While Nick was passing his driver's license and newspaper I.D. through the bulletproof glass at the admittance office, he said, "So, you gonna give me a clue here as to what's going on, Joel?"
"I can't say that I even have a clue," Cameron said, still not looking Nick in the eye. "If Hargrave wanted to leak something to you, Nick, he should've just called you on the phone like the rest of your sources do."
Yeah, Nick thought, Cameron's pissed.
When the officers inside the security fishbowl passed a temporary I.D. back at Nick, he clipped the badge onto his shirt pocket, listened for the electronic click of the lock on the adjoining door and then followed Cameron into the main offices. They immediately took a right and got onto an escalator rolling up to the second floor. When did they start putting escalators into police headquarters? Nick thought as they rose. The world, my man, has changed.
At the end of a hallway that Nick knew led to the executive offices, Cameron stopped and hesitated at a door just shy of the double entrance to the sheriff's own suite. He carefully knocked twice and then entered, again holding open the door so that Nick would have to walk through first. Nick quickly recognized the room as the conference area where he had once conducted an interview with the sheriff during an election year. Nick had always hated politics, but, as the senior police reporter, it was in his job description to cover the sheriff's race. The only redeeming aspect was that the assignment only had to be done once every four years.
The room was dominated by a long, polished maple conference table and at the other end sat Hargrave and a sheriff's lieutenant Nick recognized as head of special operations. Against the wall behind them stood a middle-aged man whom Nick judged to be a lawyer by the cut of his suit and tie. He had a file opened in his hands and did not look up as they entered, never a good sign, Nick thought. It was Cameron's job to make introductions.
"Gentlemen," he began, a slight catch in his throat. "Mr. Mullins is here as requested. Mr. Mullins, this is Lieutenant Steve Canfield."
Canfield stood up as Nick worked his way down the length of the table on the side opposite Hargrave and offered his hand.
"I believe we've met," he said, "at one news conference or another."
Nick had had few dealings with Canfield but respected him. He had started as a street cop and rose to be commander of the department's SWAT operations and then implemented the first community policing program as a captain in a rough neighborhood in the northwest section of the county.
"It was actually during a training exercise at the abandoned Margate hospital when you were running SWAT, sir," Nick said, shaking the lieutenant's hand. "Probably four, five years ago when I was putting together a magazine piece."
"Yes, I think you're right," he said and then sat.
Nick detected a movement from the mystery man when he had mentioned the SWAT exercise. The man had slightly lowered his file and Nick caught his eyes peering at him over the top edge of the paperwork.
"And you know Detective Hargrave," Cameron said, "who you met the other day."
Hargrave nodded but did not look up from his hands, which were clasped and resting on the table before him. Nick extended his own hand but, instead of presenting a handshake, turned his palm up to show the indentations that were still visible from its time pressed into the stones on the roof of the diagnostic center.
"Yesterday, in fact," Nick said and then withdrew the hand.
"OK, please," Lieutenant Canfield quickly said. "Fellas, let's sit and talk about some concerns."
As they pulled out chairs, Nick could see Cameron's uneasiness as he cut his eyes from the lieutenant to the man still standing at the wall. Canfield picked up on the mood of the room.
"Guys, this is Agent Fitzgerald, who is an observer from a, uh, federal agency who will be sitting in."
Fitzgerald raised his eyes again and nodded. Hargrave stared at his hands. Cameron said nothing, but scratched something onto the pad he'd now placed on the table.
"OK. We all know why we're here," Canfield began.
No one at the table responded. The statement had perhaps caught them all cynically thinking, No, we don't know why the hell we're here. Why don't you tell us?
"Detective, you've got a homicide case that's still fresh. I know you want to work that with every advantage available, and I know you've got your methods.
"Mr. Mullins, you've got a job to do as a member of the press covering this incident and we all respect that. You've been quick to come up with information that you're presenting to the public, and we respect that too."
Both men nodded their agreement to the obvious and let the silence force Canfield into saying something they didn't already know.
"We would normally let these things run their course," the lieutenant continued. "But Mr. Fitzgerald here is now connected peripherally to the case because his agency has been alerted to all shooting incidents in which a sniper might have been involved.
"They have been using a computer-assisted alert system to red-flag reports nationwide and then dispatching agents to observe and be made aware of any, uh, protocols that might match up and be useful to them."
Protocols? Nick was watching the agent to see if the man was going to make any acknowledgment of the lieutenant's useless bureaucratic jargon.
"Sniper shootings?" Nick suddenly said, again using his big mouth to get at least some kind of reaction, juggle things up a bit and see if anything fell. "You're specifically looking at sniper shootings?" He took out his notebook. Deirdre wanted to use sniper in the story, she was going to get it now.
The mystery man simply looked up over his file and fixed an unreadable, mannequinlike look at Nick's face.
"I'm not at liberty to say."
Nick loved that form of no comment. "Not at liberty." "I cannot confirm nor deny." "Beyond my purview." Everybody's a lawyer these days. But it rarely slowed him down.
"And the reason you're letting me in is that you put this sniper homicide on a fast track, and you wanna know what I know when I know it instead of waiting to read the paper tomorrow?" he said, since no one else was going to explain it.
He looked across the table at Hargrave, who was still studying his interlaced fingers, but Nick noticed the top edges of his sharp cheeks rise slightly as he suppressed a grin.
"OK. Yeah, Nick. It's on a fast track," Canfield jumped in. "And as soon as Mr. Fitzgerald knows all that we know so he can rule out that this particular shooting has any interest for his agency, he'll thank us and get on with the work he's been assigned to."
That's why Nick liked the guy. Even if he knew Mr. Federal Agency was drilling into the back of his head with his stone-cold eyes, Canfield was going to just lay it out on the table in plain English.
"So you're officially looking for a sniper, not a drive-by, not a random shooting?" Nick said, just to make sure.
"Yeah," Canfield said. "That's official."
Nick was impressed. A sniper and the presence of the feds. This was a new twist on homeland security. He didn't write anything down, he just took a moment to let the admission sink in.
"So the ball's in your court, Nick," Canfield said.
Nick felt Cameron shift in the chair beside him. This was touchy stuff, asking a journalist to divulge information before publication. Nick knew he could easily fall back on the old freedom-of-the-press line and walk away. But he was also too damned intrigued by the exclusivity he would gain by being on the inside. And besides, as far as he knew, he didn't have squat that they wouldn't already have learned.
"OK, Steve," Nick said, using the old first-name trick. "First of all, I can't give up the names of any sources."
"We know that, Nick. We know you've got a dozen guys in the Sheriff's Office that like to talk to you. We know that's where you got Ferris's name and probably the caliber of the bullet. What we need you to tell us is whether you had some sort of early knowledge of the rooftop. We would like to know what Ferris's family might have said to you that you didn't put in the paper. And we'd like to know what Ms. Cotton told you in her interview this morning."