We had found a shaded spot next to the front wall of a Public Storage center and had just settled in for what might be a long, hot and fruitless wait, when we got lucky. A motor-cyclist pulled out of the Western Data entrance and headed west on McKellips Road. It was impossible to tell who was on the bike because the rider wore a full-mask helmet, but Rachel and I both recognized the cardboard box that was lashed to a rear rack with bungee cords.
“Follow the box,” Rachel said.
I restarted the car and quickly pulled onto McKellips. Following a motorcycle in a tin can rental car wasn’t my idea of a good plan but there was no alternative. I pinned the accelerator and quickly pulled within a hundred yards of the box.
“Don’t get too close!” Rachel said excitedly.
“I’m not. I’m just trying to catch up.”
She leaned forward nervously and put her hands on the dashboard.
“This is not good. Following a motorcycle with four cars trading off the lead is difficult; this is going to be a nightmare with just us.”
It was true. Motorcycles were able to slip through traffic with ease. Most riders seemed to have a general disdain for the concept of marked lanes of travel.
“You want me to pull over and you drive?”
“No, just do the best you can.”
I managed to stay with the box for the next ten minutes through stop-and-go traffic and then we got lucky. The motorcycle cut into a freeway entrance and got up on the 202 heading toward Phoenix. I had no problem keeping pace here. The motorcycle stayed a steady ten miles over the speed limit and I hummed along two lanes over and a hundred yards back. For fifteen minutes we followed him in clear traffic as he transitioned onto I-10 and then North I-17 through the heart of Phoenix.
Rachel began to breathe easier and even leaned back in her seat. She thought we had disguised our tail well enough that she told me to pull up in our lane so she could get a better look at the man on the motorcycle.
“That’s Mizzou,” she said. “I can tell by his clothes.”
I glanced over but couldn’t tell. I had not committed to memory the details of what I had seen in the bunker. Rachel had and that was one of the things that made her so good at what she did.
“If you say so. What do you think he’s doing, anyway?”
I started falling back again to avoid being spotted by Mizzou.
“Taking Freddy his box.”
“I know that. But I mean, why now?”
“Maybe it’s his lunch break or maybe he’s finished work for the day. Could be a lot of reasons.”
Something about that explanation bothered me but I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. The motorcycle started gliding across four lanes of interstate in front of me and heading toward the next exit. I made the same maneuvers and fell in behind him on the exit with a car between us. We caught the light on green and headed west on Thomas Road. Pretty soon we were in a warehouse district where small businesses and art galleries were trying to stake a claim in an area that looked like it had been deserted by manufacturers long ago.
Mizzou stopped in front of a one-story brick building and dismounted. I pulled to the curb a half block away. There was little traffic and few cars were parked in the area. We stood out like, well, cops on an obvious surveillance. But Mizzou never checked his surroundings for a tail. He took off his helmet, confirming Rachel’s identification, and put it over the headlight. He then unhooked the bungee cords and took the box off the bike rack. He carried it toward a large sliding door at the side of the building.
Hanging on a chain was a round free weight like the kind used on barbells. Mizzou grabbed it and pounded it on the door, making a banging sound I could hear a half block away with the windows up. He waited and we waited but nobody came and opened the door. Mizzou pounded again and got the same negative result. He then walked over to a large window that was so dirty there was no need for blinds on the inside. He used his hand to rub away some of the grime and looked in. I couldn’t tell whether he saw anyone or not. He went back to the door and pounded one more time. Then for the hell of it he grabbed the door handle and tried to slide it open. To his surprise and ours, the door easily moved on its rollers. It was unlocked.
Mizzou hesitated and for the first time looked around. His eyes didn’t hold on my car. They quickly returned to the open door. It looked like he called out, and then after a few seconds he went in and slid the door closed behind him.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think we need to get in there,” Rachel said. “Freddy’s obviously not there, and who knows if Mizzou is going to lock that place up or decide to take something of value to the investigation. It’s an uncontrolled situation and we should be in there.”
I dropped the car into gear and drove the remaining half block to the building. Rachel was out and moving toward the sliding door before I had it back in park. I jumped out and followed.
Rachel pulled the door open just enough for us to slip in. It was dark inside and it took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. When they finally did, I saw Rachel was twenty feet in front of me, walking toward the middle of the warehouse. The place was wide open with steel roof supports going up every twenty feet. Drywall partitions had been erected to divide it into living, working and exercise space. I saw the barbell rack and bench the door knocker had come from. There was also a basketball rim and at least a half court of space in which to play. Farther down was a dresser and an unmade bed. Against one of the partitions was a refrigerator and a table with a microwave, but there was no sink or stove or anything else resembling a kitchen. I saw the box Mizzou had carried on the table next to the microwave but I saw no sign of Mizzou.
I caught up to Rachel as we passed a partition and I saw a workstation set up against the wall. There were three screens on shelves above a desk and a PC underneath it. The keyboard, however, was missing. The shelves were crowded with code books, software boxes and other electronic equipment. But still no sign of Mizzou.
“Where’d he go?” I whispered.
Rachel raised her hand to silence me and walked toward the workstation. She seemed to study the spot where the keyboard should have been.
“He took the keyboard,” she whispered. “He knows what we can-”
She stopped at the sound of a toilet flushing. It came from the far corner of the warehouse and was followed by the sound of another door being slid open. Rachel reached up to one of the shelves and grabbed a cable tie used for bunching computer wires, then grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me around a wall to the sleeping area. We stood, backs against the wall, and waited for Mizzou to pass. I could hear his approaching steps on the concrete floor. Rachel moved past me to the edge of the partition. Just at the moment Mizzou passed the edge, she sprang forward, grabbing him by the wrist and neck and spinning him onto the bed before he knew what was happening. She planted him face-first and hard on the mattress and in one fluid move jumped on his back.
“Don’t move!” she yelled.
“Wait! What is-”
“Stop struggling! I said, don’t move!”
She yanked his hands behind his back and used the cable tie to quickly bind them.
“What is this? What did I do?”
“What are you doing here?”
He tried to look up but Rachel smashed his face back into the mattress.
“I said, what are you doing here?”
“I came to drop off Freddy’s shit and just decided to use the can.”
“Breaking and entering is a felony.”
“I didn’t break in. And I didn’t steal shit. Freddy never minds it. You can ask him.”
“Where is Freddy?”
“I don’t know. Who are you, anyway?”
“Never mind who I am. Who is Freddy?”
“What? He lives here.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know. Freddy Stone. I work with him. I mean, I used-Hey, you! You’re that lady that was on the tour today. What are you doing, man?”
Rachel climbed backward off of him, since hiding her identity no longer mattered. Mizzou turned around on the bed and propped himself up. Wide-eyed, he looked from Rachel to me and back to Rachel.
“Where is Freddy?” Rachel demanded.
“I don’t know,” Mizzou said. “Nobody’s seen him.”
“Since when?”
“When do you think? Since he quit. What is going on here? First the FBI and now you two. Who are you, anyway?”
“Don’t worry about it. Where would Freddy go?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?”
Mizzou suddenly stood up as if he were simply going to walk out and ride away with his hands bound behind his back. Rachel roughly slammed him back onto the bed.
“You can’t do this! I don’t even think you’re cops. I want a lawyer.”
Rachel took a threatening step closer to the bed. She spoke in a low, calm voice.
“If we’re not cops, what makes you think we would get you a lawyer?”
Mizzou’s eyes became scared then as he realized he had stumbled into something he might not be able to stumble out of.
“Look,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything I know. Just let me go.”
I was still leaning against the partition wall, trying to act like it was just another day at the office and that sometimes people ended up as collateral damage when things were getting done.
“Where can I find Freddy?” Rachel asked.
“I told you!” Mizzou yelped. “I don’t know. I would tell you if I knew but I don’t know!”
“Is Freddy a hacker?”
She gestured toward the wall. The workstation was on the other side.
“More like a troller. He likes fucking with people, doin’ pranks and shit.”
“What about you? Did you do some of that with him? Don’t lie.”
“One time. But I didn’t like it, messing people up for no good reason.”
“What’s your name?”
“Matthew Mardsen.”
“Okay, Matthew Mardsen, what about Declan McGinnis?”
“What about him?”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I heard he e-mailed that he was home sick.”
“Do you believe that?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know. I guess.”
“Did anybody talk to him?”
“I don’t know. That kind of stuff is above my pay grade.”
“And that’s it?”
“That’s all I know!”
“Then, stand up.”
“What?”
“Stand up and turn around.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I said, stand up and turn around. Never mind what I’m going to do.”
He reluctantly did what he was told. If he could have turned his head a hundred eighty degrees to keep his eyes on Rachel, he would have. As it was, he must have been close to one twenty.
“I told you everything I know,” he offered desperately.
Rachel came up close behind him and spoke directly into his ear.
“If I find out differently, I’m going to come back for you,” she said. Holding him by the cable tie she pulled him around the wall into the workstation. She took a pair of scissors off the shelf and cut the binding from his wrists.
“Get out of here and don’t tell anybody what happened,” she said. “If you do, we’ll know.”
“I won’t. I promise I won’t.”
“Go!”
He almost slipped on the polished concrete when he turned to head toward the door. It was a long walk and his pride deserted him when he was ten feet from freedom. He ran those final steps, slid the door open and slammed it home behind him. Within five seconds we heard the motorcycle kick to life.
“I liked that move, throwing him down on the bed like that,” I said. “I think I’ve seen that before.”
Rachel offered a very thin smile in return and then got down to business.
“I don’t know if he’s going to go running to the cops or not, but let’s not take too much more time here.”
“Let’s get the hell out now.”
“No, not yet. Look around, see what you can find out about this guy. Ten minutes and then we’re out of here. Don’t leave your fingerprints.”
“Great. How do I do that?”
“You’re a newspaper reporter. You have your trusty pen?”
“Sure.”
“Use that. Ten minutes.”
But we didn’t need ten minutes. It quickly became clear that the place had been stripped of anything remotely personal about Freddy Stone. Using my pen to open cabinets and drawers, I found them empty or containing only generic kitchen tools and food packages. The refrigerator was almost empty. The freezer contained a couple of frozen pizzas and an empty ice tray. I checked in and under the dresser. Empty. I looked under the bed and between the mattress and box spring. There was nothing. Even the trash cans were empty.
“Let’s go,” Rachel said.
I looked up from checking under the bed and saw she was already to the door. Under her arm she was carrying the box that Mizzou had just dropped off. I remembered seeing the flash drives in there. Maybe the drives would hold information we needed. I hurried after her, but when I went through the open door, she was not at the car. I turned and caught a glimpse of her rounding the corner of the building and entering the alley.
“Hey!”
I trotted over to the alley and made the turn. She was walking with purpose down the center of the alley.
“Rachel, where are you going?”
“There were three trash cans in there,” she called back over her shoulder. “All of them were empty.”
It was then that I realized she was heading toward the first of two industrial-size Dumpsters that were pushed into alcoves on opposite sides of the alley. Just as I caught up with her she handed me Freddy Stone’s box.
“Hold this.”
She flung the heavy steel lid up and it banged loudly against the wall behind it. I glanced down into Freddy’s box and saw that somebody, probably Mizzou, had taken his cigarettes. I doubted he would miss them.
“You checked the kitchen cabinets, right?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah.”
“Were there any trash can liners?”
It took me a moment to understand.
“Uh, yeah, yeah, a box under the sink.”
“Black or white?”
“Uh…”
I closed my eyes to try to visualize what I had seen in the cabinet under the sink.
“… black. Black with the red drawstring.”
“Good. That narrows it down.”
She was reaching into the Dumpster, moving things around. It was half full and smelled awful. Most of the detritus was not in bags but had been dumped in directly from waste containers. Most of it was construction debris from a repair or renovation project. The rest was rotting garbage.
“Let’s try the other.”
We crossed the alley to the other alcove. I put the box down on the ground and threw open the heavy lid of the Dumpster. The odor was even more stunning and at first I thought we had found Freddy Stone. I stepped back and turned away, blowing air through my mouth and nose to keep the stench away.
“Don’t worry, it’s not him,” Rachel said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know what a rotting body smells like, and it’s worse.”
I moved back to the Dumpster. There were several plastic trash bags in this container, many of them black and many of them torn and spilling putrid garbage.
“Your arms are longer,” Rachel said. “Pull out the black bags.”
“I just bought this shirt,” I said in protest as I reached in.
I pulled out every black bag that wasn’t already torn and revealing its contents and dropped them on the ground. Rachel started opening them by tearing the plastic in such a way that the contents stayed in place inside. Like performing an autopsy on a garbage bag.
“Do it like this and don’t mix contents from different bags,” she said.
“Got it. What are we looking for? We don’t even know if this stuff is from Stone’s place.”
“I know but we have to look. Maybe something will make sense.”
The first bag I opened mostly contained the confetti of shredded documents.
“��I’ve got shreddings here.”
Rachel looked over.
“That could be his. There was a shredder by the workstation. Put that one aside.”
I did as I was told and opened the next bag. This one contained what looked like basic household trash. I immediately recognized one of the empty food boxes.
“This is him. He had the same brand of microwave pizza in the freezer.”
Rachel looked over.
“Good. Look for anything of a personal nature.”
She didn’t have to tell me that but I didn’t object. I carefully moved my hands through the refuse in the torn bag. I could tell it had all come from the kitchen area. Food boxes, cans, rotting banana peels and apple cores. I realized it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. There was only a microwave in the warehouse loft. It made the choices narrow and the food came in nice clean containers that could be hermetically sealed before being tossed.
At the bottom of the bag was a newspaper. I carefully pulled it out, thinking the date of the edition might help us narrow down when the bag had been tossed into the Dumpster. It was folded into quarters in the way a traveler might carry it. It was the previous Wednesday’s edition of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That was the day I had been in Vegas.
I unfolded it and noticed the face of a man in a photograph on the front page had been doodled on in black marker. Someone had awarded the man sunglasses and a set of devil’s horns and the requisite pointy beard. There was also a coffee ring on the photo. The ring partially obscured a name written with the same marker.
“I’ve got a Vegas paper with a name written here.”
Rachel looked up immediately from the bag she had her hands in.
“What name?”
“It’s blurred by a coffee ring. It’s Georgette something. Begins with a B and ends M-A-N.”
I held the paper up and angled it so she could see the front page. She studied it for a second and I saw recognition fire in her eyes. She stood up.
“This is it. You found it.”
“Found what?”
“He’s our guy. Remember, I told you about the e-mail to the prison in Ely that got Oglevy put in lockdown? It was from the warden’s secretary to the warden.”
“Yeah.”
“Her name is Georgette Brockman.”
Still crouched on my haunches next to the open bag, I stared up at Rachel as I put it all together. There was only one reason Freddy Stone would have that name written on a Las Vegas newspaper in his warehouse. He had trailed me to Vegas and knew I was going up to Ely to talk to Oglevy. He was the one who wanted to isolate me in the middle of nowhere. He was Sideburns. He was the Unsub.
Rachel took the newspaper from me. Her conclusions were the same as mine.
“He was in Nevada trailing you. He got her name and wrote it down while he was hacking the prison system’s database. This is the link, Jack. You did it!”
I got up and approached her.
“We did it, Rachel. But what do we do now?”
She lowered the paper to her side and I saw a sad realization play on her face.
“I don’t think we should be touching anything else here. We need to back off and call in the bureau. They have to take it from here.”
Equipmentwise, the FBI always seemed ready for anything. Within an hour of Rachel’s calling the local field office, we were placed in separate interrogation rooms in a nondescript vehicle the size of a bus. It was parked outside the warehouse where Freddy Stone had lived. We were being questioned by agents inside while other agents on the outside were in the warehouse and the nearby alley, looking for further signs of Stone’s involvement in the trunk murders as well as his current whereabouts.
Of course, the FBI didn’t call them interrogation rooms and would have objected to my calling the converted mobile home the Guantánamo Express. They called it a mobile witness interview unit.
My room was a windowless cube about ten feet by ten feet and my interrogator was an agent named John Bantam. This was a misnomer because Bantam was so big he seemed to fill the whole room. He paced back and forth in front of me, regularly slapping his leg with the legal pad he carried in a way I think was designed to make me think that my head could be its next destination.
Bantam grilled me for an hour about how I had made the connection to Western Data and all the moves Rachel and I had made after that. All the way, I took the advice Rachel gave me right before the federal troops showed up:
Do not lie. Lying to a federal agent is a crime. Once you commit it, they have you. Do not lie about anything.
So I told the truth, but not the whole truth. I answered only the questions put to me and offered no detail that was not specifically asked for. Bantam seemed frustrated the whole time, annoyed with not being able to ask the right question. A sheen of sweat was forming on his black skin. I thought maybe he was the embodiment of the whole bureau’s frustration with the fact that a newspaper reporter had made a connection they had missed. Either way, he was not happy with me. The session went from a cordial interview to a tense interrogation and it seemed to go on and on.
Finally, I hit my limit and stood up from the folding chair I had been seated in. Even with me standing, Bantam still had six inches on me.
“Look, I told you all I know. I have a story to go write.”
“Sit down. We’re not finished.”
“This was a voluntary interview. You don’t tell me when it’s finished. I’ve answered every one of your questions and now you’re just repeating yourself, trying to see if I get crossed up. It’s not going to happen because I only told you the truth. Now, can I go or not?”
“I could arrest you right now for breaking and entering and impersonating a federal agent.”
“Well, if you are going to make things up, I guess you could arrest me for all kinds of things. But I didn’t break and enter. I followed someone into the warehouse when we saw him enter and thought he might be committing a crime. And I did not impersonate a federal agent. That kid might have thought we were agents but neither of us said or did anything that even remotely indicated that.”
“Sit down. We’re not done.”
“I think we are.”
Bantam slapped the pad against his leg and turned his back to me. He walked to the door and then turned back.
“We need you to hold your story,” he said.
I nodded. Now we were finally down to it.
“This is what this was all about? The interrogation? The intimidation?”
“It wasn’t an interrogation. Believe me, you’d know it if it were.”
“Whatever. I can’t hold the story. It’s a major break in a major case.
Besides, splashing Stone’s face across the media might help you catch him.”
Bantam shook his head.
“Not yet. We need twenty-four hours to assess what we’ve got here and at the other locations. We want to do that before he knows we’re onto him. Splashing his face across the media will be fine after that.”
I sat back down on the folding chair as I thought about the possibilities. I was supposed to discuss any deal not to publish with my editors but I was beyond all of that now. This was my last story and I was going to call my own shots.
Bantam took a chair that was leaning on the wall, unfolded it and sat down for the first time during the session. He positioned himself directly in front of me.
I looked at my watch. It was almost four o’clock. The editors in Los Angeles were about to go into the daily meeting and set the next day’s front page.
“This is what I am willing to do,” I said. “Today is Tuesday. I hold the story and write it tomorrow for Thursday’s paper. We keep it off the website so it won’t get picked up by the wire services until early Thursday morning and won’t start making waves on TV until after that.”
I looked at my watch again.
“That would give you a solid thirty-six hours, at least.”
Bantam nodded.
“Okay. I think that will work.”
He made a move to get up.
“Wait a minute, that’s not all. And, this is what I want in return. I obviously want exclusivity. I made this break and so the story is mine. No leaks and no press conferences until after my story hits the front of the Times.”
“That’s no problem. We’ll-”
“I’m not finished. There’s more. I want access. I want to be in the loop. I want to know what is going on. I want to be embedded.”
He smirked and shook his head.
“We don’t do embedded. You want to be embedded, then go to Iraq. We don’t take citizens, especially reporters, inside investigations. It could be dangerous and it complicates things. And, legally, it could compromise a prosecution.”
“Then, we don’t have a deal and I need to call my editor right now.”
I reached into my pocket for my cell phone. It was a dramatic move I hoped would force the issue.
“All right, wait,” Bantam said. “I can’t make this call. Sit tight and I’ll get back to you.”
He stood up and left the room, closing the door. I got up and checked the knob. As I had guessed, the door was locked. I pulled my phone and checked the screen. It said no service. The soundproofing of the cube probably knocked down service, and Bantam had probably known it all along.
I spent another hour sitting on the hard folding chair, occasionally getting up to knock loudly on the door or to pace in the tiny room the way Bantam had. The abandonment started to work on me. I kept checking my watch or opening my phone, even though I knew there was no service and that wasn’t going to change. At one point I decided to test my paranoid theory that I was being watched and listened to the whole time I was in the room. I opened my phone and walked the corners like a man reading a Geiger counter. In the third corner I acted like I had found service and started through the motions of making a call and talking excitedly to my editor, telling him I was ready to dictate a major breaking story on the identity of the trunk killer.
But Bantam didn’t come rushing in and it only proved one of two possibilities. That the room wasn’t wired for sight and sound, or that the agents outside watching me knew my cell service was blocked and I couldn’t possibly have made the call I had just pretended to make.
Finally, at 5:15 the door opened. But it wasn’t Bantam who entered. It was Rachel. I stood up. My eyes probably showed my surprise but my tongue held in check.
“Sit down, Jack,” Rachel said.
I hesitated but then sat back down.
Rachel took the other seat and sat down in front of me. I looked at her and pointed to the ceiling, raising my eyebrows in question.
“Yes, we’re being recorded,” Rachel said. “Audio and visual. But you can speak freely, Jack.”
I shrugged.
“Well, something tells me you’ve put on weight since I last saw you. Like maybe a badge and a gun?”
She nodded.
“I actually don’t have the badge or gun yet but they’re on their way.”
“Don’t tell me, you found Osama bin Laden in Griffith Park?”
“Not exactly.”
“But you were reinstated.”
“Technically, my resignation had not been signed off on yet. The slow pace of bureaucracy, you know? I got lucky. I was allowed to withdraw it.”
I leaned forward and whispered.
“What about the jet?”
“You don’t have to whisper. The jet is no longer an issue.”
“I hope you got it in writing.”
“I got what I needed.”
I nodded. I knew the score. She had used what leverage she had to make a deal.
“So let me guess, they want it to read that an agent identified Freddy Stone as the Unsub, not someone they had just run out of the bureau.”
She nodded.
“Something like that. I am now assigned to dealing with you. They’re not going to let you inside the tape, Jack. It’s a recipe for disaster. You remember what happened with the Poet.”
“That was then and this is now.”
“It’s still not going to happen.”
“Look, can we get out of this cube? Can we just take a walk where there are no hidden cameras or microphones?”
“Sure, let’s walk.”
She stood up and went to the door. She knocked with a two-and-one pattern and the door was opened immediately. As we stepped into the narrow hallway that led to the front of the bus and the exit, I noticed Bantam was behind the door. I knocked the two-and-one pattern on it.
“If only I had known the combo,” I said. “I could’ve been out of here an hour ago.”
He found no humor in my comment. I turned away and followed Rachel out of the bus. Outside I could see that the warehouse and the alley were still nests of bureau activity. Several agents and technicians were moving about, collecting evidence, taking measurements and photos, writing notes on clipboards.
“All these people, have they found anything we didn’t find?”
She smiled slyly.
“Not so far.”
“Bantam said the bureau was swarming other locations-plural. What other locations?”
“Look, Jack, before we talk we need to be straight on something. This isn’t a ride-along and you’re not embedded. I am your contact, your source, as long as you hold the story for a day the way you offered.”
“The offer was based on full access.”
“Come on, Jack, that’s not going to happen. But you have me and you can trust me. You go back to L.A. and you write your story tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything I can tell you.”
I moved away from her down the sidewalk toward the alley.
“See, that’s what I’m worried about. You will tell me everything that you can tell me. Who decides what you can tell me?”
“I will tell you everything I know.”
“But will you know everything?”
“Jack, come on. Stop with the semantics. Do you trust me? Isn’t that what you said when you called me up out of the blue last week from the middle of the desert?”
I looked in her eyes for a moment and then back to the alley.
“Of course I trust you.”
“Then that’s all you need. Go back to L.A. Tomorrow you can call me every hour on the hour if you want and I will tell you what we’ve got. You will be up to speed until the moment you put the story in the paper. It will be your story and nobody else’s. I promise you that.”
I didn’t say anything. I stared into the alley, where there were several agents and techs dissecting the black trash bags we had found. They were documenting each piece of garbage and debris like archaeologists at a dig in Egypt.
Rachel grew impatient.
“Then do we have a deal, Jack?”
I looked at her.
“Yes, we have a deal.”
“My one request is that when you write it, you identify me as an agent. You don’t mention my resignation or its withdrawal.”
“Is that your request or the bureau’s?”
“Does it matter? Will you do it or not?”
I nodded.
“Yes, Rachel, I’ll do it. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
I turned away from the alley to face her.
“So what’s happening right now? What about the other locations Bantam mentioned?”
“We also have agents at Western Data and at the home of Declan McGinnis in Scottsdale.”
“And what’s McGinnis have to say for himself?”
“Nothing so far. We haven’t found him.”
“He’s missing?”
She shrugged.
“We’re not sure whether he’s voluntarily or involuntarily missing, but he’s gone. And so is his dog. It’s possible that he did some investigating on his own after the agents visited Friday. He might have gotten too close to Stone, and Stone reacted. There’s another possibility, too.”
“That they were in it together?”
She nodded.
“Yes, a team. McGinnis and Stone. And wherever they are, they’re together.”
I thought about it and knew it was not without precedent. The Hillside Strangler turned out to be two cousins. And there were other serial killer teams before and after. Bittaker and Norris came to mind. Two of the most heinous sex killers to ever walk the planet somehow found each other and became a team in California. They tape-recorded their torture sessions. A cop once gave me a copy of one such session that took place in the back of a van. After the first scream of panic and pain, I turned the thing off.
“You see, Jack? This is why we need time before the media fire-storm. Both men had laptops and they took those with them. But they also had computers at Western Data and we have them. We’ve got an EER team coming in from Quantico. They’ll be on the ground by-”
“Ear?”
“ E-E-R. Electronic Evidence Retrieval team. They’re in the air now. We’ll put them on the system at Western Data and see what we can learn. And remember what we already learned today. That place is wired for sight and sound. The archived recordings should be able to help us as well.”
I nodded. I was still thinking about McGinnis and Stone working together as a tag team of murderers.
“What do you think?” I asked Rachel. “You think it’s one Unsub or two?”
“I’m not ready to say for sure yet. But I think we’re talking about a team here.”
“Why?”
“You know the scenario we spun the other night? Where the Unsub comes to L.A., lures Angela to your house, then kills her and flies to Vegas to follow you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the bureau checked every airline flying out of LAX and Burbank to Vegas that night. Only four passengers on the late flights bought tickets that night. Everybody else had reservations. Agents tracked and interviewed three of them and they were cleared. The fourth, of course, was you.”
“Okay, then he could have driven.”
She shook her head.
“He could have driven but why send the GO! package overnight if you were driving to Vegas. You see? Sending the package overnight only works if he was flying over and was going to pick it up, or if he was sending it to somebody.”
“His partner.”
I nodded and started pacing in a circle as I riffed on this new scenario. It all seemed to make sense.
“So Angela goes to the trap site and alerts them. They read her e-mail. They read my e-mail. And their response is that one goes to L.A. to take care of her and one goes to Vegas to take care of me.” “That’s how I’m seeing it.”
“Wait. What about her phone? You said the bureau traced the call the killer made to me on her phone to the airport in Vegas. How did the phone get to-”
“The GO! package. He sent your gun and her phone. They knew it would be a way of further tying you to her murder. After your suicide, the cops would find her phone in your room. Then when it didn’t work out as planned, Stone called you from the airport. Maybe he just wanted to chat, or maybe he knew it would help set the idea that there was one killer out there who had gone from L.A. to Vegas.”
“Stone? So you’re saying McGinnis went to L.A. for Angela, and Stone went to Vegas for me.”
She nodded.
“You said the man with sideburns was no older than thirty. Stone is twenty-six and McGinnis is forty-six. You can disguise appearance but one of the hardest things to do without being obvious about it is to disguise age. And it’s much harder to go younger than older. I’m betting your man with the sideburns was Stone.”
It made sense to me.
“There’s another thing that indicates we’re dealing with a team here,” Rachel said. “It was right in front of us the whole time.”
“What’s that?”
“A loose end from the Denise Babbit killing. She was put in the trunk of her own car and it was abandoned in South L.A., where Alonzo Winslow happened upon it.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So if the killer worked alone, how did he get out of South L.A. after he dropped off the car? We’re talking late at night in a predominantly black neighborhood. Did he take a bus or call a cab and wait on the curb? Rodia Gardens is about a mile from the nearest Metro stop. Did he just walk it, a white man in a black neighborhood in the middle of the night? I don’t think so. You don’t end a murder as well planned as this with that kind of getaway. None of those scenarios makes much sense.”
“So whoever dropped her car off had a ride out of there.”
“You got it.”
I nodded and went silent for a long moment while I thought of all the new information. Rachel finally interrupted.
“I’m going to have to get to work, Jack,” she said. “And you need to get on a plane.”
“What is your assignment? I mean, besides me.”
“I’m going to work with the EER team at Western Data. I need to get over there now to get things ready.”
“Did they shut that place down?”
“More or less. They sent everybody home except for a skeleton crew to keep systems operating and to help with the EER team. I think Carver in the bunker and O’Connor on the surface, maybe a few others.”
“This is going to put them out of business.”
“We can’t help that. Besides, if the CEO of that company and his young cohort were dipping into stored data to find victims for their shared kill dreams, then I think their customers are entitled to know that. What happens after that happens.”
I nodded.
“I guess so.”
“Jack, you gotta go. I told Bantam I could handle this. I wish I could hug you but now’s not the time. But I want you to be very careful. Get back to L.A. and be safe. Call me for anything and, obviously, call me if you hear from one of these men again.”
I nodded.
“I’m going back to the hotel to get my stuff. You want me to leave the room for you?”
“No, the bureau’s paying my way now. When you check out, can you just leave my bag with the front desk? I’ll check back in there later.”
“Okay, Rachel. And you be careful yourself.”
As I turned to head to my car, I slyly reached out and squeezed her wrist. I hoped the message was felt loud and clear; we were in this together.
Ten minutes later the warehouse was in my rearview mirror and I was on the way back to the Mesa Verde Inn. I was on hold with Southwest Airlines, waiting to book a flight back to L.A., but I could not concentrate on anything other than the idea that the Unsub was actually two killers acting in unison.
To me, the idea of two people meeting and acting on the same wavelength of sexual sadism and murder more than doubled the sense of dread such dark things conjured. I thought of the term Yolanda Chavez had used during the tour of Western Data. Dark fiber. Could there be anything as deep and dark in the fiber of one’s being as the desire to share such things as what had happened to Denise Babbit and the other victims? I didn’t think so and the thought of it chilled me to the center of my soul.