He poured another drink and when he put the bottle down, his cell phone chirruped as if the movement had set it off. He fumbled with it, punched the answer button and took a deep breath, about to curse who he figured to be someone from the paper again trying to rouse him. But before the words got out, Hargrave's voice snapped out of the earpiece:
"Easy, Nick, easy, Nick, easy… Mr. Mullins," he said, modulating his volume with each repetition.
Nick swallowed his words and held the phone closer. "Hargrave?"
"Yeah."
"Sorry."
"It's alright. I've been bitched out enough on the phone to know what's coming after that deep breath, Mullins. You OK?"
"Yeah," Nick said softly. "OK."
"Look, I ran the rest of those names and we need to talk," Hargrave said, his voice kicking back to business mode.
Nick looked at his watch. It was almost two in the morning.
"Now?"
"Now."
"Uh, alright," Nick said. "Let me give you the address and-"
"I already have it," Hargrave interrupted.
"Yeah? OK, then," Nick said. He wiped at his mouth and tried to sound sober. "Come on over, I've got some of your favorite here."
"Yeah, I can hear it," Hargrave said. "I'll be there in ten." Nick waited out at the end of his driveway, watching a constellation up in the Western Hemisphere that he had either just discovered for the scientific community, or he was drunk. He had to steady himself with a hand on his mailbox when the headlights of Hargrave's car swept around the corner. When the detective got out, Nick explained that he did not want to wake his daughter and then led the way around the back, where they entered his pool area through a screen door. He had fetched another tumbler from the kitchen, and had also drunk two deep glasses of water to try to take the edge off the whiskey's effects.
Hargrave scraped a patio chair across the flagstone and sat, angled with a sight line of the pool and darkness beyond. He picked up the bottle of Maker's and poured himself a glass.
"You're welcome," Nick said as he retook his own seat.
Hargrave got the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. "Nice spot," he said.
"Yeah, it serves its purposes."
Hargrave took a sip of the whiskey and said, "Cameron tells me that some other reporter from your paper contacted him this evening for update information on the Michaels shooting."
Nick took a silent few seconds to pour two fingers of whiskey into his own glass, but remained quiet.
"In our business we'd call that being bounced off the case," Hargrave said, this time turning to look at Nick. "Are you off the case, Mr. Mullins?"
"I haven't been told that officially, but since I quit this afternoon, it's probably a good guess."
This time Hargrave simply held his glass near his face, letting the blue-green light blend with the deep red of the whiskey to form a color that seemed oddly cartoonish.
"Just because I'm not doing the story for the Daily News doesn't mean I'm not doing it as a freelancer," Nick quickly added.
"They're going to call you a material witness," Hargrave said, again with the official tone.
"My ass," Nick said, though it would only take a minute of sober thought to know it was true.
"Oh, what fun it would be to see a journalist up there on the stand like the rest of us when the real mud wrestling begins," Hargrave said, now actually grinning, no attempt to cover.
Nick let him enjoy his shot, for thirty seconds, then scraped his own chair forward. "The names, Detective. What did you come up with?"
Hargrave put his glass down. The grin was gone.
"Of the names we decided on from your stories, four are dead, seven are still in prison and two are out on probation, but I still haven't been able to contact their parole officers to find out where they are. Last record had one guy over on the Tampa side and the other up near Pensacola."
Nick didn't have to say the obvious: that this information didn't bring them any closer than they'd been.
"How about Canfield? Any luck talking with the SWAT guys?"
"No one's seen Redman but you," Hargrave said, emphasizing the you. "Far as they know, he's off the face of the earth. Canfield even checked with the managers of the firing range where Redman practically lived when he was with the unit. His parents are dead, of natural causes, mind you, up north somewhere, and he doesn't have any siblings. The lieutenant said he wasn't surprised no one had seen him. He said Redman had become isolated even before he left for Iraq."
"The goddamn editorials," Nick said.
"Yeah, I read up on those," Hargrave said.
Nick eyed him over the rim of his glass, reminding himself to never underestimate this guy.
"So what's his reasoning? What's Redman's motive for putting ex-cons in his target zone?" Nick said, thinking out loud even if the thinking was a bit clouded.
"Could be a combination," Hargrave said. "Public humiliation, death of his partner, post-traumatic stress from Iraq."
"Might even be enough to put the Secretary of State there," Hargrave said. "She's the one who sets policy, the one with the President's ear when shit hits the fan over in the Middle East. He already killed the man who killed his partner, maybe he just considers this a job undone."
"Jesus, Detective, you're siding with Fitzgerald now?" Nick said.
Hargrave shook his head and blew out a long breath.
"Now, there's a fed with some major responsibility pushing on his sphincter," Hargrave continued. "But the secretary is coming to town and it would be a hell of a venue to make a statement."
Nick took another drink, like he thought the booze was going to make things clearer. "OK, so you're following the theory that you can never say never, but I can't see it. I don't see a man like Redman targeting his own country's leaders. That's not who he's after."
Hargrave matched Nick's feat of emptying his glass and sat back like he had given up and was just staring into the pool. Then he said in a clear, matter-of-fact voice, "How about Mr. Walker, Nick?"
He let the question and the name hang in the night air, not looking to see the reaction in Nick's face like he would if it were a question posed to some arrestee in the interview room.
"What were Redman's words again, Nick? Do you a favor?" he said just as clearly. "This one's just for you? How about killing the man who put your family in the ground?"
Nick wondered if the detective could hear the sound of his heart, impossible to ignore with the way it had started thumping in his ears. The detective had not trusted his explanation for the last name on the list. Hell, he might have recognized it right off. Why wouldn't he have been briefed on Nick's background before they gave the reporter such access? Why wouldn't he see immediately that a name that starts with W fits perfectly with the alphabetizing of Redman's own victims list?
"Yeah," Nick finally said out over the glow of the pool. "How about him?"
Chapter 28
Michael Redman was working the rooftops in the predawn hours of his last week in Florida. No operation he'd worked had ever come off so smoothly. Targets identified. Intel right on the mark. Clean shots. Perfect regress and four confirmed kills. This one should be no different.
He had done reconnaissance on the target, just like the others. He'd mapped out the probable movements and used the sight lines from the street to pick two spots that his experience told him would work.
Today he was up top, checking out the closer of the two. He'd used the height of a Dumpster behind the building to gain access to the second floor and then jimmied a simple half-moon lock on the sash to get into a stairwell. The door to the roof opened from the inside and he used a piece of gravel from the tarred deck itself to wedge it open. If anything happened, there would be no evidence left behind. At the east roof edge he raised the night-vision goggles to his face and scoped the front of the target building. Firing from here would be nearly a six-hundred-yard shot. His optimum distance. Easily done. Sure and clean.