Fair Warning

43

We gathered at Sun Ray Studios on Cahuenga Boulevard to record the last episode of the podcast on the Shrike. The last, that is, until there was some sort of break in the case worthy of a new episode. I had gone through seventeen episodes. I had discussed the story from every conceivable angle and had interviewed every person associated with the case who was willing to go on the record and be taped. This even included an interview with Gwyneth Rice in her hospital room, her voice now an eerie electronic creation manifested from her laptop.

This last episode was a heavily promoted live discussion with as many of the players in the case as I could bring together. The studio had a round table in the recording room. It was Rachel Walling, Metz from the FBI, Detective Ruiz from the Anaheim Police Department, Myron Levin from FairWarning, and Hervé Gaspar, the lawyer who had represented Jessica Kelley, the victim in the William Orton case. I had never been able to figure out whether Ruiz or Gaspar had been my Deep Throat source. Both had denied it. But Gaspar had eagerly accepted the invitation to be part of the podcast, while Ruiz had to be cajoled. That tipped my guess toward Gaspar. He relished the secret part he had played in the case.

Lastly, we had Emily Atwater on the phone, calling in from her unknown spot in England and ready to answer questions as well.

We had calls on hold before the scheduled hour even began. This did not surprise me. The podcast had steadily grown an audience. More than half a million people had already listened to the prior week’s episode, when the live event was announced.

We gathered around the table, and Ray Stallings, the engineer and owner of the studio, handed out headsets and checked and adjusted the microphones.

The moment was awkward for me. It had been almost three months since Robinson Felder’s attempted abduction. In that time, I had only seen Rachel once and that was when she had come to my apartment to collect some clothes she had left there.

We were no longer seeing each other, despite my apologizing and taking back the accusation I had made against her on that last night. As she had warned, my accusation ruined everything. We were now finished. Getting her to appear on the final podcast took an email lobbying campaign that was a digital version of begging and groveling. I could have easily proceeded without her on the episode, but I hoped that getting her into the same room with me might spark something or at least give me the chance to once more confess my sins and seek forgiveness and understanding.

It wasn’t a complete shutdown of communications because we were still inextricably bound together by the Shrike. She was my source. She had access to Metz and the FBI investigation; I had access to her. Though we communicated by email only, it was still communication, and more than once I had tried to engage her in a discussion outside the bounds of the source/reporter relationship. But she had thwarted and deflected such efforts, with the request that we keep things on a professional level from now on.

I watched her as Ray positioned the microphone in front of her lips and had her say her name a few times while he checked the sound levels. She avoided eye contact with me the whole time. Looking back, I was as mystified by this turn of events as by anything else that had occurred in the case. I could not figure out what I had or didn’t have inside me that would lead me to doubt a sure thing and look for the cracks in its foundation.

Once we went live, I began with the scripted intro I used at the start of every episode of the podcast:

“Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it... I’m Jack McEvoy and this is Murder Beat, the true-crime podcast that takes you beyond the headlines and on the trail of a killer with the investigators on the case.

“This episode wraps up our first season with a live discussion featuring the investigators, attorneys, and journalists who all played a part in exposing and hunting a serial killer known as the Shrike...”

And so it went. I introduced the panel members and started taking listener questions. Most of them were routine softballs. I acted as moderator and chose which participant to throw each question to. Everybody had been prepped beforehand to keep their answers short and precise. The shorter the answer, the more questions we could get to. I directed more than an equal share to Rachel, thinking that somehow it was like engaging her in conversation. But it felt hollow and embarrassing after a while.

The most unusual call came from a woman identifying herself as Charisse. She did not ask a question about the Shrike case. Instead, she said that eleven years earlier her sister Kylie had been abducted and murdered, her body left in the sand under the Venice pier. She said the police never arrested anyone for the crime and there was no active investigation she knew of.

“My question is whether you would investigate her case,” Charisse said.

The question was so out-of-left-field that I struggled to answer.

“Well,” I said. “I could probably look into it and check on what the police did with it, but I’m not a detective.”

“What about the Shrike?” Charisse said. “You investigated him.”

“The circumstances were a bit different. I was working on a story and it became a serial-murder case. I—”

I was interrupted by a dial tone. Charisse had hung up.

I got the discussion back on track after that but the episode still went long. The advertised hour stretched to ninety minutes and the only time we veered away from questions from listeners was when I had to read advertisements from our sponsors, which were mostly other true-crime podcasts.

The listeners who called in were enthusiastic about Murder Beat and many eagerly asked what the next season would be about and when it would start. These were questions I didn’t yet have an official response to. But it was good to know that there appeared to be an audience out there waiting. It buoyed my sinking morale.

I have to admit that I secretly hoped that I would hear from him. The Shrike. I had hoped that he was one of the podcast’s listeners and that he would feel compelled to call in to taunt or threaten the journalists or the investigators. That was why I let the session go long. I wanted to get to every caller just in case he was there waiting to speak.

But it never happened, and when we answered the last question and killed the live feed, I looked across the table at Metz. We had talked previously about the possibility of the unsub — FBI-speak for the unknown subject — calling in. He shook his head at me and I shrugged. I glanced at Rachel, who was sitting next to Metz. She was already taking her headphones off. I then saw her touch his arm and lean toward him to whisper something. The gesture looked intimate to me. My morale sagged further.

I wrapped things up with my usual thanks to those involved in the podcast: the participants, the sponsors, the studio, and the sound engineer. I promised listeners that we would be back with a new chapter in the Shrike case as soon as anything occurred. We went out with a tune from saxophonist Grace Kelly called “By the Grave.”

And that was it. I took my headphones off and draped them over the microphone stand. The others did the same.

“Thanks, everybody,” I said. “That was good. I was hoping the Shrike would call in but he was probably busy doing laundry today.”

It was a lame and insensitive attempt at a joke. No one even smiled.

“I have to go to the restroom,” Rachel said. “So I’m going to leave. Good to see everybody.”

She gave me a smile as she stood up, but I couldn’t hang any hope on it. I watched her leave the recording room.

Gaspar and Ruiz were the next to leave as they each had to drive all the way back to Orange County. I asked Ray if Emily was still on the line but he said she had disconnected. Myron bailed next and then Metz. I was left with Ray, who had questions about whether I wanted him to edit the session down to an hour or post it in its entirety as the season finale. I told him to put the whole thing out. Those who hadn’t listened to the live version could download the whole thing and listen to as much or as little as they liked.

I took the elevator down to the building’s basement. The garage was always crowded, requiring an attendant named Rodrigo to be constantly moving double-parked cars around so people could get in and get out. When the elevator opened, I saw through the alcove that Rachel was in the garage waiting with Metz for their cars. I hung back for a moment. I wasn’t sure why. I thought if Metz got his car first, I would have a chance to talk to Rachel and maybe ask for a meeting to clear the air about what was happening with us. In the last month I had used the ad revenues from the podcast both to lease a new car and rent a bigger apartment. After ten years with the ragtag Jeep I had gotten a new car: a Range Rover SUV that was the very picture of maturity and security. I thought maybe we could leave Rachel’s car in the garage and go up the street to Miceli’s for an afternoon glass of wine.

But I was wrong. Rodrigo brought up a car that I recognized as a fed vehicle, and both of them walked toward it, Rachel to the passenger door. That told me more than I wanted to know. Embarrassed, I waited until they were pulling away before passing through the alcove into the garage.

But I timed it wrong. Just as I stepped out, Rachel turned in her seat to reach back over her shoulder for the seat belt. Our eyes caught and she smiled as the fed car pulled away. I took it as an apology smile. And a goodbye look.

Rodrigo came up behind me.

“Mr. Jack,” he said. “You’re all set. First row, keys on the front tire for you.”

“Thank you, Rodrigo,” I said, still watching Metz’s car as it turned out of the garage onto Cahuenga.

Once it was gone from sight I walked alone to my car.

44

I decided I had nowhere to go but home. I pulled out onto Cahuenga and headed north. I followed the road as it made the big bend west until it became Ventura Boulevard and I was in Studio City. My new place was a two-bedroom apartment on Vineland. I was thinking about what I had just seen in the parking garage and how I should interpret it. I wasn’t paying attention to the road and didn’t register the brake lights in front of me.

My new SUV’s anti-collision system engaged and a sharp alarm issued from the dashboard. I came out of my reverie and slammed the brake pedal with both feet. The SUV came skidding to a halt two feet from the Prius stopped in front of me. I felt the dull thud of an impact behind me.

“Shit!”

I settled down and checked the rearview mirror, then got out to inspect the damage. I walked to the back of the car and saw that the car behind me was a good six feet away. The back of my car had no sign of damage. I looked at the other driver. His window was down.

“Did you hit me?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t hit you,” he said indignantly.

I checked the back of my car again. I still had a temporary tag on the car.

“Hey, buddy, how about you get in your pretty new car and keep moving?” the other driver said. “You’re holding up traffic with this bullshit.”

I waved him and his rudeness off and climbed back into the driver’s seat, confused by the whole situation. I continued driving, thinking about what had happened. I had definitely felt some kind of heavy thud of impact when I hit the brakes. I wondered if something was wrong or loose in the new car, then thought about Ikea. My new apartment was nearly twice the size of my old one. It had dictated the need for more furniture and I had made several runs to the Ikea in Burbank since getting the new SUV, making good use of the rear storage compartment. But I was sure I had not left anything back there. The compartment was empty. Or it should have been.

Then it hit me. I checked the rearview mirror but this time was more interested in what was on my side of the back window than behind my car. The pullover cover for the rear compartment was in place. Nothing seemed amiss.

I pulled my phone and speed-dialed Rachel. The ringing came blaring out of the car stereo’s surround sound. I had forgotten about the Bluetooth connection the car salesman had set up for me when I took delivery of the car.

I quickly hit the button on the dash that killed the sound system. The buzzing returned to only my phone and my ear.

But Rachel didn’t answer. She was probably still with Metz and thought I was calling for some kind of maudlin let’s-get-back-together conversation. It went to her voice mail and I disconnected.

I called again and while I waited I reached over to my laptop on the seat next to me and opened it. I knew I had Metz’s cell number in a file on the desktop.

But this time Rachel answered.

“Jack, this is not a good time.”

I slapped the laptop closed and spoke in a low voice.

“Are you with Metz?”

“Jack, I’m not going to talk about who I—”

“I don’t mean that way. Are you still driving with Metz?”

I checked the rearview again and realized I had to stop talking out loud.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “He’s just taking me back to my office.”

“Check your messages,” I said.

I disconnected.

Traffic slowed again as I came to the intersection with Vineland. I used the moment to type out a text to Rachel.

I realized after I sent it that autocorrect had changed Shrike to Strike. I figured, though, that she would understand.

She did and I got an almost immediate response.

I was coming up to my apartment building but drove by it. And typed in a reply.

My phone buzzed and Rachel’s name was on the screen. I connected but didn’t say hello.

“Jack?”

I coughed and hoped she understood I did not want to reveal I was on the phone to the person hiding in the back.

“Okay, I get it,” Rachel said. “You can’t talk. So, listen, you have two choices. You get to a populated area, pull into a parking lot where there are people, and just get out and get away from the car. Give me the location and we will try to get the police there and hopefully catch him.”

She waited a moment for any sort of response before going to choice two. She must have registered my continuing silence as interest in the alternate plan.

“Okay, the other thing is we make damn sure we get him. You drive to a destination and we set up a horseshoe like we did before and we finally get this guy. This choice is more risky to you, of course, but I think if you keep the car moving he’s not going to make a move. He’s going to wait.”

She waited. I said nothing.

“So, Jack, do this. Cough once if you want the first choice. Don’t cough, don’t do anything if you want to go with the second.”

I realized that if I took any time to consider my options, my silence would confirm that I was going with the riskier second option. But that was okay. In that moment, I flashed on a vision of Gwyneth Rice in her hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines, and her electronic plea that we not take the Shrike alive.

I wanted the second option.

“Okay, Jack, option two,” Rachel said. “Cough now if I have it wrong.”

I was silent and Rachel accepted the confirmation.

“You need to get to the 101 and head south,” she said. “We were just on it and it’s wide open. You’ll be able to get to Hollywood and by then we’ll have a plan. We’re turning around and we’ll be there.”

I was coming up to a southbound entrance to the 170 freeway. I knew it merged with the 101 less than a mile south. Rachel continued.

“I’m going to keep the line open while Matt sets things up — he’s talking to LAPD. They’ll be able to mobilize quicker. You just have to stay in motion. He won’t try anything while the car is moving.”

I nodded even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

“But if something happens and you have to stop, just get out of the car and get clear. Get safe, Jack... I need you... to be safe.”

I registered the quiet, more intimate tone in her voice and wanted to respond. I hoped my silence communicated something. But just as quickly, doubt started to move into my mind. Had I left something in the storage compartment? Had the thud I felt simply come from a pothole in the road? I was mobilizing the FBI and LAPD on what amounted to a hunch. I was beginning to wish I had just coughed once and pointed the car toward the North Hollywood Police Division.

“Okay, Jack,” Rachel said, her voice modulated back to a command tone. “I’ll get back to you when we have it set up.”

I got lucky and saw up ahead that I had a green light to turn into the freeway entrance.

Doubt aside, I made the turn. The freeway entrance looped around and then I was heading south on the 170. I took one of the 101 merge lanes and got the car up to sixty. Rachel had been right. The freeway was moderately crowded but the traffic was moving. It was pre-rush hour and most of the traffic was going northbound out of downtown to the suburbs in the Valley and beyond.

Once I merged onto the 101 I worked my way over to the fast lane and stayed in the flow, now moving at fifty miles per hour. I checked the rearview every few seconds and kept the phone to my left ear. I could hear Metz’s voice as he talked on another phone in the car with Rachel. It was muffled and I couldn’t make out everything he said. But I could definitely read the urgency in his tone.

Soon I was into the Cahuenga Pass and could see the Capitol Records building ahead. I was putting the picture together as I waited for Rachel to come back on the line and tell me the plan. I realized that the Shrike was a listener of the podcast after all and I had given him everything he needed. At the end of each episode I had plugged the recording studio when I thanked Ray Stallings. I had then repeatedly promoted the time and date of the live roundtable discussion that would be the final episode.

The Shrike then only had to surveil the building where Sun Ray Studios were located to figure out how he could use the parking-garage situation to his advantage. The attendant left the keys of the cars he moved around on each vehicle’s front right tire. The Shrike could have snuck in while Rodrigo was shuffling cars, used the key to unlock my Range Rover, and then secreted himself in the back.

I suddenly realized there was another possibility. I had broadcast the podcast’s time and location to everybody. It was possible that if someone was concealed in the back, it wasn’t the Shrike. It could be another crazy incel like Robinson Felder. I took the phone from my ear to try to text this possibility to Rachel when I heard her voice again.

“Jack?”

I waited.

“We have a plan. We want you to get to Sunset Boulevard and take the exit. It dumps you out on Van Ness at an intersection with Harold Way. Take the immediate right onto Harold Way and we’ll be set up for you. LAPD has got two units there right now and more are on the way. Matt and I are two minutes out. Clear your throat if you understand and we are good to go.”

I waited a beat and then cleared my throat loudly. I was good to go.

“Okay, Jack, now what I want you to do is try to text me a description of what you’re driving. I know you mentioned in a recent email that you got a new car. Give me make, model, and color. Color is important, Jack. We want to know what we’ve got coming. Also put in what exit you last passed so we’ll have a sense of timing. Go ahead, but be careful. Don’t wreck while texting.”

I pulled the phone away and typed the needed information into a text to her, cycling my focus repeatedly from the phone to the rearview to the road ahead.

I had just sent off the text, including the fact that I was about to pass the Highland exit, when my eyes went to the road ahead and I saw brake lights flaring across all lanes.

Traffic was stopping.

45

There was an accident ahead. My SUV gave me a view over the rooflines of several cars in front of me and I could see smoke and a car turned sideways blocking the fast lane and left shoulder of the freeway.

I knew I had to get to the right before I was stopped dead in the backup. I hit the turn signal and almost blindly started pushing across four lanes of the slowing traffic.

My moves brought a chorus of horns from angry motorists who were trying to do the same thing I was. The traffic slowed to a crawl and the spaces between cars compressed, but nobody on the road had the kind of emergency I had. I didn’t care about their frustrations or horns.

“Jack?” Rachel said. “I hear the horns, what is — I know you can’t talk. Try to text. We got the info you sent. Try to tell me what’s going on now.”

I did what most L.A. drivers do when they are alone in their cars. I cursed the traffic.

“Goddamn it! Why are we stopping?”

I had one lane left to get over to and I believed it would be the fastest way around the accident backup. I didn’t trust the mirrors anymore and was turning half in my seat to check my competition through the windows, all the while keeping the phone to my ear.

“Okay, Jack, I get it,” Rachel said. “But ride on the shoulder, do whatever you have to do and get down here.”

I coughed once, not knowing at this point if that meant yes or no. All I knew was that I had to get around the backup. Once I got past the crash, the freeway would be wide open and I’d be flying.

I had slowly passed the Highland exit and could see that the accident scene was a couple hundred yards ahead and before the Vine Street exit. That was where traffic came to a complete halt.

Now I could see people getting out of their cars and standing in the freeway. Cars were moving inch by inch as they passed the smoking wreckage. I could hear a siren coming up behind me and knew the arrival of first responders would shut things down even further and for longer. I also knew I could go to those first responders with the deadly cargo I believed I was carrying. But would they understand what I had? Would they capture him?

I was considering these questions and the last mile I had to go to Sunset Boulevard when there was a loud thwack from the back of my car.

I turned around fully and saw that the spring-loaded cover to the rear storage area had been released and had snapped back into its housing like a window shade.

A figure rose from the space. A man. He looked around as if to get his bearings, then must have seen through the rear windows that the siren he had heard was from a rescue ambulance making its way to the crash site.

He then turned and looked directly at me.

“Hello, Jack,” he said. “Where are we going?”

“Who the fuck are you?” I said. “What do you want?”

“I think you know who I am,” he said. “And what I want.”

He started climbing over the rear seats. I dropped the phone and pinned the accelerator. The car lurched forward and I yanked the wheel to the right. I clipped the right corner of the car in front of me as the SUV veered onto the freeway shoulder. The wheels spun on the loose gravel and litter before finding purchase. In the rearview I saw the intruder thrown backward into the space where he had been hiding.

But he quickly reemerged and started climbing over the seats again.

“Slow it down, Jack,” he said. “What’s the hurry?”

I didn’t answer. My mind was racing faster than the car as I tried to think of an escape plan.

The Vine Street exit was just past the accident site. But what did that get me? My choices seemed simple in that adrenalized moment. Fight or flight. Keep moving or stop the car and get out and run.

In the back of my mind I knew one thing. Running away meant the Shrike would escape again.

I kept my foot on the pedal.

With less than a hundred yards before I would clear the traffic backup and get off the shoulder, a beat-up pickup truck filled with lawn equipment suddenly pulled onto the shoulder ahead of me — at a much slower pace.

I yanked the wheel right again and tried to squeeze by without losing speed. My car scraped sharply along a concrete sound barrier that bordered the freeway and then rebounded into the side of the pickup, pushing it into the cars to its left. A full chorus of horns and crashing metal followed, but my car kept moving. I straightened the wheel and checked the mirror. The man behind me had been thrown to the floor of the back seat.

Two seconds later I was past the traffic backup and there were five lanes of open freeway in front of me.

But I was still a half mile from the Sunset exit and knew that I could not hold off the Shrike for that long. The phone was somewhere in the car and Rachel was presumably still listening. I made what I thought might be a last call out to her.

“Rachel!” I yelled. “I—”

An arm came around my neck and choked off my voice. My head was snapped back against the headrest. I reached up with one hand and tried to pull it off my neck, but the Shrike had locked his arm and was tightening the pressure.

“Stop the car,” he said in my ear.

I planted my feet and pushed back into the seat, trying to make space against his forearm. The car picked up speed.

“Stop the car,” he said again.

I realized one thing: I had a seat belt on and he didn’t. I remembered the salesman droning on about the safety and construction of the car. Something about rollover protection. But I had not been interested. I just wanted to sign the papers and drive away, not listen to things that would never matter to me.

Now they did.

I felt the car automatically lowering into its high-speed profile as the digital speedometer clicked past eighty-five. I let go of my attacker’s forearm, put both hands on the wheel and yanked it to the left.

The car jerked wildly to the left and then the forces of physics took over. For a split second it held the road, then the front left wheel came off the surface and the back left followed. I believe the car became airborne by at least a few feet and then flipped side over side before impacting and continuing to rotate, tumbling down the freeway.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion, my body jolting in all directions with each crashing impact. I felt the arm that had been around my neck fall away. I heard the loud tearing of metal and the explosive shattering of glass. Debris flew around in the car and out the now glass-free windows. My laptop hit me in the ribs and at some point I blacked out.

When I came to, I was hanging upside down in my seat. I looked down at the ceiling of the car and saw that I was dripping blood on it. I reached to my face and located the source: a long gash on the top of my head.

I wondered what had happened. Had somebody hit me? Had I hit somebody?

Then I remembered.

The Shrike.

I looked around as best as I could. I didn’t see him. The rear seats of the car had broken loose in the accident and were now tilted down to the ceiling, obstructing my view.

“Shit,” I said.

I could taste blood in my mouth.

I became aware of a sharp pain in my side and remembered my laptop. It had hit me in the ribs.

I put my left hand down on the ceiling to brace myself and used the other to release my seat belt. My arm wasn’t strong enough and I crashed down to the ceiling, my legs still tangled with the steering column. I slowly lowered myself the rest of the way. As I did, I became aware of a tinny voice calling my name.

I looked around and saw my cell phone on the asphalt about four feet outside the front window. The screen was spider-webbed with cracks but I could read the name “Rachel” on it. The call was still active.

Once my legs were free I crawled through the space where the windshield had been and reached for my phone.

“Rachel?”

“Jack, are you all right? What happened?”

“Uh... we crashed. I’m bleeding.”

“We’re on our way. Where is the unsub?”

“The... what?”

“The Shrike, Jack. Do you see him?”

Now I remembered the arm around my neck. The Shrike. He was going to kill me.

I crawled all the way out of the wreck and unsteadily stood up by the front end of the upside-down Range Rover. I saw people running down the shoulder of the freeway toward me. There was a car with flashing blue lights working its way down as well.

I took a few uneasy steps and realized there was something wrong with one of my feet. Every step sent a jolt of pain from my left ankle up to my hip. Nevertheless I kept moving around the wreckage and looking through the windows into the back.

There was no sign of anyone else. But the car was canted unevenly on the ground. When the people got to the car, I heard shrieks of panic.

“We have to move this! He’s underneath!”

I limped around to their side and saw what they saw. The car was resting unevenly on the roadway because the Shrike was underneath it. I could see his hand extending out from the edge of the roof. I carefully lowered myself to the asphalt and looked under the wreck.

The Shrike was crushed under the car. His face was turned toward me and his eyes were open, one of them staring lifelessly, the other in a broken orbit and at an off-angle.

“Help me push this off him!” somebody yelled to the others running to the scene.

I started to get up.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s too late.”