a bunch of stuff to your queue, Nick,” she said. “Was it him?”
“They’re not letting it loose officially yet,” he said. “But I think my source is good. What I want to do now is get some kind of an M.O. thing going. Can you do a search first locally and then nationwide on shootings, homicides that involved rifles and that might have been described as sniper-type shootings?”
Lori was writing on a pad. “Pretty broad, but yeah, we can do all the South Florida media. National is going to take some time. We can do most of the online newspaper archives and the Associated Press stuff. How far back do you want to go?”
“Two, three years,” Nick said. “No, make it four.”
She looked up from her pad over the top of her frameless reading glasses. “You’ve got an editor’s approval on this, don’t you, Nick?”
In the corporate world of news gathering, computer search time was money. Somebody had to be held responsible for every dime spent. Nick knew that. Lori knew that.
“Yeah,” he said. “Deirdre.”
Lori was still looking over her lenses. “My ass,” she said.
“OK. I’m grandfathered in,” Nick said.
“My ass again,” she said, this time grinning.
Nick just looked at her with his eyebrows up, surprised.
Lori shook the pad at him and smiled. “Off the books,” she said. “For now.”
Nick almost winked, but then thought, Don’t do that. That’s what Carly would call “weird Dad stuff.”
“And speaking of books,” Lori said, bailing him out, “I’ve got that Van Gogh book that you said Carly might like.” She bent under the shelf and came up with a big picture book he’d commented on weeks ago.
“How’s she doing, anyway?”
“Better,” Nick said, taking the book and wondering about the coincidence that they’d both thought of his daughter at the same time. “She’ll love this, Lori. Thanks.”
On the way back through the rat’s maze to his desk, Nick kept his coffee cup up to his face. Maybe no one would interrupt him at midswallow. But before he got to his chair an editor for the online edition of the paper asked if he had anything new on the jail shooting and could he please file something so they could put it up on the website. Nick just nodded. In another era newspaper reporters had a daily deadline: Get the best and most accurate story you can by nine or ten o’clock tonight so it makes the morning’s paper. Only the wire service and radio reporters had to make several updates during the day, leaving them little time to dig deeper into a story. But in a time of website mania, every daily reporter was in competition on an hourly basis. File what you have so the office workers sneaking looks at the news on their computers at their desks can follow your shifting speculation all day.
Nick hated it, but played the game.
He sat down and called up a blank file and wrote:
An inmate being transferred to the county’s downtown jail was killed by an unknown gunman at 7:55 this morning, police said.
The prisoner, whose name was being withheld by the Sheriff’s Office, was the only person injured during the rush-hour shooting as he was being walked into the rear of the jail building in the 800 block of South Andrews Avenue.
A Sheriff’s Office spokesman said the shooting took place after a van transporting several prisoners was inside a closed gated area just a block from the county courthouse. Investigators were unsure how many shots were fired, said spokesman Joel Cameron, and officials would not speculate on a motive for the killing.
“The shooting piece is in,” he called over his shoulder to the online editor when he finished. It had taken him eight minutes. A lot of nothing, he thought. But it’ll hold them off for a while.
He took a long sip of coffee and then called up his e-mail message inbox and started at the real work.
Lori had sent him several files and he opened up the one titled YOURFERRIS, figuring it to be the story he had written on Steven Ferris just four years ago.
THE PREDATORS AMONG US
By Nick Mullins, Staff Writer
They walked hand in hand on the street, two little girls, one in green-and-white sneakers, the other in pink shorts, sisters strolling home after school.
When they were stopped by a soft voice, it didn’t startle them—it was familiar. When they turned to the big doughy man with the kind smile, they felt no fear—they knew him. When he invited them into his