I rushed back to my office. John was elsewhere, which was good because I needed to concentrate on writing my article about Holt Everand. I had the jump on Carter Wilkins by a day and I was a primary source too. I needed to take advantage of this.
I found an email waiting for me from the Swan Agency. It contained two press releases, one on the untimely death of Holt Everand and the other about Zero Bend, a volatile artist who had nothing to do with the recent graffiti in Harlot Bay.
Both of the press releases were pure advertising and I decided to use none of it. Fusion Swan and his agency were clearly experts at media manipulation.
With that in mind, I headed out into ye olde Internet for some research. I admit, being a reporter isn’t as cool as it used to be. Secret meetings in underground parking garages, midnight rendezvous, and frantic car chases had all been replaced with the reporter sitting in front of a computer, tapping away at a keyboard. You see it all the time in movies. They add a fast-paced thudding song behind it, but there is just no way to make searching on the Internet as thrilling as a secret meeting in an old barn.
Firstly, Zero Bend. Alongside clips of him butter carving, ice carving, and stone sculpting were a thousand gossip sites following his every move. Zero Bend breaks up with Saskia! No last name, just Saskia. She looked vaguely familiar. Zero Bend in Drunken Brawl! Zero Bend Throws Girlfriend Out Third-Story Window!
I read through that one. A few months back, at the Russian Sand Carver International, Zero had allegedly thrown his girlfriend (another model, one-word name: Issa) out the window. They were staying on the third floor. She landed in the swimming pool and refused to press charges.
I kept reading Zero Bend stories, and they all shared a common theme: violence and aggression. He was constantly fighting with paparazzi, starting bar brawls, smashing expensive vases, or being found drunk and asleep in a child’s treehouse. In all the articles he was called a genius, brilliant, and amazing . . . but also drunk, violent, and obsessed. He’d once beaten up a carving festival organizer for not chilling the butter correctly.
The Bad Boy of Sculpting indeed.
His rivalry with Holt Everand popped up here and there. The thing with a guy like Zero was that he had about a thousand feuds going at any time. Apparently, he and Holt had come to blows in Tokyo after Zero carved a statue of Holt’s girlfriend—her face on the body of a pig. Holt had punched Zero in the face and they’d both been disqualified.
So . . . Holt and Zero come to Harlot Bay to compete, and Zero goes to the butter storage warehouse to check that everything is up to his high standards. He finds Holt is already there, an argument breaks out, he clobbers Holt with a hammer . . .
It was plausible. Both he and Holt were known to be perfectionists, so it was reasonable that they’d visit the warehouse to confirm everything would be correct. The tying-to-the-chair bit, though? The blood-bruise handprint and the missing blood—not so clear if Zero Bend did that.
I spent the next hour diving into the world of butter carving, stone sculpting and associated art forms (sand sculpting, jelly slicing, ice carving). It was definitely one of those things you have no idea is so big until you get into it. The prize money for some of these competitions was a million dollars. The sculptors would compete for money and prestige, and the winners were often commissioned to create art for major companies and rich people. A Wall Street investment firm had paid Zero $800,000 for a sculpture titled Dark Coin.
Zero Bend was a rich, genius, violent, drunken artist—but was he a murderer?
It was a question for another day. I had work to do, and if I wasn’t careful I’d spend a thousand years online. I printed off the photo of the black hole where Holt Everand should have been and stuffed it in my bag. I wrote a puff piece about the Butter Festival opening, which included my photos of Zero Bend’s incredible ice carving, and published it. Then I wrote a quick headline—Holt Everand, Butter Festival Competitor, Found Dead in Harlot Bay Warehouse—and typed like the wind, whipping up an article. It took me maybe half an hour of writing, and then I spent another half hour checking my work. It’s the story of a one-woman online newspaper: I’m a journalist, photographer, editor, publisher, salesperson, and every other job too.
It wasn’t perfect, but what writing is? You do your best and move on.
I published it to the front page of the Harlot Bay Reader and called it a day.