Hack, p.17
Hack, page 17
She hung her head.
“My boss, the U.S. Attorney, said you were probably a murderer and he saw nothing in our jurisdiction to investigate. He socializes with your boss, Lucky Tal Edgar.”
“‘Lucky’ is right,” I said.
“I got them,” Izzy bragged. “I got search warrants for the Mail computers, records and phones before lunch. We interrupted them in the middle of large-scale file shredding and computer dumping. You know they have a whole room full of industrial-strength shredders? The NYPD computer people are trying to recover the data now.”
“You hope,” Mary Catherine told him. “Your District Attorney got a big chunk of her last re-election campaign war chest from the owner of the New York Mail.”
“If Mary Catherine couldn’t get the U.S. Attorney to come in, how did you do it, Izzy?”
“I told the judge I was investigating the murder of one New York Mail employee and the mysterious disappearance of another. I said I had a witness unconscious in the hospital and that lives were in danger.”
“My life?” I asked.
“We discussed several possibilities. You. Another serial killer victim. Maybe Matt Molloy. Gotta get the evidence.”
“So we have evidence from the Mail on the serial killings and the Joyce case?” I asked hopefully.
“The recent stuff was the first shit they erased,” Izzy said. “The computer guys are looking to recover whatever they can. Huge amount of stuff, it’s going to take time. Fingers crossed.”
I cursed Lucky Tal, his boss Trevor Todd, and all their minions and suggested they had sexual intercourse with their mothers and various barnyard animals. It didn’t make me feel better.
Then I told them everything. Almost. I recounted dropping my phone, Leslie with the gun, the wild ride, my bailout, the trunk thing. I left out the part with my flaming knife and my ghostly green pal. Then the fire, the flying, the sinking, the swimming, the van, the ducks. Izzy said he would put out an alert for a black van. Maybe Molloy fled in one.
“So, Shepherd,” Izzy asked, “did Molloy murder his partner or did you kill Jack Leslie in lawful self-defense, after he fired a gun at you and you were in fear for your life?”
“What are you comfortable with?” I asked.
Izzy and Mary Catherine chuckled.
“Well, we found one ejected shell casing on the back floor of the cab, along with the emptied nine millimeter, wiped clean of prints. The rest of the ejected brass was grouped near a burned spot on the rock above the reservoir, uphill from where the cab went airborne, consistent with Molloy firing at you inside the trunk. One deformed round was recovered from the right passenger door panel, consistent with someone firing level in the back seat. Your friend Mary Catherine here has night-vision video of you, apparently unarmed, getting into the cab, with your hands up. Looks like an abduction to me. The video recorded a flash and a bang as the cab sped away. Only one gun was recovered at the scene but no knife.”
“A knife?” I asked.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Izzy said. “Leslie was stabbed to death. Once. In the heart, by somebody who knew what they were doing.”
“You mean like Matt Molloy?”
“I might be comfortable with that. He tried really hard to kill you. Several times.”
“And maybe he and his buddy killed several people to boost newspaper circulation.”
“Maybe. No evidence yet,” Izzy said. “Do you remember your ordeal, sir?”
“Maybe. Not yet.”
“Traumatic amnesia is a tricky thing,” Izzy said.
“I hope so,” I told him. “You bugged my phones.”
“Could be,” he replied.
“How else did you know to be hiding in the park at that moment? What happened? Your guys and Mary Catherine’s people fell all over each other?”
They both looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry, Shepherd. I let you down,” Mary Catherine said sadly. “We didn’t know Lieutenant Negron and his men were going to be there. He didn’t know we were there. They got away with you in the confusion. It’s a miracle no one was killed. Well. Almost no one.”
“I apologize for handcuffing you,” Izzy said to her. “It’s your fault, Shepherd.”
“Go ahead, blame the victim. Who has my phone?” I asked.
“I do,” said Izzy. “We’re done copying it. I’ll bring it next time.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“So…” Izzy continued, “your paper has put out a statement that it is cooperating fully with our investigation.”
“Are they?”
“Hell no. Total stonewall of lawyers. We went to the Human Resources department and the woman in charge claimed she never heard of your pals. Leslie and Molloy had their own office in the basement, with lots of bugging equipment, burglary tools, cameras, radios, you name it. We were there all night, copying computer files, seizing paper ones, hauling everything out except the floor. We weren’t the first ones there, though. Half the file cabinets were empty. From the dust you could see two desktop computers had been removed.”
I asked how I had got to the hospital and was told an anonymous caller reported a man had been hit by a car on Park Drive and was crawling in the roadway, bleeding and rambling about ducks.
“Ducks?” Mary Catherine asked. “What was that all about?”
“I don’t remember. I have traumatic amnesia, remember?”
44.
I suddenly remembered Skippy.
“He’s being taken care of by a friend,” said Mary Catherine.
“Whose friend?” I asked.
“Yours,” Mary Catherine replied. “Your girlfriend, the vet.”
“Jane?”
“She called 911 and reported you missing. She was directed to me,” Izzy recounted. “She said she was your girlfriend and she couldn’t reach you and that you went to meet the Hacker. We told her you were alive and gave her your keys. Was that okay?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Jane seems very nice,” Mary Catherine beamed. “She was very worried about you and relieved that you were alive. She was here while you were unconscious and said she would be here tonight, after work. So, tell me about her.”
“I can’t. Traumatic amnesia, remember?”
A doctor came in and checked me, then ran over the long menu of damage, including a mysterious funnel-shaped burn on my left forearm. Most of my wounds were the result of slugs that were broken up and shredded by the tire and exited the far side as a confetti of lead and steel that, fortunately, had lost most of its punch and ended up in my skin or the muscle underneath. Painful, ugly but not life threatening. I would never have a career as a pantyhose model. I thanked my doctor for saving me and was thankful for the New York Mail health insurance plan that paid for it.
Izzy and Mary Catherine spoke to the doctor in the hall before coming back in and just looking at me and each other for a while.
“What?” I finally asked them.
“The doctor said it’s okay,” Mary Catherine said, unfolding a New York Mail.
“Sorry. So much for the good news,” Izzy muttered.
“This is today’s paper,” Mary Catherine explained.
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” Izzy chuckled.
Mary Catherine held up the front page so I could see The Wood.
HACKER ATTACK?
Ace Reporter or Sly Slayer?
Uh-oh, the dreaded question mark, the one magic squiggle that made it possible for a newspaper to lie about anyone. Mary Catherine handed me the rag. My photograph, a head shot from my Mail ID, was inset onto a scene of cops examining Jack Leslie’s wet body next to the banged-up cab. But they had done something to my picture, photoshopped it. My eyes were hollow and predatory. I looked evil. Under my picture were three words and one squiggle.
Cannibal Serial Killer?
This set me off on another jag, accusing my bosses at the Mail of incest and bestiality. As I read, I expanded my oaths to include various other perversions. The front page asked the question whether New York Mail reporter Francis X. Shepherd had murdered one and possibly two intrepid Mail security investigators, who had begun investigating him as the possible Hacker. Police, it said, had served a search warrant on the newspaper as part of its probe—of me. The byline was Don Badger and they had the gall to call it EXCLUSIVE. Turned out my favorite Human Resources executives were intrepid sleuths on the trail of an elusive killer—who had pretended to get exclusive stories on slayings he might have engineered. It quoted an anonymous law enforcement source, who said I might have killed Jack Leslie and Matt Molloy because their unofficial investigation came too close for comfort. Previously, cops had believed that famous foodie Aubrey Forsythe was the Hacker but investigators were now wondering if Forsythe had help in his horrific killing spree. What was clear was that Leslie and Molloy were heroes.
“They tried to lure him with a ruse but, sadly, it appears they seriously underestimated their quarry,” the unnamed law enforcement source said.
It was strange that, when they spoke to the Mail, New York cops suddenly seemed to acquire British accents. The paper was cooperating with the police investigation, turning over records and computer data to help lock up the wily monster who had slain three—perhaps as many as five—if the courageous security men were counted. It went on like that for pages, re-hashing the hackings and speculating how I might have been in a perfect position to commit the killings and blame them on someone else. The only things missing were advertisements for torches and pitchforks. There was a particularly cute editorial by my fearless leader, Lucky Tal Edgar, an apology to his dear readers—for me. I was a viper at the breast of the First Amendment, a clever trickster who foisted myself off as an investigative reporter, after concealing past evil deeds that involved the death of helpless children. I was the worst person in the world, a suspected serial killer, lusting for the blood of innocents. Wow.
“Crap,” I spat, throwing the paper to the foot of my bed.
“Don’t worry,” Izzy said. “I know it’s bullshit.”
“What about the DA?”
“He doesn’t have the case yet. Not until I make an arrest.”
“And my boss wants to stay out of it,” Mary Catherine threw in.
“Not after he reads this,” I said. “People with badges will be popping up everywhere. That was the idea. The Mail has taken over the investigation. They own the county prosecutors and the feds. The worst of this whole thing is… I have to… Oh, man…”
“What?” Mary Catherine asked, alarmed.
“This crap will be picked up everywhere. Even in Kansas, even on NPR,” I explained. “Now I have to call my parents.”
“That’s the worst?” Izzy asked.
“You haven’t met my parents.”
45.
Jane arrived in my hospital room just as I was finishing up my call to my parents. She waited until I hung up then leaned in and kissed me.
“Who was that?”
I told her.
“It’s funny, I can’t picture you with a mother and a father.
You seem like, I don’t know, an orphan,” she smiled. “Cute, lovable, maybe a little sad?”
“My parents think I’m an orphan, too.”
She made a face and asked if I was kidding. I wasn’t. “They rarely speak to me. They called me a serial killer before the Mail called me one. That was my mom I was talking to. My dad wouldn’t get on the phone. When I left college to join the military after 9/11, they were horrified. When they found out I killed people, terrorists, they disowned me.”
“But you were a soldier, fighting the evildoers.”
“They don’t see it that way. To them, I’m a killer, even if I kill killers. They’re from the planet 1960s, pacifists. My dad spent Vietnam working as an orderly in a veterans’ hospital, a conscientious objector. To Mom and Dad, I’m what’s wrong with the world. I tried to tell my mother that the stuff in the Mail is all lies but I doubt it got through.”
“Don’t they believe in self-defense?”
“No. Non-violent direct action, you know, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. They were Freedom Riders.”
“What’s a Freedom Rider?” she asked.
I changed the subject and we talked about Skippy. “That horrible girl from the Daily Press was hanging around outside your building,” Jane said. “She and these two huge slugs demanded information. Of course I didn’t tell her a thing.”
“Sorry, she’s just sucking around for a story, a day late and a dollar short.”
After a nurse came in to take some blood, Jane began asking about my night in the park.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” she said quickly.
I took a deep breath, which hurt, and told her everything. “Wow,” she said. “Aren’t you worried I’ll tell Lieutenant Negron?”
“He already knows. Not about the knife, probably, but he definitely knows I took Jack Leslie out. We’re just waiting to see if Matt Molloy shows up and what kind of story he tells when he does. We’ll take it from there.”
“It must be nice to be so close to someone that you each know what the other is thinking,” Jane said wistfully. “I’d like to have that with someone again.”
“Don’t be jealous of Izzy. We’re just good friends. Look, Jane, look deep into my eyes and tell me what I’m thinking.”
She looked. Then she moved closer and kissed me.
“This is a hospital,” she laughed. “Someone could come in.”
“See? That wasn’t so tough.”
She sat on the bed, took my hand and kissed me, better this time. It felt good.
A flash went off. Another. Ginny Mac was in the room, shooting pictures with a silver digital camera. Damn. Speak of the devil. She had probably followed Jane here. Ginny zipped around the bed for a better angle and took more shots. She stashed the camera and pulled out a pen and notebook and began peppering me with questions. Did I kill both Jack Leslie and Matt Molloy? Did I kill Neil Parmesan and all the other victims? Why did I do it? Did I get a sexual charge from it?
She was loving it. Now there was an explanation for how I beat her on everything. I was the Hacker. I tried to respond but she wouldn’t shut up her ridiculous rapid-fire questions—I assumed so she could say I had refused to comment on whether I was a degenerate. She asked Jane her name and age and if she enjoyed sex with a serial killer.
“You are an idiot,” Jane said. “Those goons from the Mail kidnapped Shepherd and tried to kill him, you moron. The police have video. Can’t you see all these bandages? You think he shot himself?”
“Shot? That’s not what his own paper says,” Ginny countered. “They say you’re the Hacker, Sheppie.”
Sheppie?
“It’s a cover-up because they’re all involved. In this and a lot of other things,” Jane protested. “They—”
“Don’t, Jane,” I warned her. “Ginny, I thought you got fired?”
“Only temporarily. You being a serial killer gave me an in. And this story will make me golden.”
“Ginny, I’d be happy to comment if you’d stop talking for a second. Or don’t you want me to respond? You just want me to say no comment, so you can run back to your office and write some stupid story. Like… let’s see, what have you got? I know: ‘Smiling Killer!’ Or ‘First Picture of the Hacker!’ right?”
“Maybe, sweetie,” she replied, sarcastically. “I was thinking ‘Horny Hacker Humps in Hospital.’ You know, ‘Sex-Fest in Bed!—Serial Slayer Laughs at Cops,’ something like that. We all know you’re a gas in the sack.”
I laughed. Jane was appalled and looked at me like Ginny and I had the same disease and she was wondering if it was contagious. She looked back and forth between Ginny and me, putting it together.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jane said, pulling her hand away from mine. “You two?”
“Wait,” I tried. “Let me explain.”
“I don’t believe it,” Jane said, walking out of the room, with a frosty glare at Ginny. Ginny gave her a triumphant nasty girl smile. I tried to get up. No way. I asked Ginny for help but she just looked at me, and all my electronic and tubular attachments, like she was seeing my injuries for the first time. She took another shot with her camera. I gave up.
“Any comment, Hacker?” Ginny asked.
“That’s crap,” I told her. “You want to sneak around for this penny-ante shit, that’s your choice. Or are you ready for a real story? A bigger story. Huge. One that will blow the Mail away?”
“You’re just stalling me,” Ginny said.
“You’ll know soon enough. I get the feeling the Mail will not be publishing my story on the subject. I need an outlet, a job. If not you, then I’ll give it to the Tribune. In fact, they were Aubrey’s paper. They would love this and they’re so much better at detail than you.”
“The fuck they are,” Ginny snapped, moving closer to me. “This story is mine.”
“You keep saying that but it’s not true. Not once. You just want it to be true and you have a big mouth. I can make it happen—if you shut your trap and listen.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’ll give me a big story on Tuesday for a fuck today.”
“You are an idiot,” I concluded. “You pissed Jane off. Last chance—take it or leave it. Your bosses will go berserk and you will finally win. You want the story or not?”
“Maybe. I’m not agreeing until I hear it all.”
“Fair enough. Off the record. For now.”
She grudgingly agreed and I told her most of the story of my night in the park. Then I told her about Badger and the Mail on the Joyce case and that there were lots of others—leaving out names and specifics.
“Holy shit,” she said, when I paused. “That’s a fucking story. But we need proof.”
She did not seem to notice that she had used the word “we.”
“We’ll have it soon,” I said, hoping I was telling the truth. “More than we can fit in the paper. And this time take a better picture of me.”
