Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

The rest of the e-mail stuff looked too routine to bother with. Nick leaned back and started making his regular phone checks. Nick had been at the game for enough years to know who was plugged in and had an ear to the streets.

His first call was to the medical examiner's office to see if there were any fresh bodies from the weekend. A receptionist he knew answered.

"Hey, Margie. Anything new in the back room from the weekend?"

He heard Margie shuffling papers: "Nothing unnatural, Nick. Sorry."

Nick often wondered why they thought that the lack of violence would disappoint him. He didn't get paid by the number of dead people he wrote about. Sometimes he felt like a phone solicitor for Fuller Brush: Got any death today? No? Sure? We're having a special for the front page tomorrow. OK, I'll check back with you later. Have a good day!

His second call was to the Sheriff's Office communications desk. He was listening to the fifth unanswered ring when he heard a voice over the police radio near his desk. The dispatcher's voice was cranked just a notch above dispassionate.

"Kilo-nineteen, kilo-nineteen. Report of a man down on the sidewalk. One hundred block of East McNab Road. Possible gunshots. Repeat. Possible gunshots."

Nick stood up and reached over to crank up the radio volume. He recognized the address as a corrections and parole office. He was listening to the radio with one ear, the ringing phone with the other. The phone spoke first.

"Broward Sheriff's Office, dispatch, Sergeant Sortal."

"Yeah, hey, Sarge. This is Nick Mullins from the Daily News. Anything going on today or over the weekend that we ought to know about?"

Nick always tried to sound friendly, like he and they were both on the same team, especially if he didn't recognize the person on duty.

"Nothing much over the weekend, Nick," the female sergeant said. She did not elaborate even though Nick knew that as the dispatch sergeant she was listening to the same radio traffic he was.

"So, this thing going on up at the DOC office in Pompano, what's that?" Nick said. Typically, the cops knew how to blow off the press if they could. It was always better to know a little bit going into the questions, like priming a stubborn pump.

"Well, I'm not sure about that yet, Nick. All we have so far is a man down with units on the way. Might be heatstroke as far as we know."

Nick figured this was probably bullshit since he'd already heard the call about possible gunshots.

"And it's not at a DOC building. It's a parole office in the center there," she said, using her knowledge to one-up him, but inadvertently giving him information that he didn't have.

"OK, well, I'll check back with you later on that. Thanks a lot."

"Have a nice day," she said and hung up.

Nick did not apologize for being a skeptic-it came with the job. As a daily journalist you want to know immediately what's going on, even if you discard half of it later. The government or business entities you cover do not share that enthusiasm. They want to spin things so they don't look bad, or, Nick conceded, they want to have all their ducks in a row before they tell you. Nick recognized this. He in fact held the opinion that everything eventually would come out. Even the identity of Deep Throat came out. Sure, it was thirty years after Mark Felt's information put an end to President Nixon. Still, a journalist's hunger to know is what drives the good ones, and Nick was too hyped up about guys dropping in the streets from unheard gunshots to wait. He called a friend at the city of Pompano Beach with the paramedic rescue unit.

"Hey, Billy. Nick Mullins from the Daily News. How you doin'?"

"Nicky! Hey, what's going on? Your girls going to get involved with the softball league this year or what? We really need Lindsay on the mound again."

Billy Matthews was a city administrator who oversaw the fire and rescue services for the city. His daughter had been on the same athletic teams that Carly and Lindsay were on. They were passing friends due to being fathers. Billy had obviously forgotten about Lindsay and Julie's deaths when he'd picked up the phone.

"I'm not really sure yet, Bill. I'm going to have to see if Carly's up to it yet, you know."

"Jesus. I'm sorry, Nick. Yeah, sure, see if she's up to it. It would be great to see you two back involved, you know?"

Now it was coming back to him, Nick thought.

"Yeah. But Billy, right now I need some help on a call you guys have going over near the DOC office. My sources say there might be a shooting victim out there and, you know, I don't know if I should run up there on it. Could you do a check for me and see how serious it is? I'd appreciate it."

"Nobody here has said anything to me yet. Let me check a second. Let me make a call and get right back to you."

Nick knew he now had the poor guy over a barrel. The man had forgotten about Nick's dead wife and daughter. Now he had to figure he owed him something. And hell, it was probably nothing. Maybe some guy did have heatstroke and some old lady passing by started screaming gunshots. It was South Florida, after all, filled with both heat and easily wigged-out retirees.

Nick sat back down at his desk with the police radio turned up even if he did know that the cops would switch over to an unmonitored tactical channel if they found anything good. He went back to his computer, called up a blank screen and typed in some times and locations on the radio call like he usually did on a breaking story. If the early reports eventually washed out, he'd just kill the notes later. Still better to put some facts down just in case. He stored the file and then went back into some earlier stuff. He had not yet been through all the research on statewide shootings involving high-powered rifles.

He scrolled through the listings. Lori had been thorough, as was her way:

A forty-eight-year-old man up in the central part of the state killed by fellow hunter. I.D.s on both of them. Friends since grade school.

A woman in Tallahassee shot dead by her common-law husband with a rifle during a domestic dispute involving allegations of infidelity.

A mysterious killing in the Keys in which police found a man dead in his boat with a gunshot wound to the head. The caliber of the gun that killed him was considered a large-caliber in early stories. Nick read the follow-ups, feeling a slight shiver in his blood. Forensics found the bullet lodged in the interior gunwales of the dead man's boat. An odd.303-caliber. Nick jumped three stories and found disappointment. The killing had been attributed to another fisherman, pissed because he thought the other guy had been raiding his favorite holes. The shooter had turned himself in after four days of speculation. Nick did not recognize the names. He moved on.

Four stories later was a story out of Sebastian, a city on the east coast up north near Daytona. Indian County sheriff's officials have released the name of a man found dead in front of a west Sebastian home Thursday as Martin J. Crossly, a 32-year-old house painter who had apparently been renting the home for some eight months.

A medical examiner's report released over the weekend showed that Crossly, who was a former inmate at the Avon Park Correctional institution in Polk County, died of a single gunshot wound to the head. Police said today that Crossly had an extensive criminal history and had apparently been living in the Sebastian home on the north side along Louisiana Boulevard since being freed from prison in December after serving three years on a conspiracy charge.

Neighbors in the area near the FEC tracks said they were not familiar with Crossly and indicated that the home had long been used as a crack house before he moved in.

"The victim was shot once with a large-caliber bullet from an unknown rifle," said Deputy Chief Larry Longo of the Indian County Sheriff's Office. "With the kind of background this guy had, I'm sure he had plenty of enemies."