by D. F. Bailey
“You can’t be serious!” Busby stood up and wheeled about. His fists rolled into two hammers as he tried to restrain his temper.
“Detectives.” Lou Levine held up a hand. “We have every right to protect our sources, and you know it. Now I called you here to advise you that we have a name. We’ve given it to you. Vincent Sessions. Our obligations — moral and legal — are fulfilled.”
“Fuck!” Busby lifted his chrome chair by the back and drove the legs onto the carpet.
“Dan,” Albescu whispered. “We got the name. Let’s find Sessions. We can deal with the source later.”
Busby drew a loud breath. Once again he narrowed his eyes as he studied Finch. He seemed to be calculating the sum of information that Finch had added to what he already knew. “All right,” he said, “we’ll take it from here.”
Albescu leaned forward and clicked off the cassette recorder.
“Let us know if you need anything more,” Levine said and stood up. He faked a generous smile. “And thanks for coming down.”
Albescu lifted the cassette deck from the coffee table and slipped it into his briefcase. Busby took his file in his hand. As they gathered their belongings, Busby said, “If this plays out — this lead to Vincent Sessions — we’ll want to talk to you again.”
“Fine,” Will said as he rose from his chair. “Any time,” he added, knowing that he had to stay on their side if the case broke open and he finally got his exclusive interview.
After the two agents left the office, Lou closed the door and turned to Will. “You’re treading a fine line, Will. They could easily have cuffed you and taken you in.”
“I was just playing for some leverage,” he replied. “Isn’t that what Wally would do?”
Levine laughed. “Yeah, you’re right.” Then with a frown, he added, “Sadly.”
※
When Lou and Will returned to the boardroom, the editorial meeting appeared to be wrapping up. Wally glanced at the lawyer and Will as they made their way to their chairs.
“You settle everything with the FBI?” The question was addressed to Lou, and then he turned his attention to Finch.
“I think so,” Lou said in a voice that left room for doubt. “Will had to claim first amendment protection.”
“Really?”
“I had to,” Finch said and shrugged.
“Good. No need to apologize.” Wally seemed pleased with the answer. “Stories like these push us to use all the resources we have. If you know you’re right, stick to your guns.
“Okay. What else do we have?” Wally continued and glanced at Sumner and Olivia.
“My contact in the medical examiner’s office whispered something over coffee this morning.” Olivia folded her hands on the table. “A forensic detail that could be important.”
“Tick-tock,” Wally said with an impatient frown. “Don’t make us guess.”
“Sorry.” She nodded and continued. “So apparently a trace of organic tissue found under Jojo’s fingernails matches Madden’s DNA.”
After a moment’s pause, Wally asked, “And that means what, exactly?”
“She must have cut him,” Finch said. He turned to Olivia. “Were there any scratch wounds found on Madden?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and lifted her hands in an empty gesture.
“Well, when he attacked me, Madden was already injured,” Finch said. “On his right shoulder.”
Wally turned to Olivia. “Can you check it out?”
“I can try.”
“That means she got her digs in. Literally,” Finch said. “Before he killed her. She didn’t go down without a struggle.” Then he realized that without Jojo’s first cut at Madden he wouldn’t have been able to exploit the injury. Very likely, in fighting for her own life, she’d saved Will and Cecily.
Wally nodded, a silent acknowledgment that although she’d defended herself against a monster twice her size, the outcome was inevitable. He turned to Finch. “All right, that leaves your story, Will. Last night when Madden came for you. Are you ready to tell it?”
He set his hands flat on the table. “I think so.”
“Good. Set aside a half hour with Olivia after we break. She’ll run the interview. I want it on the front page tomorrow morning. That’s priority one.”
Finch felt a hint of betrayal. Suddenly the tables had been turned on him. “You mean I don’t get to write it?”
“Not this one. You’re the story, not the reporter.”
“But —” He paused when a thin blade of pain shot along the length of his injured forearm.
Wally held up a hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll get to write the first-person feature sometime down the road. Once we have all the facts. It’ll be the capstone story, I guarantee it. But not yet.” He lowered his hand and continued. “Okay, priority two is yours, Ross. Backgrounders on all the TruForce board members and directors. Where do we stand on that?”
“Almost done. It’ll be on your desk before I leave tonight,” Sumner said. He brushed a six-inch-long band of blond hair from his eyes and tucked it over his left ear.
Apart from a brief greeting when they shook hands, this was the first time Finch had heard Sumner speak up. Until now, he seemed like an unknown quantity. But if he could provide a three-sixty view of TruForce, it would add an essential dimension to the story.
“Good,” Wally replied. “Okay, so from what I can see, that leaves two unanswered questions. One: If the feds confirm that Felix Madden is not the five knives serial killer, how the hell did he know about it — and then do a copy-cat killing?”
“From Ironwood Prison,” Finch said.
“Ironwood?”
“That’s what he told me. He heard the story inside. As if the five knives murders were common knowledge. He said, ‘men have lips, men have ears.’ ”
A grimace of disgust crossed Olivia’s face. “Obviously, a master of human observation.”
“Why would he tell you that?” Sumner asked. “It’s completely self-incriminating.”
“I don’t know.” Finch shrugged again. Now that he recalled what Madden said before their fight, he realized much of Madden’s personality and motivations would remain a mystery. “I think he was ramped up on methamphetamines. He was injured. He had nowhere to run. So —”
“And he’s a sociopath,” Lou Levine cut in. “Sometimes there’s no making sense of what they do.”
“All right,” Wally’s tone suggested he wanted to move on. “Olivia, make sure you cover all that in your interview with Will. That takes us to question two: our missing link. How did Julian Blomquist hook up with Felix Madden?”
Finch suppressed a smile as he glanced around the room. “Again, I can tell you what Madden told me.” He still found the answer hard to believe. “They’re cousins.”
Olivia turned to him. “Cousins?”
“Really?” Wally lowered his jaw and studied Finch over the rim of his glasses.
“It was one of the last things he said to me.” Finch nodded. “I can’t imagine why he’d lie about it.”
“No? Maybe not,” Wally said. “Are you ready to dig in on that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Try to contact Blomquist’s family members. If they won’t talk to you, then run a check through the state birth, marriage and death registries. Check California first. If you come up empty then search state by state, going west to east.”
“Sure thing,” he said, his voice flat, almost inaudible. He didn’t have a clue how to steer his way through these databases. Or where to begin.
Olivia noticed his puzzled expression and glanced at Wally. “Jeremy Costain can help him with that,” she said as she turned back to Finch. “Record searches are his front and backyard.”
“Right. Get Costain to pinch hit on this thing. Tell him I said to give you two hours of his time. Then after you verify the link between Blomquist and Madden,” Wally continued, “write a sidebar on it.”
“Got
it,” Finch said.
“At some point, we should determine how far back they’ve been running a kill book. Is this a one-off, or what?” His voice dropped to a baritone murmur. “And Lord help us if it isn’t.”
No one responded. Everyone appeared to understand that Wally’s appeal to the Lord indicated the meeting was about to end.
“All right, that’s it, people. Unless you’re on the weekend desk, have a good weekend. I want everyone to report back here by noon on Monday. And remember why we do this.” Wally’s voice was brighter now. “Without the facts — without the truth — we can kiss this country goodbye.”
At that moment Finch felt as if he’d arrived. He was part of the team now and he knew the story couldn’t move forward without him. Depending on where the various threads of the crimes led, the Post would need him to weave the whole story together for weeks — maybe months — to come.
※ — SIXTEEN — ※
WILL RETURNED TO his desk on Monday morning and dug into the research linking Felix Madden and Paul Julian Blomquist. But as the morning wore on, connecting Blomquist to Madden became problematic.
As Wally predicted, none of the Blomquist family members would answer any of Finch’s questions. First, he called his wife, Suzanne, who abruptly hung up when Finch identified himself as a reporter at the Post. His younger brother, Roman Blomquist, the director of communications at TruForce Investments, threatened to sue the Post (and Finch personally) before he cursed and hung up.
But with the help of Jeremy Costain, Finch discovered that Julian Blomquist and Felix Madden were indeed cousins. Within an hour, Costain’s savvy navigation of the Vital Records section of the California Department of Public Health revealed that in 1968, eight-year-old Donna Rasmussen — later to become Felix Madden’s mother — had been placed in foster care following her own mother’s death from heart failure. After the state declared that it was unable to locate the eight-year-old’s father, Alfred and Polly Wilmott formally adopted the orphaned girl and gave her their surname. They brought Donna into their home in Sacramento, at which point Donna became a stepsister to Josie, the Wilmott’s biological daughter. In 1981, Josie married Abner Blomquist, a local insurance salesman. Ten months later Donna married Waylon Madden, a telephone lineman from Fresno. The stepsisters bore their first sons within two months of one another. The baby boys were technically cousins — but only in the legal sense of the word. And while they may not have been born psychopaths, together they had become something worse.
At the noon editorial meeting Finch made his report to Wally showing the connections linking Blomquist and Madden. He acknowledged that Jeremy Costain had figured it out. Then Will thanked Olivia Simmons and Ross Sumner for their support and direction. When the meeting wrapped up at twelve-thirty, Will had no doubts that he was a part of the team. Although a lot of work remained to report the full story, everyone was smiling.
High from the effervescent mood, he bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich on rye at Grove Yerba Buena, returned to the office and then started to write a criminal profile of Felix Madden. Just after two o’clock, he received a call from the blood lab.
“This is Agatha Castellanos. I have your blood test results.” The voice had a formal, bureaucratic tone. “I can give them to you over the phone if you like. If not, I can mail them to you. Or I can do both.”
“Yes. Of course,” he said. “Over the phone.” He drew a breath.
“Good news, Mr. Finch,” she said, a little more personably. “Your profile came in HIV-negative.”
He exhaled a sigh of relief. “So that means I’m clear? No chance of getting AIDS?”
“As of today, no. You’re clear. As I said, it’s good news.” Now the lab tech’s voice sounded almost affectionate. He could tell she was pleased, too. Likely she had to make several calls a day that went the other way.
“What about false negatives?” Part of him couldn’t quite believe it. “Do you ever get those?”
“Rarely. Almost never.” A pause. “You’re good to go. Anything else I can do to help you?”
“No. I guess not.”
“Great. Enjoy your love life.” She laughed and hung up.
He checked his watch. Cecily had probably finished her coffee break. He knew that she’d want to hear the news about his blood test. More important, he wanted to speak to her — to hear the sound of her voice. Within thirty seconds he’d connected with her from his desk phone.
“How’s Momma doing today?” he asked.
“Momma’s all right. For the first time, I’m definitely feeling pregnant.” Her voice revealed a weariness. “It’s kind of exhausting.”
“I can imagine.” In fact, he couldn’t. Conception, pregnancy, and birth all remained mysterious to him. He understood them about as well as he understood the mystery behind quantum mechanics.
“So I just got the call from the blood lab.” To tease her, he let the sentence hang.
“You did? And?” Her voice rose in anticipation. He knew she could tell the result was good.
“And I’m fine. HIV-negative.”
“Fantastic. Great news.”
“I know. It is.”
A moment of silence slipped between them. Will wanted to let her move the conversation forward, let her decide if she wanted to talk about Madden’s attack on them. She did.
“You still thinking about what happened?” she asked.
“Not so much now. It’s over and done with.”
After a pause, she said, “Yeah I can see that in you. I don’t know how you do that.”
“It’s a kind of focus.” He thought for a moment. “You think of something else, something better — like the baby — and concentrate on that.”
“As simple as that?” She sounded dismissive. “They taught you this in the army?”
“No. Not the army.” He felt like changing the focus right now. “How ’bout you? You okay?”
After her shocked reaction to Madden’s attack, Cecily seemed to shake off the worst aftereffects by the time Will was released from the hospital. Over the weekend they’d both settled into something that resembled their usual routine. Finch bowed out of the baseball game, knowing that Phil Lees would gladly play Will’s position as the team catcher. Over Saturday and Sunday, Will and Cecily were never more than ten feet from one another. Whenever she expressed any anxiety, he drew her into his arms until the moment passed. But he knew from his experience in Iraq that PTSD could take weeks to manifest. Sometimes years. J.R. provided a sorrowful example of how your life could unravel.
“I think so.”
“You sure?” He glanced around the bog to see if any reporters were listening to him. When he saw no evidence of eavesdropping, he continued. “I mean, if you want to talk about it, like really talk about it, we can get some help.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You don’t need to keep asking.” Her voice perked up. “My baby’s healthy. I love my job. I’m about to marry the man who saved my life. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
He laughed and then quickly stifled it under his breath. “You’re right. And we’re going to celebrate.”
“We are?”
“Absolutely. Today’s payday. I think I’m going to buy a new phone.”
“Finally.”
“And Saturday I’ll take you back to Sausalito on the ferry.”
“You want to try that again?” She sounded hesitant. “Could be bad luck, you know. What if you drop the phone overboard again?”
“No. I’m sure of it. And the weather’s supposed to be clear. We can hang out on the stern deck.”
“You’re tempting fate, you know.”
“No, no. It’s exactly the opposite. Everything in my life is heading up. I want us to stay in this groove.”
“I know. I want the same thing. Let’s stay there and make it last forever.”
He realized that her mood had changed. She sounded warm and confident, and he felt the pleasure of being part of that.
“Fore
ver and a day,” he said. “All right, I’ve got to get back to work here. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
As he hung up, he chuckled to himself. At the illusion of forever. He believed that there was always — and only — one moment. One today. If you were lucky, another day followed. Then another. Soon the days marked a path through life. Sometimes, for those who realized it was possible, you could glimpse the possibilities ahead and chart a course. Maybe he and Cecily could do that without becoming rigid or obsessed. The mistake would be to blindly embrace the illusion that they were masters of their destiny. That alone could destroy them.
※
By four o’clock he’d finished the profile of Madden’s criminal past and prison incarcerations. He was about to reread the story when his desk phone rang. The call screen showed an incoming line from Dixie Lindstrom.
“Will, I’ve got Agent Raymond Albescu on line two for you,” Dixie said. “From the FBI.”
The FBI. His pulse quickened. This call could go any one of a dozen different directions. He rubbed a hand over his face and realized that he should prepare. He opened a new file on this laptop.
“All right, Dixie,” he said, “put him through.”
“Press two and you’ll be connected,” she said and then added, “Good luck.”
He pressed the flashing button — 2 — heard the line click, then leaned forward. “Agent Albescu. How can I help you?”
“The question is, how can I help you?” Albescu’s heavy whisper had an upbeat tone.
Finch typed a name on the top line of the screen: Albescu.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“That’s good.” A soft laugh followed. “That means there’s been no leaks.”
“Uhhh … what leaks are you referring to?” He typed: leaks?
“Vincent Sessions. We bagged him Saturday evening down in the Tenderloin.” He paused as if he were considering how much to reveal on the phone. “He was going under an alias. Richard Babcock.”
Finch typed the name and then paused. “How did you connect Babcock to Sessions?”