“Is he alive?” I asked.
No one answered. I saw that one of the men had a cell phone up to his ear and was making a call.
“This is Dr. Bernstein,” he said calmly. “I need a rescue ambulance to the intersection right outside the ER. Alden and George Burns. Somebody got hit by a car out here. We have major head and neck trauma. We’ll need a backboard to move him. And we need it now.”
I became aware of the sound of sirens nearby but still outside the medical complex. I hoped that those were FBI sirens and they were descending on the Shrike, running him to ground in his silent killing machine.
My cell phone buzzed and it was Rachel.
“Jack, is he dead?”
I turned and looked up at the garage. I saw her standing at the third-floor balustrade, cell phone to her ear.
“They’re saying he’s still alive,” I asked. “What the fuck happened?”
“It was a Tesla. It was the Shrike.”
“Where’s the FBI? I thought they were watching this guy!”
“I don’t know. They were.”
“Did you get a plate?”
“No, it was too fast, unexpected. I’m coming down.”
She disconnected and I put my phone away. I leaned back over the men trying to help Vogel.
I then heard Dr. Bernstein speak to the other man in scrubs.
“He’s gone. I’m calling it. Ten fifty-eight. I’ll call off the truck. We need to leave him here for the police.”
Bernstein pulled his phone again. And I saw Rachel heading toward me. She was talking on her phone. She disconnected when she got to me.
“That was Metz,” she said. “He got away.”
The Shrike
40
He knew it was more than likely an FBI trap but he also knew they would not be prepared for his move. They would refer to the profiles and programs they relied on like religion when it came to understanding and catching men like him. They would expect him to do what he had done before: follow his quarry and attack with stealth. And that was their mistake. Using his phone, he had watched the two reporters on the hospital’s own security cameras, and knew they were staking out some kind of rendezvous spot. When he was sure they had identified the target for him, he moved quickly and boldly. Now he was gone like a blur and he was sure they were scrambling in his wake.
But they were too late.
He was pleased with himself. The last connection between him and the site and the list was surely dead and now it was time for him to fly south for the winter, maybe change plumage and prepare.
He would then come back to finish things when it was least expected.
He drove the Tesla up the ramp and into the parking garage of the Beverly Center. He drove all the way up to the fourth level. There were not many cars up here and he suspected that the mall tended to be more crowded in the later hours of the day. He parked at the southeast corner. Through the decorative steel grating that encased the structure he could see down to La Cienega Boulevard. He saw flashing lights on unmarked cars moving in the traffic. He knew the cars belonged to the feds he had just outwitted and embarrassed. Fuck them. They were searching blind and would never find him.
Soon he heard a helicopter overhead as well. Good luck with that. And good luck to the owner of every black Tesla that was about to get pulled over by feds with their guns out and anger in their eyes.
He checked himself in the rearview mirror. He had shaved his head the night before — in case they had managed to get a physical description of him. His scalp had been startling white when he was finished and he had to rub bronzer from CVS over it. It had stained his pillow while he slept but it did the trick. It now looked like he had kept the look for years. He liked it and found himself checking his look in the mirror all morning.
He lowered the windows about an inch to let air come in, then killed the engine and opened the door. Before getting out he took out a matchbook and a pack of cigarettes. He lit a cigarette with a match and drew in deeply, watching the tip glow hot in the rearview. He coughed as the smoke invaded his lungs. That always happened. He then folded the matchbook around the middle of the cigarette and put the improvised fire starter down on the center console. He adjusted it so the cigarette was tilted slightly downward and would continue to burn up toward the matches. With any luck the matches wouldn’t be necessary and the cigarette would do the job.
He got out of the car, closed the driver’s door, and quickly moved to the front of the car. He checked the front bumper and the plastic skirt below it to see if there was any blood or debris. He saw nothing and bent down to check beneath. He saw blood dripping onto the concrete like oil from the engine of a gas-powered car.
He smiled. He thought that was ironic.
He moved back to the side of the car and opened the rear passenger door. There was the natural-gas canister he had removed from Hammond’s poolside barbecue on the back seat. He had cut the rubber-hose attachment three inches from the coupling and then bled off most of the contents. He did not want a large explosion. Just enough to do what was needed.
Now as he opened the valve he heard the hiss of the remaining gas escaping into the car. He stepped back, peeled off his gloves, and threw them into the car. The Tesla had served him well. He would miss it.
He closed the car door with his elbow and started walking toward the escalator that would take him down to the street.
On the second escalator down, he heard the unmistakable thump of the explosion ignite inside the Tesla. Not enough to blow out the windows but good enough to engulf the inside of the car and burn away every trace of its final user.
He was confident they would never know who he was. The car had been stolen in Miami and the current plates on it were from a duplicate Tesla in the long-term parking lot at LAX. They might have a picture of him but they would never know his name. He had taken too many precautions.
He opened the Uber app on his phone and ordered a pickup on the La Cienega side of the mall. In the destination prompt he typed:
LAX
The app told him his driver Ahmet was on his way and that he would be at the airport in fifty-five minutes.
That was time enough to decide where to go.
The First Story
The FBI and Los Angeles Police have begun an urgent hunt for a man suspected of killing at least 10 people in a cross-country murder spree that included breaking the necks of eight young women.
The killer, who is known as the Shrike on the Internet, targeted the women based on specific profiles from DNA they had provided to a popular genetic-analytics site. The victims’ genetic profiles were downloaded by the unidentified suspect from a site on the dark web that catered to a clientele of men seeking to take sexual advantage of women.
The FBI has scheduled a major news conference tomorrow in Los Angeles to discuss the investigation.
This week the two operators of the site — which was closed down by the FBI today — were murdered by the suspect, authorities said. Marshall Hammond, 31, was found hanged in his Glendale home, where he operated a DNA lab. Roger Vogel, 31, was mowed down in the street in a hit-and-run just seconds after being confronted by reporters from FairWarning. A third man was also killed by the suspect earlier when authorities believe he was mistaken for Vogel.