Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

According to published reports, Crossly's prison stretch was the result of…

Nick did not need to read further. He knew Crossly's name, and knew his crime. Crossly was the delivery boy of a bomb that was sent to a small North Florida city meant to kill a woman who was turning state's evidence on a Broward drug dealer. Crossly's car was stopped by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper for speeding on an interstate near Tallahassee, only forty miles from his destination. Suspicious of the man's answers to questions concerning where he was headed and the fact that he was driving a rental car, the officer asked Crossly to open the trunk. Inside was a box wrapped in birthday paper. The trooper asked Crossly if he could open the package. When Crossly said sure, the cop unwrapped a microwave oven and, looking through the door window, saw a package of some sort inside. When he opened the door, a powerful bomb rigged to the handle exploded, blowing the trooper into pieces. In the grisly aftermath a medical examiner's team had to do a step-by-step inspection of a forty-yard circle around the point of detonation to collect the trooper's remains.

Nick had written a huge story on the case and had quoted several street sources about the close personal link between the drug dealer who sent the bomb and Crossly. On the corners of northwest Fort Lauderdale, Crossly was known as the dealer's enforcer. There was no doubt among rival dealers and runners that Crossly knew exactly what he was carrying that day. In time, the dealer was arrested and charged with the murder of a law enforcement officer and sent to death row. But despite Nick's stories, which, as usual, were never allowed in court, Crossly was able to lighten his load by agreeing to testify against the dealer. Prosecutors offered him a conspiracy charge and he took it. He had been out on parole when someone shot him dead on his porch.

Dr. Chambliss.

Martin Crossly.

Steven Ferris.

All criminals with ugly homicides in their pasts. All subjects of extensive stories Nick had done for his newspaper. All killed on the street. Coincidence?

Nick had done hundreds of stories about criminals over the years, and no doubt other journalists would have done pieces on these guys too. But Nick had stepped up on these guys. He'd been both pissed and fascinated by their crimes, and to prove they were evil he'd checked more sources, dug into pasts, quoted more than the official side. He hated to admit it, but Deirdre had let him do the kind of extensive pieces on these guys that few reporters were allowed, bless her clompy shoes.

He started to scroll down the research list again, hungry this time for names that he recognized. He was about to call Lori's desk to get her to run another search, this time matching any names in the stories she'd sent him and his own byline. He was reaching for the phone when it rang just as his fingertips touched it, causing him to flinch.

"Nick Mullins," he said, finally picking up the line.

"It's Billy, Nick. Hey, this is all on the QT, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, Bill. I just need to know if I should run up there, you know?"

"OK. Rescue has a white male by the name of Trace Michaels, DOA when they got there. Single bullet wound to the head. It was actually in the doorway of the probation and parole office in that block. They didn't move the body because he was obviously dead when they got there. Guys said half his head was missing from the back. Ugly scene, Nick."

Matthews listened to silence for a moment.

"Nick? Did you get that?"

"Repeat that name for me," Nick said, his brain now flashing.

"Trace Michaels. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S."

"Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it," Nick said.

"OK, Nicky, but remem-"

Nick hung up before the administrator could finish his sentence.

Three was too many. Four was impossible. Nick was up and on his way through the newsroom, his eyes glazed with remembering, when an editor called out his name.

"I'm going to a shooting in Pompano," he answered, snapping his notepad on the edge of the woman's desk as he walked by and left it at that. On his brisk walk to the elevators he was thinking, Trace Michaels, dead. Maybe they should give this shooter a medal. Nick drove north on Dixie Highway through the bedroom communities of Wilton Manors and Oakland Park, thinking about Mary Chardain's face, the skin on her left cheek and forehead whitened in splotches where the burned and crinkled skin had to be removed. Her thin arms, lying out straight on the hospital bed, were still gauzed and Nick had already been told by the nurse of the agony the woman would have to go through as those bandages were regularly removed, dead skin removed and then the new raw layer rewrapped. Trace Michaels had sloshed rubbing alcohol over the head of his lover of six years and set her on fire. "Jesus," Nick said aloud in the car, remembering the guy's face. A public defender had argued Michaels's case, claiming that both he and Chardain were drug addicts and the alcohol had accidentally spilled on Mary when they were cooking another dose together and had caught fire. Nick had done a story on Chardain and her daughter, a bright eleven-year-old who witnessed the incident and had jumped to her mother's aid. Michaels had gone down for attempted murder. But somehow-and Nick was thinking about the prison overcrowding that was forcing the release of model prisoners and the use of gain time, which cut their sentences down for good behavior-Michaels was back on the street.

When he got to McNab he turned east and as he went through the light at Cypress Road he could see the collection of cop cars and Pompano's yellow-green rescue trucks blinking in the next block. He pulled over into a small shopping center, parked his car and walked the rest of the way, watching, searching the rooflines of any building tall enough to give a sniper an angle on the offices where the largest knot of paramedics and cops were gathered. By now Nick had lost his skepticism. This was another one. As he approached he saw the paramedics reloading their truck, no one to treat or transport. A couple of deputies were standing just off the sidewalk, talking quietly, their backs purposely turned to the yellow sheet that covered a lump behind them. The body had not been moved and still lay mostly on the sidewalk, only its feet jamming open the door of the parole office. Nick stopped at the crime scene tape that was stretched around three parked cars, positioned to keep the gawkers at a distance. He was looking for a familiar face among the officers to signal to when he saw Hargrave step out of the building with a pen in his mouth and a leather-bound notebook in his hand. Nick stayed silent, watching the detective look down at the body. The ballpoint pen was between his teeth and was flicking back and forth like a metronome. He bent his knees and folded himself down like some adjustable ladder so that he was on the balls of his feet. Then he peeled back the yellow sheet, looked under it and finally turned his gaze to the sky, the rooflines. Nick knew he had been right.

"Detective?" Nick called out, as any reporter at the scene would.

But unlike any other reporter, he was summoned by a crook of Hargrave's finger and he raised the plastic tape and slipped under.

The beefy sergeant who seemed to run with Hargrave as protection, though Nick doubted that the wiry detective would need any in a street fight, stepped up to block his advance only a few feet from the body.

"It's OK, Tony," Hargrave said and the big man backed off.

The detective stayed in his crouch and Nick joined him. Hargrave said nothing and instead pulled back the yellow tarp and exposed the dead man's face. Nick was not squeamish and knew that it was not Hargrave's intent to shock him. In profile, the man's face had already gone whiter than normal. The dark stubble on his cheek and chin was unnaturally distinct, as if each follicle were raised in relief. Nick knew that the other cheek on the ground would be the opposite, growing dark purple as the blood settled at the lowest point. The man's exposed and wide-open right eye had already lost its glisten of moisture. Hargrave pulled the sheet back farther. The back portion of the man's head, behind the ear, had been ripped open by a heavy round.