He didn’t see how the research he was doing would be considered off-limits to his story enough to push Deirdre to fire him, but the doubt must have shown in his face.
“You’re not even supposed to be here, Mullins,” the detective said. “Your participation is on the QT. No one outside of that room back there knows about you. And I doubt that you, as a professional journalist, would want your cooperation to be broadcast material either.”
Nick was about to say that he doubted that he was going to be employed as such by tomorrow, but held his tongue long enough for Hargrave’s phone to ring. He listened while the detective grunted some acknowledgments, picked up a pencil and gave two-word answers to whoever it was on the other end.
Nick looked around, as was his training, for family portraits or awards or plaques of recognition in Hargrave’s work area. Nothing. Not a sign of anything personal. He spun around in the chair. The other detective’s space was cluttered with softball trophies, photographs of what must be grandchildren and a prominently placed photo of a man and woman in their late fifties or early sixties, arms around waists, smiles on faces, Hawaiian leis around necks in a too-bright sun. Nick’s eyes went to the now-closed door and a map of the city that was taped to the back. He got up and took in the four red stars that had been placed on the nearest cross-streets of where the sniper’s victims had been shot. Hargrave had obviously lumped them together long before today. Nick was studying the map for some kind of pattern when Hargrave hung up.
“The SWAT team went in on commiekid’s apartment after they didn’t get a response and found the guy in the sack with his girlfriend,” Hargrave said. “His real name is Byron Haupt, if you can believe that one. He’s nineteen, a student at BCC and says he was at the library from seven to ten this morning working on some project. Said he uses the computer terminals there to send information to the other kids in his project group and maybe, just maybe someone could have had access to his e-mail account while he was away from the desk.
“Canfield went in with the team and flashed an old photo of Redman and the kid said he might have seen someone who fits the description, but he really doesn’t pay that much attention to other people unless they ‘get in his space.’ ”
Hargrave rolled his eyes at the last part and Nick waited for him to say, kids these days, but it didn’t come.
“They ran Haupt’s juvenile record and he’s clean. They’re going to make the kid sit tight, but at this point Canfield’s going on the assumption that Redman used the library terminal after the kid logged on. They’re going to interview the girl too just in case she used the boyfriend’s log-on, but it’s looking like a dead end.”
The two men sat in silence, but their thoughts were rolling around the same subject, the questions and scenarios spinning on such similar wavelengths they could have been having an unspoken dialogue.
“I don’t know, maybe he could be setting up on the secretary,” Nick said out loud.
“Pissed off at some sense of command, some buck-stops-here idea he got from Iraq? Somebody has to be responsible for what he saw over there,” Hargrave picked up. “God knows what a guy sees in those damned rifle scopes just before he pulls the trigger. I couldn’t do it.”
“But it goes out of his pattern, his M.O., as you guys call it.”
“No, you guys call it that, we just feed it to you,” Hargrave said, but his attempt at levity didn’t cut the mood.
“The man’s about retribution,” he finally said.
“So he blames a politician for Iraq?”
Hargrave put an eye on Nick. “Who else you gonna blame?”
Nick’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he automatically pulled it out. The readout on the screen gave just the main switchboard number for the newsroom, so it could be coming from anyone’s extension.
“Shit,” he said.
Hargrave stood up. “I’m not you, Mullins, but you gotta take that call sometime. Why not get it over with?” the detective said. “I’m going to get coffee, want some?”
“Black,” Nick said as Hargrave closed the door behind him.
On the fourth buzz Nick punched the answer button. “Mullins,” he said.
“Nick. You need to come in off the street,” Deirdre said, her voice unmistakable with a distinct commanding edge in it.
“I’m working a story, Deirdre,” Nick said.
She only hesitated a second. “Yeah? What story is that, Nick? The serial killer story? The story that matches up the ballistics on the sniper killings? Or the story that shows that an assassin is somehow connected to your byline?”
“I’m not sure where you get your wild imagination, Deirdre, but I wouldn’t say any of those stories is on my budget.”
Nick was scraping, trying to figure out if she was just guessing. None of the information about the ballistics or his byline list matches had been in his earlier pieces because he’d deleted it.
“Well, I know it’s not on your budget line because you haven’t filed one today, and that’s the first rule you’ve repeatedly broken, Nick. Secondly, don’t think for a minute that everything you write on our computers doesn’t belong to this newspaper and is available to those who have the clearance to see it, because that would be at your peril.”
Nick knew that the newsroom computer system was an open setup. Because of the direct production link, every PC was tied in to the next level of the chain. A reporter’s PC could be accessed by his editor. That editor’s by the copy desk. The desk by the printing facility.
They must have been monitoring him. Nick knew that every time a reporter hit the save button—and you did it all the time to keep from losing everything in a crash—the editors could read exactly what you were writing without asking. They were probably watching his screen while he was putting in his notes, before he deleted them. He suddenly felt like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. The thought did not scare him as it had the character in the old television serial, it only pissed him off.
“I want you in here, Nick. I’ve spent the day trying to cover for you, but I’m going to have to take you off this story if you can’t level with me. I saw what you wrote. I know what you’re chasing, but I can’t argue for your stand on this without you. ”
He so badly wanted to tell her to fuck off, but knew she didn’t deserve it.
“They’ll slap it up there in headlines, Deirdre. You know they will, even if it is all still speculation. It’ll be a command decision and you won’t stop them.”
The line was still open, but Deirdre wasn’t arguing.
“I’ll be in to pick up my personal items tomorrow,” Nick said. “Today, I quit.”
The second he pushed the off button he thought of his daughter, and then checked his watch. Carly would be home from school. Elsa gushing all over whatever art project she’d brought home. The television would go on, tuned to whatever kid thing was in vogue. There wouldn’t be any fighting now that she didn’t have her sister to share the decisions with. Not that Nick had ever heard the fighting. He’d never been home, just heard about it later in the evening.
Now unemployed, maybe he’d make up for it, find time to argue with her himself about watching ESPN or That’s So Raven.
Hargrave knocked, or maybe just bumped the door before he came in with coffee cups in either hand. Nick accepted one and looked into the dark swirling slick. There was a sheen of bean oil on top.
“Fresh,” he said.
“No such thing in a cop shop,” Hargrave said and then sat down in front of his computer and punched some keys. Nick sipped at the cup, saying nothing.
“OK,” Hargrave said with the only hint of surprise Nick had yet heard in the man’s voice. “You’ve got a better computer researcher over there than we’ve got here. The file is in.”
Hargrave printed out two copies of the newspaper list and ended up with a healthy stack. He handed one to Nick, then sat back in his chair. Nick immediately started to scan the first page and when he jumped to the second, H
argrave reached out and stopped him.
“Let’s do this one by one, if you don’t mind, Mullins. I’ve only been here a couple of years and a lot of these names are going to be completely foreign to me, so I want you to walk through them. Believe it or not, I might pick up on something that you could skip over.”
Nick conceded it made sense and went back to the beginning. Lori had printed out just the first or second paragraphs of first-day stories Nick had written on each person. The headers on the top of each story held the date of publication.
Bobby Andreson, the kid who shot a deputy when the off-duty officer tried to stop the twenty-one-year-old and his sidekick from boosting the chrome rims off a Cadillac.
“But when they tracked Andreson down, he did a murder-suicide, shot his partner and then himself. DOA at the scene,” Nick explained.
Stephen Burkhardt, killed a hooker down on South Federal. Went in for twenty-five to life.
“Doesn’t seem like the avenging kind of case unless Redman knew the girl,” Nick said.
“I’ll check him with DOC and see if he’s still in,” Hargrave said, making a mark on his sheet. “Pretty graphic stuff,” he said, continuing to read the story. “You see this body when it happened?”
“Yeah. Back then the road patrol deputies thought it was fun to have the print guys take a look. This girl was hacked into pieces and tossed into the Dumpster,” Nick said, moving on to the next name. Hargrave just looked at him, studying the side of his face.
Damalier, the casino boat operator that Susan caught the scoop on by photographing the guy’s license plate.
“Mob hit,” Nick said and they dismissed it.
By the fourth page they realized that Lori had sent the file in alphabetical order, not by year.
“Falmuth. I worked that one,” Hargrave said. “Scrap it. That guy died of AIDS while he was in lockup. Rapist. Deserved the worst and got it.”
Ferris was next on the list and both of them set his story aside.
It went on like that for two hours. Nick’s cell phone rang three times and he refused to answer after checking the number. Hargrave on occasion would be interrupted by a receptionist or a call directly into his office, which he answered with short affirmations or begged off because he had “something going right now.”
The Kerner story stopped Hargrave and when he asked about it, Nick filled him in.
“Did you call anyone in law enforcement up there to check it out?”
“Not yet,” Nick said, embarrassed that it had slipped his mind. “I’ll do it tonight.”
When they got to the last sheet, they found Lori had included only a name and a date and the charges against the arrested.
Robert Walker. Manslaughter. There was no bylined story.
“What’s this one?” Hargrave asked, flipping the page over to see if there had been a misprint on the back.
“Nothing,” Nick said, turning his head away, trying to hide the flash of anger in his eyes. Why the hell would she include that? “Not what we’re looking for. A DUI manslaughter case that got negotiated down. Doesn’t fit our guy at all.”
“OK,” was all Hargrave said and then he reshuffled his papers and set them down.
In the end they had narrowed the list to a dozen. Twelve possible targets if Michael Redman was truly judging and executing subjects of Nick’s stories who might be considered worthy of death.
“Look, I’ll run these through the DOC website, find out where these guys are, whether they’re even alive anymore. The ones who are on the street we’ll track down through probation and parole,” Hargrave said.
Nick nodded. It was the same thing he would do if he went back to the newsroom, where he would have access to most of the sites the cops had, with the exception of FBI links.
When Hargrave went back to his computer terminal, Nick did not move. After a few keystrokes the detective turned.
“You’re dismissed, Mullins,” he said.
Nick got up to go. “You’ve got my cell. Keep me in the loop, OK? That’s the deal, right?”
“Yeah. Go write your story,” Hargrave said without turning.
Nick stepped out of the tiny office and took a deep breath of the stale air-conditioning and left the building. He wasn’t writing stories anymore.
Chapter 27
When he walked in the front door of the house he had owned for nine years, the only family left looked at him simultaneously and then at their watches in dismay. The early hour, long before deadline, caught them off guard.
“Querido? Mr. Mullins. You are early!”
“Hi, Dad. How come you’re home?”
He put a smile on his face, the one that, if he really thought about it, he knew never fooled anyone.
“I’m here to see my girls,” he said, using a familiar phrase, and then quickly added, “Carly the Creative, and Elsa the Magician!”
The two looked at each other with a mix of humor and apprehension and waited until Nick crossed the floor and bent to kiss his daughter and said quietly, “I wanted to see you, pumpkin.” She accepted that and took his hand and led him to the sewing machine, where she was putting together her latest fashion project.
“See how cool?”
While she explained the intricacies of double stitching, Elsa hung near Nick’s shoulder, pretending to watch, but not too secretly smelling his breath. When she was satisfied that he was not drunk, she said, “I am going to do the dinner.”
Nick asked his daughter several questions about her technique and reasons for color choices and aspirations for the skirt she was making. It was like an interview for a lively little lifestyle feature. Carly kept giving him sidelong glances but eventually got caught up in her enthusiasm for the creation and went into great detail until Elsa called them to dinner.
While they ate, Nick turned out one of his favorite and long-memorized stories of building a fort with his best friend in the field behind his house when he was a boy. He described how it was three stories high in the shape of ever smaller plywood boxes and how they’d put hinged trapdoors in the floor of each to get from top to bottom. Rocket ship, battleship, Foreign Legion outpost—it was whatever they cared it to be with only a twist of imagination. Carly had heard the story many times, but her father’s enthusiasm in the retelling on this night made her laugh at the funny parts and groan at the hokey parts.
After dinner both Nick and Carly demanded to help Elsa with the dishes and then after they were done they convinced her to play a game of Pictionary with them. They sat around the kitchen table and with only three to play they were forced to rotate teams—Nick and Carly first, then Elsa and Carly. It had been a family favorite. But with Elsa’s partial knowledge of English and limited background in Americana, the game quickly became hilarious.
“No es donkey. Es un burro, si?”
She took the merriment in stride even when Carly doubled over in the kind of childlike laughter that is as pure as a jiggling bell. All of their sides were aching by the time someone finally won.
At bedtime Nick kissed his daughter on the forehead and tucked her in and as Elsa passed him in the hallway she whispered, “You are a good man, Mr. Nick.” He only nodded and found his way to the garage, where he searched out a hidden bottle of Maker’s Mark and in the dark silence formed his own whisper: “No, I am not.”
For the next two hours he sat out by the pool in turquoise light and drank the whiskey alone, thinking of the times his wife and he swam naked after the girls had gone to bed, of the arguments when their own bedroom door was closed, of the fragrance of her hair that he swore still hung in her pillow even after he tossed the sheets and cases in the trash bin months ago.
He poured another drink and when he put the bottle down, his cell phone chirruped as if the movement had set it off. He fumbled with it, punched the answer button and took a deep breath, about to curse who he figured to be someone from the paper again trying to rouse him. But before the words got out, Hargrave’s voice snapped out of th
e earpiece:
“Easy, Nick, easy, Nick, easy … Mr. Mullins,” he said, modulating his volume with each repetition.
Nick swallowed his words and held the phone closer. “Hargrave?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s alright. I’ve been bitched out enough on the phone to know what’s coming after that deep breath, Mullins. You OK?”
“Yeah,” Nick said softly. “OK.”
“Look, I ran the rest of those names and we need to talk,” Hargrave said, his voice kicking back to business mode.
Nick looked at his watch. It was almost two in the morning.
“Now?”
“Now.”
“Uh, alright,” Nick said. “Let me give you the address and—”
“I already have it,” Hargrave interrupted.
“Yeah? OK, then,” Nick said. He wiped at his mouth and tried to sound sober. “Come on over, I’ve got some of your favorite here.”
“Yeah, I can hear it,” Hargrave said. “I’ll be there in ten.”
Nick waited out at the end of his driveway, watching a constellation up in the Western Hemisphere that he had either just discovered for the scientific community, or he was drunk. He had to steady himself with a hand on his mailbox when the headlights of Hargrave’s car swept around the corner. When the detective got out, Nick explained that he did not want to wake his daughter and then led the way around the back, where they entered his pool area through a screen door. He had fetched another tumbler from the kitchen, and had also drunk two deep glasses of water to try to take the edge off the whiskey’s effects.
Hargrave scraped a patio chair across the flagstone and sat, angled with a sight line of the pool and darkness beyond. He picked up the bottle of Maker’s and poured himself a glass.
“You’re welcome,” Nick said as he retook his own seat.
Hargrave got the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. “Nice spot,” he said.
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