Eye Of Vengeance Part 3

Nick had gone to the crime scene. He had been there when the two small body bags were carried out, just like the rest of the press. But for this one he could not tear his eyes away. He remembered the look in the lead investigator's eyes when he later told Nick he would never forget the feeling of realizing that the bodies of those girls had been lying right above him as he'd listened to Ferris deny he had even seen the children. Nick remembered thinking they should not let detectives or police reporters who have kids of their own go to crime scenes involving the deaths of children. He remembered interviewing the mother, even though he knew she was still in shock, her eyes swollen, the pupils enlarged and glossed by sedatives and some internal message that kept trying to convince her it wasn't so. He remembered hating Steven Ferris.

Nick scrolled down through the story, past the history he'd dug up on Ferris: the arrests for loitering, the multiple laborer jobs, the interview with the girlfriend who had left him after she'd caught him in her daughter's room but had never reported it, just cursed him and kicked him out.

None of that had come out in court. Ferris's trial had been emotional and sensational. Nick hadn't covered it. That a.s.signment belonged to the court reporter. But Nick had slipped into the courtroom on several days, squeezing into the back rows and watching the back of Ferris's head as he sat at the defense table. One day the little girls' mother, who could not stand to sit inside, was in the hallway on a bench and recognized Nick as he quietly left during testimony.

"Mr. Mullins," she said and stood.

Nick stopped and looked at her face, trying to read whether she was indignant or angered by something he had written. "You are the reporter, yes?"

"Yes, ma'am," Nick said, taking two steps closer to her.

When she put out her hand, he closed the final gap and clasped her fingers softly.

"Thank you, sir," she said. "For the way you treated me and my girls in your stories."

Nick was silent, not knowing how to react, seeing her eyes again, clearer now, but still holding a pain that would be there forever. Nick knew even then that whatever went on in the courtroom would never ease her pain.

"They were beautiful children," he remembered saying and then had excused himself and walked away.

Now he knew the pain personally. Loved ones dead. A child you could never hold again. The urge for vengeance. Robert Walker.

Within days of the start of Ferris's trial the predator was convicted by a jury that would later recommend the death penalty. The judge had agreed. Nick shook the scenes out of his head. He remembered each detail, but today's story wasn't so much about Ferris as it was about his killer.

He moved on to the other stories Lori had sent him. There was a hearing that the newspaper's court reporter had written months after Ferris's conviction. An appeals court had ruled on arguments raised over the prejudicial nature of the trial itself. Several people in the courtroom gallery had worn b.u.t.tons on their s.h.i.+rts and blouses adorned with photographs of the dead girls. Ferris's lawyer argued that the crowd and the photos had influenced the jury. Though the prosecution argued that members of the public had a right to attend the proceedings, a panel of judges disagreed.

"Here, the direct link between the b.u.t.tons, the spectators wearing the b.u.t.tons, the defendant, and the crime that the defendant allegedly committed was clear and unmistakable," read the doc.u.ment handed down by the three-judge appellate court panel. "A reasonable jurist would be compelled to conclude that the b.u.t.tons worn by members of the gallery conveyed the message that the defendant was guilty."

Lori had sent another quick story that quoted a defense attorney who claimed the conviction should be thrown out. Another hit on the computer came up with only a single line: "Convicted murderer Steven Ferris sits mute as lawyers argue for a new hearing for the man who was given the death penalty for raping and killing two sisters, 6 and 8, three years ago. Ferris is currently serving time and no decision by the court was reached."

Nick recognized the line as a caption that must have run under a photo that appeared with no story. He wondered how he could have missed it. He checked the date it ran: January 21 of last year.

Nick had not been aware of anything during that month or the February after that. He'd been on an extended leave of absence. Death in the family.

He refocused on the screen and called up the next mention of Ferris. But with continued delays of the hearing dates, each story got smaller and was placed deeper on inside pages until they were barely noticeable.

Nick knew that information about court hearings and calendar calls wouldn't make the paper. He switched out of the stories and called up a website from his favorites list on the Internet: Florida Department of Corrections. From here, he could enter Ferris's name and date of birth and find out where he had been held in the prison system. While he was waiting, his phone rang.

"Nick Mullins," he answered.

"Hey, Nick. It's Lori. I've got some court docket stuff on Ferris that I got online. The last entry was a request by defense to show cause for a change of sentence that looks like it had been delayed a couple of times."

"Let me guess," Nick said. "Rescheduled for today."

"Two in the afternoon in Judge Grossman's courtroom," she said.

Nick could hear the tinge of disappointment in her voice that she hadn't been ahead of him.

"Was that in the clips?" she asked.

"Nope. h.e.l.l, the guy was off our radar for almost a year," Nick said, as much to himself as Lori. "Can you print that stuff and send it over?"

Nick knew that to get into the court's docket database you had to have a subscription. Most attorneys did. Most large newspapers did. It was expensive. But Nick also knew you could still do it the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. The case notes are public record and anyone with an interest in Ferris could have walked into the court records office and checked out the file. From there you could get the date of his next appearance and set up your own appointment for a morning shooting.

Nick thanked Lori and went back to his DOC search and in five minutes had an electronic sheet on Ferris. His most recent home had been the South Florida Reception Center. Before that he'd been up in Tomoka Correctional, a maximum security prison near Daytona Beach.

Nick sat back and took another long sip of coffee. He was gathering string. Piecing stuff together. Speculating? Yes. But not out loud. h.e.l.l, even though he trusted his source at dispatch, confirmation that the dead inmate was Ferris was still in the wind. And at this point Nick didn't even know if the shooter was targeting anyone specific. Maybe the sniper was just some whack job out to pop a bad guy, any bad guy, and knew the sally port was where prisoners were off-loaded. But the picture was still in Nick's head, the roofline looking down into the fenced yard, the distance, the single blood spatter. No way, he decided. There were probably half a dozen prisoners down there. All this guy wanted was one shot. One preselected victim.

Nick called up an old file on his computer, a huge list of telephone numbers he'd collected over the years. He was the kind of reporter who recorded nearly every substantial contact number he'd gathered over the years. Each time he finished a story, he'd copy the numbers from his notebooks or cut and paste them from his computer notes and put them on the bottom of this list. There were hundreds. He knew he'd never use eighty percent of them ever again, but times like these kept him at the habit.

Using a search function for Ferris's name on the computer, he found what he was looking for in seconds-Ferris's father's and brother's names and their telephone numbers. The father had been in West Virginia three years ago and hadn't been much help. But the brother lived here. The cops would have the same numbers and at some point they would call to inform next of kin. Nick knew if he got some family member on the line, he'd have a good chance of confirming it was Ferris who was now lying in the morgue. He picked up the phone and started to punch in the number for the brother, then stopped. David Ferris's address, in a mobile home park only twenty minutes away in Wilton Manors, was typed in next to the number. Nick checked his watch: eleven o'clock. He was not pressed for time. No other stories were breaking. He'd made a dozen of these calls before. After the ones in which he was the first person to tell a relative that a son or wife or brother was dead, it always left a soured lump of guilt in his gut. He hung up the phone and logged off his computer.

"We're still waiting on the identification of that shooting victim at the jail," he said to the a.s.sistant city editor as he walked by. "I'm going out. But I'm on my cell."

Nick made sure the editor had heard him and waved the phone and got a nod from the guy.

You tell somebody his brother is dead face to face if you can, Nick thought as he rode the elevator down.

Chapter 4.

Don't hesitate, he told himself, sitting in his car outside David Ferris's double-wide, watching the curtains in the window just to the right of the louvered front door. Nick had driven up Federal Highway, practicing the words he'd use when the brother of the dead man answered the door: Excuse me, Mr. Ferris, I hate to bother you. I don't know if you remember me, Nick Mullins from the Excuse me, Mr. Ferris, I hate to bother you. I don't know if you remember me, Nick Mullins from the Daily News. Daily News. I did some stories about your brother a few years back? I did some stories about your brother a few years back?

Liar, Nick thought. You don't hate to bother him when there's a good chance that his brother has just been shot dead. You're after a story. You need a comment.

h.e.l.lo, Mr. Ferris. Nick Mullins from the Daily News. Daily News. I'd like to verify if you've heard from the Sheriff's Office concerning your brother. I'd like to verify if you've heard from the Sheriff's Office concerning your brother.

The straight-out-in-their-face technique was at least honest.

Oh, and by the way, if you have heard, could you please spill your guts to me on how you feel about this news for two hundred thousand strangers to read in tomorrow's editions?

When he'd arrived in the correct block, Nick pulled into the entrance of the Palms Mobile Park and checked the address on his pad. But after the first left turn, his memory served him. He eased down the narrow street past Flamingo Trail, Ponce de Leon Court and Anhinga Way. Speed b.u.mps between each block jounced him, and palm trees, all with too-thin trunks and browned fronds, leaned precariously at each corner. Nick once noted that trees did not like to thrive in trailer parks. Maybe it was the cramped s.p.a.ce that wouldn't let the roots spread. Maybe the cheap owner a.s.sociations refused the expense of fertilizers and care. Maybe, as with the natural instincts of animals, they somehow knew better than to grow in places that always seemed to be magnets for tornadoes and hurricanes.

Nick had turned onto Bougainvillea Drive, gone all the way to the end and parked in front of the dusty turquoise-and-white trailer. He then turned off the ignition and made the mistake of letting the quiet form around his ears. When he was a rookie reporter in Trenton, two weeks on the job, the Marine barracks in Beirut had been bombed. Every reporter on the metro desk was given a list of six names, families who had lost sons and husbands and daughters. All had to be interviewed within two days. He had done the same thing years later after 9/11. And he still hadn't learned to avoid hesitating.

He finally picked up the pad from the pa.s.senger seat and opened the door. Before stepping out, he took off his sungla.s.ses. You don't ask a man if he knows his brother is dead and not have the b.a.l.l.s to show your eyes. He put the pad in his back pocket.

There were no other cars in the drive. The carport, little more than a sheet of tin supported by poles and tacked to the roof of the trailer, was filled with a full-sized washer and dryer, rusted at their edges. A chaise lounge was missing two plastic straps. And water-stained cardboard boxes containing G.o.d knows what were stacked alongside the front of a sheet-metal utility shack. Nick kept checking the curtains, waiting for a movement that would tell him someone was inside who didn't want to talk to him.

A woman opened the door just a crack before he could step up onto the metal grated stairway. Nick lowered his eyes, just for a moment, and then looked into the light-colored eyes that peered out.

"Good morning, ma'am. I'm looking for David Ferris. Is he home, please?"

The eyes continued to look out and the crack widened, letting sunlight give blueness to their irises.

"My name is Nick Mullins, ma'am, I'm a reporter for the Daily News. Daily News."

"I know who you are," the woman said. Her voice was neither accusatory nor contemptuous. Nick took it as a good sign.

"Have I met you before, ma'am?" Nick said.

"You interviewed my husband about four years ago, right here on these steps," she said, opening the door wider, her hand high on the edge of the jamb. The sun glinted off thin strands of blond hair that dangled in front of her face like a spider's web catching light. She was a small, thin woman dressed in a flower-patterned smock and loose matching pants, the kind of outfit a nurse would wear.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry," Nick said. "I, uh, I don't recall your name."

She just nodded, offering nothing.

"David isn't in, then?"

"He just called, Mr. Mullins. They got ahold of him on his cell phone at work. He's on his way home."

Nick looked down again, as though he understood.

"He's still at the Motorola plant, then?" he said, recalling the reporting he'd done on the earlier Ferris stories.

"We're both still working, Mr. Mullins, trying to pay off the lawyer's bills," she said, only now letting an edge into her voice.

Nick s.h.i.+fted his weight. He was still standing below her, looking up now into her face. He thought he'd remembered her being in her mid-twenties on the doc.u.ments he'd dug up on the Ferris family. But the crow's-feet at the corners of her eyes and the pull of skin from her cheekbones did not fit that age. He felt somehow responsible, but could not leave it alone.

"Was the phone call about Steven?" he finally asked and she simply nodded in the positive and looked off into the distance behind him. Again Nick let silence surround them, second-guessing whether she was relieved or saddened. He finally took a step back.

"May I wait for David to get 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. 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.

On the way back to his desk Nick made his obligatory stop at the a.s.sistant 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 s.h.i.+t?"

"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 Daily News for a year and had been told early that Mullins had an att.i.tude, 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. for a year and had been told early that Mullins had an att.i.tude, 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 s.h.i.+t," 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 h.e.l.l difference it made if some other news outlet knew Ferris's was the body now being s.h.i.+pped 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, bypa.s.sing the switchboard by using an inside extension to one of the M.E.'s a.s.sistants.

"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, right?"

"Did I say that, Mr. Nick? I'm not sure I said that. You know this call may be monitored for quality a.s.surance 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 G.o.dd.a.m.n hour-long seminar with the county attorney on right to privacy and HIPPA laws and then sign a f.u.c.king 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 d.a.m.n thing in court and pointing at us: 'We told them, they didn't listen, sue them, not the state.' "