Calling on my last reserve of strength, I half crawled, half lunged after him as I struggled to my feet. I was hurt and spent but I knew that if he got to the knife, I would be dead.
I threw my weight into him from behind. He lurched forward into the railing, his upper body pivoting over it. Without thinking, I reached down, grabbed one of his legs and flipped him all the way over the rail. He tried to grab the steel piping but his grip slipped and he fell.
His scream lasted only two seconds. His head hit either a railing or the concrete siding of the shaft, and after that, he fell silently, his body caroming from side to side on its way down thirteen floors.
I watched him all the way. Until the final, loud impact echoed all the way back up to me.
I wish I could say I felt guilt or even a sense of remorse. But I felt like cheering every moment of his fall.
The next morning I went back to Los Angeles for real, leaning against the plane’s window and sleeping the whole way. I had spent most of the night in the now familiar surroundings of the FBI. Agent Bantam and I faced off again in the mobile interview room for several hours, during which I told and retold the story of what I had done the evening before and how Courier came to fall thirteen floors to his death. I told him what Courier had said about McGinnis and the desert and the plan for Rachel Walling.
During the interview Bantam never dropped the mask of detached federal agent. He never said thank you for saving the life of his fellow agent. He just asked questions, sometimes five or six different times and ways. And when it was finally over, he informed me that the details regarding the death of Marc Courier would be submitted to a state grand jury to determine if a crime had been committed or if my actions constituted self-defense. It was only then that he broke the mold and spoke to me like a human being.
“I have mixed feelings about you, McEvoy. You no doubt saved Agent Walling’s life but going up there after Courier was the wrong move. You should have waited. If you had, he might be alive right now and we might have some of the answers. As it is, if McGinnis is really dead, most of the secrets went down that shaft with Courier. It’s a big desert out there, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that, Agent Bantam. I kind of look at it like if I hadn’t gone after him, he might have gotten away. And if that had happened, the chances are, you wouldn’t get any answers either. You’d just get more bodies.”
“Maybe. But we’ll never know.”
“So what happens now?”
“Like I said, we’ll present it to the grand jury. I doubt you’ll have any problems. The world’s not exactly going to feel sorry for Marc Courier.”
“I don’t mean with me. I’m not worried about that. With the investigation, what happens now?”
He paused as if to consider whether he should tell me anything.
“We’ll try to re-create the trail. That’s all we can do. We’re not done at Western Data. We’ll continue there and we’ll try to put together a picture of what these men did. And we’ll keep looking for McGinnis. Dead or alive. We only have Courier’s word that he’s dead. Personally, I’m not sure I believe it.”
I shrugged. I had accurately reported what Courier had said. I would leave it to the experts to determine if it was the truth. If they wanted to put a picture of McGinnis in every post office in the country, that was fine with me.
“Can I go back to L.A. now?”
“You’re free to go. But if anything else comes to mind, you call us. Likewise, we’ll call you.”
“Got it.”
He didn’t shake my hand. He just opened the door. When I stepped out of the bus, Rachel was waiting for me. We were in the front parking lot of the Mesa Verde Inn. It was close to five in the morning but neither of us seemed very tired. The paramedics had checked her out. The swelling was already beginning to subside but she had a badly cut and bruised lip and a contusion below the corner of her left eye. She had refused a transport to a local hospital for further examination. The last thing she would do at this point would be leave the center of the investigation.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Bantam said I’m clear to take off. I think I’ll catch the first flight back to L.A. ”
“You’re not going to stay for the press conference?”
I shook my head.
“What are they going to say that I don’t already know?”
“Nothing.”
“How long do you think you’ll be here?”
“I don’t know. I guess until they wrap things up. Which won’t happen until we know all there is to know.”
I nodded and checked my watch. The first flight to L.A. probably wouldn’t be for another two hours.
“You want to go get breakfast somewhere?” I asked.
She tried to crinkle her lips to show disdain for the idea but the pain foiled the effort.
“I’m not that hungry. I just wanted to say good-bye. I need to get back to Western Data. They found the mother lode.”
“Which is what?”
“An unaccounted-for server that both McGinnis and Courier had been accessing. It’s got archived videos, Jack. They filmed their crimes.”
“And both of them are in the videos?”
“I haven’t seen them but I am told they are not readily identifiable. They wear masks and shoot at angles that mostly show their victims, not them. I was told that in one of the videos, McGinnis is wearing an executioner’s hood-like the one worn by the Zodiac.”
“You’re kid-Wait a minute, he’d have to be sixty-some years old to be the Zodiac.”
“No, they’re not suggesting that-you can buy the hood in cult stores in San Francisco. It’s just a sign of who they are. It’s like having your book on the bedside. They know history. And it shows how much fear plays a part in their program. Scaring their victims was part of the rush.”
I didn’t think you needed to be an FBI profiler to understand that. But it brought to mind how truly horrible the last moments of their victims’ lives were.
I once again remembered the audiotape of the Bittaker and Norris torture session in the back of the van. I couldn’t listen then. I almost didn’t want the answer to the question I had now.
“Is Angela on film?”
“No, she was too recent. But there are others.”
“You mean victims?”
Rachel glanced over my shoulder at the door to the FBI bus and then back at me. I guessed that she might be talking out of turn, no matter the deal I supposedly had.
“Yes. They haven’t looked at everything yet but they have at least six different victims. McGinnis and Courier were doing this a long time.”
Now I wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave. The bottom line was that the bigger the body count, the bigger the story. Two killers, at least six victims… If it was possible for the story to get bigger than it already was, then it had just happened.
“What about the braces? Were you right about that?”
She nodded solemnly. It was one of those times that being right wasn’t such a good thing.
“Yeah, they made the victims wear leg braces.”
I shook my head as if to ward off the thought of it. I checked my pockets. I had no pen and my notebook was back up in my room.
“You have a pen?” I asked Rachel. “I need to write this down.”
“No, Jack, I don’t have a pen to give you. I told you more than I should have. At this point it’s just raw data. Wait till I have a better handle on everything and then I’ll call you. Your deadline isn’t for another twelve hours, at least.”
She was right. I had a full day to put the story together, and the information would develop through the day. Besides that, I knew that when I got back to the newsroom, I would face the same issue as the week before. I was part of the story again. I had killed one of the two men the story was about. Conflict of interest dictated that I wouldn’t be writing it. I was going to sit with Larry Bernard once again and feed him a front-page story that would echo around the world. It was frustrating but by now I was getting used to it.