Shit!
For the millionth time in Miami, Mike wished he were bilingual. “
Por favor,
uh…”
The phone rang back in Zack’s apartment, and with the door open he could hear it echoing down the hallway.
“Let me inside, just for a second—
please!
”
The man shrugged and slammed the door.
The phone kept ringing. Mike sprinted back inside and snatched it up.
“What took you so long?” the voice asked.
Mike paused to catch his breath. The call sounded even closer than before. “Where
are
you?”
“Where I am, who I am. That’s not important. Now, the killer—
he’s
important. So get yourself a pen, and write fast. Here’s your hundred-thousand-dollar story. Here’s what the criminal psychiatrists of the world call a profile of a serial killer.”
Mike stood in the doorway, torn. He could rush downstairs on nothing but a hunch that his caller was there, but with the limited range of his cordless phone he’d lose the connection and miss the story. His other option was to stay put and get the story—the whole hundred-thousand-dollar exclusive. His stomach churned with the same mercenary guilt that had tortured him last time, when he’d called Aaron Fields to reserve page one.
“I’m listening,” he said as he stepped back inside and closed the door. “Talk to me.”
127
v
ictoria arrived at Washington National Airport with pleasant thoughts of a quick drive home and a long soak in a hot, sudsy bath. Before she even reached baggage claim, however, her plans had changed. Another agent met her at the gate with new orders. She got right back on another flight and landed in Tampa, Florida, at ten-thirty Saturday morning.
Clearwater Beach was a forty-minute drive from the airport. Victoria knew the way and drove on automatic pilot, glancing now and again at the glistening waves on a choppy Tampa Bay. Wrapped in her thoughts, she was recounting those pulse-pounding moments outside Timothy Copeland’s apartment last Tuesday night, ending in a futile chase of the glowing orange dot down the dark alley. It seemed like a metaphor for the entire investigation: a flicker of hope, another blind alley.
She wondered if she’d really been that close to the killer, trying to understand the logic behind a serial 128
James Grippando
killer watching her inspect the crime scene. She didn’t have to stretch to find an analogue. Her training had taught her that serial killers—particularly intelligent ones—often insinuated themselves into the police investigation, sometimes just for the thrill of it, but more often to learn more about the investigation and the people conducting it. Ted Bundy had volunteered at a rape crisis center while he was murdering women in Seattle. Edmund Kemper, the California co-ed killer—with an IQ of 148, higher than Einstein’s—had so befriended the police that when he finally called and confessed to the murders they thought it was a crank.
Her tired eyes suddenly flickered with an idea. She picked up her Dictaphone from the passenger seat, brought it to her lips, and hit RECORD. “Possible proactive measures. One. Hold community meetings in each affected neighborhood to discuss the murders. Publicize through the local media. Killer may appear at one or more, so monitor each meeting with plainclothes or video surveillance. Two. Identify local bars or other social gathering places where officers investigating the murders in each city hang out. Be on the lookout for inquisitive civilians.
Three…”
She paused, then sighed. She knew there was a third idea, but after a night on an airplane her mind had checked out. The exit ramp was just ahead anyway, so she switched off the Dictaphone and turned off the causeway.
In five minutes she was in a quiet old neighborhood sporting one ranch-style house after another, all built in the 1950s and 1960s. Most had been updated by 129
THE INFORMANT
younger couples in recent years with new barrel-tile roofs and bright pastel paint jobs. A few were still home to their original owners, marked by old jalousie windows and pink plastic flamingos on the lawn. She checked the street numbers, then parked the rental car at the curb at the end of the cul-de-sac.
She checked herself in the mirror. Terrible case of mushy airplane face, but it would have to do. She walked up the sidewalk and double-checked the address. Four-fifteen Bell Aire Lane. She rang the door bell and waited.
A full-faced woman in her sixties answered. She looked like she’d just come from Saturday morning at the beauty parlor, with styled gray hair and a warm expression.
Victoria identified herself and flashed her badge. “Are you Edith Malone?”
Her brow furrowed with concern. “Yes,” she said shakily. “What’s this about?”
“Please don’t be alarmed. I’m here for your daughter.”
“My
daughter
? Why? I hope she’s not in some kind of trouble.”
Victoria tucked her badge away, then answered without emotion. “None of her own doing. May I come in please?”
Her hands were shaking as she opened the door. “Yes, sure. Come inside.”
Victoria drove to the airport, where she and Karen boarded an eight-seat prop Buplane. Karen seemed be-wildered, and Victoria was certainly sympathetic.
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James Grippando
Here was a woman whose marital problems alone had driven her to her mother’s for a week of reflection. Victoria tried to imagine how she would feel if some guy had chased her through a Metrorail station one week, only to have the FBI track her down halfway across the state the next. She explained everything, though, on the flight to Miami.
“Why wasn’t I told any of this before?”
Victoria paused, considering her response. “The minute we learned that the informant planted the latest message in the glove compartment of your car, we felt you were in sufficient danger that we had to tell you. Your involvement was no longer indirect. It would be impossible for us to give you the level of protection you need now, unless you know what’s going on. And you need to be able to take your own precautions, to protect yourself. For your own safety, we acted immediately, even before we had time to consult your husband.”
“That wasn’t my question. I want to know why I wasn’t told
before
.”
She started to respond, then checked herself. “That was a joint decision between your husband and the FBI.”
“You mean Mike actually agreed to that?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to speak out of turn. I think I’ll let him explain when we land.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” she huffed.
They sat in silence for several minutes, each in her own thoughts as the engines hummed. Victoria glanced across the narrow aisle several times discreetly, and Karen seemed to be cooling down. Finally, their eyes met, and they exchanged awkward smiles.
131
THE INFORMANT
“So,” said Karen, “how do you like working with Mike?”
“Fine. No problem.”
“Do you like him?”
“Like him? Yeah, sure. Then again, I spend most of my day trailing psychopathic sexual sadists. Let’s face it: Saddam Hussein would be a breath of fresh air.”
Karen smiled. “Yours
is
an unusual career choice. I can’t help but wonder—”
“Why do I do it,” Victoria finished the thought for her.
“Your husband asked the same question. I gave him the ten-cent version.”
“
Nobody
gives Mike the ten-cent version of anything.”
“So I learned. He wasn’t too happy. Made some crack about how I must have something in my background that makes me feel like a victim.”
Karen’s eyebrow arched with interest. “Meaning you do this for revenge?”
“I’m not a vigilante, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that. I just meant I wouldn’t fault you for feeling angry, you know, if you were a victim. I could understand how a woman would feel that way.” She rubbed between her eyes, like a woman with a migraine. “If she were a victim.”
Victoria blinked with confusion. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” she said with a “chin-up” smile. “I was just thinking how quickly people forget about the victims.
That’s the worst part about being one, I would imagine.
Being around people who’d rather forget something you can never forget.”
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James Grippando
Victoria hesitated, then touched her lightly on the forearm. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
“No, not really. I guess the thought of a serial killer having just rummaged through my glove compartment has me a little spooked. I’m genuinely curious, though, one woman to another. Has doing this serial killer stuff helped you?”
“Helped me what?”
“With whatever it is that drove you to do it.”
“I don’t want you to think there’s some big ugly secret here.”
“I don’t. I’d just really like to know.”
“I’m not one to talk about myself,” she said wearily.
She glanced across the aisle and caught Karen’s eye. She seemed sincere, not nosy. “Well, if you really want to know, I think it has something to do with my…shall we say, family history. I’m what they call a Jewban—half Jew, half Cuban. Sometimes I think my boss wishes I was handicapped, just to cover another minority, but that’s another story.
“My maternal grandfather died in Auschwitz. My uncle—my father’s brother—spent twenty-six years in one of Castro’s political prisons. Family reunions were a real blast. A bunch of old drunks guzzling down Sangria made with Manischewitz wine, arguing over who was the most persecuted. At least that’s how I saw it as a kid. As I got older, though, the stories started to fascinate. It made me want to understand the criminal mind—especially the minds of men who know the difference between right and wrong, yet who kill and kill again, with no remorse or any sign of a conscience.”
133
THE INFORMANT
“So you’re one of those cops who likes to think like the killer.”
“I wouldn’t say that. I try to understand the killer by looking through the eyes of the victim. Which means I may not crawl as far inside the killer’s head as some investigators do. But it gives me the passion to keep on looking when others might give up.”
Karen nodded slowly. “I figured you were like that.”
“Pro-victim, you mean?”
“No. The kind of woman who never gives up.”
Victoria thought she sensed something in her tone, a defensiveness she sometimes got from wives of the men she worked with.
Silence lingered as they exchanged ambiguous glances.
Then each just looked away, peering out the little oval window over the wing, toward Lake Okeechobee below.
134
f
or the first time in two months, Mike went home.
Fortunately, Karen was a creature of habit, so he’d had no trouble finding her car at the airport—she always parked on level K, “for
Karen,
” so she wouldn’t forget her spot.
Had he not been carrying an envelope with the names of two more victims, it would have felt good to pull into the familiar driveway and walk up the curved path of stepping stones that cut across the front lawn. Whatever might come of their marital problems, he would always think of this pink stucco house with white gingerbread trim as a happy place, filled with memories of happier times. He remembered the day he and Karen had planted the little hedges around the flower bed, five or six years ago. It rained like a hurricane halfway through the job.
They ended up laughing and rolling in the mud, then they chased each other inside, scrubbed each other clean and spent every ounce of remaining energy making love to each other the rest of the day.
135
THE INFORMANT
It pleased him to see everything still looking the same.
Karen hadn’t changed a thing. A good sign, he thought.
The only problem was that the invitation home had come not from Karen, but Victoria Santos.
“Come on in,” said Victoria, answering the door.
“Thanks. Nice of the FBI to invite me into my home.”
Her phone call had been appropriately cryptic, though Mike had gleaned enough from her innuendo to know that Karen would be there and that she was finally in the loop. Still, his heart skipped a beat when he saw her sitting on the living-room couch. He wanted to give her a hug, but she rose slowly and seemed a little standoffish.
Her coolness only heightened the guilt he felt for not having told her the truth from the beginning.
“I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” he said softly.
“Me too,” she said in a clipped voice.
Victoria stepped forward. “Just so you know, Mike, I picked Karen up this morning on orders from Washington. As soon as we heard that the informant had left the latest predictions in Karen’s car, we figured it was only a matter of time before you told her everything. So we told her.”
He was still reading Karen’s expression, searching for some opening to seek her forgiveness. He suddenly turned toward Victoria, as if her words had just registered. “Let me stop you right there,” he said sharply. “How in the hell did you know the informant had left something in Karen’s car before I even called to tell you about it?”
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James Grippando
Her expression fell. “I—I was on an airplane, unreach-able. I guess I assumed you’d called somebody else.”
“If I had called somebody else, don’t you think they would have told me they were sending you to pick up my wife and tell her everything? I never called anybody.”
She blinked hard, thinking. “Well, it’s not really important
how
we knew. Somehow, we knew.”
“You tapped my telephone, didn’t you.”
“No!” she said.
“You’re lying. You promised to respect my integrity as a journalist. The deal was that the FBI supplied the money, and the only information you’d get was whatever I decided to print in the
Tribune.
You broke your promise not to eavesdrop on confidential conversations between me and my informant.”
“
I
don’t know that, Mike, and your mere accusation doesn’t make it true.”
“The
only
way you could have known about Karen’s car is if the FBI had listened in on my phone call with my informant.”