Earth needs a killer

DYNAMIC FEATURE NOVEL
You are the man we need, Ray Berton. You're a killer, but you're sane and rational. Those we are fighting are insane, irrational, and they'll destroy humanity if they are not stopped. We have power, but we can't use it for destruction, no matter how great the need. But we can give you power—then it's up to you!
From an evening tele-audiocast by International Information Service, New York City, September 8, 1983: Reporter: ... and now, as a special dramatic interest story, here's something for the Fortean Society, though a more scientific diagnosis will certainly be forthcoming.
At five P.M. today, a man's body materialized out of thin air at an altitude of over ten thousand feet above Uptown Manhattan. According to many reliable witnesses, the body plunged down to smash into an unrecognizable mass on the plasticrete of Tier 19 and Grav-lift 6-H, Fifth Avenue II.
The reliable witnesses include twenty passengers of the trans-State jetliner, all of whom agree that the unknown man did materialize out of the air very near the liner's position as it circled for a cradle in La Guardia Field.
Every witness tells about the same story that the body did appear suddenly from the atmosphere. There was no other air vessel near. Also it was reported that another object followed the body out of the air, according to preliminary reports, a manuscript oddly written on a scroll of metal.
Stay visioed to I.I.S. for further reports on this Fortean mystery. The manuscript, we hope, will contain some kind of explanation which will be forwarded to you as soon as it reaches our news clearance scanners....
It starts for me on Mars. I guess Mars is about the only place it could have started. Maybe they'll bring the real earth law there someday, and clean up dives like Jelahn's krin-krin tavern on the North Canal, a breeding place for crime, and where a man can be goaded into killing. That night I didn't care much.
The place was crawling with scum, strained through the sieves of Marsport, and Jokhara and Sanskran where the worst of the asteroid miners and space bums gather. Earthmen and Martians and half-breeds whom the Solar cops, said to be the toughest ever to wear a shield, would have gone at with care.