Raised on grits and eggs, born in a trailer park, high school dropout, with her first baby by fifteen, BillieJo Loggett had gone from single mother waitress to successful business owner to congresswoman. With her hand to mouth upbringing and real world business experience BillieJo could have shaken the rich boys’ club of Congress until it trembled. But instead of the poor man’s friend, BillieJo was just a garden variety vitriolic, narcissistic skin of evil. And Laney Speedwell took a great deal of pleasure in bringing about her downfall.

Perched on a wobbly stool in the printer room, Laney typed on her laptop. The Aurora Gazette had switched from private offices and a cubicle crowded bull room for its journalists to a open concept desk sharing nightmare. Ted French and the other big name columnists and reporters worked from home while the big names’ assistants and the byline jockeys battled each other for space like the thunderdome. Laney worked on her latest BillieJo Loggett article amongst stacks of copy paper.

On the Education beat, Laney used to cover local school board meetings. To keep up for student loan payments, Laney cleaned office buildings with her mother and aunties. Cleaning ladies always knew where the true dirt hid.

Because of old Miss Lucy from over at Clarke Middle School Laney learned that the Loggett twins had gotten very ill and spread COVID to teachers, staff and classmates. Apparently BillieJo’s businesses were super spreader sites. Laney’s expose on underaged drinking and lack of COVID protocols at The Rifleman made the front page and made the county issue a restraining order against the bar for public safety.

Soon followed stories on food poisoning at BillieJo’s chain of watering holes as well as employers not receiving wages. Laney had hoped to get assigned to bigger stories on workers’ right and universal health care. But her editor wanted sizzle not steak. Her sources continued to come to her. She received messages in texts, emails, notes slipped under her battered Honda’s windshield wiper. BillieJo like shingles was the gift that kept on giving.

The Lopez sisters who cleaned for Shooter City police department informed Laney that Tucker Loggett, BillieJo’s husband was picked up for indecent exposure and public drunkenness. Laney discovered that Sheriff Kane had hushed all the incident. That crime and the even more important coverup made the front pages. For her investigating, Laney got a state inquiry into police corruption and a cinder block thrown through her parked car’s window. She moved back to the trailer park with her folks for safety.

BillieJo, with her sassy cowgirl comebacks, was a media darling for the national press but in her western Colorado district of farmers and miners their congresswoman was dollar store lunchmeat. BillieJo’s re-election campaign was DOA. During Laney’s article series on the law and disorder candidate’s coverup, Laney’s folks’ trailer was firebombed. Luckily Crazy Pete put out the blaze and there was minimal damage. She convinced her parents to visit kin in Arizona.

Laney smuggled into unoccupied hotel rooms at the Hilton, Hampton Inn, Courtyard by Marrott, the Wyndham. In cleaning carts or dressed as staff she spent her night eating twenty dollar room service burgers and researching. Her stories caught the national interest. TikTok and morning news shows only focused on BillieJo’s more hilarious alternative facts. Colorado residents who appreciated a functional legislature weren’t laughing.

Laney uploaded her article comparing the congresswoman attacks on other politicians’ family members to her pleas for compassionate for her own son’s recent felonies to fact-checking. Her whole body sagged. Laney leaned on a box of 92 Brilliant White Recycled paper. She just wanted to go home, take a walk, drink hot coffee and read a book at a sidewalk cafe without worrying about one of BillieJo’s fans to take a pot shot at her.

Rolling her suitcase, Laney headed out of the printer room to meet up with Lupita to be snuck into another hotel. She would take a bath and eat dark chocolate. In front of the printer room there was a brass jacketed rifle cartridge. Her name was scrawled on the ammunition’s side in Sharpie.

With a plastic baggie from her jacket, Laney picked it up carefully and added the cartridge to others she had come across this week. She was working with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to identify the individuals making threats against her. Yawning, she thought how the growing list of people, including police officers, pastors, government officials, and a few Loggetts, was going to make another great story.