By the time his neighbors finished and had checked out to go home to, he assumed, the spouses they’d cheated on, he’d found the book. He read through the draft, noting she worked in what he thought of as patchwork style—scenes and chapters mixed out of order that she’d link and weave together in another draft.
He looked at her key ring with some regret. How he wished he could risk going through her apartment. She’d have more there—files, notes, books, numbers.
He began to read again, this time making some changes, some additions. He’d keep the computer, the drives, and merge her work with his if he survived the next stage.
For the first time in months he felt a bubble of excitement over something other than killing. He’d include the portions of his own book, the draft he’d begun in the first person, with her third-person reporter’s point of view. Juxtaposing his parts of the story with hers.
His evolution and her observations.
And with Kati’s help, he would create his own song and story. Death, even his own, would be his legacy.
In the conference room where she and Tawney worked together, Mantz held her phone in one hand and tapped her keyboard with the other. “Yeah, got it. Thanks, Tawney.” She set the phone down, gestured. “I just got word that
He stepped over to her desk, read over her shoulder.
Under “Sneak Peeks” the headline glared:
FACE-OFF
Fiona Bristow Goes to Prison to Confront Perry
“Son of a bitch.” Tawney murmured it, the low tone more violent than a shout. “The UNSUB will read this and it puts Fee right back in the crosshairs. Front and center.”
“And Starr’s billing’s going up. She’s piling up career capital with this. Whatever she’s invested to get information, it’s paying off for her.”
“We need to find the leak. And we need to see this goddamn story. I’m going to push on her editor, her publisher. She’s hampering the investigation by printing sensitive information, information she may have obtained by illegal means.”
“Yeah, we try that, and ball it up with lawyers on both sides. I’ve got a more direct idea. I can move on that while you try the push. I’ll try a little face-off myself, with Starr.”
“No way she’ll reveal her sources.” Tawney stalked over to the coffeemaker. “She’ll lap it up.”
“Yeah. But I’ll go see her, now. Off-hours, late. Try to pump her while she’s trying to pump me. I might get something.” Mantz checked her watch as she outlined the scenario in her head. “Either way, I bring her in, tonight. Obstruction of justice, interference with a federal investigation, harassing a federal witness. I’ll pile it on while she makes her noises about the Fourth Estate and freedom of the press.”
Tawney sipped his coffee. “Okay, then what?”
“We sweat her awhile. She’ll want a lawyer, she’ll call her boss, but we might be able to get her to hold off, just a bit. She wants attention, and she wants information. If we make it seem like we have more, she might try to play us. Buy us time.”
“For?”
“For letting it leak she’s talking. That we’re breaking her down.”
Considering, Tawney edged a hip onto Mantz’s desk. “So her source or sources start to sweat.”
“Worth a shot. It’s probably a waste of time, but why shouldn’t she lose some sleep over this, feel some pressure? She’s shortcutting her way through this, Tawney, and using Bristow every chance she gets. We can work with the media. We do. We use them, they use us. That’s the way it’s done. But she’s not interested in cooperation. She’s just looking for the byline.”
“You’re not going to get an argument from me. I’ll work from here, play the game with her bosses. You go direct. Let me know if and when you’re bringing her in, and I’ll set it up.”
He rubbed the knots of tension at the back of his neck. “Maybe he won’t see the paper. Maybe he’ll make a move tomorrow, one of the mail drops, or we’ll spot his car at one of the trolling sites.”
Mantz nodded as she put on her jacket. “If he’s following current events, and we know damn well he is, Starr’s telegraphing our leads, or enough of them to put him on alert. The mail drops are a long shot. I think he’s done with Perry, and if not, he will be once he knows Bristow went to see him.”
She paused at the door. “Are you going to let her know what’s coming?”
“Like you said, it’s late. Let her get a decent night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s soon enough for that. Work Starr, Erin, then bring her in and we’ll work her harder.”
“Looking forward to it.”
It felt good to be outside, to do something that didn’t involve the keyboard or the phone. Mantz didn’t mind the rain. In fact, Seattle’s weather suited her perfectly. She enjoyed catching sight of Mount Rainier on sunny days, just as she enjoyed the cozy sense of intimacy the rain offered her.
Tonight, she considered it an added bonus. Pulling Starr out of her office or dry apartment into a downpour piped a little icing on the cake.
She really wanted a go at the reporter on a personal level as much as professional. While she wasn’t a one- for-all-because-we’re-women sort, she saw Starr’s barrel-ahead style on this story as a woman climbing over the bodies of other women—dead and alive.
She’d climbed her own rocky cliff to get where she was in the bureau, Mantz thought, but by God she hadn’t taken shortcuts, she hadn’t stepped on anyone’s back to do it.
Those who did deserved to be kicked down a few rungs.
With her windshield wipers swishing and the lights blurring wet on the glass, she drove toward the paper first. Most likely Starr had called it a night by this time, but the building was en route to the apartment. Might as well do a check there.
As she drove she considered her strategy. Go in soft first, she thought, let the fatigue and the stress show. Try the girl-to-girl appeal. Her instincts said that approach would bomb, and Starr would see it as a weakness.
That was just fine. It would add an element of what-the-fuck? when she kicked in, bore down and charged Starr with obstruction, maybe tossed in suspicion of bribing a federal employee.
She’d see how it went.
She turned into the parking lot and lifted her eyebrows when she spotted the apple-red Toyota. A scan of the plate verified it as Starr’s car.
Burning the midnight oil? That was just fine.
As she pulled up beside it, she noted the flat right rear tire.
“Bad luck,” Mantz murmured and smiled as she parked beside the Toyota.
Even as she reached for her umbrella something tickled in her gut. She sat for a moment, studying the lot, the rain, the building. Dark but for the security lights on the main level, she noted. You’d need a light in your office to burn the midnight oil.
She left the umbrella in the car, hitched her jacket back for easier access to her weapon.
She heard nothing but the rain and the wet whoosh of sporadic traffic when she got out. Traffic light enough, she observed, distant enough so the lot, the position of the car wouldn’t be in clear view. And the rain? There was that icing again.
She circled the car, studied the pancaked tire and, going with impulse, tried the door.
That tickle went to a buzz when she found it unlocked.
Following the buzz, she hiked to the building, banged on the locked glass doors. When the security guard crossed the tiled lobby floor, his walk, his body language said retired cop.
Sixty-couple, she judged, and sharp-eyed.
She held her ID up to the glass.
He studied it, and her, then used the intercom.
“Problem?”
