“But he didn’t.”
“Oh, no. He did.”
Rather than walking back into Homicide, Vail continued down the hallway. “I’m sensing there’s more to this.”
Allman drank again. He thought a moment, then said, “Stephen was great. He taught me a lot of stuff. Got me into places I never would’ve gotten into. Like SFPD. Back when I started, things were more relaxed than they are now. Reporters had better access to people and things. Made our jobs a whole lot easier. We lunched with the dicks, we made their coffee in the break room. Things were good.”
“But,” Vail said. “There’s a but.”
Allman chuckled sardonically. “There is, in fact, a but.” They passed the photography lab on the left, white-collar crime on the right. “My editor liked my style better. And he kind of didn’t hide the fact he really dug my writing. Somewhere along the line I learned how to tell a story. Not just the typical journalistic pyramidal structure, but an actual story. Anyway, I got a line on a case in ’82, and I sold my editor on it. He trusted me. Led with it, in fact, and put it on page one. Turned out I was right. And we beat the Chronicle. In my editor’s eyes, I looked like a freaking genius, even though Stephen and I co-wrote it. Couple months later, I was promoted. Stephen got nothing. Actually, he got angry. Big time. And he bolted.”
“That was the case in San Bruno?”
“Yep.”
They reached the end of the hall, turned back and headed for Homicide.
“And you haven’t spoken to him since then?”
“Kind of. A thing here or there if we met up at a crime scene. Occasionally at a bar around town. But we’ve kept our distance. He’s still got a lot of animosity, all these years later.”
“Long time to hold a grudge.” Vail realized she had hardly drunk her coffee. She took a sip. “You really have no clue who his source is on that story?”
“Not even a suspicion.” Allman nodded at an inspector who was hurrying down the hall in the opposite direction. “Do you really have a line into the killer?”
Vail smiled, then sipped her drink.
“Hey, can’t blame me for trying. I’m on deadline.”
They arrived at Homicide. “You’ve got enough to run with. Give me some time, maybe I’ll be able to give you more. Just not yet.” Vail placed a hand on the door.
“Fair enough. Catch you later.”
Allman backed away, leaving Vail alone as she pushed through the entrance. Dixon was visible in the back room.
“Anything?”
Dixon turned. “Lab’s still working shit up. They’re backed up big time. You get anywhere?”
Vail set the coffee down on the table. “Nothing earth shattering. If we had actual case files, maybe I’d have a shot at something. There’s just not enough info to link these cases together. There are some similarities. But to do it right, we need to look into the victims.”
Burden came up behind them. “I think I’ve got a way for us to do that. Budget’s a disaster, but I’ve got a line into some college students, criminology majors. I spoke to their class a couple months ago. If I can get my lieutenant to sign off on having them do some Internet and microfiche work for us, they may be able to put together your victimologies much faster than we could.”
“That’d be extremely helpful.”
“That’s what I thought. Wish me luck.” He moved past them and headed for his boss’s office.
Friedberg leaned back in his seat and called across the room. “Karen. I picked up a disk from Rex with the crime scene photos, all the way through this morning. You wanna look through ’em?”
Vail pushed up from her seat. “Don’t have to ask twice.” She walked over and snatched up the CD. “Nothing else is working. Wading knee deep in the blood and guts may just get the juices flowing.”
“Anyone ever tell you,” Friedberg said, “that you’ve got a way with words?”
October 1, 1960
Leavenworth
MacNally and Rucker had spent the better part of the next four weeks working through each step of their plan. During that time, MacNally had been told that John Anglin had been transferred out of Leavenworth-where, no one knew. But MacNally did not concern himself with those details: he was planning to be far away from this place, with the likes of Gormack and Wharton and the Anglin brothers, and even Voorhees, a distant part of his past.
As to the escape, it turned out that Rucker’s three years worth of varied experiences at Leavenworth proved invaluable because he knew details about the penitentiary and hack procedures, work schedules, and yard layout that MacNally had only been able to surmise based on what he had observed.
Their plan would begin in the same manner that Anglin had outlined- but that was where the similarities ended.
When all of the prison departments closed for the evening and the cellhouse officers made preparations for shutting the institution down for the night, MacNally and Rucker dressed up their beds with “impostors”: they positioned jeans and shirts beneath the bed covers in their bunks in the shapes of legs and torsos, then overstuffed underwear into a sock, giving a fair approximation of a head-with the covers drawn high and assuming the guard did not scrutinize their “bodies” as he passed the cell.
They then made their way to the chaplain’s office, in the second floor recreation area, where they hid out until the staff left at 9:00 pm. With some difficulty, they forced their thinned- down bodies through a barred window and then proceeded towards the laundry. There, they waited until 10:00pm before continuing on to the west wall.
As Rucker told MacNally, 10:00pm counts were conducted by the evening watch officers. The men coming on at midnight did an immediate tally and then assumed their graveyard shift duties. If the guards did not detect anything untoward, the count was declared “clear” and all supplementary staff went home.
“That leaves two officers per cellhouse,” Rucker had said during their earlier discussions. “One officer each on the west yard, the east yard, the Centerhall, and in Control. Best odds we’ll have in a twenty-four hour cycle.”
“How do we know the guards won’t decide to do another pass of the cellhouse?” MacNally asked.
“’Cause they’re kickin’ back. Things are quiet, cons are goin’ down for the night, listenin’ to music, playin’ board games. The hacks go through inmate mail and sort it for delivery. Think back to other prisons you’ve been at. Nighttime hacks pass the time, just tryin’ to stay awake. The cons are sleepin’. Fucking boring as shit, but some of them wimps like that shift ’cause it’s the safest one.”
