Play with Fire

chapter Twenty-Three

THE BRANCH REPORT is an online gossip column with delusions of self-importance. This undue self-regard has been fed by the fact that the publication very occasionally stumbles upon a story with actual news value, and breaks it hours before what publisher Frank Branch likes to call the “lamestream media.”

Mostly, the Branch Report consists of nothing more than links to items appearing in various “news” sites on the web – most of which are of the right-leaning variety. But occasionally, Frank Branch puts in an item that hasn’t appeared anywhere else in cyberspace – yet.

Walt Duran had barely spent the $100 fee that Branch had sent him through PayPal when this item appeared in the Branch Report:

Sources inside the Justice Department have revealed that “occult investigator” Quincey Morris, who was mysteriously freed from prison after facing a slew of federal charges stemming from the last RNC convention, has been hired by the FBI to investigate the series of fire bombings of churches and synagogues that have occurred over the last six weeks. Morris’s “partner,” one Elizabeth Chastain, calls herself a “white witch.” Maybe she can use some magic to keep Morris out of jail this time.

A great many people followed the Branch Report, some of whom would never have admitted as much publicly. One of its regular readers, who found the item concerning Morris and Chastain to be of great interest, was a man known as Theron Ware.