Eye of Vengeance

by Jonathon King

  “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.”

  Nick could take the fact that the lieutenant would have pulled a copy of the dossier they undoubtedly put together on him when they invited him into this mess. But the suggestion of letting Walker be shot down in the street was one that made all three of them shift their eyes and go quiet. Nick had spun that scenario in his head a thousand times. He even thought of doing it himself but dismissed the notion by thinking of Carly having to come on visiting days at the prison. He’d done jail-house interviews himself and had seen children, dressed in their Sunday best, standing fidgety and unsure while their fathers, dressed in blue prison garb, tried to coax them into a smile. Could you trade retribution for that?

  Canfield finally shifted his weight, stood up. The heat had caused dark semicircles to form under the arms of his uniform shirt.

  “Mo, I can’t believe you’re going for this,” he finally said to Hargrave, using a shortened form of the detective’s first name that had not been used in Nick’s presence before.

  Hargrave shook his head. “Hard to judge this shooter, Lieutenant, I think we can all agree on that,” he said, his voice flat and deliberately lacking in emotion. “The fact that he contacted Mullins gives a hell of a lot of credence to the theory that he’s picking victims from Mullins’s stories. That leads into the logic that he’s read Mullins’s work and has some kind of connection to him and would know about the accident that killed his family. So I’m not convinced it’s that far of a jump to figure that the statement Redman made to Mullins—‘One more. You’re owed’—could mean he’s going to take out this Walker character.”

  Nick remained silent. He couldn’t have put it any better.

  “I’m sorry, guys. I just can’t go for it. I’ve already got deputies all over this OAS meeting and the Secretary of State coming to town and now some goddamn public relations thing they’re going to do. You want to tell this guy Walker what you’re thinking, go ahead, Mo. But I can’t authorize some kind of protective custody or some damn sniper watch on a theory. You want to make it part of your investigation, go to it.”

  Canfield started to leave when Hargrave stopped him. “Sir, how about our man Fitzgerald? Did he show any interest in the story Mullins did about the secretary?”

  Nick was looking at the tabletop when he heard the question. His head snapped up like he had been yanked by the hair.

  “What the hell are you … What story?” he said, staring stupidly at Hargrave.

  The detective pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket and handed it to Nick. “Your research person faxed this after you left,” he said. “Remember you asked them to send you anything political you’d done that mentioned the Secretary of State?”

  Nick unfolded the sheet and read the headline:

  LOCAL GUARDSMAN KILLED IN IRAQ

  REMEMBERED BY FAMILY, FRIENDS

  Someone had highlighted certain lines in the story, including a quote by the dead boy’s father blaming the Secretary of State for keeping his son overseas beyond his assigned date to come home.

  “I’ve kept Fitzgerald in the loop on your investigation all along,” Canfield said to Hargrave. “I’m not sure how seriously he’s taking this connection between Mullins and the sniper, but he did seem interested in talking to Redman if we ever find him. But that mention of the secretary carried a lot more weight than any mention of this Walker character.” He nodded at the clipping in Nick’s hands. “I got the feeling that Fitzgerald was going to do his job protecting the secretary, but wasting manpower on Walker was not his inclination.”

  Hargrave remained sitting on the edge of the picnic table until Canfield disappeared around the corner of the building.

  “Not his inclination,” he said in a mocking voice just loud enough for Nick to hear.

  “What?” Nick said, just finishing the story and flipping the paper to see if it continued on the backside.

  “Nothing,” Hargrave said and then pointed at the clipping. “What do you think?”

  “Hell, I don’t even remember that quote,” he said, tapping the backs of his fingers on the sheet of paper. “I remember doing this story on the National Guard kid, but not that quote about the secretary. I mean, that’s kind of reaching. Unless Redman somehow knew the guy or his parents.”

  The story had been written shortly after Nick had returned to work. At the time he was doing both the cop shift and some home-front stories about area soldiers who were shipped out to Iraq. Some of those stories were obituaries, like the one in his hand.

  By Nick Mullins, Staff Writer

  South Florida friends and family of Corporal Randy Williams gathered at his parents’ home Friday to remember a young man “who never walked away from a pal and always covered your back,” when he grew up here in Fort Lauderdale.

  Williams, 28, was killed in Iraq earlier this week during a routine patrol according to the Defense Department. He had been serving with a National Guard unit based in Homestead and was sent to the Gulf more than a year ago. He had been scheduled to return home in January but a change in policy in which guardsmen were to serve only one year of active duty was altered.

  “If the Secretary of State had honored her promise, my boy would be back here now, alive and safe with us. He did his job,” said Williams’s father, Vern.

  Vern Williams later said he was referring to a speech made last week by the secretary that defended the military’s controversial ruling.

  “The interpretation of the contract for guardsmen is that deployments are to mean twelve months, boots on the ground, in the service of the country and do not include the months of stateside preparations and training they spent away from their homes and stateside jobs,” the secretary said at the time. “We hope this clears up any confusion and we regret if those families of the soldiers protecting our nation misinterpreted that commitment.”

  The secretary’s words did not mollify the Williams family.

  “That’s not what our son’s commanders told us before he shipped out. They said he’d be home three months ago. If you make a promise to these boys and then ship them off to risk their lives, you should honor that promise,” said Vern Williams.

  Williams was a highly regarded member of his unit and was guarding the rear flank of his patrol in Iraq when he was killed by a single gunshot fired by an insurgent sniper.

  “We still have not taken down his stuff in the barracks,” wrote Josh Murray, a fellow unit member from Coconut Creek in an e-mail sent to the Daily News yesterday. “He was a special guy. Always watchin’ out for us.”

  The story went on, quoting friends and other members of Williams’s Guard unit praising the kid’s intensity and loyalty both at home and in Iraq. But Hargrave had circled the paragraphs that held the secretary’s name.

  “And Canfield showed this to the Secret Service?” Nick said, working it in his head.

  “You heard the man,” Hargrave said.

  “Do we have any connection between Redman and this guy Williams?”

  “Checking. But they weren’t with the same Guard unit, nor did their units work together over there as far as anyone can find,” Hargrave said. “But then it hasn’t been easy to nail down exactly w
hat Redman was doing over there. The information officer with the Florida National Guard will only tell us that he was with a special operations group that was farmed out across the country. No specifics.”

  “So what? You’re thinking Redman reads this piece by me and gets juiced up about avenging this kid’s death by assassinating the secretary who justified keeping him over there?” Nick said, to himself as much as to Hargrave.

  “Hell if I know,” the detective said. “I showed it to Canfield, just like that tight-ass Fitzgerald asked.”

  Nick could feel the sun cooking the back of his neck. He folded the story and unconsciously slipped it into his back pocket. Hargrave noticed and extended his hand and flexed his fingers in a give-it-back signal. Nick shrugged his shoulders and returned the paper.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We?” Hargrave looked up. “We?”

  It was hard for Nick to look wounded; he’d made himself an expert at not looking wounded. “What, you’re going to sit back and just wait for the next victim to drop?”

  “No,” Hargrave said. “I’m going to get a return call from the P.D. up in Birmingham on this Kerner shooting and keep all possibilities open.”

  He gave a nod in the direction of Canfield’s departure.

  “That’s what he was saying, between the management-speak. That goes with his job, not mine.”

  The detective flicked a furry red blossom, which did indeed look like a bottlebrush, off the table with one finger and then stood.

  “Speaking of jobs, Mullins. I see from the front page this morning that someone else has taken over your story.”

  You can tell a cop either accepts you or despises you by the tone he uses when he takes a verbal shot.

  Nick grinned at the statement and answered with an edge of bravado. “No way, Mo. Nobody else has my story. Because I’m the only one who has the true one. This is no marauding killer,” he said, thinking of the lead paragraph on Joe Binder’s front-page piece. “This guy’s got it all planned out.”

  Chapter 31

  Nick stayed off the sauce all day, passing by the urge to stop at Kim’s Alley Bar on Sunrise when he drove out to the beach. Three years ago he would have slipped in, had a couple just to relax after a deadline, just to paint over the stress of the day, just to wash out the vision of another body bag or charred home or mangled wreck. Those were the excuses he gave his wife back in the days when he stumbled into the house late, after the girls had already gone to bed. When he repeated the excuses now to himself, they rang just as hollow, and he kept driving.

  On A1A he turned left and then parked at the curb along the ocean. He was well north of the once-infamous Fort Lauderdale Strip, once the world-famous bacchanal of college kids gone wild. But the backdrop of Where the Boys Are had gone the way of most things money-driven. When the profit on kegs of beer and cheap hotel rooms couldn’t stand up to family resorts and high-priced boutique stores, out went the old, in came the new. Yet it was still a wonder to him that this stretch of beach, from the road to the horizon, was sand untouched. The city had somehow worked it into a legal legacy that no buildings would go up on this stretch of land. Nick got out of his car and walked down to the tide mark and let the surf slosh white and bubbling over his ankles and up onto his cuffs. He thought of Julie, always with her feet in the water. His wife would pull the beach chair all the way down to the edge, even when she knew the tide was coming in, even when she knew she was going to have to change her position within the hour. The closer to the ocean you are, the less of the city you see behind you, she would say. It’s more like being out there, floating, without a care in the world.

  Nick had never experienced that feeling of floating. He had envied her that. Out on the horizon, the cobalt blue of the ocean water was meeting the azure of the sky, trying to meld, but unable to mix the line until dark. Nick felt the tingle in his right hand again and flexed the fingers.

  When his cell phone rang the sound made him turn to look behind, like he’d been caught, like the truth had come out and someone would be standing there. He shook off the feeling and brought the phone out of his pocket. The readout on the incoming number was blocked.

  “Nick Mullins,” he said.

  “I am deeply disappointed, Mr. Mullins,” said a man’s deep voice.

  The tenor of the words immediately charged his nerves and Nick turned away from the ocean wind, cupping his hand over the cell to listen closer.

  “Yeah? Maybe I am too,” he said. “Would you mind telling me who you are and why you’re disappointed?”

  “You gave our story up, Mr. Mullins,” the voice said. “I planned out a lot of possibilities, my friend. But I never figured you to give our story up to someone else.”

  Nick immediately turned and ducked his head and started back to his car to get out of the breeze so he could hear and think.

  “Mike? Mike Redman?”

  “I mean, come on, Mr. Mullins. A marauding killer? That guy Binder writes just like the rest of them. All flash and no substance. Although I have to give him credit for mapping out my use of your journalism to decide on who needed to be eliminated. But I have a feeling that was your work. Am I right?”

  Nick opened his car, climbed in and closed the door to create a vacuum of silence.

  “Christ, Redman. What are you doing, man? You’re shooting people in the streets. That’s not your training. I saw your work too. This is not what you do,” Nick said, guessing at the words to use, trying to juggle what he knew with how he thought the sniper might be thinking.

  “It’s not what any of us were trained to do, Mullins. I went to war and killed innocent people, did everything the opposite of how I was trained. And now look at yourself. I’ve read every story you did on those scumbags over the years. You were the truth. And now you gave it up too. You handed it over.”

  Nick was silent. Had he copped out by quitting? Was the sniper right?

  “OK, Mike. Maybe I did. But do you want to set it straight?” Nick said, scrambling to keep him talking, truly falling back on his training. “You and I could talk. We could do an interview. I’d get it out straight from you, tell the story the right way. The truth, like you just said.”

  There was the sound of a deep chuckle in the cell earpiece. The guy was laughing.

  “See? You and I are a lot alike, Nick. You can’t help but be the newsman. I can’t help but pull the trigger. It’s what we do,” Redman said. “I’m not after publicity, Nick. I don’t need any stories. Like I told you, I’ve got one more shot, tomorrow. One more piece of business, and it’s for you. Then I gotta move on. Then I’m gonna get on with my life, Nick. And you can too. Don’t you see? We’re a lot alike, you and I.”

  Nick felt the conversation slipping away. He’d lost interviews before, had them stop before he had the answers he needed.

  “Wait, wait, Mike,” he nearly yelled into the phone. “What do you mean, for me? Who’s for me, Michael? The Secretary of State doesn’t mean anything to me, Michael. I only wrote that quote. It wasn’t me that said it.”

  There was no response. But no dial tone either.

  “Is it Walker? Do you know about Walker, Mike?”

  Nick’s voice was still rising, reverberating in the closed space and buffeting back on his own ears.

  “Hey, don’t put this on me, Mike. I’m not out for retribution. Mike!” Nick slapped his right hand against the steering wheel in anger and frustration. “Redman?”

  Three electronic beeps and the line went dead.

  Nick sat back in his seat and stared out at the horizon. And then dialed Hargrave’s number.

  Chapter 32

  At six fifteen the next morning Nick was sitting in his car, parked next to the Dumpster, down the street but well within view of Archie’s Tool Sharpening Shack.

  After talking with Hargrave, he’d gone home last night and had dinner with Carly and Elsa and tried to put on a clear-headed, smiling act. But when he went quiet in the middle of a conve
rsation about his daughter’s science lesson on the African desert’s effect on forming hurricanes, she looked up and saw his eyes staring out through the window. She turned to Elsa, but the nanny only shook her head and said, “It’s OK, Carlita, he will be back.”

  They pretended not to notice and in a few minutes Nick was back, rejoining the discussion as though no lapse had occurred.

  Later in the evening Nick helped with Carly’s math homework and then gave her an early good-night kiss and went out to the patio. He slept in the chair and, almost as if an alarm sounded, he woke at five AM, took a shower and drove to this spot.

  At six thirty he began to squirm. Walker was late and he had never been late so far. Light from the east was starting to glow and a dusty gray was rising into the sky. He was leaning forward, anticipating the headlights of Walker’s car, when a sharp tapping of metal on glass caused him to jump.

  At the passenger window was the face of a man, a long flashlight tube in his hand. Nick was confused for a second. No one had ever approached him before. The flashlight snapped against the window again and now Nick could see the badge displayed on the man’s chest.

  He hit the automatic button to lower the passenger-side window and only then did he realize a second man was on his side of the car, standing back a few paces at the rear panel.

  “Please step out of the car, sir, and keep your hands where we can see them,” the officer at the open window said. He was standing sideways as he bent to look in. A standard defense procedure, Nick knew, that gave less of a profile to hit if a driver was thinking of shooting a cop during a traffic stop.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure, Officers. I’m cool,” Nick said, exaggerating his hands up and fingers spread. “I’m just reaching down to open the door, OK?”