“Okay, so then what do we know? We know that somehow Angela or possibly you hit a trip wire and alerted him to your investigation.”
“Trunk murder dot com.”
“I will have it checked out as soon as I can. Maybe that was it and maybe it wasn’t. But somehow our guy was alerted. His response was to invade the Los Angeles Times and try to find out what you two were up to. We don’t know what Angela put in her e-mails but we know that you put your plan to go to Las Vegas last night into an e-mail. I am betting that our guy read it and a lot of your other e-mails and keyed his plan off of it.”
“We keep saying ‘our guy.’ We need a name for him.”
“In the bureau we would call him an unknown subject until we knew exactly who we were dealing with. An Unsub.”
I got up and looked through the curtains on the front window. The street was dark out there. No cops yet. I walked over to a wall switch and turned on the outside lights.
“Okay, Unsub, then,” I said. “What do you mean he keyed his plan off of my plan?”
“He needed to neutralize the threat. He knew that there was a good chance you had not confirmed your suspicions or talked to the authorities yet. Being a reporter, you would keep the story to yourself. This worked in his favor. But he still had to move quickly. He knew Angela was in L.A. and you were going to Vegas. I think he started in L.A., somehow grabbed Angela, and then killed her and set you up for it.”
I sat back down.
“Yeah, that’s obvious.”
“He then focused his attention on you. He went to Vegas, probably driving through the night or flying out this morning, and tracked you to Ely. It would not have been hard to do. I think he was the man who followed you in the hallway at the hotel. He was going to make his move against you in your room. He stopped when he heard my voice and that has sort of puzzled me until now.”
“Why?”
“Well, why did he abort the plan? Just because he heard you had company? This guy isn’t shy about killing people. What would it matter to him if he had to kill you and the woman he heard in your room?”
“So then, why did he abort?”
“Because the plan wasn’t to murder you and whoever you were with. The plan was for you to kill yourself.”
“Come on.”
“Think about it. It would be the best way for him to avoid detection. If you end up murdered in a hotel room in Ely, there is going to be an investigation that would lead to all of this unraveling. But if you were a suicide in a hotel room in Ely, then the investigation would go in a completely different direction.”
I thought about this for a few moments and saw where she was going with it.
“Reporter gets laid off, has the indignity of having to train his own replacement, and has few prospects for another job,” I said, reciting a litany of true facts. “He gets depressed and suicidal. Concocts a story about a serial killer running around two states as cover, then abducts and murders his young replacement. He then gives all his money to charity, cancels his credit cards and runs off to the middle of nowhere, where he kills himself in a hotel room.”
She was nodding the whole time I was running it down.
“What’s missing?” I asked. “How was he going to kill me and make it look like suicide?”
“You’d been drinking, right? You came into the room with two bottles of beer. I remember that.”
“Yeah, I’d only had two before that.”
“But it would help sell the scene. Empty bottles strewn around the hotel room. Cluttered room, cluttered mind, that sort of thing.”
“But beer wouldn’t kill me. How was he going to do it?”
“You already gave the answer earlier, Jack. You said you had a gun.”
Bang. It all came together. I stood up and headed toward my bedroom. I’d bought a.45 caliber Colt Government Series 70 twelve years earlier, after my encounter with the Poet. He was still out there at the time and I wanted some protection in case he came calling on me. I kept the weapon in a drawer next to my bed and only took it out once a year to go to the range.
Rachel followed me into the bedroom and watched me slide open the drawer. The gun was gone.
I turned back to Rachel.
“You saved my life, you know that? No doubt about that now.”
“I’m glad.”
“How would he know I owned a gun?”
“Is it registered?”
“Yes, but what, now you’re saying he can hack into the ATF computers? This is getting far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“Actually, no. If he tapped the prison computer, I don’t see why he couldn’t get into the gun registry. And that may be only one place where he could have gotten it. Back during the period when you bought it, you were interviewed by everybody from Larry King to the National Enquirer. Did you ever put it out there that you owned a gun?”
I shook my head.
“Unbelievable. I did. I said it in a few interviews. I was hoping the word would get out and it would deter a surprise visit from the Poet.”
“There you go.”
“But for the record, I never did an interview with the Enquirer. They did a story on me and the Poet without my cooperation.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, this guy now isn’t as smart as we think. There was one big flaw in his plan.”
“What was that?”
“I flew to Vegas. All baggage is screened. I never would have gotten the gun there.”
She nodded.
“Maybe not. But I think it is a widely accepted fact that the scanning process is not one hundred percent perfect. It would probably bother the investigators in Ely but not enough to make them change their conclusion. There are always loose ends in any investigation.”
“Can we go back out to the living room?”
Rachel headed out of the room and I followed, taking a glance back at the bed as I went through the door. In the living room, I dropped down on the couch. A lot had happened in the last thirty-six hours. I was getting fatigued but knew there would be no rest for the weary for a long time.
“I thought of something else. Schifino.”
“The lawyer in Vegas? What about him?”
“I went to him first and he knew everything. He could put the lie to my suicide.”
Rachel considered this for a moment and then nodded.
“That could’ve put him in danger. Maybe the plan was to kill you and then double back to Vegas and take him out, too. Then, when the chance was missed with you, there was no reason to hit Schifino. I’ll have the field office in Vegas make contact, anyway, and see about protection.”
“Are you going to have them go up to Ely and pull the video from the casino where I sat with this guy?”
“I’ll do that, too.”
Rachel’s phone rang and she answered immediately.
“It’s just me and the homeowner,” she said. “Jack McEvoy. He’s a reporter for the Times. The victim here was a reporter as well.”
She listened for a moment and said, “We’re coming out now.”
She closed the phone and told me the police were out front.
“They’ll feel more comfortable if we come out to meet them.”
We walked to the front door and Rachel opened it.
“Keep your hands in sight,” Rachel said to me.
She walked out, holding her credentials high. There were two patrol cars and a detective cruiser in the street out front. Four uniformed officers and two detectives were waiting on the driveway. The uniformed officers pointed their flashlights at us.
When we got closer I recognized the two detectives from Hollywood Division. They held their guns down at their sides and looked ready to use them if I gave them the right reason.
I didn’t.
I didn’t get to the Times until shortly before noon on Thursday. The place was bustling with activity. A lot of reporters and editors were moving about the newsroom like bees in a hive. I knew it was all because of Angela and what had happened. It’s not every day that you come to work and find out your colleague has been brutally murdered.