I shushed her. No explanation was necessary.
“Listen, was he by himself? Was McGinnis there?”
She shook her head.
“I only saw Courier. I recognized him too late.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The kitchen man was standing back down the hall, now with other men dressed in kitchen clothes. I signaled them to come forward and they didn’t move at first. Then one reluctantly stepped forward and the others followed.
“Push that elevator button for me,” I said.
“You sure?” one asked.
“Just do it.”
I leaned down and put my face into the crook of Rachel’s neck. I hugged her tightly, breathed in her scent and whispered in her ear.
“He went up. I’m going to go get him.”
“No, Jack, you wait here. Stay with me.”
I pulled up and looked into her eyes. I said nothing until I heard the elevator open. I then looked up at the kitchen man I had originally spoken to. On his white shirt the name Hank was embroidered.
“Where’s security?”
“They should be here,” he said. “They’re coming.”
“Okay, I want you men to wait here with her. Don’t leave her. When security gets here, you tell them there’s another victim on the seventh-floor stairwell and that I went up to the top to look for the guy. Tell security to cover all the exits and elevators. This guy went up, but he’s gonna have to try to come down.”
Rachel started to get up.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“No, you’re not. You’re hurt. You stay here and I’ll be right back. I promise.”
I left her there and stepped onto the elevator. I pushed the 12 button and looked back at Rachel. As the door closed I noticed that Hank the kitchen man was nervously lighting his cigarette.
It was a damn-the-rules moment for both of us.
The service elevator moved slowly upward and I came to realize that so much of Rachel’s rescue had relied on pure luck—a slow elevator, my staying in Mesa to surprise her, my taking the stairs with the bottle of wine. But I didn’t want to dwell on what could have been. I concentrated on the moment and when the elevator finally reached the top of the building, I stood ready with the one-inch corkscrew blade as the door opened. I realized I should have grabbed a better weapon from the kitchen, but it was too late now.
The housekeeping vestibule on twelve was empty except for the red waiter’s jacket I saw dropped on the floor. I pushed through the swinging doors and into the central hallway. I could hear sirens coming from outside the building now. A lot of them.
Looking both ways I saw nothing and I started to realize that a one-man search of a twelve-story hotel nearly as wide as it was tall was going to be a waste of time. Between elevators and stairwells, Courier had his choice of multiple escape routes.
I decided to go back down to Rachel and leave the search for hotel security and the arriving police.
But I knew that on the way down I could cover at least one of those exit routes. Maybe my luck would hold. I chose the north stairwell because it was closest to the hotel’s parking garage. And it was the stairwell Courier had used earlier to hide the body of the room service waiter.
I went down the hallway, rounded the corner and then pushed through the exit door. I first looked over the railing and down the shaft. I saw nothing and heard only the echo of the sirens. I was just about to head down the steps, when I noticed that even though I was on the top floor of the hotel, the stairs continued up.
If there was access to the roof, I needed to check it. I headed up.
The stairwell was dimly lit by a sconce on each landing. Each floor was broken into two sets of stairs and landings in the routine back-and-forth design. When I reached the midlevel and turned to take the next set of stairs to what would be the thirteenth floor, I saw the upper and final landing was crowded with stored hotel room furnishings. I came all the way up to where the stairs ended in a large storage area. There were bed tables stacked on top of one another and mattresses leaning four deep against one of the walls. There were stacks of chairs and mini-refrigerators and pre–flat-screen-era television cabinets. I was reminded of the filing cabinets I had seen in the Public Defender’s Office hallway. There had to be multiple code violations here, but who was looking? Who ever came up here? Who cared?
I worked my way around a grouping of standing stainless-steel lamps and toward a door with a small square window at face height. The word roof had been painted on it with a stencil. But when I got to it, I found the door was locked. I pushed hard on the release bar but it wouldn’t move. Something had jammed or locked the mechanism and the door wouldn’t budge. I looked through the window and saw a flat gravel roof running behind the barrel-tiled parapets of the hotel. Across a forty-yard expanse of gravel I could see the structure that housed the building’s elevator equipment. Beyond that was another door to the stairwell on the other side of the hotel.
I shifted to my left and leaned in closer to the window so I could get a wider view of the roof. Courier could be out there.
Just as I did this, I saw a blurred reflection of movement in the glass.
Someone was behind me.
Instinctively, I jumped sideways and turned at the same time. Courier’s arm swung down with a knife and barely missed me as he crashed into the door.
I planted my feet and then drove my body into his, bringing my arm up and stabbing my own blade into his side.
But my weapon was too short. I scored a direct hit but didn’t do enough damage to bring down the target. Courier yelped and brought his forearm down on my wrist, knocking my blade to the floor. He then took an enraged, roundhouse swing at me with his own. I managed to duck underneath it but got a good look at his blade. It was at least four inches long and I knew if he connected with it, it would be a one-and-done proposition for me.
Courier made another jab and this time I parried to the right and caught his wrist. The only advantage I had was my size. I was older and slower than Courier, but I had forty pounds on him. While holding his knife hand away, I threw my body into him again, knocking him back through the forest of stand-up lamps and onto the concrete floor.
He broke free during the fall and then scrabbled to his feet with the knife ready. I grabbed one of the lamps, holding its round base out and ready to spar at him and deflect the next assault.
For a moment nothing happened. He held the knife at the ready and we seemed to be taking each other’s measure, waiting for the other to make the next move. I then made a charge with the lamp base but he sidestepped it easily. We then squared off again. He had a desperate sort of smile on his face and was breathing heavily.
“Where are you going to go, Courier? You hear all those sirens? They’re here, man. There’s going to be cops and FBI all over this place in two minutes. Where’re you going to go then?”
He didn’t say anything and I took another poke at him with the lamp. He grabbed the base and we momentarily struggled for control of it, but I pushed him back into a stack of mini-refrigerators and they crashed to the floor.
I had no experience in the area of knife fighting, but my instincts told me to keep talking. If I distracted Courier, then I would lessen the threat from the knife and possibly get an open shot at him. So I kept throwing the questions at him, waiting for my moment.
“Where’s your partner? Where’s McGinnis? What did he do, send you to do the dirty work by yourself? Just like Nevada, huh? You missed your chance again.”
Courier grinned at me but didn’t take the bait.
“Does he just tell you what to do? Like your mentor on murder or something? Man, the master’s not going to be very happy with you tonight. You’re oh for two, man.”
This time he couldn’t control it.
“McGinnis is dead, you dumb fuck! I buried him in the desert. Just like I was going to bury your bitch after I was through with her.”
I feigned anot
her jab at him with the lamp and tried to keep him talking.
“I don’t get it, Courier. If he’s dead, why didn’t you just run? Why risk everything to go for her?”
At the same moment he opened his mouth to reply, I faked a jab at his chest with the lamp and then brought the base up into his face, catching him flush on the jaw. Courier staggered backward momentarily and I quickly moved in, hurling the lamp at him first and then going for the knife with both hands. We smashed into a television cabinet and fell to the floor, me on top of him and grappling for control of the knife.
He shifted his weight beneath me and we rolled three times, with him ending up on top. I kept both hands on his wrist and he pushed his free hand into my face, trying to break my grip by stiff-arming me away. I finally managed to bend his wrist at a painful angle. He cried out and the knife came free and clattered to the concrete. With an elbow I shoved it toward the stairwell shaft but it stopped just shy of the mark, balancing on the edge below the blue guardrail. It was six feet away.
I went after him like an animal then, punching and kicking and fueled by a primal rage I had never felt before. I grabbed an ear and tried to rip it off. I swung an elbow into his teeth. But the energy of youth gradually gave him the upper hand. I was tiring quickly and he managed to pull back and get distance. He then brought a knee up into my crotch and the air exploded out of my lungs. Paralyzing pain shot through me and weakened my hold. He broke completely free and got up to go for the knife.
Calling on my last reserve of strength, I half crawled, half lunged after him as I struggled to my feet. I was hurt and spent but I knew that if he got to the knife, I would be dead.
I threw my weight into him from behind. He lurched forward into the railing, his upper body pivoting over it. Without thinking, I reached down, grabbed one of his legs and flipped him all the way over the rail. He tried to grab the steel piping but his grip slipped and he fell.
His scream lasted only two seconds. His head hit either a railing or the concrete siding of the shaft, and after that, he fell silently, his body caroming from side to side on its way down thirteen floors.
I watched him all the way. Until the final, loud impact echoed all the way back up to me.
I wish I could say I felt guilt or even a sense of remorse. But I felt like cheering every moment of his fall.
The next morning I went back to Los Angeles for real, leaning against the plane’s window and sleeping the whole way. I had spent most of the night in the now familiar surroundings of the FBI. Agent Bantam and I faced off again in the mobile interview room for several hours, during which I told and retold the story of what I had done the evening before and how Courier came to fall thirteen floors to his death. I told him what Courier had said about McGinnis and the desert and the plan for Rachel Walling.
During the interview Bantam never dropped the mask of detached federal agent. He never said thank you for saving the life of his fellow agent. He just asked questions, sometimes five or six different times and ways. And when it was finally over, he informed me that the details regarding the death of Marc Courier would be submitted to a state grand jury to determine if a crime had been committed or if my actions constituted self-defense. It was only then that he broke the mold and spoke to me like a human being.
“I have mixed feelings about you, McEvoy. You no doubt saved Agent Walling’s life but going up there after Courier was the wrong move. You should have waited. If you had, he might be alive right now and we might have some of the answers. As it is, if McGinnis is really dead, most of the secrets went down that shaft with Courier. It’s a big desert out there, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that, Agent Bantam. I kind of look at it like if I hadn’t gone after him, he might have gotten away. And if that had happened, the chances are, you wouldn’t get any answers either. You’d just get more bodies.”
“Maybe. But we’ll never know.”
“So what happens now?”
“Like I said, we’ll present it to the grand jury. I doubt you’ll have any problems. The world’s not exactly going to feel sorry for Marc Courier.”
“I don’t mean with me. I’m not worried about that. With the investigation, what happens now?”
He paused as if to consider whether he should tell me anything.
“We’ll try to re-create the trail. That’s all we can do. We’re not done at Western Data. We’ll continue there and we’ll try to put together a picture of what these men did. And we’ll keep looking for McGinnis. Dead or alive. We only have Courier’s word that he’s dead. Personally, I’m not sure I believe it.”
I shrugged. I had accurately reported what Courier had said. I would leave it to the experts to determine if it was the truth. If they wanted to put a picture of McGinnis in every post office in the country, that was fine with me.
“Can I go back to L.A. now?”
“You’re free to go. But if anything else comes to mind, you call us. Likewise, we’ll call you.”
“Got it.”
He didn’t shake my hand. He just opened the door. When I stepped out of the bus, Rachel was waiting for me. We were in the front parking lot of the Mesa Verde Inn. It was close to five in the morning but neither of us seemed very tired. The paramedics had checked her out. The swelling was already beginning to subside but she had a badly cut and bruised lip and a contusion below the corner of her left eye. She had refused a transport to a local hospital for further examination. The last thing she would do at this point would be leave the center of the investigation.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Bantam said I’m clear to take off. I think I’ll catch the first flight back to L.A.”
“You’re not going to stay for the press conference?”
I shook my head.
“What are they going to say that I don’t already know?”
“Nothing.”
“How long do you think you’ll be here?”
“I don’t know. I guess until they wrap things up. Which won’t happen until we know all there is to know.”
I nodded and checked my watch. The first flight to L.A. probably wouldn’t be for another two hours.
“You want to go get breakfast somewhere?” I asked.
She tried to crinkle her lips to show disdain for the idea but the pain foiled the effort.
“I’m not that hungry. I just wanted to say good-bye. I need to get back to Western Data. They found the mother lode.”
“Which is what?”
“An unaccounted-for server that both McGinnis and Courier had been accessing. It’s got archived videos, Jack. They filmed their crimes.”
“And both of them are in the videos?”
“I haven’t seen them but I am told they are not readily identifiable. They wear masks and shoot at angles that mostly show their victims, not them. I was told that in one of the videos, McGinnis is wearing an executioner’s hood—like the one worn by the Zodiac.”
“You’re kid—Wait a minute, he’d have to be sixty-some years old to be the Zodiac.”
“No, they’re not suggesting that—you can buy the hood in cult stores in San Francisco. It’s just a sign of who they are. It’s like having your book on the bedside. They know history. And it shows how much fear plays a part in their program. Scaring their victims was part of the rush.”
I didn’t think you needed to be an FBI profiler to understand that. But it brought to mind how truly horrible the last moments of their victims’ lives were.
I once again remembered the audiotape of the Bittaker and Norris torture session in the back of the van. I couldn’t listen then. I almost didn’t want the answer to the question I had now.
“Is Angela on film?”
“No, she was too recent. But there are others.”
“You mean victims?”
Rachel glanced over my shoulder at the door to the FBI bus and then
back at me. I guessed that she might be talking out of turn, no matter the deal I supposedly had.
“Yes. They haven’t looked at everything yet but they have at least six different victims. McGinnis and Courier were doing this a long time.”
Now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave. The bottom line was that the bigger the body count, the bigger the story. Two killers, at least six victims… If it was possible for the story to get bigger than it already was, then it had just happened.
“What about the braces? Were you right about that?”
She nodded solemnly. It was one of those times that being right wasn’t such a good thing.
“Yeah, they made the victims wear leg braces.”
I shook my head as if to ward off the thought of it. I checked my pockets. I had no pen and my notebook was back up in my room.
“You have a pen?” I asked Rachel. “I need to write this down.”
“No, Jack, I don’t have a pen to give you. I told you more than I should have. At this point it’s just raw data. Wait till I have a better handle on everything and then I’ll call you. Your deadline isn’t for another twelve hours, at least.”
She was right. I had a full day to put the story together, and the information would develop through the day. Besides that, I knew that when I got back to the newsroom, I would face the same issue as the week before. I was part of the story again. I had killed one of the two men the story was about. Conflict of interest dictated that I wouldn’t be writing it. I was going to sit with Larry Bernard once again and feed him a front-page story that would echo around the world. It was frustrating but by now I was getting used to it.
“All right, Rachel. I guess I’ll go up and pack my stuff, then head to the airport.”
“Okay, Jack. I’ll call you. I promise.”
I liked that she promised before I had to ask. I looked at her for a moment, wanting to make a move to touch and hold her. She seemed to read me. She took the first step and pulled me into a tight embrace.
“You saved my life tonight, Jack. You think you’re getting out of here with just a handshake?”
The Scarecrow Page 31