"I have a business deal for you. If the hunchback won't come on the – "
"She's never coming on your show."
"I think I guessed that. Now I want you, Riker. You could work with me on the Reaper murders, keep the show from getting stale. You probably wonder why I'd help that freak hunt down the people who set me free. You think I'm an ungrateful bastard, and you're right about that."
"No, I'm thinking you're a moron."
Apparently, Zachary enjoyed being insulted. Grinning, he held up a manila envelope with Riker's name printed in Mallory's neat block letters. "I know a lot about you." He dropped the envelope on the desk and pushed it in Riker's direction. "That's your dossier. No ordinary detective. I understand that Special Crimes Unit is an elite squad, and my fans just love hero cops with multiple gunshot wounds. I think we can work together. I'll give you access to everything I've got on the Reaper, and, babe, I've got plenty. My fans can get me anything I want."
"Your fans are squirrels," said Riker. "You've got nothing." He was leafing through Mallory's background report, a pack of lies. "And it would be a big mistake to call me babe one more time." Mallory's dossier had given him massive debts and a heavy mortgage for a summer house on Shelter Island, a place that he had never even visited. On the next page, she had jacked up his apartment rent to an amount that only a cop on the take could afford, thus painting him as a shady, money-hungry man with great bribe potential. He rolled the sheets into a paper truncheon. "I've got no idea why the feds don't shut you down."
"They tried. In fact, the FCC did suspend me for a few nights. Then a pack of ACLU lawyers beat up their lawyers on the issue of free speech. Oh, and then – you'll love this part – an idiot judge lifted my suspension before the matter even went to a hearing. I'm betting the Reaper kills the last juror before the government gets my case into court. Bless the morons. And back to my job offer. In addition to all that free advertising, you get paid a bundle just for – " "No deal."
"Not so fast, Riker. I know what you do for a living these days. You clean crime scenes. That's a joke job. And I know you need money." He nodded to the dossier. "I have very good sources."
"So do I. The jury verdict was a farce. The Chicago cops say you committed murder. No mistake, hard evidence and eyewitnesses. And it was real cold."
"Well, this is what they didn't tell you – because they didn't know." Zachary flipped a lever on his console. "Listen. This tape was never been played on the air." And now the speakers carried the sound of breaking glass and a woman's voice screaming obscenities. "I recorded this in my old Chicago studio – the first time she tried to kill me. She broke the window on her sound booth to get at me."
Riker listened to the recorded voice of the shock-jock describing a woman who had gone mad, crunching broken glass underfoot as she rushed toward him with a broken shard in her hand. He even described a cut to his chest when she opened his skin.
Zachary turned off the machine, then unbuttoned his shirt to display a jagged scar. "It wasn't deep, not as bad as it looks. The station manager called in a doctor. I gave him a lame story about an accident. The woman was never charged. So you can't say I never gave her a break. They just took her off to a hospital. Ten days later, she was released from the psycho ward. That's when she started following me around. Have you ever been stalked?"
Riker nodded. It was a rare day when he did not have someone following him around, though sometimes it was only a feeling.
"Well, she came after me again on the day she died. I ran into that building to get away from her, but she caught up to me on the roof. It was a construction site, lots of workmen standing around. I'm guessing the sling blade belonged to one of them. Wicked-looking knife. It was in her hand when she backed me up to the wall. Then she rushed me. So, yes, I pushed her off that roof. I stepped to one side and helped her right over the wall. The knife dropped with her, but the police never found it, and the workmen didn't see it in her hand."
"And none of this came out in your trial?"
"I wouldn't let my attorneys use the tape. Incidentally, the prosecutor had her psychiatric history – years of voluntary hospital stays. She was always unstable, but the district attorney neglected to share that with my defense team. It would've ruined the case against me. You see, I wasn't the first man she tried to kill. So I had more than enough grounds for a new trial if the verdict didn't go my way."
"If all this is true," and Riker was skeptical, "why didn't you plead self-defense?"
Zachary leaned forward, smiling. "Tell me, Riker, what's more intriguing – a radio personality who killed a woman to save his own sorry ass – or a man who got away with cold-blooded murder?" He smiled. "Point taken? Good. After my acquittal, I was back on the air and my ratings were the highest in the history of Chicago radio. And then the major networks were calling me. New York City, every jock's dream, and national syndication."
"And now you help the Reaper kill off your own jury. You're getting away with murder… again."
"Only in America. I love this country. If you want fame, and you want it fast – well, then you've got to kill somebody. That's the American way." "I'm out of here," said Riker.
"Wait! Just hear me out, all right? You could be the one to catch the Reaper."
"I'm not a cop anymore." Riker turned his back on the man and walked toward the door.
"Wait – three minutes, that's all I'm asking." Zachary raised his voice. "And I won't tell my audience about the hunchback, the prime suspect for the murder of an FBI agent. Just three minutes. That's the deal."
The man leaned far back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, making himself an easy target for a beating. Riker walked back to him, and Zachary sat up straight, perhaps believing that he was about to take a blow. But Riker only leaned over the console to push the lever that played the Chicago tape. He listened to the rest of the mad woman's murder attempt, her screams subsiding to soft weeping as she was strapped to a gurney and taken away. And now she was dead.
"You drove that poor woman crazy." Riker glanced back at the sound booth and the young girl behind the glass, Zachary's current victim. "I know your style. You're a damn psychopath."
"Actually, I'm not. At my trial, the prosecutor's shrink testified that I was a sociopath – not legally crazy. I'm also the nation's foremost expert on the Reaper. So work with me. I'll get you all the information you want. Would you like to see an autopsy picture, one of the Reaper's kills?" He opened the console drawer, pulled out a glossy photograph and handed it to Riker. "I got that from a fan who works in the Chicago morgue. Now this is what I have in mind. One of the jurors is in New York City – "
"I heard your show last night," said Riker. "Leave that poor bastard alone."
"There's something you should know about this juror, MacPherson." "Your three minutes are up. Don't go near Jo, not on or off the air." He pointed to the crazy woman behind the window. "If she can get through that lock – I can."
After leaving the studio, he paused at the open door of the sound booth to speak with the young woman inside. She had freckles, and that broke his heart. "You should quit this job," he said. "Just walk away."
"I can't." Her eyes had a hint of gratitude, and mild surprise was also there. Kindness would be something rare to her these days. She was like a child on the verge of tears, though she was smiling when she said, "I want to be famous."
Riker nodded, silently responding with Ian Zachary's words in his head. Then you've got to kill somebody.
Chapter 11
ON THE SIDEWALK OUTSIDE THE RADIO STATION, RIKER was greeted by a small band of excited people. Their outstretched hands held pens and autograph books. Disappointment set in as they quickly identified him as a nobody, then turned their attentions back to the door, waiting for someone more worthy, somebody famous.