Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

Nick closed out the message screen and then punched Hargrave's cell number into the phone while he stood. He looked around the newsroom, where he could see only a few heads. After three rings on Hargrave's cell, there was a heavy click and a recorded answer kicked in. Hargrave's voice, in a clipped tone, said, "Leave a message." Nick's head was already dwelling somewhere else and he quickly came up with a stumbling message:

"I might have gotten a response from the sniper. I'm going to meet him. I'll call you later. Oh, the e-mail account he used to get the message to me was from an account called commiekid@computrust.net, so maybe you could find something out about that. I'll call you later."

Nick punched off the phone and started around his desk on the way out. He took the long way around the assistant editors' pod so Deirdre would not spot him from her office. But Bill Hirschman caught Nick's eye from his desk in front of the city editor's glass window and started toward him. When the education reporter came near, he stopped at an empty pod partition like he didn't want to get too close to Nick and catch whatever he had.

"The vultures are out after your ass, Mullins," he said, just loud enough for Nick to hear. He tilted his head back toward Deirdre's office. "They've been in there for an hour. The boss, the managing editor and the man."

Nick looked past Hirschman's shoulder, but the angle on Deirdre's floor-to-ceiling window was too severe to make out the occupants.

"Best I could hear was something about you and a vigilante story you were supposed to be working."

Nick nodded, checked his watch and said thanks.

"I'll be back, I gotta go check out a lead."

Michael Redman was on the seventh floor of the parking garage attached to the Riverside Hotel, once a quaint two-story historical jewel that had been transformed into a huge chunk of lime-colored concrete block like any other modern-day structure that had gone up in the city over the past fifteen years. He was wearing navy blue chinos and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. There was a simple baseball cap, without a logo, on his head, and in his hand a zippered jacket. He could be security. Or a parking attendant. Or even a guest. He'd simply punched the PUSH HERE FOR TICKET button and then yanked the ticket and jogged in long before the wooden arm even rose. He put the card in one pocket. In the other he'd carried the spotting scope and at the moment was watching the sidewalk below, scanning the empty back lot of the closed grocery store, waiting for the arrival of Nick Mullins.

Redman had been out on the street three minutes after the Daily News vendor dropped a dozen papers into the honor box. He'd then sat at the kitchen table of his new condo and read and reread Mullins's story. He'd felt a warmth rise to his cheeks when he read the quote from Detective Hargrave, someone new that he'd never met during his time with the Sheriff's Office: 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.

Redman wasn't stupid. He could spot a setup when he saw it. Hargrave and some dip from media relations had slipped that one to Mullins and he'd stuck it in there. It was meant for some hothead who'd boil over at the quote and do something foolish. They didn't have a clue who they were dealing with. But the attempt to rattle him had made up Redman's mind on one point: It was time to do the last one. He'd finished his list, but he had saved one last ex-con. Now he had to talk to Mullins, face to face so that he would understand, so that he would know, and would get the story right.

When the library opened that morning at seven thirty, Redman walked in like any civilian and took a seat at the public terminals. He scrolled through some websites just to look busy. He'd visited the library several times, culling info he couldn't get from his computer at home or to track back on archived stories that other journalists like Mullins might have done on the people on his list. Sometimes he'd take the dates and addresses straight to the courthouse, walk in like any other member of the general public and use their terminals or pull the cases he wanted to look at. He'd get the probable-cause statements and take down victims' and arrestees' addresses and check the file updates to find inmate numbers to cross-reference direct with DOC. Getting information was the easy part. Staying below the radar was only a bit harder. Now he had to come up from undercover. He had to make contact with the world again and he'd already planned it out.

In the library he'd tagged a familiar mark, the kid with the earring and the Karl Marx T-shirt, who was working the computer a seat away. Redman had seen him before, probably went to the community college around the block. The kid thought he was a radical, but he did the same thing over and over. Human beings with their patterns, Redman thought.

This morning the kid sniggered a couple of times after typing something into the terminal where he was sitting and then hitting the enter key. Then he got serious and walked back into the stacks and came out with a book or two and sat back down. Redman passed behind him once and confirmed that he was using his own Internet account, probably sending messages to some girlfriend. The next time he got up and went into the aisles, Redman slipped into the kid's chair and quickly typed in Mullins's e-mail address and sent him a message and walked away.

Now he was in the parking garage, waiting to see if the reporter would take up the offer. The morning's news clipping was now in Redman's file with all the rest that marked the deaths of those deserving few on his list.

That's not how law enforcement works in a democracy. That's not how this country operates.

"No shit, bubba," Redman whispered. The courts give a child killer like Ferris another bite at the apple to see if he can knock his sentence down instead of getting the death penalty. The country goes to Iraq and indiscriminately kills anything it sees in the name of retribution for 9/11 even if the skinny woman in the burka walking down the alley wouldn't know the Twin Towers if they fell on her. The spotter tells me to kill her, I kill her. No questions asked. There's your democracy.

At least Redman knew who his spotter was now, and he would show up. He looked at his watch-9:57-then raised the spotting scope. Redman knew he'd show up.

Nick looked at his watch-9:58-and kept moving. He was walking along the river, yachts and sailboats tied up along the seawall to his right, the new, monstrous condos on the left. He'd been trying to recall Redman's face since reading the e-mail and all he could conjure was the intensity of the guy's eyes when Nick had done a day of reporting on the SWAT team's training. Sharp, clear and blue. Eyes that did not flinch even after twenty minutes of hard focus. There were few people on the street. A couple of guys rubbing the brightwork on a fifty-foot double-masted schooner. A blond jogger trotting by. A delivery truck pulling into the service entrance of one of the condos. Around the curve of the river the back lot of the grocery store came into view, the exact opposite of the high-priced luxury he'd just passed. The lot was empty. The ground was covered with gravel and patchy weeds. The rear delivery doors were padlocked. Nick knew that the city had tried to save this chunk of land for a park along the river. But when the grocery chain went under, the prime real estate went to the highest bidder, another condo developer. It had been sitting unused and decaying while lawyers argued. On occasion a rumpled fisherman would be camped at the seawall, a line tossed into the New River. But it was empty now and Nick took up the spot where the fisherman would have been. He'd done this kind of thing before, met with sources who did not want to be identified and did not want to be seen with a reporter. He wasn't thinking of safety, hadn't even considered himself a target, but as he turned yet another three-sixty, scanning the back of the building and the hedge of ratty trees and sea grape that walled off the other side, he felt an uncomfortable itch on the side of his head, just above his left sideburn, and raised his hand to touch the spot with his fingers. If this guy was who Nick figured he was, there wouldn't be such a thing as safety. If he wanted to take you out, you'd be dead. Redman caught the movement in his spotting scope and grinned. There had always been a rumor in sniper circles that there were targets that had such premonition that they could actually feel the spot of death on their skin before you took the shot. Redman had caught Mullins in his lens as the reporter walked up the sidewalk and then followed him to the seawall, where he stopped and waited. Redman took an extra few minutes to scan the area. He knew where the stakeout people would be if Mullins had called the new detective, Hargrave, and alerted him to their meeting. From his vantage point Redman could see up all three entry streets to the river. No cop cars within two blocks. No unmarked Ford Crown Victorias that any idiot would know carried plainclothes officers. He was going to give it another five minutes of all clear when a voice behind him called out: