"Just stuff. But we are going to get to do some more clay sculpture in art and it's going to be way cool. I'm finally going to put the legs on that angel I told you I was working on. Then we might actually get them in the kiln this week. Do you think I should paint her, or just leave her with the clay color-I mean, you can see the details and stuff without the paint and that's what counts and it's kinda weird to paint them all white and silver and stuff when nobody really knows what angels wear anyway and so what, you can do what you want, right?"
Elsa came over and set a bowl of cream of wheat in front of the girl and smiled that smile at Nick that said, She is wound up this morning, eh?
"Absolutely," Nick said. "Art is in the eye of the beholder and you're the beholder. Do what you want, babe."
Carly rambled on about her teacher and how she'd already figured out how to manipulate her. "I can just play around with my own ideas and she'll still give me a good grade."
Nick listened, and thought, When did these kids get so smart?, and then they heard the car horn outside and his daughter jumped up, kissed him on the head, said, "'Bye, Dad," kissed Elsa and thanked her for the half eaten breakfast and then blew out through the front door, leaving a fragrance and an energy wafting behind.
Nick sat for a moment, sipping his coffee. When he finally rose, Elsa looked him in the face.
"You look like the sin, Mr. Mullins," she said with her thick accent and shaking her head as one might at a shameful sight.
"Thank you, Elsa," Nick said. "I'm going to shower and then I'm going to work. Please make me some more coffee."
He'd gone over the scenario too many times to count during the night and it was still in his head. Nick was trying to decide whether to turn the letters over to Hargrave, including the one with Michael Redman's name on it, still in the plastic bag, right on top. The box was sitting on the passenger seat next to him. He couldn't help glancing over at it, like some snake crate about to pop open and let loose a beast that would rise and start spitting venom in all directions. He knew it could be evidence, that wasn't in question, whether it could be. But his reluctance through the night had been twofold.
First, he'd called Lori in research before he left the house and she punched Redman's name into the local and national media database and came up with nothing. The last reference had been Nick's own story on the weapons-dealer shooting and the editorial before it. As far as he could tell, no media had any idea what the guy had been doing for the last few years or whether he was even still with the Sheriff's Office. In Nick's head, linking Redman to the recent shootings was premature.
Second, if he gave the letter to Hargrave, then it would be in their house. Could Hargrave keep it under his hat? Would he have to tell Canfield, who Nick knew was Redman's supervisor back in the day? Would anyone be able to contain it if it leaked? Tell two people and three will know. Once there are three, there will be four by the end of the day. Rumor was always exponential. He could see the Herald's headlines:
FORMER SWAT SNIPER INVESTIGATED FOR RECENT KILLINGS
Once the television guys and the Herald got the story about the letter, they'd be knocking on Margaria Cotton's front door, dredging up all the ugly memories. Yeah, Nick thought, like you already have?
"Christ!" he said. He was driving south on 1-95, trailing behind some late-model Chevy Cavalier. He looked over at the box and then at his speedometer. Fifty-four. OK, he might have been driving blind for the last twenty minutes, but it was putsy blind. He wasn't a speeder when his head was tied up. By instinct he instead tucked in behind another car and followed without paying any damned attention. He punched the gas and passed the blue-haired old lady piloting the Cavalier and pushed it up to the normal sixty-five. Eight miles later he got off the interstate and then crawled with morning traffic into downtown. When he parked in the newspaper lot he left the box of letters on the passenger seat and locked the doors.
The newsroom was, as usual in the morning, quiet. Nick headed for his desk, snatching up a copy of the day's paper and glancing at the front page as he went. His story on Michaels was below the fold, in the bottom right-hand corner.
SECOND FELON ASSASSINATED IN FIVE DAYS
Nick's lead paragraph had not been changed. And they had also left Hargrave's quote on the front before the story jumped and was continued on a deep inside page. Nick sighed a bit in relief, but the respite was short-lived. When he logged into his e-mail file and scanned the dozen or so names there, Deirdre's was high up with a capitalized subject field: SEE ME!
No, thank you, Nick thought. He started down the list, looking for someone familiar. Hargrave, Cameron, anyone. His eye instead settled on commiekid@computrust.net and the subject field read: you're a smart guy, nick. m.r. The initials had already been branded into his head overnight. Michael Redman. Nick pulled up the message: meet me behind super saver at ten.
He checked the time the message was sent. Almost two hours ago. The morning paper, displaying Hargrave's paragraph, had been out since dawn. He then looked at the clock in the middle of the newsroom: nine forty-five. Fifteen minutes… if it was the old abandoned Super Saver Market three blocks away, he could make it.
Nick closed out the message screen and then punched Hargrave's cell number into the phone while he stood. He looked around the newsroom, where he could see only a few heads. After three rings on Hargrave's cell, there was a heavy click and a recorded answer kicked in. Hargrave's voice, in a clipped tone, said, "Leave a message." Nick's head was already dwelling somewhere else and he quickly came up with a stumbling message:
"I might have gotten a response from the sniper. I'm going to meet him. I'll call you later. Oh, the e-mail account he used to get the message to me was from an account called commiekid@computrust.net, so maybe you could find something out about that. I'll call you later."
Nick punched off the phone and started around his desk on the way out. He took the long way around the assistant editors' pod so Deirdre would not spot him from her office. But Bill Hirschman caught Nick's eye from his desk in front of the city editor's glass window and started toward him. When the education reporter came near, he stopped at an empty pod partition like he didn't want to get too close to Nick and catch whatever he had.
"The vultures are out after your ass, Mullins," he said, just loud enough for Nick to hear. He tilted his head back toward Deirdre's office. "They've been in there for an hour. The boss, the managing editor and the man."
Nick looked past Hirschman's shoulder, but the angle on Deirdre's floor-to-ceiling window was too severe to make out the occupants.
"Best I could hear was something about you and a vigilante story you were supposed to be working."
Nick nodded, checked his watch and said thanks.
"I'll be back, I gotta go check out a lead."
Chapter 22
Michael Redman was on the seventh floor of the parking garage attached to the Riverside Hotel, once a quaint two-story historical jewel that had been transformed into a huge chunk of lime-colored concrete block like any other modern-day structure that had gone up in the city over the past fifteen years. He was wearing navy blue chinos and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. There was a simple baseball cap, without a logo, on his head, and in his hand a zippered jacket. He could be security. Or a parking attendant. Or even a guest. He'd simply punched the PUSH HERE FOR TICKET button and then yanked the ticket and jogged in long before the wooden arm even rose. He put the card in one pocket. In the other he'd carried the spotting scope and at the moment was watching the sidewalk below, scanning the empty back lot of the closed grocery store, waiting for the arrival of Nick Mullins.