“I’m sure your lawyers had all the background stats on your jury. Addresses, too, right? So why didn’t you give the fans—”
“I couldn’t.” He paused, wondering if he had just admitted to a crime. Legally, he had not been entitled to any of that information. “My lawyers won’t let me. It’s a technicality.” He watched the file change to the related murder of Agent Timothy Kidd. Next, she scrolled the file on a national hunt for a major player. The Chelsea Hotel was the only highlighted address out of hundreds on the screen.
The investigator glanced in his direction. “So your fans located Dr. Apollo, but you never mentioned her on the air.”
“She used to be in a witness protection program. The FBI got a gag order from a federal judge. If I just say her name on the air, I’m toast and the station loses its license. So I screen out all the hunchback calls.”
“That’s why you want her to do an interview? You think Dr. Apollo’s going to expose herself on national radio?” Unspoken were the words you fool.
“You underestimate me,” he said.
Her mouth dipped on one side to tell him that this was not possible.
“Next job.” He handed her a sheaf of papers with the name and last known address of a surviving juror as well as drawings of the man’s face. “I bought those sketches from a courtroom artist. I want you to find information on this man, but don’t tell anyone the sketches came from me.”
“Your attorneys wouldn’t like that, would they? Cause and effect that ties back to you.”
“Just a minor departure from the game format,” he said. “The fans are a bit slow in developing solid leads. I want your report in the form of anonymous e-mail. And for God’s sake, don’t use a computer from Highland Security.” His lawyers would go into cardiac arrest if they knew he was stepping outside the rules and gathering his own data.
She pocketed the papers, never taking her eyes off the screen and the latest sightings for fresh victims. “How stupid are your fans? You think they know what they’re doing?”
“Well, it’s pretty basic,” he said, “tracking down helpless people so they can get their throats slit. But I don’t think my fans give it that much thought. They call in a sighting, a juror drops dead. They never connect those two events. It’s only a game, right? Now here’s where I part company with the Reaper. He hates imbeciles, but not me. Without all these morons, I’d have no show. But the game’s getting unwieldy—way too much information on the players. I can’t tell good data from bogus.”
“You’re not really into computers, are you?” Her head turned his way, but the glasses were so dark, he could never be certain that her eyes were on him.
“I can open my e-mail,” he said. “What more do I need?”
“More sophisticated software.” She closed his laptop. “If I cross-index the fan reports by geography, date and time, I might get a line on the juror. But first I need to install my own programs.” And now she was leaving—with his computer under her arm.
“Wait! You can do the installation here.”
Her head slowly turned in his direction, dark glasses giving away nothing as she patiently waited for him to realize that they were going to do this her way.
She was barefoot, and her feet were dirty. At first, Riker had mistaken the strange young woman for one of the homeless insane. Her clothes were soiled, her hair was matted, and the odor of unchanged underwear was pungent. Yet she had identified herself as the sound engineer and personal assistant of the hottest radio star in America. As he trailed her through a maze of hallways, she said, “Everyone calls me Crazy Bitch.” This nationally known victim of verbal torture and humiliation was the first show-business celebrity he had ever met.
“You’re really mad, aren’t you? Yeah,” she said, “Zack told me you’d be mad.”
“Lady, you’ve got a gift for understatement.”
Crazy Bitch suddenly flattened against a wall, giving Riker a clear view of the tall blonde in sunglasses striding down the narrow corridor. He followed the example of his guide and joined up with the wall, for Kathy Mallory was not losing any momentum. This was why civilians always moved aside for her; she assumed they would want to save themselves before she could walk over them or through them. Riker had sometimes taken advantage of that, wading through crowds in her wake. Now she passed him by, never even glancing his way, as if they had never met.
“She’s from Highland Security,” said Crazy Bitch. “They cater to celebrities.” The sound engineer continued down the hall, then stood to one side and gestured toward a doorway. “This is my booth.” She nodded toward an adjacent door with a formidable lock. “And that one leads to the studio. Zack’s just signing off. He’ll buzz you in when the delivery guy leaves.”
Riker walked into her own domain, a claustrophobic space of electronics and blinking telephone lights. On the other side of a plate-glass window, Ian Zachary was seated before a desk of dials and levers and one clear space for his catered meal. An apron-clad delivery boy laid out a late supper that no steak-and-potatoes man could identify: slimy round things covered with white sauce and garnished with the leaves of alien vegetables. Bubbling designer water was poured into a wineglass. For that alone, Riker would have disliked the man, but he had larger issues tonight—a message left on his answering machine in Zachary’s voice and the words, So what’s it like to screw a hunchback?
The radio host flashed a smile at the uninvited guest in the sound-booth window. Riker wondered if this man knew him on sight, or was he simply anticipating a fast reaction to his telephone message? Zachary tapped a button on his console. After the loud buzz, Riker entered the studio and slammed the door behind him. That made the other man jump, perhaps believing that his visitor was homicidally angry. He had no way to know that Riker slammed all the doors in the world all the time.
“Pull up a chair, babe. Make yourself at home.”
Riker preferred to stand. He hoped his clenched fists would impart a strong desire to break the Englishman in half.
Unfortunately, Zachary was smiling again and taking no offense. “Have I got a deal for you—a fortune in free advertising.”
“I don’t give a shit about the advertising. Go fuck yourself.”
“If that was possible,” said Crazy Bitch, “he would’ve done it already. That’s his big dream.”
Ian Zachary stared at the woman walking toward him from the far side of the room. “I didn’t buzz you in. How did you get past the lock?”
“Feeling a little less secure?” She leaned over the dinner tray and picked up a knife that was only good for slicing butter. After scrutinizing it, she pronounced it “Too dull.” She picked up the fork and nodded her approval as she held it out to Riker. “Try this. Go for the throat.”
“I think I might be in love,” said Riker. “Are you married?”
“We’re pretty sure she’s a lesbian,” said Zachary.
Riker shrugged. “I can work around that.”
The woman bowed low over the dinner plate and deposited a glob of mucus on the food.
Her boss merely glanced at his ruined supper, then pushed it to one side. “Well, Riker, you might have some reservations about her table manners. You can’t take her anywhere.” He watched his assistant stalk out of the room, her bare feet slapping the floor. “She’s totally nuts. How did she get past the lock?”
“Does it matter?” Riker had watched her jam the lock with a toothpick after the delivery man had departed, but he elected not to share this information. “If she wants to hurt you, she will. Just get used to the idea. But I’m first.”
“I have a business deal for you. If the hunchback won’t come on the—”
“She’s never coming on your show.”
“I think I guessed that. Now I want you, Riker. You could work with me on the Reaper murders, keep the show from getting stale. You probably wonder why I’d help that freak hunt down the people who set me free. You think I’m an ungrateful bastard, and you’re right
about that.”
“No, I’m thinking you’re a moron.”
Apparently, Zachary enjoyed being insulted. Grinning, he held up a manila envelope with Riker’s name printed in Mallory’s neat block letters. “I know a lot about you.” He dropped the envelope on the desk and pushed it in Riker’s direction. “That’s your dossier. No ordinary detective. I understand that Special Crimes Unit is an elite squad, and my fans just love hero cops with multiple gunshot wounds. I think we can work together. I’ll give you access to everything I’ve got on the Reaper, and, babe, I’ve got plenty. My fans can get me anything I want.”
“Your fans are squirrels,” said Riker. “You’ve got nothing.” He was leafing through Mallory’s background report, a pack of lies. “And it would be a big mistake to call me babe one more time.” Mallory’s dossier had given him massive debts and a heavy mortgage for a summer house on Shelter Island, a place that he had never even visited. On the next page, she had jacked up his apartment rent to an amount that only a cop on the take could afford, thus painting him as a shady, money-hungry man with great bribe potential. He rolled the sheets into a paper truncheon. “I’ve got no idea why the feds don’t shut you down.”
“They tried. In fact, the FCC did suspend me for a few nights. Then a pack of ACLU lawyers beat up their lawyers on the issue of free speech. Oh, and then—you’ll love this part—an idiot judge lifted my suspension before the matter even went to a hearing. I’m betting the Reaper kills the last juror before the government gets my case into court. Bless the morons. And back to my job offer. In addition to all that free advertising, you get paid a bundle just for—”
“No deal.”
“Not so fast, Riker. I know what you do for a living these days. You clean crime scenes. That’s a joke job. And I know you need money.” He nodded to the dossier. “I have very good sources.”
“So do I. The jury verdict was a farce. The Chicago cops say you committed murder. No mistake, hard evidence and eyewitnesses. And it was real cold.”
“Well, this is what they didn’t tell you—because they didn’t know.” Zachary flipped a lever on his console. “Listen. This tape was never been played on the air.” And now the speakers carried the sound of breaking glass and a woman’s voice screaming obscenities. “I recorded this in my old Chicago studio—the first time she tried to kill me. She broke the window on her sound booth to get at me.”
Riker listened to the recorded voice of the shock-jock describing a woman who had gone mad, crunching broken glass underfoot as she rushed toward him with a broken shard in her hand. He even described a cut to his chest when she opened his skin.
Zachary turned off the machine, then unbuttoned his shirt to display a jagged scar. “It wasn’t deep, not as bad as it looks. The station manager called in a doctor. I gave him a lame story about an accident. The woman was never charged. So you can’t say I never gave her a break. They just took her off to a hospital. Ten days later, she was released from the psycho ward. That’s when she started following me around. Have you ever been stalked?”
Riker nodded. It was a rare day when he did not have someone following him around, though sometimes it was only a feeling.
“Well, she came after me again on the day she died. I ran into that building to get away from her, but she caught up to me on the roof. It was a construction site, lots of workmen standing around. I’m guessing the sling blade belonged to one of them. Wicked-looking knife. It was in her hand when she backed me up to the wall. Then she rushed me. So, yes, I pushed her off that roof. I stepped to one side and helped her right over the wall. The knife dropped with her, but the police never found it, and the workmen didn’t see it in her hand.”
“And none of this came out in your trial?”
“I wouldn’t let my attorneys use the tape. Incidentally, the prosecutor had her psychiatric history—years of voluntary hospital stays. She was always unstable, but the district attorney neglected to share that with my defense team. It would’ve ruined the case against me. You see, I wasn’t the first man she tried to kill. So I had more than enough grounds for a new trial if the verdict didn’t go my way.”
“If all this is true,” and Riker was skeptical, “why didn’t you plead self-defense?”
Zachary leaned forward, smiling. “Tell me, Riker, what’s more intriguing—a radio personality who killed a woman to save his own sorry ass—or a man who got away with cold-blooded murder?” He smiled. “Point taken? Good. After my acquittal, I was back on the air and my ratings were the highest in the history of Chicago radio. And then the major networks were calling me. New York City, every jock’s dream, and national syndication.”
“And now you help the Reaper kill off your own jury. You’re getting away with murder . . . again.”
“Only in America. I love this country. If you want fame, and you want it fast—well, then you’ve got to kill somebody. That’s the American way.”
“I’m out of here,” said Riker.
“Wait! Just hear me out, all right? You could be the one to catch the Reaper.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.” Riker turned his back on the man and walked toward the door.
“Wait—three minutes, that’s all I’m asking.” Zachary raised his voice. “And I won’t tell my audience about the hunchback, the prime suspect for the murder of an FBI agent. Just three minutes. That’s the deal.”
The man leaned far back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, making himself an easy target for a beating. Riker walked back to him, and Zachary sat up straight, perhaps believing that he was about to take a blow. But Riker only leaned over the console to push the lever that played the Chicago tape. He listened to the rest of the mad woman’s murder attempt, her screams subsiding to soft weeping as she was strapped to a gurney and taken away. And now she was dead.
“You drove that poor woman crazy.” Riker glanced back at the sound booth and the young girl behind the glass, Zachary’s current victim. “I know your style. You’re a damn psychopath.”
“Actually, I’m not. At my trial, the prosecutor’s shrink testified that I was a sociopath—not legally crazy. I’m also the nation’s foremost expert on the Reaper. So work with me. I’ll get you all the information you want. Would you like to see an autopsy picture, one of the Reaper’s kills?” He opened the console drawer, pulled out a glossy photograph and handed it to Riker. “I got that from a fan who works in the Chicago morgue. Now this is what I have in mind. One of the jurors is in New York City—”
“I heard your show last night,” said Riker. “Leave that poor bastard alone.”
“There’s something you should know about this juror, MacPherson.”
“Your three minutes are up. Don’t go near Jo, not on or off the air.” He pointed to the crazy woman behind the window. “If she can get through that lock—I can.”
After leaving the studio, he paused at the open door of the sound booth to speak with the young woman inside. She had freckles, and that broke his heart. “You should quit this job,” he said. “Just walk away.”
“I can’t.” Her eyes had a hint of gratitude, and mild surprise was also there. Kindness would be something rare to her these days. She was like a child on the verge of tears, though she was smiling when she said, “I want to be famous.”
Riker nodded, silently responding with Ian Zachary’s words in his head. Then you’ve got to kill somebody.
11
ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE THE RADIO STATION, Riker was greeted by a small band of excited people. Their outstretched hands held pens and autograph books. Disappointment set in as they quickly identified him as a nobody, then turned their attentions back to the door, waiting for someone more worthy, somebody famous.
Mallory’s tan sedan was not among the vehicles along the curb. Riker focused on the one parked some distance away. Nothing about this automobile would set it apart from the rest, but the suit and tie of the man behind the wheel was the standout feature of a security detail. After the midn
ight hour, this was no longer a neighborhood of suits. Riker approached the car at a blind-side angle, then ripped open the door and slid into the front seat beside a startled FBI agent.
“I wanna see Marvin Argus, right here, right now!”
While waiting for Argus, the time passed in easy conversation with the local FBI man, whose military service was thirty years behind him, though he still wore the crew cut and retained the hard body of his army days. Agent Hennessey was not much of a drinker and liked the early morning hours best, but the two men did find a common ground in their hatred of divorce lawyers.
From force of habit, Riker cultivated every contact with the New York bureau. Tonight, establishing rapport had been easy, almost instant—thanks to all the old newspaper headlines on his ambush by a psychotic teenager. So, quite naturally, the two men discussed the lighter side of getting shot in the line of duty. Agent Hennessey had a bullet wound of his own. He assured Riker that come summer, bathing suit weather, the scars would be magnets for bikini-clad cop groupies. More bonding occurred after discovering that they were both addicts. Two cigarette embers glowed in the dark of the car, and Riker learned that Hennessey’s bureau chief was not a happy man these days, not since Special Agent Marvin Argus had blown into town from Chicago with his own crew. The man stopped short of making derogatory remarks about a fellow agent. But then, Hennessey had never met Argus.
“You’re in for a treat,” said Riker. “When he smiles, you’ll wanna deck him, but you won’t know why. I keep my hands in my pockets when I talk to the guy.”
Finally, Marvin Argus arrived in a large white sedan with rental plates. He pulled over to the curb only two feet from the New York agent’s front bumper. This earned him a slow shake of the head from Hennessey, for Argus had just parked his white elephant in the middle of a covert detail. The man from Chicago was broadly smiling as he approached the other agent’s car, then leaned down to the open window on the driver’s side. “So Riker spotted you, huh? Well, forget it, Hennessey. You’re not in any trouble.”
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