Hard Press: The Evie Black Files Read online

  Hard Press

  The Evie Black Files

  Adam Nicholls

  Copyright © 2018 by Adam Nicholls

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  [email protected]

  For Charlotte.

  Always.

  Black Out

  Case File 1

  Chapter One

  Even in his unconsciousness, he had heard his family’s screams. They were shrill, terrified cries of panic and seemed to last forever. But when the hammer came down to strike them, they silenced instantly, like turning off a loud movie.

  Calvin Durant, fatigued and dizzy, sat up slowly. His eyes were stubborn to open, as if they knew about the disturbing scene they were due to witness. When he could finally see, however, there was nothing short of panic.

  In his hand lay a hammer, a thick coat of blood dripping from the once shiny claw. It had trickled down the grip, covering his hand like a scarlet glove. Calvin looked down at his feet, still adjusting to his sleepy, dreamlike state.

  But this was no dream.

  His mouth widened in an O of horror, a soundless scream frozen on his face. Across the kitchen from where he lay clutching the murder weapon was Sadie—the Good Wife Sadie. Everything You Could Ever Ask for in a Woman Sadie. Everything, presumably, save for a pulse.

  “Honey?” Calvin croaked, dropping the hammer and crawling across the floor. “Sadie, honey, speak to me.”

  Curled up in a fetal position in the doorway, her back facing him, Sadie remained motionless. There was blood in her hair—he could see that now—and he could feel his world turning upside down as he observed the trauma to her skull.

  Calvin was on her now, wrapping an arm around her and holding her like he used to do in bed. How did this happen? This wasn’t me. He glanced across the kitchen at the hammer, then at the blood on his hands. This couldn’t have been me… I could never have… Could I?

  He turned then, and something even worse caught his eye.

  “Oh no. No, it can’t…” Calvin didn’t want to look, but he simply couldn’t help himself. Once more he began to crawl, careful not to further harm the lifeless body of his high school sweetheart, and maneuvered into the hallway.

  It was exactly as he had feared.

  Emma Durant, five years old and full of love, seemed to have suffered the same fate. Try as he might, Calvin couldn’t get his head around why somebody would want to do something so awful to such a sweet, young girl. In spite of appearances, he just couldn’t imagine that he had been the one to do this.

  But then, what had really happened?

  All he could remember was arguing with Sadie—something stupid about money, as usual—and then the briefest memory of her turning her back on him. After that, he had stumbled to the floor, and Sadie had turned to help him. Was that the order of things?

  Calvin turned and looked around at the kitchen. Was his brain making up for his state of unconsciousness? Had he really done this? He didn’t think so—he loved his family more than anything else in the world.

  Suddenly, the front door burst open, and three people swarmed in. Calvin looked up and, although still dizzy, could just about recognize one of the men as his neighbor, Steve. In the past, they had occasionally played poker together and fed each other’s cats when one of them was on vacation. But now was a different story. Now, Steve was pinning him down, and a woman behind him was saying, “Police, please.”

  That was all Calvin could remember before he blacked out again. And in the closing moments before his life changed forever, he could see Sadie’s smile, Emma riding her bike with the pink training wheels.

  And then he heard the sirens.

  Chapter Two

  Six months later

  Evie Black (or Evelyn, if you wanted to see her scowl) was finally settling in to New York. It was her fourth week in the city and her second week on the job. If she were totally honest with herself, she would have been at least a little thankful to have even found a job at a magazine house. But spending all day making coffee for other journalists? No, thank you.

  Not so long ago she had been a journalist herself—an independent blogger, yes, but a journalist nevertheless. Things had worked well for her, working alongside her brother, the private investigator. But like all good things, it had eventually run its course. Evie had dreamed of a new life, and where better to start than New York City?

  On this particular spring Tuesday, when the air was just beginning to introduce humidity, Evie pushed open the door with her backside and pulled the cart into the boardroom. The china on the tray rattled, the coffee nearly spilled, and still, nobody paid the slightest bit of attention.

  “One day at the most,” said a woman at the table, which ran the length of the room with people at either side. The head of the company, millionaire Conan Reed, sat on the end, nodding his head and holding a finger to his lip. “If it doesn’t come in time, then we can move on to the harbor story.”

  “Excellent,” Conan said. “And you?”

  As each member of staff explained themselves, Evie moved around the table. Quickly and quietly, she placed a china mug in front of each person and leaned into the center of the table to leave the coffeepots. It was her job to be invisible while doing this, and she liked to think that she was getting good at it. This wasn’t exactly how she had pictured her new life, but it gave her a front-row seat to the modern publishing industry.

  “One more column to fill,” Conan announced, moving his arm off the table to make room for the mug. “Who wants it?”

  Evie straightened herself out, took the cart, and headed for the door. She couldn’t help but notice the silence that filled the room and even stole a look over her shoulder. Everybody at the table sat looking at each other, wondering who would take on the responsibility. Nobody did.

  “Come on, somebody must want it,” Conan insisted.

  The uncomfortable silence remained, however, and Evie stood at the door with her fingers tapping nervously on the handle. She knew that it wasn’t her place to say anything, but what if this was her chance? What if this was God extending an olive branch as a way of apologizing for the past few years?

  Conan Reed sighed, fidgeting with his cufflinks. “I’ll have to start—”

  “I’ll do it,” Evie blurted. As soon as she did, she regretted it.

  Laughter erupted around the table, and although there were one or two people nice enough to try hiding it behind their hands, it was no less humiliating.

  “The coffee girl wants a job,” one of the men said, snickering. Evie recognized him as Troy Bukowski, Pulitzer winner of 2010. He was handsome, too, in a cheesy Prince Charming sort of way, but he seemed to know it. “If this falls through, you could always promote her to distributing pastries.”

  Everybody laughed at that. Evie felt her face redden.

  Conan, however, didn’t say a word. He hadn’t joined in with the laughter, but he hadn’t had the decency to look at her, either. All he did was stare down at the table, deep in thought.

  Evie couldn’t take it anymore. Leaving the cart where it was, she passed through the door as fast as possible. She could never come back here now. Not after that. All she had wanted was to get her foot back in the door of the journalism trade,
and it had backfired.

  Before anyone could stop her and ask where she was going, Evie entered the elevator and slammed the heel of her hand into the buttons. Never in her life had she been so embarrassed, and for something as simple as offering her skills.

  Chapter Three

  The doors sprung open and Evie stormed out into the lobby. She was red-faced and on the verge of tears. People were staring, but she found peace in the fact that she would never see them again.

  Suddenly there were footsteps padding quickly along the marble, and somebody was shouting her name. It echoed through the lobby like the halls of a hospital. For a moment, people stopped, but soon resumed their business as they realized there would be no drama unfolding today.

  Evie stopped and turned, spotting Conan Reed jogging toward her. What could he possibly say now that wouldn’t make her feel more like a fool? Realizing there was nothing, she simply rolled her eyes and continued toward the door.

  “Miss Black, please.” He finally caught up to her, placing a hand on the glass door and preventing her from opening it. “I wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

  “I’m not okay,” Evie said. It was louder than talking but quieter than shouting—enough to make her point known. Besides, it wasn’t like she could lose her job, so shouldn’t she stand up for herself? “That was all different kinds of humiliating, and not a single person came to my defense. If that’s the kind of company this is, I’d rather not be a part of it.”

  She tried the door again, but Conan was far stronger than he looked. “I can’t apologize enough, but maybe giving you the column would be a good way to start.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s yours, Miss Black.” Conan let go of the door and looked right at her. His features were subtle, but his eyes were a sharp blue. He had a trustworthy face, and even male-pattern baldness seemed to suit him. “If you think you can fill it, the column is yours.”

  It took every ounce of her willpower to keep from telling him to get lost. Ever since she was a teenager, she had molded her morals into a strict guideline and followed them to the letter. However, it had never gotten her where she’d needed to be, and now that an opportunity had come knocking, she could at least consider betraying herself for a moment.

  “I really am sorry that this happened to you,” Conan said.

  Evie nodded her head, snapping out of her thoughtful trance. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “Great.” Conan breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back from the door, grinning. “Well, the theme is injustice. Strictly for balance, we want to show a side of New York where people can be misled by the media.”

  “But we are the media,” Evie said, feeling it was too soon to use the word we.

  “Indeed. Look, almost every story in the past year has been about war, terrorism, and all other forms of violence. If we can, we need to stick with that subject. But ideally, we would stop people from pointing the blame at somebody and simply realize what was lost. Too often we’re told to hate this person and that person because of what they did. But when do we ever take the time to step back and remember what’s been lost? We never form our own opinions anymore, and we need to address that.”

  As well as experiencing newfound respect for Vision Magazine and its chief, Evie was intrigued by the angle. “It’s strong, but risky.”

  “Yep.”

  Evie looked down at her shoes, tapping her toes and mulling it over. “How long?”

  “Ten days, max.”

  Wow. That was barely long enough to get the story, much less write it and do it well. But it was that or making coffee for a tableful of assholes, and she wasn’t about to get back on that path. “Fine. Leave it with me.” Evie pushed open the door, stopping briefly. “And Conan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If you had taken the time to Google me, you would know that you’re not taking too big a risk.” With that, she let go of the door and let it swing shut behind her. She had made an offer, been handed a job, and now she had to prove herself. Which, she thought, would have been a lot easier if she knew what the hell she was going to write about.

  Chapter Four

  After his arraignment had failed to help him, Calvin Durant sat in his cell with his knees to his chest and his hands covering his eyes. He was being treated like a killer. Hell, it may even be that he was a killer, but that was no easier for him to digest.

  No matter how many times he pictured his wife and daughter, there was always a dark stain of blood oozing from their skulls. It was a horrific sight to behold, but it could have been that this was his punishment. And as if that wasn’t punishment enough, nobody would come to visit him, either. Everyone who had ever trusted him was either dead or disgusted with him. The only certain thing was that he was utterly alone.

  It was enough to make even Calvin start to wonder if he had done it. Anything could have happened during his blackout, and all the clues pointed at his guilt: the hammer, the blood, the fact that nobody else was in the house. The only thing missing, in fact, was a motive.

  Interrupting those dark thoughts, the door clunked open. Detective Little—who was anything but—entered and looked at Calvin like he was something he’d stepped in. It was the same man who had arrested and escorted him to the jail. And being that he was a six-foot-something black homicide detective with a threatening snarl, Calvin hadn’t dreamed of resisting.

  “What are you doing here?” Calvin asked.

  “I pulled some strings. Come with me, Mr. Durant,” Little said, reaching forward and taking him by the elbow.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You don’t get to ask the questions.”

  “But I’ve made my case. You have no right to—”

  “Shut up.”

  Calvin recoiled. Neither of them said a word as they walked through the narrow white corridors. Calvin was eventually shown into a gray visitation room, and it was exactly how they always looked in the movies—dark, dull, and with hooks in the floor for shackles. It was the room where most people would break down.

  “Take a seat. I’ve got some more questions for you. Your story isn’t adding up, dirtbag.” Detective Little closed the door and sat on the far side of the table. He seemed adamant to give not so much as a glance to Calvin Durant. Instead, he just looked down at the files in his hands and flicked through them, preparing himself for the interrogation. It was as though he could happily lock a man away and then carry on with his life while some guy, innocent or not, was stuck behind bars until he died.

  It doesn’t look like he wants to hear a damn thing I have to say. Calvin sat tense in his chair, wondering what was happening and thinking desperately about how he was supposed to convince someone that he wasn’t a murderer. Especially when he couldn’t even convince himself.

  Chapter Five

  The sun was an orange line of brightness on the horizon, a natural reminder that she hadn’t slept. She’d been up all night in her crappy apartment, looking in every dark corner of the internet for a story that might be worth reporting.

  Of course, it was just her luck that it was all trash. Everything had been used and reused. That might have been enough for your everyday reporter, but not for Evie. She needed something concrete. Something new that grabbed Conan by the balls and said, “Hey, buddy, look at me.”

  It was time for a break. She was a hot mess, and her eyes were sore from looking at the screen for so long. She needed air. A wander around the city and a hot dog for breakfast could be just what she needed.

  As she walked the streets, Evie found it tough to familiarize herself. New York was totally unlike San Francisco, where she had grown up. Here, she still felt like an outsider, like a nerdy little alien who wasn’t welcome. She even considered a fresh look. Doing away with the Clark Kent glasses and black hair might do her some good. Contacts and bleach, however, were quite the stretch when you had no money t
o pay for them.

  In Central Park, Evie found a coffee stand and decided to treat herself. She stood to one side with her hands around the cup and her nostrils hanging over the coffee, not letting a single whiff of caffeine go to waste. She watched the joggers doing their laps, the businessmen cutting through the park on their way to work. She closed her eyes and listened to the chitchat of those passing by. She focused and heard…

  “Murdered?” It was a man’s voice, surprised.

  “Yep. With a hammer, no less.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there to see it myself.”

  “No.”

  “Yep.” There was even a hint of pride in this one’s voice. This was the type of person that made Evie sick, but her ears were pricked all the same. “I heard the screams and burst in. There they were on the floor, blood everywhere. But that was a long time ago, man.”

  Evie opened her eyes, studied the men (who were both dumpy and looked like they couldn’t be trusted to hold your wallet), and listened closer.

  “I just can’t believe it,” the first man said, shaking his head. “I’ve known the guy since we were kids. He wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

  “Shows how much you know, dummy.” He jolted a finger forward and made a farting noise. They both laughed in raspy, twenty-a-day chuckles and half-heartedly wrestled each other. It looked like the discussion was over.

  But not for Evie.

  “Who are you talking about?” she asked, stepping away from the coffee cart.

  The men looked at each other before the chubbier guy answered. “Calvin Durant. Why, you know him?”

  Evie shook her head.