Silent City by Alex Segura

placing his hand on Pete’s shoulder and holding him for a second too long.
    “And, well, I still have to write you up. Company policy and all that. No hard feelings?”
    “Right,” Pete said, and walked out.
    Pete felt his hands scrounging through his pockets to prevent himself from lunging for Vance. At his desk, he pulled out a wrinkled coaster from the Abbey and the useless keys to Kathy’s apartment. Pete closed his eyes for a second. He could feel his breathing and the blood pulsing through him. Everything was coming apart, he thought. Everything was coming apart. He sat down and jammed his headphones onto his head.

Chapter Seven
    T he light clicking sound of his fingertips on the computer keyboard seemed louder as the Talking Heads live album in his headphones shifted from “Psycho Killer” to “Heaven.” The quiet break between David Byrne’s beat-box-fueled solo rendition of the first track allowed the sound of the newsroom to creep into Pete’s head. He felt some calm return to him as he realized the office was humming at a normal volume. The initial drama of the day had been momentarily forgotten and people were hard at work getting the paper out. Pete felt some relief that he wasn’t in charge this evening. He was happy to just be one of the editors, churning away at story after story and able to leave when the shift was over.
    It was midnight, and close to the end of his reduced workload. Vance had left around dinner, his dirty work complete. With his departure the staff seemed to loosen up, and Pete could almost forget that his career—what little was left of it—was on the ledge.
    Feeling a tap on his shoulder, Pete took off his headphones and turned around to find Mike leaning on his desk. They’d reached the end of the line for the night—all the pages were designed and only copy tweaks were left, meaning designers like Mike had very little to do. The perfect time for some newsroom socializing.
    “How you doing?” Mike asked, keeping his voice a little lower than usual.
    “Eh, fine,” Pete said. “It is what it is. I just need to cut down on mistakes, you know?”
    Mike nodded. “Yeah, you’ll handle your shit. You just can’t let people get to you.”
    Pete sighed and typed a quick response to the slot editor about the sidebar to the main baseball game story. The reporter had misspelled a player’s name. Pete quickly typed back the correct spelling for “Renteria.”
    “Yeah. That’s tough. I don’t want to rip on the guy. I just need to do my thing and know what will set him off.”
    “You seem distracted lately, though. You were almost an hour late.”
    Pete wheeled his chair around. “I had stuff to do.”
    Mike raised his arms in mock surrender. “I’m just saying you were late. That probably didn’t help your cause.”
    “Nah, it didn’t,” Pete said. “I had to do some stuff. I only have time to run errands before work.”
    “Since when do you run errands before work? You’re usually sleeping off the night before.”
    Pete couldn’t help but laugh. A dry, empty laugh. It was true. He didn’t like it, but it was true.
    “Well, I told Chaz I’d look into this Kathy business, so I did.”
    ‘So, you’re actually doing this thing? I thought you’d sleep that off, too.”
    Pete looked up at Mike and sighed. He didn’t feel the need to respond. His fuse was short tonight, and the last person he wanted to go off on was his best—and probably only—friend.
    Mike folded his arms and looked around the newsroom. Sports was the last section to go to press, and the building was slowly emptying out.
    “I don’t like it.”
    Pete shrugged and turned back to his computer. The word was out—the slot editor had messaged everyone to alert the newsroom that sports was sent and ready to go.
    “I get you don’t like it,” Pete said. “It’s a distraction. Once I convince Chaz Kathy’s missing, he’ll take it to the police. It’s pretty clear she’s not on some