Fair Warning

34

I got back to the office in the late afternoon and started feeding the new quotes and information from RogueVogue to Emily. She had already put together a fifteen-hundred-word story, which was generally considered the line at FairWarning when reader exhaustion starts to set in. But the new stuff was vital. RogueVogue was one of the two men who created Dirty4 and had set a killer down the path of death and destruction.

“I’m just going to have to tighten up other parts,” she said.

“We can also keep some of the minor stuff for the follow-up stories,” I said. “I’m sure there will be many.”

We were sitting together in her pod.

“True,” she said. “But if we have good stuff now, there’s no reason not to try to get it in.”

“You think Myron’s going to throw a flag because we only have his online name?”

“Probably. Are we one hundred percent sure he’s the guy?”

I thought about it for a moment and nodded.

“He responded to the email I sent to the address that clearly belonged to Hammond’s partner. And he expressed enough knowledge about the site and what was happening to verify who he was. So, we don’t have his name, but it’s him. For sure.”

Emily didn’t nod in agreement or say anything. This told me she was still uncomfortable with putting her name on a story that contained information she wasn’t completely sure of.

“All right,” I said. “I was hoping to avoid having to do this but I will call Rachel and see if the bureau has made any headway in identifying the guy.”

“Why are you avoiding calling her?” Emily asked.

I realized I had just talked myself into a jam. I would have to reveal to Emily the rift that had opened between Rachel and me.

“She has taken the bureau’s side on something,” I said.

“What is it?” Emily asked. “We need her, Jack. She’s our in with the bureau. Once this breaks, we will really need that.”

“The issue is that the FBI don’t want us to publish because it will alert this guy that they’re on to him. They’re afraid he’ll disappear. My side of it is that we are called FairWarning for a reason, and we have to warn the public about this guy. He has killed two people today alone and he has the list of women identified by Dirty4.”

Emily nodded.

“I agree with you,” she said. “We have to go now. Should we run it by Myron before he leaves?”

“Let me see if I can get Rachel on the line first,” I said. “Then we’ll be completely up-to-date with what we’ve got.”

“So... what happened between you two back in the day?”

“We just... I screwed up and she paid for it is what happened.”

“How so?”

I had to decide whether I wanted to get into this. I thought maybe talking about it would exorcise it. But we were in the middle of chasing a story.

“It might help me to know,” Emily said. “Since she’s become part of this.”

I nodded. I got that.

“I was working for the Velvet Coffin,” I said. “And Rachel and I were together. It was a secret. We kept our separate places but that was for show. And I was working on this story about an LAPD cop I heard the feds were looking at for corruption. I had a source who said the guy had been indicted by a federal grand jury but then nothing happened. It got quashed because the target had dirt on the sitting U.S. Attorney.”

“You asked Rachel for help?” Emily asked.

“I did. She got me the grand-jury transcripts and we published. The U.S. Attorney sued and the chief judge got mad and I got pulled into court. I wouldn’t name my source and the judge put me in jail for contempt. Meantime, the cop this was all about offs himself and leaves a note saying he was an innocent man bullied by the media — meaning me. That didn’t win me any sympathy, and after two months I was still in lockup.”

“Rachel came forward.”

“She did. She admitted she was the source. I was freed and she lost her job. End of story and end of us.”

“Wow. That’s rough.”

“She used to chase serial killers and terrorists. Now, she mostly runs background checks for corporations. And it’s all on me.”

“It wasn’t like you forced her to do it.”

“Doesn’t matter. I knew what could happen if I took the transcripts. I took them anyway.”

Emily was silent after that. And so was I. I got up, rolled my chair back to my pod, and called Rachel’s cell. She answered right away. I could tell she was in a moving car.

“Jack.”

“Hey.”

“Where are you?”

“At the office, working on the story. You left the bureau?”

“Yes. I was about to call you.”

“Going home?”

“No, not yet. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you and your FBI friends got anywhere with identifying Rogue.”

“Uh, not really. They’re still working on it.”

I suddenly grew suspicious.

“Rachel, you’re not moving in on him right now, are you?”

“No, not at all. I would tell you that, Jack.”

“Then what’s going on? I haven’t heard from you all afternoon and now you’re going somewhere but not telling me where.”

“I told you, I was just about to call. Thanks for trusting me.”

“I’m sorry but you know me. I get suspicious about what I don’t know. What were you going to call about?”

“I told you they’re trying to determine if there were other victims, right? All you had were cases people mentioned on that coroner’s website. The bureau is doing a deeper dive than that.”

“Okay, that’s good. Are they finding anything?”

“Yes. There are more cases, more women with broken necks. But they aren’t going to share with you if you publish the story before they’re ready. They’re going to come to you tomorrow and try to make a trade. You hold back and they’ll give you more cases.”

“Shit. How many are we talking about?”

“At least three other deceased victims — including the Tucson case you mentioned today.”

Now I paused. What did that mean?

“Are you saying there are non-deceased victims?”

“Well, there may be one. That’s where I’m going now. They identified an assault where a woman’s neck was broken in similar fashion to the others. But she didn’t die. She’s a quadriplegic.”

“Oh god. Where is she?”

“It’s a Pasadena case. We pulled the file and it seems to match up. There’s a composite sketch and she met the guy in a bar.”

“What happened? How did they find her?”

“He had to have thought she was dead. He dumped her down a set of stairs in the hills. Have you ever heard of the Secret Stairs in Pasadena?”

“No.”

“I guess there are stairs that run up and down all through this neighborhood. After he broke her neck he took her body to the stairs and threw her down so it would look like an accident. But some guy running the stairs at dawn found her body and she still had a pulse.”

“Does this mean he knew Pasadena? Maybe the location is a big clue.”

“Well, they are called the Secret Stairs but they aren’t really that secret. There are Yelp reviews and photos all over the Internet. All the Shrike had to do was search Pasadena Stairs online and he’d have found them.”

“What about DNA? Did she go to GT23?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t part of the case file. That’s why I’m going now to try to interview her.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, alone. The agents on this won’t get around to it until tomorrow. Too much else going on.”

I remembered my early research on atlanto-occipital dislocation. It wasn’t always fatal.

“Where?” I asked. “I’m going to meet you.”

“I don’t know if that’s best, Jack,” Rachel said. “I’m going as an investigator. She might not want to talk to a reporter — if she can talk at all.”

“I don’t care. You can do the interview but I want to be there. Where are you going?”

There was a pause and I felt that everything about the fragile relationship I had with her was on the line.

“Altadena Rehab,” Rachel finally said. “Google the address. Her name is Gwyneth Rice. She’s only twenty-nine.”

“I’m on my way,” I said. “Wait for me.”

I disconnected and went back to Emily’s pod to inform her that there were more victims and that I was going to see one who was still alive. I told her about the FBI’s plan to float a deal: information on other victims in exchange for delaying publication.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We have till tomorrow to think about it. Why don’t you talk to Myron about that while I try to get this interview?”

“Sounds good.”

“By the way. They have a composite drawing of the Shrike.”

“Is that part of the deal?”

“We’ll make it part of it.”

I left the office then, grabbing my keys off my desk and hurrying out.

35

Rachel was waiting for me in the lobby of Altadena Rehab. She was all business. No hug, no hello, just “It took you long enough.”

She turned and headed toward a set of elevators and I had to catch up.

“Her father agreed to meet me,” she said after we entered an elevator and she hit the 3 button. “He’s with her now. Brace yourself.”

“For what?” I asked.

“This is not going to be a good scene. Happened four months ago and the victim — Gwyneth — is not doing well physically or mentally. She’s on a ventilator.”

“Okay.”

“And let me handle the introductions. They don’t know about you yet. Don’t be obvious.”

“About what?”

“That you’re there for a story. Maybe it would be better if I took notes.”

“I could just record it.”

“There is nothing to record. She can’t speak.”

I nodded. The elevator moved slowly. There were only four levels.

“I’m here for more than the story,” I said to set the record straight.

“Really?” Rachel said. “When we talked earlier today it felt like that’s all you cared about.”

The elevator door opened and she exited before I could defend myself on that.

We walked down a hallway and Rachel gently knocked on the door to room 309. We waited and a man opened the door and emerged into the hallway. He looked to be about sixty years old with a worn expression on his face. He pulled the door closed behind him.

“Mr. Rice?” Rachel asked.

“Yes, that’s me,” he said. “You’re Rachel?”

“Yes, we spoke on the phone. Thank you for allowing me to visit. As I said, I am FBI retired but still—”

“You look too young to be retired.”

“Well, I still keep my hand in and work with the bureau on occasion. Like with this case. And I wanted to introduce you to Jack McEvoy. He works for FairWarning and is the journalist who first connected all the cases and brought the investigation to the bureau.”

I put my hand out and Mr. Rice and I shook.

“Good to meet you, Jack,” Rice said. “I wish somebody like you was there four months ago and could have warned Gwynnie about this guy. Anyway, come on in. I told her she was having company and finally something is being done. I have to warn you, this is going to go slow. She has a screen and something called a mouth-stick stylus that allows her to communicate.”

“No problem,” I said.

“It’s kind of amazing,” Rice said. “It turns her teeth and the roof of her mouth into a keyboard. And each day she gets more proficient at it. Anyway, she does get tired and she’ll shut down at some point. But let’s see what we can get.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said.

“One more thing,” Rice said. “This kid has been through hell and back. This is not going to be easy. I told her she didn’t have to do it but she wants to. She wants to get this evil man and she’s hoping you can do it. But at the same time she’s fragile. Go easy is what I’m saying, okay?”

“We understand,” Rachel said.

“Of course,” I added.

With that, Rice opened the door and went back inside the room. I looked at Rachel and nodded her in first as we followed.

The room was dimly lit by a soft spotlight over a hospital bed with railings. Gwyneth Rice was raised at a 45-degree angle on the bed and flanked by equipment and tubes that monitored her, breathed for her, fed her, and took her bodily wastes away. Her head was held steady by a framework that looked like scaffolding and appeared to be screwed into her skull in at least two points. Altogether it was a horrible tableau and my first instinct was to look away, but I knew that she might register my reflex for what it was and refuse the interview before it started. So I looked at her straight on and smiled and nodded as I entered the room.

There was a metal arm that was attached to the headboard and extended around and in front of Gwyneth at eye level. Attached to it were two small back-to-back flat screens that allowed her to see one, and her audience the other.

The first thing that Gwyneth’s father did was take a folded paper towel off a bedside table and dab the corners of her mouth where saliva had accrued. I could see a very thin glassine wire extending from the right side of her mouth, down her cheek, and into the nest of wires and tubes attached to the electronic assembly.

Her father put the paper towel aside and introduced us.

“Gwynnie, this is Rachel Walling, who I told you about,” he said. “She’s the one working with the FBI on your case and on those other girls. And this is Jack. Jack’s the writer who discovered this whole thing and called Rachel and the FBI. They have some questions about the man who did this, and you answer what you want, okay? No pressure at all.”

I could see Gwyneth work her jaw and tongue inside her mouth. Then the letters OK appeared on the screen facing us.

This is how it would work.

Rachel moved to the side of the bed and Mr. Rice brought her a chair to sit down on.

“Gwyneth, I know this may be very difficult for you and we really appreciate your willingness to help,” she began. “I think it’s best if the questions just come from me and you try to answer them as best as you can. And if there is anything I ask that you just don’t want to answer, that’s absolutely okay.”

This left me as a spectator on my own story but I was willing to let Rachel start out. If I thought there was something that needed to be asked, I would tap her on the shoulder and we could conference outside the room.

“I want to start by saying we are very sorry for what you’ve been through,” Rachel said. “The man who did this is evil and we are doing everything we can to find and stop him. Your help will be extremely valuable. The Pasadena Police seemed to deal with this when it happened as an isolated case. We now believe one man has hurt several women like you and so what I want to do today is concentrate on him. Who he is, how he chose you, things of that nature. It will help us build a profile of him that will identify him. So, some of my questions might seem odd to you. But there is a purpose to them. Is that okay, Gwyneth?”

Rachel nodded and then glanced back at me and Mr. Rice to see if we had anything to add. We didn’t. She turned back to Gwyneth.

“Okay, then let’s start. It’s very important that we learn how this offender chose his victims. We have one theory and I want to ask about that now. Have you in the past done any sort of DNA hereditary or medical analysis?”

I saw Gwyneth’s jaw start moving. It almost looked like she was eating something. The letters always came out in all caps and as the interview progressed the only punctuation seemed to come through automatic spell-check.

I saw Mr. Rice raise his head in surprise. He didn’t know about his daughter’s looking into her DNA. I wondered if it would have been a sore subject within the family.

“Which company did you use?” Rachel asked.

To me that all but confirmed her as a victim of the Shrike. But she had somehow lived to tell about it, even if it was a life now severely circumscribed by her injuries.

“Okay, so let’s go to the night this happened,” Rachel said. “You were still in extremely critical condition when the initial investigation was carried out. The detectives were mostly trying to work with some grainy video footage from outside the bar. Once you were able to communicate, another detective was on the case who didn’t appear to ask you very many questions about who—”

“‘He was afraid,’” Rachel read off the screen. “Who was afraid? You mean the detective?”

“Well, we’re not afraid, Gwyneth,” Rachel said. “I assure you of that. We are going to find the man who did this to you and he will pay for his crimes.”

Rachel paused when the message printed on the screen. There was a dark shine in Gwyneth’s brown eyes. The moment felt sacred to me.

“I’ll say this, Gwyneth,” Rachel said. “I understand your feelings and you should know that we are going to find this guy and justice is going to be carried out. Now, I know this is tiring for you, so let’s get back to the questions. Has any of your memory of that night come back to you?”

“Can you talk about them? What do you remember?”

“Okay, do you remember anything in particular about the way he talked?”

“Did he tell you about himself at all?”

“Not necessarily. It is harder to sustain a conversation based on lies than one that is close to the truth. It could be a mix of both. Did he tell you, for example, what he did for a living?”

“Okay, that fits with what we already know about this man. So, that could be the truth and that could be very helpful, Gwyneth. Did he say where he worked?”

“Were you a regular at that bar?”

“Had you ever seen him in there before?”

I admired how Rachel was conducting the interview. Her voice was soothing and she was establishing rapport. I read it in Gwyneth’s eyes. She wanted to please Rachel by giving her information she didn’t have. I felt no need to jump in with a question. I felt confident Rachel would get to all the relevant questions — as long as Gwyneth didn’t tire.

It went on like this for another fifteen minutes, with Rachel drawing out little details of the behavior and character of the man who had hurt Gwyneth so badly. And then Rachel looked back over her shoulder at Gwyneth’s father.

“Mr. Rice, I’m going to ask Gwyneth some personal questions now,” she said. “I think it might be better if you and Jack went out into the hall for a few minutes.”

“What kind of questions?” Rice asked. “I don’t want her upset.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen. I just think she will be better able to answer if it’s just between us girls, so to speak.”

Rice looked down at his daughter.

“You okay, honey?” he asked.

And then,

I didn’t like getting the boot myself but saw the logic in it. Rachel would get more doing the questioning one-on-one. I moved toward the door and Rice followed me. In the hallway I asked if there was a cafeteria but he said there was just a coffee vending machine in an alcove down the hall.

We went that way and I treated us each to a terrible cup of coffee. We stood there sipping the liquid levels down in our cups before attempting to walk back down the hall. I decided to do what Rachel was doing: work a subject one-on-one.

“This must be unbelievably hard for you, seeing your daughter like that,” I said.

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you,” Rice said. “It’s a nightmare. But I’m there for her. Whatever she needs and whatever will help catch the bastard who did this to her.”

I nodded.

“Do you have work?” I asked. “Or is this—”

“I was an engineer at Lockheed,” Rice said. “I retired early so I could just be here for her. She’s all that matters to me.”

“Is her mother in the picture?”

“My wife passed six years ago. We adopted Gwynnie from an orphanage in Kentucky. I think her doing that DNA stuff was her attempt to find her birth mother and family. If you’re saying that had something to do with this, then... Jesus Christ.”

“It’s an angle we’re looking at.”

I started walking back down the hallway. We talked no further until we reached the door of 309.

“Are there any treatments out there that might help your daughter’s situation?” I asked.

“I’m on the Internet every morning searching,” Rice said. “I’ve contacted doctors, researchers, the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, you name it. If it’s out there, we’ll find it. The main thing right now is to get her off the respirator and breathing and talking on her own. And that’s not as far-fetched as you might think. This kid — somehow — stayed alive. He thought she was dead and just dumped her down the stairs. But she was alive and whatever it was that kept her going and kept her breathing, that’s still there.”

I could only nod. I was completely out of my element here.

“I’m an engineer,” Rice said. “I’ve always looked at problems like an engineer. Identify the problem, fix it. But with this, identifying the—”

The door to the room opened and Rachel stepped out. She looked at Rice.

“She’s getting tired and we’re almost finished,” she said. “But I want to show her something that I held to the end because it might upset her.”

“What is it?” Rice asked.

“It’s a composite drawing of the suspect that was put together with the help of people who were in the bar that night and saw your daughter with him. I need her to tell us if it’s accurate to her memory.”

Rice paused for a moment as he thought about his daughter’s possible reaction to the drawing. Then he nodded.

“I’ll be here for her,” he said. “Let’s show it to her.”

I realized that I had not seen the composite myself. As we reentered the room I saw that Gwyneth’s eyes were closed and thought she might be asleep. But as I got nearer I realized that her eyes were closed because she was crying.

“Aww, Gwynnie, it’s okay,” Rice said. “It’s going to be okay.”

He picked up the folded paper towel again and blotted the tears on his daughter’s cheeks. It was such a wrenching moment. I felt as though a scream were building in my chest. At that moment the Shrike changed from the abstract subject of a story to a flesh-and-blood villain I wanted to find. I wanted to break his neck but let him live the way this woman now had to live because of him.

“Gwyneth, I need to ask you one last thing,” Rachel said. “To look at a picture — a composite sketch put together with the help of the people in the bar with you that night. I want you to tell me if it looks like the man who did this to you.”

She paused. Nothing appeared on the screen.

“Is that okay, Gwyneth?”

Another pause, then:

Rachel took her phone from her back pocket and opened the photo app. She pulled up the composite and held the phone a foot from Gwyneth’s face. Gwyneth’s eyes darted back and forth as she studied the photo of the drawing. Then her jaw started working.

“The man in this composite looks like mid-thirties to me,” Rachel said. “Is that what you remember?”

Tears began to fall again down Gwyneth Rice’s face. Her father moved in with the paper towel. Rachel stood up and stepped away, putting her phone back in her pocket.

“It’s okay, Gwynnie. It’s okay now,” Rice consoled. “Everything’s going to be all right, baby.”

Rachel looked at me and then back to the bed. In that moment I saw the distress in her eyes and knew this was not any clinical interview for her either.

“Thank you, Gwyneth,” she said. “You have been a wonderful help. We are going to get this man and I will come back to tell you.”

After Rice stepped out of the way, Rachel returned to her position next to the bed and looked down at Gwyneth. They had bonded. Rachel reached a hand to Gwyneth’s face and lightly touched her cheek.

“I promise you,” she said. “We will get him.”

Gwyneth’s jaw went to work and she repeated the same message she had sent at the beginning of the conversation.

36

We didn’t talk until we were out of the building and walking toward the parking lot. It was dark out now.

I had seen Rachel’s blue BMW when I had pulled in and parked next to it. We stopped behind our cars.

“That was intense,” Rachel said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How was the dad out in the hallway?”

“Ugh. I never know what to say in that sort of situation.”

“I had to do that, Jack. Get him out of the room. I wanted her to speak freely because it’s important we know the details. We can assume that what happened to her happened to the other victims who we can’t talk to. Gwyneth provides the template.”

“And what is the template?”

“Well, for one thing. There was no rape. She invited him back to her apartment, ostensibly to show him the place for comparison since he was supposedly looking for a place to live. They had consensual sex — he used a condom — but not to completion. He couldn’t keep an erection. He pulled out and that’s when the nightmare began. He forced her up from the bed to stand naked in front of the bathroom mirror. He made her look at herself as he twisted her neck in a forearm lock.”

“Oh, shit.”

“He was naked too and she felt his erection come back against her back as he thought he was killing her.”

“Fucker gets off on the act of killing them.”

“All serials do. But the fact that there was no rape is important. It lends itself to why he is targeting women with the DRD4 gene. He thinks it gives him an edge in getting his victims into bed. There seems to be a psychological play in that. He doesn’t want to be a rapist. Doesn’t like what that says about him.”

“But killing women is okay, just not raping them first.”

“It’s weird but not unique. Have you heard of Sam Little?”

“Yeah, the FBI’s top serial.”

“Caught here in L.A. and good for as many as ninety murders of women across the country. He only started confessing to the murders once the investigators stopped calling him a rapist — which in his case he was. He was okay with admitting to killing women but would never admit to a single rape.”

“Weird stuff.”

“But like I said, not unique. If this is part of our profile, it could be useful to strategically put something in your story or the press releases that follow to motivate the offender.”

“You mean like have him come after me or Emily or FairWarning?”

“I was thinking more about him making contact with you. There are plenty of examples of serials reaching out to the media to sort of correct the record. But we would take safety precautions just the same.”

“Well, I would have to think about that, talk to Emily and Myron for sure.”

“Of course. We wouldn’t do anything without everybody being on board. It’s just something to think about at this stage.”

I nodded.

“What else did you learn from this?” I asked. “Anything that struck you as a profiler?”

“Well, he obviously dressed her afterward,” she said. “All the victims except for Portrero were dressed. All of them before Portrero were dressed and then dropped off in sometimes elaborate ways in an attempt to cover the murder. I would have to take a hard look at the other locations and where the women lived, but Portrero might show a change. He never removed her from her apartment.”

“Maybe with the others the sex wasn’t at their homes. They were where he was staying or in his car or something. So he had to distance them from him.”

“Maybe, Jack. We’ll make a profiler out of you yet.”

Rachel pulled out her keys and unlocked her car.

“Now what?” I asked. “Where do you go from here? Back to the bureau?”

She pulled her phone to check the time on the screen.

“I’ll call Metz — he’s the agent heading this up — and tell him I talked to her and they can hold off in the morning. He probably won’t be happy I jumped the gun but it will keep his people busy on the other stuff. After that, I think I’m going to call it a day. You?”

“Probably. I’ll check in with Emily and see if she’s still writing.”

I hesitated before getting to the question I really wanted to ask.

“You coming to my place or going home?” I asked.

“You want me to come home with you, Jack?” Rachel asked. “You seem upset with me.”

“I’m not upset. There are just a lot of things going on. I’m seeing this thing I started getting pulled by different people in different directions. So I get anxious.”

“The story, you mean.”

“Yeah, and we have that disagreement: whether to publish or wait.”

“Well, the good thing is we don’t have to decide that until tomorrow morning, right?”

“Right.”

“So I’ll see you at your place.”

“Okay. Good. You should follow me so that you can get into the garage and use my second parking spot.”

“You’re giving me your second parking spot? Are you sure you’re ready for such an important step?”

She smiled and I smiled in return.

“Hey, I’ll give you a remote and a key if you want them,” I said.

The ball back in her court, she nodded.

“I’ll be right behind you,” she said.

She moved toward the door of her car, taking her phone out of her back pocket so she could call Agent Metz. It reminded me of something.

“Hey,” I said. “I couldn’t see the composite when you showed it to Gwyneth. Let me see.”

She walked over to me, opening the photo app on the phone. She held the screen up to me. It was a black-and-white sketch of a white man with dark bushy hair and piercing dark eyes. His jaw was square and his nose was flat and wide. His ears did not extend far from the sides of his head. The top of each ear disappeared into the hairline.

I realized he looked familiar to me.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

I reached up and held Rachel’s hand so she would not take the phone away.

“What?” she said.

“I think I know this guy,” I said. “I mean, I think I’ve seen him.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. But the hair... and the set of the jaw...”

“Are you sure?”

“No. I just...”

My mind raced back over my activities in recent days. I concentrated on the hours I had spent in jail. Had I seen this man in Men’s Central? It was a night of intense fear and emotions. I had such clarity about what and who I had seen but I could not place the man in the drawing.

I let go of Rachel’s hand.

“I don’t know, I’m probably wrong,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I turned and walked to my Jeep while Rachel got in her Beemer. I started the engine and turned to look through the passenger window to give Rachel the nod to back out first. It was then that I realized where I had seen the composite man.

I killed the engine and jumped out of the Jeep. Rachel had already backed halfway out of her spot. She stopped and lowered the window.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I know where I saw him,” I said. “The guy in the composite. He was sitting in a car today at the coroner’s office.”

“You’re sure?”

“I know it sounds far-fetched but the shape of his jaw and the pinned-back ears. I’m sure, Rachel. I mean, I guess I’m pretty sure. I thought he was there waiting for somebody inside. You know, like a family member or something. But now... I think he was following me.”

That conclusion made me suddenly turn and scan the parking lot I stood in. There were only about ten cars and the lighting was poor. I would need a flashlight to determine if anyone was in one of them and watching.

Rachel put her car into park and got out.

“What kind of car was it, do you remember?”

“Uh, no, I have to think. It was dark and he had backed into his space like me. Another sign he could have been following me.”

Rachel nodded.

“The quick exit,” she said. “Was the car big or small?”

“I think small,” I said.

“Sedan?”

“No, more like a sports car. Sleek.”

“How close was he parked to you?”

“He was like across the aisle and down a couple. He had a good view of me. Tesla — it was a black Tesla.”

“Good, Jack. Do you think that lot has cameras?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. But if it was him, how would he know to follow me?”

“Hammond. Maybe they knew about you. Hammond warned the Shrike and the Shrike started eliminating threats. You are a threat, Jack.”

I broke away from her and started walking down the two-row parking lot, looking for a Tesla or any car with someone sitting behind the wheel. I found nothing.

Rachel caught up to me.

“He’s not here,” I said. “Maybe I’m totally wrong about this. I mean, we’re talking about a composite. It could be anybody.”

“Yes, but you saw Gwyneth’s reaction,” Rachel said. “I don’t usually put much stock in composites, but she thought it was dead on. Where did you go after the coroner’s office?”

“Back to the office to feed everything I had to Emily.”

“So he knows where FairWarning is. I didn’t pay attention when I was there, but could he have had any sort of angle of view from the outside?”

“I think so, yes. The front door’s glass.”

“What could you see from the outside, looking in? Could he have seen you working with Emily?”

I thought about the times I had gotten up and gone to Emily’s cubicle to confer with her. I pulled my phone.

“Shit,” I said. “She should know about this.”

There was no answer on Emily’s cell. I next called her desk line, though I assumed she would not still be at the office.

“No answer on either of her phones,” I reported.

My concern was now tipping toward fear. I could see the same apprehension in Rachel’s eyes. All of it was amped up by the interview with Gwyneth Rice.

“Do you know where she lives?” Rachel asked.

I called Emily’s cell again.

“I know it’s Highland Park,” I said. “But I don’t have the exact address.”

“We need to get it,” Rachel said.

No answer. I disconnected and called Myron Levin’s cell. He answered right away.

“Jack?”

“Myron, I’m trying to check on Emily and she’s not answering her phones. Do you have her address?”

“Well, yeah, but what’s going on?”

I told him of the suspicion shared by Rachel and me that I had been followed earlier in the day by the killer at the center of the story we were writing. My concern immediately transferred to Myron and he put me on hold while he searched for Emily’s address.

I turned to Rachel.

“He’s getting it,” I said. “Let’s start driving. Highland Park.”

I walked to the passenger side of her car as she took the driver’s seat. We were out of the parking lot by the time Myron came back on the line and read off an address.

“Call me as soon as you know something,” Myron said.

“Will do,” I said.

I then suddenly thought about Myron and the times Emily and I had conferred with him at the office.

“Are you home, Myron?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m here,” he said.

“Lock the doors.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking that.”

37

I entered the address Myron had given me into my GPS app and muted the command voice. I gave Rachel verbal directions because the incessant commands from the app were always annoying. The app showed we were sixteen minutes away. We made it in twelve. Emily lived in an old brick-and-plaster apartment building on Piedmont Avenue off Figueroa Street. There was a glass entry door with a keypad to the left with individual buttons for eight apartments. When repeated pops on unit 8 did not receive a response, I hit all seven other buttons.

“Come on, come on,” I urged. “Somebody’s gotta be waiting for Postmates. Answer the damn door.”

Rachel turned and checked the street behind her.

“Do you know what she drives?”

“A Jag but I saw a parking lane leading to the back. She probably has a space back there.”

“Maybe I should go—”

The electronic lock snapped open and we went in. I never looked at which unit had responded and finally opened the door, but I knew if we had gained entrance so easily then the Shrike could have as well.

Unit 8 was on the second floor at the end of the hallway. No one answered my heavy knocking and calling out of Emily’s name. I tried the door but it was locked. I stepped back in frustration, a dread growing in me.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Call her again,” Rachel said. “Maybe we hear the phone through the door.”

I walked down the hall twenty feet and called. When I heard the phone start ringing on my end, I nodded to Rachel. She leaned an ear toward the doorjamb of apartment 8, her eyes still on me. The call went to message and I disconnected. Rachel shook her head. She had heard nothing.

I walked back to Rachel and the door.

“Should we call the cops?” I asked. “Tell them we need a wellness check? Or call the landlord?”

“Looks like it’s off-site management here,” Rachel said. “I saw a number on an apartment-for-rent sign out front. I’ll go get it and call. See if that leads to the back lot and if her car is here.”

She pointed to an exit door at the end of the hallway.

“Don’t get locked out,” I said.

“I won’t,” she said.

I watched her go and then disappear down the stairs. I walked down to the exit door, wondering if an alarm would sound. I hesitated for a moment, then pushed the bar and the door swung open. No alarm sounded.

Stepping out onto an exterior landing, I saw that the stairway led down to the building’s small rear parking lot. There was a mop in a bucket on the landing and a can half full of cigarette butts. Someone in the building smoked but not in their unit. I stepped farther out to look over the railing to see what was on the bottom landing. There were some empty plant pots and garden tools.

The door closed behind me. I whipped around. On the outside of the door there was a steel handle. I grabbed it and tried to turn it. I was locked out.

“Shit.”

I knocked on the door but knew it was too soon to expect Rachel to be back at unit 8. I went down the stairs to the parking lot and looked around for Emily’s car. It was a silver Jaguar SUV but I didn’t see one. I then followed the access drive to the front. As I walked down the drive I looked up at the second-floor windows of the building to see if there were any lights on in the windows of the apartment I judged was Emily’s. They were all dark.

When I got to the front of the building there was no sign of Rachel. I pulled my phone and called her but was distracted by motion in the street. I saw a car moving behind the parked cars lining Piedmont. I got only a quick glimpse of it as it passed an opening for the next driveway down.

“Jack? Where are you?”

Rachel had answered.

“I’m out front and I just saw a car drive away. It was silent.”

“A Tesla?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Okay, I’m not waiting for this guy.”

“What guy?”

“The landlord.”

I heard a loud bang and a splintering of wood followed by a muffled bang. I knew she had just kicked in the door of unit 8. I moved to the front door of the building but could see it was closed.

“Rachel? Rachel, I can’t get in. I’m going around—”

“I can buzz you in,” she said. “Go to the front door.”

I ran up the steps to the front door. The lock was buzzing when I got there and I was in.

I went up the interior stairs to the second floor and then down to apartment 8. Rachel was standing in the apartment’s entranceway.

“Is she...?”

“She’s not here.”

I noticed that a piece of the door’s wood trim was lying on the floor of the threshold. But as I fully entered the apartment, that was the only sign of disarray. I had never been there before but I saw a place that was neat and orderly. There was no sign of any sort of struggle having occurred in the living areas. A short hallway to the right led to the open door of a bathroom and a second door to the left that I assumed was the bedroom.

I walked that way, feeling odd about invading Emily’s privacy.

“It’s empty,” Rachel said.

I checked anyway, standing on the threshold of the bedroom and leaning in. I hit a switch on the interior wall and two lamps on either side of a queen bed went on. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was neat; the bed was made and the coverlet was smoothed and had not even been sat on.

I next checked the bathroom and slapped back a plastic shower curtain to reveal an empty bathtub.

“Jack, I told you, she’s not here,” Rachel said. “Come out here and tell me about the car.”

I stepped back into the living room.

“It drove up Piedmont,” I said. “If I hadn’t seen it, I would’ve missed it. It was a dark color and silent.”

“Was it the Tesla you saw at the coroner’s?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look.”

“Okay, think now. Could you tell if it had just pulled away from the curb or was passing by?”

I took a moment and ran it through my mind again. The car was already moving down the street when it had drawn my attention.

“I couldn’t tell,” I said. “I didn’t see it until it was already moving down the street.”

“Okay, I’ve never been in a Tesla,” Rachel said. “Do they have a trunk?”

“I think the newer ones do.”

I realized she was asking whether Emily could be in the trunk of the car I saw driving away.

“Shit — we need to go after it,” I said.

“It’s long gone, Jack,” Rachel said. “We need to—”

“What the fuck is this?”

We both turned to the front door of the apartment.

Emily stood there.

She was in the clothes I had seen her wearing at the office earlier. She carried her backpack with the FairWarning logo on it.

“You’re okay,” I blurted out.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she said. “You broke down my door?”

“We thought the Shrike had... had been here,” I said.

“What?” Emily said.

“Why haven’t you answered your phone?” Rachel asked.

“Because it’s dead,” Emily said. “I was on it all day.”

“Where were you?” I asked. “I called the office.”

“The Greyhound,” she said.

I knew she hated to drive because she grew up driving on the other side of the road and feared making the transition. But I was confused and must have looked like it. Greyhound was for long-distance travel.

“It’s a pub over on Fig,” Emily said. “My local. What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I was being followed today and when—”

“By the Shrike?”

I suddenly didn’t feel as sure about things.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. There was a guy in a Tesla I saw at the coroner’s office and I—”

“How would he know to follow you?” Emily asked. “Or me, for that matter.”

“Probably Hammond,” I said. “He either told him or there was something in the computer or the documents taken from Hammond’s lab.”

I saw fear enter Emily’s eyes.

“What do we do?” she said meekly.

“Look, I think we should calm down a little bit here,” Rachel said. “Let’s not get paranoid. We still don’t know for sure that either Jack or you was being followed. And if Jack was followed, why would he jump from Jack to you?”

“Maybe because I’m a woman?” Emily said.

I was about to respond. Rachel might be right. All of this was because I thought I had matched a composite drawing to a face I had seen behind the wheel of a car in a parking lot from at least eighty feet away. It was a stretch.

“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t we—”

I stopped short when a man appeared in the doorway. He had a full beard and a ring of keys in his hand.

“Mr. Williams?” Rachel asked.

The man stared down at the piece of door framing on the floor, then checked the strike plate hanging by a single loose screw on the jamb.

“I thought you were going to wait for me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “We thought there was an emergency. Will you be able to secure the door tonight?”

Williams turned and saw that when the door had been kicked open it had swung against the side wall of Emily’s entryway. The knob had put a fist-sized dent in the wall.

“I can try,” he said.

“I’m not staying here if I can’t lock the door,” Emily said. “No way. Not if he knows where I live.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” I said. “We saw a car driving away but—”

“Look, why don’t we let Mr. Williams try to fix it and we go somewhere else to talk about this?” Rachel said. “I got more from the FBI today. I think you’ll want to know it.”

I looked at Rachel.

“Well, when were you going to tell me?” I asked.

“We got sidetracked when we were leaving Gwyneth Rice,” Rachel said.

She pointed to the door that Williams was still examining as though that explained her delay.

“By the way, how was Gwyneth Rice?” Emily asked.

“Good stuff... but so fucking sad,” I said. “He’s messed her up for life.”

Halfway through my answer I was afflicted with reporter’s guilt. I knew that Gwyneth Rice would become the face of the story. A victim who would likely never recover, whose life path had been violently and permanently altered by the Shrike. We would use her to draw readers in, never mind that her heartbreaking injuries would last well beyond the life of the story.

“You have to ship me notes,” Emily said.

“As soon as I can,” I said.

“So what are we doing?” Rachel asked.

“We could go back to the Greyhound,” Emily said. “It was pretty quiet in there when I left.”

“Let’s go,” Rachel said.

We moved toward the door and Williams turned sideways so we could fit by. He looked at me.

“You kicked in the door?” he asked.

“Uh, that would be me,” Rachel said.

Williams did a quick up-and-down appraisal of Rachel as she went by him.

“Strong lady,” he said.

“When I need to be,” she said.

38

The Greyhound was less than two minutes away and Rachel drove all three of us. I sat in the back seat, looking out the rear window for a possible tail the whole way. If the Shrike was following I saw no sign of him and my thoughts returned to the question of whether I was being vigilant or paranoid. I kept thinking about the man in the Tesla. Had I simply wanted him to look like the face on the composite or did he really look like the face on the composite?

I had never been to England but the inside of the Greyhound looked like an English pub to me, and I saw why Emily had adopted it as her local. It was all dark woods and cozy booths. A bar ran the entire length of the establishment, front to back, and there was no table service. Rachel and I ordered Ketel martinis and Emily asked them to pull the tap on a Deschutes IPA. I waited at the bar for the drinks while the women grabbed a booth in the back corner.

I took two trips to deliver the drinks so as not to spill the martinis and then settled into the U-shaped booth with Emily across from me and Rachel to my right. I took a full sip of my martini before saying a word. I needed it after the ebb and flow of adrenaline the evening had so far produced.

“So,” I said, looking at Rachel. “What have you got?”

Rachel took a steady-handed draw of her martini, put the glass down, and then composed herself.

“I spent most of the day at the FO in Westwood with the ASAC,” she said. “I was treated as a leper at first, but when they started going through the checkable facts of the story I was telling, they started seeing the light.”

“ASAC?” Emily asked.

She said it the way Rachel had — A-sack.

“Assistant special agent in charge of the L.A. Field Office,” Rachel said.

“You said his name is Metz?” I asked.

“Matt Metz,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I already told you that they’ve linked at least three other cases by cause of death and then Gwyneth Rice, the only known survivor.”

“Were you able to get the new names?” I asked.

“No, that’s what they’re holding back to trade with you for pushing the story back,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get them.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I insisted. “We’re going to publish tomorrow. Putting out the warning about this guy is more important than any other consideration.”

“You sure that the scoop is not the most important thing to you, Jack?” Rachel shot back.

“Look, we’ve been over this,” I said. “It’s not our job to help the FBI catch this guy. Our job is to inform the public.”

“Well, you might change your mind when you hear what else I got,” Rachel said.

“Then tell us,” Emily said.

“Okay, I was dealing with this guy Metz who I knew from when I was an agent,” Rachel said. “Once they legitimized what I brought them they started putting together a war room and attacking this from all angles. They found the other cases and one team was working on that. There’s also a case in Santa Fe where they’re going to do an exhumation of the body tomorrow because they think AOD might have been missed at autopsy.”

“How could they miss a broken neck?” I asked.

“Condition of the body,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get the exact details but it was left out in the mountains and animals got to it. AOD may not have been seen for what it was. Anyway, another team was looking at Hammond and the Dirty4 angle, trying to pull all of that together.”

Rachel broke off there to take another sip of her martini.

“And?” Emily prompted.

“Through the site, they IDed Hammond’s partner,” Rachel said. “At least they think they did.”

I leaned in over the table. This was getting good.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“His name is Roger Vogel,” Rachel said. “Get it? Roger Vogel becomes RogueVogue in the digital universe?”

“Got it,” I said. “How did they find him?”

“I think his fingerprints — digital, that is — are all over the site,” she said. “They brought in a cipher team and I don’t think it was that hard. I didn’t get all the details but they were able to trace him to a stationary IP address. That was his mistake. He did some maintenance of the site from an unmasked computer. Got lazy and now they know who he is.”

“So, what is the location?” I said. “Where is he?”

“Cedars-Sinai,” Rachel said. “It looks like the guy works in Administration. That’s the location of the computer he used.”

At first I felt a jolt of excitement at the prospect of confronting Vogel before the FBI grabbed him. But then the reality hit me: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was a massive, high-security complex that covered five entire blocks in Beverly Hills. It might be impossible to get to him.

“Are they picking him up?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Rachel said. “They’re thinking that having him loose might work to their advantage.”

“As bait for the Shrike,” Emily said.

“Exactly,” Rachel said. “It’s clear he wanted to take Vogel out and made a mistake with the guy up in Northridge. So he may try again.”

“So,” I said, thinking out loud. “If the bureau is watching this guy, there is nothing to stop us from going in there and confronting him. Have they traced him to his home or other locations?”

“No,” Rachel said. “Thanks to you giving Vogel the warning about the Shrike, he’s taking all precautions. They had a loose tail on him and lost him after he left work.”

“That’s not good,” Emily said.

“But here’s the thing,” Rachel said. “He’s a smoker. He is taking precautions but he still has to go outside to smoke. I saw surveillance photos of him at a smoker’s bench outside the building. There was a street sign in the background. It said George Burns Road. That goes right through the middle of the complex.”

I looked across the table at Emily. We both knew exactly what we were going to do.

“We’re going to be there tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get him when he comes out to smoke.”

Emily turned to Rachel.

“Would you recognize this guy off the surveillance photo you saw?” she asked. “If you saw him at the bench, I mean?”

“I think so,” Rachel said. “Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll need you to be there too.”

“If I do that, it will burn me with the bureau,” Rachel said. “I’ll be like you two, on the outside looking in.”

“Okay, we’ll have to figure out a plan for that,” I said.

I grabbed my glass and finished off my drink. We had the rough outlines of a plan and I was good to go.

39

The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was a cluster of tall glass buildings and parking garages crowded together on a five-block parcel but still segregated by the grid of city streets passing through those blocks. At the office that morning we used the Streetview feature of Google Maps to locate the smoker’s bench Rachel had seen in the FBI surveillance photo. It was at the corner of Alden Drive and George Burns Road, an intersection almost dead center in the medical complex. It was apparently centrally located to serve patients, visitors, and employees from all buildings in the complex. It consisted of two benches facing each other across a fountain in a landscaped strip that ran alongside an eight-story parking garage. There were pedestal ashtrays at the ends of each of the benches. We finalized a plan and headed there from the office at 8 a.m. — hoping to be in place before Roger Vogel would go out for his first smoking break.

We watched the smoking benches from two angles. Emily and I were in the nearby ER waiting room, where the windows gave us a full-on ground-level view of the benches, but no view of the Administration Building. Rachel was on the third level of the parking garage because it gave a commanding view of the benches plus the entrance of the Administration Building. She would be able to alert us when Vogel emerged and headed to the benches to smoke. Her position also kept her out of the view of the FBI. Using the angles she remembered from the surveillance photo she had seen the day before, she had pinpointed the FBI observation post in a medical office building across the street from Administration.

Emily Atwater was a lapsed smoker, meaning she had cut back from a pack-a-day habit to a pack-a-week dalliance, and primarily indulged herself during off-work hours. I remembered the ash can outside the second-floor exit at her apartment building.

At regular intervals she went out to the benches to smoke a cigarette, hoping that she would be in place when Vogel showed up to indulge his own habit. I had not smoked since I had moved to California but I had a prop pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket as well, with the intention of going to the benches and using them when Vogel finally appeared.

The morning passed slowly with no sighting of Vogel. Meanwhile, the benches were a popular spot for other employees, visitors, and patients alike — one patient even walked her mobile IV pole and drip bag out to the spot for a smoke. I kept a steady text chain going with Rachel and included Emily when she was at one of the benches. That was where she was at 10:45 when I sent out a group missive suggesting we were wasting our time. I said Vogel had probably been spooked by the conversation I’d had with him the day before and blown town.

After sending it, I got distracted by a man who had entered the ER with blood on his face and demanded to be attended to immediately. He threw a clipboard he had been handed onto the floor and yelled that he had no insurance but needed help. A security guard was moving toward him when I heard my text chime go off and pulled my phone. The text was from Rachel.

The text had gone to both Emily and me. I checked on Emily through the window and saw her sitting on one of the benches looking at her phone. She had gotten the alert. I headed out through the automatic doors and toward the smoking benches.

As I approached I saw a man standing by the benches. Emily was on one bench smoking and another woman was on the other. Vogel, if it was Vogel, was apparently intimidated about sharing one of the benches with the women. This was problematic. I didn’t want him standing when we identified ourselves as journalists. It would be easier for him to walk away from us. I saw him light a cigarette with a flip lighter. I started to remove the prop pack of smokes from my shirt pocket. I saw Emily pretending to read a text but I knew she was opening her phone’s recording app.

Just as I got there the interloping smoker stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and left the butt behind. She got up and walked back toward the ER. I saw Vogel take her place on the empty bench. Our plan was going to work out.

As far as I could tell, Vogel never looked at Emily or acknowledged her in any way. When I got to the spot I put a cigarette in my mouth and then patted the pocket of my shirt as if looking for matches or a lighter. I found none and looked at Vogel.

“Can I borrow a light?” I asked.

He looked up and I gestured with my unlit cigarette. Without saying a word he reached into his pocket and handed me his lighter. I studied his face as he reached the lighter out to me. I saw a look of recognition.

“Thanks,” I said quickly. “You’re Vogel, right?”

Vogel looked around and then back at me.

“Yeah,” he said. “Are you in Admin?”

Identity confirmed. We had the right guy. I threw a quick glance at Emily and saw that her phone had been put down on her bench and angled toward Vogel. We were recording.

“No, wait a minute,” Vogel said. “You’re... you’re the reporter.”

Now I was surprised. How did he know?

“What?” I said. “What reporter?”

“I saw you in court,” he said. “It’s you. We talked yesterday. How the hell did you—? Are you trying to get me killed?”

He threw his cigarette down and jumped up from the bench. He started to head back toward the Administration Building. I raised my hands as if to stop him.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I just want to talk.”

Vogel hesitated.

“About what?”

“You said you know who the Shrike is. We need to stop him. You—”

He pushed by me.

“You need to talk to us,” Emily called.

Vogel’s eyes darted toward her as he realized she was with me and he was being tag-teamed.

“Help us catch him,” I said. “And then you’ll be safe too.”

“We’re your best chance,” Emily said. “Talk to us. We can help you.”

We had rehearsed what we would say on the ride over from the office. But the script, as it was, did not go much further than what we had just said. Vogel kept walking, yelling back at us as he went.

“I told you, none of this was supposed to happen. I’m not responsible for what that crazy person is doing. Just back the fuck off.”

He started to cross George Burns Road.

“You just wanted the women to be fucked over, not killed, right?” Emily called. “Very noble of you.”

She was standing now. Vogel pirouetted and strode back to us. He bent slightly to get right into Emily’s face. I moved in closer in case he made a further move toward her.

“What we did was no different from any dating service out there,” he said. “We matched people with what they were looking for. Supply and demand. That’s it.”

“Except the women didn’t know they were part of that equation,” Emily pressed. “Did they?”

“That didn’t matter,” Vogel said. “They’re all whores anyway and—”

He stopped as his eyes found the cell phone Emily held up in front of her body.

“You’re recording this?” he shrieked.

He turned to me.

“I told you, I want no part of this story,” he yelled. “You can’t use my name.”

“But you are the story,” I said. “You and Hammond and what you’re responsible for.”

“No!” Vogel cried. “This bullshit is going to get me killed.”

He turned again toward the street and headed to the crosswalk.

“Wait, you want your lighter?” I called after him.

I held it up in my hand. He turned back to me but didn’t slow down as he stepped into the street.

“Keep—”

Before he could say the next word, a car swooshed by and caught him in the crosswalk. It was a black Tesla with windows tinted so dark it could have been driverless and I would not have been able to tell.

The force of the collision at the knees threw Vogel forward into the intersection and then I saw his body swallowed by the silent car as it ran over him. The Tesla bounced as it went over Vogel. His body was then dragged underneath it into the middle of the intersection before the car could finally break free of it.

I heard Emily scream behind me but there was no sound from Vogel. He was as silent as the car that took him under.

Once free of the body, the Tesla hit top takeoff speed and screamed across the intersection and down George Burns Road to Third Street. I saw the car turn left on a yellow light and disappear.

Several people ran to the crumpled and bloodied body in the intersection. It was, after all, a medical center. Two men in sea-foam-green scrubs were the first to get to Vogel and I saw that one was physically repelled by what he saw. There were drag marks in blood on the street.

I checked on Emily, who was standing next to the bench she had occupied, her hand to her throat as she gazed in horror at the activity in the intersection. I then turned and joined the scrum that was gathering around Roger Vogel’s unmoving body. I looked over the shoulder of one of the men in scrubs and saw that half of Vogel’s face was missing. It had literally disintegrated while he had been dragged facedown under the car. Vogel’s head was also misshapen and I was sure that his skull had been crushed.

“Is he alive?” I asked.

No one answered. I saw that one of the men had a cell phone up to his ear and was making a call.

“This is Dr. Bernstein,” he said calmly. “I need a rescue ambulance to the intersection right outside the ER. Alden and George Burns. Somebody got hit by a car out here. We have major head and neck trauma. We’ll need a backboard to move him. And we need it now.”

I became aware of the sound of sirens nearby but still outside the medical complex. I hoped that those were FBI sirens and they were descending on the Shrike, running him to ground in his silent killing machine.

My cell phone buzzed and it was Rachel.

“Jack, is he dead?”

I turned and looked up at the garage. I saw her standing at the third-floor balustrade, cell phone to her ear.

“They’re saying he’s still alive,” I asked. “What the fuck happened?”

“It was a Tesla. It was the Shrike.”

“Where’s the FBI? I thought they were watching this guy!”

“I don’t know. They were.”

“Did you get a plate?”

“No, it was too fast, unexpected. I’m coming down.”

She disconnected and I put my phone away. I leaned back over the men trying to help Vogel.

I then heard Dr. Bernstein speak to the other man in scrubs.

“He’s gone. I’m calling it. Ten fifty-eight. I’ll call off the truck. We need to leave him here for the police.”

Bernstein pulled his phone again. And I saw Rachel heading toward me. She was talking on her phone. She disconnected when she got to me.

“That was Metz,” she said. “He got away.”