Find Virgil (A Novel of Revenge)

by Frank Freudberg

  “Sorry,” she said, tucking her hair behind one ear and leaning forward to blow on the still-too hot slice. “But I get ravenous when I’m nervous.” The mozzarella steamed, and she dropped the slice back onto the paper plate.

  “Why are you so nervous?” he said. “You’re taking orders from the woman you report to. If she’s forged a document, then no one is going to hold you responsible. You’re just a cog in the wheel.”

  “I know that. But I’m not at the top of my form. Anthony’s dying, and taking care of him’s killing me. I can’t seem to control my mind. I worry and worry about everything. And what I’m worried about with Pratt is that he knows, or thinks he knows, that I know what’s in those files. If it’s something bad, something he doesn’t want anyone to know… well, you’ve heard the rumors. Who knows how far he’d go?” She looked through sad eyes at Rhoads and let him see her looking. “Okay, let’s say I do what you said. Make an extra set of disks before I erase everything. The disks won’t protect me unless Pratt knows I made the copies, and if he knows, then he’ll definitely do something about it. It’s a Catch-22, and I’m the one who’s caught. I’m frightened. Really frightened.”

  “At the police academy they taught us that any time you’re in a situation and you have to draw your gun, you’ve already made about ten mistakes. But that was just smart-ass twenty-year guys spouting off. The truth is, there are plenty of times you’re minding your own business and things just happen. Those are the times when you’re glad as hell you remembered to bring your gun. So I recommend you make those disks. You may never need them.”

  “Then again…”

  “Then again, you may be glad you have them.”

  “Let’s say I do it. What do I do with them?”

  “First, let me see what’s on them. You’re not wrong about Pratt, but Midas is his Achilles heel. We’re both involved in Midas, if only peripherally. But if Pratt is as bad as you think—and I think you’re right about that—our only leverage is knowing what he knows and what he’s after. Once I’ve seen them, you hide them. Hide them very carefully,” Rhoads said.

  “What if I get caught making the copies?”

  “Can’t you fix it up so you don’t? And if you do get caught, you can always say you weren’t sure that Trichina was acting legally, and you kept a set to protect Old Carolina while you tried to figure out what to do, which would not be a lie.”

  “But it’s illegal to make those copies, no matter what bull I make up to explain it,” she said.

  “Let me tell you something. Have you ever heard the expression ‘impersonating a police officer’?”

  “Of course.”

  “You think it’s illegal to impersonate a police officer?”

  “Of course.”

  “Wrong. It’s only illegal if you get someone to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do because you made them think you’re a police officer.”

  She stared at him. “And your point?”

  “You make copies of computer disks and just lock them up somewhere, it’s not too much of a crime. It’s not like you’re selling the information for personal gain. You’re not damaging Old Carolina. That’s what law boils down to—did one guy cause another guy injury.”

  Mary nodded.

  “Or,” Rhoads said, “if you want, give the disks to me.” His mind started churning, and he had a second thought. “The thing is, you’ll have to get in tomorrow and quick make a copy of the disks before Trichina comes to Documentation.”

  “Wrong. You can’t copy Level Three documents that easily. It’s a complicated, time-consuming process. I’ll need hours.”

  “How are you going to do it with Trichina standing right there making sure you don’t make a second copy?”

  “Already thought of that.” Mary smiled, pleased with herself. “That’ll be the easiest thing in the world.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. First I have to print out a hard copy of everything.”

  “She’ll be standing right there watching every keystroke.”

  “Then, after I’ve printed everything out, she’s going to want me to delete every single Midas document from the computer.”

  “She’ll be right there watching.”

  “So when the computer asks me which group of files to delete, I type in…” Mary took a pen from her bag and wrote on Rhoads’s napkin. In all capital letters, she printed MIDOCS. “That’s the computer’s shorthand for ‘Midas Documents.’”

  “That’ll delete them, right?” Rhoads said.

  “Wrong. Take a look at the ‘0’ in ‘MIDOCS’.” Rhoads did.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s not the letter ‘O.’ It’s a zero.” She drew a narrower character. She drew “0.” “As far as the computer is concerned, it’s totally different.”

  “Won’t the computer flash an error message or something to alert you there’s no such set of documents to erase?”

  “Not if I create a MIDOCS directory with a zero instead of a letter ‘0.’ Then it will have something to delete. That I can do quickly.”

  Rhoads studied the napkin. “All this is a little over my dinosaur head. You’re sure it’ll work?”

  “If I don’t have a heart attack or shake so hard that the computer tilts.” She spoke lightly but was being brave. Rhoads could see her hands tremble.

  Rhoads wanted to touch her. He wanted to reach across the table and take hold of her hand, squeeze it. Maybe kiss it.

  Instead of taking her hand, he complained about his coffee and tried to flag down the restaurant’s only waitress, who was busy laughing loudly and jumping back every time the guy making the pizzas grabbed at her.

  “It’ll be all right. You’ll see, Mary.”

  She shrugged and picked up a slice of pizza, finally finding a place where she could take hold with her teeth, negotiated a bite, and struggled with a long string of cheese.

  “I hope you’re right,” she said. “But something Pratt said is what’s got me super nervous. Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

  “That’s easy when you work at Old Carolina. What’d he say?”

  She leaned in a few inches and lowered her voice. “He asked me, when he called me at home Monday night, he asked me if someone could access the Midas files, then change the log that reports who’s seen them.”

  “That’s a good question. What’s the answer?”

  “Besides Mr. Pratt and Anna Maria? I’m the only one who can do that.”

  43

  Saturday, October 7

  Philadelphia

  “Dr. Trice?”

  She looked up from her desk. “Mr. Rhoads.”

  Rhoads, wearing a suit, stood in the doorway to the cluttered office of Beatrice Trice, MD, PhD, professor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Psychiatry. He was there at Franklin’s request. It was busy work, but Rhoads was happy to play along. He knew Franklin didn’t trust him completely, not yet, but as long as he wanted to keep him close it was fine. Once Rhoads had his hands on the Midas documents, he’d be in a position to deal.

  There was a lot to juggle, to be sure—he had to find the killer to collect the bonus from Pratt and get the FBI off his back. He knew Franklin knew he didn’t have anything to do with Midas, but that didn’t mean Rhoads wouldn’t get roped in and tainted if it became a political necessity.

  Franklin wanted to take Pratt down almost as much as he wanted to catch the killer, but that would be a tough job. Pratt had people in the halls of power on his side, and if Franklin thought the best he could do was hurt Pratt by offering up Rhoads as an accomplice of sorts, Rhoads knew he’d be tempted to do so. Rhoads had to catch the killer to help Teddy, and he had to deliver something substantive to Franklin to save himself.

  Mary was the key to that.

  Rhoads would hold on to the Midas f
iles until he knew exactly what Franklin was willing to do to get at Pratt. Federal whistleblower laws allowed inside informants to recover a percentage of the payout if a Federal case was successful against a corporation, so there was another possible payout on the back end. A long shot, but something to keep his eye on. Until then, he played along and went where he was told to go.

  So here he was at Dr. Trice’s office. In a letter transmitted to the FBI through U.S. Senator George Brackenham’s office, Dr. Trice had suggested that she had possibly divined hidden meaning in the published accounts of Muntor’s call to FBI Headquarters. Rhoads figured Franklin thought it was a waste of time, otherwise he would have sent one of his own men. But Franklin had to cover all his bases in case it all went wrong.

  Ceiling-high stacks of medical journals, files, reports, newspapers, and notebooks decorated the room. An overgrown Wandering Jew hung in a plastic pot from the ceiling.

  Dr. Trice was a small, plump woman in her seventies. She dyed her hair an attention-getting shade of red that nature hadn’t thought of. She sat, visible only from the shoulders up, behind her desk.

  Dr. Trice used a spoon to scoop something out of a plastic container. Rhoads could not determine what it was. He walked in and sat down, opened a small soft-leather portfolio and removed a notebook. He turned to a blank page and took a pen from his breast pocket and clicked it open. He wrote “Interview with Dr. Trice” at the top of the page.

  “Thank you for contacting the Bureau, Dr. Trice. I understand you have a theory regarding the cyanide killer.”

  “Until I complained to George Brackenham, no one at the FBI seemed very interested in hearing me out. Nevertheless,” she sighed and took another scoopful of whatever she had in front of her, “what inspired my call is the published transcript of Virgil’s communication with the FBI.”

  “What about it?”

  Dr. Trice scraped inside the container. “Don’t tell me the FBI actually thinks Virgil really revealed anything about himself in that call. Or do they?”

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to be asking the questions, Dr. Trice.”

  Dr. Trice smiled and made eye contact. “But I’m a psychiatrist. Even the FBI can’t stop us from asking questions. And please, call me Bea.”

  “Okay, Bea. Here’re my answers to your next ten questions. ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Can’t say.’ ‘That’s classified.’ ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Can’t say.’ ‘That’s classified.’ ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Can’t answer that.’ ‘Can’t say.’ ‘That’s classified.’ Now, please go on.”

  “Virgil’s message is disturbing. That’s why I called. To make certain that the FBI understands, fully understands, the extent of the problem Virgil presents.”

  “Disturbing. You mean, apart from the fact that he’s smart, devious, doesn’t seem to mind killing hundreds of people, and probably has a legitimate reason to hate tobacco companies?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Trice said. “Normally, if you’ll excuse the use of that term in this situation, people who behave as Virgil behaves are seeking attention, and therefore, whether they acknowledge it to themselves or not, they have a desire to be caught. Getting caught generates a lot of attention.”

  Rhoads gave her his full attention. He doubted she had more to offer than the entire FBI profiling division, but he knew that a good investigator didn’t prejudge new information.

  Dr. Trice continued. “People who do the kinds of things Virgil does want their pictures in the newspaper. They want to be interviewed on television, even if it has to be from a prison cell. They want to be talked about. That proud child who brings home a pretty picture from kindergarten for all to praise. Such people rarely have the personal resources to endure the level of stress Virgil must be under for any extended period.”

  Rhoads shifted in the seat again. “And you think Virgil’s an exception to this.”

  “No. I’m convinced he’s an exception to this.”

  “So, he’s not looking for a forum?”

  “Oh, no, he is, and he’s already found it. The media. He seems to know a lot about the media. He’s already impressed me with his skill at manipulating them. The exceptional part is that I’m afraid Virgil has no desire to be caught. It’s even likely that the stress he’s feeling is for him a positive experience, almost joyous. He has finally found the thing at which he excels. Mr. Rhoads, how will you feel when you finally find the thing that feels right for you? And if my idea that Virgil’s dying is correct—and I imagine it is—finally finding the thing he’s good at in his last few days on Earth is a powerful discovery. It will spur him to heights of accomplishment he’s probably never imagined.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “For one thing, as far as I know, Virgil hasn’t asked for money or anything which would benefit him personally. That means that his compensation derives from what he’s already doing. And his behavior tells us exactly what that is.”

  “Which is…”

  “Which is his control over the situation. He can make the CEO of a major corporation into his own marionette and he commands the attention of the entire nation. He has a player and an audience, so we just need to discover what story he wants to tell. That will be one of the keys to finding him…”

  “Pratt’s his puppet.”

  “Yes. And no matter how advantageous you think it may be to humor him and obey his commands, don’t. He will punish you anyway. That’s what he meant when he called Pratt’s reading of the Surgeon General’s Report a ‘confession’ and said that it had to be delivered that way. Nothing will be contrite enough to satisfy him. First you confess. You’ve admitted guilt. Then he metes out justice. My guess is that Virgil’s not a member of the Forgiveness-of-the-Month Club. Body bags will be needed no matter what you do. Does the FBI understand this? No. Virgil is not a political terrorist or a consumer-product tamperer. And if your apprehension strategy is based on the supposition that he is a terrorist, you’ll be in more trouble than you are now.”

  “Well, not to contradict you, Bea, personally, I do see him as a terrorist. He’s getting something he wants through the use of terror. Now, what do you call that?”

  “Virgil is, in his mind, an avenging angel. He has a lesson to teach.”

  “Okay, Dr. Trice. Then who, in your opinion, should we be looking for?”

  “I believe there are two different personalities to consider. There is the personality of the man Virgil was for most of his life. And there is a second, I will say, ‘super’ personality that has come into being through planning and executing this crime. The original personality is that of a petty, resentful man, who has always felt that his abilities were slighted and unrecognized, someone who believes he has never gotten what he deserved.”

  “He’s getting recognition now.”

  “Yes, but that recognition is for who he has become, not who he was. To look at him, you would think him an ordinary, perhaps rather unpleasant person unworthy of much notice. The super-personality is dangerous because the abilities he imagines he has, are, in some sense, real.”

  “You got all that from the transcript of a quick telephone conversation?”

  “No, Rhoads, I got all that from forty-four years of sitting in offices like this, from working with thousands and thousands of people. I’m a scientist, and I can tell you that the test of any scientific theory lies in whether it can predict a specific outcome. I’m prepared to predict a specific outcome that will enable the FBI to assess the value of my insights.”

  “You’ve got my attention.”

  “He gave you a hint about additional murders he’ll commit before the next broadcast deadline, which is… when?”

  “Wednesday night. He gave a hint? What is it?”

  “I can tell you where it is in the transcript. He used it once in a call and once in the tape he left at the phone booth in Newark. Deciphering its specific meaning requires me
knowing more than you are willing to share. But here it is anyway.” Dr. Trice hesitated. “It’s his use of the word ‘star.’ He jimmied it into his speeches.”

  Dr. Trice picked up a document that Rhoads recognized as a copy of the transcript. Rhoads reached into his briefcase to get his own copy. She flipped through several pages.

  “What page are you on?” Rhoads asked.

  “Page four, beginning at line number fourteen. This comes in where he states what time he wants to hear Pratt read the confession: ‘It doesn’t have to be precisely nine, but it should be within a few minutes. Don’t keep me waiting long. I’m one guy you don’t want to piss off. I’ll be a big star burning brightly while I’m waiting. And I don’t wait patiently.’”

  “‘I’ll be a big star burning brightly while I’m waiting,’” Rhoads repeated. “That means something to you?”

  “If I’m right about who he is, it sure as hell does. Listen, and read that line again.”

  Rhoads read it to himself, moving his lips to show her he was doing as asked.

  “Now, doesn’t that line sound a little forced, a little out of context?” she continued. “I think he had planned to work that line into the call. If only I could hear the tape. Then I might be able to say. Without more information, I can only guess. I think it’s clear that until he gets what he’s asked for from Pratt, he’s going to keep burning. But the word ‘star’ is the tip-off. I had to think about it for a while. ‘Star’ has special significance.

  “Listen to the tape again, and tell me if you don’t agree. Probably ‘star’ has something to do with where he’s going to strike. Too vague to help you now, but after he commits his next murders, we’ll all see that he had already told us about it, how clever he’s been.”