He'd also have to check on the list that Lori was putting together on sniper-related deaths in the state. Had she already sent that to him?
"Jesus, man. It's Sunday, Nick," he said, again out loud to himself. "Chill."
He went through the remnants of the Sunday paper, sorted out the sections that had nothing to do with news and got up and went to the couch in the living room. He'd been up late with Hargrave and hadn't slept when he did get in. Now it was quiet. The girls are gone. Take advantage of the day. He lay down with that thought in his head, then edited himself. Only two girls are gone, Nick, he thought. The third one needs you, man. Needs you to be strong. He held the newspaper up in front of his face. He'd stopped crying months ago even though the need was still with him. He focused on the sports pages. You can do this, Nick, he thought, repeating a mantra that had become very old for him. You can do this.
He tried to focus on a photo of Alonzo Mourning, started to read the paper's basketball beat writer opining about the star center's struggle and victory over kidney disease, but as he drifted off he saw his daughter sitting in the stands at a Miami Heat game, smiling and cheering. Lindsay, his dead daughter. His eyes came back open and he tried to clear them, and read about doctors still being amazed that Mourning had returned to the court, but he drifted off again and saw his wife's face as she closed the door on the girls' room. And he followed her vision into their room and there was candlelight flickering on the walls and the glow was warm and then her face appeared above him. She was whispering something that he could not hear. She was beautiful and her honey-blond hair was falling down in his face and she was straddling him and looking down and he could feel her against him, the warmth of her, and he could feel himself growing hard. She said something in his ear, a warning, but he did not want to hear it. He wanted the movement of her hips to continue and he could see the candlelight flickering in time to their rise and fall. And she tried to say something in his ear again, the brush and moisture of her breath both exciting and distracting him, and he turned his face away and let the sensation of sex take him over and then he tried to roll with her, but suddenly the warmth was gone and Nick woke with his eyes wide open. "Jesus," he said out loud. "What the hell was that?"
He was on the couch, the disorientation clearing fast. The newspaper had fallen to the floor. The light of late afternoon was slicing through the front blinds. He sat up and recalled the dream.
"Shit," he said, again out loud in the empty house. But it was not said in anger. He checked his watch: 3:40 PM. He had slept, or dreamed, or both, for almost three hours and it had been deep and not at all unpleasant. He sat up and realized he had to take a shower. Then he could go pick up Carly. Tomorrow he would sort out work. He was not embarrassed by his unconscious afternoon excursion and was in fact in higher spirits than he had been in a long time.
Chapter 18
On Monday Nick was back in the office, checking faxes and e-mails from a variety of law enforcement offices and from sources that he had scattered about South Florida and beyond.
There was a sheaf of fax paper on his desk, gathered from the machines in the newsroom over the weekend. Even though e-mails would be easier, police agencies still hadn't caught up with technology and still sent news releases out by facsimile machines to newspapers, television newsrooms and radio stations. They'd give a short synopsis of crime events. They might include names and dates and arrest numbers and a line of description of an armed robbery or gang shooting or multicar accident. If a newsroom had an interest, it was up to them to call and dig deeper. If the skeleton crew that manned the weekends missed anything worth writing about, Nick would have to pick it up on Monday morning. A two-day-old robbery was no good to him, the neighborhood already knew about it. A car fatality that happened over the weekend was old news by Tuesday's paper, which was what he was writing for on Monday. Unless there was a great hook-a thirteen-year-old gets in an accident while driving his pregnant mom to the emergency room for a delivery; a seventy-five-year-old grandmother shoots a burglar in her bedroom-Nick usually pleaded ignorant. "Hey, if we missed it, we missed it."
But today he was looking carefully for anything that might appear to be a random shooting, anything with a high-powered rifle involved, anything that might have a tie-in to a sniper working, no matter how peripheral. He recalled years ago hearing from a middle school education reporter of a sixth-grader being caught with a handgun. The kid told security officers at the school that he'd found the gun in the street on his way to school. They dismissed it as a lie. Later the gun turned out to be the weapon used to kill a prominent racing boat tycoon who had been assassinated as he sat in his car. Nick had learned years ago that stories are always out in the streets. The media only picks up on a fraction of them and the cops only a small fraction more.
When nothing in the weekend pile of faxes showed any promise, Nick started going through e-mails. He had one from the Bradenton Sheriff's Office giving him a number to call to reach the detective handling the shooting of the doctor who'd killed his wife. Another was from a Washington Bureau reporter whom he'd asked earlier to find out more about Fitzgerald: Nick: I'll have to look further on the Secret Service guy. He's not their usual front man on State visits. Must be a back-roomer. I'll get back to you. Rafael
The rest of the e-mail stuff looked too routine to bother with. Nick leaned back and started making his regular phone checks. Nick had been at the game for enough years to know who was plugged in and had an ear to the streets.
His first call was to the medical examiner's office to see if there were any fresh bodies from the weekend. A receptionist he knew answered.
"Hey, Margie. Anything new in the back room from the weekend?"
He heard Margie shuffling papers: "Nothing unnatural, Nick. Sorry."
Nick often wondered why they thought that the lack of violence would disappoint him. He didn't get paid by the number of dead people he wrote about. Sometimes he felt like a phone solicitor for Fuller Brush: Got any death today? No? Sure? We're having a special for the front page tomorrow. OK, I'll check back with you later. Have a good day!
His second call was to the Sheriff's Office communications desk. He was listening to the fifth unanswered ring when he heard a voice over the police radio near his desk. The dispatcher's voice was cranked just a notch above dispassionate.
"Kilo-nineteen, kilo-nineteen. Report of a man down on the sidewalk. One hundred block of East McNab Road. Possible gunshots. Repeat. Possible gunshots."
Nick stood up and reached over to crank up the radio volume. He recognized the address as a corrections and parole office. He was listening to the radio with one ear, the ringing phone with the other. The phone spoke first.
"Broward Sheriff's Office, dispatch, Sergeant Sortal."
"Yeah, hey, Sarge. This is Nick Mullins from the Daily News. Anything going on today or over the weekend that we ought to know about?"
Nick always tried to sound friendly, like he and they were both on the same team, especially if he didn't recognize the person on duty.
"Nothing much over the weekend, Nick," the female sergeant said. She did not elaborate even though Nick knew that as the dispatch sergeant she was listening to the same radio traffic he was.
"So, this thing going on up at the DOC office in Pompano, what's that?" Nick said. Typically, the cops knew how to blow off the press if they could. It was always better to know a little bit going into the questions, like priming a stubborn pump.