“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 though 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.