The Call

     "Yeah."
     "Hey, how's it going?"  It was Brice.  I let out a soft sigh in preface to my answer.
     "Not so great.  I'm not getting much but the feeling that there's something to be got.  It's like they have something they want to tell me but they're not sure themselves of what it is."
     "Question:  Have you been keeping track of which aliases you've used for individual interviews?"
     "Yup."
     "Write these down:  Burrows, Chandler, Grayson, Keane, Martins.."
     "You going to list them all?" I interrupted.
     "Almost done... Nelson, Peters, Simpson, and Valens."
     "Got it."
     "All dead.  All in the last four months."
     The hotel room walls blew away as a voluminous blackness both expanded and contracted around me, touching me with a cold clamminess and utter isolation.
     "How?" I barely managed to whisper.
     "Various ways.  Accidents."
     I cursed myself a million times as my mind raced.  I had been concerned about the well-being of any interviewees that talked to me but did I once worry about those whose identities I'd used? There was a reason that I had opted for real PIs but I couldn't think of what it was, now that the full onslaught of self-hatred had been unleashed.
     "Best to make sure that it's all worth it, in the end."
     And he was gone.