“All right, Rachel. I guess I’ll go up and pack my stuff, then head to the airport.”
“Okay, Jack. I’ll call you. I promise.”
I liked that she promised before I had to ask. I looked at her for a moment, wanting to make a move to touch and hold her. She seemed to read me. She took the first step and pulled me into a tight embrace.
“You saved my life tonight, Jack. You think you’re getting out of here with just a handshake?”
“I was sort of hoping there would be more than that.”
I kissed her lightly on the cheek, avoiding her bruised lips. If Agent Bantam or anybody else behind the smoked black windows of the FBI mobile command center was watching, neither one of us cared.
It was almost a minute before Rachel and I separated. She looked into my eyes and nodded.
“Go write your story, Jack.”
“I will… if they let me.”
I turned and walked toward the hotel.
All eyes were on me as I walked through the newsroom. It had spread as quickly as a Santa Ana wind through the newsroom that I had killed a man the night before. Many probably thought I had avenged Angela Cook. Others may have thought I was some sort of danger freak who put myself in harm’s way for the thrill of it.
As I approached my cubicle the phone was buzzing and the message light was on. I put my backpack on the floor and decided I would deal with all the callers and messages later. It was almost eleven o’clock, so I walked over to the raft to see if Prendo was in yet. I wanted to get this part over with. If I was going to give my information to another reporter, I wanted to start giving it up now.
Prendo wasn’t in but Dorothy Fowler was sitting at the head of the raft. She looked up from her computer screen, saw me and did a double take.
“Jack, how are you?”
I shrugged.
“Okay, I guess. When’s Prendo coming in?”
“Probably not till one. Are you up to working today?”
“You mean, do I feel bad about the guy who fell down the stairwell last night? No, Dorothy, I’m actually okay with that. I feel fine. As the cops say, NHI-no human involved. The guy was a killer who liked to torture women while he raped and suffocated them. I don’t feel too bad about what happened to him. In fact, I sort of wish he has been conscious the whole way down.”
“Okay. I think I understand that.”
“The only thing I don’t feel good about right now is that I’m guessing I don’t get to write the story, right?”
She frowned and nodded.
“I’m afraid not, Jack.”
“Déjà vu all over again.”
She squinted her eyes at me like she was wondering if I realized the inanity of what I had just said.
“It’s a saying. Yogi Berra? The baseball guy?”
She didn’t get it. I could feel the eyes and ears of the newsroom on us.
“Never mind. Who do you want me to give my stuff to? The FBI has confirmed to me that there were two killers and they have found videos of them with several victims. At least six besides Angela. They’ll be announcing all of this at a press conference but I have lots of stuff they won’t be putting out. We’ll kick ass with this.”
“Just what I want to hear. I’m going to put you with Larry Bernard again for continuity. You have your notes? Are you ready to go?”
“Ready when he is.”
“Okay, let me call and book the conference room again so you guys can go to work.”
I spent the next two hours giving Larry Bernard everything I had, turning over my notes and filling him in off the top of my head with regard to my own actions. Larry then interviewed me for a sidebar story on my hand-to-hand battle with the serial killer.
“Too bad you didn’t let him answer that last question,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“At the end, when you asked him why he didn’t just take off instead of going after Walling, that’s the essential question, isn’t it? Why didn’t he run? He went after her and it didn’t make a lot of sense. He was responding to you but you said you hit him with the lamp before he answered that one.”
I didn’t like the question. It was as if he was suspicious of my veracity or what I had done.
“Look, it was a knife fight and I didn’t have a knife. I wasn’t interviewing the guy. I was trying to distract him. If he was thinking about my questions, then he wasn’t thinking about putting the knife in my throat. It worked. When I saw my chance I took it. I got the upper hand and that’s why I’m alive and he’s not.”
Larry leaned forward and checked his tape recorder to make sure it was still operating.
“That’s a good quote,” he said.
I’d been a reporter for twenty-plus years and I had just been baited by my own friend and colleague.
“I want to take a break. How much more do you need?”
“I actually think I’m good,” Larry said, his manner completely unapologetic. It was just business. “Let’s take a break and I’ll go through my notes and make sure. Why don’t you call Agent Walling and see if anything’s come up in the last few hours.”
“She would have called me.”
“You sure?”
I stood up.
“Yes, I’m sure. Stop trying to work me, Larry. I know how it’s done.”
He raised his hands in surrender. But he was smiling.
“Okay, okay. Go take your break. I have to write up a couple budget lines anyway.”
I left the conference room and went back to my cubicle. I picked up the phone and checked messages. I had nine of them, most from other news outlets wanting me to comment for their own reports. The CNN producer I had saved from the wrath of the censors by heading off Alonzo Winslow’s interview left a message that he wanted me back on for the report on the latest turn of events.
I would deal with all such requests the next day, after the story had run exclusively in the Times. I was being loyal to the end, even though I didn’t know why I should be.
The last message was from my long-lost literary agent. I hadn’t heard from him in more than a year, and then it was only to tell me he had been unable to sell my latest book proposal-a year in the life of a cold case detective. His message informed me that he was already fielding offers for a book about the trunk murders case. He asked if the killer had been given a name by the media yet. He said a catchy name would make the book easier to package, market and sell. He wanted me to be thinking about that, he said, and to sit tight while he wheeled and dealed.
My agent was behind the curve, not realizing yet that there were two killers, not one. But the message made any frustration I was feeling about not getting to write the day’s story go away. I was tempted to call the agent back but decided to wait until I heard from him with significant news. I then hatched a scheme in which I would tell him I would only take a deal from a publisher who would promise to publish my first novel as well. If they wanted the nonfiction story badly enough, they would take the deal.
After hanging up the phone, I went to my screen and looked into the city basket to see if Larry Bernard’s stories were on the daily budget. As expected, the top of the budget was weighted with a three-story package on the case.
SERIAL- A man suspected of being a serial killer who took part in the killings of at least seven women, including a Times reporter, died Tuesday night in Mesa, AZ, after a confrontation with another reporter for the newspaper led to his falling thirteen floors down a hotel stairwell shaft. Marc Courier, 26, a Chicago native, was identified as one of two men suspected in a string of sexually motivated abductions and murders of women in at least two states. The other suspect was identified by the FBI as Declan McGinnis, 46, also of Mesa. Agents said McGinnis was the chief executive officer of a data storage facility from which victims were chosen from stored law firm files. Courier worked for McGinnis at Western Data Consultants and had direct access to the files in question. Though Courier claimed to a Times reporter that he had killed McGinnis, the FBI has listed his whereabouts as unknown. 45 inches w/mug shot of Courier. BERNARD