a soft swab and ran it through the barrel and asked himself, Would Collie have done what I have done?
His SWAT friend, his only true friend, Collie always had a way of working the bugs out of Redman’s head after a shoot, sitting in a bar washing the vision of blood down your throat. He’d grab Redman by the neck with those Vise-Grip fingers of his and say, “Moral courage, man. We do the job that no one else will do. We make the hard choices. And don’t you think any different, Mikey It ain’t the lieutenant. It ain’t the sheriff. It ain’t the range master. When your finger is on the trigger, buddy, you are ultimately the man. It’s your moral courage that lets you pull it.”
Would Collie have pulled those triggers in Iraq? Redman couldn’t find the answer and it ate at him. But he’d sworn it would be different when he got home, and today he had known his target, he knew the man was deserving, knew he’d exacted a moral vengeance for two little girls whose innocence had been stolen. Collie would have pulled this trigger.
Redman closed his eyes while he worked, his fingers moving with the precision of motor memory in the dark. He wondered what the newspaper story would say in the morning. He wondered if Nick Mullins would get the assignment, if the only journalist he trusted would get it right, would understand.
Chapter 7
The last call Nick made was to Joel Cameron. It was just after eight o’clock and his story was finished and ready to move on to the editors and copy readers. He had named Ferris and given a full background of his murder trial and the rapes and killings of the children. The bulk of the story was on the dead man. The main question of the piece was the identity of his shooter. Nick had left three phone messages for Detective Hargrave, knowing they would never be returned. He’d watched the six o’clock news on three local television channels and all were still reporting that the name of the dead inmate had not been released. His own editors had voted to keep Ferris’s name off the newspaper’s Internet site so they could scoop the competition. Every newsgroup monitored each other’s site. It had become laughable how one group now bragged that they got their story “up” on the Web ten minutes before the other.
Nick tried out his “he’ll still be just as dead tomorrow” line on Cameron when the information officer started to whine after Nick told him he was naming Ferris in the morning paper.
“Shit, Nick. The other guys are going to be all over me that I wasn’t being fair by treating everyone the same.”
Cameron’s defensiveness was yet additional confirmation that Nick had the right guy.
“So just don’t confirm it, Joel. I’ve got it and if anybody gives you a hard time, you can honestly say you didn’t give it to me,” Nick said.
There was a silence. Cameron was thinking. Always a danger, Nick thought.
“But you won’t give it out for the eleven o’clock television guys just because I do have it, right? That was our deal.”
“Yeah,” Cameron acquiesced. “But Hargrave’s still going to be pissed.”
“He’ll get over it, Joel. And while I’ve got you, is there anything more on the shooting that you are giving out? Caliber of the bullet? Search warrant issued at the house of a pissed-off relative of dead girls? Anything more from our friend across the street who saw a man dressed in a SWAT uniform coming down off the roof?”
“Shit, Nick. You’re not using that, are you?” Cameron said.
“Actually, no,” Nick said. “I’m holding back on that for some later development. You might pass that on to Detective Hargrave—my cooperation, that is.”
Cameron was quiet for a beat. “All we’re giving out is on the most recent press release, Nick. That’s it.”
That was little more than nothing. Nick had read the release and spiked it on his desk.
“OK, Joel. I’m outta here. Talk with you tomorrow.”
“Word of advice, Nick,” Cameron said before clicking off. “Walk careful with Hargrave. He’s not like the other homicide guys.”
Nick had already seen that in the detective’s eyes. He wouldn’t be the kind who sat around the desks in the squad room and hashed out his theories with the others. Not once had he written anything down, either while he was inspecting the blood spatter or up on the roof. His were the kind of eyes that