She waited a moment for any sort of response before going to choice two. She must have registered my continuing silence as interest in the alternate plan.
“Okay, the other thing is we make damn sure we get him. You drive to a destination and we set up a horseshoe like we did before and we finally get this guy. This choice is more risky to you, of course, but I think if you keep the car moving he’s not going to make a move. He’s going to wait.”
She waited. I said nothing.
“So, Jack, do this. Cough once if you want the first choice. Don’t cough, don’t do anything if you want to go with the second.”
I realized that if I took any time to consider my options, my silence would confirm that I was going with the riskier second option. But that was okay. In that moment, I flashed on a vision of Gwyneth Rice in her hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines, and her electronic plea that we not take the Shrike alive.
I wanted the second option.
“Okay, Jack, option two,” Rachel said. “Cough now if I have it wrong.”
I was silent and Rachel accepted the confirmation.
“You need to get to the 101 and head south,” she said. “We were just on it and it’s wide open. You’ll be able to get to Hollywood and by then we’ll have a plan. We’re turning around and we’ll be there.”
I was coming up to a southbound entrance to the 170 freeway. I knew it merged with the 101 less than a mile south. Rachel continued.
“I’m going to keep the line open while Matt sets things up—he’s talking to LAPD. They’ll be able to mobilize quicker. You just have to stay in motion. He won’t try anything while the car is moving.”
I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t see me.
“But if something happens and you have to stop, just get out of the car and get clear. Get safe, Jack … I need you … to be safe.”
I registered the quiet, more intimate tone in her voice and wanted to respond. I hoped my silence communicated something. But just as quickly, doubt started to move into my mind. Had I left something in the storage compartment? Had the thud I felt simply come from a pothole in the road? I was mobilizing the FBI and LAPD on what amounted to a hunch. I was beginning to wish I had just coughed once and pointed the car toward the North Hollywood Police Division.
“Okay, Jack,” Rachel said, her voice modulated back to a command tone. “I’ll get back to you when we have it set up.”
I got lucky and saw up ahead that I had a green light to turn into the freeway entrance.
Doubt aside, I made the turn. The freeway entrance looped around and then I was heading south on the 170. I took one of the 101 merge lanes and got the car up to sixty. Rachel had been right. The freeway was moderately crowded but the traffic was moving. It was pre-rush hour and most of the traffic was going northbound out of downtown to the suburbs in the Valley and beyond.
Once I merged onto the 101 I worked my way over to the fast lane and stayed in the flow, now moving at fifty miles per hour. I checked the rearview every few seconds and kept the phone to my left ear. I could hear Metz’s voice as he talked on another phone in the car with Rachel. It was muffled and I couldn’t make out everything he said. But I could definitely read the urgency in his tone.
Soon I was into the Cahuenga Pass and could see the Capitol Records building ahead. I was putting the picture together as I waited for Rachel to come back on the line and tell me the plan. I realized that the Shrike was a listener of the podcast after all and I had given him everything he needed. At the end of each episode I had plugged the recording studio when I thanked Ray Stallings. I had then repeatedly promoted the time and date of the live roundtable discussion that would be the final episode.
The Shrike then only had to surveil the building where Sun Ray Studios were located to figure out how he could use the parking-garage situation to his advantage. The attendant left the keys of the cars he moved around on each vehicle’s front right tire. The Shrike could have snuck in while Rodrigo was shuffling cars, used the key to unlock my Range Rover, and then secreted himself in the back.
I suddenly realized there was another possibility. I had broadcast the podcast’s time and location to everybody. It was possible that if someone was concealed in the back, it wasn’t the Shrike. It could be another crazy incel like Robinson Felder. I took the phone from my ear to try to text this possibility to Rachel when I heard her voice again.
“Jack?”
I waited.
“We have a plan. We want you to get to Sunset Boulevard and take the exit. It dumps you out on Van Ness at an intersection with Harold Way. Take the immediate right onto Harold Way and we’ll be set up for you. LAPD has got two units there right now and more are on the way. Matt and I are two minutes out. Clear your throat if you understand and we are good to go.”
I waited a beat and then cleared my throat loudly. I was good to go.
“Okay, Jack, now what I want you to do is try to text me a description of what you’re driving. I know you mentioned in a recent email that you got a new car. Give me make, model, and color. Color is important, Jack. We want to know what we’ve got coming. Also put in what exit you last passed so we’ll have a sense of timing. Go ahead, but be careful. Don’t wreck while texting.”
I pulled the phone away and typed the needed information into a text to her, cycling my focus repeatedly from the phone to the rearview to the road ahead.
I had just sent off the text, including the fact that I was about to pass the Highland exit, when my eyes went to the road ahead and I saw brake lights flaring across all lanes.
Traffic was stopping.
45
There was an accident ahead. My SUV gave me a view over the rooflines of several cars in front of me and I could see smoke and a car turned sideways blocking the fast lane and left shoulder of the freeway.
I knew I had to get to the right before I was stopped dead in the backup. I hit the turn signal and almost blindly started pushing across four lanes of the slowing traffic.
My moves brought a chorus of horns from angry motorists who were trying to do the same thing I was. The traffic slowed to a crawl and the spaces between cars compressed, but nobody on the road had the kind of emergency I had. I didn’t care about their frustrations or horns.
“Jack?” Rachel said. “I hear the horns, what is—I know you can’t talk. Try to text. We got the info you sent. Try to tell me what’s going on now.”
I did what most L.A. drivers do when they are alone in their cars. I cursed the traffic.
“Goddamn it! Why are we stopping?”
I had one lane left to get over to and I believed it would be the fastest way around the accident backup. I didn’t trust the mirrors anymore and was turning half in my seat to check my competition through the windows, all the while keeping the phone to my ear.
“Okay, Jack, I get it,” Rachel said. “But ride on the shoulder, do whatever you have to do and get down here.”
I coughed once, not knowing at this point if that meant yes or no. All I knew was that I had to get around the backup. Once I got past the crash, the freeway would be wide open and I’d be flying.
I had slowly passed the Highland exit and could see that the accident scene was a couple hundred yards ahead and before the Vine Street exit. That was where traffic came to a complete halt.
Now I could see people getting out of their cars and standing in the freeway. Cars were moving inch by inch as they passed the smoking wreckage. I could hear a siren coming up behind me and knew the arrival of first responders would shut things down even further and for longer. I also knew I could go to those first responders with the deadly cargo I believed I was carrying. But would they understand what I had? Would they capture him?
I was considering these questions and the last mile I had to go to Sunset Boulevard when there was a loud thwack from the back of my car.
I turned around fully and saw that the spring-loaded cover to the rear storage area had been released and had s
napped back into its housing like a window shade.
A figure rose from the space. A man. He looked around as if to get his bearings, then must have seen through the rear windows that the siren he had heard was from a rescue ambulance making its way to the crash site.
He then turned and looked directly at me.
“Hello, Jack,” he said. “Where are we going?”
“Who the fuck are you?” I said. “What do you want?”
“I think you know who I am,” he said. “And what I want.”
He started climbing over the rear seats. I dropped the phone and pinned the accelerator. The car lurched forward and I yanked the wheel to the right. I clipped the right corner of the car in front of me as the SUV veered onto the freeway shoulder. The wheels spun on the loose gravel and litter before finding purchase. In the rearview I saw the intruder thrown backward into the space where he had been hiding.
But he quickly reemerged and started climbing over the seats again.
“Slow it down, Jack,” he said. “What’s the hurry?”
I didn’t answer. My mind was racing faster than the car as I tried to think of an escape plan.
The Vine Street exit was just past the accident site. But what did that get me? My choices seemed simple in that adrenalized moment. Fight or flight. Keep moving or stop the car and get out and run.
In the back of my mind I knew one thing. Running away meant the Shrike would escape again.
I kept my foot on the pedal.
With less than a hundred yards before I would clear the traffic backup and get off the shoulder, a beat-up pickup truck filled with lawn equipment suddenly pulled onto the shoulder ahead of me—at a much slower pace.
I yanked the wheel right again and tried to squeeze by without losing speed. My car scraped sharply along a concrete sound barrier that bordered the freeway and then rebounded into the side of the pickup, pushing it into the cars to its left. A full chorus of horns and crashing metal followed, but my car kept moving. I straightened the wheel and checked the mirror. The man behind me had been thrown to the floor of the back seat.
Two seconds later I was past the traffic backup and there were five lanes of open freeway in front of me.
But I was still a half mile from the Sunset exit and knew that I could not hold off the Shrike for that long. The phone was somewhere in the car and Rachel was presumably still listening. I made what I thought might be a last call out to her.
“Rachel!” I yelled. “I—”
An arm came around my neck and choked off my voice. My head was snapped back against the headrest. I reached up with one hand and tried to pull it off my neck, but the Shrike had locked his arm and was tightening the pressure.
“Stop the car,” he said in my ear.
I planted my feet and pushed back into the seat, trying to make space against his forearm. The car picked up speed.
“Stop the car,” he said again.
I realized one thing: I had a seat belt on and he didn’t. I remembered the salesman droning on about the safety and construction of the car. Something about rollover protection. But I had not been interested. I just wanted to sign the papers and drive away, not listen to things that would never matter to me.
Now they did.
I felt the car automatically lowering into its high-speed profile as the digital speedometer clicked past eighty-five. I let go of my attacker’s forearm, put both hands on the wheel and yanked it to the left.
The car jerked wildly to the left and then the forces of physics took over. For a split second it held the road, then the front left wheel came off the surface and the back left followed. I believe the car became airborne by at least a few feet and then flipped side over side before impacting and continuing to rotate, tumbling down the freeway.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion, my body jolting in all directions with each crashing impact. I felt the arm that had been around my neck fall away. I heard the loud tearing of metal and the explosive shattering of glass. Debris flew around in the car and out the now glass-free windows. My laptop hit me in the ribs and at some point I blacked out.
When I came to, I was hanging upside down in my seat. I looked down at the ceiling of the car and saw that I was dripping blood on it. I reached to my face and located the source: a long gash on the top of my head.
I wondered what had happened. Had somebody hit me? Had I hit somebody?
Then I remembered.
The Shrike.
I looked around as best as I could. I didn’t see him. The rear seats of the car had broken loose in the accident and were now tilted down to the ceiling, obstructing my view.
“Shit,” I said.
I could taste blood in my mouth.
I became aware of a sharp pain in my side and remembered my laptop. It had hit me in the ribs.
I put my left hand down on the ceiling to brace myself and used the other to release my seat belt. My arm wasn’t strong enough and I crashed down to the ceiling, my legs still tangled with the steering column. I slowly lowered myself the rest of the way. As I did, I became aware of a tinny voice calling my name.
I looked around and saw my cell phone on the asphalt about four feet outside the front window. The screen was spider-webbed with cracks but I could read the name “Rachel” on it. The call was still active.
Once my legs were free I crawled through the space where the windshield had been and reached for my phone.
“Rachel?”
“Jack, are you all right? What happened?”
“Uh … we crashed. I’m bleeding.”
“We’re on our way. Where is the unsub?”
“The … what?”
“The Shrike, Jack. Do you see him?”
Now I remembered the arm around my neck. The Shrike. He was going to kill me.
I crawled all the way out of the wreck and unsteadily stood up by the front end of the upside-down Range Rover. I saw people running down the shoulder of the freeway toward me. There was a car with flashing blue lights working its way down as well.
I took a few uneasy steps and realized there was something wrong with one of my feet. Every step sent a jolt of pain from my left ankle up to my hip. Nevertheless I kept moving around the wreckage and looking through the windows into the back.
There was no sign of anyone else. But the car was canted unevenly on the ground. When the people got to the car, I heard shrieks of panic.
“We have to move this! He’s underneath!”
I limped around to their side and saw what they saw. The car was resting unevenly on the roadway because the Shrike was underneath it. I could see his hand extending out from the edge of the roof. I carefully lowered myself to the asphalt and looked under the wreck.
The Shrike was crushed under the car. His face was turned toward me and his eyes were open, one of them staring lifelessly, the other in a broken orbit and at an off-angle.
“Help me push this off him!” somebody yelled to the others running to the scene.
I started to get up.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s too late.”
THE END
46
As of now, they don’t know the identity of the man who was crushed under my car. We can’t put a true name to him. There was no identification in the gray hoodie he wore or the pockets of his pants. His fingerprints and DNA were submitted by the FBI to every available database in the world and produced no match. An extensive and thorough search of a mile-wide grid around the Sun Ray Studios building found no abandoned vehicle and only a gas-station camera that captured an out-of-focus angle on a man in a gray hoodie crossing east to west over the 101 freeway on the Barham Boulevard overpass. He was moving in the direction of the studio an hour before the live podcast. But a new grid search on the east side of the freeway produced no vehicle and no record of a drop-off by any car service.
Examination of the body during autopsy revealed a prior surgery to repair a broken arm bone called the radius. It appeared to ha
ve been a childhood injury, a spiral fracture, which is an indication of abuse. There was limited dental work. What there was appeared to be distinctly American, but not enough to successfully trace X-rays to a specific dentist or patient.
As of now the Shrike remains a cipher in death.
Most likely it will remain that way. In the parlance of the newspaper business, he is now off the front page. The public’s moment of grim fascination with him dissipated like smoke curling away from a cigarette as the focus of the media moved on. The Shrike had flown beneath the radar for most of his existence. He returned there after his run was over.
With the Shrike no longer a threat, Emily Atwater returned from the UK, having found that she missed Los Angeles. And with the ending to the story I had provided on the 101 freeway, she was able to complete the book. She then returned to FairWarning as its senior staff writer, and I know Myron was happy about that.
Still, I remained haunted by not knowing who the Shrike was and what made him a killer of women. To me, that left the story unfinished. It was a question that would remain in my mind forever.
The whole story changed me. I wondered often about what might have been if I had not happened to go on a date with Christina Portrero. If my name had not come up in the LAPD investigation and Mattson and Sakai had not followed me into the garage that night. Would the Shrike still be out there below the radar? Would Hammond and Vogel still be operating Dirty4 on the dark web? And would William Orton still be selling the DNA of unsuspecting women to them?
These were scary thoughts but also inspiring ones. They made me think about all the unsolved cases out there. All the failures of justice and all of the mothers, fathers, and families who had lost loved ones. I thought about Charisse, who had called the podcast, and wished there was a way to reach out to her.
I knew then that I could no longer be an observer, a journalist who wrote about these things or talked about them in a podcast. I knew that I could not be a sideline reporter. I needed to be in the game.
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 29