Abe put down his iPad. He had defined cheekbones that sat high on his face, and each one was home to six or seven tiny red freckles. Back when we were partners, I once heard a call girl compliment him on those cheeks. In fact, she offered her services for free. Which my partner turned down, at least in front of me. Maybe he circled back later.

“All right,” I said. “I’m headed out back. You need anything, shout.”

I walked into the backyard, where Beau, the dog, was waiting for me. He had one blue eye and one brown.

Over the top of the one-story house, I could see the lights of news cameras and hear the murmur of reporters, still out front.

Standing at the threshold of the casita, I stared in at the four dozen banker’s boxes in the middle of the room. I wondered if Harrington did his research and writing out here.

I started at his desk first, sitting down and pulling open each drawer.

In the top one, I found an old-style Rolodex, with individual index cards, loosely attached on a center spindle. I pulled one card out and stared at the chicken scratches on it. The writing was a combination of numbers and letters. Some code probably used to hide the names of Harrington’s sources. A reporter’s system, old-school and secret.

I continued flipping through them.

Not every card was like this. On one I found his sister’s name, Maryanne Harrington Liggins, along with various phone numbers, some of them crossed out over the years. The index card was sun-faded, and I wasn’t even sure if this was a recent system Harrington was using.

I moved to the second drawer and found a molded ceramic picture frame made of two letter B’s at the bottom and a big square at the top. The glass inside the frame had been cracked, but underneath was a picture of Jed Harrington, along with his dog, Beau.

In the picture, Harrington donned a Tulane T-shirt and overalls and leaned on a long Ruger. I recognized June Lake in the background.

I wondered who took the photo. Who went hunting or camping with Beau and Jed? Was it his sister? Would she be able to tell us what set her brother off?

In my experience, the families of criminals are often as confused as the rest of us as to the evolution of their criminal sons or daughters. A mother sees her kid’s life in flashes: her son as an infant, crawling on a rug. Then a boy in third grade, excited to go to school. And suddenly a nineteen-year-old, held without bail for killing his best friend over twenty dollars.

I took more items out of the drawers. Pads of paper and pens and little tchotchkes collected over the years. None of them led to any connection between Harrington and the school. No reason for him to be at Falls Magnet.

I moved to the boxes next, which were full of file folders that corresponded to various stories that Harrington had written over the years. They ranged from research on corruption to drug trafficking to pieces he’d written about soldiers’ lives, adjusting after a return from the Middle East.