I realized he looked familiar to me.
“Wait a minute,” I said.
I reached up and held Rachel’s hand so she would not take the phone away.
“What?” she said.
“I think I know this guy,” I said. “I mean, I think I’ve seen him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. But the hair … and the set of the jaw …”
“Are you sure?”
“No. I just …”
My mind raced back over my activities in recent days. I concentrated on the hours I had spent in jail. Had I seen this man in Men’s Central? It was a night of intense fear and emotions. I had such clarity about what and who I had seen but I could not place the man in the drawing.
I let go of Rachel’s hand.
“I don’t know, I’m probably wrong,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I turned and walked to my Jeep while Rachel got in her Beemer. I started the engine and turned to look through the passenger window to give Rachel the nod to back out first. It was then that I realized where I had seen the composite man.
I killed the engine and jumped out of the Jeep. Rachel had already backed halfway out of her spot. She stopped and lowered the window.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I know where I saw him,” I said. “The guy in the composite. He was sitting in a car today at the coroner’s office.”
“You’re sure?”
“I know it sounds far-fetched but the shape of his jaw and the pinned-back ears. I’m sure, Rachel. I mean, I guess I’m pretty sure. I thought he was there waiting for somebody inside. You know, like a family member or something. But now … I think he was following me.”
That conclusion made me suddenly turn and scan the parking lot I stood in. There were only about ten cars and the lighting was poor. I would need a flashlight to determine if anyone was in one of them and watching.
Rachel put her car into park and got out.
“What kind of car was it, do you remember?”
“Uh, no, I have to think. It was dark and he had backed into his space like me. Another sign he could have been following me.”
Rachel nodded.
“The quick exit,” she said. “Was the car big or small?”
“I think small,” I said.
“Sedan?”
“No, more like a sports car. Sleek.”
“How close was he parked to you?”
“He was like across the aisle and down a couple. He had a good view of me. Tesla—it was a black Tesla.”
“Good, Jack. Do you think that lot has cameras?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. But if it was him, how would he know to follow me?”
“Hammond. Maybe they knew about you. Hammond warned the Shrike and the Shrike started eliminating threats. You are a threat, Jack.”
I broke away from her and started walking down the two-row parking lot, looking for a Tesla or any car with someone sitting behind the wheel. I found nothing.
Rachel caught up to me.
“He’s not here,” I said. “Maybe I’m totally wrong about this. I mean, we’re talking about a composite. It could be anybody.”
“Yes, but you saw Gwyneth’s reaction,” Rachel said. “I don’t usually put much stock in composites, but she thought it was dead on. Where did you go after the coroner’s office?”
“Back to the office to feed everything I had to Emily.”
“So he knows where FairWarning is. I didn’t pay attention when I was there, but could he have had any sort of angle of view from the outside?”
“I think so, yes. The front door’s glass.”
“What could you see from the outside, looking in? Could he have seen you working with Emily?”
I thought about the times I had gotten up and gone to Emily’s cubicle to confer with her. I pulled my phone.
“Shit,” I said. “She should know about this.”
There was no answer on Emily’s cell. I next called her desk line, though I assumed she would not still be at the office.
“No answer on either of her phones,” I reported.
My concern was now tipping toward fear. I could see the same apprehension in Rachel’s eyes. All of it was amped up by the interview with Gwyneth Rice.
“Do you know where she lives?” Rachel asked.
I called Emily’s cell again.
“I know it’s Highland Park,” I said. “But I don’t have the exact address.”
“We need to get it,” Rachel said.
No answer. I disconnected and called Myron Levin’s cell. He answered right away.
“Jack?”
“Myron, I’m trying to check on Emily and she’s not answering her phones. Do you have her address?”
“Well, yeah, but what’s going on?”
I told him of the suspicion shared by Rachel and me that I had been followed earlier in the day by the killer at the center of the story we were writing. My concern immediately transferred to Myron and he put me on hold while he searched for Emily’s address.
I turned to Rachel.
“He’s getting it,” I said. “Let’s start driving. Highland Park.”
I walked to the passenger side of her car as she took the driver’s seat. We were out of the parking lot by the time Myron came back on the line and read off an address.
“Call me as soon as you know something,” Myron said.
“Will do,” I said.
I then suddenly thought about Myron and the times Emily and I had conferred with him at the office.
“Are you home, Myron?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.
“Lock the doors.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking that.”
37
I entered the address Myron had given me into my GPS app and muted the command voice. I gave Rachel verbal directions because the incessant commands from the app were always annoying. The app showed we were sixteen minutes away. We made it in twelve. Emily lived in an old brick-and-plaster apartment building on Piedmont Avenue off Figueroa Street. There was a glass entry door with a keypad to the left with individual buttons for eight apartments. When repeated pops on unit 8 did not receive a response, I hit all seven other buttons.
“Come on, come on,” I urged. “Somebody’s gotta be waiting for Postmates. Answer the damn door.”
Rachel turned and checked the street behind her.
“Do you know what she drives?”
“A Jag but I saw a parking lane leading to the back. She probably has a space back there.”
“Maybe I should go—”
The electronic lock snapped open and we went in. I never looked at which unit had responded and finally opened the door, but I knew if we had gained entrance so easily then the Shrike could have as well.
Unit 8 was on the second floor at the end of the hallway. No one answered my heavy knocking and calling out of Emily’s name. I tried the door but it was locked. I stepped back in frustration, a dread growing in me.
“What do we do?” I asked.
“Call her again,” Rachel said. “Maybe we hear the phone through the door.”
I walked down the hall twenty feet and called. When I heard the phone start ringing on my end, I nodded to Rachel. She leaned an ear toward the doorjamb of apartment 8, her eyes still on me. The call went to message and I disconnected. Rachel shook her head. She had heard nothing.
I walked back to Rachel and the door.
“Should we call the cops?” I asked. “Tell them we need a wellness check? Or call the landlord?”
“Looks like it’s off-site management here,” Rachel said. “I saw a number on an apartment-for-rent sign out front. I’ll go get it and call. See if that leads to the back lot and if her car is here.”
She pointed to an exit door at the end of the hallway.
“Don’t get locked out,” I said.
“I won’t,” she said.
I watched her go and then disappear down th
e stairs. I walked down to the exit door, wondering if an alarm would sound. I hesitated for a moment, then pushed the bar and the door swung open. No alarm sounded.
Stepping out onto an exterior landing, I saw that the stairway led down to the building’s small rear parking lot. There was a mop in a bucket on the landing and a can half full of cigarette butts. Someone in the building smoked but not in their unit. I stepped farther out to look over the railing to see what was on the bottom landing. There were some empty plant pots and garden tools.
The door closed behind me. I whipped around. On the outside of the door there was a steel handle. I grabbed it and tried to turn it. I was locked out.
“Shit.”
I knocked on the door but knew it was too soon to expect Rachel to be back at unit 8. I went down the stairs to the parking lot and looked around for Emily’s car. It was a silver Jaguar SUV but I didn’t see one. I then followed the access drive to the front. As I walked down the drive I looked up at the second-floor windows of the building to see if there were any lights on in the windows of the apartment I judged was Emily’s. They were all dark.
When I got to the front of the building there was no sign of Rachel. I pulled my phone and called her but was distracted by motion in the street. I saw a car moving behind the parked cars lining Piedmont. I got only a quick glimpse of it as it passed an opening for the next driveway down.
“Jack? Where are you?”
Rachel had answered.
“I’m out front and I just saw a car drive away. It was silent.”
“A Tesla?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Okay, I’m not waiting for this guy.”
“What guy?”
“The landlord.”
I heard a loud bang and a splintering of wood followed by a muffled bang. I knew she had just kicked in the door of unit 8. I moved to the front door of the building but could see it was closed.
“Rachel? Rachel, I can’t get in. I’m going around—”
“I can buzz you in,” she said. “Go to the front door.”
I ran up the steps to the front door. The lock was buzzing when I got there and I was in.
I went up the interior stairs to the second floor and then down to apartment 8. Rachel was standing in the apartment’s entranceway.
“Is she … ?”
“She’s not here.”
I noticed that a piece of the door’s wood trim was lying on the floor of the threshold. But as I fully entered the apartment, that was the only sign of disarray. I had never been there before but I saw a place that was neat and orderly. There was no sign of any sort of struggle having occurred in the living areas. A short hallway to the right led to the open door of a bathroom and a second door to the left that I assumed was the bedroom.
I walked that way, feeling odd about invading Emily’s privacy.
“It’s empty,” Rachel said.
I checked anyway, standing on the threshold of the bedroom and leaning in. I hit a switch on the interior wall and two lamps on either side of a queen bed went on. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was neat; the bed was made and the coverlet was smoothed and had not even been sat on.
I next checked the bathroom and slapped back a plastic shower curtain to reveal an empty bathtub.
“Jack, I told you, she’s not here,” Rachel said. “Come out here and tell me about the car.”
I stepped back into the living room.
“It drove up Piedmont,” I said. “If I hadn’t seen it, I would’ve missed it. It was a dark color and silent.”
“Was it the Tesla you saw at the coroner’s?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look.”
“Okay, think now. Could you tell if it had just pulled away from the curb or was passing by?”
I took a moment and ran it through my mind again. The car was already moving down the street when it had drawn my attention.
“I couldn’t tell,” I said. “I didn’t see it until it was already moving down the street.”
“Okay, I’ve never been in a Tesla,” Rachel said. “Do they have a trunk?”
“I think the newer ones do.”
I realized she was asking whether Emily could be in the trunk of the car I saw driving away.
“Shit—we need to go after it,” I said.
“It’s long gone, Jack,” Rachel said. “We need to—”
“What the fuck is this?”
We both turned to the front door of the apartment.
Emily stood there.
She was in the clothes I had seen her wearing at the office earlier. She carried her backpack with the FairWarning logo on it.
“You’re okay,” I blurted out.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said. “You broke down my door?”
“We thought the Shrike had … had been here,” I said.
“What?” Emily said.
“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” Rachel asked.
“Because it’s dead,” Emily said. “I was on it all day.”
“Where were you?” I asked. “I called the office.”
“The Greyhound,” she said.
I knew she hated to drive because she grew up driving on the other side of the road and feared making the transition. But I was confused and must have looked like it. Greyhound was for long-distance travel.
“It’s a pub over on Fig,” Emily said. “My local. What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I was being followed today and when—”
“By the Shrike?”
I suddenly didn’t feel as sure about things.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. There was a guy in a Tesla I saw at the coroner’s office and I—”
“How would he know to follow you?” Emily asked. “Or me, for that matter.”
“Probably Hammond,” I said. “He either told him or there was something in the computer or the documents taken from Hammond’s lab.”
I saw fear enter Emily’s eyes.
“What do we do?” she said meekly.
“Look, I think we should calm down a little bit here,” Rachel said. “Let’s not get paranoid. We still don’t know for sure that either Jack or you was being followed. And if Jack was followed, why would he jump from Jack to you?”
“Maybe because I’m a woman?” Emily said.
I was about to respond. Rachel might be right. All of this was because I thought I had matched a composite drawing to a face I had seen behind the wheel of a car in a parking lot from at least eighty feet away. It was a stretch.
“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we—”
I stopped short when a man appeared in the doorway. He had a full beard and a ring of keys in his hand.
“Mr. Williams?” Rachel asked.
The man stared down at the piece of door framing on the floor, then checked the strike plate hanging by a single loose screw on the jamb.
“I thought you were going to wait for me,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “We thought there was an emergency. Will you be able to secure the door tonight?”
Williams turned and saw that when the door had been kicked open it had swung against the side wall of Emily’s entryway. The knob had put a fist-sized dent in the wall.
“I can try,” he said.
“I’m not staying here if I can’t lock the door,” Emily said. “No way. Not if he knows where I live.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” I said. “We saw a car driving away but—”
“Look, why don’t we let Mr. Williams try to fix it and we go somewhere else to talk about this?” Rachel said. “I got more from the FBI today. I think you’ll want to know it.”
I looked at Rachel.
“Well, when were you going to tell me?” I asked.
“We got sidetracked when we were leaving Gwyneth Rice,” Rachel said.
She pointed to the door that Williams was still examining as tho
ugh that explained her delay.
“By the way, how was Gwyneth Rice?” Emily asked.
“Good stuff … but so fucking sad,” I said. “He’s messed her up for life.”
Halfway through my answer I was afflicted with reporter’s guilt. I knew that Gwyneth Rice would become the face of the story. A victim who would likely never recover, whose life path had been violently and permanently altered by the Shrike. We would use her to draw readers in, never mind that her heartbreaking injuries would last well beyond the life of the story.
“You have to ship me notes,” Emily said.
“As soon as I can,” I said.
“So what are we doing?” Rachel asked.
“We could go back to the Greyhound,” Emily said. “It was pretty quiet in there when I left.”
“Let’s go,” Rachel said.
We moved toward the door and Williams turned sideways so we could fit by. He looked at me.
“You kicked in the door?” he asked.
“Uh, that would be me,” Rachel said.
Williams did a quick up-and-down appraisal of Rachel as she went by him.
“Strong lady,” he said.
“When I need to be,” she said.
38
The Greyhound was less than two minutes away and Rachel drove all three of us. I sat in the back seat, looking out the rear window for a possible tail the whole way. If the Shrike was following I saw no sign of him and my thoughts returned to the question of whether I was being vigilant or paranoid. I kept thinking about the man in the Tesla. Had I simply wanted him to look like the face on the composite or did he really look like the face on the composite?
I had never been to England but the inside of the Greyhound looked like an English pub to me, and I saw why Emily had adopted it as her local. It was all dark woods and cozy booths. A bar ran the entire length of the establishment, front to back, and there was no table service. Rachel and I ordered Ketel martinis and Emily asked them to pull the tap on a Deschutes IPA. I waited at the bar for the drinks while the women grabbed a booth in the back corner.
I took two trips to deliver the drinks so as not to spill the martinis and then settled into the U-shaped booth with Emily across from me and Rachel to my right. I took a full sip of my martini before saying a word. I needed it after the ebb and flow of adrenaline the evening had so far produced.
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 24