believe she was having problems. She labored overnight in her cell alone, and her baby was stillborn the next morning."
Sherry met Sophie's gaze, shared the disgust and anger she saw there. But this was what investigative journalism was all about—shining light into the dark corners so that wrongdoers could have no place to hide.
Tom didn't react at all, but after a lifetime in journalism, he'd probably seen and heard everything. "What can you pull together by deadline?"
"I can write up an overview of the lawsuit—probably fifteen inches. I'd like to follow up on the medical angle later in the week—how many doctors per inmate, how well equipped the facility is to deal with women's medical emergencies and such. I've put in an open-records request and am getting the usual runaround."
Syd nodded, scribbled, did the math. "Photos?"
"The plaintiff's mug shot."
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• All Night
Sherry's thoughts drifted back to last night. She didn't hear Matt talk about his story on city council members holding illegal secret meetings via a previously unknown e-mail loop. She didn't hear Katherine discuss the latest on Rocky Flats, the site of a former nuclear weapons plant now open to the public as a recreation area where people could picnic in the plutonium.