ATLANTA GEORGIA
7th March 2022

VINCE

"What shall you be having?" A curvaceous blonde waitress with the waist of a wasp asked. She had on that smile that most waitresses think passes for customer service but Vince knew was crammed. They probably taught it during orientation.

As Vince leafed through the menu of The Meat House (yes, that's what it was called), he knew instantly that he could not order anything to eat unless he wanted his wife to rise from the dead and beat him black and blue. Clara had been a stalwart health freak. She was probably tormenting the unhealthy souls in the afterlife as we speak. She hadn't eaten fastfood, hadn't consumed any sugar (she used expensive organic honey instead), hadn't eaten meat and only ate food measured meticulously in calories. Because of this, Vince didn't eat a lot of things as a show of allegiance to Clara's memory. Meat was still a part of his diet albeit in moderation. Vince contemplated ordering a bacon sandwich but thought of the calories in that sandwich and reconsidered.

"A diet Coke will do."

The waitress flashed that customer service smile again, tucked her pen into her shirt pocket emblazoned with The Meat House logo -which was really just a slab of meat with eyes and huge red lips- and left. Vince tried not to watch the waitress's ass jiggle in her Velcro black skirt. There was something hypocritical in making a waitress wear skimpy clothing as a uniform. Especially in a place that served alcohol. If it was their choice then yeah, sure, let them wear whatever they want. But you cannot be in the age of women's rights and say that it is wrong for women to be used as sex objects, then sexualize them just to make a profit. For Christ's sake, Vince could almost see half of the waitress's left butt cheek in that skirt.

A woman at the table just across his was staring at him rather obviously. Vince was used to being stared at. There were many reasons for people -especially white people- to stare at him. First off, he was a black man. Add that to his six feet six-inch height and he was a novelty. Her eyes narrowed and Vince realized with a start that she was not staring at him because of his physical appearance. She was trying to pin where she'd seen him before. It would not be long until she recognized him from one of the news stories about his wife. Five years later, the journalists still had not left him alone. Her face clouded over with pity and Vince was instantly furious.

The woman stood up with her two little girls and for a moment, Vince thought she was going to come and talk to him, to say something cliche and stupid and so fucking annoying like I'm really sorry for your loss or It's sad what happened or how are you getting on without her? Or maybe she would be unknowingly mean about it as some of his friends and co-workers had been. Vince breathed a sigh of relief when she walked past him and left, dragging her girls along with her.

Vince wanted to leave, to escape back home and climb into his bed, under the covers, and sleep until he died. He didn't like the way people who recognized him looked at him as though he was some kind of fucking charity case; oh, poor guy. He saves everyone else but he couldn't save his own wife. What a shame.

Then there were the people at work. Their pity was the worst. They talked about him behind his back. He'd heard them a few times. They called him mad because he kept spouting conspiracy after conspiracy about his wife's death. Maybe that was what grief did; it made you mad. They had reported him to his boss because they were so damn concerned about him and he'd been made a police liaison which was really just a polite demotion. Even his stellar achievements in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had ceased to matter at that point because his boss -and everyone else at work- had all but said he was unhinged. Vince's hands started to shake and he squeezed them between his thighs. He was not unhinged.

Breathe in. Hold. One, two, three. Breathe out.

It was 8:12 a.m. meaning that the person he had come to meet was twelve minutes late. The Meat House was supposed to be a neutral location but Vince was starting to think it was not as neutral as the guy had made it seem. Vince didn't like people who weren't punctual.

Vince opened his Snapchat (just to pass the time) and tapped Quinn's story. She'd posted another video of her year-old baby girl, Princess. There was some irony in Quinn naming her daughter Princess and Vince knew that was what Quinn had been going for when she chose that name. Princess was slapping dough in a bowl with her pudgy fingers, a huge smile on her face, her red glitter dress covered in flour. The video was captioned, At least there's a baker in the family. Vince burst out laughing, the sound feeling alien and a little off-key even to his own ears.

A message came in from his sister, Jessie, asking him -no beseeching him- to call their mother. Vince knew he would not call her. Not today. Not anytime soon. He blocked his sister and put his phone screen down on the table. Vince couldn't just forgive his mother for what she'd done. She'd turned on him and cast him out in the wake of Clara's death as if he had not gotten enough of that from his peers.

The waitress from before came back with his Coke in a glass held on a wooden tray. She placed it on the table without looking at him.

"Will you be having anything else? I recommend the-"

"No thank you. The Coke is just fine." Vince clearly remembered saying that the Coke would do. He should have known that The Meat House would not be content without him ordering some meat.

The waitress huffed and left just as a white slightly overweight man with dreadlocks entered. He was nonchalantly dressed in grey sweatpants, white sneakers and a striped short sleeved shirt that exposed an intricate tattoo pattern that coiled around his beefy arm. He looked like he'd just gotten out of bed. This was the man he was supposed to be meeting? Vince had expected someone more... corporate, someone less casual.

"The name is Myles. With a Y." He offered his hand and Vince shook it.

"Vince. Vince Gilligan."

Myles sat down. He snapped his hand in the air like an aristocrat and another female waiter -same Velcro skirt- came and took his order for a beef burger with extra mayonnaise, extra mustard, extra ketchup, extra cheese, extra everything. Vince was appalled, considering it was only eight in the morning. How could Clara work with a guy who clearly had no regard for his own health? Myles saw Vince looking at him. His face must have given him away because Myles smiled.

"Clara tried and failed with me. She couldn't get me to give up anything remotely unhealthy. She succeeded with the booze and I can say that is as far as anyone has ever gone."

Vince smiled. "Right. So, you were her cameraman?"

"No. Not exactly. I studied journalism. I was supposed to be her trainee. And then her cameraman quit. Something about greener pastures. I took up the opportunity. And I've been a cameraman for journalists since. I worked with Clara until... until she died. I quit after that. Couldn't handle working for someone else. Felt a lot like adultery."

Vince took a long sip of his drink. Myles stared at his glass, a smile on his lips.

"Clara got to you, too, huh?"

Vince forced himself to laugh because he could tell Myles was trying to be funny. "Yeah. She was always relentless when it came to such things. She was always trying to convert people to her lifestyle."

"Like a Jihadist without the Allah Akbar and the violence." Myles laughed.

Myles put his hands on the table and Vince noticed that his nails were painted black. Vince was about to make the uncanny mistake of blatantly asking him about his nails when Myles' burger came. Myles bit into it and the extra everything dripped out from the burger onto the plate. He looked at his shirt and smiled with relief. He had not stained it. Yet.

"So let's get down to why we are here." Myles leaned in so close that Vince could see the lines around his eyes and mouth. "Two weeks ago, a crime junky that goes by the initials R.A posted on his or her website that he -or she- saw Samantha Carmichael attend the Atlanta Film Festival in 1981."

Confused was an understatement. Vince was befuddled. "Huh?"

Myles stopped, looked at him, plucked up a napkin, cleaned his lips. "You don't know about the Samantha Carmichael case? What kind of a cop are you?"

Vince wasn't exactly a cop but he was not going to go into the semantics of his job with Myles. "I know about the Samantha case. Everyone at this point does. I just don't see how it is tied to Clara and her death."

"So she didn't tell you?"

"Didn't tell me what?" Vince could feel irritation rising like sour vomit in his gut. Myles was running circles around him and frankly speaking, Vince was tired of spinning.

Myles pushed his chair forward, suddenly serious like he was getting ready to explain the Greek alphabet to a baby and he was determined that they would understand. "Alright. I'm going to start from the beginning."

"Please do."

"The year Clara died, she was supposed to work on a documentary for the Atlanta Film Festival. The organisers were giving the station a lot of money and Clara was gonna get a big paycheck from this project. Clara didn't care about the money. I'm sure if she could have worked for free, she would have. Anyway, Clara researched extensively on the Festival and, naturally, she came across the Samantha Carmichael case. Just like you said, Clara was relentless and finding out what happened to Sam became her passion. I don't know about what she did to find Sam because she did it outside work hours. But she met up with someone the day she died. I don't know where, but she texted me saying that she had met up with someone called Jae. I tried to get her to tell me more but she didn't reply. The next day, I found out she was dead.

Vince was suddenly in disbelief. "Why are you only telling me this now? Why didn't you tell this to the police back then?"

"Because I thought Clara was bluffing! I didn't believe that there was something sinister behind the Sam case. I thought she was cooking up another conspiracy and I wouldn't have changed my mind if I hadn't seen that crime junky article about Sam attending the Atlanta Film Festival."

Myles took four big bites of the burger and it disappeared. "Look, I don't know if I am right. But I really think I am. I know Clara found something. Something that someone has kept hidden for many years and they killed her for it. I don't mind if you believe me or not. But it's something worth looking into."

Vince watched Myles push his chair back, pull out a twenty, slap it on the table and leave. He felt something inside him unfurl as though a really difficult knot had finally begun to yield. All these years of nothing and now he had something. He had Samantha Carmichael and he had mystery Jae. He could start from there.