Death Prophets (Strange Gravities Book 3) by Steve Armstrong

Author:Steve Armstrong [Armstrong, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Alreadynotyet Books
Published: 2018-01-29T22:00:00+00:00

32

Felicia settled into her desk at the Poughkeepsie Journal. It was eleven in the morning and most other staffers at the paper were too engrossed in their own projects to care much about what she was doing. Her hair was still wet and her body was sore from another morning workout. For years, Felicia had consistently exercised at a local Pilates and Kickboxing studio, mainly for aesthetic and health reasons. But now, after the events at 13 Prospect Street, her workouts had become more like training sessions that prepared her for some looming, undetermined conflict.

As people around her click-clacked their keyboards and spoke on the phone, Felicia entered the archival database of the Journal. The paper’s efforts over the previous years to consolidate their old editions into electronic form saved her a trip to the bowels of the paper’s headquarters. Now, instead of hunting down boxes of old papers and leafing through pages (like in the really old days) or scrolling through microfiche (like in the not quite so old days), Felicia simply typed the name ‘George Oliver’ into the search engine and pressed enter. As always, there were more ‘George Olivers’ than she expected. But only one such hit was from an obituary from 1989.

Felicia clicked on the link and scanned through the obituary. It was your garden variety obit: no cause of death listed, Oliver impacted many with his life, plus a list of survivors, including a wife, two children, his mother, a sister, and a few other assorted relatives. Oliver died at 53—certainly young in a relative sense, but a little past the threshold when you assumed a variety of threatening conditions lurked right around the corner. Patricia Oliver was his widow.

The reporter whipped out her phone so she could pass the baton of information to the next runner. Matt Harrison answered her call.

“What do you got for me?”

“George Oliver’s wife is Patricia Oliver. Maiden name is Henry. Think you can track her down?”

“Please. Give me some kind of challenge.”

“Okay, let me know if you need any more information.”

Felicia placed her phone back on her desk and toggled the print command so she could have a physical copy of the obituary.

“Hey Felicia!” a peppy voice announced from behind her, making her jump in her seat a bit. She turned to see a man her height with a receding hairline and insipid smile.

“Hi, Mike,” Felicia said, not even attempting to force a smile. She should’ve known Mike Gaines would pay her a visit at some point during the day. He either carried some sort of undeclared affection for her or lacked the appropriate social protocols to avoid grating on her nerves; the end result of each possibility was the same.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

“Just doing a little research.” She turned back to her computer, hoping that Gaines would take the hint.

“Well, if you need any help, you know where to find me,” he said.

“Okay, thanks.” Felicia didn’t bother to make sure he left, trusting that if she ignored him long enough, he’d depart on his own.

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.