Page 30 of The Fourth Option
“I don’t have a computer,” Walker said, running his palm slowly over the first notebook’s battered cover as though reading the texture.
She studied him for a moment. Then she nodded. “Then the hard copies will do.”
Walker cracked the older journal open. Rows of compact, precise handwriting stacked one atop another filled the pages, dark ink absorbing the light. Few breaks. No wasted space. A mind running hot.
“He was obsessed with Moleskines,” Leigh Ann said. “He was an analog guy, like you. Used them all through LSU and prep school.”
Prep school, Walker noted. Not high school.
“What prep school was that?”
“An all-boys Jesuit academy. About three miles from here.”
Walker nodded. Skeptics and philosophers disguised as priests.
“You know, he was on his way to get his graduate degree in journalism at Columbia.” Her tone dipped. “Dying in Afghanistan is one thing, Chris. Dying on the streets of New Orleans, working on a story, that’s another. He wanted to start Columbia with some experience.”
“Leigh Ann, what happened?”
Her face hardened, jaw set, eyes focused.
“He got to the wrong people.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you.” She turned her monitor toward him and opened a file.
It was a scanned version of the journal, annotated in soft red ink. Passages were highlighted. Some sections were tagged with dates, others with clipped Post-its in digital yellow.
“He started a year ago,” she said, scrolling to a specific entry. “Thesetwo ODs, Marcus and Lisa, they were Louisiana kids. One from here, one from Baton Rouge.” She pointed with the back of her pen. “Then more names follow. Each with details.”
Walker flipped through the notebook in parallel, turning pages beneath callused fingers. “Did he ever discuss any of this with you?”
“He kept it to himself. Said he was working on something big, ‘a story on the Big Easy,’ he would joke. Looking back, I think he was trying to protect me.”
“It’s hard to make sense of these entries,” Walker said, eyes narrowing.
“That’s the code Connor was using. I couldn’t crack it, not entirely. But I had access to death certificates through the hospital, for the local cases at least. Some of the details matched what’s in here.”
“You used your credentials?”
Leigh Ann shrugged, pragmatic. “I had access. The investigators were not giving me anything.” She tapped a page on the screen. “What I’ve learned so far is that Connor was trying to map opioid-related overdoses, figure out where the supply was coming from, and who was moving it. He focused in on a particular drug he called ‘Snowball.’ It’s the new popular pill out there.”
“How’d you get that far?”
“I gave myself a crash course in code breaking online. There’s a printed legend taped to the back cover. It’s a start.”
Walker flipped to the rear flap of the older notebook. A taped sheet of paper bore a cipher legend alongside a printout of Leigh Ann’s cross-referenced notes.
“I see.”
“Connor found patterns in the overdoses. All tied to a network operating out of a section of town called the Ninth Ward, which is where he thought this Snowball was coming from.” She opened Google Maps and pulled up an overhead view. “The Ninth is east of us, on the same bank. Right along the canal.”
An image of roads, grids, and waterways appeared on her screen.
“It was nearly wiped out during Katrina. That levee,” she tapped the canal, “broke wide open. The entire area was submerged fifteen feet underwater. It’s never really recovered. The vacant homes became a magnet for gang activity. My ER gets constant GSWs, gunshot wounds, coming out of the Ninth.”
“And Connor was doing research out there?”
