Cadaver in Chief by Steve Hockensmith

Author:Steve Hockensmith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, horror, mystery, humor, zombies, political satire
Publisher: Steve Hockensmith

—The Louisville Courier-Journal, section B, page 4, September 23

Six

Woods called the contact number listed on Billy Prosch's website. President Brick Bradley answered. Sort of.

"I want to make one thing perfectly clear," said a man who sounded like a slightly less patrician, more nasal President Bradley, "Billy Prosch is the best Brick Bradley impersonator you're going to find. And I ought to know. Unfortunately, Billy's out at the moment, but if you leave your name, number and the date you'd like him—or perhaps I should say me—at your event, he'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you, and god bless America."

Beeeeeep.

Woods hung up. Sometimes it was better to catch a source off guard. If she left a message, it would just boil down to "Hi, I'm a reporter from the Washington Tribune. Before you call me back, why don't you take some time to think about what you've got to hide and how you can bullshit your way around it."

Woods turned her attention back to the other name Debbie Does Dallas had given her: Peter Smith. Searches for "peter smith president" and " peter smith government" hadn't turned up anything, except the fact that Peter Hammersmith of Petaluma, California, thought Brick Bradley was the worst thing to happen to the country since the Bushes and said so with seemingly obsessive frequency (and a distinctive lack of punctuation, subject-verb agreement and tact) in Yahoo! News comments.

So Woods sent out three messages asking about a Peter Smith with possible government ties. One went to the beleaguered, buyout-depleted Tribune editorial staff. Another went to an online discussion group for old Trib farts who'd been forced into retirement. The third went to Rick Klinger along with a follow-up question: Had his original source come to see him in person?

Woods's money was on the old farts.

She drummed her fingers on her desk for a minute, then called Prosch again. His voicemail message was even more irritating the second time around. By the fifth or sixth time she heard it, she knew, she'd want to find the guy just so she could slap him.

She plugged his name and number into whitepages.com and got a hit: an address in Silver Spring, Maryland.

She drummed her fingers on her desk some more.

She checked her In Box and found no responses to her Peter Smith queries after all of six minutes.

Woods started to drum her fingers on her desk again.

All she had to do was sit there another five hours, waiting for messages that would never come, maybe playing some Words with Friends. Then she could stand up and say, "Too bad the story didn't work out. Have a nice life, everybody!" And maybe the people who'd wanted her dead the day before would leave her alone, because Jan Woods wouldn't matter anymore.

"Screw that," Woods said.

Pyke was still in his meeting, rearranging deck chairs or perhaps (in the great tradition of newspaper management) setting them on fire. So she left him a note: Billy Prosch's name and address and the words "This is where to start looking if I don't come back.

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