Hargrave only called Nick one more time. It was on the day that charges of violating probation were filed against Robert Walker for being in possession of and consuming alcoholic beverages. Hargrave had made sure evidence from that shooting scene was gathered by the Sheriff’s Office, including Walker’s blood-and-alcohol-soaked pants. He’d also called in a request at the E.R. and had them take a blood-alcohol test immediately. And he personally canvassed all the area liquor stores within a ten-minute radius of Archie’s until he found the clerk who’d been selling the whiskey to Walker, to use as a witness.
When Nick’s name was released as one of the wounded, he was inundated by members of the media, including old friends, requesting interviews. The managing editor of the Daily News sent a written request, pointing out that since he had not gone through the final “separation from the company” process, he might still be considered an employee with certain obligations. That was a new one on Nick. He’d yet to hear of the management technique of both asking a favor and threatening legal action against an employee at the same time.
To everyone he simply said, “No comment,” and meant it. Maybe, when his hand healed and he was able to type without pain again, he might put his own exclusive story together.
But this morning he and Carly were on the living room couch, reading and waiting for a visitor. At the sound of the doorbell, Carly jumped up to answer the door.
“Hi, Lori!” she said to the research assistant who had been the first newsroom person to check on Nick without asking for a quote.
“Hello, Carly,” she said, walking in. “What are you and your dad up to this morning?”
“I don’t know,” the girl said and smiled. “You will have to ask Mr. Secrecy over there.”
Nick got up, shaking his head and dangling his car keys in his right hand, a smile on his face. “We’re going on a visit.”
The girls looked at him and gave in. Both of them had already learned not to rush to help him walk or offer to drive. During the trip the girls talked about their mutual interest in paintings and photographs. Lori told Carly about the access she had to hundreds of photos through the newspaper’s archives and her collection of museum tomes like the one about Van Gogh she’d given her.
“Awesome!” was Carly’s sophisticated comment and Nick smiled.
After several minutes they turned into a neighborhood in northwest Fort Lauderdale where neither Carly nor Lori had ever been. Both of them looked out with curiosity at the streets and the small, sun-faded homes. On Northwest Tenth, Nick spotted the red geranium on the porch and pulled into the driveway.
“I want you guys to meet Ms. Cotton,” he finally said. “She’s a very nice lady.”
The small black woman was waiting for them just inside the door and Nick made introductions as they were invited in. Ms. Cotton had made a pitcher of lemonade and Carly politely accepted a glass while they sat. Nick watched his daughter’s eyes go immediately to the photos of the girls on the wall and stay there, like she was studying them. Their host noticed.
“Those are my girls,” Ms. Cotton said directly to Carly. “Your father was very kind to them when they passed away.”
Carly looked at her father, anxious over the mention of death, but hiding it well.
“What were their names?” she asked Ms. Cotton.
“Gabriella and Marcellina,” she said. “They were artists, the both of them. Would you like to see some of the things I kept?”
Carly’s eyes brightened and Ms. Cotton led both her and Lori to a small bedroom in the back. After a minute she returned alone.
“That child is lovely, Mr. Mullins. Is that why you wanted to come by, to show her to me? Because I already knew she was special.”
“Maybe,” Nick said, not really sure what his motivation was. “Mostly to thank you, ma’am.”
He fumbled at his back pocket with his good hand and came up with a white, lace-fringed thank-you card, which he presented to her.
“Whatever for, Mr. Mullins?” she said, looking not at the card, but into his eyes.
Since the last time he was in this house he had not been able to rid himself of the feeling that this woman knew things about him that should have been impossible for her to know.
“For forgiveness,” he said.
“Ah,” the tiny woman said and turned away to step toward the portraits on her wall. As she did, Nick could see the stack of newspapers on her coffee table. He had no doubt she had read every story of his involvement with the sniper. “You gave some of it to me, in your stories. Now I give it back to you. Somehow, I believe, that is how it spreads.”
Nick went quiet. No question had been asked. He didn’t know how to respond.
She extended her hand to his, held the bandaged palm lightly and turned toward the interior of the house. “Let’s go back, Mr. Mullins, and see what your girls have found.”
Acknowledgments
The author would like to acknowledge the excellent autobiography Shooter, by Gunnery Sgt. Jack Coughlin, USMC, and Capt. Casey Kuhlman, USMCR (St. Martin’s Press, 2005), and Sniper/Counter Sniper by Mark V. Lonsdale (S.T.T.U., 2000), both books that greatly aided me in the writing of this novel. A debt of thanks is also owed for the years of law enforcement insight gleaned from those who walked the walk, including the late Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Ron Cochran, former Broward Sheriff’s Office undercover detective Dennis Gavalier, police expert Doug Haas and FDLE agent James O. Born. Any errors or exaggerations in police or sniper procedure are purely the fault of the author.
Also a debt of gratitude is due to the many newspaper editors who helped influence the author’s twenty-five-year journalism career, including Will Williams, John Parkyn, and Henry Wright.
As always, many thanks to the folks at Dutton: Mitch Hoffman, Erika Kahn, Kathleen Matthews Schmidt and Dave Cole for their support and the reading and correcting of the author’s numerous errors and lapses.
As from the beginning, the author wishes to thank Philip Spitzer and Lukas Ortiz. Also of great help and contribution to this story were my early readers and friends Maren Bingham, Dave Wieczoreck and Jane Wood.
Last but not least the author wishes to thank Florida National Guardsman Jeremy Polston and Army Airborne soldier Mark Kaufman for their service in Iraq and their families’ sacrifices at home.
A Biography of Jonathon King
Jonathon King is the Edgar Award–winning author of the Max Freeman mystery series, which is set in south Florida, as well as a thriller and a historical novel.
Born in Lansing, Michigan, in the 1950s, King worked as a police and court reporter for twenty-four years, first in Philadelphia until the mid-1980s and then in Fort Lauderdale. His time at the Philadelphia Daily News and Fort Lauderdale’s South Florida Sun-Sentinel greatly influenced the creation of Max Freeman, a hardened former Philadelphia police officer who relocates to south Florida to escape his dark past. King began writing novels in 2000, when he used all the vacation days he accrued as a reporter to spend two months alone in a North Carolina cabin. During this time, he wrote The Blue Edge of Midnight (2002), the first title in the Max Freeman series. The novel became a national bestseller and won the Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel by an American Author. A Visible Darkness (2004), the series’ second installment, highlights Max’s mission to identify a dark serial killer stalking an impoverished community. Shadow Men (2004), the third in the series, revolves around Max’s investigation of an eighty-year-old triple homicide, and A Killing Night (2005) tells the story of a murder investigation in which the prime suspect is Max’s former mentor. After finishing A Killing Night, his fourth book, King left journalism to become a full-time novelist.
Since 2005, King has published his fifth and sixth Max Freeman novels, Acts of Nature (2007), about a hurricane that puts Max and his girlfriend at the mercy of some of the Everglades’ most menacing criminals, and Midnight Guardians (2010), which features the dangerous reemergence of a drug kingpin from Max’s past. He ha
s also published the stand-alone thriller Eye of Vengeance (2007), about a military-trained sniper who targets the criminals that a particular journalist has covered as a crime reporter. In 2009, King published the historical novel The Styx, which tells the story of a Palm Beach hotel at the turn of the twentieth century and the nearby community’s black hotel employees whose homes were burned to the ground amid the violent racism of the time.
King currently lives in southeast Florida, where he writes, canoes, and explores the Everglades regularly.
Jonathon King playing basketball for his high school team, the Waverly Warriors, in Lansing, Michigan, in 1972.
King’s yearbook photo from his senior year of high school in 1972.
For seven summers, from 1974 to 1980, King was a lifeguard in Ocean City, New Jersey. He’s shown here in 1974 or 1975 with his best friend and fellow lifeguard, Scott Erb.
In 1976, King worked as part of a crew hired by boat owners to deliver sailboats from New Jersey to Florida at the end of the summer. He’s shown here sailing a forty-foot vessel down the coast.
King’s children, Jessica and Adam, at ages ten and eight, respectively, with the mascot of the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2003.
A handwritten manuscript page from King’s debut novel, The Blue Edge of Midnight. Worried that his years as a reporter would make it difficult to write thoughtfully using a keyboard, King wrote his first two books with pencil on legal pads to avoid sounding like a journalist.
King’s Edgar Award for the Best First Mystery Novel by an American Author, which he won in 2002 for The Blue Edge of Midnight, the debut book in the Max Freeman series. The Edgars, which are given annually by the Mystery Writers of America, are considered the most prestigious awards in the mystery genre.
King stands inside of Kim’s Alley Bar, one of the oldest taverns in Ft. Lauderdale. Several scenes in the Max Freeman series take place here, particularly in A Killing Night, in which Max investigates the abductions of several bartenders. An actual bartender from Kim’s Alley even made an appearance in the book.
King at an isolated fishing camp in the middle of the Florida Everglades.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2006 by Jonathon King
cover design by ORIM
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9986-9
This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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