"OK," Hargrave said with the only hint of surprise Nick had yet heard in the man's voice. "You've got a better computer researcher over there than we've got here. The file is in." Hargrave printed out two copies of the newspaper list and ended up with a healthy stack. He handed one to Nick, then sat back in his chair. Nick immediately started to scan the first page and when he jumped to the second, Hargrave reached out and stopped him.
"Let's do this one by one, if you don't mind, Mullins. I've only been here a couple of years and a lot of these names are going to be completely foreign to me, so I want you to walk through them. Believe it or not, I might pick up on something that you could skip over."
Nick conceded it made sense and went back to the beginning. Lori had printed out just the first or second paragraphs of first-day stories Nick had written on each person. The headers on the top of each story held the date of publication.
Bobby Andreson, the kid who shot a deputy when the off-duty officer tried to stop the twenty-one-year-old and his sidekick from boosting the chrome rims off a Cadillac.
"But when they tracked Andreson down, he did a murder-suicide, shot his partner and then himself. DOA at the scene," Nick explained.
Stephen Burkhardt, killed a hooker down on South Federal. Went in for twenty-five to life.
"Doesn't seem like the avenging kind of case unless Redman knew the girl," Nick said.
"I'll check him with DOC and see if he's still in," Hargrave said, making a mark on his sheet. "Pretty graphic stuff," he said, continuing to read the story. "You see this body when it happened?"
"Yeah. Back then the road patrol deputies thought it was fun to have the print guys take a look. This girl was hacked into pieces and tossed into the Dumpster," Nick said, moving on to the next name. Hargrave just looked at him, studying the side of his face.
Damalier, the casino boat operator that Susan caught the scoop on by photographing the guy's license plate.
"Mob hit," Nick said and they dismissed it.
By the fourth page they realized that Lori had sent the file in alphabetical order, not by year.
"Falmuth. I worked that one," Hargrave said. "Scrap it. That guy died of AIDS while he was in lockup. Rapist. Deserved the worst and got it."
Ferris was next on the list and both of them set his story aside.
It went on like that for two hours. Nick's cell phone rang three times and he refused to answer after checking the number. Hargrave on occasion would be interrupted by a receptionist or a call directly into his office, which he answered with short affirmations or begged off because he had "something going right now."
The Kerner story stopped Hargrave and when he asked about it, Nick filled him in.
"Did you call anyone in law enforcement up there to check it out?"
"Not yet," Nick said, embarrassed that it had slipped his mind. "I'll do it tonight."
When they got to the last sheet, they found Lori had included only a name and a date and the charges against the arrested.
Robert Walker. Manslaughter. There was no bylined story.
"What's this one?" Hargrave asked, flipping the page over to see if there had been a misprint on the back.
"Nothing," Nick said, turning his head away, trying to hide the flash of anger in his eyes. Why the hell would she include that? "Not what we're looking for. A DUI manslaughter case that got negotiated down. Doesn't fit our guy at all."
"OK," was all Hargrave said and then he reshuffled his papers and set them down.
In the end they had narrowed the list to a dozen. Twelve possible targets if Michael Redman was truly judging and executing subjects of Nick's stories who might be considered worthy of death.
"Look, I'll run these through the DOC website, find out where these guys are, whether they're even alive anymore. The ones who are on the street we'll track down through probation and parole," Hargrave said.
Nick nodded. It was the same thing he would do if he went back to the newsroom, where he would have access to most of the sites the cops had, with the exception of FBI links.
When Hargrave went back to his computer terminal, Nick did not move. After a few keystrokes the detective turned.
"You're dismissed, Mullins," he said.
Nick got up to go. "You've got my cell. Keep me in the loop, OK? That's the deal, right?"
"Yeah. Go write your story," Hargrave said without turning.
Nick stepped out of the tiny office and took a deep breath of the stale air-conditioning and left the building. He wasn't writing stories anymore.
Chapter 27
When he walked in the front door of the house he had owned for nine years, the only family left looked at him simultaneously and then at their watches in dismay. The early hour, long before deadline, caught them off guard.
"Querido? Mr. Mullins. You are early!"
"Hi, Dad. How come you're home?"
He put a smile on his face, the one that, if he really thought about it, he knew never fooled anyone.
"I'm here to see my girls," he said, using a familiar phrase, and then quickly added, "Carly the Creative, and Elsa the Magician!"
The two looked at each other with a mix of humor and apprehension and waited until Nick crossed the floor and bent to kiss his daughter and said quietly, "I wanted to see you, pumpkin." She accepted that and took his hand and led him to the sewing machine, where she was putting together her latest fashion project.
"See how cool?"
While she explained the intricacies of double stitching, Elsa hung near Nick's shoulder, pretending to watch, but not too secretly smelling his breath. When she was satisfied that he was not drunk, she said, "I am going to do the dinner."
Nick asked his daughter several questions about her technique and reasons for color choices and aspirations for the skirt she was making. It was like an interview for a lively little lifestyle feature. Carly kept giving him sidelong glances but eventually got caught up in her enthusiasm for the creation and went into great detail until Elsa called them to dinner.
While they ate, Nick turned out one of his favorite and long-memorized stories of building a fort with his best friend in the field behind his house when he was a boy. He described how it was three stories high in the shape of ever smaller plywood boxes and how they'd put hinged trapdoors in the floor of each to get from top to bottom. Rocket ship, battleship, Foreign Legion outpost-it was whatever they cared it to be with only a twist of imagination. Carly had heard the story many times, but her father's enthusiasm in the retelling on this night made her laugh at the funny parts and groan at the hokey parts.
After dinner both Nick and Carly demanded to help Elsa with the dishes and then after they were done they convinced her to play a game of Pictionary with them. They sat around the kitchen table and with only three to play they were forced to rotate teams-Nick and Carly first, then Elsa and Carly. It had been a family favorite. But with Elsa's partial knowledge of English and limited background in Americana, the game quickly became hilarious.
"No es donkey. Es un burro, si?"
She took the merriment in stride even when Carly doubled over in the kind of childlike laughter that is as pure as a jiggling bell. All of their sides were aching by the time someone finally won.
At bedtime Nick kissed his daughter on the forehead and tucked her in and as Elsa passed him in the hallway she whispered, "You are a good man, Mr. Nick." He only nodded and found his way to the garage, where he searched out a hidden bottle of Maker's Mark and in the dark silence formed his own whisper: "No, I am not."
For the next two hours he sat out by the pool in turquoise light and drank the whiskey alone, thinking of the times his wife and he swam naked after the girls had gone to bed, of the arguments when their own bedroom door was closed, of the fragrance of her hair that he swore still hung in her pillow even after he tossed the sheets and cases in the trash bin months ago.