He started to scroll down the research list again, hungry this time for names that he recognized. He was about to call Lori's desk to get her to run another search, this time matching any names in the stories she'd sent him and his own byline. He was reaching for the phone when it rang just as his fingertips touched it, causing him to flinch.
"Nick Mullins," he said, finally picking up the line.
"It's Billy, Nick. Hey, this is all on the QT, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, Bill. I just need to know if I should run up there, you know?"
"OK. Rescue has a white male by the name of Trace Michaels, DOA when they got there. Single bullet wound to the head. It was actually in the doorway of the probation and parole office in that block. They didn't move the body because he was obviously dead when they got there. Guys said half his head was missing from the back. Ugly scene, Nick."
Matthews listened to silence for a moment.
"Nick? Did you get that?"
"Repeat that name for me," Nick said, his brain now flashing.
"Trace Michaels. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-S."
"Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it," Nick said.
"OK, Nicky, but remem-"
Nick hung up before the administrator could finish his sentence.
Three was too many. Four was impossible. Nick was up and on his way through the newsroom, his eyes glazed with remembering, when an editor called out his name.
"I'm going to a shooting in Pompano," he answered, snapping his notepad on the edge of the woman's desk as he walked by and left it at that. On his brisk walk to the elevators he was thinking, Trace Michaels, dead. Maybe they should give this shooter a medal. Nick drove north on Dixie Highway through the bedroom communities of Wilton Manors and Oakland Park, thinking about Mary Chardain's face, the skin on her left cheek and forehead whitened in splotches where the burned and crinkled skin had to be removed. Her thin arms, lying out straight on the hospital bed, were still gauzed and Nick had already been told by the nurse of the agony the woman would have to go through as those bandages were regularly removed, dead skin removed and then the new raw layer rewrapped. Trace Michaels had sloshed rubbing alcohol over the head of his lover of six years and set her on fire. "Jesus," Nick said aloud in the car, remembering the guy's face. A public defender had argued Michaels's case, claiming that both he and Chardain were drug addicts and the alcohol had accidentally spilled on Mary when they were cooking another dose together and had caught fire. Nick had done a story on Chardain and her daughter, a bright eleven-year-old who witnessed the incident and had jumped to her mother's aid. Michaels had gone down for attempted murder. But somehow-and Nick was thinking about the prison overcrowding that was forcing the release of model prisoners and the use of gain time, which cut their sentences down for good behavior-Michaels was back on the street.
When he got to McNab he turned east and as he went through the light at Cypress Road he could see the collection of cop cars and Pompano's yellow-green rescue trucks blinking in the next block. He pulled over into a small shopping center, parked his car and walked the rest of the way, watching, searching the rooflines of any building tall enough to give a sniper an angle on the offices where the largest knot of paramedics and cops were gathered. By now Nick had lost his skepticism. This was another one. As he approached he saw the paramedics reloading their truck, no one to treat or transport. A couple of deputies were standing just off the sidewalk, talking quietly, their backs purposely turned to the yellow sheet that covered a lump behind them. The body had not been moved and still lay mostly on the sidewalk, only its feet jamming open the door of the parole office. Nick stopped at the crime scene tape that was stretched around three parked cars, positioned to keep the gawkers at a distance. He was looking for a familiar face among the officers to signal to when he saw Hargrave step out of the building with a pen in his mouth and a leather-bound notebook in his hand. Nick stayed silent, watching the detective look down at the body. The ballpoint pen was between his teeth and was flicking back and forth like a metronome. He bent his knees and folded himself down like some adjustable ladder so that he was on the balls of his feet. Then he peeled back the yellow sheet, looked under it and finally turned his gaze to the sky, the rooflines. Nick knew he had been right.
"Detective?" Nick called out, as any reporter at the scene would.
But unlike any other reporter, he was summoned by a crook of Hargrave's finger and he raised the plastic tape and slipped under.
The beefy sergeant who seemed to run with Hargrave as protection, though Nick doubted that the wiry detective would need any in a street fight, stepped up to block his advance only a few feet from the body.
"It's OK, Tony," Hargrave said and the big man backed off.
The detective stayed in his crouch and Nick joined him. Hargrave said nothing and instead pulled back the yellow tarp and exposed the dead man's face. Nick was not squeamish and knew that it was not Hargrave's intent to shock him. In profile, the man's face had already gone whiter than normal. The dark stubble on his cheek and chin was unnaturally distinct, as if each follicle were raised in relief. Nick knew that the other cheek on the ground would be the opposite, growing dark purple as the blood settled at the lowest point. The man's exposed and wide-open right eye had already lost its glisten of moisture. Hargrave pulled the sheet back farther. The back portion of the man's head, behind the ear, had been ripped open by a heavy round.
"The woman in front of him opened the door and then dropped a set of keys. Our victim apparently had just begun to bend down to get them when she heard a 'slap,' as she described it," Hargrave said. "She's inside, trying not to look at the blood spatter all over her dress."
Nick stood up, not needing to see any more. Hargrave replaced the sheet and stood with him.
"Look familiar?" the detective said.
"Trace Michaels," Nick said quietly. "I did a takeout piece on him a few years ago. He's the guy who doused his girlfriend with alcohol and set her on fire."
"Good memory," Hargrave said.
"I remember them all," Nick replied.
They both went quiet for several seconds, maybe realizing what they both shared.
"I think we better step into the office here, Mr. Mullins."
Hargrave led the way around the body and into the reception area of the parole office. There were plastic chairs against two walls. A glassed window, slid shut, was in the middle of the third wall. They passed through a door into an interior hallway and Nick saw a small huddle of what he took to be employees sitting around a small break table in one room, talking quietly but in voices that were unnaturally high with anxiety and the breathlessness that goes with, "My God. I could have been walking in that door myself."
Hargrave opened the third door, checked for anyone inside and then nodded Nick in. The detective sat on the edge of a crowded desktop stacked with folders and what Nick recognized as Florida Statute books. With one skinny haunch on the desk, Hargrave's knee hung at a ninety-degree angle like a broken stick and his elbow was bent in the same geometric way while he stroked his chin. Nick had an unwanted vision of an erector set flash through his head.
"Mr. Michaels was coming in for his weekly visit to his parole officer," Hargrave began, opening his notebook as though he were checking the time. "A nine o'clock appointment. The PO says the guy had been consistent ever since he was released from his road prison gig last July. Hadn't missed a check-in and his spot urine had been clean of drugs every time."
"So how would our sniper know when and where he was coming in?" Nick asked, sitting down in the one chair that was probably meant for clients.