Once the television guys and the Herald got the story about the letter, they'd be knocking on Margaria Cotton's front door, dredging up all the ugly memories. Yeah, Nick thought, like you already have?
"Christ!" he said. He was driving south on 1-95, trailing behind some late-model Chevy Cavalier. He looked over at the box and then at his speedometer. Fifty-four. OK, he might have been driving blind for the last twenty minutes, but it was putsy blind. He wasn't a speeder when his head was tied up. By instinct he instead tucked in behind another car and followed without paying any damned attention. He punched the gas and passed the blue-haired old lady piloting the Cavalier and pushed it up to the normal sixty-five. Eight miles later he got off the interstate and then crawled with morning traffic into downtown. When he parked in the newspaper lot he left the box of letters on the passenger seat and locked the doors.
The newsroom was, as usual in the morning, quiet. Nick headed for his desk, snatching up a copy of the day's paper and glancing at the front page as he went. His story on Michaels was below the fold, in the bottom right-hand corner.