Eye of Vengeance by Jonathon King Page A

right?”
    “Did I say that, Mr. Nick? I’m not sure I said that. You know this call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.”
    “Jesus, Mac. Did they come down on you guys again for leaking stuff to the press?”
    “Come down on us? Christ, Nicky, we even had to do a goddamn hour-long seminar with the county attorney on right to privacy and HIPPA laws and then sign a fucking waiver sheet saying we attended and understood ‘all materials presented,’ ” McGregor said, his legendary sarcasm back in his voice. “I can see ’em waving that damn thing in court and pointing at us: ‘We told them, they didn’t listen, sue them, not the state.’ ”
    “OK, well, I wouldn’t want to get you into any trouble, Mac,” Nick said and then waited for what he knew would come.
    “Up their arse,” the baritone growled. “It’s a free country. I’ll say what I want, when I want. What do they think they are? British occupiers?”
    Nick always listened to McGregor’s Scottish rants. The guy was three generations removed from Edinburgh, but wore it like an honor.
    “Yeah, Nicky. We got your white male, six feet, two-twenty if he’s an ounce, dressed in tailored prison orange and a single bullet just missed his bloody ear hole by an inch.”
    “Who’s doing the autopsy?” Nick said.
    “We’re a bit in the weeds over here, lad. So the old man himself is going to take this one, but he won’t get to it till late tonight. Why don’t you come on over about midnight? Bring a snack. You two can swap stories like old times, eh?”
    “Thanks, Mac. I might take you up on that,” Nick said.
    “No thanks needed from you, Nicky. I haven’t said a word.” Nick heard the chuckle in the voice before the connection clicked off.
    So the old man, Broward M.E. Dr. Nasir Petish himself, would be doing the autopsy in one of his peculiar “dead-of-the-night” sessions, as the seventy-three-year-old pathologist called them. Nick thought of the last such session he’d attended, snuffed the memory out of his nose and put off making any plans for his own evening. Now he had a story to write. He still had calls to make to the Department of Corrections and at least get their “No comment.” He’d get the prosecutor who had won Ferris’s conviction. He’d get a line on a couple of jurors in the murder trial from the court reporter who covered it four years ago. And he’d have to try to find the mother of the little girls, though he knew it would be difficult tracking someone who had been essentially homeless. He’d start with the prosecutor, who might know a way to contact her. He picked up the phone. The always-present deadline was creeping past midday.

Chapter 6
    M ichael Redman was at his makeshift table, breaking down the rifle he had used most of his adult life to kill dangerous human beings who did not deserve to walk this earth. “Break down,” though, was perhaps the wrong term for Redman. He could no more “break down” his weapon than he could break down his right arm. He handled the bolt from the H&K PSG-1 with just the tips of his fingers, feeling the weight and shape and the touch of finely crafted metal against his own skin. The smell of the Shooter’s Choice cleaner was as fond to him as perfume; a certain signaling sifted like smoke through his head when he used it to clean the rifle after a kill. It signaled an end. The final act of taking care of business. It made him relax, often for the first time in weeks.
    He had taken the door off the adjoining bedroom and laid the heavy plank across two nightstands, creating a wide bench on which to work. The only light was from the street lamp outside, seeping in through the window he faced. He liked the dark. You didn’t have to see so much in the dark. And you could feel more—the breeze across a sheen of sweat, the soft vacuum of silence that cupped your ears in the quiet, the weight of a careful footstep on a hallway floor. Michael Redman liked those