After he had dried her tears, after they put the homework away, he waited for her to get ready for bed and this time laid down next to her and read some of her favorite Shel Silverstein poems from Where the Sidewalk Ends. When her eyelids fluttered and she yawned, he stroked her hair and told her he promised never to come home late again and then stared up at the ceiling thinking how often he had made that same promise to his wife. Don't go there again, Nick, he told himself and then tried to block out everything but the sound of his daughter's breathing. When it became deep and rhythmic, Nick slipped out of the room and retrieved the box of letters and sat it on the kitchen table.
He started randomly. The first letter was dated a week after the killings and was from another mother of two who scribbled condolences and then copied a psalm that included something about lambs and innocence and God's love. Nick slid it away.
Another was from a parent at the school where Ms. Cotton's girls had attended sporadically. She had known the children "both of them bright and beautiful and I cannot comprehend your anguish." No, you can't, Nick thought and flipped that one into a growing pile.
After a dozen, he started from the back of the box and became more systematic in his search, not knowing what he was searching for. He first concentrated on the place, the postmark and the date sent. Then he studied the name to see if it sparked even the slightest memory Then he scanned the contents, getting the gist of each letter without focusing on the words. The messages were familiar. He had thrown out a similar pile a month after the death of his wife and daughter without reading or even opening the majority of them.
He was more than halfway through the box when he picked up a long envelope, business-sized, with no return address. Ms. Cotton's address was typed on the face of it. Inside was a folded sheet of stiff stationery. No card. The message was also typed: Condolences on your loss… a complete and utter lack of justice… we failed you and your children… something must be done, and will… the elimination of those that threaten civil society…
Nick jumped to the bottom of the page where the name of the writer was not signed, but simply typed, in an uncapitalized format: yours, mike redman
The name was so out of place Nick recognized it immediately. Redman. The SWAT team member. Five killings in the line of duty. A professional with a sniper rifle.
Nick had written an extensive story about a SWAT shooting that took place in Deerfield Beach a few years ago. His editorial board had taken the opportunity to chastise this guy Redman for killing an armed man, one of a group of guys who were selling weapons out of some motel room and then tried to shoot their way out when the team busted them. Nick had been so incensed over the editorial, he'd gone out and interviewed every team member, including Steve Canfield. He was allowed to view the video- and audiotape of the bust and heard, with his own ears, the whumph of the door breaking down, the shouts of "POLICE, POLICE, DON'T MOVE" and then the scuffling of feet and the sound of gunfire. He'd pulled schematics of the parking lot setup, measured the distances himself and sat in the room where this Redman guy had been acting as sharpshooter and cover man. He'd even gone out on a training day to see how the team was trained. He'd come away impressed and wrote a detailed Sunday story called a tick-tock that gave a second-by-second unfolding of the drama. He had not been allowed to interview Redman, who was still waiting to be cleared by a shooting board investigation. But Nick remembered him. Six-foot. Muscled. Close-cropped hair. And strange eyes, the kind that seemed to absorb everything around him and give nothing back. Nick had read somewhere that his partner had been killed in a SWAT operation years ago. When Redman was eventually cleared, Nick had felt a personal vindication. No one from the editorial board ever said a word to him.
He flipped over the envelope and checked the postal cancellation date. One week after the trial that found Ferris guilty of rape and murder, but long before his sentencing was overturned. Redman. Hell, when was the last time Nick had even heard the name? Last thing he could remember was the pressure of moving the guy off to another division in the Sheriff's Office after the newspaper's editorial board pissed all over the guy.
He looked down at the letter again and first thought about copying it in his home office and then second-guessed himself. He took out a reporter's notebook and a pencil instead and then turned the page, using only the tip of the eraser to touch the paper. He then copied the message word for word into the notebook, and sat back, staring at the collection on the table in front of him. He was fighting an urge to call Hargrave and tell the detective to get the hell over here. "Chill, Nick," he actually whispered out loud.
There was nothing in the letter that said the writer was intending a specific act or what form of "something" would be done. It was also some three years ago when the thing was written. Ferris had been in jail most of that time and Nick didn't even know where the hell this Redman guy had been. He knew that a cop writing to the victim of a crime was unusual because of legal considerations. But after a case was adjudicated? He'd never heard of it, though that didn't mean anything. Coincidence again? Redman writes a vague letter to the mother of two dead girls. Their killer gets shot by a sniper three years later. Redman is a sniper. He must be the avenging shooter. It was the basic logic progression you used to construct in school, always of course in a vacuum. But Nick had learned long ago that logic rarely includes the spins that unpredictable humans can put on it.
He got up from the table and opened a kitchen drawer and took out a large plastic freezer bag from its carton. Then, using the eraser, he pushed both the letter and the envelope it came in into the bag and then sealed it. He'd watched CSI too. He then put the bag aside and looked at the box of letters. Only halfway through. Be thorough, he told himself. Go through all of them. Don't jump to conclusions. But as he did, he only skimmed the rest of the notes with less and less interest and kept looking for another plain envelope lacking a return address.
Chapter 21
Elsa woke him in the morning, partially with the scent of fresh-brewing coffee, then fully with a careful pat on the shoulder. Nick had fallen asleep on the couch fully dressed and with a jumble of unanswered questions and barely connected trails of victims and prisoners and violence that spun him enough to twist his shirt around his middle and cause his pants to shift a quarter turn around. When he finally stood, he had to adjust his clothes before he could walk to the kitchen counter and rescue his muddled brain with Elsa's Colombian coffee, black, no sugar.
It was nearly seven and he could hear Carly shuffling and moving in the girls' bathroom that she had taken over since the accident. She had insisted on saving Lindsay's bath oils and bottled fragrances, especially the ones they'd concocted together. And even two years later he couldn't bring himself to toss them. Even in the master bath Nick had not had the heart to put away the makeup tray where Julie had kept her perfumes. He used to foolishly pick up a spritzer and squirt a cloud of her scent into the air and just stand there, breathing it in. It used to make him cry. He'd tried to break the habit. Her side of the vanity remained spotless. He used the other sink and a small kit bag in the corner that had always held his shaving stuff, deodorant and a toothbrush. Julie had joked that he was always packed and ready to go. But it had not been funny near the end and they had both known it. Still, he never changed.
When Carly was ready for school she came out for breakfast and Nick moved his coffee to the table.
"Hey, sunshine," Nick said. His face was dark and slack with fatigue, but he was trying to cover it. "What's on the agenda for today?"