I was getting punchy, obviously, or maybe just relieved that I got out of that passageway alive. I pulled the dog by the collar down to the near end of Winter Place, out onto Winter Street, and toward Boston Common. I didn’t want to let go, because I didn’t want him to get hit by a car. He walked agreeably, nearly appreciatively, beside me.
Out on the main intersection, where the passing traffic gave me the feeling of safety, I pulled him into a Bank of America storefront that contained an ATM. It was relatively clean, and bright, and enclosed, all good things at the moment. We were alone in there, so I let go of his collar. He sprawled out on the floor with a short groan, followed by a long sigh, as I opened the envelope. I tried to be careful in tearing the paper in case there was any forensic evidence involved.
Inside, I felt a heavy laminated card, and my heart immediately sank into my stomach: a driver’s license, another dead woman, killed on my watch, as I did too little to stop it. I held the license in my hand for what felt like a long minute without looking at it, frustration and helplessness seeping through every pore of my exhausted body. My prior relief devolved into contained fury. The dog sprawled on the floor with his eyes at half-mast. A car honked its horn out on Tremont Street. A group of teenagers laughed as they strode past on the sidewalk.
I slowly lifted the license to my eyes. I wasn’t in any rush to see the next victim, because it didn’t really do me — or her — any good to know. My only job here, courtesy of the Phantom, wasn’t to help or to stop or to investigate, but merely to convey. Another day, another license, another dead woman somewhere in Boston. How many more women would die before this story came to an end?
I flicked the license over and stared at it, but what I saw didn’t fully, immediately register. The face, it was familiar, the way her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes were piercing, and she was giving this look as if she was about to call out my name, not in any sort of plea, but casually, like she had a million times before. Where do you want to eat. What movie do you want to see. Let’s go grab a drink after work.
I melted at her image, almost as if I hadn’t realized yet why I was seeing it.
And then I did, and I screamed, except nothing would come out. Finally, with blurred vision and with trembling hands, I read her name, just to be sure I hadn’t lost my mind, that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on my brain. But it was there in black and white, the newest victim of the Phantom Fiend.
Elizabeth Riggs.
32
Next thing I knew, the door of the ATM storefront blasted open, and I looked up to see Hank Sweeney, sweating and panting, lunging toward me. Much later, I’d ask him why he didn’t simply buzz the door open with his bank card rather than kick it down with his foot. And at that time, he’d explain to me that he didn’t carry a card because he didn’t trust what he called those “fancy-schmancy financial gimmicks,” adding, “I’m a cash-and-carry kind of guy.”
On his end of the two-way radio connection, he thought I was a man in distress. And I was, just not in the way he expected. I was hunched over the counter with the ATM deposit envelopes and the pens chained to the faux-wood top. I showed him the license in my hand and he said, “Oh God. That son of a fucking bitch.”
By the way, alarms were sounding, courtesy of Hank and the broken door. I have virtually no doubt that our images were clearly captured on the two surveillance cameras inside, and soon enough, our faces would be hanging on bulletin boards in post offices as far away as Nebraska and Wyoming.
He grabbed me by the arm and the two of us bolted out the door and across Tremont Street toward his parked car. When I put my fingers on the door handle, a synapse fired in my brain and I exclaimed, “Fuck!” I looked across the roof of the car at Hank and said, “I’ll be right back.” And I bolted across the street from whence I came, weaving amid the late-night traffic.
When I got to the ATM, the dog was still inside — sitting by the glass door, which was broken but shut, just staring out into the dark street. When he saw me approach, he stood up and began to pace, his tail furiously wagging. When I stepped inside, he was crying with joy.
I scooped him up in my arms, all seventy or so pounds of him, and scampered back across the street, carrying him all the way to Hank’s car, his head resting placidly on my shoulder, his wet muzzle pushing against my ear. When I pushed him into the backseat, Hank flatly said, “You’re going to put that beast in my nice clean car?” I gave him a look.
Hank asked, “How do we know he doesn’t bite?”
I looked back at the dog, who had already spread himself out across the seat, panting softly, staring straight ahead in contentment. I said, “Hank, he’s wondering the exact same thing about you. Shut up and drive.”
So he threw the car into drive — Hank, not the dog, though where we were heading, I neither knew nor particularly cared. I pulled my cell phone out, located Elizabeth Riggs’s cell phone number on my speed dial, and pressed Call.
It took an agonizing moment to connect, and finally I heard a ring. Then another. And another — five times in all. Her recorded voice came on the line and said, “You’ve reached Elizabeth. You don’t need me to explain what to do.” And then a beep. The futility of this exercise was starting to overtake me, yet I left a message anyway. You don’t have anything when you don’t have hope.
“Elizabeth, Jack. This is an emergency. Call me immediately. Immediately. Please.” And I hung up.
I located her home number on my speed dial and pressed Call. Same drill — another agonizing moment, then a ring, followed by several more, followed by her voice saying, “Sorry I’m not around. Let me know who it is, and we’ll talk soon.”
“Elizabeth, Jack. Sorry for the hour, but this is really, really important. Call me ASAP on my cell.”
I stared at my cell, willing it to ring. In the meantime, I punched out 411 and asked an operator to connect me to San Francisco Police. I thought of that night at the San Francisco Airport, her sidling up to me, the casual banter, the look she gave me after I kissed her on the cheek, her bombshell announcement that she was pregnant.
And then it struck me like a lightning bolt that someone had followed me out to Las Vegas, and had seen me in the waiting lounge with Elizabeth. He undoubtedly assumed we were lovers, and that’s why he targeted her now.
“Hold the line, please, for the San Francisco Police Department.” That was the woman from directory assistance, patching me through.
Another woman answered the phone and informed me that this call was being recorded. I told her that someone in her city might be in trouble. She asked, skeptically, what I meant. Good question. I told her I had received an ominous threat. She asked the address. I gave it to her. Then I gave her my number.
That call ended, I looked at Hank and said, “Where are we headed?”
“The newsroom. It’s where you do your best thinking.” And then he added, “You need to call Boston PD.”
I did. He was right. But something was holding me back, that something known as distrust. Still, his first simple answer — “the newsroom” — jarred something in my head, and I pulled my phone open again, dialed 411, and asked for the number for The New York Times.
After an infuriating five-minute session with the newspaper’s automatic telephone system, a real live human being finally picked up a phone, announcing in a bored voice, “National Desk.” It was now 1:45 a.m. I suspected they were just past deadline for their final edition.