Eye of Vengeance (16 page)

Redman yelled, “Medical,” before he even called, “Clear.”

He could only tell that Collie was down. Still, as he was trained, he stepped into the bathroom and ripped the shotgun from the suspect’s death grip and tossed it aside. Then he aimed his flashlight on his partner. He did not ask if he was OK because he knew that answer. Collie’s breathing was ragged and sounded like a kid sucking the last bits of soda through a straw. Redman went to his knees and tried to search for his partner’s eyes in the beam, but one was missing. A gaping hole was torn in his left cheek, and Redman could see broken teeth floating in blood inside.

He might have started screaming, “Man down! Man down!” as was his training, but Redman did not remember afterward. From then on he did not consider anyone a partner. And with Collie gone forever, no one on the team ever took point but him. And no one ever spoke of moral courage.

Redman looked at his watch now and then proceeded to bag the scope and the laser range finder and took an extra few seconds to mock the time it would take to also bag his rifle and pick up a shell casing. He inched backward from the roofline and then walked in a crouch to the fire escape. When he was back in the van, with everything stowed away, he rechecked the watch. He wanted the timing of his exit on Monday to be perfect, nothing left to chance, only training. One shot, one kill.

Chapter 17

O
n Sunday Nick spent two hours on the couch watching cartoons with his daughter. He drank coffee and munched on oven-baked crescent rolls and worked very hard against the urge to get the Sunday newspaper from the driveway, and even harder at keeping the conversation with Hargrave from ringing in his head.

He would keep his unspoken promise to Carly not to ignore her on his days at home. He’d done that to his family before. It had been the source of friction in his marriage ever since the girls were born. In the beginning his passion for the work, that he was good at what he did, that he was respected, was a source of pride for his wife.

After the girls were born, he hadn’t changed. He’d gotten them through the pregnancy and the postpartum by working only eight-hour days and sneaking computer time on the weekends. But at three months, the twins went to Elsa for day care and once he dropped them off, he reentered the news world. Maybe it was subconscious, the pleasure he got from it, the demands and the people and the streets. It was the only thing he did well, and without saying it, he knew it defined him.

But his wife did change. Her priorities became different. He kept claiming that he understood the mothering instinct and all. He talked a good talk about sharing as a family and how he knew how important it was for him to be part of the equation, but failed to show it. That lack of action was the reason Julie and the girls were riding alone that night, touring the Christmas lights without him. He was out doing death when it came to visit his own family.

“Why does the redhead always have to play the ditzy one?” he asked Carly, who was lying back against his legs, using them as a chair back.

“They can’t change every week,” she said in that
Duh?
voice so popular in her age group. “The dumb one is the dumb one, Dad. It’s preordained.”

He laughed. “Preordained? Geesh, kid. Is that the fifth-grade word of the week or what?”

“No. I read it,” Carly said, being coy.

“In what did you read it?” Nick tried to match her.

“I think it was in
Messenger.
”

“Good book.” Nick had introduced her and Lindsay to the tales of Lois Lowry. The next year they were assigned by her teacher.

“OK. So what does it mean,
preordained?
” he said, still teasing.

Carly was silent and he could only see the back of her head against his knees. He poked her in the ribs. She elbowed him.

“Huh? What does it mean?”

“It means that everything that happens is already supposed to happen,” she said and Nick could hear the clip of anger in her voice. “If people are going to die, they die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He let it sit for a minute, silently cursing himself for setting a semantics trap that had hurt her and that had bitten him back.

“Maybe that’s what that specific word means, baby. But that’s not the way it is,” Nick said, with authority, because he believed it.

Carly did not sniffle, did not even clear her voice. She simply remained silent while Nick stroked her hair.

“See?” she finally said, pointing her finger at the television screen. “The blond one is the smart one.”

When the program was done, Carly got up and put her dishes in the sink and reminded her father that today her friend Jessica was having a birthday party and that he would have to drop her off in an hour.

Nick must have looked quizzically at her and she read his face and put a hand on her hip, just like her mother used to do to him.

“It’s on the board, Dad. We talked about it on Wednesday, and you said fine, so we’ve got to be there by eleven.”

“Right, right, right. You got it, babe. I didn’t forget,” Nick said, knowing she knew he’d forgotten. He tried to smile his way out of it. “Jessica’s it is. Her mother’s name is Ro. Her brother is Tyler. Her dad is Bob.”

Carly frowned a frown that was filled with sarcasm but included that small twinkling humor in her eye.

“That would be correct, Dad,” she said and he again marveled at her ability to be so damned quick and grown-up. Fast on the draw, just like her mom.

At ten thirty Carly was dressed and waiting by the door with a small wrapped present in her hands. Nick felt himself hustling to find his car keys. When they arrived in Jessica’s neighborhood, he remembered exactly where to turn. He was trying to impress Carly, to show her that he was paying attention to her life. Without hesitation he spotted the Lipinskis’ dominating two-story at the end of a cul-de-sac and he figured it made him look like a genius. He got out with Carly and went to the door instead of just dropping her off. Ro Lipinski welcomed them and when they stepped into the house, Carly spotted Jessica and two other girls back on the wide pool patio and with a flip of her fingers and a “’Bye, Dad,” skipped away. Ro, an attractive woman with short blond streaked hair and a swimmer’s athletic figure, asked if Nick wanted a cup of coffee.

“Bob’s out with the boys teaching them how to play golf,” she said.

Nick smiled and declined, his eyes following his daughter through the glass doors and the smiles and little-girl greetings. Ro watched the side of Nick’s face.

“How’s she doing, Nick?”

Her question brought him back.

“Good. I, uh, think she’s good,” he said.

The woman’s face was showing concern, like a mom. She had been close with Nick’s wife. Their kids shared schools and birthday parties. Both sets of parents shared cookouts and the occasional dinner out on weekends.

“The school counselor says that this Christmas should be easier than last year, but no guarantees. You know? They don’t like to give you guarantees,” Nick said, turning his gaze back out to where the girls were huddled around some new blow-up pool toy.

“Well, she’s pretty good here when they’re all together, Nick. I know it’s still got to be hard over at your house when it’s quiet,” Ro said, her voice consoling, like it had been at the funeral and every time Nick had seen her since.

“Yeah, well, it’s probably good for her to be around the girls instead of just me on the weekends.”

Nick looked past the woman’s eyes. Shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He hadn’t moved off the flagstone in the entryway.

“And how are you doing, Nicky?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s been two years. I shouldn’t still be dwelling on it that much. But I am, and you know something? I don’t give a damn if I am.”

Ro was looking in his face, nodding. Nick could feel his skin redden, caught clumsy by his own anger. He shifted his weight again and put his hand in his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his car keys. He wanted to run, leave his daughter here, giggling and playing and being happy, and just run.

“I know, Nicky. I know,” Ro said, reaching out to touch his arm. “Look, when you come back to pick her up, come a little late, OK? Bob will be back with the boys and maybe you guys can talk, you know? Maybe you and Carly can stay for dinner or something.”

“Sure, maybe that’ll be a good idea,” Nick said, even though he and Bob Lipinski had never been so close as to have heart-to-hearts about anything personal, and he doubted that that was going to change now. He started to back out through the front door.

“Yeah, I’ll be back to get her about five, alright?”

She could see the look of lingering pain on his face and called after him. “She’ll be fine, Nick.”

He waved. “Yeah, sure. I know,” he said and kept moving.

When Nick got back home, he sat at the empty kitchen table and began to make a mental list. He’d have to call Ms. Cotton early tomorrow to see about the collection of letters. If Hargrave got to her first, he could only make a request with the press officer to see what they’d come up with. Because the detective had loosened somewhat with information, Nick was holding out hope that the guy would share. It was still a give-and-take with him. He would also have to check out this OAS meet. If it was ten days off, Deirdre wouldn’t get to it until this week. Daily newspaper editors rarely thought of anything more than a few days in advance and then jumped in with both feet when the show was just about to begin.

Nick caught himself mentally pissing and moaning again. It’s just the nature of the biz, he told himself. That’s the way it is. “Shut up,” he said and the reverberation of his own voice stopped him. His wife would have looked over at him and shaken her head: “Talking to yourself again?” But she would have been smiling, knowing how he could get lost in his head and suddenly come out with statements and half thoughts so out of context that she couldn’t help but laugh.

He’d also have to check on the list that Lori was putting together on sniper-related deaths in the state. Had she already sent that to him?

“Jesus, man. It’s Sunday, Nick,” he said, again out loud to himself. “Chill.”

He went through the remnants of the Sunday paper, sorted out the sections that had nothing to do with news and got up and went to the couch in the living room. He’d been up late with Hargrave and hadn’t slept when he did get in. Now it was quiet. The girls are gone. Take advantage of the day. He lay down with that thought in his head, then edited himself. Only two girls are gone, Nick, he thought. The third one needs you, man. Needs you to be strong. He held the newspaper up in front of his face. He’d stopped crying months ago even though the need was still with him. He focused on the sports pages. You can do this, Nick, he thought, repeating a mantra that had become very old for him. You can do this.

He tried to focus on a photo of Alonzo Mourning, started to read the paper’s basketball beat writer opining about the star center’s struggle and victory over kidney disease, but as he drifted off he saw his daughter sitting in the stands at a Miami Heat game, smiling and cheering. Lindsay, his dead daughter. His eyes came back open and he tried to clear them, and read about doctors still being amazed that Mourning had returned to the court, but he drifted off again and saw his wife’s face as she closed the door on the girls’ room. And he followed her vision into their room and there was candlelight flickering on the walls and the glow was warm and then her face appeared above him. She was whispering something that he could not hear. She was beautiful and her honey-blond hair was falling down in his face and she was straddling him and looking down and he could feel her against him, the warmth of her, and he could feel himself growing hard. She said something in his ear, a warning, but he did not want to hear it. He wanted the movement of her hips to continue and he could see the candlelight flickering in time to their rise and fall. And she tried to say something in his ear again, the brush and moisture of her breath both exciting and distracting him, and he turned his face away and let the sensation of sex take him over and then he tried to roll with her, but suddenly the warmth was gone and Nick woke with his eyes wide open. “Jesus,” he said out loud. “What the hell was that?”

He was on the couch, the disorientation clearing fast. The newspaper had fallen to the floor. The light of late afternoon was slicing through the front blinds. He sat up and recalled the dream.

“Shit,” he said, again out loud in the empty house. But it was not said in anger. He checked his watch: 3:40
PM
. He had slept, or dreamed, or both, for almost three hours and it had been deep and not at all unpleasant. He sat up and realized he had to take a shower. Then he could go pick up Carly. Tomorrow he would sort out work. He was not embarrassed by his unconscious afternoon excursion and was in fact in higher spirits than he had been in a long time.

Chapter 18

O
n Monday Nick was back in the office, checking faxes and e-mails from a variety of law enforcement offices and from sources that he had scattered about South Florida and beyond.

There was a sheaf of fax paper on his desk, gathered from the machines in the newsroom over the weekend. Even though e-mails would be easier, police agencies still hadn’t caught up with technology and still sent news releases out by facsimile machines to newspapers, television newsrooms and radio stations. They’d give a short synopsis of crime events. They might include names and dates and arrest numbers and a line of description of an armed robbery or gang shooting or multicar accident. If a newsroom had an interest, it was up to them to call and dig deeper. If the skeleton crew that manned the weekends missed anything worth writing about, Nick would have to pick it up on Monday morning. A two-day-old robbery was no good to him, the neighborhood already knew about it. A car fatality that happened over the weekend was old news by Tuesday’s paper, which was what he was writing for on Monday. Unless there was a great hook—a thirteen-year-old gets in an accident while driving his pregnant mom to the emergency room for a delivery; a seventy-five-year-old grandmother shoots a burglar in her bedroom—Nick usually pleaded ignorant. “Hey, if we missed it, we missed it.”

But today he was looking carefully for anything that might appear to be a random shooting, anything with a high-powered rifle involved, anything that might have a tie-in to a sniper working, no matter how peripheral. He recalled years ago hearing from a middle school education reporter of a sixth-grader being caught with a handgun. The kid told security officers at the school that he’d found the gun in the street on his way to school. They dismissed it as a lie. Later the gun turned out to be the weapon used to kill a prominent racing boat tycoon who had been assassinated as he sat in his car. Nick had learned years ago that stories are always out in the streets. The media only picks up on a fraction of them and the cops only a small fraction more.

When nothing in the weekend pile of faxes showed any promise, Nick started going through e-mails. He had one from the Bradenton Sheriff’s Office giving him a number to call to reach the detective handling the shooting of the doctor who’d killed his wife. Another was from a Washington Bureau reporter whom he’d asked earlier to find out more about Fitzgerald:

Nick: I’ll have to look further on the Secret Service guy. He’s not their usual front man on State visits. Must be a back-roomer. I’ll get back to you.
Rafael

The rest of the e-mail stuff looked too routine to bother with. Nick leaned back and started making his regular phone checks. Nick had been at the game for enough years to know who was plugged in and had an ear to the streets.

His first call was to the medical examiner’s office to see if there were any fresh bodies from the weekend. A receptionist he knew answered.

“Hey, Margie. Anything new in the back room from the weekend?”

He heard Margie shuffling papers: “Nothing unnatural, Nick. Sorry.”

Nick often wondered why they thought that the lack of violence would disappoint him. He didn’t get paid by the number of dead people he wrote about. Sometimes he felt like a phone solicitor for Fuller Brush:
Got any death today? No? Sure? We’re having a special for the front page tomorrow. OK, I’ll check back with you later. Have a good day!

His second call was to the Sheriff’s Office communications desk. He was listening to the fifth unanswered ring when he heard a voice over the police radio near his desk. The dispatcher’s voice was cranked just a notch above dispassionate.

“Kilo-nineteen, kilo-nineteen. Report of a man down on the sidewalk. One hundred block of East McNab Road. Possible gunshots. Repeat. Possible gunshots.”

Nick stood up and reached over to crank up the radio volume. He recognized the address as a corrections and parole office. He was listening to the radio with one ear, the ringing phone with the other. The phone spoke first.

“Broward Sheriff’s Office, dispatch, Sergeant Sortal.”

“Yeah, hey, Sarge. This is Nick Mullins from the
Daily News.
Anything going on today or over the weekend that we ought to know about?”

Nick always tried to sound friendly, like he and they were both on the same team, especially if he didn’t recognize the person on duty.

“Nothing much over the weekend, Nick,” the female sergeant said. She did not elaborate even though Nick knew that as the dispatch sergeant she was listening to the same radio traffic he was.

“So, this thing going on up at the DOC office in Pompano, what’s that?” Nick said. Typically, the cops knew how to blow off the press if they could. It was always better to know a little bit going into the questions, like priming a stubborn pump.

“Well, I’m not sure about that yet, Nick. All we have so far is a man down with units on the way. Might be heatstroke as far as we know.”

Nick figured this was probably bullshit since he’d already heard the call about possible gunshots.

“And it’s not at a DOC building. It’s a parole office in the center there,” she said, using her knowledge to one-up him, but inadvertently giving him information that he didn’t have.

“OK, well, I’ll check back with you later on that. Thanks a lot.”

“Have a nice day,” she said and hung up.

Nick did not apologize for being a skeptic—it came with the job. As a daily journalist you want to know immediately what’s going on, even if you discard half of it later. The government or business entities you cover do not share that enthusiasm. They want to spin things so they don’t look bad, or, Nick conceded, they want to have all their ducks in a row before they tell you. Nick recognized this. He in fact held the opinion that everything eventually would come out. Even the identity of Deep Throat came out. Sure, it was thirty years after Mark Felt’s information put an end to President Nixon. Still, a journalist’s hunger to know is what drives the good ones, and Nick was too hyped up about guys dropping in the streets from unheard gunshots to wait. He called a friend at the city of Pompano Beach with the paramedic rescue unit.

“Hey, Billy. Nick Mullins from the
Daily News.
How you doin’?”

“Nicky! Hey, what’s going on? Your girls going to get involved with the softball league this year or what? We really need Lindsay on the mound again.”

Billy Matthews was a city administrator who oversaw the fire and rescue services for the city. His daughter had been on the same athletic teams that Carly and Lindsay were on. They were passing friends due to being fathers. Billy had obviously forgotten about Lindsay and Julie’s deaths when he’d picked up the phone.

“I’m not really sure yet, Bill. I’m going to have to see if Carly’s up to it yet, you know.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry, Nick. Yeah, sure, see if she’s up to it. It would be great to see you two back involved, you know?”

Now it was coming back to him, Nick thought.

“Yeah. But Billy, right now I need some help on a call you guys have going over near the DOC office. My sources say there might be a shooting victim out there and, you know, I don’t know if I should run up there on it. Could you do a check for me and see how serious it is? I’d appreciate it.”

“Nobody here has said anything to me yet. Let me check a second. Let me make a call and get right back to you.”

Nick knew he now had the poor guy over a barrel. The man had forgotten about Nick’s dead wife and daughter. Now he had to figure he owed him something. And hell, it was probably nothing. Maybe some guy did have heatstroke and some old lady passing by started screaming gunshots. It was South Florida, after all, filled with both heat and easily wigged-out retirees.

Nick sat back down at his desk with the police radio turned up even if he did know that the cops would switch over to an unmonitored tactical channel if they found anything good. He went back to his computer, called up a blank screen and typed in some times and locations on the radio call like he usually did on a breaking story. If the early reports eventually washed out, he’d just kill the notes later. Still better to put some facts down just in case. He stored the file and then went back into some earlier stuff. He had not yet been through all the research on statewide shootings involving high-powered rifles.

He scrolled through the listings. Lori had been thorough, as was her way:

A forty-eight-year-old man up in the central part of the state killed by fellow hunter. I.D.s on both of them. Friends since grade school.

A woman in Tallahassee shot dead by her common-law husband with a rifle during a domestic dispute involving allegations of infidelity.

A mysterious killing in the Keys in which police found a man dead in his boat with a gunshot wound to the head. The caliber of the gun that killed him was considered a large-caliber in early stories. Nick read the follow-ups, feeling a slight shiver in his blood. Forensics found the bullet lodged in the interior gunwales of the dead man’s boat. An odd .303-caliber. Nick jumped three stories and found disappointment. The killing had been attributed to another fisherman, pissed because he thought the other guy had been raiding his favorite holes. The shooter had turned himself in after four days of speculation. Nick did not recognize the names. He moved on.

Four stories later was a story out of Sebastian, a city on the east coast up north near Daytona.

Indian County sheriff’s officials have released the name of a man found dead in front of a west Sebastian home Thursday as Martin J. Crossly, a 32-year-old house painter who had apparently been renting the home for some eight months.

A medical examiner’s report released over the weekend showed that Crossly, who was a former inmate at the Avon Park Correctional institution in Polk County, died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Police said today that Crossly had an extensive criminal history and had apparently been living in the Sebastian home on the north side along Louisiana Boulevard since being freed from prison in December after serving three years on a conspiracy charge.

Neighbors in the area near the FEC tracks said they were not familiar with Crossly and indicated that the home had long been used as a crack house before he moved in.

“The victim was shot once with a large-caliber bullet from an unknown rifle,” said Deputy Chief Larry Longo of the Indian County Sheriff’s Office. “With the kind of background this guy had, I’m sure he had plenty of enemies.”

According to published reports, Crossly’s prison stretch was the result of …

Nick did not need to read further. He knew Crossly’s name, and knew his crime. Crossly was the delivery boy of a bomb that was sent to a small North Florida city meant to kill a woman who was turning state’s evidence on a Broward drug dealer. Crossly’s car was stopped by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper for speeding on an interstate near Tallahassee, only forty miles from his destination. Suspicious of the man’s answers to questions concerning where he was headed and the fact that he was driving a rental car, the officer asked Crossly to open the trunk. Inside was a box wrapped in birthday paper. The trooper asked Crossly if he could open the package. When Crossly said sure, the cop unwrapped a microwave oven and, looking through the door window, saw a package of some sort inside. When he opened the door, a powerful bomb rigged to the handle exploded, blowing the trooper into pieces. In the grisly aftermath a medical examiner’s team had to do a step-by-step inspection of a forty-yard circle around the point of detonation to collect the trooper’s remains.

Nick had written a huge story on the case and had quoted several street sources about the close personal link between the drug dealer who sent the bomb and Crossly. On the corners of northwest Fort Lauderdale, Crossly was known as the dealer’s enforcer. There was no doubt among rival dealers and runners that Crossly knew exactly what he was carrying that day. In time, the dealer was arrested and charged with the murder of a law enforcement officer and sent to death row. But despite Nick’s stories, which, as usual, were never allowed in court, Crossly was able to lighten his load by agreeing to testify against the dealer. Prosecutors offered him a conspiracy charge and he took it. He had been out on parole when someone shot him dead on his porch.

Dr. Chambliss.

Martin Crossly.

Steven Ferris.

All criminals with ugly homicides in their pasts. All subjects of extensive stories Nick had done for his newspaper. All killed on the street. Coincidence?

Nick had done hundreds of stories about criminals over the years, and no doubt other journalists would have done pieces on these guys too. But Nick had stepped up on these guys. He’d been both pissed and fascinated by their crimes, and to prove they were evil he’d checked more sources, dug into pasts, quoted more than the official side. He hated to admit it, but Deirdre had let him do the kind of extensive pieces on these guys that few reporters were allowed, bless her clompy shoes.

He started to scroll down the research list again, hungry this time for names that he recognized. He was about to call Lori’s desk to get her to run another search, this time matching any names in the stories she’d sent him and his own byline. He was reaching for the phone when it rang just as his fingertips touched it, causing him to flinch.

“Nick Mullins,” he said, finally picking up the line.

“It’s Billy, Nick. Hey, this is all on the QT, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, Bill. I just need to know if I should run up there, you know?”

“OK. Rescue has a white male by the name of Trace Michaels, DOA when they got there. Single bullet wound to the head. It was actually in the doorway of the probation and parole office in that block. They didn’t move the body because he was obviously dead when they got there. Guys said half his head was missing from the back. Ugly scene, Nick.”

Matthews listened to silence for a moment.