What had once been her normal routine felt strange—leaving home without a protection detail, driving her own car, making her way through the streets of Denver without a U.S. Marshal escort.
She arrived at the paper to find dozens of reporters standing out front, cameras and mics ready. She’d issued a statement through her attorney yesterday afternoon after the FBI press conference, but apparently that hadn’t been enough. She walked through the crowd, taking the opportunity to thank the Marshal Service, the FBI, and the Denver police, mentioning Zach, Janet, and even Agent Petras by name.
She found her desk festooned with balloons, a bouquet of calla lilies in the center.
Sophie gave her a hug. “Welcome back!”
“Thanks.” Laura sniffed the lilies. “These are beautiful.”
Alex made his way past her to his desk, his black eye beginning to yellow. “Oh, look, it’s our celebrity.”
Laura ignored him, getting settled in at her desk.
“Hey, Laura, good to see you.” Matt walked up to her in a pair of black trousers and a wrinkled blue dress shirt, a big grin on his boyish face, sunglasses propped on top of his short red hair. “Glad that’s all behind you. I guess it wasn’t Al-Nassar after all. That’s good news.”
“Yes, it is—and thanks.”
She checked her voice mail, deleting a message from Gary in which he apologized once more—and asked her to come in for another interview tonight. He even offered to send a limo. But she wanted nothing to do with him. Next, she answered her e-mails, including one from Javier suggesting she pick up a spray can of whipped cream on the way home.
“For dessert,” he’d written.
“My favorite,” she answered.
She hadn’t had time to read through the paper this morning, so she quickly perused it. She was glad to see that Alex had asked Petras about Edwards’s ties to Ali Al Zahrani. Petras had declined to comment. She couldn’t be a hundred percent sure her hunch about Ali was correct, but it seemed to her that Petras wasn’t really interested in finding the truth. She might have called Zach and asked him to look deeper into the case against Ali, but she knew there was little he could do. The Marshal Service had coordinated her protection detail and the task force, but the bombing investigation had been left to the FBI.
She wished she could write an article challenging the bureau to reexamine the evidence against Ali, but she had promised Janet that she wouldn’t reveal the contents of the file. Laura didn’t break promises. But she didn’t give up either. Maybe there was a way to get it in the paper
She would have to think about that.
Tom was in an unusually bright mood, probably because he’d just learned that several I-Team stories had won prizes in this year’s Investigative Editors and Reporters Awards. “We’re glad to have you back, Nilsson. Harker, what’s going on with the city?”
Matt was working on a follow-up piece about Candy’s Emporium. When the property had been vacated, one of the employees had apparently left behind a little black book of clients that included several leading city officials —and a state senator.
Sophie hoped to head into the mountains with a naturalist to see how the areas burned in last summer’s catastrophic wildfires had recovered. “It ought to make for a really fantastic photo spread if you’re up for it, Joaquin.”
He grinned. “You know it.”
Alex hoped to put to bed the first story in his series about prison gangs, this installment focusing on how gang members in prison, even those in D-seg—disciplinary segregation—managed to communicate with gang members on the outside. “I wore a camera for some of the interviews, so I’ve got video for the website.”
“Nilsson, how’s the VA story coming together?”
“I’m good to go. I’ll finish it today.”
Syd turned to Joaquin. “Photos?”
“They’re all turned in except for the shot of Ted Hollis. When I called, he thought I was part of some government conspiracy or something. He freaked out and told me Laura had never said anything about photos. He sounded really out of it.”
“Sorry, Joaquin. I told him I needed a shot of him and said he could expect a call from you. I guess he forgot. I’ll call him.”
JAVIER SLID THE CD of the surveillance footage into Laura’s computer and played it, watching as the shooter with his strange glowing ball of a head scoped out his shot and waited. He fast-forwarded, then watched again as the guy set up the M110, got into position, and opened fire. He watched closely as the sniper spotted Tower and reacted, squeezing off two near-fatal rounds before getting in the vehicle and making his getaway.
There was no way the man in this footage could be Edwards. The sniper moved smoothly, efficiently, demonstrating a kind of dexterity that came from practice and experience. Edwards had moved slowly with an almost shuffling gait.
Javier stopped the playback, picked up his cell phone, and dialed a buddy of his in Coronado. He and Miles had gone through BUD/S together. Miles had been a SEAL until he’d lost both legs to a land mine in Afghanistan. Once he recovered, he’d found a new way to serve and now worked in naval intelligence. “Hey, you got a second?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“I need a favor.”
“This wouldn’t have to do with a sexy reporter, would it?”
“Yeah, and keep that to yourself.” He explained the situation to Miles. “I just don’t buy that this guy is the same one who shot me. Can you run this footage and get a height and weight off the shooter?”
“Sure thing—but it’s going to cost you a steak dinner.”
“You got it, bro.”
“When do you need this?”
“Now.”
Miles laughed. “Make that a steak dinner—and a bottle of Glenfiddich.”
“Deal.”
“I’m creating a shared folder. Give me an e-mail address where I can send the password and the URL for the folder. Once you log in, upload the footage. I’ll get to work on it as soon as it’s here.”
“Roger that.”
LAURA SAT AT her desk, listening with no small degree of satisfaction to the shouting coming from Tom’s office. She’d told Tom how Alex had behaved when he’d come over for lunch and demanded to know if Tom thought Alex’s actions were consistent with good journalistic ethics. It hadn’t been a rhetorical question. She’d been genuinely interested to hear Tom’s answer. She knew he was an aggressive journalist, but she’d always considered him to be an ethical one.
She’d been pleased when he’d apologized for Alex’s actions—and then shouted, “Carmichael, get in here!”
He’d made Alex apologize.
She’d walked out with a smile on her face.
She’d been working on her VA story since then, hoping to wrap it up well before deadline. She’d called and left a message on Ted Hollis’s cell phone about Joaquin and the photo situation, but Hollis hadn’t called back yet. She read through what she’d written so far and made a few tweaks to the nut graph, summarizing the findings that would be in the article. She was about to go get another cup of coffee when her phone rang.
“Hi, Laura.” It was Ted Hollis. “I’m sorry I acted that way. I guess I should have trusted the photographer, but I thought you’d be coming and . . . I just don’t like dealing with strangers.”
She tried to reason with him. “I’m a stranger, and you trusted me.”
“I guess you don’t feel like a stranger. I feel like I know you.”
“I can understand that.” People often thought they knew people they saw on TV or read about in the
