"Thanks," he said to Hargrave when the tea arrived and they went quiet, both having run out of manners.
"You seem to have some kind of relationship with Ms. Cotton, Mullins. We're the ones that caught Ferris, but she wants to talk to you first. What's that all about?"
Nick waited until he finished ripping a couple of sugar packets and dumping their contents in his tea. A stalling tactic, to get his answer straight.
"Can't say that I know," he finally said. "I talked with her a few times when it happened and then only a little during the trial. She seemed to like the stories I wrote. I got the sense she liked being, you know, respected."
Hargrave took a sip of his whiskey, looked down into the glass. "Yeah, I read your stories. You never called her homeless. The rest of the media kept calling her a homeless woman bringing her kids up in a car."
Nick remembered the arguments he'd had with editors over that.
Hargrave let him think and then said, "She give you anything you didn't tell us about in that room?"
This guy was going to be hard to slide anything by, Nick thought. "Not really," he said, taking a long drink of the tea, trying to judge the guy. Hargrave was pushing this investigation, up late on a Saturday, reworking the already unusual ground of talking to a reporter. Would it hurt to give him the mention of the letters? Would the detective give him anything in return? Nothing ventured, as they say.
"You get the letters she said her attorney kept forwarding on to her? The ones from sympathy folks and people encouraging her?" Nick said.
Hargrave lifted one eye at him, making Nick think maybe something was wrong with the guy's peripheral vision. "No. It wasn't mentioned."
"She said that she had held on to some of them, put them in a box someplace. I figured, you know, that I might go back," Nick said, avoiding Hargrave's look. "Might be some names, maybe some threats against Ferris, you know, 'We'll get that son-of-a-bitch' types."
"We'll have to look into it," the detective said, but Nick could see the mental note-taking going on in Hargrave's head. He'd probably be at her door Monday morning, if not sooner.
He drank his tea. Maybe it was time to get something back.
"So what's with the federal guy at the meeting?" he asked, knowing Hargrave would have checked the guy out with his own law enforcement contacts as soon as he could get out of the lieutenant's sight.
"OK," Hargrave said, recognizing the game of give-and-take. "He's with the Secret Service. Sources say he's down here as security on a political junket, but he's got this hairbrush up his ass about snipers. They say he's got a whole list of shootings that have anything to do with long-distance kills and high-powered rifles."
"They say? Who's they?"
Hargrave let something that might have been a grin come onto his face. "My unnamed sources."
Nick tried to give the information an appropriate "That's interesting" response. But he was thinking about his own list of shooting victims, the one he'd asked Lori to put together. It was still in his computer at work and he hadn't taken the time to look at it all.
"You've seen this list?" he asked Hargrave.
"No. But Fitzgerald's definitely got a hard-on about it. And with all this homeland security shit, that puts the pressure on us to cooperate with him."
"And with me," Nick said.
"The guy's on a timetable," Hargrave said, sipping again at his drink, but Nick could see there was nothing but ice left in the bottom.
"What do you mean?"
The detective again gave Nick another sideways look, while sucking a cube into his mouth and then gnashing the thing between his teeth.
"Jesus, Mullins. Don't you read your own paper?"
"Yeah, but I only believe half of it," Nick said.
Hargrave looked over the top of his whiskey glass as though he were trying to tell whether Nick was serious or joking. Nick shrugged.
"He's Secret Service. The Secretary of State shows up next week for a meeting of the Organization of American States down at the convention center," Hargrave said. "I figure this guy to be part of the advance team, but he's a little too focused on the sniper bit. That's usually taken care of in protocol, part of the overall security plan."
Nick knew about the upcoming OAS confab. Representatives from most of Latin America would be present. Miami was pretty much the gateway to the United States for the Hispanic and Caribbean world now, and the Broward County convention center was north of Miami. Protestors would have a harder time getting there and the center was right next to the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. They picked the site because it meant less travel for the dignitaries and was easier to secure. In fact, Nick figured Deirdre would be pulling him aside to do a piece about that security anytime now. But as a rule, Nick rarely paid attention to politics until it lapped over into his coverage of death or law enforcement. He recalled the time he was asked to write a story about some dustup after the President started using scenes of September 11 in his reelection advertisements. The editors came to him because Nick had interviewed families in South Florida who had lost loved ones in the Twin Towers. He had at least a fledgling relationship with them, along with their contact numbers. Death revisited. It was a shitty assignment, having to call people still emotionally raw and ask stupid questions. But he did it. And everyone he talked to said they were bothered by the use of 9/11 in any advertisement, political or not. Nick had written their responses, and had only the President's press secretary's rebuttal to balance it. The next day his phone and e-mail were filled with angry readers pissing on Nick personally and the "Liberal press" in general for being one-sided and taking a political stand against Republicans. Nick endured until the eighth or ninth call and then spouted off at some condo political captain: "It's not a political story. It's a human story, man. It's about people's feelings. It's about people who lost sons and daughters and family and felt like they just got gouged again. Can't you understand that? It's about humans, not politics."
The guy on the other end of the line just laughed at what he considered Nick's naivete. "Everything's about politics, young man. You'll learn that."
Nick went back to his regular police reporting that day when the dismembered body of a prostitute was found in a Dumpster only thirty yards away from Federal Highway, and Nick was taken off the political advertisement story.
"You think the Secret Service has some kind of credible threat that a sniper is tailing the Secretary of State?" Nick said.
"Christ, I don't know," Hargrave said, hissing between his teeth. "I'm sure as hell not thinking that my guy is assassinating felons just to warm up for the Secretary of State. But if he finds something to link our guy to whatever he's looking for, I'll take the help. Right now I've got a homicide to work even if no one else gives a damn."
Nick wasn't sure how many whiskeys Hargrave had downed, but the reticent man was showing the pressure. The detective pushed his glass toward the bar gutter and peeled off a few bills and left them as a tip.
"I'll give Ms. Cotton a visit on Monday for those letters, and maybe if I get a look at Fitzgerald's list, I'll let you know."
He got up and slid past Nick without so much as letting his coat sleeve make contact. Nick said, "Thanks," to his back as the thin man walked away.
Chapter 16
Get in. Kill quickly. And get out without being seen.
Sniper Theory 101. He had learned it and earned it in his first stint with the military, and gave it all up after the first Gulf War when he came home to be a cop.
Out here in the civilian world, he'd also learned intelligence and careful planning and specific targeting and, he admitted, a hell of a lot of patience and frustration had replaced the kill-quickly rule. He'd been proud of his abilities in both theaters before. He had always, in his head, done the right thing. And now, he told himself, he was doing the right thing again.