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 have 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.