The Poet

20

As a show of good faith Rachel Walling went first-after extracting a promise from me that the conversation was off the record until her team supervisor decided how much cooperation, if any, the bureau would give me. I didn't mind making the promise because I knew I was holding the high hand. I already had a story and the bureau would likely not want a story published yet. I figured that gave me a lot of leverage, whether Agent Walling realized it yet or not.

For a half hour while we moved slowly south on the freeway toward Quantico she told me what the bureau had been doing for the last twenty-eight hours. Nathan Ford of the Law Enforcement Foundation had called her at three o'clock Thursday to inform her of my visit to the foundation, the findings of my own investigation to that point and my request to see the suicide files. Walling concurred with his decision to rebuff me and then consulted with Bob Backus, her immediate supervisor. Backus gave her the go-ahead to drop the profiling work she had been assigned and proceed with a priority investigation of the claims I had made in my meeting with Ford. At this time, the bureau had not yet heard from anyone from the Denver or Chicago police departments. Walling started her work on the Behavioral Science Service's computer, which had a direct tie to the foundation computer.

"Basically, I did the same search Michael Warren did for you," she said. "In fact, I was on-line in Quantico when he went in and did it. I just ID'ed the user and literally watched him do it on my laptop. I guessed right then that you had turned him as a source and he was doing the search for you. This became a problem of containment, as you can imagine. I didn't need to go up to the city today because we have hard copies of all the protocols at Quantico. But I had to see what you were doing. I got a second confirmation that Warren was leaking to you and that you had copies of the protocols when I found your notebook page left in the files."

I shook my head.

"What's going to happen to Warren?"

"After I told Ford, we confronted him this morning. He admitted what he had done, even told me what hotel you were at. Ford asked for his resignation and Warren gave it."

"Shit."

I felt a pang of guilt, yet I was not overwrought by what had happened. For I wasn't sure if Warren hadn't somehow engineered his own dismissal. Maybe it was a self-derailment. At least, that's what I told myself. It was easier to handle that way.

"By the way," she said, "where did I go wrong with my act?"

"My editor didn't know where I was staying. Only Warren knew."

She was quiet for a few moments until I prompted her to continue the chronology of her investigation. She told me that on Thursday afternoon when she ran the computer search she'd come up with the same thirteen names of dead homicide detectives that Warren had gotten from me, plus my brother and John Brooks of Chicago. She then pulled the hard copies of the protocols and looked for ties, keying on the suicide notes as I had told Ford I wanted to do. She had the aid of a bureau cryptologist and the FBI cipher computer, which had a database that made the Rocky's look like a comic book.

"Including your brother and Brooks, we came up with a total of five direct connections through the notes," she said.

"So in about three hours you did what it took me all week to do. How'd you get McCafferty without the note in the file?"

She took her foot off the gas and looked over at me. Only for a moment, then she took the car back up to speed.

"We didn't count McCafferty. There are agents from the Baltimore field office on that now."

This was puzzling because I had five cases, including McCafferty.

"Then what five have you got?"

"Uh, let me think…"

"Okay, my brother and Brooks, that's two."

I was opening my notebook as I said this.

"Right."

Reading my notes, I said, "You got Kotite in Albuquerque? 'Haunted by ill angels'?"

"Right. We have him. There was one in-"

"Dallas. Garland Petry. 'Sadly, I know I am shorn of my strength.' From 'For Annie.' "

"Yeah, got that."

"And then I had McCafferty. Who'd you have?"

"Uh, something or other from Florida. It was an old one. He was a sheriff's deputy. I need my notes."

"Wait a minute." I flipped through a few pages of my notebook and found it. "Clifford Beltran, Sarasota County Sheriff's Department. He-"

"That's it."

"But wait a minute. I've got his note as 'Lord help my poor soul.' I read all the poems. That wasn't in any of them."

"You're right. We found it somewhere else."

"Where? One of the short stories?"

"No. They were his last words. Poe's last words, 'Lord help my poor soul.' "

I nodded. It wasn't a poem but it fit. So now there were six. I was quiet a moment, almost in respect to the new man added to the list. I looked down at my notes. Beltran had been dead three years. A long time for a murder to go unnoticed.

"Was Poe a suicide?"

"No, though I suppose his lifestyle might be considered a long suicide. He was a womanizer and a heavy drinker. He died at forty, apparently after a lengthy drinking bout in Baltimore."

I nodded, thinking about the killer, the phantom, and wondering if he drew corollaries to Poe's life.

"Jack, what about McCafferty?" she asked. "We had him as a possible but no note according to the protocol. What did you get?"

Now I had another problem. Bledsoe. He had revealed something to me that he had not revealed to anyone before. I didn't feel I could just turn around and give it to the FBI.

"I've gotta make a call first before I can tell you."

"Oh, Jesus, Jack. You're going to pull that shit after all I just told you? I thought we had a deal."

"We do. I just have to make a call first and clear something with a source. Get me to a phone and I'll do it right then. I don't think it will be a problem. Anyway, the bottom line is McCafferty is on the list. There was a note."

I looked through my notebook again and then read from it.

" 'The fever called living is conquered at last.' That was the note. It's from 'For Annie.' Just like Petry in Dallas."

I looked over at her and could tell she was still upset.

"Look Rachel-can I call you that?-I'm not going to hold back on you. I'll make the call. Your agents from the field office probably already got this anyway."

"Probably," she said, in a voice that seemed to say, Anything you can get we can get better.

"Okay, so go on, then. What happened after you came up with the list of five?"

She told me that six o'clock Thursday evening she and Backus had convened a meeting of BSS and Critical Incident Unit agents to discuss her preliminary findings. After she trotted out the five names she had and explained the connections, her boss, Backus, became agitated and ordered a full-scale priority investigation. Walling was named lead agent, reporting to him. Other BSS and CIU agents were assigned to victimology and profiling tasks, and VICAP liaison agents from local field offices in the five cities where the deaths occurred were scrambled to immediately begin gathering and shipping data on the deaths involved. The team had literally worked through the night.

"The Poet."

"What?"

"We're calling him the Poet. Every task force investigation gets a code name."

"Jesus," I said. "The tabloids are going to love that. I can see the headlines. 'The Poet Kills without Rhyme or Reason.' You guys are asking for it."

"The tabs will never know about it. Backus is determined to get this guy before he's spooked by any press leaks."

There was silence while I thought of how to answer that.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" I finally asked.

"Jack, I know you're a reporter and you're the one who started this whole thing. But you've got to understand, if you start a media firestorm about this guy, we'll never get him. He'll get spooked and go back underneath his rock. We'll lose our chance."

"Well, I'm not on the public payroll. What I am, though is paid to report and write stories… The FBI cannot tell me what and when to write."

"You can't use anything I just told you."

"I know it. I agreed and I'll keep my word. I don't need to use it. I already had it. Most of it. All except for Beltran and all I have to do is read the bio section of this book and I'll find his last words… I don't need the FBI's information or permission for this story."

That brought the silence back. I could tell she was steaming but I had to stand my ground. I had to play my cards as shrewdly as I could. In this kind of game you don't get a second deal. After a few minutes of this I started seeing the freeway signs for Quantico. We were close.

"Look," I said. "We will talk about the story later. I'm not going to run off and start writing. My editor and I will calmly talk about it and I will let you know what we are going to do. Is that okay?"

"That's fine, Jack. I hope you're thinking about your brother when you have that discussion. I'm sure your editor won't be."

"Look, do me a favor. Don't talk to me about my brother and my motives. Because you don't know a thing about me or him or what I'm thinking about."

"Fine."

We drove a few miles in solid silence. My anger wore off a bit and I began wondering if I'd been too harsh. Her goal was to capture this person they now called the Poet. It was mine, too.

"Look, I'm sorry about the speech," I said. "I still think we can help each other. We can cooperate and maybe catch this guy."

"I don't know," she replied. "I don't see the point in cooperating when what I say is just going to show up in the newspapers and then the TV and then the tabloids. You're right, I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know you and I don't think I can trust you."

She didn't say another word until we got to the gatehouse at Quantico.