didn't sleep well after my day with the files. I CTkept thinking about the photos. First of Theresa, then of my brother. Both of them captured forever in horrible poses, stored away in envelopes. I wanted to go back and steal the photos and burn them. I didn't want anyone ever to see them.

In the morning, after I had made coffee, I turned on my computer and dialed into the Rocky's system to check messages. I ate handfuls of Cheerios from the box as I waited for the connection to be made and my password to be approved. I kept my laptop and printer set up on the dining room table because I most often ate while using them. it beat sitting at the table alone and thinking about how I'd been eating alone for more years than I cared to remember.

My home was small. I'd had the same one-bedroom apartment with the same furniture for nine years. It wasn't a bad place but it was nothing special. Other than Sean, I couldn't remember who the last visitor was. When I was with women, I didn't take them there. There hadn't been many of them, anyway. I thought when I first moved in I'd only be staying a couple years, that maybe I'd eventually buy a house and get rried or have a dog or something. But it hadn't happened I'm not sure why. The job, I guess. At least that's what I told myself I concentrated my energy on my work. In each room of the apartment there were stacks of newspapers with my stories in them. I liked to reread them and save them. If I died at home, I knew they'd come in there and find me and mistakenly think I was one of those pack rats I'd written about who die with newspapers stacked to the ceiling and their cash stuffed into the mattress. They wouldn't bother to pick up one of the papers and read my story.

On the computer I had only a couple of messages.

most recent was from Greg Glenn asking how it was going.

It had been sent at six-thirty the night before. The timing annoyed me; the guy okayed the assignment Monday morning and on Monday night he wanted to know where I was going with it. "How's it going?" was editor-speak for "Where's the story?"

Fuck him, I thought. I sent back a brief reply saying I had spent Monday with the cops and was convinced of my brother's suicide. That out of the way, I would begin exploring the causes and frequency of police suicide.

The previous message on the tube was from Laurie Prine in the library. It had been sent at four-thirty Monday. All it said was, "Interesting stuff on Nexis. It's on the counter."

I sent a message back thanking her for the quick search and saying I had unexpectedly been tied up in Boulder but would pick up the search package right away. I thought she had an interest in me, though I had never responded to her on anything other than the professional level. You have to be careful and be sure. You make a wanted advance and you're cool. You make an unwanted advance and you get a personnel complaint. My view is that it's better just to avoid the whole thing. Next I scrolled through the AP and UPI wires to see if there was anything interesting going on. There was a story about a doctor being shot outside a women's clinic in Colorado Springs. An anti-abortion activist was in custody, but the doctor had not died yet. I made an electronic copy of the story and transferred it to my personal storage basket, but I didn't think I'd ever do anything with it unless the doctor died.