“How do you think the Shrike found Marshall?”
There was a pause but then he finally spoke again.
“He made contact.”
“Who did? Marshall?”
“Yes. We knew about the ones who died. Clients told us that we had—that some of our profiles were … defunct. Marshall looked into it. He checked the downloads and found the link between them. It was him. Marshall reached out. He told him he had to stop.”
That was all the explanation he gave, but again it helped me put more pieces of the story together.
“And that’s how the Shrike found him? He traced the contact?”
“Somehow. We took precautions but somehow he found him.”
“‘We’?”
“We agreed to send the note. Marshall sent it.”
“Let’s go back to Orton. Marshall fixed his case, right? The DNA.”
“I’m not talking about that.”
“Then Orton owed him. He gave you the DNA.”
“I told you, I—”
“Okay, okay, forget it. What about the Shrike? You said you know who he is. Give me a name. You do that and you won’t be a villain in this. You’ll be somebody trying to stop it. Like you said, this wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“And then you give the name to the FBI?”
“I can or you can. Doesn’t matter as long as you are the one who gives it.”
“I’ll think about that. It’s all I have.”
I guessed he meant that the Shrike’s ID was all he had to trade in exchange for not being prosecuted.
“Well, don’t think too long,” I said. “If you found it, the FBI will eventually find it and then you’ve got nothing to give.”
He didn’t respond. I realized I was asking for the Shrike’s ID when I didn’t even have my source’s real name.
“What about you? Can you give me your name so I know who I’m talking to?”
“Rogue.”
“No, your real name. You know my name—why don’t you tell me yours?”
I waited. Then I heard the connection go dead.
“Hello?”
He was gone.
“Shit.”
The interview was over.
THE SHRIKE
33
He watched the reporter across the parking lot. He seemed to be going from one call to the next. And he had snuck a photo of the two men leaving the coroner’s office. They were obviously cops—homicide detectives, since this was where they brought dead people. The whole thing was curious. How much did the reporter know? How much did the police know?
He had followed him from the office, making the identification off the photo on the FairWarning website. The reporter had been in a hurry then, running through yellow lights and driving in the carpool lane on the freeway even though he was clearly alone. Now he had slowed down and was just sitting in the Jeep making calls. The Shrike wondered what he had learned inside the coroner’s office.
He drummed his fingers on the center console. He was agitated. Things had gone wrong and were spinning out of his control. He was still frustrated and angry about Vogel. Once he had started interrogating the man from the mall, he quickly learned he was not Vogel but had to finish the kill. He now wondered who had warned Vogel or how he had known it was a trap. Maybe it was Vogel who had trapped him.
Finally, the reporter pulled out of his parking space and headed to the exit. The Shrike had backed in so he could also make an easy exit and not lose his quarry. From the coroner’s office he turned left on Mission and then took the next left on Marengo. The Shrike stayed with him and followed the reporter as he drove onto the northbound 5 freeway.
For the next thirty minutes he followed the reporter on freeways going north and then west into the San Fernando Valley. He finally realized that he was heading toward the mall where the Shrike had been just that morning.
Again, he seemed to know things.
The reporter pulled into the parking garage and then continued up the ramps to the top level. He parked and walked to the spot, crossing without hesitation under the yellow tape the police had left in place. He looked down over the concrete balustrade. He used his phone to take photos. He backed away from the edge and took more.
The Shrike realized several things. The killing of the man here had already been identified as his work. The reporter knew about it, indicating he had sources inside the police department and medical examiner’s office. The questions that remained were about Vogel. What did he know and who had he shared it with? Was he talking to the police or was he talking to the reporter?
Final conclusion: eliminating the reporter now would be a mistake when he might be the best chance of getting to Vogel.
The Shrike changed his plans, deciding to let the reporter live. For now.
JACK
34
I got back to the office in the late afternoon and started feeding the new quotes and information from RogueVogue to Emily. She had already put together a fifteen-hundred-word story, which was generally considered the line at FairWarning when reader exhaustion starts to set in. But the new stuff was vital. RogueVogue was one of the two men who created Dirty4 and had set a killer down the path of death and destruction.
“I’m just going to have to tighten up other parts,” she said.
“We can also keep some of the minor stuff for the follow-up stories,” I said. “I’m sure there will be many.”
We were sitting together in her pod.
“True,” she said. “But if we have good stuff now, there’s no reason not to try to get it in.”
“You think Myron’s going to throw a flag because we only have his online name?”
“Probably. Are we one hundred percent sure he’s the guy?”
I thought about it for a moment and nodded.
“He responded to the email I sent to the address that clearly belonged to Hammond’s partner. And he expressed enough knowledge about the site and what was happening to verify who he was. So, we don’t have his name, but it’s him. For sure.”
Emily didn’t nod in agreement or say anything. This told me she was still uncomfortable with putting her name on a story that contained information she wasn’t completely sure of.
“All right,” I said. “I was hoping to avoid having to do this but I will call Rachel and see if the bureau has made any headway in identifying the guy.”
“Why are you avoiding calling her?” Emily asked.
I realized I had just talked myself into a jam. I would have to reveal to Emily the rift that had opened between Rachel and me.
“She has taken the bureau’s side on something,” I said.
“What is it?” Emily asked. “We need her, Jack. She’s our in with the bureau. Once this breaks, we will really need that.”
“The issue is that the FBI don’t want us to publish because it will alert this guy that they’re on to him. They’re afraid he’ll disappear. My side of it is that we are called FairWarning for a reason, and we have to warn the public about this guy. He has killed two people today alone and he has the list of women identified by Dirty4.”
Emily nodded.
“I agree with you,” she said. “We have to go now. Should we run it by Myron before he leaves?”
“Let me see if I can get Rachel on the line first,” I said. “Then we’ll be completely up-to-date with what we’ve got.”
“So … what happened between you two back in the day?”
“We just … I screwed up and she paid for it is what happened.”
“How so?”
I had to decide whether I wanted to get into this. I thought maybe talking about it would exorcise it. But we were in the middle of chasing a story.
“It might help me to know,” Emily said. “Since she’s become part of this.”
I nodded. I got that.
“I was working for the Velvet Coffin,” I said. “And Rachel and I were together. It was a secret. We kept our separate places but that was for sho
w. And I was working on this story about an LAPD cop I heard the feds were looking at for corruption. I had a source who said the guy had been indicted by a federal grand jury but then nothing happened. It got quashed because the target had dirt on the sitting U.S. Attorney.”
“You asked Rachel for help?” Emily asked.
“I did. She got me the grand-jury transcripts and we published. The U.S. Attorney sued and the chief judge got mad and I got pulled into court. I wouldn’t name my source and the judge put me in jail for contempt. Meantime, the cop this was all about offs himself and leaves a note saying he was an innocent man bullied by the media—meaning me. That didn’t win me any sympathy, and after two months I was still in lockup.”
“Rachel came forward.”
“She did. She admitted she was the source. I was freed and she lost her job. End of story and end of us.”
“Wow. That’s rough.”
“She used to chase serial killers and terrorists. Now, she mostly runs background checks for corporations. And it’s all on me.”
“It wasn’t like you forced her to do it.”
“Doesn’t matter. I knew what could happen if I took the transcripts. I took them anyway.”
Emily was silent after that. And so was I. I got up, rolled my chair back to my pod, and called Rachel’s cell. She answered right away. I could tell she was in a moving car.
“Jack.”
“Hey.”
“Where are you?”
“At the office, working on the story. You left the bureau?”
“Yes. I was about to call you.”
“Going home?”
“No, not yet. What’s up?”
“I was wondering if you and your FBI friends got anywhere with identifying Rogue.”
“Uh, not really. They’re still working on it.”
I suddenly grew suspicious.
“Rachel, you’re not moving in on him right now, are you?”
“No, not at all. I would tell you that, Jack.”
“Then what’s going on? I haven’t heard from you all afternoon and now you’re going somewhere but not telling me where.”
“I told you, I was just about to call. Thanks for trusting me.”
“I’m sorry but you know me. I get suspicious about what I don’t know. What were you going to call about?”
“I told you they’re trying to determine if there were other victims, right? All you had were cases people mentioned on that coroner’s website. The bureau is doing a deeper dive than that.”
“Okay, that’s good. Are they finding anything?”
“Yes. There are more cases, more women with broken necks. But they aren’t going to share with you if you publish the story before they’re ready. They’re going to come to you tomorrow and try to make a trade. You hold back and they’ll give you more cases.”
“Shit. How many are we talking about?”
“At least three other deceased victims—including the Tucson case you mentioned today.”
Now I paused. What did that mean?
“Are you saying there are non-deceased victims?”
“Well, there may be one. That’s where I’m going now. They identified an assault where a woman’s neck was broken in similar fashion to the others. But she didn’t die. She’s a quadriplegic.”
“Oh god. Where is she?”
“It’s a Pasadena case. We pulled the file and it seems to match up. There’s a composite sketch and she met the guy in a bar.”
“What happened? How did they find her?”
“He had to have thought she was dead. He dumped her down a set of stairs in the hills. Have you ever heard of the Secret Stairs in Pasadena?”
“No.”
“I guess there are stairs that run up and down all through this neighborhood. After he broke her neck he took her body to the stairs and threw her down so it would look like an accident. But some guy running the stairs at dawn found her body and she still had a pulse.”
“Does this mean he knew Pasadena? Maybe the location is a big clue.”
“Well, they are called the Secret Stairs but they aren’t really that secret. There are Yelp reviews and photos all over the Internet. All the Shrike had to do was search Pasadena Stairs online and he’d have found them.”
“What about DNA? Did she go to GT23?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t part of the case file. That’s why I’m going now to try to interview her.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone. The agents on this won’t get around to it until tomorrow. Too much else going on.”
I remembered my early research on atlanto-occipital dislocation. It wasn’t always fatal.
“Where?” I asked. “I’m going to meet you.”
“I don’t know if that’s best, Jack,” Rachel said. “I’m going as an investigator. She might not want to talk to a reporter—if she can talk at all.”
“I don’t care. You can do the interview but I want to be there. Where are you going?”
There was a pause and I felt that everything about the fragile relationship I had with her was on the line.
“Altadena Rehab,” Rachel finally said. “Google the address. Her name is Gwyneth Rice. She’s only twenty-nine.”
“I’m on my way,” I said. “Wait for me.”
I disconnected and went back to Emily’s pod to inform her that there were more victims and that I was going to see one who was still alive. I told her about the FBI’s plan to float a deal: information on other victims in exchange for delaying publication.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “We have till tomorrow to think about it. Why don’t you talk to Myron about that while I try to get this interview?”
“Sounds good.”
“By the way. They have a composite drawing of the Shrike.”
“Is that part of the deal?”
“We’ll make it part of it.”
I left the office then, grabbing my keys off my desk and hurrying out.
35
Rachel was waiting for me in the lobby of Altadena Rehab. She was all business. No hug, no hello, just “It took you long enough.”
She turned and headed toward a set of elevators and I had to catch up.
“Her father agreed to meet me,” she said after we entered an elevator and she hit the 3 button. “He’s with her now. Brace yourself.”
“For what?” I asked.
“This is not going to be a good scene. Happened four months ago and the victim—Gwyneth—is not doing well physically or mentally. She’s on a ventilator.”
“Okay.”
“And let me handle the introductions. They don’t know about you yet. Don’t be obvious.”
“About what?”
“That you’re there for a story. Maybe it would be better if I took notes.”
“I could just record it.”
“There is nothing to record. She can’t speak.”
I nodded. The elevator moved slowly. There were only four levels.
“I’m here for more than the story,” I said to set the record straight.
“Really?” Rachel said. “When we talked earlier today it felt like that’s all you cared about.”
The elevator door opened and she exited before I could defend myself on that.
We walked down a hallway and Rachel gently knocked on the door to room 309. We waited and a man opened the door and emerged into the hallway. He looked to be about sixty years old with a worn expression on his face. He pulled the door closed behind him.
“Mr. Rice?” Rachel asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” he said. “You’re Rachel?”
“Yes, we spoke on the phone. Thank you for allowing me to visit. As I said, I am FBI retired but still—”
“You look too young to be retired.”
“Well, I still keep my hand in and work with the bureau on occasion. Like with this case. And I wanted to introduce you to Jack McEvoy. He works for Fair
Warning and is the journalist who first connected all the cases and brought the investigation to the bureau.”
I put my hand out and Mr. Rice and I shook.
“Good to meet you, Jack,” Rice said. “I wish somebody like you was there four months ago and could have warned Gwynnie about this guy. Anyway, come on in. I told her she was having company and finally something is being done. I have to warn you, this is going to go slow. She has a screen and something called a mouth-stick stylus that allows her to communicate.”
“No problem,” I said.
“It’s kind of amazing,” Rice said. “It turns her teeth and the roof of her mouth into a keyboard. And each day she gets more proficient at it. Anyway, she does get tired and she’ll shut down at some point. But let’s see what we can get.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said.
“One more thing,” Rice said. “This kid has been through hell and back. This is not going to be easy. I told her she didn’t have to do it but she wants to. She wants to get this evil man and she’s hoping you can do it. But at the same time she’s fragile. Go easy is what I’m saying, okay?”
“We understand,” Rachel said.
“Of course,” I added.
With that, Rice opened the door and went back inside the room. I looked at Rachel and nodded her in first as we followed.
The room was dimly lit by a soft spotlight over a hospital bed with railings. Gwyneth Rice was raised at a 45-degree angle on the bed and flanked by equipment and tubes that monitored her, breathed for her, fed her, and took her bodily wastes away. Her head was held steady by a framework that looked like scaffolding and appeared to be screwed into her skull in at least two points. Altogether it was a horrible tableau and my first instinct was to look away, but I knew that she might register my reflex for what it was and refuse the interview before it started. So I looked at her straight on and smiled and nodded as I entered the room.
There was a metal arm that was attached to the headboard and extended around and in front of Gwyneth at eye level. Attached to it were two small back-to-back flat screens that allowed her to see one, and her audience the other.
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 22