Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a late lunch at work on Monday, both Lee and Kat had been called into one of the assigned meeting rooms on their office floor, presumably to discuss the article they had been working on about Arthur Strickland, given the recent turn of events.
Prior to last week, Lee didn’t realize just how much her palms could sweat until instances like this one whereby she had found herself wiping her hands on her pleated gray trousers not unlike a child covered in mud or chocolate.
The pair walked relatively slowly, savoring each moment of company time they were being billed for as they took each and every step.
“It’s going to be bad news,” Kat huffed, pulling out the wad of bubblegum in her mouth with her hand as she placed it into the trash can to her right.
“Either our whole article gets completely dismissed or we have to rewrite it. Neither option fills me with much enthusiasm.”
Katherine Myers was no stranger to the recent turn of events concerning Arthur Strickland, just as Lee was no stranger to the recent turn of events concerning Arthur Strickland.
And, with the rarity of being called into one of the meeting rooms with their manager, Perry, it was likely that he was also no stranger to the news, either.
“Firstly, nothing fills you with enthusiasm, and secondly, we don’t know that for certain,” Lee said, trying not to show visible distaste upon her face for what Kat had done moments earlier with her bubblegum.
“I mean, you’re probably right, but let’s just get in there first and see what’s what. ”
At that moment in time, Lee was almost envious of Kat, because Kat’s inconvenience stemmed from having to do more work, which, all things considered, was a very trivial, and normal thing to be inconvenienced about.
Lee’s inconvenience was rooted in being discovered that she had broken into Arthur’s home and planted evidence for the police to find before his house was turned upside down over the weekend.
The two of them were walking the same walk, very literally speaking as they made their way to the office, but very much metaphorically talking a different talk entirely.
Lee had been naive in believing that her weekend could be a quiet one, acknowledging that with every hour that passed whilst Diana and her team inspected Arthur’s house, Morgan’s DNA could be found at any moment.
The memory of breaking into Arthur’s house was indelible, like a mental tattoo, only, in her less-than-rational mind, Morgan had taken off her gloves and rubbed her now fingerprinted hands on every available surface.
She knew this to be false, and yet, her mind would not waiver, even if she so desperately wished that it would.
A quiet weekend, it seemed, would now forever be too much to ask for.
Sitting down now in the chairs that were unsurprisingly far more comfortable than the ones in their respective cubicles, the pair of them waited in relative silence for Perry to enter the room and break the news concerning their prospective article.
Lee could see that he was close by, exchanging pleasantries with another employee sitting in their own cubicle.
After all, these offices were walled with glass sheets, which Lee found to be rather redundant, given the fact that this was meant to be considered a private meeting space.
Despite this, knowing of his presence prior as she watched him walk towards the not-so-private-meeting-space did little to suppress the anxiety that coursed through her as he made his way inside.
“Okay,” he said, immediately, before he had even closed the glass door behind him; the glass door that supposedly was intended to make the space more private, which naturally, it didn’t.
With just one word, he sounded inconvenienced himself, as if he had been writing the article that would likely be nothing more than waste for the scrap-pile, and Lee knew immediately that this conversation would be a tiresome one.
He took off his suit jacket and threw it very lazily on the office chair at the head of the table.
“We probably all know why we’re here, so let’s not waste time beating around the bush—the bush being your article.
I presume that you’ve seen the news over the weekend, and, if you haven’t, as journalists, I’d be rather disappointed in you both, so let’s just get straight down to it. ”
Lee Holmes shifted awkwardly in her seat, suppressing a smirk in the process as she committed to the act of pretending to scratch her cheek, covering her mouth as the left side of her lips tweaked upwards ever so slightly.
She acknowledged at that moment that her poker face needed work, but if this conversation was any indication, paired with the fact that she hadn’t been arrested yet, her criminal pursuits did not.
Sitting in this meeting room felt like sitting in an office as Spider-Man in the process of selling photos of himself to the Daily Bugle, Lee thought, only, if Spider-Man was tasked to do an article on himself instead, and his secret identity that came with it.
Lee was part of an inner secret that only she and Morgan were privy to.
At that moment in time, she was Peter Parker.
Her manager, Perry Graham, did not seem equally as enthused by the conversation, leaning forward over the table, his eyes focused directly upon Lee’s, as if automatically assuming that she was responsible for a vast majority of the work. “How much of the existing article will need to be discarded?”
Lee coughed despite not needing to, offering herself a mental reset as she removed her hand from her cheek, her smirk no longer visible.
“I would say at least half of it now is unusable, if not all of it. Kat and I played the sympathy angle upon his disappearance. Whilst there was little information about his personal pursuits online, we sprinkled some half-truths in there as best we could about how he was a valued member of the community.”
Kat laughed theatrically, slapping her knee for emphasis in the process, making her presence known in the room for the first time since they had entered the space.
“Half-truths? More like complete and utter lies. The man has the reputation of a scorned dictator. It was a fucking nightmare trying to play the sympathy angle with that jock-strap.”
“Sympathy sells, so, I would normally argue that this is exactly what we want from an article concerning a missing persons case, even if they are a jock-strap,” he said, offering a rare half-smile in the process.
“But, in this instance, you’re absolutely right.
I’m afraid we won’t be using that angle anymore for obvious reasons.
The media seem to think that he had something to do with the disappearance of a man called Edward…
” he paused. “I forgot his last name, and to be quite honest with you, I don’t really care. What else have we got?”
Perry began clicking his fingers around the room, as if the sound would suddenly spur both Kat and herself into motion like a dog salivating at the sound of a bell.
It was now that Lee realized that this was the part where she was beginning to tread upon a very thin line.
Namely, being able to distinguish between what information was public, and what information exclusively belonged to both herself, and Morgan.
Despite this, she had yet to learn about what the media had been saying about Arthur other than his connection to Edward, and it appeared it was playing directly into both hers and Morgan’s hands.
“Well, we do know that he and Edward Beckett were friends prior to his disappearance,” she said, nodding as she did so, as if telling her own subconscious that this answer was appropriate.
“He seems like a textbook killer to be completely honest with you, Perry. No other close friends that we know of other than Ed,” Lee continued, shortening his name as if they had been close friends themselves.
“When we were trying to pull the sympathy card in the article, Kat and I realized that he didn’t seem to have any close ties to family, either, which only made our jobs harder.
It’s always easier to make the article more emotional if we have interviews with close relatives.
However, now that we’re changing the angle of the article, it’s perfect, really.
He was heavily disliked at his place of work.
To his co-workers, he was known for being impulsive, short-tempered, and well…
as Kat so aptly put it, a bit of a jock-strap.
He ticks the murderer box relatively well. We can use this to our advantage.”
As the words left her, she couldn’t help but think of her girlfriend.
Did Morgan fit the part? Hardly, she acknowledged, almost instantly.
She had Diana, her friends, and she had Lee.
No, she didn’t fit the part, and yet she had to fit somewhere.
There had to be an explanation as to why Morgan Finch was the way she was, because the possibility of there being no explanation was a weight too heavy for Lee to carry for the rest of her life.
Perry Graham placed his hands accordingly on both sides of the table as Lee centered herself back into the conversation.
“Excellent,” he said, a full-smile illuminating his tanned features as he stared the both of them down.
“Think of Arthur like your standard 17th century witch. Entice the readers. I don’t give a fuck if he murdered Edward Whatever-The-Fuck-His-Name-Is or not.
I want all those keyboard-vigilantes to want to chase this fucker down,” he concluded, stepping back from the table, his hands leaving fingerprints upon the wood. “Let’s start this witch hunt.”
Lee Holmes exhaled, heavier than she anticipated, as Perry Graham retrieved his suit jacket, throwing it over his arm as he took his leave only minutes after he had entered the room, closing the office door behind him.
For the first time since entering the office, she felt comfortable to lean back in her chair and simply process.
Essentially, her manager was asking for a lynch mob, and she would give it to him, if only to push the spotlight onto someone else, anyone else, that wasn’t her, or Morgan.
“Wish he’d have said something about this before we continued working on the article this morning,” Kat sighed, spinning idly in her chair like a child experiencing an office seat for the first time.
Moving her foot closer towards Kat’s chair, she kicked it with enough force to spin it just a little bit faster. “Oh, stop your complaining, you big baby,” Lee said, smiling as the chair gained momentum. “We’ve written, like, a hundred words between us all day.”
Spinning wildly in her chair, Kat leaned back and allowed gravity to take her. “Yeah, well, it’s a hundred too many.”
It was 3:08pm when Lee situated herself in her own office cubicle again, as she attempted to tune out the sounds of Kat chewing on bubblegum from the other side, seemingly finished with doing anything productive for the rest of the day.
Her colleagues lack of enthusiasm was not the kind of attitude that Lee adopted herself, however, as she booted her computer up, illuminating the screen with the familiar background of both herself, and Morgan, sitting on a balcony in a hotel in Italy.
Lee was holding a glass of red wine, and Morgan had been holding an ice-cold beer, condensation dripping from the glass like a rain tinted window.
She remembered the conversation they had shared upon that balcony almost word for word.
“You know I hate all that cheesy shit about being your co-captain and your anchor and whatever other fuckin’ team metaphors you can think of,” Morgan had said, sticking out her tongue as if to emphasise her point.
“But I’ve thought a lot lately about my feelings towards you, and how much it means to me to be able to be here with you, now.
And the first thing that popped into my head when you pulled open the balcony doors just now and sat down across from me was that I would go to bat for you.
I’m disgusted at myself for even thinking something like that, but whether it’s sickening or not, it’s true. ”
At the time, Lee had half-expected Morgan to get down on one knee and propose to her there and then.
It felt like the moment proposals were designed for, after all.
The sun setting perfectly in the sky, the sound of distant birds making their presence known.
As she gazed down at her finger, with no ring adorning it currently, she recalled feeling disappointed, almost. It wasn’t like she couldn’t propose herself, she knew it was a possibility, and yet, Morgan Finch wasn’t the kind of girl that had any desire to be proposed to.
No, Morgan hadn’t proposed to her then, but she had told her something that had stuck with her, namely, that she would go to bat for her.
Thinking back to the whirlwind of a week she had just experienced, she had gone up to bat for Morgan Finch at every opportunity possible.
Writing this article felt like another opportunity to step up one more time. The heavy lifting had already been done, all that she needed to do now was amplify the work they had already committed themselves to. She would grab the bat, and swing.
She explored the tabs at the bottom of her screen and opened the document regarding the article that both Kat and herself had prepared prior to the meeting with Perry.
She smiled, not hiding it this time, selecting the entire body of text and hitting delete.
Upon doing so, she rubbed her hands together and began typing.
If Perry Graham wanted a witch hunt, he was going to get one.