I had a girlfriend for what seemed like the duration of a cup of coffee who used to text-message me every time she wanted sex, which, as it turned out, was quite often, which was good until the day it wasn’t, but that’s not really the point here. I pressed a few buttons and the message appeared on my screen: “The phantom fiend is the boston strangler. i know. i am him. will contact you asap. pf.”
I stared at it in disbelief, and not just because of my confusion over whether “I am him” was proper grammar. I had received two typed notes accompanying the driver’s licenses of fresh murder victims that most assuredly came from the Phantom Fiend, as well as a DVD that could only have come from the Phantom Fiend. In addition, I got the phone call from someone who claimed to be him, though I doubt it, given the result, which was almost my death but instead was that of an innocent bystander. But this, a text message on my cell phone? Could a serial killer who had emerged from forty years of dormancy really be so technologically savvy? Or did a text message even count as technological savviness anymore?
I reread the note again, noticing for the first time that there was an origination number on the bottom of the text message, causing my heart to skip a beat. Maybe the Phantom Fiend wasn’t as savvy as he thought he was. Maybe it was his phone number, easily traceable through cell phone records. Maybe this simple clue, this junior varsity mistake, would break the case, much in the same way Sam Berkowitz’s parking ticket near a murder scene helped break open the Son of Sam spree in New York City.
I reread the message yet again. The commissioner prattled on with the requisite thanks for the widespread cooperation among departments and agencies, even though the Boston Police was constantly at war with the state police and the FBI. Translated: We’re taking control of this thing and if any other agency tries sticking their incompetent and corrupt noses into our investigation, we’ll pummel them senseless.
Fuck the commissioner, fuck his defensive by-the-numbers press conference, fuck his nonsensical blame-the-media strategy. Maybe I should give him exactly what he wanted, I thought: raise my hand and announce, “Sir, I have just received word from the Phantom Fiend that he is, in fact, the Boston Strangler, contrary to the theory that you are pursuing in your own investigation.”
I decided against that. Instead, I stepped out of the room into the lobby, where I had been surrounded by my comrades-in-words twenty minutes earlier and dialed the number that was on the bottom of the message. It rang three times before the recorded voice of a woman came on announcing that this line didn’t take incoming calls, and to please check the number again and try redialing. I did as told, as I occasionally do, with the same result.
Before I could place the next call that I wanted to make, my phone vibrated again, this time with Peter Martin’s number on the caller ID.
“Are you watching this bullshit?” I said, picking up the phone.
“I was,” he said, his tone less calm than it had been the night before. “Right now I’m watching something else. I’m watching a video of Kimberly May’s apartment on a blog site called Hubaloo.com — ‘all the news the Record won’t print.’ They’ve got the entire clip, and they’re showing her body unimpeded — just a dead girl on the web. I don’t know how they got it — a police department leak, or whether your Phantom gave it to them. But right now the site has so many hits that it’s already crashed twice on me while I’m watching.”
“Clever name and slogan,” I said. At the same time, I swore under my breath — stupid goddamned bloggers, freaks of nature who sit around their dingy apartments in ratty bathrobes and black socks posting total crap on the web and thinking it counts as hipster journalism, the next big thing.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Martin said, his tone growing uncharacteristically angry now. “Seeing this makes me truly believe we did the right thing by not running it. The ad people could die because of the dollars we would have made, but not worth it.”
Then he asked, “You on your way back here?” I thought so at the time, so I answered in the affirmative. We hung up and I placed an immediate call to Vinny Mongillo in the newsroom. I asked him to check with his phone company sources on the number that appeared at the bottom of the text message. He put me on hold, came back, and said, “That traces to one of those disposable cells. It was purchased with cash. There’s no name on the account. You’re out of luck.”
“Could you check and see if they know what other calls were made from that phone? Maybe I can track down someone who was called by the owner.”
“Already did, Fair Hair. No other calls to this point.”
“You think they’d be willing to monitor it for future use?”
“They’re already planning on it.”
“Dinner tonight?” I asked.
“Well, now you owe me, so at a place of my choosing. You’re on your way in here? We need to go over the Paul Vasco information. We should be able to pay a call on him at our earliest convenience.”
“Which may well be today. I’ll be in shortly.”
The door to the media room flung open and the reporters and their cameramen poured out en masse. The press conference was over. Within minutes, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and, later, the three networks would authoritatively report that the serial killer was profiled by crime analysts as being a history buff in search of attention that he never got in his everyday life, careful and media-savvy, a new Boston Strangler for a new generation.
And that serial killer would soon be telling me things I wasn’t ready to hear.
22
I quite literally jumped out of the Navigator as Toby glided to a stop at the front door of the Boston Record. I bounded up the few stairs and into the glassed-in front lobby, where Edgar Sullivan was there to greet me.
“They don’t pay you enough, Edgar,” I said, striding past him as he leaned on the reception desk.
He began walking alongside me, keeping pace, the two of us heading side by side toward the escalator. He replied in a confiding voice, “Are you kidding me? Most guys my age are sitting on folding chairs in the rec rooms of retirement communities all over this country. They’d give their left walnut to have just five minutes of the excitement I’m having trying to help you escape Father Fate.”
I looked at him, at his neatly pressed blue blazer and tan pants that were in sharp contrast to his wrinkled face and hands, old but young, stern but happy. He was between wives, was his line, meaning he was between his fourth and fifth wives, assuming the next one would come along, which she undoubtedly would. I pictured him sitting in a neighborhood tavern after work beside a date twenty years his junior, explaining to her how he had pulled the paper’s kiester out of the fire again that day as he single-handedly tried to make this city safe for its entire female population. Retirement my ass.
“You know you’re doing one hell of a job on this, right?” I said this in all seriousness.
Edgar replied, “I’m just doing my job, Jack. It’s you who’s putting yourself at risk and writing this great stuff.”
I shook my head. “I don’t really have much of a choice. I’ve been put in the middle here. You — you could be off playing golf or throwing baseballs with the grandkids.”
“Ah, my golf game is awful and my grandkids are brats.” He hesitated, then added, “They’re good kids, actually. They’re just not into sports.”
We were at the top of the escalator now, walking toward the newsroom, still shoulder-to-shoulder, moving fast. Edgar pulled a white envelope from inside his jacket pocket. He held it out in front of us and said, “Jack, this came for you via courier about twenty minutes ago. My guys were under orders to grab me before any courier left. They did. I questioned him and he said the account was paid in cash, and he has no name, and no return address. He picked up the package from a man who he said he couldn’t identify, on a street corner in Downtown Crossing. I haven’t opened it. Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s starting to fit a pattern, and I thought you’d want to see it right away.”