“Come on.”
“Think about it. It would be the best way for him to avoid detection. If you end up murdered in a hotel room in Ely, there is going to be an investigation that would lead to all of this unraveling. But if you were a suicide in a hotel room in Ely, then the investigation would go in a completely different direction.”
I thought about this for a few moments and saw where she was going with it.
“Reporter gets laid off, has the indignity of having to train his own replacement, and has few prospects for another job,” I said, reciting a litany of true facts. “He gets depressed and suicidal. Concocts a story about a serial killer running around two states as cover, then abducts and murders his young replacement. He then gives all his money to charity, cancels his credit cards and runs off to the middle of nowhere, where he kills himself in a hotel room.”
She was nodding the whole time I was running it down.
“What’s missing?” I asked. “How was he going to kill me and make it look like suicide?”
“You’d been drinking, right? You came into the room with two bottles of beer. I remember that.”
“Yeah, I’d only had two before that.”
“But it would help sell the scene. Empty bottles strewn around the hotel room. Cluttered room, cluttered mind, that sort of thing.”
“But beer wouldn’t kill me. How was he going to do it?”
“You already gave the answer earlier, Jack. You said you had a gun.”
Bang. It all came together. I stood up and headed toward my bedroom. I’d bought a.45 caliber Colt Government Series 70 twelve years earlier, after my encounter with the Poet. He was still out there at the time and I wanted some protection in case he came calling on me. I kept the weapon in a drawer next to my bed and only took it out once a year to go to the range.
Rachel followed me into the bedroom and watched me slide open the drawer. The gun was gone.
I turned back to Rachel.
“You saved my life, you know that? No doubt about that now.”
“I’m glad.”
“How would he know I owned a gun?”
“Is it registered?”
“Yes, but what, now you’re saying he can hack into the ATF computers? This is getting far-fetched, don’t you think?”
“Actually, no. If he tapped the prison computer, I don’t see why he couldn’t get into the gun registry. And that may be only one place where he could have gotten it. Back during the period when you bought it, you were interviewed by everybody from Larry King to the National Enquirer. Did you ever put it out there that you owned a gun?”
I shook my head.
“Unbelievable. I did. I said it in a few interviews. I was hoping the word would get out and it would deter a surprise visit from the Poet.”
“There you go.”
“But for the record, I never did an interview with the Enquirer. They did a story on me and the Poet without my cooperation.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, this guy now isn’t as smart as we think. There was one big flaw in his plan.”
“What was that?”
“I flew to Vegas. All baggage is screened. I never would have gotten the gun there.”
She nodded.
“Maybe not. But I think it is a widely accepted fact that the scanning process is not one hundred percent perfect. It would probably bother the investigators in Ely but not enough to make them change their conclusion. There are always loose ends in any investigation.”
“Can we go back out to the living room?”
Rachel headed out of the room and I followed, taking a glance back at the bed as I went through the door. In the living room, I dropped down on the couch. A lot had happened in the last thirty-six hours. I was getting fatigued but knew there would be no rest for the weary for a long time.
“I thought of something else. Schifino.”
“The lawyer in Vegas? What about him?”
“I went to him first and he knew everything. He could put the lie to my suicide.”
Rachel considered this for a moment and then nodded.
“That could’ve put him in danger. Maybe the plan was to kill you and then double back to Vegas and take him out, too. Then, when the chance was missed with you, there was no reason to hit Schifino. I’ll have the field office in Vegas make contact, anyway, and see about protection.”
“Are you going to have them go up to Ely and pull the video from the casino where I sat with this guy?”
“I’ll do that, too.”
Rachel’s phone rang and she answered immediately.
“It’s just me and the homeowner,” she said. “Jack McEvoy. He’s a reporter for the Times. The victim here was a reporter as well.”
She listened for a moment and said, “We’re coming out now.”
She closed the phone and told me the police were out front.
“They’ll feel more comfortable if we come out to meet them.”
We walked to the front door and Rachel opened it.
“Keep your hands in sight,” Rachel said to me.
She walked out, holding her credentials high. There were two patrol cars and a detective cruiser in the street out front. Four uniformed officers and two detectives were waiting on the driveway. The uniformed officers pointed their flashlights at us.
When we got closer I recognized the two detectives from Hollywood Division. They held their guns down at their sides and looked ready to use them if I gave them the right reason.
I didn’t.
I didn’t get to the Times until shortly before noon on Thursday. The place was bustling with activity. A lot of reporters and editors were moving about the newsroom like bees in a hive. I knew it was all because of Angela and what had happened. It’s not every day that you come to work and find out your colleague has been brutally murdered.
And that another colleague is somehow involved.
Dorothy Fowler, the city editor, was the first to spot me as I came in from the stairwell. She jumped from her desk at the raft and came directly toward me.
“Jack, my office, please.”
She changed directions and headed to the wall of glass. I followed, knowing every eye in the newsroom was on me once again. No longer because I was the one that got pink-slipped by the axman. They watched me now because I was the one who might have gotten Angela Cook killed.
We entered her small office and she told me to close the door. I did as instructed and then took the seat directly across the desk from her.
“What happened with the police?” she asked.
No howyadoin’, are you all right or sorry about Angela. Right down to business and I liked it that way.
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “I spent about eight hours being questioned. First by the LAPD and the FBI, then the Santa Monica detectives joined in. They gave me a break for about an hour and then I had to tell the whole story again to the Las Vegas police, who flew in just to talk to me. After that, they let me go but wouldn’t let me go back to my house because it’s still an active crime scene. So I had them take me to the Kyoto Grand, where I checked into a room-and put it on the Times’ tab, since I don’t have a working credit card-took a shower and then walked over here.”
The Kyoto was a block away and the Times used it to put up out-of-town reporters, new hires and job candidates when needed.
“That’s fine,” Fowler said. “What did you tell the police?”
“Basically, I told them what I tried to tell Prendo yesterday. I uncovered a killer out there who murdered Denise Babbit and a woman in Las Vegas named Sharon Oglevy. Somehow, either Angela or I hit a trip wire somewhere and alerted this guy that we were onto him. He then took steps to eliminate the threat. That included killing Angela first and going to Nevada to try to get me. But I was lucky. While I was unable to convince Prendo yesterday, I had convinced an FBI agent that all of this was legit, and she met me in Nevada to talk about it. Her presence kept the killer away from me. If she hadn’t believed me and met with me, you’d be putting together stories about how I killed Angela and went off to the desert to kill myself. That’s what the Unsub’s plan was.”