Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

"I want to ask one thing, Nick."

He tried not to show any emotion in his face or body language that would say, Oh, Christ, here it comes. But he was lousy at controlling it.

Still, he stayed silent, not falling into the old question for a question, not responding by saying, Yeah, and what's that?

Instead he waited her out.

"You got the caliber of the gun, Nick, the.308, which you knew was a high-powered rifle round. You were the one up on the roof, and nice close-up, by the way."

He nodded, wanting to match the grin she was trying to give him, but too obstinate to do it. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"So why is it that the Herald used the word sniper in their headline and in the body of their story and we never even mentioned it?"

She dug the Herald out from under the pile on her desk and held up the front page: SNIPER KILLS CHILD MOLESTER ON WAY TO COURT

Nick tried to keep a dry, unflappable look on his face.

"Attribution?"

Deirdre flipped the paper over and skimmed through the story like she was trying to find the line Nick knew was not there. If someone with any authority had called the shooting the act of a sniper, it would have been in the first paragraph of his story. No one called it that, even if it was true.

"Did they contribute that characterization to any source or member of the law enforcement team that's investigating?" he said. "I honestly didn't hear the spokesman or the detective in charge or the medical examiner that did the autopsy use the word sniper."

Deirdre finally looked him in the face and if anyone else had been in the room, they would have called it a look of compassion.

"Nicky. I know where you're coming from with your theory of black-and-white news," she said and Nick turned away from the look.

"You're a great reporter because you have the instincts and experience to go after your own suppositions, to prove them true."

"I'm still doing that!" Nick snapped, getting defensive.

Deirdre raised her palms. "I know. I know you are, Nick. But you're not putting it in the paper."

"When I nail it, it'll go in the paper," he said.

"It makes us sound unsure, like we're waiting for someone else to get the good stuff first. It makes us look like we're afraid to pull the trigger."

The heat was up in Nick's face now. He could feel the flush in his neck, the hot tingle on the edges of his ears.

"Is that why we never called Robert Walker a drunk driver in print, Deirdre?" Nick said through his teeth. "Were we waiting for someone else to get the goods on that guy after he killed my family? Why didn't somebody go and dig up that guy's background and pull the goddamn trigger in print?"

Now she couldn't hold his eyes. She knew the arguments he'd had with the paper's management after the accident that killed his wife and daughter. She knew Nick had tried to get the editorial writers to paint Walker as a drunken killer. But they had refused, citing journalistic standards and telling him to wait until after the trial. She knew it had hurt him.

"That situation was different, Nick. That was personal. You're an employee. It would have looked prejudicial."

"But you want me to call this guy a sniper on the front page before we know who or what he is," Nick said, trying to make the statement sound smug, but that emotion was no longer in him.

Deirdre just looked down at her desktop.

"I'll keep chasing what happens next," Nick said, getting up. "You'll get the truth in my story at eight."

As he turned to go, Deirdre couldn't help herself, as if her comeback were so ingrained in her psyche that it was like an involuntary muscle response:

"The truth is in the-"

"Yeah, yeah," Nick interrupted. "The eye of the beholder."

He didn't turn around, just kept walking out the door.

When he got back to his desk, Nick started to call up the list from research but only got back to Dr. Chambliss's name when his phone rang.

"Mr. Mullins? This is Brian Dempsey. I'm a lawyer representing Margaria Cotton, the woman whose children were killed by Mr. Ferris four years ago that you wrote about in the paper today."

Nick was instantly wary. Lawyers, by profession, are not impartial. They do what they need to do to help their clients. A reporter never talks to an attorney without thinking, Wha's his motive?

"Yes, Mr. Dempsey. What can I do for you, sir?"

"Well, Mr. Mullins, against my advice, Ms. Cotton would like to meet with you."

"Great," Nick said and then quickly toned down his exuberance. "I'd lost touch with her, Mr. Dempsey, and didn't have a contact number or I certainly would have interviewed her for today's story."

Nick could hear the lawyer's hesitation in the beat of silence.

"Ms. Cotton has tried very hard to keep her life private after her tragedy, Mr. Mullins. But I felt duty-bound to pass on your request to speak with her and again, against my advice, she would like to meet with you first."

"First?"

"Yes, Mr. Mullins. Investigators from the Sheriff's Office are also interviewing Ms. Cotton today in my office, at one o'clock this afternoon. She would like to speak with you first."

Nick looked at the huge clock on the wall, omnipresent in the newsroom to remind everyone of their daily deadlines. It was nearly eleven.

"OK. At your office, then, Mr. Dempsey?"

"No. Ms. Cotton would like you to come to her home. She's awaiting your arrival. When you're through, I hope you could give her a ride to the Sheriff's Office in time for the detectives, if you would."

"Absolutely, sir."

The attorney gave Nick the addresses of both Cotton's home and his law office.

"And please, Mr. Mullins," he said before hanging up, "I hope you can appreciate the delicacy of this matter."

Nick could not come up with an answer to the statement before the line went quiet. He looked up again at the clock. Cotton's address was less than twenty minutes from the newsroom, thirty even if traffic was bad. He closed the research file in front of him, stuck his reporter's notebook in his pocket and told the assistant city editor that he was going out on an interview and could be reached on his cell phone if they needed him.

Standing at the elevator door, Nick could feel an electricity in his blood. You're not supposed to get giddy when you're going to talk with a woman whose children were raped and murdered. But he still gave up on waiting for the elevator and took the six flights of stairs to the parking level, two steps at a time. Nick looked at the address on the page of his notebook one more time and then slowly rolled up Northwest Tenth Avenue. The houses were single-story and all seemed to be painted a dusty color-pale yellow, powder blue-and even the white ones gave off a hue of bone. The yards were mottled with patches of dirt and the green grass seemed to have been robbed of its chlorophyll. The macadam road surface had been bleached a soft gray by the sun. Nick always wondered at the ability of poor and neglected neighborhoods to dull even the effects of the bright Florida sunshine. Postcard photos were never taken here.

The number he was looking for was not visible on the house where it should have been. He drove past two more before spotting an address painted above a doorway and then put the car in reverse and backed up, subtracting by lot. He pulled into the two-strip concrete drive in front of a dull beige clapboard home that must have been built in the early 1960s. But the roof was newly shingled. There was a potted red geranium on the front step and the porch had been swept clean. When Nick raised his hand to knock, the inside door opened before his knuckles touched wood.

"Good morning, Mr. Mullins," the woman's voice said.

"Ms. Cotton?" Nick said, though he still could only see her dark figure in the shadows of the room.