I met Kicker for lunch. I was excited to see him again. We talked about things. Perfectly normal things. It was nice. I didn’t know when I would be able to see him again, but said that I would get back to him.
After classes were over, I got in my truck and went back to the campaign headquarters. I was working on an idea that was almost as crazy and stupid as sneaking in had been.
There was no crime scene tape around. I didn’t know whether that meant no crime had been reported, or if it had been a short investigation.
When the mare appeared at seven thirty, I got ready. I had parked behind her car, and I waited until she was almost to the driver’s door before getting out and approaching.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello,” she answered. She stared at me for a moment before realizing it was impolite and turning back to unlocking her car.
“I know you left the front door unlocked yesterday night.”
The mare froze. She slowly turned her head to look at me. “Who are you?”
“My name isn’t important. I need to know why you left the door unlocked.”
“I forgot.”
“And someone broke in on the same night?”
“How did you…yes, that’s what happened.” She opened her car door.
“Listen,” I said. “Counselor Dealmaker is going down. He might try to pin this on you as an accomplice. If you help me, I’ll do what I can to help you.” I handed her a piece of paper with my phone number on it. “Please call me if you know anything I can use.”
The mare got in her car and drove away hurriedly. I had no way of knowing whether she would cooperate with me or not. She hadn’t denied a break in. I would have to check the next day’s newspaper, but I hoped to find an article about it. The same questions from the previous night came back to me. Was she working against Dealmaker by helping the burglars to get in? Did that mean she would help me? Was it part of some ruse by Dealmaker to get his own office broken into? If so, why?
It was too bad that I didn’t have time to think about it. I had to go meet Transmitter and Hickory. I got to the meeting place about ten minutes early. There were a few people in the dining court who gave me the usual stares as I walked in, but I was pretty much forgotten once I was seated at a table in the corner and slouched in my chair.
A saw the two of them arrive a minute early. They looked around, not seeing anyone who would obviously be named Shorty.
Hickory was closest to me, and I caught his eye. He paused for a moment to be sure, bumping Transmitter’s elbow to get his attention. They came over.
“Hello,” said Transmitter.
I nodded to the two of them. “Have a seat.”
“Most females who use the nickname ‘Shorty’ usually spell it S-H-A-W-T-Y,” said Hickory brightly.
Transmitter and I both gave him a look. “Are you always such a charmer?” I asked flatly. He went beet red.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” said Transmitter, breaking the moment.
“You too,” I said. “I was impressed by the website.”
“Thank you. We’re always trying to find new material. What happened on Moose Island isn’t well known, but we might be able to bring it to light with your help.”
“There’s a problem. I wasn’t the only one there. Everyone else might not want this going out on the internet for anyone to read.”
Transmitter frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. How much are you willing to tell us without revealing any names?”
“A little, I suppose. Probably not much more than I said in my first e-mail.”
Transmitter took out a tape recorder and placed it on the table. “Do you mind if I record this?”
I reached into my purse and took out my own recorder. It was a slick digital model that my parents had bought me when I first went away to be a journalist. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”
We turned on our recorders and Transmitter said, “This is Transmitter and Hickory Stump conducting an interview for the Hay-town Supernatural Society. With us today is an information source, alias ‘Shorty.’ We will be talking about the Moose Island incident.” He said the date and time and we began the interview.
Transmitter and Hickory didn’t seem to have any formal training in how to conduct interviews, but they did all right. I ran through what I had told them before, adding a detail or two.
“That matches pretty close to what we already knew,” said Hickory.
“Where did you get your information?” I asked.
“Somepony we know knows somepony who was there,” answered Transmitter.
“Who?” I asked.
“It’s not our policy to reveal sources.” I wanted to strangle him and demand to know, but the few other people in the food court would probably call the cops. Besides, as a proper reporter, I should have been sympathetic.
“It looks like we have a little bit of a standoff,” observed Hickory. “Our information is secondhand and probably not complete. If you were really there, you know a lot more, but so far you haven’t offered any proof. Furthermore, you probably can’t do that without revealing things that you don’t want to tell us.”
He was right, unfortunately. I sat there for a moment, feeling sorry that I ever sent that first e-mail. I felt like I’d made a mistake.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Transmitter. “If you were there, then you know the pony that told our source about it. It was a stallion. He was a grey unicorn that had a particular habit for swearing.”
“I know who you’re talking about.” Hard to forget him.
“If we each write down his name and then show it to each other simultaneously, we can prove that you know him.”
“But if you’re lying to me, you might be tricking me into giving you his name. Let me suggest something else. We each write down several names. If one name from each list matches, I’ll decide to trust you.” I hated to be so skeptical, but I hated to be made a fool more.
“That’s a good idea,” said Transmitter. I retrieved a small pad of paper from my purse and two pens. I slid a sheet of paper I tore out across the table with a pen. Transmitter started writing and I followed suit. I wrote down Kicker’s name. I also wrote down the name of the kid back home who taunted me into beating him up.
After writing down the name that Transmitter and Hickory were looking for, I decided I needed a couple more for balance. I put down my cousin and Star, my old Daring Kwon Do instructor.
“Done?” Transmitter asked. I gave him my paper and he gave me his. Among the names was the one I was looking for.
Hickory leaned over to read what I’d written. “Wow,” he said upon finding the correct name. They both looked across the table at me.
“My name is Tungsten Tammy,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
I talked for quite a while with Transmitter and Hickory. I didn’t have much more to say about what happened on Moose Island, at least not until I made sure everyone else was okay with it, but I learned quite a bit about the two members of HSS.
Transmitter was a senior studying prelaw. Hickory was a sophomore in statistics. They were both born and raised in Haycago, and had gone to the same high school. The website had been online for nearly three years. Much like I was, they had been surprised by the rapid growth.
“Anything we post seems to have at least five or six thousand views in the first week,” Hickory said. “Lately, those numbers have been trending upwards.”
Despite the lack of obnoxious advertising, the steady traffic did generate some modest income. They used it for operating expenses.
At the mention of money, I expressed my desire to one day become a journalist at a nice newspaper. They traded glances, as if they were both thinking the same thing.
“What?” I asked, suddenly apprehensive.
“Have you done any journalistic work before? An internship or something?” asked Transmitter.
“I work at the school newspaper,” I said.
“Would you be interested in writing for us? You seem to know a lot about the unknown, supernatural kind of magic.”
Talking about it was one thing. Authoring articles was another. “I don’t know. I guess I could help you out, but this is not exactly what I wanted to do with my life.”
“We run the site with our spare moments. It wouldn’t take much of your time. If business picks up a little, we may even start turning a profit.”
I read a study once where people were asked if they believed in ghosts. About half said they did. Despite that, most of them would probably be skeptical of things they found on the internet. Apart from the few thousand users of the HSS site, most people would think I was crazy if I told them I worked with the site. I was a little concerned that might come back to bite me if I applied for a job somewhere else.
“I’ll think about it,” I told Transmitter and Hickory. I collected my things and got up to go.
I went back to campus. As I was walking up to my dorm, I saw a stallion standing at the corner of the building. He looked a little old to be a student. I felt his eyes on me.
I was distracted and hit my head again. Cherub looked up from some shoe catalogs sympathetically.
I came in, rubbing my forehead. Cherub said, “I’m almost finished designing your clothing and I’m picking out the accessories now. They actually do make decorative shoes for cloven hooves. I want you to help me find something nicer than steel shoes.”
I had forgotten the fashion show. “I can’t really help you pick anything if I don’t know what the outfit looks like.”
“You can at least give me some ideas.” She shoved a few catalogs at me.
I flipped a couple of pages. “I don’t think they have anything in my size.”
“Maybe they have some at transvestite supply stores.”
I took it for the joke it was and laughed. “Those exist?”
She shrugged. “If nothing else, I can look online. What kind of heels do you like?”
“High heels? Me? Do they even make those for minotaur hooves?”
She took the catalogs back. “Hmm. This might be more difficult than I thought.”
I left her to her work while I got ready for bed. Our conversation distracted me from my earlier one with Transmitter and Hickory. Otherwise, I might be up all night thinking.
I was back at the newspaper in the morning. We didn’t publish on the weekend, so Fridays were usually relaxed. I had time to consider the offer from HSS.
Transmitter and Hickory said that they were making enough money to cover expenses. It was possible that whatever I might add to the site would bring in more readers and increase revenue enough to make profit. I had enough money to cover everything I needed at college, but extra wouldn’t be bad. Writing for HSS would also give me experience working on the internet, which might come in handy if I didn’t get the newspaper job I had in mind.
I still didn’t feel confident in putting my name on something HSS published. A future employer might stumble on it while doing a simple internet search. If HSS didn’t mind me using a penname I might be more open to the idea. That created other problems, though. What if HSS became respected enough that I might want to put it on my résumé?
I put off thinking about HSS for the moment by searching for information about the break in at Dealmaker’s headquarters. The Haycago Tribune was delivered to the school newspaper office, and I paged through it.
The article I found was tiny and buried deep within the paper. It merely stated that there had been a break in. No suspects were mentioned. Nothing about a minotaur either, thank sun and moon.
After classes, I went to the Daring Kwon Do club meeting. I had lapsed on practice for a few years after moving away from home and had only recently started again, managing to squeeze it into my schedule. Club meetings were held at the student sports center on Friday nights.
After three years of classes back home, I only had a brown belt. “This isn’t a factory,” Sensei Star had said. “If you’re my student, you’re going to earn belts.” I left for college before getting a black one, but that didn’t necessarily mean I couldn’t handle myself. I wasn’t the best in the club, but I won more sparring matches than I lost. Having long arms helped.
I came out of the club meeting room at eight o’clock. Kicker was there in the gym. Despite his name, he was shooting hoops. He was a little sweaty, but it was a pleasant surprise to see him.
“Hey,” he said. He ran for a layup and missed, but managed to catch his own rebound. “Do you play basketball?”
I almost gave him my standard response when someone asked me that question, No, do you play miniature golf? but I held back. He hadn’t meant it that way. I just don’t like minotaur stereotypes.
“I used to, but not since middle school,” I said. That was when everyone began to complain that playing with me was unfair.
He bounced the ball to me. “Show me what you got.”
I dribbled a couple of times. I hadn’t even touched a basketball in a year or more. I hesitated a moment, deciding what I could do. I was still wearing my white martial arts ghi. In my size, it had to be custom made, but that meant that it fit well and wouldn’t get in my way. My shoes were not designed for polished wood floors, but I thought they had plenty of traction. I decided to go for a layup like Kicker.
I took off towards the basket, old memories coming back to me, telling me what to do. At the last moment, I realized I was capable of more than layup and before I could stop myself, I jumped. My fingers brushed the rim as I dropped the ball in. It was no Air Dash, but it would have been a fair basket in any regulation game.
Kicker caught the ball. “That was amazing.”
“Thanks.” I could feel myself blushing at having outdone him. “I’ve got to go shower. See you.”
I hurried away. More than a few people had tried to get me to join intramural basketball. I hoped Kicker wouldn’t, because I didn’t want to have to tell him no.
Also, there was no way I could fit that in my schedule.
Later that night, I sat alone in the dorm room. Cherub was somewhere else, perhaps drinking. I sat with my computer and decided what to do about the offer from HSS.
I hadn’t developed any new arguments either for or against the job. I would definitely do it under an assumed name, but that might create problems later if I tried to prove it was me. Maybe I could just abbreviate my own name. I sent an e-mail explaining how I felt about that.
In the morning, I left to dorm to get breakfast. The same too-old-for-school pony I had seen Thursday night was hanging around again. I began to get a little suspicious.
After breakfast I went to the newspaper to finish some work for the Monday edition. When I left later, I turned my phone on, finding a reply to the e-mail I had sent last night.
Tammy,
When the site goes down for scheduled maintenance on Sunday night, we can add you to the admin list. If the regular readers see a new author, they’ll want to know about you, so you might have to post a bio or something.
If you have any ideas for stories, let us know. Otherwise, we can give you one to work on from our ‘to do’ pile.
Hickory
It was all happening so suddenly. It hadn’t even been two days since I introduced myself, and it seemed like they already wanted to make me a full partner. I thought that I might be in too deep to get out, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.
Luckily, Kicker saved me from thinking too much about it by calling to ask me to lunch. When we met, I carefully avoided mentioning basketball in our conversation.
He said, “The dorm floor I live on was giving away tickets to the aquarium. They’re good for next Sunday. Would you like to go?”
OceanWorld it wasn’t, but I liked the Haycago aquarium. Better yet, I didn’t have anything to do that day. “Sure, I’d like that.” We made plans to meet.
Kicker asked when we could have dinner together. I said I would call him. He seemed to imply that when we did eventually go for dinner, it wouldn’t be in the school cafeteria. With all the big changes that had been happening to me lately, I still wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
I told Kicker I had to do homework this Sunday, which was true. I said I didn’t know when we’d be able to get together again. I was beginning to sense that he didn’t like spur-of-the-moment plans. I was trying to be less difficult, I really was.
Sunday went like I thought it would. It was the closest to a normal day I’d had in about a week. I’d neglected my homework for the past couple of days, and now I was paying for it. At least I didn’t have anything else planned for the day.
On Monday, I sent an e-mail to a reporter at the Haycago Tribune. I was convinced that I was right to suspect that Dealmaker was up to no good, but I wanted to see if a real investigative journalist would do things any differently.
The reporter’s name was Font Courier. She wrote many of the pieces related to crime. In the e-mail, I said that I worked for the school newspaper and that I wanted to ask her a few questions.
When I checked my e-mail after class that day, I saw that she had replied telling me it was okay to come and meet with her.
I drove to the newspaper headquarters and found the right office. Since Font had a glass door and everything, I assumed she had some seniority.
She invited me to have a seat and seemed to be enthusiastic to talk. I didn’t know what her age was, but her mane was going grey and a few wrinkles were appearing. Her eyes were bright behind her glasses, though. She asked me what I wanted to know.
“Do you do many investigative pieces? Have you ever had something you worked on for a while, like a personal project?”
“Mostly I just write the crime reports as they come to me. I occasionally have to do some research to get more information. We do have some contributors who do only investigative things.”
“Well, I wrote an article about the city council a few weeks back, and something seemed unusual about one of the councilponies. I started doing some looking, and kept finding more things that didn’t seem right.”
“Have you tried looking at any other council members?”
I hadn’t. “No. Why?”
“If you did, you might realize that if you go looking for connections, you’ll find them whether they’re there or not.” Font said it as nicely as possible, but it was evident that she thought I was on a wild goose chase.
“Are you saying it’s not possible that a politician could have a personal agenda?”
“No, I’m just saying you need to take a step back and decide if you’re grasping at straws.”
In desperation, I pulled out my phone and showed her the picture I’d taken of Dealmaker and the unknown pony in the parking garage. I’d copied it to my phone for safekeeping.
“This is Dealmaker, right?” she said, looking at the picture.
“Right. I saw him meet with this stallion.”
“Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“It could have been just a friend of his.”
“In a parking garage in the middle of the night?”
Font shrugged. “It’s just circumstantial evidence. This alone doesn’t prove anything. Granted, it does look unusual, but unless this pony is a criminal and you can prove it, it won’t get you anywhere. If you can’t prove it and you publish it, you’ll get sued for libel.”
Font’s tone changed. “If you want, you can give me a copy of that and I’ll show it around the office. I’ll crop Dealmaker out of the picture so no one knows what you’re working on.”
“Thanks.” I e-mailed her the picture and left my phone number with her.
Walking out of the office, I decided that it had been a worthwhile meeting. I didn’t learn anything about the investigation, but she did give me some solid journalistic advice.
Before I got to the front door of the building, I received a text from Cherub asking what my favorite color was. I stopped to reply. Walking and texting was dangerous for me, because if I tripped it was a long way down. “Pick one for me,” I typed.
I put the phone away and looked up. Across the street at the corner of a building was the same guy who I had seen hanging around my dorm.
I had stopped short of the front doors of the Tribune building. The afternoon sun slanted through the glass, but I was standing to the side, in the shadows. With the glare of the sun on the glass, I hoped he couldn’t see me.
Even still, I took a couple of steps backward. What was I supposed to do? If I called the police, I had no concrete evidence that he was following me. He might even wise up and disappear as soon as he saw a police car.
Well, if he had only wanted to watch from a distance then it was time to give him a shock. I turned and went for the back door of the building. It took me several blocks of walking to get behind him without being spotted, but I can walk as fast as most ponies can trot.
The sun was at my back, casting a long shadow. I let it fall on the sidewalk beside him. After a few seconds, he turned. I had my phone ready and took his picture.
I stepped closer so he had to look up to my face. “Stop following me,” I said. He nodded slowly, his eyes wide. I walked past him back to my truck.
I felt smug, but that started to change to worry. The obvious question I should be asking was why. I couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t somehow connected to the Dealmaker investigation. Next question: how did he find me? It was possible that he could have staked out the dorm and followed my truck from there, but how had he figured out where I lived in the first place?
I put it out of my mind for the moment and went to Dealmaker’s campaign headquarters. It didn’t look at all like it had just been broken into.
I sat there for a few minutes, just watching. I saw a curtain move. The mare I had talked with before peered out, glancing around and seeing my truck across the street. She stared for a moment and appeared to be speaking. As she turned away from the window, I saw there was a phone to her ear.
Realization hit me like a lightning strike. I hadn’t heard or seen anything that might cause a curious person to take a look outside. That meant that someone had called the mare and told her to look out the window to confirm that I was there.
I drove away, even more upset than when I’d spotted the stalker at the newspaper office. I was somehow being tracked. This was not good.
When I got back to the dorm, I rolled under the truck and checked everything. If they’d managed to bug it with a tracking device at the scene of the robbery, they wouldn’t have had much time to install it, and it should be easy to find.
But what if they’d come back later and replaced it with a better-hidden bug that would be more difficult to find? Or was I being ridiculous and paranoid?
After nearly an hour, I had found nothing. I even checked the interior and under the hood. That meant that if there was a bug, either I would never find it, or it was on me rather than on the truck.
The most likely choice would be my phone. I’m no techie, but I had heard you could track someone’s phone from the internet. Actually, that made sense as I had given the woman at Dealmaker’s office my phone number, so they could find me.
I pulled the battery out and put the phone in a metal box in my closet. I didn’t know if that would help, but it made me feel better.