Eye of Vengeance (27 page)

Maybe Nick panicked. Maybe he should have taken a minute to think it through. But he didn’t.

“Redman!” he shouted. “Mike Redman!”

Mike Redman was sweeping the rooftops with his binoculars and keeping his ear tuned to the sound of the helicopter in case it should expand its circle and come his way. He had cover in the form of a sheet of metal that he’d rigged to hide his shape from the sky. He was tracking left to right, and then back behind himself, using time to pick up anything odd in the landscape, and he stopped on a sight that was new. Three buildings north he spotted on a container about the size of a squared-off suitcase near the edge of the roof that had been kicked over. The sun glanced off its surface and drew his eye. He remembered it from his earlier reconnaissance, a rain cover for a video surveillance camera. Some owners used the covers to keep the pigeon shit off the units. But this time the cover lay on its side and the difference bothered him. In his experience, few people visited the rooftops in South Florida, too damn hot, unless they had a reason. He swept the rest of that building’s roof, but saw nothing, no human, no evidence of one. He set the binoculars aside and was shifting the rifle scope to take a closer look when he picked up movement below and saw Walker’s blue F-150 turning onto the street. He knew that son-of-a-bitch would be back and silently congratulated himself for that knowledge. He let his sights follow the back window of the truck and tracked it to the spot in front of Archie’s. He could feel his breathing start to settle and become deeper and slower. Every shot, he reminded himself, is a study of concentration and focus. Excitement only gets in the way. When the truck stopped, he kept the crosshairs on the back of Walker’s head and watched the man who killed Nick Mullins’s family knock back one more hit from the pint of liquor he’d just bought. Walker shifted in his seat, one shoulder dipping, and then got out. Redman took one more breath and then let the air pass slowly through his nostrils and began to pull pressure on the trigger.

Detective Hargrave saw the truck up ahead of him as he was walking back from the cordon.

“The son-of-a-bitch came back,” he said softly to himself with as much surprise as his composure would allow and then quickened his steps.

The guys at the police line had been unhelpful.
We just showed up where we were told to show up, Detective.
Looked like they had the place pretty buttoned up. Nobody was going to get close to the secretary without an invite.

Hargrave asked if any of them had seen Fitzgerald, but when they all shrugged, he knew it was worthless and headed back. Now Walker was coming back to work. Fuck it, Hargrave figured, I already warned the guy. It’s on him to look after himself and it’s not my problem.

He was about thirty yards away when Walker got out of his truck and then instead of going toward the shop the guy stepped out in the street. He appeared to be looking up into the sky. Hargrave kept walking but followed Walker’s sight line and looked up as well.

“Mike Redman!”

Nick yelled the name a third time and was now waving his arms, like he was signaling some kind of aircraft. Finally the gunman swung around from his prone position on top of the stairwell structure and the barrel of his rifle swung with him.

“Mike! You don’t have to, man! It’s not worth …”

There was a beat, no, three beats of silence that confused Nick. He was staring into the dark eye of a target scope and he thought, on the third beat, Jesus. Is he going to kill me?

Nick dropped his arms to his side in disbelief and then felt something swat his still-moving right hand just as it passed in front of his leg and the impact sent his palm slapping against his thigh. He did not hear the report of the shot or see any kind of flash, just the splat of the bullet as it ripped through the meat of his hand and burrowed deep into his leg.

The impact shut his mouth and he looked back at the sniper in disbelief. Redman. Dark, almost black eyes with an intensity that might have been anger, or maybe just pure focus. Then Nick felt himself dropping.

Mike Redman was already pulling pressure on the trigger of his PSG-1 when the target did something unpredictable. Walker got out of the truck but instead of stepping toward the green door of Archie’s, he moved the other way, out into the street, and looked up. Maybe at the helo, Redman thought and refocused. He shifted the sight and was aiming for the sideburn, just in front of the ear, and started his pull as an unexpected voice ripped the air behind him. His name. Being shouted from the rooftop.

“Mike Redman!”

The words cut into his concentration and his own reaction jerked one shoulder as he fired. He automatically swung the rifle around to the sound of a rear attack and instantly put a man’s figure into his sights.

It was Nick Mullins. What the hell? The man who had become truth to him was looking directly at him, repeating his name, screwing up what had been a perfectly planned operation to gain vengeance against the man who killed Mullins’s own family.

Mullins was gutless. Someone deserved to die. Someone had to carry it out. If you couldn’t do it on your own, Mullins, take my gift and shut the hell up.

But now you don’t deserve it, Redman thought. He watched Mullins’s eyes flatten with confusion and then fear, and then Redman dropped his sight down to the reporter’s thigh and fired.

Mullins stared at him for a second before his leg gave way and he sank to the roof. Redman instantly swung his rifle back to the street. Mullins was down, but as he put Robert Walker’s face into the scope sight, a body stepped in to block the shot. Redman pulled back. Some bystander had already gotten to Walker and was covering him. Others, cops from the nearby barricade, were jogging down to the scene. Regress, Redman instantly thought. He gathered his shell casings and his rifle and backed out of the shooter’s nest and swept down the ladder. At the door to the stairwell he stopped, looked across the roof at Mullins sitting with glassy eyes and his hands on a bloody leg and said, “Sorry, Nick,” out loud, knowing the reporter could not hear him. “Maybe another time.”

Mo Hargrave was deeply confused. He was watching Walker looking up in the sky when the man suddenly crumpled and went down in the street. “Christ!” he said and started running, forgetting that he was now in a wide-open field of fire. “Goddamn Mullins was right.”

He covered the last twenty yards and then bent over the downed man. Walker was now curled on the concrete, his back bent and his hands grabbing at his left thigh. Blood was already oozing between his fingers, but Hargrave grabbed him by the belt and the collar and dragged him like you might some wallowing drunkard in a bar fight until they were safely behind the bed of the truck.

Walker’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was keening in a high pitch through his nose. Hargrave listened for a second rifle shot, fully expecting to hear a bullet
wang
against the fender, but heard nothing. In the distance he could see the boys from the cordon beginning to move his way, probably because they’d seen a fellow cop yanking some guy across the ground.

“Are you hit anywhere else?” he asked Walker, who had started breathing in those short bursts that come with intense pain. Walker didn’t respond and Hargrave did a quick search of the man’s head and shoulders and back. No sign of any other trauma. He then took a more studied look at the leg, which Walker was still clutching with both hands high at the thigh. Hargrave could see a puddle starting to form on the street surface, but it too confused him. It could be a through-and-through wound, he thought, but the consistency of the blood was too fast and watery. He pulled the man up by the armpits to put him in a sitting position against the truck wheel and when he inhaled with the effort he took the odor up into his nose. Whiskey, Hargrave thought. And it wasn’t as refined as Maker’s Mark. He reached down to Walker’s hands and pushed them off the wound to feel it himself and when he touched the bloodied cargo pants he could feel the broken glass inside the thigh pocket. The bullet had shattered the newly purchased pint bottle and then ricocheted down into the man’s leg. The blood-and-whiskey mix was now running a gravity trail out into the street and Hargrave made a note of it before standing and waving the arriving cops to the side of the buildings and pointing up. It only took seconds for the street to clear, but the officers continued to move up using the overhangs as cover until they were beside the truck and Hargrave stood up.

“Probably ought to call EMS,” he said to the first man. “You’ve got one gunshot victim down on the street. And you also better get on the tactical channel to the Secret Service guys and tell them they might have a sniper working north of the barricades.”

At that the officers all looked up at the same time as they crouched next to Walker. But Hargrave remained standing and answered a ring on his cell phone.

“Hargrave,” he said.

“Detective, this is Mullins. I’m gonna need some help up here.”

Chapter 34

T
wo weeks later, Nick was at home, lying on the couch on a Saturday morning, waiting to take Carly on a field trip. He’d had plenty of time at home, unemployed and without a deadline. At first he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to stand the open time, the lack of schedule. The slow cocktail of pressure and adrenaline and approaching deadline that had consumed his life was now over for good. But he quickly found that he did not miss it, or its hangover, at all.

On the morning of the shooting he’d called Hargrave on the cell for help and directed him to the top of the Marsh Storage Facility. Hargrave had come alone and in his own stoic way took command. While calling for paramedics on his cell phone, he simultaneously spun his handkerchief into a rope, put a knot in the middle and then stuffed it like a plug into the palm of Nick’s hand and then wrapped it in place. Then he crouched there and assessed the leg wound. He stripped his shirt and folded it to form a pressure bandage and then held it hard against the seeping hole and then watched as news helicopters filled the sky like carrion vultures until the rescue squad got there.

“Goddamn snipers aren’t such good shots after all,” he said.

The next day’s headline had read:

SECRETARY OF STATE SAFE, TWO CIVILIANS WOUNDED

DURING SHOOTING NEAR OAS CONFERENCE IN LAUDERDALE

The
Daily News
and other media jumped all over a speculation that the shooting had been an attempt on the secretary’s life gone awry and that when the sniper was interrupted by two civilians and sensed capture, he fled.

The Secretary of State immediately flew back to D.C. and a spokesperson issued a statement that the incident was “troubling” but that they would have no comment until the Secret Service had done a full investigation.

When Nick was interviewed by the feds he simply told the truth. On a news hunch, he was looking for someone on the roof when he inadvertently surprised the sniper, who turned and fired at him. The bullet was deflected when it sheared through his left hand and then struck his leg. He could not say that he heard another shot, and he saw no one else on the roof until Detective Hargrave arrived.

Later in the week it was directly from Hargrave that Nick learned that FBI crime-scene technicians had taken over the scene and confirmed his story after finding that the round that pierced Walker’s leg and his whiskey bottle matched that found in Mullins’s thigh.

Both the detective and the reporter had their own theories on what happened. If they ever sat down and compared scenarios, their versions would not have been much different, but they never did.

Hargrave only called Nick one more time. It was on the day that charges of violating probation were filed against Robert Walker for being in possession of and consuming alcoholic beverages. Hargrave had made sure evidence from that shooting scene was gathered by the Sheriff’s Office, including Walker’s blood-and-alcohol-soaked pants. He’d also called in a request at the E.R. and had them take a blood-alcohol test immediately. And he personally canvassed all the area liquor stores within a ten-minute radius of Archie’s until he found the clerk who’d been selling the whiskey to Walker, to use as a witness.

When Nick’s name was released as one of the wounded, he was inundated by members of the media, including old friends, requesting interviews. The managing editor of the
Daily News
sent a written request, pointing out that since he had not gone through the final “separation from the company” process, he might still be considered an employee with certain obligations. That was a new one on Nick. He’d yet to hear of the management technique of both asking a favor and threatening legal action against an employee at the same time.

To everyone he simply said, “No comment,” and meant it. Maybe, when his hand healed and he was able to type without pain again, he might put his own exclusive story together.

But this morning he and Carly were on the living room couch, reading and waiting for a visitor. At the sound of the doorbell, Carly jumped up to answer the door.

“Hi, Lori!” she said to the research assistant who had been the first newsroom person to check on Nick without asking for a quote.

“Hello, Carly,” she said, walking in. “What are you and your dad up to this morning?”

“I don’t know,” the girl said and smiled. “You will have to ask Mr. Secrecy over there.”

Nick got up, shaking his head and dangling his car keys in his right hand, a smile on his face. “We’re going on a visit.”

The girls looked at him and gave in. Both of them had already learned not to rush to help him walk or offer to drive. During the trip the girls talked about their mutual interest in paintings and photographs. Lori told Carly about the access she had to hundreds of photos through the newspaper’s archives and her collection of museum tomes like the one about Van Gogh she’d given her.

“Awesome!” was Carly’s sophisticated comment and Nick smiled.

After several minutes they turned into a neighborhood in northwest Fort Lauderdale where neither Carly nor Lori had ever been. Both of them looked out with curiosity at the streets and the small, sun-faded homes. On Northwest Tenth, Nick spotted the red geranium on the porch and pulled into the driveway.

“I want you guys to meet Ms. Cotton,” he finally said. “She’s a very nice lady.”

The small black woman was waiting for them just inside the door and Nick made introductions as they were invited in. Ms. Cotton had made a pitcher of lemonade and Carly politely accepted a glass while they sat. Nick watched his daughter’s eyes go immediately to the photos of the girls on the wall and stay there, like she was studying them. Their host noticed.

“Those are my girls,” Ms. Cotton said directly to Carly. “Your father was very kind to them when they passed away.”

Carly looked at her father, anxious over the mention of death, but hiding it well.

“What were their names?” she asked Ms. Cotton.

“Gabriella and Marcellina,” she said. “They were artists, the both of them. Would you like to see some of the things I kept?”

Carly’s eyes brightened and Ms. Cotton led both her and Lori to a small bedroom in the back. After a minute she returned alone.

“That child is lovely, Mr. Mullins. Is that why you wanted to come by, to show her to me? Because I already knew she was special.”

“Maybe,” Nick said, not really sure what his motivation was. “Mostly to thank you, ma’am.”

He fumbled at his back pocket with his good hand and came up with a white, lace-fringed thank-you card, which he presented to her.

“Whatever for, Mr. Mullins?” she said, looking not at the card, but into his eyes.

Since the last time he was in this house he had not been able to rid himself of the feeling that this woman knew things about him that should have been impossible for her to know.

“For forgiveness,” he said.

“Ah,” the tiny woman said and turned away to step toward the portraits on her wall. As she did, Nick could see the stack of newspapers on her coffee table. He had no doubt she had read every story of his involvement with the sniper. “You gave some of it to me, in your stories. Now I give it back to you. Somehow, I believe, that is how it spreads.”

Nick went quiet. No question had been asked. He didn’t know how to respond.

She extended her hand to his, held the bandaged palm lightly and turned toward the interior of the house. “Let’s go back, Mr. Mullins, and see what your girls have found.”