Jonathon King - Eye of Vengeance

Hargrave was not available for comment yesterday, but sources say ballistics experts have matched the deadly bullets from the most recent killings as coming from the same high-powered rifle commonly used by highly trained snipers.

"Shit," Nick said out loud. Had they somehow tracked the e-mail from Lori to Hargrave's private e-mail account? They easily could have snatched the printouts off Nick's desk and made assumptions about the link between the five victims. A trickle of sweat caught enough gravity to cause it to slip down his back and Nick realized he was still standing on the concrete in front of his house in the direct morning sunlight. He went inside and sat at his kitchen table, laying the newspaper out in front of him.

They'd cribbed the partial quote from Hargrave off Nick's earlier story. But where the hell did they get the ballistics match? He scanned the rest of the piece-not a single named source other than a boilerplate quote from Joel Cameron saying "the investigation is continuing." Nick was trying to re-create his earlier stories on the first two shootings and recalled writing the vigilante angle and the bullet match in his notes but then deleting them when he put the pieces together. But as he knew, that wouldn't stop them. As he feared, they'd used their unrestricted eavesdropping in the editorial computer system. Cops would need a court order to listen in to a citizen's conversations or read that person's mail. But in a newspaper's offices, management could electronically watch a reporter write with impunity. Work product, they would argue. It belongs to us. You're just an employee.

Nick went back to the front page to reread the story. Every scrap of information was his, no matter how they'd juiced it up and delivered it. Poor Joe Binder just followed orders and had his byline slapped on it. Then Nick noticed he'd missed the "Interactive news" box on his first reading. Below the line that said "continued on 12A" was a shadow boxed teaser inviting readers to go to the newspaper's Web page and vote in a poll question: Do you think the vigilante sniper is wrong for targeting former killers? Yes or No? Jesus, Nick thought. I gotta get out of this business.

The traffic on 1-95 seemed incredibly heavy. Nick wasn't used to being on the interstate so close to the lunch hour. When he pulled off onto the Broward Boulevard exit he had a decision to make: Turn right and drive to the Sheriff's Office headquarters and talk with Hargrave, or turn left and go to the newspaper office to clear out his personal stuff and take the chance of letting his short fuse get him to the jail-house in the back of a cruiser.

What the hell, he turned left.

When he parked in the employee lot, Nick was surprised that his staff I.D. still worked and automatically raised the barricade arm. He grinned at the little victory and purposely left the badge in his car in case they asked him to turn it in. But as he got off the elevator on the tenth floor, Jim, the security guard, was as vigilant as ever.

"Good afternoon, Nick," he said, looking at Nick's shirtfront. "Got your I.D. with you?"

Nick and Jim had greeted each other nearly five days a week for the past eight years. The guard had commented on Nick's stories, had even congratulated him when he'd bought a new car three years ago. Yet after 9/11 all employees had to wear a badge identifying themselves. The first time he'd misplaced his I.D. and Jim made him sign in, Nick joked about joining al-Qaeda after eight years as a staff reporter, but the look the guard had given him was scary.

This morning Nick just shook his head and signed in.

"Try to find it, Nick. Or you'll have to buy a new one," the guard said.

Nick looked up at him. "How did you know my name without it, Jim?" he said and walked away.

Down in the newsroom the usual din was running. Most of the reporters were out on their beats. But folks on the daytime copy desk were in their nose-to-the-grindstone mode. While he worked his way through the back of the maze, Nick kept his eyes down, trying to be low-profile. Get in, get your stuff and leave. Simple as that. He ducked into a back room where they stored supplies and picked out an empty cardboard box and then made it to his desk.

The computer he'd used for the last several years was gone. Even the monitor. The only thing left was a pattern of dust where it once sat. When he tried the drawers of his desk, they'd been locked. He tried his key. No go, as he had figured. Even the belly drawer, which only held pencils and paper clips and stale breath mints, was locked. On the desktop the documents that Lori had delivered to his desk were predictably gone, used no doubt to put together this morning's story. His personal dictionary, a thesaurus and a copy of Bernstein's The Careful Writer were still stacked on one corner. There was a clay sculpture of a green-and-blue dog that his oldest daughter, by three minutes, had made and given to him on a Father's Day several years ago. The family photo, showing the four of them, was lying face down, apparently knocked over during the hasty removal of his computer. Nick could feel eyes on him when he picked it up and, refusing to be emotional, he slid it into the bottom of the box and then piled the rest of his stuff in after. On his way out Nick avoided Joe Binder's desk, even though he could see the back of the reporter's head, bent low as if he were studying some newly installed hieroglyphics on his keyboard. Carrying the box, he took the back way to the research center and when Lori saw him she got up from her terminal and walked straight to him. Her eyes were red-rimmed when she stepped up to the counter.

"I'm sorry, Nick. Really, I tried to call you and-"

Nick reached out and touched her hand. "It's OK, Lori. I shouldn't have put you in a bad position. It's all on me. Please. You're the best," he said and then hugged her to him, longer than he needed to, but not as long as he wanted to. "I'll call you. I'd like to see you, you know, off campus."

He smiled at the joke as he walked away, somewhat mystified that a moment that should have been sad had somehow left a lightness in his head.

They met under the shade of a bottlebrush tree, gathered at a picnic table that was set up behind the county's fire and paramedics warehouse. It was a short walk for Canfield and Hargrave. Nick needed only to take the short drive from the newspaper he'd passed on earlier.

The meeting place was suggested by the detective after Nick called him on his cell. It was eighty degrees in the shade and the lieutenant in uniform was sweating twice as much as the two in plain clothes.

"It's out of the pattern. It's out of the sequence of logic. And you two are out of your minds," Canfield was saying to both of them but looking directly at Hargrave, who, for the first time since Nick had laid eyes on him, was appearing unsure.

"What, you're going to call this ex-con Walker and tell him some sniper might be targeting him because his good friend Mr. Mullins has an angel of death killing the subjects of his stories?

"And, I might add," he said, shifting his focus onto Nick, "you didn't write the story about the death of your own family, did you?"

Nick felt the anger starting up from that spot deep in his limbic system, the source in the very top of his spine where it always came from and where he so infrequently got it to stop before it came tumbling out of his mouth. This time he held it.

"Why don't you tell him yourself, Mullins?" Canfield continued, unaware of Nick's struggle. "You tell this Walker asshole he's in danger."

"I can't," Nick said. "I'm not allowed to have any contact with the guy."

"Yeah, no shit. We've got that in your file too. Stalking this guy, Christ. Why even bring it up? If you're so convinced this sniper is going to take Walker out, let him," Canfield said. "I would."