Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

"OK, now what are you going to give me?"

Canfield started to say something, then stopped.

Nick looked over at the press officer. "You know," he said. "The reason I came in here, agreed to this trade of information?"

Cameron cut his eyes the other way. Not my call, he was saying. I'm just taking orders.

"Well, you've already got the brother declared a nonsuspect. That isn't out yet," Canfield finally spoke up.

"At this time," Hargrave said off to the side.

Nick went from face to face. All eyes were down. They always knew more than they told you. Always.

"How about ballistics?" he said, trying to pry something loose.

"You've already got that, Nick. It was a.308. Actually, a Federal Match loaded with the 168-grain Boat Tail Hollow Point," Canfield said.

Nick jotted down the name. He didn't know shit about bullets. But that didn't matter much to his readers.

"Federal Match?" he said, cutting his eyes to the agent, who was still standing. "Does that mean it only comes from the military?"

The agent's eyes lifted and Nick detected a muscle twitch in the guy's jaw as it tightened. OK. If you were a poker player, that was a tell. Did mention of the military trip the guy?

"No, not at all," Canfield said quickly. "It's a round that's on the civilian and law enforcement market. Anyone could buy it."

"Any prints on the casing?" Nick said, working it.

"Never found a casing," Hargrave answered, not looking up until he asked his own question: "Did you?"

Nick let it pass. He knew his reputation would have already been passed to Hargrave. He'd never keep something that vital to a case to himself. It was more than unethical, it would have been stupid. Instead he took the opportunity to nail an attribution for the rooftop site.

"So you're saying the kill shot was taken from the roof?"

Canfield nodded. The creases in Hargrave's brow made it clear he was in pain giving such information to a reporter. Nick let it sit for a moment and then carefully set up his next question, wanting to watch the reaction, see which of the men in the room clenched his teeth the hardest, or breathed deepest, or just got up and walked out.

"So, you're working the angle that it's a military sniper or a law enforcement sniper?"

No one flinched. The fed even controlled his jaw muscle. Everyone was in control, almost like they'd expected the question and rehearsed. Even Nick knew by now that it would be Canfield's job to answer the delicate ones.

"We would be remiss in our duty, Nick, not to pursue all possibilities."

Nick let the standard answer hang in the air for a moment, but couldn't control himself.

"So you guys learned a lesson from the D.C. Beltway, eh?"

This time the federal officer's eyes came up and seared into Nick's. Gotcha, Nick thought.

In the fall of 2002, the Beltway sniper case had scared the hell out of Washington, D.C, and surrounding Virginia when ten innocent people had been killed, shot dead by a cold-blooded sniper from long distances as they were going about their daily lives. One was filling her tank at a gas station. Another was carrying groceries. Another picking up her son at school. In the flurry that built after the second shooting, the rumors and assumptions flew. The speculation, fed by so-called sources from the FBI and both the state and local police departments, was that a disturbed soldier, active or retired, or some rampaging cop was serially wreaking havoc. The shots were too difficult. The skill in striking and then disappearing was too well planned and logistical. The weaponry too sophisticated.

When the killer was finally caught, it turned out to be some teenager firing from the trunk of a car driven by the boy's pissed-off and most likely deranged stepfather. Amateurs. The speculators had been all wrong.

"Like your fellow seers in the media didn't like jumping on that? Like they had some fucking movie playing out," Hargrave mumbled.

"No argument there, Detective," Nick said. "No one's finest hour on that one."

In the following silence, Canfield shoved his chair back, signaling an end to the meeting. Nick flipped his notebook closed. The fed pushed off the wall with one hip, turned without a word and started out the adjoining door.

"OK, Nick. Please keep in touch through Mr. Cameron's office," Canfield said as he stood and offered his hand.

"I will," Nick said, shaking the lieutenant's hand over the table.

Hargrave stood during the formality and met Nick's eyes, his own holding a look devoid of hostility or superiority. The softened lines surprised Nick, and forced his eyebrows to rise in anticipation.

"Check you later," the detective said, a phrase that in one way may have said nothing. But Nick didn't think so. There was a crack in the ice.

"Anytime," he said, taking the man's hand, almost skeletal in its thinness and sharp protrusions of knuckle and bone. But once again he noted the taut cablelike muscles in the detective's forearm. I would not want to be caught in that guy's grip in a dark alley, he thought and carried his own warning out the door. When Nick got back to the newsroom it was almost six PM. It was the busiest part of the day, when reporters had all come back into the house after being out on assignment, when assistant city editors were working line by line to get through each of their charges' daily stories, asking questions, getting clarification, trying to make sure photographs taken during the day were matched up with the right reports and generally busting hump to clear the decks before deadline.

He stopped at the city desk to tell the assistant in charge of the cop shift that he had a story coming as a follow on the jail shooting.

"Yeah, Deirdre said you'd have something," the editor said as he looked through a sheaf of papers that Nick knew was a printout of tomorrow's story budget. Man, that woman was something, he thought, shaking his head, but with a smirk of respect at the corners of his mouth.

"How much space do you think you need?"

Nick knew the question was really eighty percent rhetorical. By this time of day, most of the paper would already have been laid out and story lengths pretty much decided. He also knew the business, this paper in particular, and knew what length would be acceptable and wouldn't put a twist in anyone's shorts.

"Twelve to fifteen inches should be enough," he said.

"Sounds good," the editor said and looked at his watch. "You've got two hours, man. Early deadline because of the breaking stuff coming in late from Miami on the mayor being indicted."

Nick just nodded and moved away. Two hours to compose four or five hundred words. Easy. He might even get home to eat dinner with Carly. That was sometimes the blessing of early deadlines.

"Oh, and Nick," the editor said as he started to walk away. "Call that story VIGILANTE3, and we'll use file art on Ferris again."

Vigilante. Shit, thought Nick. Where did they get that? TV? The Herald's Web page? He hadn't even written the piece and they were jumping to conclusions. Go write the story, Nick told himself. Go home. Keep your mouth shut.

At his desk Nick charged up the computer and ignored the blinking message light on his phone. The top of the story was already in his head and he clicked it off on the keyboard: On the hunt for a sniper with an unknown motive, police yesterday began a widespread, investigation to track down the executioner of convicted child molester and murderer Steven Ferris.

Interviewing members of the Ferris family, the mother of the two children Ferris abused and killed and a witness who may have seen the triggerman Friday morning, sheriff's detectives put their efforts on a fast track to find the marksman who shot Ferris inside the fences of their own jail.

From there Nick rolled through the piece like a simple game of eight ball: quotes from Canfield confirming they were looking for a sniper, all of the statements from Margaria Cotton that Nick thought were relevant, the admission by Hargrave that Ferris's brother was not a suspect. Even if he was being given special access, Nick still wasn't obliged to ease up on his own reporting. He included the quotes from the witness who had seen someone dressed in black and carrying a satchel leaving the roof of the building across the street just moments after the shooting. Even though he knew it would be questioned by the editors, Nick omitted the worker's name. He knew that the guy would freak out if he saw his identity in print and would swamp the paper with complaints that Nick had set him up to be a target of the killer. And who knew if he wouldn't be right? The editors didn't like unnamed sources and Nick would have to explain it, but he figured he was on solid ethical ground.