Eye Of Vengeance Part 4

"OK, well, I wouldn't want to get you into any trouble, Mac," Nick said and then waited for what he knew would come.

"Up their a.r.s.e," the baritone growled. "It's a free country. I'll say what I want, when I want. What do they think they are? British occupiers?"

Nick always listened to McGregor's Scottish rants. The guy was three generations removed from Edinburgh, but wore it like an honor.

"Yeah, Nicky. We got your white male, six feet, two-twenty if he's an ounce, dressed in tailored prison orange and a single bullet just missed his b.l.o.o.d.y ear hole by an inch."

"Who's doing the autopsy?" Nick said.

"We're a bit in the weeds over here, lad. So the old man himself is going to take this one, but he won't get to it till late tonight. Why don't you come on over about midnight? Bring a snack. You two can swap stories like old times, eh?"

"Thanks, Mac. I might take you up on that," Nick said.

"No thanks needed from you, Nicky. I haven't said a word." Nick heard the chuckle in the voice before the connection clicked off.

So the old man, Broward M.E. Dr. Nasir Petish himself, would be doing the autopsy in one of his peculiar "dead-of-the-night" sessions, as the seventy-three-year-old pathologist called them. Nick thought of the last such session he'd attended, snuffed the memory out of his nose and put off making any plans for his own evening. Now he had a story to write. He still had calls to make to the Department of Corrections and at least get their "No comment." He'd get the prosecutor who had won Ferris's conviction. He'd get a line on a couple of jurors in the murder trial from the court reporter who covered it four years ago. And he'd have to try to find the mother of the little girls, though he knew it would be difficult tracking someone who had been essentially homeless. He'd start with the prosecutor, who might know a way to contact her. He picked up the phone. The always-present deadline was creeping past midday.

Chapter 6.

Michael Redman was at his makeshift table, breaking down the rifle he had used most of his adult life to kill dangerous human beings who did not deserve to walk this earth. "Break down," though, was perhaps the wrong term for Redman. He could no more "break down" his weapon than he could break down his right arm. He handled the bolt from the H&K PSG-1 with just the tips of his fingers, feeling the weight and shape and the touch of finely crafted metal against his own skin. The smell of the Shooter's Choice cleaner was as fond to him as perfume; a certain signaling sifted like smoke through his head when he used it to clean the rifle after a kill. It signaled an end. The final act of taking care of business. It made him relax, often for the first time in weeks.

He had taken the door off the adjoining bedroom and laid the heavy plank across two nightstands, creating a wide bench on which to work. The only light was from the street lamp outside, seeping in through the window he faced. He liked the dark. You didn't have to see so much in the dark. And you could feel more-the breeze across a sheen of sweat, the soft vacuum of silence that cupped your ears in the quiet, the weight of a careful footstep on a hallway floor. Michael Redman liked those sensations. Many times they had kept him alive.

Redman caressed the bolt like a lover's hand, wiped it down and set it next to the silencer he had removed from the barrel. He knew he would have to rezero the H&K before he used the suppressor again, but it had done its job this morning. h.e.l.l, the few reporter s.h.i.tbirds that had gathered for Ferris's perp walk hadn't even flinched when his round fired. No one heard a thing except for the splat the bullet had made when it entered the edge of Ferris's sideburn and burrowed through his head. The only sound was that of his lifeless body crumpling to the staircase steps, dead at the second of impact, an unavoidable blessing for someone who had deserved worse. Sometimes justice was swift but not always compensative, Redman thought. But that was not the gunman's choice. He did only what he was trained to do, maybe born to do.

Redman attached a rod guide into the breech of the weapon and then with the folding rod ran a brush up and back once through the barrel. One push through for each shot fired. And there had only been one. In the dark, he let his mind drift back to Falluja and Ramadi. He had been a law enforcement sniper for ten years, six before that in the Marine Corps. He had told friends that the only reason he'd joined the National Guard was to take advantage of the access to military gun ranges when he was traveling. He never expected to get called up to another war at age forty-six. But they said they needed his talent, his training. They attached him to a forward Marine infiltration squad. Let him pick his own high ground, always in a building, rarely one that seemed stable after the early bombing the cities had taken. The spotter they'd partnered him with was active duty and had rank. Their squad was good at close-quarter tactics and always cleared the building before they set up. High ground was a precious commodity over there. Enemy snipers coveted them. On occasion, Redman would hear the quiet spit of the clearing team's silenced handguns or a m.u.f.fled grunt, the sound of something heavy and soft and lifeless being dragged on the floor above. But when the spotter called him up, he never saw a body, just the drag marks leading to another room or behind a partial wall. Redman would set up with an optimum view of the streets below. By daybreak, the Marine units would begin to move into the city. The spotter would use his binoculars to sweep both streets and buildings. Their orders were to safeguard the advancing troops. When the spotter called out a target, be it a man in a window, a shawled figure moving carefully in the street or some thin-limbed kid struggling to carry the weight of an AK-47, it was Redman's job to kill.

"Take the shot."

He didn't ask questions. After the first four months, he stopped adding the number of times he slid the brush through his weapon's barrel. He was very good at his job. But unlike his police work, he never knew the dead, whether they were innocent or evil, dangerous or just unlucky. After the brush, Redman squeezed some Shooter's Choice on a soft swab and ran it through the barrel and asked himself, Would Collie have done what I have done?

His SWAT friend, his only true friend, Collie always had a way of working the bugs out of Redman's head after a shoot, sitting in a bar washing the vision of blood down your throat. He'd grab Redman by the neck with those Vise-Grip fingers of his and say, "Moral courage, man. We do the job that no one else will do. We make the hard choices. And don't you think any different, Mikey It ain't the lieutenant. It ain't the sheriff. It ain't the range master. When your finger is on the trigger, buddy, you are ultimately the man. It's your moral courage that lets you pull it."

Would Collie have pulled those triggers in Iraq? Redman couldn't find the answer and it ate at him. But he'd sworn it would be different when he got home, and today he had known his target, he knew the man was deserving, knew he'd exacted a moral vengeance for two little girls whose innocence had been stolen. Collie would have pulled this trigger.

Redman closed his eyes while he worked, his fingers moving with the precision of motor memory in the dark. He wondered what the newspaper story would say in the morning. He wondered if Nick Mullins would get the a.s.signment, if the only journalist he trusted would get it right, would understand.

Chapter 7.

The last call Nick made was to Joel Cameron. It was just after eight o'clock and his story was finished and ready to move on to the editors and copy readers. He had named Ferris and given a full background of his murder trial and the rapes and killings of the children. The bulk of the story was on the dead man. The main question of the piece was the ident.i.ty of his shooter. Nick had left three phone messages for Detective Hargrave, knowing they would never be returned. He'd watched the six o'clock news on three local television channels and all were still reporting that the name of the dead inmate had not been released. His own editors had voted to keep Ferris's name off the newspaper's Internet site so they could scoop the compet.i.tion. Every newsgroup monitored each other's site. It had become laughable how one group now bragged that they got their story "up" on the Web ten minutes before the other.

Nick tried out his "he'll still be just as dead tomorrow" line on Cameron when the information officer started to whine after Nick told him he was naming Ferris in the morning paper.

"s.h.i.t, Nick. The other guys are going to be all over me that I wasn't being fair by treating everyone the same."

Cameron's defensiveness was yet additional confirmation that Nick had the right guy.

"So just don't confirm it, Joel. I've got it and if anybody gives you a hard time, you can honestly say you didn't give it to me," Nick said.

There was a silence. Cameron was thinking. Always a danger, Nick thought.

"But you won't give it out for the eleven o'clock television guys just because I do have it, right? That was our deal."

"Yeah," Cameron acquiesced. "But Hargrave's still going to be p.i.s.sed."

"He'll get over it, Joel. And while I've got you, is there anything more on the shooting that you are giving out? Caliber of the bullet? Search warrant issued at the house of a p.i.s.sed-off relative of dead girls? Anything more from our friend across the street who saw a man dressed in a SWAT uniform coming down off the roof?"

"s.h.i.t, Nick. You're not using that, are you?" Cameron said.

"Actually, no," Nick said. "I'm holding back on that for some later development. You might pa.s.s that on to Detective Hargrave-my cooperation, that is."

Cameron was quiet for a beat. "All we're giving out is on the most recent press release, Nick. That's it."

That was little more than nothing. Nick had read the release and spiked it on his desk.

"OK, Joel. I'm outta here. Talk with you tomorrow."

"Word of advice, Nick," Cameron said before clicking off. "Walk careful with Hargrave. He's not like the other homicide guys."

Nick had already seen that in the detective's eyes. He wouldn't be the kind who sat around the desks in the squad room and hashed out his theories with the others. Not once had he written anything down, either while he was inspecting the blood spatter or up on the roof. His were the kind of eyes that absorbed everything and then let those images turn and twist in his head until they started to fit. Nick knew Hargrave's kind. They were the ones who burned out quick, or were d.a.m.ned good because of the experience they gained by not giving in.

"I'll try not to p.i.s.s him off, Joel," Nick said and hung up the phone.

Nick pulled into his driveway at nine, only fourteen hours since he'd left this morning. He turned off the engine and sat in the quiet, trying to set aside the scenes in his head, his internal speculations on who might have dressed in black, positioned himself on a roof and killed a man who was already sitting in prison for life and still carrying a death sentence. And that was if Ferris was indeed the intended target. Suppose some incompetent rifleman had meant to hit the jail guard? Suppose Ferris had just stumbled in front of a bullet? Nick took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

"Don't take it into the house," he whispered to himself. "Don't do this to her too."

When he got out, he fixed a smile onto his face and unlocked the front door. When he stepped in, his daughter was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle laid out before her, half done. The sight stopped him, like always now when he encountered Carly sitting or standing or twisting a strand of her hair in the exact same way that her twin sister had done. Ghosts, Nick thought. Will I always have to live with ghosts?

"Hi, Daddy. I've been saving all this side for you," Carly said in her nine-year-old voice, sweeping her hand over the yet-undone side of the puzzle. She tossed her silky limp hair aside and gave him that face, the mischievous one with the raised eyebrows and the smile made without parting her lips.

"Oh, saved it, huh?"

Nick walked over and reached down with both hands and his daughter took them on cue, and with a firm grip, he lifted and tossed her up with one motion and then caught her against his chest and she wrapped her legs around his waist and squeezed.

"You didn't just slow down so you could stay up later?" he said into her ear and then kissed her cheek.

"No way," she said, leaning back with her hands now locked behind her father's neck. "I could have done your side easy."

"I know you could have," Nick said, starting to move in a tight circle, beginning the spin he knew she expected, and her eyes got wider and brighter and the fake smile he'd carried in became unconsciously real as they went around together. They were both laughing when Elsa interrupted.

"Buenas noches, Mr. Mullins," said the small elderly woman, wiping her hands with a dish towel. "You need something for your dinner, yes?" Mr. Mullins," said the small elderly woman, wiping her hands with a dish towel. "You need something for your dinner, yes?"

Elsa was Bolivian, a grandmother to two young boys, the sons of her immigrant daughter. A decade ago she came to the United States to take care of her grandsons and earned extra money by taking in the children of working parents as a daytime sitter. Kind and matronly and endlessly patient, she had looked after both of the Mullinses' girls from the time they were babies as their daytime nanny. While Nick and his wife worked, Elsa cared for the girls along with her older grandsons in her daughter's home. By the time the boys were old enough to be home alone, Elsa had fallen in love with the girls, and they with her. Nick offered her a live-in position and after the accident she stayed, although Nick had never asked her to. She took it almost as a duty to watch over him and Carly, to protect the child from her dreams and to protect Nick from himself.

"Just a sandwich, Elsa. Please," Nick said and carried his daughter to the small kitchen table.

"Wait, wait, wait," Carly said, squirming from Nick's arms. "You have got to see this, Dad."

When she skipped from the room, Nick sat heavily in the chair near the patio slider and looked out onto the spotlighted pool. The aqua glow rose like a tinted bubble from the water. Nick liked the softness of it on his eyes. After the crash, at the bottom of his breakdown, he'd spent nights staring out into the light, sipping whiskey for hours and trying to let the color wash out the images of white, bloodless skin and torn metal from behind his eyelids. The booze had let him sleep. But the next night he would be back. It had gone on for months until finally he made a decision to stand up and live, for his remaining daughter, and went back to work. Still, on days when he was tired and let down his guard, the lure of slipping into the pale blue light forever would come over him.

"Mr. Nick?" Elsa said and the words snapped him back. When he looked over at her, she was eyeing him and propping up the corners of her mouth with her thumb and ring finger, making a smile. It was her job to warn him when the "grouper" face appeared. The child psychologist had warned him that his own sadness could overtake and eventually empower his daughter's grief. It was something he needed to stay conscious of. When Carly came back into the room with a sheaf of papers and an unframed canvas, he had regained his smile.

"Ta-daaa!" his daughter announced, holding out the canvas, upon which a brightly colored and finely textured painting had been produced. Nick studied the work while Carly posed and held it with the corners balanced in her palms. He felt her watching his eyes. But this time he did not have to pretend. The colors were pastels of pink and orange, the lines soft and flowing.

"It's beautiful, C!" he said, using his pet name for her. "Are these wings?"

"Yes. And here in the corner."

"How did you get that texture in there? That's really cool."

"It's that resin stuff you got me. They showed me how to use it at school, and see, you can peak it just so or really raise it up if you want," she said, pointing out sections of the painting that rose delicately off the canvas.

They propped the painting up against a napkin holder on the table and while Nick ate, Carly showed him homework, her graded papers, and explained in detail how Meagan Marts had been such a pain correcting her and the other girls on the bus that morning when they were discussing what lip gloss was made of. Nick listened. He had set up this nightly ritual on the advice of a divorced friend whose wife had left him. It was invaluable, the friend said, to keep in touch, to keep a semblance of normality, to stay sane.

Elsa had made him one of her famous Bolivian chicken salad sandwiches. Nick couldn't tell the difference between the chopped celery or spring onions, but he truly loved the battle of tastes between the seedless grapes and the rainbow chiles. While father and daughter talked, Elsa stayed busy washing and wiping and straightening a kitchen that Nick knew was already spotless.

"OK, Carlita," Elsa finally said. "It is very late, yes, Mr. Nick?"

Elsa had that wonderful trait of being the boss while using the right phrases to make the man think he was still in charge.

"Elsa's right, babe. Time to get ready for bed," Nick said. "You go, and I'll come in and read."

With a limited amount of preadolescent huffing, his daughter left the room.

Nick spun his chair back to a view of the pool. A random breeze fluttered across the surface, causing the refracted light to dance on the far wall.

"How was she today?" he asked without looking over at Elsa.

"Yo creo que es mejor, Mr. Nick," Elsa said. She too was looking outside through the window over the sink. "She is very smart, though. It is too much to see inside her head." Mr. Nick," Elsa said. She too was looking outside through the window over the sink. "She is very smart, though. It is too much to see inside her head."

Nick just nodded, but Elsa went quiet and he turned after a moment to look at her. She was again folding and refolding a dishtowel in her hands, her eyes on the floor now. Nick knew something was bothering her, but let Elsa decide when to tell it.

"She call me Lindsay today," Elsa finally said. "While she is looking for something in the office room she say, 'Lindsay, do you know where the, the thing for the paper staples is?' and I just say, 'No,' like I no hear Lindisita's name."

Elsa was clearly distressed, but Nick was caught between smiling at her attempt to relate the Freudian slip or crying at Carly's use of her sister's name.

"It's OK, Elsa," he said. "I will tell the counselor when she goes for her session."

The housekeeper turned the towel in her hand. Nick looked back out into the light.

"Dad? I'm ready," his daughter called from her room.

"Can you make me some coffee, please, Elsa?" Nick said as he walked through the kitchen.

"You are going out again?"

"After she's asleep," he said. "I'll lock up before I go." Nick did not turn to see Elsa's reaction. He knew she would disapprove. He'd promised to give up the late-night forays into the streets for the sake of a story, both to his wife before and to Elsa afterward. Now he was again going back on that promise.

In his daughter's room, he knelt down in front of the bookcase, searching for a t.i.tle. Carly was already in bed and had slid over against the wall to give him room to stretch out in his usual position. Nick had taken the second twin bed out of the room after two months. He'd replaced it with a desk and an additional case of the girls' favorite books, some that had been packed away in the garage.

"I've got the Harry Potter over here, Dad," Carly said.

"I'm looking for something else, C. One of my favorites."

Carly didn't complain, just pulled a stuffed tiger closer to her and waited for him to find a thin, worn volume from one of the lower shelves. He finally lay down on the outside edge of the bed and turned away from the nightstand, where he knew a family photo of the four of them looked out upon his back.

"We Were Tired of Living in a House, by Leisel Moak Skorpen," he announced and then peeked over from the side of the opened book to see his daughter's reaction. She rolled her eyes but still smiled. by Leisel Moak Skorpen," he announced and then peeked over from the side of the opened book to see his daughter's reaction. She rolled her eyes but still smiled.

"Alright, go ahead," she said, giving him permission.

Nick read the book aloud, pausing to give both of them a long look at the accompanying artwork on each double page. It was actually a long, lovely and mischievous poem about two brothers and two sisters who get scolded for misdoings at home and their adventures finding another place to live-a tree, a pond, a cave and the seash.o.r.e-before finally returning home to their parents to live in a house.

When he finished, Nick closed the book and turned off the bedside lamp and waited in the silence. He could tell by her breathing that she was still awake. Before, he'd always read to the girls from a rocking chair set in between the beds and when he was done he'd continue to rock, the low creak of the runners sounding in a rhythm that would eventually put them to sleep. He found he could no longer stand the sound and had thrown the chair out.

"Was someone killed today?" his daughter's voice finally, quietly broke the silence.

Nick just closed his eyes. Unfortunately, it was not an unusual question from Carly. She was a bright girl.

"Yes, honey," he said.

"Did you write about it?"

"Yes."

"Will I read about it in the newspaper?"

"I'm not sure you should be reading the paper, honey, with all your schoolwork and stuff. You should really concentrate on that reading."

He had never encouraged his daughters to read his work, but Carly had taken more to it since the accident, and the counselors had suggested he let it go instead of trying to ban her from the practice.

"Did it make you sad, the killing?"