“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” Lewis answered trying to regain his breath.
“You got something solid?” Tyler asked. Lewis shuffled about a little and Tyler glanced at his reflection in the side window but didn’t know what he was up to.
“Not much, but it will explain why no one has heard anything about Danny Kercheck and why you can't get in contact with him,” Lewis said, sounding pleased with himself.
“Great,” Tyler said and waited for it.
“He’s being held under counter-terrorism charges pending an ongoing investigation,” Lewis said, the pomp and self-importance of his being able to get this information unmistakable.
“Wow,” Tyler said, sounding impressed (he wasn’t, he’d figured this would be the case) “What is the investigation?” This was the big part and if Tyler could get some eyes on this, his newspaper and his own career would be set for a long time to come.
“I’m afraid that was a dead end,” Lewis said, “I couldn't find a single thing about it, but I’ll keep on looking.”
“Please do,” Tyler said, “But what you have on Danny answers a lot of questions and will give me some new avenues to explore.”
“I look forward to reading them in the ‘Echo’” Lewis said and with that he slid to the opposite door he’d gotten in from and was gone without another word. Tyler got the impression, Lewis might think he was slipping away like some ninja into a masking cloud, but in reality he was cumbersome and slow getting out despite his seemingly rapid movements of arms and legs. Tyler couldn't complain though, Lewis had been good in the past and he was eager to please and just as eager to show off the information he had access to.
It was unlikely he would find out anything more about the investigation the FBI were ‘secretly’ running into a suspected mass serial killer (aka Dwight Spalding). That investigation had been closed off to any of Tyler’s informants and from what Sarah had said there were very, very few people involved in an effort to stem any leaking of the story to the media. He had to admit it was the best case of covert policing he’d ever seen. Tyler hadn’t been able to get so much as a sniff of the investigation from any of his sources.
Before setting off for his home, Tyler scanned the news on his phone. There had been another farmer murder in Virginia and he cursed himself for not being there right now. He clicked on to the TV coverage and saw the usual red and blue flashing lights as the camera zoomed and strained to see what was going on in and around the farmhouse a couple of hundred yards back from the road.
The reporter was the first on the scene and was giving a rundown on what she knew so far- which wasn’t much and was as likely as not to be in need of correcting later on, but as she spoke, Tyler saw on screen a familiar shape emerge from the building. The camera panned to the door and focused, hoping, Tyler was sure, to see white faced and shaken officers coming out. Instead there was one woman, the calm and poised but determined face of Sarah Brightwater.
“You’re looking well, Sarah,” Tyler said, though he could tell she was tired. He wondered if she had been able to find out anything on the case that should have been hers. Would she share with him if she had? Unlikely; their dangerous collaboration had come to an end when Davis was arrested. Tyler guessed Sarah had been living in fear since then about what might happen if her superiors found out she’d been hiding things from them during the ‘John the Baptist’ case.
She didn’t have anything to fear from Tyler, he wasn’t going to say anything and he was sure she knew that. He wasn’t the only person who knew though, that was the kicker. Davis had been somehow in on what they’d been doing, and ‘The Monster’ seemed to know everything Davis did too, so there was no telling for sure how the information could get to the FBI if someone wanted it to.
This brought Tyler’s mind around to the silence of the anonymous tipster since Davis had been arrested. Every day since, Tyler had been expecting a letter or a phone call where the harsh metallic voice would tell him something no one else knew yet.
Tyler didn’t think it was Davis once the identity of that killer came out and he still didn’t think it. He was sure it was part of a larger thing, perhaps the ‘Monster’ case, but he couldn’t be sure. He did hope so, though. Getting in on that would be a major boon for his career and for the book on serial killers he was currently writing.
Tyler had run the idea of visiting incarcerated killers like he had with Stewart ‘The Spider’ Spekler, and using the bulk of the interviews in the newspaper and saving some juicy bits for the book. The new editor, Calvin Briggs, jumped at the idea. Tyler was his star and he didn’t want to give him any reason to leave the newspaper. Tyler’s inside knowledge on Davis had seen the sales of ‘The Baltimore Echo’ rocket into the stratosphere since the trial.
Now that the major fuss
