Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

He finally picked up the pad from the passenger seat and opened the door. Before stepping out, he took off his sunglasses. You don't ask a man if he knows his brother is dead and not have the balls to show your eyes. He put the pad in his back pocket.

There were no other cars in the drive. The carport, little more than a sheet of tin supported by poles and tacked to the roof of the trailer, was filled with a full-sized washer and dryer, rusted at their edges. A chaise lounge was missing two plastic straps. And water-stained cardboard boxes containing God knows what were stacked alongside the front of a sheet-metal utility shack. Nick kept checking the curtains, waiting for a movement that would tell him someone was inside who didn't want to talk to him.

A woman opened the door just a crack before he could step up onto the metal grated stairway. Nick lowered his eyes, just for a moment, and then looked into the light-colored eyes that peered out.

"Good morning, ma'am. I'm looking for David Ferris. Is he home, please?"

The eyes continued to look out and the crack widened, letting sunlight give blueness to their irises.

"My name is Nick Mullins, ma'am, I'm a reporter for the Daily News."

"I know who you are," the woman said. Her voice was neither accusatory nor contemptuous. Nick took it as a good sign.

"Have I met you before, ma'am?" Nick said.

"You interviewed my husband about four years ago, right here on these steps," she said, opening the door wider, her hand high on the edge of the jamb. The sun glinted off thin strands of blond hair that dangled in front of her face like a spider's web catching light. She was a small, thin woman dressed in a flower-patterned smock and loose matching pants, the kind of outfit a nurse would wear.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry," Nick said. "I, uh, I don't recall your name."

She just nodded, offering nothing.

"David isn't in, then?"

"He just called, Mr. Mullins. They got ahold of him on his cell phone at work. He's on his way home."

Nick looked down again, as though he understood.

"He's still at the Motorola plant, then?" he said, recalling the reporting he'd done on the earlier Ferris stories.

"We're both still working, Mr. Mullins, trying to pay off the lawyer's bills," she said, only now letting an edge into her voice.

Nick shifted his weight. He was still standing below her, looking up now into her face. He thought he'd remembered her being in her mid-twenties on the documents he'd dug up on the Ferris family. But the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and the pull of skin from her cheekbones did not fit that age. He felt somehow responsible, but could not leave it alone.

"Was the phone call about Steven?" he finally asked and she simply nodded in the positive and looked off into the distance behind him. Again Nick let silence surround them, second-guessing whether she was relieved or saddened. He finally took a step back.

"May I wait for David to get here?" he said.

She fixed her dry blue eyes on his. "He doesn't want to talk with you, Mr. Mullins. Enough has been said," she said. "I know that people can't understand it, why he stood up for his brother after what he did to those children. I don't know that I even understand it."

She looked down for the first time, a crack in her show of defiance.

"But David still loved his brother, sir. And now we have a funeral to plan." Nick nodded his head again, this time in deference, and continued stepping backward.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ferris," he said and then closed his lips around the air that had started behind his teeth before he could say, Thank you.

By the time he opened his car door, she was gone. He climbed in and the spiral wire of his notebook caught the fabric of the seat. He had not taken it from his back pocket.

On the way back to his desk Nick made his obligatory stop at the assistant city editor's pod.

"I have an I.D. confirmation on the dead guy at the jail," he said.

The editor rolled back his chair while his fingers were still on his keyboard, reluctant to leave unfinished a sentence for a budget line item that would have to be presented in yet another news meeting at noon.

"OK, great, Nick. Anybody we know?" he said, finally bringing his head and a grin around with the final word.

"Yeah. It's a guy they put away a few years ago on a double homicide and rape of two elementary school sisters."

"No shit?"

"Yeah," Nick said, knowing he'd finally gotten the guy's attention. "He was coming back into court for a hearing on a change of sentencing and it looks like somebody from the outside popped him."

The editor's name was John Rhodes. He'd only been at the Daily News for a year and had been told early that Mullins had an attitude, most of it coming after a car wreck that involved his family some time ago. He was told to walk lightly with him. But he'd also learned quickly that when Mullins brought something to the editors' desk, the guy would have nailed it down.

"No shit," he repeated and looked around to see if anyone else was within earshot and sharing the news of the minute. "How long ago did this guy do the… uh, murder the kids?"

"Four years," Nick said. "Only the sentencing was in litigation."

"So people are gonna remember, right?"

"Yeah, John. People will remember."

"OK, yeah, sure. Whadda you think, Nick. Page one?"

"That's your call, man. I got some more people to talk to," Nick said and then nodded his head toward Deirdre's office. "Tell her it's Steven Ferris. I already got the clips from the library."

Rhodes got up as Nick started to walk away. "Hey, does anyone else have this?" he said.

Nick turned around but didn't say anything.

"I mean, you know, do we have an exclusive here?" Rhodes said.

"They're just sources, John. I don't know who else they talk to," Nick said and went on to his desk. He wanted to ask what the hell difference it made if some other news outlet knew Ferris's was the body now being shipped to the morgue. He wanted to ask when "exclusive" had become the value of a story. But he'd said those things before. Maybe he was learning to keep his big mouth shut.

Morgue, Nick thought when he sat down and logged into his computer. While the machine booted up, he called the medical examiner's office, bypassing the switchboard by using an inside extension to one of the M.E.'s assistants.

"McGregor," the deep baritone announced after eight rings.

"Hey, Mac. Nick Mullins. Sorry if I pulled you away from something disgusting and violated."

"Nick? Nick?" said McGregor, making his voice sound like he was perplexed. "Nick, ahhhh. Sorry, I'm having a hard time coming up with the last name. Do I know you?"

Nick smiled into the phone.

"OK, Mac. So you must be working on this dead inmate with the head wound, right?"

"Did I say that, Mr. Nick? I'm not sure I said that. You know this call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes."

"Jesus, Mac. Did they come down on you guys again for leaking stuff to the press?"

"Come down on us? Christ, Nicky, we even had to do a goddamn hour-long seminar with the county attorney on right to privacy and HIPPA laws and then sign a fucking waiver sheet saying we attended and understood 'all materials presented,' " McGregor said, his legendary sarcasm back in his voice. "I can see 'em waving that damn thing in court and pointing at us: 'We told them, they didn't listen, sue them, not the state.' "

"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 arse," 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.