Eye of Vengeance (20 page)

Chapter 21

E
lsa woke him in the morning, partially with the scent of fresh-brewing coffee, then fully with a careful pat on the shoulder. Nick had fallen asleep on the couch fully dressed and with a jumble of unanswered questions and barely connected trails of victims and prisoners and violence that spun him enough to twist his shirt around his middle and cause his pants to shift a quarter turn around. When he finally stood, he had to adjust his clothes before he could walk to the kitchen counter and rescue his muddled brain with Elsa’s Colombian coffee, black, no sugar.

It was nearly seven and he could hear Carly shuffling and moving in the girls’ bathroom that she had taken over since the accident. She had insisted on saving Lindsay’s bath oils and bottled fragrances, especially the ones they’d concocted together. And even two years later he couldn’t bring himself to toss them. Even in the master bath Nick had not had the heart to put away the makeup tray where Julie had kept her perfumes. He used to foolishly pick up a spritzer and squirt a cloud of her scent into the air and just stand there, breathing it in. It used to make him cry. He’d tried to break the habit. Her side of the vanity remained spotless. He used the other sink and a small kit bag in the corner that had always held his shaving stuff, deodorant and a toothbrush. Julie had joked that he was always packed and ready to go. But it had not been funny near the end and they had both known it. Still, he never changed.

When Carly was ready for school she came out for breakfast and Nick moved his coffee to the table.

“Hey, sunshine,” Nick said. His face was dark and slack with fatigue, but he was trying to cover it. “What’s on the agenda for today?”

“Just stuff. But we are going to get to do some more clay sculpture in art and it’s going to be way cool. I’m finally going to put the legs on that angel I told you I was working on. Then we might actually get them in the kiln this week. Do you think I should paint her, or just leave her with the clay color—I mean, you can see the details and stuff without the paint and that’s what counts and it’s kinda weird to paint them all white and silver and stuff when nobody really knows what angels wear anyway and so what, you can do what you want, right?”

Elsa came over and set a bowl of cream of wheat in front of the girl and smiled that smile at Nick that said,
She is wound up this morning, eh?

“Absolutely,” Nick said. “Art is in the eye of the beholder and you’re the beholder. Do what you want, babe.”

Carly rambled on about her teacher and how she’d already figured out how to manipulate her. “I can just play around with my own ideas and she’ll still give me a good grade.”

Nick listened, and thought, When did these kids get so smart?, and then they heard the car horn outside and his daughter jumped up, kissed him on the head, said, “’Bye, Dad,” kissed Elsa and thanked her for the half eaten breakfast and then blew out through the front door, leaving a fragrance and an energy wafting behind.

Nick sat for a moment, sipping his coffee. When he finally rose, Elsa looked him in the face.

“You look like the sin, Mr. Mullins,” she said with her thick accent and shaking her head as one might at a shameful sight.

“Thank you, Elsa,” Nick said. “I’m going to shower and then I’m going to work. Please make me some more coffee.”

He’d gone over the scenario too many times to count during the night and it was still in his head. Nick was trying to decide whether to turn the letters over to Hargrave, including the one with Michael Redman’s name on it, still in the plastic bag, right on top. The box was sitting on the passenger seat next to him. He couldn’t help glancing over at it, like some snake crate about to pop open and let loose a beast that would rise and start spitting venom in all directions. He knew it could be evidence, that wasn’t in question, whether it
could
be. But his reluctance through the night had been twofold.

First, he’d called Lori in research before he left the house and she punched Redman’s name into the local and national media database and came up with nothing. The last reference had been Nick’s own story on the weapons-dealer shooting and the editorial before it. As far as he could tell, no media had any idea what the guy had been doing for the last few years or whether he was even still with the Sheriff’s Office. In Nick’s head, linking Redman to the recent shootings was premature.

Second, if he gave the letter to Hargrave, then it would be in their house. Could Hargrave keep it under his hat? Would he have to tell Canfield, who Nick knew was Redman’s supervisor back in the day? Would anyone be able to contain it if it leaked? Tell two people and three will know. Once there are three, there will be four by the end of the day. Rumor was always exponential. He could see the
Herald’s
headlines:

FORMER SWAT SNIPER INVESTIGATED FOR RECENT KILLINGS

MODERN-DAY GUARDIAN ANGEL GUNS DOWN BAD GUYS

IN THE STREETS

Once the television guys and the
Herald
got the story about the letter, they’d be knocking on Margaria Cotton’s front door, dredging up all the ugly memories. Yeah, Nick thought, like you already have?

“Christ!” he said. He was driving south on 1-95, trailing behind some late-model Chevy Cavalier. He looked over at the box and then at his speedometer. Fifty-four. OK, he might have been driving blind for the last twenty minutes, but it was putsy blind. He wasn’t a speeder when his head was tied up. By instinct he instead tucked in behind another car and followed without paying any damned attention. He punched the gas and passed the blue-haired old lady piloting the Cavalier and pushed it up to the normal sixty-five. Eight miles later he got off the interstate and then crawled with morning traffic into downtown. When he parked in the newspaper lot he left the box of letters on the passenger seat and locked the doors.

The newsroom was, as usual in the morning, quiet. Nick headed for his desk, snatching up a copy of the day’s paper and glancing at the front page as he went. His story on Michaels was below the fold, in the bottom right-hand corner.

SECOND FELON ASSASSINATED IN FIVE DAYS

POLICE LOOKING FOR CONNECTION

Nick’s lead paragraph had not been changed. And they had also left Hargrave’s quote on the front before the story jumped and was continued on a deep inside page. Nick sighed a bit in relief, but the respite was short-lived. When he logged into his e-mail file and scanned the dozen or so names there, Deirdre’s was high up with a capitalized subject field:
SEE ME!

No, thank you, Nick thought. He started down the list, looking for someone familiar. Hargrave, Cameron, anyone. His eye instead settled on
[email protected]
and the subject field read:
you’re a smart guy, nick. m.r.
The initials had already been branded into his head overnight. Michael Redman. Nick pulled up the message:
meet me behind super saver at ten.

He checked the time the message was sent. Almost two hours ago. The morning paper, displaying Hargrave’s paragraph, had been out since dawn. He then looked at the clock in the middle of the newsroom: nine forty-five. Fifteen minutes … if it was the old abandoned Super Saver Market three blocks away, he could make it.

Nick closed out the message screen and then punched Hargrave’s cell number into the phone while he stood. He looked around the newsroom, where he could see only a few heads. After three rings on Hargrave’s cell, there was a heavy click and a recorded answer kicked in. Hargrave’s voice, in a clipped tone, said, “Leave a message.” Nick’s head was already dwelling somewhere else and he quickly came up with a stumbling message:

“I might have gotten a response from the sniper. I’m going to meet him. I’ll call you later. Oh, the e-mail account he used to get the message to me was from an account called
[email protected],
so maybe you could find something out about that. I’ll call you later.”

Nick punched off the phone and started around his desk on the way out. He took the long way around the assistant editors’ pod so Deirdre would not spot him from her office. But Bill Hirschman caught Nick’s eye from his desk in front of the city editor’s glass window and started toward him. When the education reporter came near, he stopped at an empty pod partition like he didn’t want to get too close to Nick and catch whatever he had.

“The vultures are out after your ass, Mullins,” he said, just loud enough for Nick to hear. He tilted his head back toward Deirdre’s office. “They’ve been in there for an hour. The boss, the managing editor and the man.”

Nick looked past Hirschman’s shoulder, but the angle on Deirdre’s floor-to-ceiling window was too severe to make out the occupants.

“Best I could hear was something about you and a vigilante story you were supposed to be working.”

Nick nodded, checked his watch and said thanks.

“I’ll be back, I gotta go check out a lead.”

Chapter 22

M
ichael Redman was on the seventh floor of the parking garage attached to the Riverside Hotel, once a quaint two-story historical jewel that had been transformed into a huge chunk of lime-colored concrete block like any other modern-day structure that had gone up in the city over the past fifteen years. He was wearing navy blue chinos and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. There was a simple baseball cap, without a logo, on his head, and in his hand a zippered jacket. He could be security. Or a parking attendant. Or even a guest. He’d simply punched the
PUSH HERE FOR TICKET
button and then yanked the ticket and jogged in long before the wooden arm even rose. He put the card in one pocket. In the other he’d carried the spotting scope and at the moment was watching the sidewalk below, scanning the empty back lot of the closed grocery store, waiting for the arrival of Nick Mullins.

Redman had been out on the street three minutes after the
Daily News
vendor dropped a dozen papers into the honor box. He’d then sat at the kitchen table of his new condo and read and reread Mullins’s story. He’d felt a warmth rise to his cheeks when he read the quote from Detective Hargrave, someone new that he’d never met during his time with the Sheriff’s Office:
The victims’ pasts don’t open up an avenue for them to be gunned down in the streets. That’s not how law enforcement works in a democracy. That’s not how this country operates.

Redman wasn’t stupid. He could spot a setup when he saw it. Hargrave and some dip from media relations had slipped that one to Mullins and he’d stuck it in there. It was meant for some hothead who’d boil over at the quote and do something foolish. They didn’t have a clue who they were dealing with. But the attempt to rattle him had made up Redman’s mind on one point: It was time to do the last one. He’d finished his list, but he had saved one last ex-con. Now he had to talk to Mullins, face to face so that he would understand, so that he would know, and would get the story right.

When the library opened that morning at seven thirty, Redman walked in like any civilian and took a seat at the public terminals. He scrolled through some websites just to look busy. He’d visited the library several times, culling info he couldn’t get from his computer at home or to track back on archived stories that other journalists like Mullins might have done on the people on his list. Sometimes he’d take the dates and addresses straight to the courthouse, walk in like any other member of the general public and use their terminals or pull the cases he wanted to look at. He’d get the probable-cause statements and take down victims’ and arrestees’ addresses and check the file updates to find inmate numbers to cross-reference direct with DOC. Getting information was the easy part. Staying below the radar was only a bit harder. Now he had to come up from undercover. He had to make contact with the world again and he’d already planned it out.

In the library he’d tagged a familiar mark, the kid with the earring and the Karl Marx T-shirt, who was working the computer a seat away. Redman had seen him before, probably went to the community college around the block. The kid thought he was a radical, but he did the same thing over and over. Human beings with their patterns, Redman thought.

This morning the kid sniggered a couple of times after typing something into the terminal where he was sitting and then hitting the enter key. Then he got serious and walked back into the stacks and came out with a book or two and sat back down. Redman passed behind him once and confirmed that he was using his own Internet account, probably sending messages to some girlfriend. The next time he got up and went into the aisles, Redman slipped into the kid’s chair and quickly typed in Mullins’s e-mail address and sent him a message and walked away.

Now he was in the parking garage, waiting to see if the reporter would take up the offer. The morning’s news clipping was now in Redman’s file with all the rest that marked the deaths of those deserving few on his list.

That’s not how law enforcement works in a democracy. That’s not how this country operates.

“No shit, bubba,” Redman whispered. The courts give a child killer like Ferris another bite at the apple to see if he can knock his sentence down instead of getting the death penalty. The country goes to Iraq and indiscriminately kills anything it sees in the name of retribution for 9/11 even if the skinny woman in the burka walking down the alley wouldn’t know the Twin Towers if they fell on her. The spotter tells me to kill her, I kill her. No questions asked. There’s your democracy.

At least Redman knew who his spotter was now, and he would show up. He looked at his watch—9:57—then raised the spotting scope. Redman knew he’d show up.

Chapter 23

N
ick looked at his watch—9:58—and kept moving. He was walking along the river, yachts and sailboats tied up along the seawall to his right, the new, monstrous condos on the left. He’d been trying to recall Redman’s face since reading the e-mail and all he could conjure was the intensity of the guy’s eyes when Nick had done a day of reporting on the SWAT team’s training. Sharp, clear and blue. Eyes that did not flinch even after twenty minutes of hard focus. There were few people on the street. A couple of guys rubbing the brightwork on a fifty-foot double-masted schooner. A blond jogger trotting by. A delivery truck pulling into the service entrance of one of the condos. Around the curve of the river the back lot of the grocery store came into view, the exact opposite of the high-priced luxury he’d just passed. The lot was empty. The ground was covered with gravel and patchy weeds. The rear delivery doors were padlocked. Nick knew that the city had tried to save this chunk of land for a park along the river. But when the grocery chain went under, the prime real estate went to the highest bidder, another condo developer. It had been sitting unused and decaying while lawyers argued. On occasion a rumpled fisherman would be camped at the seawall, a line tossed into the New River. But it was empty now and Nick took up the spot where the fisherman would have been. He’d done this kind of thing before, met with sources who did not want to be identified and did not want to be seen with a reporter. He wasn’t thinking of safety, hadn’t even considered himself a target, but as he turned yet another three-sixty, scanning the back of the building and the hedge of ratty trees and sea grape that walled off the other side, he felt an uncomfortable itch on the side of his head, just above his left sideburn, and raised his hand to touch the spot with his fingers. If this guy was who Nick figured he was, there wouldn’t be such a thing as safety. If he wanted to take you out, you’d be dead.

Redman caught the movement in his spotting scope and grinned. There had always been a rumor in sniper circles that there were targets that had such premonition that they could actually feel the spot of death on their skin before you took the shot. Redman had caught Mullins in his lens as the reporter walked up the sidewalk and then followed him to the seawall, where he stopped and waited. Redman took an extra few minutes to scan the area. He knew where the stakeout people would be if Mullins had called the new detective, Hargrave, and alerted him to their meeting. From his vantage point Redman could see up all three entry streets to the river. No cop cars within two blocks. No unmarked Ford Crown Victorias that any idiot would know carried plainclothes officers. He was going to give it another five minutes of all clear when a voice behind him called out:

“Excuse me, sir. Can I help you with something?”

Redman turned and slipped the scope under his jacket all in one motion. At the ramp leading down to the next level stood a uniformed security guard, a young guy, hair cut high and tight, eyes clear and sharp, not lackadaisical and bored.

“Well, I was trying to get my bearings,” Redman said, looking back out over the retaining wall and then returning to the guard. He then slipped his hand into his pocket and watched the guard approach, unwary. Not an undercover, Redman thought. No real cop would let some guy go into his pockets without reacting.

As the guard came closer, Redman continued to dig around with his fingers and then pulled out the parking ticket he’d punched out of the machine and acted as if he were examining it.

“I thought I was on the west side of the sixth floor, but I can’t seem to find my car.”

“This is seven, sir,” the guard said, scanning Redman’s clothes, but not in a suspicious manner.

“No shit?” Redman said, looking around, trying to act the part. He turned and pointed at the number seven that was painted on the front of a nearby column. “Man, I gotta get my eyes checked.” He hung on to the parking ticket, waving it but not offering or letting him see it too closely.

“You can take the elevator over there down,” the guard said, pointing in the direction of the center column. “But you were right about the west side.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m not all stupid this morning,” Redman said and started walking. “Thanks.”

The young guard just nodded. “Yes, sir. Have a good day.”

Redman took the elevator to the ground floor, convinced that his meeting with Mullins was clear.

Nick looked at his watch—10:08—but he did not move from his spot. A lesson from years of street reporting: Don’t leave the scene until you’ve got everything you can get or your deadline is screaming in your face. At this point in the morning there was plenty of time to write, and knowing that Deirdre was waiting with a harsh
SEE ME!
was motivation to stay away as long as possible.

He looked out onto the river, the water a dark impenetrable brown color. He recalled a description of the same spot, recorded by Fort Lauderdale pioneer Ivy Stranahan in the late 1890s, of a river so clear you could watch the fish swimming below. Growth of the area killed that vision, as it did her husband, Frank, who committed suicide by strapping weights to his body and throwing himself into the river in a spot not fifty yards away from where Nick now stood. Nick was thinking about ghosts when he picked up on the rustle of branches off to his left and saw a man coming through the sea grape hedge.

Michael Redman did not suddenly appear like some stealthy ninja warrior. He even stumbled a bit extricating himself from the brush. At first Nick thought the man might just be a fisherman, but he was carrying nothing but a dark jacket. He was dressed peculiarly, like some gas station attendant. There were no furtive glances to see if they were alone, the man simply walked over with a confident stride and when their eyes met, any doubt was immediately dissolved.

“Mr. Mullins,” Redman said and it was not a question. He stopped just within handshaking distance, but did not offer his hand.

“Michael Redman,” Nick replied. He was studying the man’s face, older than he remembered, cut with deep crow’s-feet and lines across the forehead, sallow skin that accented the dark pouches that hung under his eyes. Not a man who slept well, Nick caught himself thinking.

“I’ve read your stories, Mr. Mullins,” Redman said in a clear, conversational tone. “You’ve always impressed me with your knowledge of certain events and people.”

Nick wasn’t sure how to react. But being cavalier, considering the circumstances, was out.

“I believe you’ve made some of those stories, Mike. Especially some of the recent ones.”

Nick wasn’t sure that the familiar use of Redman’s first name was appropriate. Redman only nodded his head, a noncommittal bob.

“I believe the now-silent subjects of those stories created those situations on their own,” Redman said.

Nick didn’t reply. He was assessing the man: clean clothes and freshly shaven, not living on the streets. Eyes clear of any obvious drug tinge. The man’s forearms were big for his otherwise thin frame, cabled with muscle that rolled in an almost dangerous way at the slightest turn of his big-knuckled hands.

“Yeah, sometimes,” Nick finally said and believed it. “Can I ask where you’ve been the last few years, Mike? The last time I remember seeing you was after that crazy shoot-out at the Days Inn.”

The look in Redman’s eyes slipped to memory and he let just the slightest twitch raise one corner of his mouth—a suppressed smile?

“Wasn’t anything crazy about it,” he said, extinguishing the look. “It was by the book, just like you showed in your story. Too bad your editorial board doesn’t talk to you.”

“Is that why you left?” Nick said, thinking instinctively about the reporter’s notepad in his back pocket, but then dismissing it.

“No. Hell, I understand a little about the politics of offices like yours, and like the ones I used to work for,” Redman said. “No, I stayed for a while after that and then went to hell.”

Nick hesitated. Man goes to hell. What does that mean? He gave it a second thought, but he rarely pulled punches at interviews and wasn’t going to start now.

“What? Alcoholism? Rehab?” he asked.

Redman laughed, outright and pure, and the softness it suddenly gave his face nearly made Nick smile.

“No, man. Though there was plenty of that over there and plenty of rehab is coming down the road for the guys that will come back,” Redman said. “No, Mr. Mullins. Iraq. I went to Iraq.”

He lost the laughter quickly.

“There is no hell like war,” he said.

“General Sherman,” Nick said quickly, a lesson from a Civil War history class jumping into his head.

“ ‘It’s glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell,’ ” Redman quoted. “Ol William Tecumseh, he got that one right, didn’t he?”

Nick let the silence take hold. Sometimes it was the best way to keep them talking, just say nothing, let them tell it on their own. He was watching Redman’s eyes as they went out onto the river. Post-traumatic stress? Just plain nuts? The quiet held too long.

“Is that what it is you’re doing, Mike, waging war?”

“No, Mr. Mullins. That’s not it. I did that for a lot of years with the Sheriff’s Office, warred against the criminals. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes you were second-guessed, as you know. But those editorial writers were the ones who never fired a shot or heard the groans, right?”

Nick did not disagree.

“No, this is just a list, my friend. One that’s got to be cleaned out before I go.”

“What list might that be?” Nick asked and he could hear the anxiety in his own voice, thinking about his byline list, the Secret Service list, the cross-reference list of both.

“My list,” Redman said, turning back to again look straight into Nick’s face when he spoke. “Just mine. That simple.”

“But what does your list have to do with me, Mike? I’m not a soldier. I’m not in a war. I haven’t fired a shot or heard the groans.”

Redman would not move his eyes and they burned with some internal heat.

“Yeah, you have, Nick. You’ve heard the worst groans, the ones that ripped your guts, man. You took the heaviest losses. You’re owed.”

Nick’s mind was racing, but illogically, he was trying to second-guess the words without just asking the question, every reporter’s downfall. Find the guts to just ask the question.

“Is it me? Am I on your list?”

The question seemed to break Redman’s intensity. The three lines that creased his forehead deepened and then he grinned.

“Well, hell, no, Mr. Mullins. You’re not on the list. You’re the architect of the list, man. You’re the spotter,” Redman said. “And I just wanted to meet you, properly, before we finish.”

Redman then reached out his hand in such a formal and courteous way that Nick’s muddled reaction was to take it. It was Redman’s muscled forearm that gripped and raised the handshake one time and then let it fall. When he turned to go, Nick found his voice.

“Wait. Wait a second, Mike. What do you mean, finish? You mean you’re going to kill someone else?”

Redman kept walking and Nick didn’t follow. It was against his years of work and instinct to chase after an interviewee, even this one. He stood and called out instead:

“Mike, come on. What are you doing? Why? How many more on your list?”

Redman turned before he disappeared back into the sea grape.

“One more, Mr. Mullins,” he called back. “Like I said, you’re owed.”

Nick stared after the bushes, dumbstruck. What the hell did that mean? I’m owed? I don’t do anything but write the stories. Then he pulled the notebook out of his back pocket and knelt right there, next to the seawall, and wrote down everything he could remember of the conversation, the exact words.

The now-silent subjects of those stories created those situations on their own.
Yeah, alright, Nick thought.

War is hell.
Goddamn Sherman quote. But if Redman had gone to Iraq, he either joined up or went as a guardsman. A lot of guardsmen from Florida went over there. Nick had done several stories about locals who packed up and shipped out, leaving families behind. That would be easy to check out.

This is just a list, my friend. One that’s got to be cleaned out before I go.

OK, his list. He’s working his own list. Would it be a physical thing? Or all in his head? And was it the same as any of the samples Nick already had, the one with his byline all over it?

You’re not on the list. You’re the architect of the list, man. You’re the spotter.

That can’t be right. What’s that mean? I’m the spotter. Nick knew enough about SWAT operations and snipers to know what a spotter was. He’s the guy that calls the shots in a two-man team. I’m not on this guy’s team. How the hell did I get on this guy’s team?

One more, Mr. Mullins. Like I said, you’re owed.
Nick scribbled down the last quote, the final words Redman had used.

“I’m owed?” he said out loud. Why am I owed? I’m not the subject of my stories. I have never been the subject of my stories. Your career, your journalism is not supposed to be about you, it’s supposed to be about other people.

The sound of Nick’s cell phone caused him to jerk and he had to put his hand out on the rough concrete to keep from tumbling into the damn water. He looked at the readout and the calling number was blocked.

“Nick Mullins,” he answered.

“Mr. Mullins,” announced Detective Hargrave’s quiet voice. “You have a flair for the dramatic that I didn’t expect from you. I got your message about going out to meet with a homicide suspect on your own and tossing me an Internet research assignment as a bone. This is exactly why we don’t bring amateurs in on investigations, Mullins. They always tend to do stupid things.”

Nick said nothing. The guy was right. What do you say?

“Can I assume that you have already met with your possible sniper, or are you standing around in some open field waiting for him to put a round through your head?” Hargrave said in a muted, conversational tone.