Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

"Nobody else but the ex-con hurt, right?"

"No, but I did get some good quotes from the woman who was standing in front of him," Nick said, lowering his voice. "Got the guy's blood splattered all over her."

"We get a picture of that? Tell me we got a picture of that!" Deirdre said, not bothering to hide her enthusiasm.

"I don't know. I think you guys dispatched a photographer after I left," Nick said. But he did know the blood factor might get her off his back for a while.

"I'll check," Deirdre said, but she didn't leave. Instead she put an elbow on the top of Nick's partition and set a hip into the side of it like she was going to stay awhile.

"I was going to have you do a security piece on that State Department visit to the OAS convention, but this is sounding a lot more interesting," she said. "So what's the deal? Drive-by? Guy doing some other felon's old lady?"

"I can't say the detectives are that far along yet, Deirdre."

"But you got the guy's background, right?"

"Sure," Nick said, again looking at his pad even though he didn't have to read it. He was just relieved that Deirdre was pulling him off the OAS gig. This was what he needed to be doing.

"Trace Michaels," he said, as if he'd finally found the name. "He was in for attempted murder after he set his girlfriend on fire. He's been out almost eight months according to the research files. Plenty of time to make more enemies, I suppose."

Nick told himself he was not really trying to steer Deirdre away from the similarities in the sniper story.

"But it's a long-range shooting, right? And it was a large-bore bullet wound, right?"

"Yeah," Nick said. She wasn't so stupid.

"So we have a serial sniper running around the city shooting ex-cons and bad men, right?"

Deirdre's language always got tougher as the excitement of a good story got up her nose. After all, she had been a reporter before she joined management.

She leaned over his partition and lowered her voice. "Nick, do we have some serial killer out there doing a Son of Sam thing to scumbags on the streets? Are you working that angle or what?"

Nick looked away and flipped through a couple of pages in his notebook like he was searching for an answer.

"We've both been at this game a long time, Deirdre. You never say never. But to tell you the truth, right now I'm not focused on speculation and screaming headlines," Nick said, getting hot. "I mean, shit, since when does two dead jump to serial killer? Christ, Son of Sam had five shooting scenes and a ballistics match in before they started calling Berkowitz a serial killer."

The heads of other reporters and editors started peeking up over their cubicles. Even with Nick's reputation the tension level of his voice was rising too high for the modern newsroom-as-insurance-office protocols. Nick went silent.

"Instead I'm looking into any connection between this guy and the one from last week, but as of this minute, I don't have anything," he began again, quietly. "Research is running some driver's license history to see if they ever even lived in the same area. And I'm trying to get the probable-cause affidavits from their prior arrests to see if they were ever listed as running together on any of their earlier crimes."

The investigative theory, Nick knew, was to find out if any of the victims had something in common that might be a motive for their killer, and by now Nick and Hargrave were both on that page.

"Alright, alright. Do what you're doing, Nick," Deirdre said and started to walk away, but stopped. "And hey, send some of your contact numbers with the Sheriff's Office over to the national desk so they can assign someone to that OAS security story."

Nick nodded and she spun on her heel again, but not all the way around.

"And hey, why not check the DOC files too. See if these guys ever spent prison time together, you know, for midweek. But not today. Today," she said, looking at her watch, "we got deadline."

As she left, Nick was cursing himself. OK, OK. I didn't tell her about the other sniper shootings out of our area, or my byline connections with these guys, five now, just like Berkowitz, smart-ass. But you are not the story, Nick. You are not the story. Hargrave had already given him shit about that theory being an ego trip and he sure wasn't tossing that ammunition to Deirdre.

He turned back to his computer and started clicking keys. But that was good about the DOC files. Why didn't I think of that? By seven o'clock Nick had finished the Michaels shooting story. He had not been able to track down the girlfriend that the ex-con had set aflame. His contact, a social worker in the hospital where the woman was treated, could only tell him that the burn victim and her daughter had moved out of state. The attorney who prosecuted Michaels would only say things like "What goes around, comes around" that were off the record. The public defender that represented Michaels had moved on to another lawyer job.

Nick ended up laying it out in simple news style: A 43-year-old construction laborer was shot to death outside a Pompano Beach parole office early Monday morning, just as he was entering for a weekly appointment.

Trace Michaels, who worked part-time with Hardmack Construction, was declared dead at the scene in the 100 block of McNab Road, police said. He was shot once in the head, police said.

The shooting of Michaels, who had recently served five years in prison for attempted manslaughter after setting his girlfriend aflame during an argument, was the second time in two weeks that an ex-convict has been murdered in Broward County. But sheriff's detectives investigating the shootings say they have yet to find any evidence linking the two cases.

Nick had then run out the story with quotes from the office employees at the scene and from Joel Cameron, who had given the basics of the "ongoing investigation" to all the media. While he was constructing the piece he had typed into the file some of the linkages with the lists that Hargrave had given him from the Secret Service agent and his own research from the library but had then deleted the information off his screen. If the only thread in the cases was that he had written extensive stories about the shooting victims, he wasn't going to go there. A journalist wasn't supposed to be part of any story, and he sure as hell wasn't going to go there without a lot more factual evidence.

Before he wrapped up the piece, he gave Hargrave a final call. He went through the basics of what the next morning's story would say. Hargrave only listened and gave an occasional grunt of assent, or maybe just of boredom.

"So what else do you want, Mr. Mullins?"

"It's the serial killer thing, Detective. You and I both know the other newspapers and TV are going to start pounding the hell out of that line whether they have any facts or not," Nick said. "My editors are already on my ass about it."

Hargrave again went quiet, deciding something.

"We've got a ballistics match on the bullets used in both Michaels and Ferris," he finally said. "But that's not a public fact yet, Mr. Mullins. And I don't want it to be public yet."

Nick had been in on such negotiations before. Official sources and reporters played the game every day.

"OK. Give me something else," he said. "Something that's going to benefit both of us, because you know and I know the stories I'm going to have to write if these names keep matching up."

Again silence. But this time Nick knew the detective was being thoughtful instead of uncooperative. They both knew what the accuracy, efficiency and technique of the shooter meant. Unlike the Beltway shooter, this wasn't some kid in a trunk shooting people for some insane reason. This shooter was a professional, either military- or law-enforcement-trained. Without either one of them naming it, or its purpose, they collaborated on a message in the form of a quote: "We will investigate both shootings as we would any illegal killing. The victims' pasts don't open up an avenue for them to be gunned down in the streets. That's not how law enforcement works in a democracy. That's not how this country operates," said Broward sheriff's homicide detective Maurice Hargrave.