Eye of Vengeance by Jonathon King

here?” he said.
    She fixed her dry blue eyes on his. “He doesn’t want to talk with you, Mr. Mullins. Enough has been said,” she said. “I know that people can’t understand it, why he stood up for his brother after what he did to those children. I don’t know that I even understand it.”
    She looked down for the first time, a crack in her show of defiance.
    “But David still loved his brother, sir. And now we have a funeral to plan.” Nick nodded his head again, this time in deference, and continued stepping backward.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ferris,” he said and then closed his lips around the air that had started behind his teeth before he could say, Thank you.
    By the time he opened his car door, she was gone. He climbed in and the spiral wire of his notebook caught the fabric of the seat. He had not taken it from his back pocket.

Chapter 5
    O n the way back to his desk Nick made his obligatory stop at the assistant city editor’s pod.
    “I have an I.D. confirmation on the dead guy at the jail,” he said.
    The editor rolled back his chair while his fingers were still on his keyboard, reluctant to leave unfinished a sentence for a budget line item that would have to be presented in yet another news meeting at noon.
    “OK, great, Nick. Anybody we know?” he said, finally bringing his head and a grin around with the final word.
    “Yeah. It’s a guy they put away a few years ago on a double homicide and rape of two elementary school sisters.”
    “No shit?”
    “Yeah,” Nick said, knowing he’d finally gotten the guy’s attention. “He was coming back into court for a hearing on a change of sentencing and it looks like somebody from the outside popped him.”
    The editor’s name was John Rhodes. He’d only been at the Daily News for a year and had been told early that Mullins had an attitude, most of it coming after a car wreck that involved his family some time ago. He was told to walk lightly with him. But he’d also learned quickly that when Mullins brought something to the editors’ desk, the guy would have nailed it down.
    “No shit,” he repeated and looked around to see if anyone else was within earshot and sharing the news of the minute. “How long ago did this guy do the … uh, murder the kids?”
    “Four years,” Nick said. “Only the sentencing was in litigation.”
    “So people are gonna remember, right?”
    “Yeah, John. People will remember.”
    “OK, yeah, sure. Whadda you think, Nick. Page one?”
    “That’s your call, man. I got some more people to talk to,” Nick said and then nodded his head toward Deirdre’s office. “Tell her it’s Steven Ferris. I already got the clips from the library.”
    Rhodes got up as Nick started to walk away. “Hey, does anyone else have this?” he said.
    Nick turned around but didn’t say anything.
    “I mean, you know, do we have an exclusive here?” Rhodes said.
    “They’re just sources, John. I don’t know who else they talk to,” Nick said and went on to his desk. He wanted to ask what the hell difference it made if some other news outlet knew Ferris’s was the body now being shipped to the morgue. He wanted to ask when “exclusive” had become the value of a story. But he’d said those things before. Maybe he was learning to keep his big mouth shut.
    Morgue, Nick thought when he sat down and logged into his computer. While the machine booted up, he called the medical examiner’s office, bypassing the switchboard by using an inside extension to one of the M.E.’s assistants.
    “McGregor,” the deep baritone announced after eight rings.
    “Hey, Mac. Nick Mullins. Sorry if I pulled you away from something disgusting and violated.”
    “Nick? Nick?” said McGregor, making his voice sound like he was perplexed. “Nick, ahhhh. Sorry, I’m having a hard time coming up with the last name. Do I know you?”
    Nick smiled into the phone.
    “OK, Mac. So you must be working on this dead inmate with the head wound,