The editor laced her fingers and cocked her head, just so.
"I think this version is a bit punchier, Nick."
"Punchy? Christ, Deirdre," he said, losing it again. "This was a domestic murder-suicide. The guy used an old Colt revolver and a shotgun for bird hunting, not an AR16.
"He fought in Vietnam thirty goddamn years ago! You think I didn't look it up? He was honorably discharged. The guys down at the VA clinic never heard of him. None of the VFW support groups did. His neighbors had known him forever. The city employed him for the last dozen years and then fired his entire department. He wasn't some psycho dressed in camouflage creeping the suburban hedges for North Vietnamese regulars. He got downsized and lost it. Why put in that veteran of Vietnam stuff? You guys love that knee-jerk shit. This had nothing to do with Vietnam or his military record."
This time he flipped the paper back onto her desk.
The city editor just looked over her folded hands at him, eyes still bright, eyebrows still high like they'd been painted on in the happy department at Mattel. She never argued with reporters. The newsroom was not for arguing anymore.
"Was Mr. Madison," she said, looking at the paper, "a Vietnam veteran?"
Nick said nothing.
"Was he armed with two guns?"
He stayed silent, knew what was coming.
"Did the authorities attribute the killings to him?"
This time she waited.
"Yeah," he said.
"Then we printed the truth, Nick. You can ask the staff attorney upstairs. That's our obligation."
He bit the inside of his cheek, working to keep his mouth shut, when one of the assistant news editors stuck his head inside the door and said, "Excuse me for intruding. Uh, Nick, we got a shooting over at the jail. We gotta get you out there. Somebody said it might have been some kind of escape attempt."
Nick nodded and looked back to the city editor.
"Death calls," he said, turning to go.
"Nick," she said, stopping him as he started through the door.
"Yeah."
"Larry Keller called me this morning from over at the courthouse," she said, lowering her eyes, her voice going quiet. She wasn't good at being emotional. "He told me that Robert Walker was released early from the Lee County road prison last week."
When she looked up it was Nick who turned his face away.
There was a tightening of lips, a clench in jaw muscle that he knew could transform his face into a portrait of anger, frustration and guilt all at once. He'd seen it in the mirror after Keller had called him first with the news as a courtesy.
"I'm sorry, Nicky," Deirdre said.
Nick took a couple of deep breaths, through his nose, not wanting her to notice. He knew sympathy was not her strong suit, and it wasn't in him anymore to accept it. People in the newsroom knew about the deaths of his wife and daughter. They knew that he had been sent as a breaking news reporter to cover yet another fatal car wreck, only to arrive at the scene and recognize his own family van. They never brought it up. He never brought it up.
"Do you need some time off?" she said. "A couple of days?"
"I had a year off, Deirdre," Nick said, sounding sharper than he meant to. "I need to get back to work."
"That's what I thought," she said and then turned back to her screen, dismissing him with her shoulder.
Nick stopped at the open door, shook his head and let a grin pull at the side of his mouth. He turned back, unwilling to let her get a leg up on him.
"That lead change still sucked," he said. The city editor just raised her hand and flicked at him with her extended fingers. The South Florida Daily News city room is a huge expanse of open space divided only by waist-high partitions. From above it must look like one of those rat mazes. Nick figured the idea of offices without walls was to elicit both a sense of personal space and open communication and camaraderie. Shared goals and all that. The designers probably didn't figure in the nascent e-mail culture. Now most of the gossip and innuendo and communication happened on the wires that ran through the ceiling and connected to every computer. Reporters never massed at the coffee machine or at one guy's desk to discuss strategy or to make fun of some management decision to create a "shopping mall reporter" position. Now everyone kept their heads down and whispered through the wire. Scorn to the guy who stood up and voiced an opinion out loud. The heads were particularly low as he left the city editor's office, a sure sign the others had heard his voice bombing the boss, some with embarrassment, a couple with pride and a few more hoping he'd get canned so they could apply for his crime beat. By the time he made it back to his pod, an assignment editor was already waiting for him.
"Nick, you probably ought to get over to the jail. They're saying a guard was shot by some inmates trying to break out."
"Yeah, I heard," he said, sitting down at his desk and picking up the phone. When the guy nodded and walked away, Nick waited until he was gone and then put the phone down. He pushed his chair back and pulled his wallet from his pocket and flipped it open to the photograph. His girls. The twins when they were still in elementary school, ribbons of different colors in their hair. His wife, smiling, like only she could, long ago, before that look of pure happiness in their marriage began to fade. His eyes blurred, only for a second. Deirdre knew Walker was the man driving the car that killed Nick's family, and the visage of the man strolling free in the streets rose in his head and Nick snapped the wallet shut. "You won't just walk away," he whispered and took out his own cell phone.
Nick punched in the cell number of the sheriff's communications desk sergeant, whom he had known for years. They always spoke cell to cell, both of them wary, and both of them knowing that their organizations could easily track their calls in and out of their respective buildings. Nick never wanted to put his sources at risk, or let his own people know what he knew until it was time.
While he waited, a photo editor hurried up to his desk. "Nick, you going over to the jail? We got a photographer over there already who was staking out some perp walk. Now we hear they've got an officer down and the guards are beating the hell out of the prisoners who are trying to heist a van in the sally port."
"Yeah," Nick said, waiting for the sergeant to click on his cell phone. The editor nodded and hustled away. Nick was shaking his head. News was always nothing but gossip until you checked it out, but even the so-called professionals were still human and loved that need to know something first and then go spread it. The chirping in Nick's ear stopped.
"Yo, Nick. A little slow on the uptake these days, heh?" Sergeant Jim Langford's voice announced on the other end of the line.
"Hey, Sarge," Nick said. He'd never blocked the caller I.D. on his cell, wanting his contacts to choose whether to answer or not. It always gave them the option of an unspoken No comment.
"What's jumping? The rumors are flying that one of your own might have been wounded over at the jail."
"Shit, Nicky. Would I sound so bright and bushy-tailed if it was one of ours? Hell, no. Somebody made a hit on some pervert who was being transferred in for court. Prisoner was dead before he hit the ground, from what I hear."
"No shit?" Nick said, scratching down Langford's words on an empty notepad in front of him. "The word rolling through here was that a guard got hit."
"Ha! Donny Strock was standing right next to the guy and caught a little blood splatter, but according to the boys down there, the shooter got what he wanted, one clean head shot, and that was it."
"Where was it, Jim?" Nick said, trying to see the scenario in his head. He was familiar with the layout of the jail and the attached courthouse. "This wasn't some kind of Jack Ruby thing, was it?"
"No. No. It was outside, Nicky. Just as they were walking this asshole up the steps to the rear intake door. The security gate back there was already closed. It was a long-distance shooter is what the guys said."