Dead in the Water by Jack Patterson

Author:Jack Patterson [Patterson, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Crime, Murder, Vigilante Justice, Spies & Politics, Conspiracies, Crime Fiction, Kidnapping, Thrillers, Pulp, Nonfiction, mystery suspense, action adventure, thriller
ISBN: 1938848551
Amazon: B00JLZD9VW
Publisher: Hangman Books
Published: 2014-05-10T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

AFTER THE MEMORIAL SERVICE, Cal accompanied Potter to Café Lagniappe for some coffee. Everyone there recalled stories of Baker helping them or making a spectacular catch to win a football game for Saint-Parran High. Cal hoped to glean something more about Baker, though it sounded like more of the same.

Cal’s phone buzzed. It was Gatlin.

“Sorry, I gotta take this,” he said as got up out of his chair and walked outside.

“Hi, Gatlin,” Cal said as he answered the phone.

“Cal, what are you doing down there? Are you drinking? Are you fishing? Please give me an excuse I can live with.”

“Whoa, whoa. Slow down. What’s going on?”

“Have you not been checking your email?”

“I’ve been at Tre’vell Baker’s funeral service all morning.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“No excuse for what?” Cal asked as he paced about the parking lot.

“No excuse for one of my reporters being on site for one of the biggest recruiting stories that’s trending on Twitter right now—and not a single word of copy written about it,” Gatlin said. Cal was glad several hundred miles separated him from his boss.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about Dominique Dixon and that new Audi TT of his.”

“What? I was just there. He didn’t have an Audi.”

“He does now. Just look up hashtag MyUncleGaveIt2Me on Twitter,” Gatlin said. “Tell me what you see.”

Cal put Gatlin on speakerphone so he could continue the conversation while he searched for the hashtag on the social media site.

It didn’t take long for Cal to find the original source and gasp—first at the brazen nature of the initial tweet and then at the avalanche of responses.

First, there was a picture of Dixon flashing the peace sign next to his new Audi TT with the hashtag: #MyUncleGaveIt2Me.

The reactionary nature of college football fans made social media sites a dangerous place. Bitter and jealous fans would turn a harmless tweet into a piranha feeding in the Twitter fishbowl. And since plenty of fans believed there was some shady business going on, embittered fans of southern college football teams united. The #MyUncleGaveIt2Me went viral with people taking pictures of themselves outside giant houses or nice cars, most of which didn’t belong to them. It questioned the integrity of Dixon’s tweet as well as attracted the attention of an NCAA investigator. By the early afternoon, one recruiting website had a story up quoting a kid at the school who said he knew for a fact an Alabama booster gave the car to Dixon.

And Cal hadn’t written a single word about it, much less knew about it.

“I can get something on this for you,” Cal said.

“No! It’s too late for the world we live in. This isn’t the 1990s. Besides, I want you on a plane tonight. You’re gonna put some kind of story together—and then you’re gonna be covering the Hawks this weekend. Got it?”

Cal hung up and trudged back into the café. He texted Dixon and told him he couldn’t meet today and that he might not be back.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.