Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020)

by Connelly, Michael

  “So,” I said, looking at Rachel. “What have you got?”

  Rachel took a steady-handed draw of her martini, put the glass down, and then composed herself.

  “I spent most of the day at the FO in Westwood with the ASAC,” she said. “I was treated as a leper at first, but when they started going through the checkable facts of the story I was telling, they started seeing the light.”

  “ASAC?” Emily asked.

  She said it the way Rachel had—A-sack.

  “Assistant special agent in charge of the L.A. Field Office,” Rachel said.

  “You said his name is Metz?” I asked.

  “Matt Metz,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I already told you that they’ve linked at least three other cases by cause of death and then Gwyneth Rice, the only known survivor.”

  “Were you able to get the new names?” I asked.

  “No, that’s what they’re holding back to trade with you for pushing the story back,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get them.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I insisted. “We’re going to publish tomorrow. Putting out the warning about this guy is more important than any other consideration.”

  “You sure that the scoop is not the most important thing to you, Jack?” Rachel shot back.

  “Look, we’ve been over this,” I said. “It’s not our job to help the FBI catch this guy. Our job is to inform the public.”

  “Well, you might change your mind when you hear what else I got,” Rachel said.

  “Then tell us,” Emily said.

  “Okay, I was dealing with this guy Metz who I knew from when I was an agent,” Rachel said. “Once they legitimized what I brought them they started putting together a war room and attacking this from all angles. They found the other cases and one team was working on that. There’s also a case in Santa Fe where they’re going to do an exhumation of the body tomorrow because they think AOD might have been missed at autopsy.”

  “How could they miss a broken neck?” I asked.

  “Condition of the body,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get the exact details but it was left out in the mountains and animals got to it. AOD may not have been seen for what it was. Anyway, another team was looking at Hammond and the Dirty4 angle, trying to pull all of that together.”

  Rachel broke off there to take another sip of her martini.

  “And?” Emily prompted.

  “Through the site, they IDed Hammond’s partner,” Rachel said. “At least they think they did.”

  I leaned in over the table. This was getting good.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “His name is Roger Vogel,” Rachel said. “Get it? Roger Vogel becomes RogueVogue in the digital universe?”

  “Got it,” I said. “How did they find him?”

  “I think his fingerprints—digital, that is—are all over the site,” she said. “They brought in a cipher team and I don’t think it was that hard. I didn’t get all the details but they were able to trace him to a stationary IP address. That was his mistake. He did some maintenance of the site from an unmasked computer. Got lazy and now they know who he is.”

  “So, what is the location?” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Cedars-Sinai,” Rachel said. “It looks like the guy works in Administration. That’s the location of the computer he used.”

  At first I felt a jolt of excitement at the prospect of confronting Vogel before the FBI grabbed him. But then the reality hit me: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was a massive, high-security complex that covered five entire blocks in Beverly Hills. It might be impossible to get to him.

  “Are they picking him up?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Rachel said. “They’re thinking that having him loose might work to their advantage.”

  “As bait for the Shrike,” Emily said.

  “Exactly,” Rachel said. “It’s clear he wanted to take Vogel out and made a mistake with the guy up in Northridge. So he may try again.”

  “So,” I said, thinking out loud. “If the bureau is watching this guy, there is nothing to stop us from going in there and confronting him. Have they traced him to his home or other locations?”

  “No,” Rachel said. “Thanks to you giving Vogel the warning about the Shrike, he’s taking all precautions. They had a loose tail on him and lost him after he left work.”

  “That’s not good,” Emily said.

  “But here’s the thing,” Rachel said. “He’s a smoker. He is taking precautions but he still has to go outside to smoke. I saw surveillance photos of him at a smoker’s bench outside the building. There was a street sign in the background. It said George Burns Road. That goes right through the middle of the complex.”

  I looked across the table at Emily. We both knew exactly what we were going to do.

  “We’re going to be there tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get him when he comes out to smoke.”

  Emily turned to Rachel.

  “Would you recognize this guy off the surveillance photo you saw?” she asked. “If you saw him at the bench, I mean?”

  “I think so,” Rachel said. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll need you to be there too.”

  “If I do that, it will burn me with the bureau,” Rachel said. “I’ll be like you two, on the outside looking in.”

  “Okay, we’ll have to figure out a plan for that,” I said.

  I grabbed my glass and finished off my drink. We had the rough outlines of a plan and I was good to go.

  39

  The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was a cluster of tall glass buildings and parking garages crowded together on a five-block parcel but still segregated by the grid of city streets passing through those blocks. At the office that morning we used the Streetview feature of Google Maps to locate the smoker’s bench Rachel had seen in the FBI surveillance photo. It was at the corner of Alden Drive and George Burns Road, an intersection almost dead center in the medical complex. It was apparently centrally located to serve patients, visitors, and employees from all buildings in the complex. It consisted of two benches facing each other across a fountain in a landscaped strip that ran alongside an eight-story parking garage. There were pedestal ashtrays at the ends of each of the benches. We finalized a plan and headed there from the office at 8 a.m.—hoping to be in place before Roger Vogel would go out for his first smoking break.

  We watched the smoking benches from two angles. Emily and I were in the nearby ER waiting room, where the windows gave us a full-on ground-level view of the benches, but no view of the Administration Building. Rachel was on the third level of the parking garage because it gave a commanding view of the benches plus the entrance of the Administration Building. She would be able to alert us when Vogel emerged and headed to the benches to smoke. Her position also kept her out of the view of the FBI. Using the angles she remembered from the surveillance photo she had seen the day before, she had pinpointed the FBI observation post in a medical office building across the street from Administration.

  Emily Atwater was a lapsed smoker, meaning she had cut back from a pack-a-day habit to a pack-a-week dalliance, and primarily indulged herself during off-work hours. I remembered the ash can outside the second-floor exit at her apartment building.

  At regular intervals she went out to the benches to smoke a cigarette, hoping that she would be in place when Vogel showed up to indulge his own habit. I had not smoked since I had moved to California but I had a prop pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket as well, with the intention of going to the benches and using them when Vogel finally appeared.

  The morning passed slowly with no sighting of Vogel. Meanwhile, the benches were a popular spot for other employees, visitors, and patients alike—one patient even walked her mobile IV pole and drip bag out to the spot for a smoke. I kept a steady text chain going with Rachel and included Emily when she was at one of the benches. That was where she was at 10:45 when I sent out a group missive suggesting we were wasting our time. I said
Vogel had probably been spooked by the conversation I’d had with him the day before and blown town.

  After sending it, I got distracted by a man who had entered the ER with blood on his face and demanded to be attended to immediately. He threw a clipboard he had been handed onto the floor and yelled that he had no insurance but needed help. A security guard was moving toward him when I heard my text chime go off and pulled my phone. The text was from Rachel.

  He just walked out of administration, cigarettes in hand.

  The text had gone to both Emily and me. I checked on Emily through the window and saw her sitting on one of the benches looking at her phone. She had gotten the alert. I headed out through the automatic doors and toward the smoking benches.

  As I approached I saw a man standing by the benches. Emily was on one bench smoking and another woman was on the other. Vogel, if it was Vogel, was apparently intimidated about sharing one of the benches with the women. This was problematic. I didn’t want him standing when we identified ourselves as journalists. It would be easier for him to walk away from us. I saw him light a cigarette with a flip lighter. I started to remove the prop pack of smokes from my shirt pocket. I saw Emily pretending to read a text but I knew she was opening her phone’s recording app.

  Just as I got there the interloping smoker stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and left the butt behind. She got up and walked back toward the ER. I saw Vogel take her place on the empty bench. Our plan was going to work out.

  As far as I could tell, Vogel never looked at Emily or acknowledged her in any way. When I got to the spot I put a cigarette in my mouth and then patted the pocket of my shirt as if looking for matches or a lighter. I found none and looked at Vogel.

  “Can I borrow a light?” I asked.

  He looked up and I gestured with my unlit cigarette. Without saying a word he reached into his pocket and handed me his lighter. I studied his face as he reached the lighter out to me. I saw a look of recognition.

  “Thanks,” I said quickly. “You’re Vogel, right?”

  Vogel looked around and then back at me.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Are you in Admin?”

  Identity confirmed. We had the right guy. I threw a quick glance at Emily and saw that her phone had been put down on her bench and angled toward Vogel. We were recording.

  “No, wait a minute,” Vogel said. “You’re … you’re the reporter.”

  Now I was surprised. How did he know?

  “What?” I said. “What reporter?”

  “I saw you in court,” he said. “It’s you. We talked yesterday. How the hell did you—? Are you trying to get me killed?”

  He threw his cigarette down and jumped up from the bench. He started to head back toward the Administration Building. I raised my hands as if to stop him.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I just want to talk.”

  Vogel hesitated.

  “About what?”

  “You said you know who the Shrike is. We need to stop him. You—”

  He pushed by me.

  “You need to talk to us,” Emily called.

  Vogel’s eyes darted toward her as he realized she was with me and he was being tag-teamed.

  “Help us catch him,” I said. “And then you’ll be safe too.”

  “We’re your best chance,” Emily said. “Talk to us. We can help you.”

  We had rehearsed what we would say on the ride over from the office. But the script, as it was, did not go much further than what we had just said. Vogel kept walking, yelling back at us as he went.

  “I told you, none of this was supposed to happen. I’m not responsible for what that crazy person is doing. Just back the fuck off.”

  He started to cross George Burns Road.

  “You just wanted the women to be fucked over, not killed, right?” Emily called. “Very noble of you.”

  She was standing now. Vogel pirouetted and strode back to us. He bent slightly to get right into Emily’s face. I moved in closer in case he made a further move toward her.

  “What we did was no different from any dating service out there,” he said. “We matched people with what they were looking for. Supply and demand. That’s it.”

  “Except the women didn’t know they were part of that equation,” Emily pressed. “Did they?”

  “That didn’t matter,” Vogel said. “They’re all whores anyway and—”

  He stopped as his eyes found the cell phone Emily held up in front of her body.

  “You’re recording this?” he shrieked.

  He turned to me.

  “I told you, I want no part of this story,” he yelled. “You can’t use my name.”

  “But you are the story,” I said. “You and Hammond and what you’re responsible for.”

  “No!” Vogel cried. “This bullshit is going to get me killed.”

  He turned again toward the street and headed to the crosswalk.

  “Wait, you want your lighter?” I called after him.

  I held it up in my hand. He turned back to me but didn’t slow down as he stepped into the street.

  “Keep—”

  Before he could say the next word, a car swooshed by and caught him in the crosswalk. It was a black Tesla with windows tinted so dark it could have been driverless and I would not have been able to tell.

  The force of the collision at the knees threw Vogel forward into the intersection and then I saw his body swallowed by the silent car as it ran over him. The Tesla bounced as it went over Vogel. His body was then dragged underneath it into the middle of the intersection before the car could finally break free of it.

  I heard Emily scream behind me but there was no sound from Vogel. He was as silent as the car that took him under.

  Once free of the body, the Tesla hit top takeoff speed and screamed across the intersection and down George Burns Road to Third Street. I saw the car turn left on a yellow light and disappear.

  Several people ran to the crumpled and bloodied body in the intersection. It was, after all, a medical center. Two men in sea-foam-green scrubs were the first to get to Vogel and I saw that one was physically repelled by what he saw. There were drag marks in blood on the street.

  I checked on Emily, who was standing next to the bench she had occupied, her hand to her throat as she gazed in horror at the activity in the intersection. I then turned and joined the scrum that was gathering around Roger Vogel’s unmoving body. I looked over the shoulder of one of the men in scrubs and saw that half of Vogel’s face was missing. It had literally disintegrated while he had been dragged facedown under the car. Vogel’s head was also misshapen and I was sure that his skull had been crushed.

  “Is he alive?” I asked.

  No one answered. I saw that one of the men had a cell phone up to his ear and was making a call.

  “This is Dr. Bernstein,” he said calmly. “I need a rescue ambulance to the intersection right outside the ER. Alden and George Burns. Somebody got hit by a car out here. We have major head and neck trauma. We’ll need a backboard to move him. And we need it now.”

  I became aware of the sound of sirens nearby but still outside the medical complex. I hoped that those were FBI sirens and they were descending on the Shrike, running him to ground in his silent killing machine.

  My cell phone buzzed and it was Rachel.

  “Jack, is he dead?”

  I turned and looked up at the garage. I saw her standing at the third-floor balustrade, cell phone to her ear.

  “They’re saying he’s still alive,” I asked. “What the fuck happened?”

  “It was a Tesla. It was the Shrike.”

  “Where’s the FBI? I thought they were watching this guy!”

  “I don’t know. They were.”

  “Did you get a plate?”

  “No, it was too fast, unexpected. I’m coming down.”

  She disconnected and I put my phone away. I leaned back over the men trying to help Vogel.

  I then heard Dr. Bernste
in speak to the other man in scrubs.

  “He’s gone. I’m calling it. Ten fifty-eight. I’ll call off the truck. We need to leave him here for the police.”

  Bernstein pulled his phone again. And I saw Rachel heading toward me. She was talking on her phone. She disconnected when she got to me.

  “That was Metz,” she said. “He got away.”

  THE SHRIKE

  40

  He knew it was more than likely an FBI trap but he also knew they would not be prepared for his move. They would refer to the profiles and programs they relied on like religion when it came to understanding and catching men like him. They would expect him to do what he had done before: follow his quarry and attack with stealth. And that was their mistake. Using his phone, he had watched the two reporters on the hospital’s own security cameras, and knew they were staking out some kind of rendezvous spot. When he was sure they had identified the target for him, he moved quickly and boldly. Now he was gone like a blur and he was sure they were scrambling in his wake.

  But they were too late.

  He was pleased with himself. The last connection between him and the site and the list was surely dead and now it was time for him to fly south for the winter, maybe change plumage and prepare.

  He would then come back to finish things when it was least expected.

  He drove the Tesla up the ramp and into the parking garage of the Beverly Center. He drove all the way up to the fourth level. There were not many cars up here and he suspected that the mall tended to be more crowded in the later hours of the day. He parked at the southeast corner. Through the decorative steel grating that encased the structure he could see down to La Cienega Boulevard. He saw flashing lights on unmarked cars moving in the traffic. He knew the cars belonged to the feds he had just outwitted and embarrassed. Fuck them. They were searching blind and would never find him.

  Soon he heard a helicopter overhead as well. Good luck with that. And good luck to the owner of every black Tesla that was about to get pulled over by feds with their guns out and anger in their eyes.

  He checked himself in the rearview mirror. He had shaved his head the night before—in case they had managed to get a physical description of him. His scalp had been startling white when he was finished and he had to rub bronzer from CVS over it. It had stained his pillow while he slept but it did the trick. It now looked like he had kept the look for years. He liked it and found himself checking his look in the mirror all morning.