“What about the jet?”
“You don’t have to whisper. The jet is no longer an issue.”
“I hope you got it in writing.”
“I got what I needed.”
I nodded. I knew the score. She had used what leverage she had to make a deal.
“So let me guess, they want it to read that an agent identified Freddy Stone as the Unsub, not someone they had just run out of the bureau.”
She nodded.
“Something like that. I am now assigned to dealing with you. They’re not going to let you inside the tape, Jack. It’s a recipe for disaster. You remember what happened with the Poet.”
“That was then and this is now.”
“It’s still not going to happen.”
“Look, can we get out of this cube? Can we just take a walk where there are no hidden cameras or microphones?”
“Sure, let’s walk.”
She stood up and went to the door. She knocked with a two-and-one pattern and the door was opened immediately. As we stepped into the narrow hallway that led to the front of the bus and the exit, I noticed Bantam was behind the door. I knocked the two-and-one pattern on it.
“If only I had known the combo,” I said. “I could’ve been out of here an hour ago.”
He found no humor in my comment. I turned away and followed Rachel out of the bus. Outside I could see that the warehouse and the alley were still nests of bureau activity. Several agents and technicians were moving about, collecting evidence, taking measurements and photos, writing notes on clipboards.
“All these people, have they found anything we didn’t find?”
She smiled slyly.
“Not so far.”
“Bantam said the bureau was swarming other locations-plural. What other locations?”
“Look, Jack, before we talk we need to be straight on something. This isn’t a ride-along and you’re not embedded. I am your contact, your source, as long as you hold the story for a day the way you offered.”
“The offer was based on full access.”
“Come on, Jack, that’s not going to happen. But you have me and you can trust me. You go back to L.A. and you write your story tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything I can tell you.”
I moved away from her down the sidewalk toward the alley.
“See, that’s what I’m worried about. You will tell me everything that you can tell me. Who decides what you can tell me?”
“I will tell you everything I know.”
“But will you know everything?”
“Jack, come on. Stop with the semantics. Do you trust me? Isn’t that what you said when you called me up out of the blue last week from the middle of the desert?”
I looked in her eyes for a moment and then back to the alley.
“Of course I trust you.”
“Then that’s all you need. Go back to L.A. Tomorrow you can call me every hour on the hour if you want and I will tell you what we’ve got. You will be up to speed until the moment you put the story in the paper. It will be your story and nobody else’s. I promise you that.”
I didn’t say anything. I stared into the alley, where there were several agents and techs dissecting the black trash bags we had found. They were documenting each piece of garbage and debris like archaeologists at a dig in Egypt.
Rachel grew impatient.
“Then do we have a deal, Jack?”
I looked at her.
“Yes, we have a deal.”
“My one request is that when you write it, you identify me as an agent. You don’t mention my resignation or its withdrawal.”
“Is that your request or the bureau’s?”
“Does it matter? Will you do it or not?”
I nodded.
“Yes, Rachel, I’ll do it. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you.”
I turned away from the alley to face her.
“So what’s happening right now? What about the other locations Bantam mentioned?”
“We also have agents at Western Data and at the home of Declan McGinnis in Scottsdale.”
“And what’s McGinnis have to say for himself?”
“Nothing so far. We haven’t found him.”
“He’s missing?”
She shrugged.
“We’re not sure whether he’s voluntarily or involuntarily missing, but he’s gone. And so is his dog. It’s possible that he did some investigating on his own after the agents visited Friday. He might have gotten too close to Stone, and Stone reacted. There’s another possibility, too.”
“That they were in it together?”
She nodded.
“Yes, a team. McGinnis and Stone. And wherever they are, they’re together.”
I thought about it and knew it was not without precedent. The Hillside Strangler turned out to be two cousins. And there were other serial killer teams before and after. Bittaker and Norris came to mind. Two of the most heinous sex killers to ever walk the planet somehow found each other and became a team in California. They tape-recorded their torture sessions. A cop once gave me a copy of one such session that took place in the back of a van. After the first scream of panic and pain, I turned the thing off.
“You see, Jack? This is why we need time before the media fire-storm. Both men had laptops and they took those with them. But they also had computers at Western Data and we have them. We’ve got an EER team coming in from Quantico. They’ll be on the ground by-”
“Ear?”
“ E-E-R. Electronic Evidence Retrieval team. They’re in the air now. We’ll put them on the system at Western Data and see what we can learn. And remember what we already learned today. That place is wired for sight and sound. The archived recordings should be able to help us as well.”
I nodded. I was still thinking about McGinnis and Stone working together as a tag team of murderers.
“What do you think?” I asked Rachel. “You think it’s one Unsub or two?”
“I’m not ready to say for sure yet. But I think we’re talking about a team here.”
“Why?”
“You know the scenario we spun the other night? Where the Unsub comes to L.A., lures Angela to your house, then kills her and flies to Vegas to follow you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the bureau checked every airline flying out of LAX and Burbank to Vegas that night. Only four passengers on the late flights bought tickets that night. Everybody else had reservations. Agents tracked and interviewed three of them and they were cleared. The fourth, of course, was you.”
“Okay, then he could have driven.”
She shook her head.
“He could have driven but why send the GO! package overnight if you were driving to Vegas. You see? Sending the package overnight only works if he was flying over and was going to pick it up, or if he was sending it to somebody.”
“His partner.”
I nodded and started pacing in a circle as I riffed on this new scenario. It all seemed to make sense.
