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