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

Michael 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.