Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020)

by Connelly, Michael

  The first thing that Gwyneth’s father did was take a folded paper towel off a bedside table and dab the corners of her mouth where saliva had accrued. I could see a very thin glassine wire extending from the right side of her mouth, down her cheek, and into the nest of wires and tubes attached to the electronic assembly.

  Her father put the paper towel aside and introduced us.

  “Gwynnie, this is Rachel Walling, who I told you about,” he said. “She’s the one working with the FBI on your case and on those other girls. And this is Jack. Jack’s the writer who discovered this whole thing and called Rachel and the FBI. They have some questions about the man who did this, and you answer what you want, okay? No pressure at all.”

  I could see Gwyneth work her jaw and tongue inside her mouth. Then the letters OK appeared on the screen facing us.

  This is how it would work.

  Rachel moved to the side of the bed and Mr. Rice brought her a chair to sit down on.

  “Gwyneth, I know this may be very difficult for you and we really appreciate your willingness to help,” she began. “I think it’s best if the questions just come from me and you try to answer them as best as you can. And if there is anything I ask that you just don’t want to answer, that’s absolutely okay.”

  OK

  This left me as a spectator on my own story but I was willing to let Rachel start out. If I thought there was something that needed to be asked, I would tap her on the shoulder and we could conference outside the room.

  “I want to start by saying we are very sorry for what you’ve been through,” Rachel said. “The man who did this is evil and we are doing everything we can to find and stop him. Your help will be extremely valuable. The Pasadena Police seemed to deal with this when it happened as an isolated case. We now believe one man has hurt several women like you and so what I want to do today is concentrate on him. Who he is, how he chose you, things of that nature. It will help us build a profile of him that will identify him. So, some of my questions might seem odd to you. But there is a purpose to them. Is that okay, Gwyneth?”

  YES

  Rachel nodded and then glanced back at me and Mr. Rice to see if we had anything to add. We didn’t. She turned back to Gwyneth.

  “Okay, then let’s start. It’s very important that we learn how this offender chose his victims. We have one theory and I want to ask about that now. Have you in the past done any sort of DNA hereditary or medical analysis?”

  I saw Gwyneth’s jaw start moving. It almost looked like she was eating something. The letters always came out in all caps and as the interview progressed the only punctuation seemed to come through automatic spell-check.

  YES

  I saw Mr. Rice raise his head in surprise. He didn’t know about his daughter’s looking into her DNA. I wondered if it would have been a sore subject within the family.

  “Which company did you use?” Rachel asked.

  GT23

  To me that all but confirmed her as a victim of the Shrike. But she had somehow lived to tell about it, even if it was a life now severely circumscribed by her injuries.

  “Okay, so let’s go to the night this happened,” Rachel said. “You were still in extremely critical condition when the initial investigation was carried out. The detectives were mostly trying to work with some grainy video footage from outside the bar. Once you were able to communicate, another detective was on the case who didn’t appear to ask you very many questions about who—”

  HE WAS AFRAID

  “‘He was afraid,’” Rachel read off the screen. “Who was afraid? You mean the detective?”

  YES. HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE HERE TO SEE ME

  “Well, we’re not afraid, Gwyneth,” Rachel said. “I assure you of that. We are going to find the man who did this to you and he will pay for his crimes.”

  DON’T TAKE HIM ALIVE

  Rachel paused when the message printed on the screen. There was a dark shine in Gwyneth’s brown eyes. The moment felt sacred to me.

  “I’ll say this, Gwyneth,” Rachel said. “I understand your feelings and you should know that we are going to find this guy and justice is going to be carried out. Now, I know this is tiring for you, so let’s get back to the questions. Has any of your memory of that night come back to you?”

  BITS AND PIECES LIKE NIGHTMARES

  “Can you talk about them? What do you remember?”

  HE BOUGHT ME A DRINK I THOUGHT HE WAS NICE

  “Okay, do you remember anything in particular about the way he talked?”

  NO

  “Did he tell you about himself at all?”

  ALL LIES, RIGHT?

  “Not necessarily. It is harder to sustain a conversation based on lies than one that is close to the truth. It could be a mix of both. Did he tell you, for example, what he did for a living?”

  SAID HE WROTE CODE

  “Okay, that fits with what we already know about this man. So, that could be the truth and that could be very helpful, Gwyneth. Did he say where he worked?”

  DON’T REMEMBER

  “Were you a regular at that bar?”

  PRETTY MUCH

  “Had you ever seen him in there before?”

  NO HE SAID HE WAS NEW IN TOWN

  HE WAS LOOKING FOR AN APARTMENT

  I admired how Rachel was conducting the interview. Her voice was soothing and she was establishing rapport. I read it in Gwyneth’s eyes. She wanted to please Rachel by giving her information she didn’t have. I felt no need to jump in with a question. I felt confident Rachel would get to all the relevant questions—as long as Gwyneth didn’t tire.

  It went on like this for another fifteen minutes, with Rachel drawing out little details of the behavior and character of the man who had hurt Gwyneth so badly. And then Rachel looked back over her shoulder at Gwyneth’s father.

  “Mr. Rice, I’m going to ask Gwyneth some personal questions now,” she said. “I think it might be better if you and Jack went out into the hall for a few minutes.”

  “What kind of questions?” Rice asked. “I don’t want her upset.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let that happen. I just think she will be better able to answer if it’s just between us girls, so to speak.”

  Rice looked down at his daughter.

  “You okay, honey?” he asked.

  I’M FINE DAD YOU CAN GO

  And then,

  I WANT TO DO THIS

  I didn’t like getting the boot myself but saw the logic in it. Rachel would get more doing the questioning one-on-one. I moved toward the door and Rice followed me. In the hallway I asked if there was a cafeteria but he said there was just a coffee vending machine in an alcove down the hall.

  We went that way and I treated us each to a terrible cup of coffee. We stood there sipping the liquid levels down in our cups before attempting to walk back down the hall. I decided to do what Rachel was doing: work a subject one-on-one.

  “This must be unbelievably hard for you, seeing your daughter like that,” I said.

  “I couldn’t even begin to tell you,” Rice said. “It’s a nightmare. But I’m there for her. Whatever she needs and whatever will help catch the bastard who did this to her.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have work?” I asked. “Or is this—”

  “I was an engineer at Lockheed,” Rice said. “I retired early so I could just be here for her. She’s all that matters to me.”

  “Is her mother in the picture?”

  “My wife passed six years ago. We adopted Gwynnie from an orphanage in Kentucky. I think her doing that DNA stuff was her attempt to find her birth mother and family. If you’re saying that had something to do with this, then … Jesus Christ.”

  “It’s an angle we’re looking at.”

  I started walking back down the hallway. We talked no further until we reached the door of 309.

  “Are there any treatments out there that might help your daughter’s situation?” I asked.

 
; “I’m on the Internet every morning searching,” Rice said. “I’ve contacted doctors, researchers, the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, you name it. If it’s out there, we’ll find it. The main thing right now is to get her off the respirator and breathing and talking on her own. And that’s not as far-fetched as you might think. This kid—somehow—stayed alive. He thought she was dead and just dumped her down the stairs. But she was alive and whatever it was that kept her going and kept her breathing, that’s still there.”

  I could only nod. I was completely out of my element here.

  “I’m an engineer,” Rice said. “I’ve always looked at problems like an engineer. Identify the problem, fix it. But with this, identifying the—”

  The door to the room opened and Rachel stepped out. She looked at Rice.

  “She’s getting tired and we’re almost finished,” she said. “But I want to show her something that I held to the end because it might upset her.”

  “What is it?” Rice asked.

  “It’s a composite drawing of the suspect that was put together with the help of people who were in the bar that night and saw your daughter with him. I need her to tell us if it’s accurate to her memory.”

  Rice paused for a moment as he thought about his daughter’s possible reaction to the drawing. Then he nodded.

  “I’ll be here for her,” he said. “Let’s show it to her.”

  I realized that I had not seen the composite myself. As we reentered the room I saw that Gwyneth’s eyes were closed and thought she might be asleep. But as I got nearer I realized that her eyes were closed because she was crying.

  “Aww, Gwynnie, it’s okay,” Rice said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  He picked up the folded paper towel again and blotted the tears on his daughter’s cheeks. It was such a wrenching moment. I felt as though a scream were building in my chest. At that moment the Shrike changed from the abstract subject of a story to a flesh-and-blood villain I wanted to find. I wanted to break his neck but let him live the way this woman now had to live because of him.

  “Gwyneth, I need to ask you one last thing,” Rachel said. “To look at a picture—a composite sketch put together with the help of the people in the bar with you that night. I want you to tell me if it looks like the man who did this to you.”

  She paused. Nothing appeared on the screen.

  “Is that okay, Gwyneth?”

  Another pause, then:

  SHOW ME

  Rachel took her phone from her back pocket and opened the photo app. She pulled up the composite and held the phone a foot from Gwyneth’s face. Gwyneth’s eyes darted back and forth as she studied the photo of the drawing. Then her jaw started working.

  YES

  HIM

  “The man in this composite looks like mid-thirties to me,” Rachel said. “Is that what you remember?”

  YES

  Tears began to fall again down Gwyneth Rice’s face. Her father moved in with the paper towel. Rachel stood up and stepped away, putting her phone back in her pocket.

  “It’s okay, Gwynnie. It’s okay now,” Rice consoled. “Everything’s going to be all right, baby.”

  Rachel looked at me and then back to the bed. In that moment I saw the distress in her eyes and knew this was not any clinical interview for her either.

  “Thank you, Gwyneth,” she said. “You have been a wonderful help. We are going to get this man and I will come back to tell you.”

  After Rice stepped out of the way, Rachel returned to her position next to the bed and looked down at Gwyneth. They had bonded. Rachel reached a hand to Gwyneth’s face and lightly touched her cheek.

  “I promise you,” she said. “We will get him.”

  Gwyneth’s jaw went to work and she repeated the same message she had sent at the beginning of the conversation.

  DON’T TAKE HIM ALIVE

  36

  We didn’t talk until we were out of the building and walking toward the parking lot. It was dark out now.

  I had seen Rachel’s blue BMW when I had pulled in and parked next to it. We stopped behind our cars.

  “That was intense,” Rachel said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How was the dad out in the hallway?”

  “Ugh. I never know what to say in that sort of situation.”

  “I had to do that, Jack. Get him out of the room. I wanted her to speak freely because it’s important we know the details. We can assume that what happened to her happened to the other victims who we can’t talk to. Gwyneth provides the template.”

  “And what is the template?”

  “Well, for one thing. There was no rape. She invited him back to her apartment, ostensibly to show him the place for comparison since he was supposedly looking for a place to live. They had consensual sex—he used a condom—but not to completion. He couldn’t keep an erection. He pulled out and that’s when the nightmare began. He forced her up from the bed to stand naked in front of the bathroom mirror. He made her look at herself as he twisted her neck in a forearm lock.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “He was naked too and she felt his erection come back against her back as he thought he was killing her.”

  “Fucker gets off on the act of killing them.”

  “All serials do. But the fact that there was no rape is important. It lends itself to why he is targeting women with the DRD4 gene. He thinks it gives him an edge in getting his victims into bed. There seems to be a psychological play in that. He doesn’t want to be a rapist. Doesn’t like what that says about him.”

  “But killing women is okay, just not raping them first.”

  “It’s weird but not unique. Have you heard of Sam Little?”

  “Yeah, the FBI’s top serial.”

  “Caught here in L.A. and good for as many as ninety murders of women across the country. He only started confessing to the murders once the investigators stopped calling him a rapist—which in his case he was. He was okay with admitting to killing women but would never admit to a single rape.”

  “Weird stuff.”

  “But like I said, not unique. If this is part of our profile, it could be useful to strategically put something in your story or the press releases that follow to motivate the offender.”

  “You mean like have him come after me or Emily or FairWarning?”

  “I was thinking more about him making contact with you. There are plenty of examples of serials reaching out to the media to sort of correct the record. But we would take safety precautions just the same.”

  “Well, I would have to think about that, talk to Emily and Myron for sure.”

  “Of course. We wouldn’t do anything without everybody being on board. It’s just something to think about at this stage.”

  I nodded.

  “What else did you learn from this?” I asked. “Anything that struck you as a profiler?”

  “Well, he obviously dressed her afterward,” she said. “All the victims except for Portrero were dressed. All of them before Portrero were dressed and then dropped off in sometimes elaborate ways in an attempt to cover the murder. I would have to take a hard look at the other locations and where the women lived, but Portrero might show a change. He never removed her from her apartment.”

  “Maybe with the others the sex wasn’t at their homes. They were where he was staying or in his car or something. So he had to distance them from him.”

  “Maybe, Jack. We’ll make a profiler out of you yet.”

  Rachel pulled out her keys and unlocked her car.

  “Now what?” I asked. “Where do you go from here? Back to the bureau?”

  She pulled her phone to check the time on the screen.

  “I’ll call Metz—he’s the agent heading this up—and tell him I talked to her and they can hold off in the morning. He probably won’t be happy I jumped the gun but it will keep his people busy on the other stuff. After that, I think I’m going to call it a day. You?”

  “Probabl
y. I’ll check in with Emily and see if she’s still writing.”

  I hesitated before getting to the question I really wanted to ask.

  “You coming to my place or going home?” I asked.

  “You want me to come home with you, Jack?” Rachel asked. “You seem upset with me.”

  “I’m not upset. There are just a lot of things going on. I’m seeing this thing I started getting pulled by different people in different directions. So I get anxious.”

  “The story, you mean.”

  “Yeah, and we have that disagreement: whether to publish or wait.”

  “Well, the good thing is we don’t have to decide that until tomorrow morning, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So I’ll see you at your place.”

  “Okay. Good. You should follow me so that you can get into the garage and use my second parking spot.”

  “You’re giving me your second parking spot? Are you sure you’re ready for such an important step?”

  She smiled and I smiled in return.

  “Hey, I’ll give you a remote and a key if you want them,” I said.

  The ball back in her court, she nodded.

  “I’ll be right behind you,” she said.

  She moved toward the door of her car, taking her phone out of her back pocket so she could call Agent Metz. It reminded me of something.

  “Hey,” I said. “I couldn’t see the composite when you showed it to Gwyneth. Let me see.”

  She walked over to me, opening the photo app on the phone. She held the screen up to me. It was a black-and-white sketch of a white man with dark bushy hair and piercing dark eyes. His jaw was square and his nose was flat and wide. His ears did not extend far from the sides of his head. The top of each ear disappeared into the hairline.