“I do.”
“Do you intend to try to trace a connection between the killings of my family and the shootings at Mansfield?”
“Of course.”
“What do your friends call you?”
“You’re assuming I have friends?”
“What does Brimmer call you?”
“Alex.”
“Okay, Alexandra, let me be as clear about this as I possibly can be.”
She did an eye roll and looked at him disdainfully. “Do I sense a patronizing lecture coming?”
“Would you like a scoop?”
Her expression changed. She picked up her recorder. “Is this on the record?”
“So long as your source is anonymous.”
“You have my word.”
“Do you normally give it that quickly?”
“You have my word,” she said tightly.
“An FBI agent was killed last night and her body was left hanging just above our heads on the catwalk up there. She was a skilled, armed federal agent who really can take care of herself. Now she’s a murder victim who was dispatched as easily as someone crushing a bug underfoot.” He slid the plate out of the way again, reached over, and clicked off her recorder.
She made no move to stop him.
“I’ve seen a lot in my twenty years on the force, but I have never seen—” He stopped, grappling for the right words. “I have never seen menace like this. But it’s not just that. It’s—” Again he stopped, tapping his fingers on the table and closing his eyes. When he opened them he said, “Menace coupled with brains and cunning. It’s a very dangerous combination, Alexandra. And I asked about your family only because I wanted to know if you would have anyone to mourn you when you’re murdered too. Because please make no mistake, he will kill you as easily as exhaling smoke from a cigarette.”
“Look, if you’re trying to—”
Decker didn’t let her finish. “He could be watching us right now for all I know, and sizing up where and how exactly he plans to take your life. It seems that he likes to screw with me that way. Kill people I’m close to or associated with. You wrote a big story on me. That ties you and me together in just the way this guy seems to love. And I have no doubt he plans to keep killing until he gets down to his last planned victim.”
Jamison no longer looked disdainful. She looked frightened, though trying hard not to show it.
“And who would that be?” She tried to say this flippantly but her voice cracked halfway through.
“That would be me.”
Chapter 32
Alexandra scooped up her recorder, pad, and pen and put them back into her bag and rose. She wouldn’t look at Decker.
“Okay, if it makes you feel better, you have officially scared the shit out of me,” she said.
“Did you see Leopold leave the bar?”
“What?”
He tapped the newspaper. “The bar where this picture was taken?”
Now she looked at him, her features wary. “I’m not going to answer that.”
“You just did. Okay, I have one more question for you.”
“What?”
He held up the newspaper. “Where did you get this photo of me and Leopold at the bar? There’s no attribution for the photographer. I know the profession is a stickler for that, so I’m wondering why there’s no name there.”
“I took it.”
“No you didn’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m pretty observant. And I happen to know you weren’t in the bar. Whoever did take the picture was watching Leopold and me. Which means he followed us both there though I was following Leopold too.” He paused. “I wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t important. How did you get the photo?”
“I got it from an anonymous source,” she finally admitted.
“And did this anonymous source also supply you with elements of the story you wrote?”
“I really can’t get into that.”
“If you don’t know the name of the source, you don’t have to worry about protecting his identity.” Decker let the paper fall to the table. “Did it come by email, text? Surely not snail mail. You wouldn’t have had time to write the story.”
“Email.”
“Can you send me the email trail?”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“Because the person who sent you the email is also the person who killed all those people.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“I know it absolutely. And I would assume that the email said that you should write this story because things smelled bad on this. That here I was meeting with the man accused of killing my family. There must be more to it, right?”
As he had spoken, Jamison’s eyes had continued to widen. “Did you send the email to me?” she hissed.
“You mean so I could see a story plastered in the newspaper basically accusing me of conspiring to murder my own family?”
She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, that was stupid.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Do you really think it was him?”
“He was there. He was within ten feet of me and I never saw him. And I’m just not sure how that’s possible.”
“You said he was cunning.”
Decker nodded. “He is. He obviously wants to destroy me professionally before he kills me.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Decker looked up at her. “Go ahead.”
“Who the hell did you piss off so badly that he’s doing all this to you?”
Decker didn’t answer, because he had no answer to give. He wrote down his email address on the back of a napkin and slid it across to her.
Jamison pocketed it, turned, and left.
Decker continued to sit there.
A few moments later his phone buzzed. He looked at the screen and allowed himself a brief smile.
Jamison had just forwarded to him the email trail from her anonymous source. Decker knew that the trail would not lead them back to the sender. That was too obvious. But he wanted to study what the man had written.
He pushed his plate aside and stared down at the message. The sender’s name was Mallard2000. That meant nothing to him. He read the message. It basically mirrored what Decker had already deduced. The sender wanted Jamison to write a story raising suspicion about Decker and his family’s murder. The word choices were simple and direct. In his mind Decker imagined Sebastian Leopold uttering each of those words out loud, trying to match the cadence of his stilted speech to the components of the message. But it was off, at least in his mind. They didn’t seem to match.
There were two of them. In this together. One person can’t be in two places at the same time. Leopold in jail during both sets of murders. So if he is involved, and I believe he is, there’s someone else. Yet there is a problem with that theory.
One man with such a vendetta against him, okay. But two of them?
He forwarded the email to Lancaster and asked her to try to track it down. He doubted she or the FBI could, but they had to try. He had no computer, so he walked to the public library and used one there.
He was not very much of a techie, and his ability to track someone from an email address was limited. He soon exhausted his possibilities on that and got up from the computer. He wandered the shelves, arriving at the nonfiction section.
Something had occurred to him on the way over, and a library was a perfect place to check out a theory forming in his mind.
The Clutter family.
He worked his way to the authors whose last name ended in C. Not for Clutter, but for the author of their tragic story.
He found the book and slipped it out.
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.