Come on in. I only have a few minutes. I'm Mike Warren.

Michael if you use my name in print, though I prefer you don't use it and talk to the staff here instead. Hopefully I can help you with that."

Once he was behind his cluttered desk I introduced myself and we shook hands. He told me to take a seat. There were newspapers stacked on one side of the desk. On the other side were photos of a wife and two children, angled so that Warren could see them as well as his visitors. There was a computer on a low table to his left and a photo of Warren shaking the president's hand on the wall above it.

Warren was clean shaven and wore a white shirt with a maroon tie. The collar was frayed a bit where his afternoon whiskers rubbed against it. His jacket was draped over the back of his chair. His sidn was very pale and set off by dark sharp eyes and straight black hair.

"So what's up? Are you in the Scripps D.C. bureau?" He was talking about the parent company. it maintained a bureau of reporters that fed Washington stories to all pa Apers in the chain. It was the office Greg Glenn had suggested I go through earlier in the week.

"No, I'm out from Denver."

"Well, what can I do you for?"

"I need to talk to Nathan Ford or maybe whoever is diy handling the police suicide study."

"Police suicide. That's an FBI project. Oline Fredrick's the researcher handling that with them."

"Yes, I know the FBI is involved."

"Let's see." He picked up the desk phone but then put it back down. "You know, you didn't call ahead on this, did you? I don't recognize the name."

"No, I just got into town. It's a breaking story, you could say.

"Breaking story? Police suicide? That doesn't sound like deadline stuff. Why the hurry?"

Then it struck me who he was.

"Did you used to work for the LA. Times? The Washington bureau? You that Michael Warren?"

He smiled because he, or his name, had been recognized.

"Yes, how'd you know?"

"The Post-Times wire. I've been scrolling it for years. I recognized the name. You covered Justice, right? Did good stuff."

"Until a year ago. I quit and came here."

I nodded. There was always a moment of uneasy silence when I crossed paths with somebody who had left the life and was now on the other side of the line. Usually, they were burnouts, reporters who grew tired of the always-ondeadline and always-need-to-produce life. I once read a book about a reporter written by a reporter who described the life as always running in front of a thresher. I thought it was the most accurate description I'd read. Sometimes people got tired of running in front of the machine, sometimes they got pulled in and were left shredded. Sometimes they managed to get out from in front of it. They used their expertise in the business to seek the steadiness of a job as a person who handled the media rather than was part of it. This is what Warren had done and somehow I felt sorry for him. He had been damn good. I hoped he didn't feel the same regret.