Eye of Vengeance (22 page)

Chapter 26

N
ick followed Hargrave down to the detective bureau and as they were about to pass through a door, the receptionist stopped them.

“Detective, you’re going to have to sign this visitor in,” she said.

Hargrave stopped just as he was about to put his badge holder against the electronic lock scanner.

“Yeah, sorry, Mary. It’s Mike Lowell, he’s a CI.”

The woman didn’t move.

“A confidential informant,” Hargrave said, raising his eyebrows.

“He’s still going to have to sign in on his own,” she said, pushing the clipboard across the shelf that separated them.

Nick caught Hargrave’s eye and then stepped over and signed the name Mike Lowell as his own. The woman thanked him and buzzed them both through.

Hargrave again led on, forcing Nick to catch up.

“The Marlins’ third baseman? That’s the best you could do in a pinch?” Nick said.

Hargrave did not turn around, but Nick again saw that twitch appear in the corner of his mouth that must pass as the thin man’s only smile in life. They walked past three rows of office pods that looked way too much like those in Nick’s newsroom and then through a door against the wall that led into Hargrave’s office.

The room was half the size of Canfield’s and it held two desks. Hargrave took his black suit coat off and hung it on a coat tree. The guy’s white shirt was crisp. Not a sign of sweat stain, like he’d just gone down to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. He sat down in the desk chair to the left, so Nick took the one on the right.

“Make yourself comfortable. Meyers is on vacation until the eighteenth,” Hargrave said over his shoulder.

While he tapped into the computer in front of him, Nick took out his cell phone. He’d turned it off before going into Canfield’s office and when he powered it back up the screen showed that there were four new messages. He looked at his watch. The daily budget meeting was coming up, when all the assistant editors met with Deirdre to pitch the day’s stories. It had to be driving them crazy not to have heard from him. Never mind the fact that he had blown her off earlier in the day. He dialed into the research library instead and asked for Lori.

“Lori Simons,” she said after Nick was transferred.

“Hey, Lori, it’s Nick. You know that search I asked you to do that matched up my bylines with that list?”

“Jesus, Nick,” she said and her voice went low and conspiratorial. “Where are you? I mean, the rumors are flying over here that you’re big-time in the shit.”

“Yeah, yeah, I suppose I am.”

“No, really. Hirschman was over here and said Deirdre was bouncing off the walls.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t surprise me, Lori,” he said. “But she hasn’t fired me yet and I need another search if you can, please?”

“Sure, Nick. I was just worried about you.”

Her voice sounded sincere. It always had. Nick just hadn’t been paying attention to his allies, especially Lori.

“Thanks, Lori. Really, I’m OK. But this story is really starting to roll up on me and I think I’ve stuck myself into it so deep now, I’m going to have to finish it.”

“And finish it your way. Even if you get fired.”

Christ, when did she get to know me so well? Nick thought. The comment was something his wife might have said three years ago.

“I put that other list on your desk,” Lori said into the silence. “So what do you need?”

Nick explained how he wanted to look for his byline and all the stories he’d done that included homicides or rapes or incest. He didn’t need the full stories, just the initial page that contained the doer’s or arrestee’s name.

“That’s going to be a lot of stories, Nick. You want to narrow it down some, maybe by years?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nick said and then covered the mouthpiece and asked Hargrave, “When did Redman start with the Sheriff’s Office? What year?”

“Eight years ago,” Hargrave said without turning around.

“Eight,” Nick said into the phone. “Oh, and also pull anything that I’ve written that included the U.S. Secretary of State’s name. It’s a long shot, but it might come up in one of those stories I did on local soldiers who were wounded or killed in Iraq.”

Nick waited, like he could hear Lori scratching the request down on paper, like he’d watched her do so many times before.

“OK, anything else?” she said.

“That’s it. See what we get and then I need you to e-mail everything to …” He looked up at Hargrave, who was already scratching down something on a business card, which he handed over.

“To
maurice69 at kingnet.com
” Nick read and looked up at Hargrave, who had already turned his back on him.

“Nicky, that’s off-campus,” Lori said.

“Yeah, I know. I owe you.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, but there was something light in her voice. “I’ll get it to you soonest.”

Nick hung up and was flipping the business card with the e-mail address between his thumb and forefinger and wearing a bemused look on his face when Hargrave turned around.

“Year I graduated from high school,” Hargrave said.

“Huh?” Nick answered, playing dumb.

“It was 1969.”

“Personal e-mail?” Nick said, now smiling.

“I don’t want that stuff coming through the department system or the fax,” Hargrave said, staying serious. “We’ve got a thing here you might have heard about, called an Internal Affairs Division?”

“OK,” Nick said, going instantly sober. Nick knew the newspaper had its own form of IAD, they just never gave it a moniker. He remembered the employee upstairs who was rumored to be logging in to pornographic websites during the day. Management had his screen monitored by the computer techs through remote access. They caught him and canned him the same day.

He didn’t see how the research he was doing would be considered off-limits to his story enough to push Deirdre to fire him, but the doubt must have shown in his face.

“You’re not even supposed to be here, Mullins,” the detective said. “Your participation is on the QT. No one outside of that room back there knows about you. And I doubt that you, as a professional journalist, would want your cooperation to be broadcast material either.”

Nick was about to say that he doubted that he was going to be employed as such by tomorrow, but held his tongue long enough for Hargrave’s phone to ring. He listened while the detective grunted some acknowledgments, picked up a pencil and gave two-word answers to whoever it was on the other end.

Nick looked around, as was his training, for family portraits or awards or plaques of recognition in Hargrave’s work area. Nothing. Not a sign of anything personal. He spun around in the chair. The other detective’s space was cluttered with softball trophies, photographs of what must be grandchildren and a prominently placed photo of a man and woman in their late fifties or early sixties, arms around waists, smiles on faces, Hawaiian leis around necks in a too-bright sun. Nick’s eyes went to the now-closed door and a map of the city that was taped to the back. He got up and took in the four red stars that had been placed on the nearest cross-streets of where the sniper’s victims had been shot. Hargrave had obviously lumped them together long before today. Nick was studying the map for some kind of pattern when Hargrave hung up.

“The SWAT team went in on
commiekid’s
apartment after they didn’t get a response and found the guy in the sack with his girlfriend,” Hargrave said. “His real name is Byron Haupt, if you can believe that one. He’s nineteen, a student at BCC and says he was at the library from seven to ten this morning working on some project. Said he uses the computer terminals there to send information to the other kids in his project group and maybe, just maybe someone could have had access to his e-mail account while he was away from the desk.

“Canfield went in with the team and flashed an old photo of Redman and the kid said he might have seen someone who fits the description, but he really doesn’t pay that much attention to other people unless they ‘get in his space.’ ”

Hargrave rolled his eyes at the last part and Nick waited for him to say,
kids these days,
but it didn’t come.

“They ran Haupt’s juvenile record and he’s clean. They’re going to make the kid sit tight, but at this point Canfield’s going on the assumption that Redman used the library terminal after the kid logged on. They’re going to interview the girl too just in case she used the boyfriend’s log-on, but it’s looking like a dead end.”

The two men sat in silence, but their thoughts were rolling around the same subject, the questions and scenarios spinning on such similar wavelengths they could have been having an unspoken dialogue.

“I don’t know, maybe he could be setting up on the secretary,” Nick said out loud.

“Pissed off at some sense of command, some buck-stops-here idea he got from Iraq? Somebody has to be responsible for what he saw over there,” Hargrave picked up. “God knows what a guy sees in those damned rifle scopes just before he pulls the trigger. I couldn’t do it.”

“But it goes out of his pattern, his M.O., as you guys call it.”

“No, you guys call it that, we just feed it to you,” Hargrave said, but his attempt at levity didn’t cut the mood.

“The man’s about retribution,” he finally said.

“So he blames a politician for Iraq?”

Hargrave put an eye on Nick. “Who else you gonna blame?”

Nick’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket and he automatically pulled it out. The readout on the screen gave just the main switchboard number for the newsroom, so it could be coming from anyone’s extension.

“Shit,” he said.

Hargrave stood up. “I’m not you, Mullins, but you gotta take that call sometime. Why not get it over with?” the detective said. “I’m going to get coffee, want some?”

“Black,” Nick said as Hargrave closed the door behind him.

On the fourth buzz Nick punched the answer button. “Mullins,” he said.

“Nick. You need to come in off the street,” Deirdre said, her voice unmistakable with a distinct commanding edge in it.

“I’m working a story, Deirdre,” Nick said.

She only hesitated a second. “Yeah? What story is that, Nick? The serial killer story? The story that matches up the ballistics on the sniper killings? Or the story that shows that an assassin is somehow connected to your byline?”

“I’m not sure where you get your wild imagination, Deirdre, but I wouldn’t say any of those stories is on my budget.”

Nick was scraping, trying to figure out if she was just guessing. None of the information about the ballistics or his byline list matches had been in his earlier pieces because he’d deleted it.

“Well, I know it’s not on your budget line because you haven’t filed one today, and that’s the first rule you’ve repeatedly broken, Nick. Secondly, don’t think for a minute that everything you write on
our computers
doesn’t belong to this newspaper and is available to those who have the clearance to see it, because that would be at your peril.”

Nick knew that the newsroom computer system was an open setup. Because of the direct production link, every PC was tied in to the next level of the chain. A reporter’s PC could be accessed by his editor. That editor’s by the copy desk. The desk by the printing facility.

They must have been monitoring him. Nick knew that every time a reporter hit the save button—and you did it all the time to keep from losing everything in a crash—the editors could read exactly what you were writing without asking. They were probably watching his screen while he was putting in his notes, before he deleted them. He suddenly felt like Patrick McGoohan in
The Prisoner.
The thought did not scare him as it had the character in the old television serial, it only pissed him off.

“I want you in here, Nick. I’ve spent the day trying to cover for you, but I’m going to have to take you off this story if you can’t level with me. I saw what you wrote. I know what you’re chasing, but I can’t argue for your stand on this without you. ”

He so badly wanted to tell her to fuck off, but knew she didn’t deserve it.

“They’ll slap it up there in headlines, Deirdre. You know they will, even if it is all still speculation. It’ll be a command decision and you won’t stop them.”

The line was still open, but Deirdre wasn’t arguing.

“I’ll be in to pick up my personal items tomorrow,” Nick said. “Today, I quit.”

The second he pushed the off button he thought of his daughter, and then checked his watch. Carly would be home from school. Elsa gushing all over whatever art project she’d brought home. The television would go on, tuned to whatever kid thing was in vogue. There wouldn’t be any fighting now that she didn’t have her sister to share the decisions with. Not that Nick had ever heard the fighting. He’d never been home, just heard about it later in the evening.

Now unemployed, maybe he’d make up for it, find time to argue with her himself about watching ESPN or
That’s So Raven.

Hargrave knocked, or maybe just bumped the door before he came in with coffee cups in either hand. Nick accepted one and looked into the dark swirling slick. There was a sheen of bean oil on top.

“Fresh,” he said.

“No such thing in a cop shop,” Hargrave said and then sat down in front of his computer and punched some keys. Nick sipped at the cup, saying nothing.

“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.”