Elsa woke him in the morning, partially with the scent of fresh-brewing coffee, then fully with a careful pat on the shoulder. Nick had fallen asleep on the couch fully dressed and with a jumble of unanswered questions and barely connected trails of victims and prisoners and violence that spun him enough to twist his shirt around his middle and cause his pants to shift a quarter turn around. When he finally stood, he had to adjust his clothes before he could walk to the kitchen counter and rescue his muddled brain with Elsa's Colombian coffee, black, no sugar.
It was nearly seven and he could hear Carly shuffling and moving in the girls' bathroom that she had taken over since the accident. She had insisted on saving Lindsay's bath oils and bottled fragrances, especially the ones they'd concocted together. And even two years later he couldn't bring himself to toss them. Even in the master bath Nick had not had the heart to put away the makeup tray where Julie had kept her perfumes. He used to foolishly pick up a spritzer and squirt a cloud of her scent into the air and just stand there, breathing it in. It used to make him cry. He'd tried to break the habit. Her side of the vanity remained spotless. He used the other sink and a small kit bag in the corner that had always held his shaving stuff, deodorant and a toothbrush. Julie had joked that he was always packed and ready to go. But it had not been funny near the end and they had both known it. Still, he never changed.
When Carly was ready for school she came out for breakfast and Nick moved his coffee to the table.
"Hey, sunshine," Nick said. His face was dark and slack with fatigue, but he was trying to cover it. "What's on the agenda for today?"
"Just stuff. But we are going to get to do some more clay sculpture in art and it's going to be way cool. I'm finally going to put the legs on that angel I told you I was working on. Then we might actually get them in the kiln this week. Do you think I should paint her, or just leave her with the clay color-I mean, you can see the details and stuff without the paint and that's what counts and it's kinda weird to paint them all white and silver and stuff when nobody really knows what angels wear anyway and so what, you can do what you want, right?"
Elsa came over and set a bowl of cream of wheat in front of the girl and smiled that smile at Nick that said, She is wound up this morning, eh?
"Absolutely," Nick said. "Art is in the eye of the beholder and you're the beholder. Do what you want, babe."
Carly rambled on about her teacher and how she'd already figured out how to manipulate her. "I can just play around with my own ideas and she'll still give me a good grade."
Nick listened, and thought, When did these kids get so smart?, and then they heard the car horn outside and his daughter jumped up, kissed him on the head, said, "'Bye, Dad," kissed Elsa and thanked her for the half eaten breakfast and then blew out through the front door, leaving a fragrance and an energy wafting behind.
Nick sat for a moment, sipping his coffee. When he finally rose, Elsa looked him in the face.
"You look like the sin, Mr. Mullins," she said with her thick accent and shaking her head as one might at a shameful sight.
"Thank you, Elsa," Nick said. "I'm going to shower and then I'm going to work. Please make me some more coffee."
He'd gone over the scenario too many times to count during the night and it was still in his head. Nick was trying to decide whether to turn the letters over to Hargrave, including the one with Michael Redman's name on it, still in the plastic bag, right on top. The box was sitting on the passenger seat next to him. He couldn't help glancing over at it, like some snake crate about to pop open and let loose a beast that would rise and start spitting venom in all directions. He knew it could be evidence, that wasn't in question, whether it could be. But his reluctance through the night had been twofold.
First, he'd called Lori in research before he left the house and she punched Redman's name into the local and national media database and came up with nothing. The last reference had been Nick's own story on the weapons-dealer shooting and the editorial before it. As far as he could tell, no media had any idea what the guy had been doing for the last few years or whether he was even still with the Sheriff's Office. In Nick's head, linking Redman to the recent shootings was premature.
Second, if he gave the letter to Hargrave, then it would be in their house. Could Hargrave keep it under his hat? Would he have to tell Canfield, who Nick knew was Redman's supervisor back in the day? Would anyone be able to contain it if it leaked? Tell two people and three will know. Once there are three, there will be four by the end of the day. Rumor was always exponential. He could see the Herald's headlines: