his desk, a sports editor grinned at him and said, “Hi, Nick. How you doing?”
The greeting snapped his concentration at first, and then piled onto Cotton’s observation.
“Hey, Stevie. Alright,” Nick answered.
Few people in the place bothered to talk to him these days. The sports guy, Steve Bryant, had told him it was because they didn’t know what to say after Nick returned to work following the accident. The first few weeks, there were the quiet condolences. He’d nodded, thanked them. But he’d never been a gregarious sort. He’d have an occasional beer with the other reporters after a late shift, would toss a good-natured barb across the desk like the one he’d received from Hirschman about the roof photo. But Steve had confided that if Nick was already intimidating with his intensity before the tragedy, he was downright scary when he’d returned.
Loss of compassion? Like Ms. Cotton had said? A scene from an old movie flashed into Nick’s head. A hard-core mercenary is told during a firefight that he’s bleeding. The guy’s rebuttal: I ain’t got time to bleed.
When he got to his desk there was a press release lying in the middle, a one-sheet write-up that had been faxed by the Sheriff’s Office as it had been to every news organization in three counties. Cameron had given everyone all the updated information that Nick had already put in his story for this morning’s edition, including the caliber of the bullet. While his computer was coming up, Nick answered the blinking light on his phone. Three of four messages were from readers who wanted him to know how glad they were that Ferris had been shot, saving them the cost of another trial “for that animal.” None left a name. The fourth call was from Cameron. There was a distinct edge in his voice:
“Nick. Nice job this morning doing an interview of a witness before the detectives could even get to her. Man, you’re gumming this one up, pal.”
Cameron paused, maybe for effect, maybe because he didn’t want to say what he had to say next.
“Detective Hargrave wants to see you himself this afternoon about four. I’ll assume you’ll be here. Believe me, Nick, it might be a once-in-a-lifetime offer. But I’m going to have to be in the room with you, so ease up, eh?”
Nick replayed the message, twice, and then sat back, thinking it through. Hargrave, the wordless one, the man who always turned his back on the media, wanted a sitdown. Did he think Nick had gotten something from Cotton he hadn’t? Maybe he thought she knew the people who had worn the pictures of Cotton’s girls during the trial. That would sure as hell be one of Nick’s moves if he was looking for someone with motive. There had been news coverage of the trial. Nick would have to call Matt over at Channel 10 to see if their film was being subpoenaed. But most of those video shots would have been of the front of the courtroom, not of the gallery. Hargrave also would have known from Cameron that Nick hadn’t covered the trial. He looked up over the cubicles to see if the court reporter was still at her desk. She might have quoted some of the people who’d worn the buttons and had some names and contact numbers. He looked at his watch. It was two o’clock. If the meeting with Hargrave took a while, he’d be pushing deadline later in the day. To be safe he opened up a new screen on his computer and started typing a rough draft of tomorrow’s follow-up story, which at this point wouldn’t be much different factually from today’s, other than planting a quote or two from Ms. Cotton. He could always hope that Hargrave would let loose with something, but he wasn’t planning on it.
It took him an hour to bang out 350 decent words that could pass for a Saturday story on its own if it had to. At this point, he’d have to lead with the only fresh thing he had, which was that police were talking with the mother of the slain children in connection with Ferris’s killing and the investigation was continuing. Nick knew it was bullshit. The investigation was always continuing and most people with half a brain would know that the cops would talk with the girls’ mom. But he also knew that if you phrased it just right, the general reading public would skim it, figure it was