"OK. I'm grandfathered in," Nick said.

"My ass again," she said, this time grinning.

Nick just looked at her with his eyebrows up, surprised.

Lori shook the pad at him and smiled. "Off the books," she said. "For now."

Nick almost winked, but then thought, Don't do that. That's what Carly would call "weird Dad stuff."

"And speaking of books," Lori said, bailing him out, "I've got that Van Gogh book that you said Carly might like." She bent under the shelf and came up with a big picture book he'd commented on weeks ago.

"How's she doing, anyway?"

"Better," Nick said, taking the book and wondering about the coincidence that they'd both thought of his daughter at the same time. "She'll love this, Lori. Thanks."

On the way back through the rat's maze to his desk, Nick kept his coffee cup up to his face. Maybe no one would interrupt him at midswallow. But before he got to his chair an editor for the online edition of the paper asked if he had anything new on the jail shooting and could he please file something so they could put it up on the website. Nick just nodded. In another era newspaper reporters had a daily deadline: Get the best and most accurate story you can by nine or ten o'clock tonight so it makes the morning's paper. Only the wire service and radio reporters had to make several updates during the day, leaving them little time to dig deeper into a story. But in a time of website mania, every daily reporter was in competition on an hourly basis. File what you have so the office workers sneaking looks at the news on their computers at their desks can follow your shifting speculation all day.

Nick hated it, but played the game.

He sat down and called up a blank file and wrote: An inmate being transferred to the county's downtown jail was killed by an unknown gunman at 7:55 this morning, police said.

The prisoner, whose name was being withheld by the Sheriff's Office, was the only person injured during the rush-hour shooting as he was being walked into the rear of the jail building in the 800 block of South Andrews Avenue.