the interns come get me. As long as I don’t get up from the chair too fast, or go chasing our UNSUB down the street, I can function.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” She paused. “I guess that goes for us, too.”
“You asked them to put together a backgrounder on Scheer. They called his wife and got his social and such-which, I gotta tell you, she wasn’t too happy we woke her again-but it was worth it. We hit some interesting stuff, but we just found it and I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“Go on.” She placed her BlackBerry on speaker.
“So Scheer was born and raised in San Mateo. First thing we did was log onto vital records, to start at the beginning and see where it led us. And it stopped us dead.”
“How so?” Burden asked.
“Birdie!” The smile was evident in Friedberg’s tone. “Good to hear your voice. Okay, so the problem is that we found two birth certificates. We’re not sure what to-”
“He was adopted,” Vail said. “When you’re adopted, they assign the adopting parents’ names. Then they destroy the old certificate. But once in a while, the original hangs around. What’s the name on the original one?”
“Baby Markley. Markley would be the mother’s maiden name if she wasn’t married-which might be why she put the kid up for adoption.”
“What does that get us?” Dixon asked.
Burden shrugged. “Not much.”
Vail asked, “Can you pull the court records and see if the mother was married? That’d get us a last name-”
“Already checked,” Friedberg said, the rhythmic tap of a keyboard coming through the speaker. “The records only go back to 1950. I think I might-hang on a second. Yeah. Here’s something.” More clicks. “Hmm. He’s got a sealed juvie record.”
Vail sat forward in her seat. “This is starting to sound interesting. Except that we’ve hit another roadblock.”
“Maybe not,” Burden said. “Sealed file-but there’s no gag order on the investigating detective. Track down the guy who handled that case and we may get an answer as to what Scheer did to land his young ass in jail.”
“I’ll get on it. Call you as soon as we have something.”
They met Carondolet and Yeung in front of the hood of their car. Yeung had his laptop open, and a warden information card filled the screen. A mug shot showed a man wearing a red, white, and black placard around his neck, identifying him as ALCATRAZ 1577. Walton MacNally.
“So this is our guy,” Burden said.
Vail placed both hands on the car’s hood and leaned closer to the PC. The screen’s brightness, amidst the dark parking lot, played harshly across her face. “One of them.”
“You’ve had time to look this over,” Dixon said. “What’s the big picture?”
Carondolet folded his arms across his chest. “They had MacNally pegged as a very bright guy, scored a 135 on a prison IQ test. Resourceful, motivated, hard worker. Did fifteen months at Leavenworth but was involved in two escape attempts and was suspected in the violent assault of two cons. After the second attempt, he was transferred here, where his history of violence continued. His intake card said he was considered a ‘serious escape risk.’”
“What was the original offense?” Burden asked.
“Convicted of two counts of armed robbery and one of kidnapping. Oh, and he’s listed as widowed. Get this-he was arrested and tried for murdering his wife but was ultimately found not guilty.”
Vail pursed her lips. “Well, that’s certainly…an impressive record. We’d be silly not to consider this guy a prime suspect.”
“I thought we already did,” Yeung said.
“We did. But we’ve been running all over the place tonight looking at Stephen Scheer.”
“And?” Carondolet asked.
Dixon bent over the laptop beside Vail and scrolled down. “And he’s looking guilty. Of what, it’s hard to say. But something isn’t right with him.”
“How old is the guy?” Vail asked. “MacNally.”
“Apparently,” Dixon said, paging down a document, “a spry and fit 79.”
“A few other things you should know,” Yeung said. “He was involved in a number of violent altercations. One with a guy you’re familiar with: one of our vics, Harlan Rucker, who he apparently had some bad blood with dating back to Leavenworth. Rucker and an accomplice attacked MacNally in Industries with a knife.”
“I’m liking MacNally more with each passing minute,” Burden said. “What else?”
Yeung cocked his head. “There was a clergyman at Alcatraz by the name of Finelli. He tried to pass a letter from MacNally to his son, but it apparently got returned unopened. The kicker is that there’s a warden’s note saying that Finelli tipped off prison officials about MacNally’s plans to escape, and the attempt ended very badly.”
“Badly for who?” Dixon asked.
“Everyone. An officer was killed, and an inmate who was in on the escape with MacNally also got killed.”
“Who killed the CO and inmate?” Vail asked.
“The reports of the incident are sketchy,” Carondolet said. “The file says it was unknown who killed the officer, MacNally or the other inmate. It also says MacNally fell down the rockbed during his escape attempt and the responding officers rescued him from drowning.”
“But?”
“But when I was a ranger we were told that rumors were rampant at the time among the inmate population that MacNally killed both the guard and the prisoner. And that revenge was dished out by one of the guards who found MacNally in back of the Powerhouse, on the Old North Caponier. Tuned up MacNally pretty badly. The doc, according to the rumor, covered for the CO and wrote a bogus report.”
“Let me guess,” Vail said. “The doctor’s name was Martin Tumaco.”
“Give that lady a pat on the ass,” Carondolet said. “And the officers involved were-ready for this? Russell Ilg and Raymond Strayhan.”
“Holy shit,” Burden said. “We’ve got our guy. MacNally is our fucking UNSUB.” He looked at Vail. “Right?”
Vail pushed up from the hood. “Maybe.” Something’s still not adding up. “It looks that way. But…a couple of things are bugging me. MacNally is a violent criminal, I get that. But I’m not seeing convincing evidence he’s a psychopath. The behaviors we’ve observed at the crime scenes, particularly what he did to the women… It doesn’t fit, at least not given the information we’ve got.”
Burden sighed. His frown telegraphed the disappointment that was now burnished on his face. “You said there were two things bothering you.”
“Scheer. He threatened Hartman to get dirt on me, and when