24 hours [nate mood]

[jamie]

1 january 2013
1:30p.m.

If the semester had already started he would have gone to the Sturm College campus where Theodore Amherst had an office. But Nate was not scheduled to attend the first class of the spring semester until next week and his father was not in his office.

Nate would not make it to the first week of classes or the second or the third. But he didn't know this when he met his father for coffee the week before classes started.

They met at a coffeehouse a few minutes' walk from the Denver Post building instead of Teddy Amherst's office. Nate went there early so he could smoke a cigarette on the sidewalk and resolve the slew of emails in his inbox from his phone. The weather was cold but not damp and the smoke from his cigarette did not blow back into his face. Still he felt the gray of the morning as a weight instead of a hue.

As parents tend to do his father was aging. He'd passed his fiftieth birthday already. Hannah had still been living in Nebraska with their mother and stepfather and Nathan called but had to give his well wishes to the old man's voicemail. That isn't anything they talk about. He hadn't called his father since then. It was his father who called while Hannah was in town and it was his father who called today to ask if he wanted to have coffee.

Teddy came up the sidewalk. He always moved like he was in a hurry. Before he greeted his son he thrust his wrist out from the edge of his suit jacket to check the time and then they were upon each other. Nate did not put out the cigarette right away and Teddy frowned at it but didn't reprimand him. The time to have done that has long since passed.

"How you doing?" he asked.
"Alright," Nate said. "Busy."
"You're taking a class this semester, right?"
"Yeah. Critical Studies of Film, TV, and Popular Culture."
"Oh that'll be three grand well spent."
"Thank you, Uncle Sam."
"Why are you critically studying TV?"
"For some reason I have to take that before I can take Qualitative Research Methods."
"And that's a requirement for the degree?"
"Can you believe it?"
"How's your mother?"

Nate took another drag off his cigarette and frowned as he blew it up towards the sky.

"When's the last time you talked to her?" Teddy asked.
"I've had a couple of nice chats with her clerk but she doesn't feel like returning my calls, I guess."
"Did you mention the accident?"
"Why would I do that?"
"You know how your mother is. She doesn't just call to chat."
"Eh."
"Nathan."
"Alright. I'll call her."
"Thank you."

They went inside after that.

---

After his meeting with his father Nathan returned to the near-empty Denver Post offices and took the stairs to the fourth floor. For the first month after his return to work he had gasped and coughed the entire way up the stairwell but his lungs were grown used to the trauma by now. The older reporters busted his balls when they got off the elevator like they always did but he could ignore the older reporters. They didn't mean anything by it.

He slept on the couch in the break room for an hour and twenty minutes and then brushed his teeth over the sink and went back out there. This week was his holiday week to work the overnights but he couldn't hound his sources or follow up on cases he was following if he slept during the day. So he shoved a bagel between his teeth and refilled his coffee cup and took it back to his desk.

The police scanner mounted over his monitor chattered throughout the day but it was not his turn to rush out to cover the stories so he was not attending to it. He had his desk phone glued to his ear and was staring at his word processing software when Doherty came over from the sports section.

Whenever Doherty came over from the sports section the old timers heckled him the entire way from the door to the desk of whichever unfortunate he was coming to harass. Nate's desk was deep inside the bullpen and he could almost ignore Doherty were not for the fact that it had the unfortunate distinction of facing the center aisle through which assholes like Doherty could walk.

"Marszalek!" he said when he was a few feet away.
"Fuck off, Doherty, I'm on the phone."
"Yeah? Who you talking to, your boyfriend?"
"I'm gonna be talking to the coroner telling him I need help hiding your stupid body if you don't get the fuck away from me."

Another crime reporter started laughing before Doherty grabbed the back of Nate's chair and started rattling it. He slammed down the phone and got to his feet before the rattling could continue for much longer. Doherty held up his hands palm-out in a show of defeat and then laughed.

"Whoa, man," he said. "Just here to ask about the Sachs case."
"The one I emailed you about two fucking days ago?"
"Yeah. Where's the workup on the girlfriend?"
"Which girlfriend? The guy has like five fucking girlfriends."
"The one who claims she's got OCD."
"Jesus Christ Doherty," Nate said as he sat back down and pulled open his desk drawer, "you are the worst goddamn fucking journalist I have ever met in my entire life."
"I'm not a journalist, bro, I cover the sports section."

Nate slapped an entire file folder against Doherty's chest and pointed towards the copier.

"Go find whatever it is you think you need so you can tell the world how the fucking Avalanche did last night and bring it back."
"Thanks, bro."
"And if you call me 'bro' again I'm gonna slash your fucking tires."

The other crime reporter at least waited until Doherty had started to walk the gauntlet towards the copier before he dissolved into laughter.

"Marszalek," he said, "his old man's on the board of directors, you can't threaten to slash his tires."
"Why not?"
"I don't actually have an answer for that."

Nate closed the gaping drawer and went back to work.

---

Officers Pete Brown and Carole Klein were the first ones to respond to the 8:22p.m. call reporting shots fired. They came in separate patrol vehicles and talked to a group of residents who were huddled outside smoking and then stood on the front lawn outside the house for several seconds while they waited for a third vehicle with the tactical unit to show up.

When the tactical unit showed up they entered the premises and discovered two bodies inside a basement apartment. A woman and a man. The woman had been dead in the bathtub for some time and the man appeared to have shot himself under the chin with a shotgun.

Carole had been with the Denver Police Department for a little over a year and could not recall covering the smell of a wet decomp in her upper-level criminal justice coursework. When it hit her she and Brown both went outside again to vomit. Pete had had the foresight to wolf down a fast food meal before coming to the call but Carole's stomach was empty and she dry heaved for nearly five minutes before someone came and checked on her.

"For fuck's sake, Klein," the sergeant said, "help secure the perimeter."
"Oh my god, thank you."

Half an hour later she was securing the last of the yellow crime scene tape when a nondescript Jeep pulled up across the street. The flashing lights bounced off of the windows and she could not see who was inside but the other officers started groaning right away.

"What?" Carole asked.
"You haven't had to talk to the press yet, have you?" asked another sergeant.
"No. Why?"
"Today's your lucky day, Rookie," said Brown.
"What? No! I don't want to talk to the press."

The guy who got out of the Jeep was tall and blond and rumpled.

"Shit," said another officer, "is he from the Post or the North High School Gazette?"
"Oh, come on," said Carole, "he doesn't look that young."
"Go talk to the press, Klein," said the other sergeant.

Someone else pushed her forward. Carole ducked under the police tape and met him halfway down the lawn. By then she had shored up her shoulders and wiped the discomfort from her face. She kept a hand on her radio as she walked towards him.

"Evening," she said.
"Evening," he said. "Nathan Marszalek, Denver Post. How's it going?"
"Double homicide. Possible murder-suicide. Possible suicide-suicide. We can't tell yet."
"You're not even gonna let me warm you up first, huh?"
"Oh. Sorry. Are you supposed to ask questions?"
"I mean, How's it going? was a question, it's just usually I gotta go a few rounds with whoever drew the short straw before they'll tell me anything."
"Sorry, this is my first time talking to a reporter."
"You're fine, I just have a couple more questions and then I'm going to want permission to take some pictures for the paper tomorrow."

He asked her more questions about the nature of the crime and whether they had any other suspects and why they thought the crime had taken place. They would have to interview the neighbors and their next of kin and check into their employers and other people who knew them before they could narrow that down. So he left to take his photos and she went back inside to help with rounding up the neighbors but in the end the sergeant pushed her back outside to continue maintaining the perimeter.

The reporter came back around eleven o'clock with a Nikon hung from his shoulder by the strap. Carole was daydreaming about a big cup of unadulterated coffee when he gave her what passed for a smile and took his notepad from his shirt pocket.

"Last question," he said.
"Go for it."
"Got a number I can reach you at later?"
"Oh, sure. It's 555-4195."

The reporter lifted an eyebrow.

"What?" she asked.
"I thought the numbers at the station all started with 913."
"OH. Oh my god. I'm so sorry. That's--"

He laughed and started to cross it off.

"I mean you can have that number," she said. "For later. I just--"

The sergeant came ambling over about then and leaned across the yellow tape with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows raised. Like a parent come out onto the front porch when his kid is pushing curfew.

"What're you doing, Marszalek?" he asked.
"Just finishing up, Sergeant."
"You know the Public Information number?"
"Oh yeah. Like the back of my hand."
"You and your hand have a lovely evening."

Like to soften the blow the sergeant reached out his right hand. The reporter took it and shook and then turned and walked himself back down the lawn.

"Really?" the sergeant asked as he got into the Jeep.
"I'm sorry, I don't know what my brain just did."
"Don't give the press your freaking phone number, Klein."
"I'm sorry. It wasn't my desk number, I swear."
"No, I know it wasn't. I got ears like a freaking bat. What're you gonna do if he calls you?"
"Answer it?"
"For crying out loud..."
"I thought the press was all overweight balding guys, nobody told me there were cute ones out there and I was going to have to talk to them."
"What are you, twelve years old?"
"No, sir. I'm twenty-three."
"Jesus Christ," the sergeant said as he stepped back from the tape, "that's even worse."

---

2 january 2013
1:30p.m.

Brown and Klein had only been in their cruiser for a couple of hours when a call came in for a homicide about a mile from the DU campus. The suspects were still on-scene and had called in the death themselves. One of them had suffered multiple lacerations from a confrontation with an employee. They responded. It was in their district and they were the closest unit.

When they walked in they saw and smelled nothing out of the ordinary. It was a bookstore. Cramped and dusty. Plenty of places for an assailant to hide so they swept the storefront before they went back into the office. That was where they found the suspects. The woman sat in a chair at the desk and the man sat on the floor by the basement stairs.

It wasn't until after the ambulance left and they turned the scene over to the detectives and got back into their cruiser that Brown asked Klein if she was alright. She was not alright. She had not yet grown a callous over her insides and seeing the reporter she had talked to the night before bloodied and barely coherent had left her uneasy.

"Why wouldn't I be?" she asked.
"Isn't that your boyfriend we're about to go shake down?"
"He's not my boyfriend."
"Heard Kowalski say you gave him your number last night."
"It was an accident!"
"So you're not gonna be bringing him no flowers or nothing while he's in the hospital."

She ground her teeth to keep from smirking and pulled away from the curb.

"That's not funny," she said.
"I'm not trying to be funny. Y'all would make a cute couple."
"Oh, yeah. That's what I look for when I'm trying to find future husband material. Someone who's married to his job and shows up at mine covered in blood."
"Bring him some flowers, Klein."
"Shut up, Brown."
"Bring the man some flowers."
"You're so immature."