brought out in paperback by a small house and was nominated for a couple of awards, but went nowhere. Some copies of reviews were included in the file. Hank read them and was surprised to find them overwhelmingly glowing. Words and phrases like “liter-ate,” “compelling,” “involving and complex” were used to describe his work.
By then, Michael Schiftmann had gotten a job as a proofreader with a small publisher of religious and archaeological texts. And according to the report, he kept the job from his mid-twenties until he was thirty- four.
Hank scanned the field office report, which listed his next four books as well. Again, good reviews, a couple of nominations, one small award, the name of which Hank didn’t recognize …
Yet, Hank thought, he couldn’t afford to give up his day job. Five books, reviews, awards, and can’t afford to quit the day job.
Hank was glad he had no impulse whatsoever to be a writer.
There was almost a four-year lapse in Schiftmann’s publishing history. During that time, he held his job, but published nothing. Was this a long dry spell, Hank wondered, or was there something else going on?
Then, five years ago, he’d published
After four years of wandering in the desert, Michael Schiftmann had suddenly become a publishing dynamo.
And, he thought, a cash cow for everyone involved.
Hank looked up from his desk and stared out the window.
Outside, it was dark. He looked at his watch and was surprised to find it was almost seven. He’d been at this twelve hours almost nonstop. Somehow, the time seemed to go by quickly.
To the untrained eye, Hank thought, there was nothing in Michael Schiftmann’s past that would jump out and shout
“murderer.” To the outside onlooker, Schiftmann looked more like a troubled kid from a troubled background who triumphed over every obstacle to succeed beyond his most impossible-to-imagine dreams. He wasn’t an ice-cold sociopath, a stone killer; he was the American dream personified.
He was a literary Horatio Alger.
But, little by little, the circumstantial evidence was piling up. Hank Powell looked at his scribbled notes. In every city where the Alphabet Man took a victim, Michael Schiftmann was close by at the time, usually at book signings on publicity tours, but sometimes at book fairs, writers’ conferences, and the like.
And as Maria Chavez had discovered, the order and basic descriptions of the murders in the first five installments of Schiftmann’s best-selling series were exactly the same as the real murders, even though some of the details and places had changed.
And finally, Hank realized, everything about Michael Schiftmann-the freedom and lack of structure in his life, his living on the edge of society for so many years, his intelligence and his resources, his history in work and school, his egomaniacal drive and lust for fame, recognition, and wealth-fit the psychological profile of a highly intelligent, organized serial killer.
In other words, the Alphabet Man …
But was this enough? The key, of course, was Nashville.
That’s where they had the best forensic evidence. That’s where they had the blood and tissue samples, the samples that could be DNA-typed to Schiftmann’s blood. If there was a match, he’d go down, hard.
Which meant that without a grand jury indictment, the chance of getting a search warrant to collect the samples was thin. It was possible, of course. Hank realized they were lucky in getting the best forensic evidence in a Southern, conservative town, rather than, say, Vancouver or New York City, where people were commonly less sympathetic to police. Schiftmann, though, had the resources to put up a good fight-primarily the money, but also the fame, and as the American public had learned over the past years, fame is a powerful weapon to a good defense attorney.
So many variables, so many things to consider. Powell and Max Bransford had talked several times in the past few days alone, and the one thing they agreed on was that there was no way they were going to the DA and the grand jury until they had a case that was solid enough to withstand the inevitable hurricane that would follow.
Hank walked over to the window and stared out into the darkening woods. To his left, in the distance, the faint sulfurous glow of the lights over the west parking lot intruded on the darkness. He realized that at this moment, he probably knew more about Michael Schiftmann than anyone alive except Schiftmann himself. But that was the problem: He knew more
“There’s got to be something else,” he whispered. “There’s got to be more out there.”
He went back to his desk and dug out the background file on Michael Schiftmann. The Manhattan Field Office had done a thorough, professional job of bringing Schiftmann’s current situation up to speed. He’d sold his condo in Cleveland, made almost six figures on it, then moved to Manhattan, where he’d been house hunting. Hank had everything on Schiftmann’s recent moves, up to and including the Northwest flight number he’d taken from Cleveland to LaGuardia.
Then Hank saw a note appended to the report almost as an afterthought, that Schiftmann had been staying with his literary agent, a woman named Taylor Robinson.
It was one of two things, he realized. Either Taylor Robinson took really good care of her clients, or these two were an item.
“Wonder what it would take to find out?” he whispered.
Hank turned to his computer and double-clicked the Internet Explorer icon. He went to Google.com and typed in Taylor’s name. In a few hundredths of a second, he found more than forty-seven thousand hits for Taylor Robinson.
The first was her home page at the Delaney amp; Associates Web site. He scanned her biography and noted she was a summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, that she had been an editor for several years before joining the agency, and that in a few short years, she had become one of the most powerful agents in the business.
Hyperbole aside, he thought, this was an impressive woman. He stared at her picture for a few seconds. She was, he realized, quite lovely as well. The picture was black-and-white, so it was hard to tell colors, but she had dark hair swept down onto her shoulders, dark piercing eyes, and high cheekbones.
She looked, he thought, patrician.
He read a few more pages, learned a little more about her, and generated some assumptions that he would later test.
Because Hank Powell had decided to pay a visit to Taylor Robinson.
CHAPTER 21
Hank Powell stepped out of the cab on East Fifty-third Street, leaned in, handed the driver a twenty, and stepped back as he drove away. He pulled his overcoat around him as a stiff wind pounded down the street from the East River.
Even in late March, the cold concrete canyons of Manhattan could chill a man to his bones.
He looked across the street at the row of brownstones, then drew a small spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket and glanced at the address. He looked back up, scanned the buildings again, and spotted his destination.
In every investigator’s professional life, there comes a time when he has to take chances. Sometimes it’s a matter of trusting someone you shouldn’t; other times it’s learning to distrust someone you thought was stand-up.
