Victoria sank in silence, unable to argue.
Tension filled the room as Mike’s look of disbelief turned quickly to anger. He started pacing, then forced himself to speak calmly. “You know, up until now I was having second thoughts about whether I should go public with the profile of the killer that my informant gave me.
I remembered what you said last time, how my printing the details of how the tongue was extracted might impede your investigation. I thought revealing the kind of person the
137
THE INFORMANT
killer is might also be detrimental. Of course, the FBI doesn’t need me to print anything, since you’re listening to my conversations. But now, as far as I’m concerned the FBI can go straight to hell. If you can’t keep a promise, then I’ll print whatever I damn well please.”
“Mike, I swear, if there was a wiretap, I personally knew nothing about it.”
“Sure,” he scoffed. “If you’re going to continue lying to me, I think it’s best if you just leave, Victoria. I need to speak to my wife.”
“I understand you two need to talk. But we have business to discuss.”
“I said it was time for you to leave,” he said sternly.
She was about to protest, but one glance at Karen’s mortified face made her think twice. “Fine,” she said stiffly.
“Good-bye, Karen.”
Karen nodded, then Mike led Victoria to the foyer and opened the door. She stopped at the threshold and looked him in the eye.
“Let me tell you something, Mike. It’s really unfair to make me out the bad guy in front of your wife. But let’s put that aside. Whatever you decide to tell Karen about our arrangement, the fact remains that we’ve got a serial killer to catch. And whether you recognize it or not, the stakes have just gone up—
way
up. There was absolutely no logical reason for your informant to put the names of those victims in Karen’s car. He could have FedExed them to you again, or used your computer again—or he could have put them in
your
glove compartment. His only purpose in using Karen was to demonstrate an increased level of control. He’s telling
138
James Grippando
you that he knows who your wife is, where she is, what she’s doing.”
“I know that.”
“But I don’t think you’ve thought it through. To be blunt: This means that if our experts in Quantico are wrong—if it turns out your informant is
not
the serial killer—then you’re dealing with an informant who is himself exhibiting serious sociopathic tendencies. That’s not a good thing,” she said with a tinge of sarcasm, “and this is no time for you and I to be at each other’s throats.
So call me when you’ve cooled off. Because it’s a little dangerous to quit the game before you even know who you’re playing against. And I assure you: We
don’t know
.”
She turned quickly and headed down the steps.
139
t
he Sunday-morning
Tribune
landed with a thud on the Baines’s doorstep. Brenda normally slept in on Sundays, but she was up early today. She’d been working on an investigative piece on Florida’s death penalty for nearly two months, and the first of a five-part series was scheduled to run on page one in Sunday’s edition. It was her biggest project in more than two years, and she was crawling out of her skin eager to see it.
Brenda had come to the
Tribune
nine years ago from the
Milwaukee Journal.
She was immediately tagged as the snowbird from the Dairy State with the milky white skin, but her shiny black hair and big green eyes made for an exotic combination worthy of a magazine cover.
Both she and Mike had been single back then. They started the lunch routine soon after her arrival, which quickly led to dinners, dates, and three nights a week at Mike’s apartment. It was while lying in bed that he’d told her the
Tribune
needed to
140
James Grippando
fire its incompetent associate publisher. It was while lying in bed that she’d passed that along to the associate publisher.
Since then, she and Mike hadn’t really seen eye to eye, so to speak.
She fumbled for her glasses on the nightstand and rolled out of bed as quickly as she could without waking her husband. They’d made love last night and she couldn’t find her panties, but the slinky top to her silk nightie hung just low enough to cover the essentials. She hurried to the porch, and the wind lifted her negligee up to her face as she reached for the paper. She stood there on the porch, oblivious to her nakedness, stunned by the headline.
SERIAL KILLER STRIKES AGAIN. VICTIMS 8 AND 9 FOUND
IN SOUTH CAROLINA. The kicker she read aloud: “A
Tribune
Exclusive, by Michael Posten.”
Her face flushed red as she flipped frantically through the paper, searching for her piece. It wasn’t there. They’d pulled it. “Son of a bitch!” she shrieked, sending the cat scurrying off the porch.
She tucked the paper under her arm and stormed back inside, slamming the door behind her. She went right back to the bedroom and threw the paper on the bed, waking her husband.
“Look at
this.
”
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then read the headline and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, honey. Looks like that jerk went out and paid for another exclusive.”
“Oh, no,” she said with an angry glare. “He hasn’t
begun
to pay for this one.”
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THE INFORMANT
Victoria was growing tired of seven-day workweeks, but she was well overdue for a status report. At noon on Sunday she drove to her supervisor’s house in rural Virginia.
February wasn’t the prettiest time of year, as the scattered forest and rolling fields were bare and brown.
The white frame house was two stories with a high-pitched roof, an old stone foundation and a wraparound porch.
Built in the late 1700s, it had all the charm and inconvenience of a historic landmark plucked from a Williamsburg village.
She and David Shapiro sat in matching leather armchairs in the downstairs study. The dark wood decor would have made any time of day feel like midnight, but the cozy glow from the fireplace warmed their faces. Out of respect, Victoria had eschewed her usual weekend scruffies for dark wool slacks, heels and a cashmere turtle-neck. Shapiro dressed more to her liking in jeans, hiking boots and an old Duke sweatshirt. A coffee-stained mug and crumpled pack of Camels lay on the end table beside him.
Shapiro was forty-nine years old with twenty-five years of law enforcement experience, mostly in violent crime.
He’d started with the FBI in the Identification Division longer ago than he cared to recount. Impressive bronze plaques on the cherry-paneled wall commemorated his service as president of the International Homicide Investigators Association, program director of VI-CAP within the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime
142
James Grippando
and, currently, chief of the Child Abduction and Serial Killer Unit. At five foot eight he was shorter than Victoria, but his piercing eyes could easily intimidate. He was a chain-smoker who rarely smiled. Even those who liked him said he had the jaundiced edge of a man who’d seen more unsolved murders than anyone in the world.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me about a wiretap at the
Tribune
?” she asked pointedly.
Shapiro took a long drag from his third cigarette since her arrival. “There’s no wiretap at the
Tribune
. The good old days of J. Edgar are gone. The FBI doesn’t just slap a wiretap on a newspaper.”
“Are you denying any eavesdropping on Mike’s conversations with his informant?”
“I’m saying that it’s been limited to Zack Newman’s apartment. I wouldn’t even bother trying for electronic surveillance at the
Tribune
, but it’s a little easier to persuade a magistrate that you need a phone tap at a penthouse suite of an unmarried black male who flies seaplanes in and out of Miami.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “We promised Posten that his conversations with his informant would be private. Period. We didn’t limit it to conversations
in the
newsroom.
If you didn’t intend to honor the agreement, you should have told me.”
“Why?” he said with a sharp glance. “So you could go over my head again? Maybe ask Assistant Director Dougherty personally to kill the proposed wiretap?”
Victoria sighed and averted her eyes toward the fire.
“I’m sorry you’re still angry, but I didn’t go to 143
THE INFORMANT
Headquarters to make you look bad. I just felt it was a terrible mistake to reject the
Tribune
’s offer. You presented your decision to me as final. I had nowhere else to turn.”
He sipped his coffee. “I’m not saying that second-guessing me was wrong. I’m just saying it has consequences.”
“What kind of consequences?”
“The wiretap’s a good example. Agents who are in the habit of going over their supervisor’s head shouldn’t expect to be made privy to every little detail of the operation.”
“This is not a little detail.”
“It is in the big scheme. We have a serial killer to catch.”
“If Posten backs out of the deal over a wiretap, we might
never
catch him.”
“He’s in too deep to back out now. If he’s not afraid for himself, he has to be afraid for his wife. We’re the only ones who can protect them. And if he stops cooperating, we stop protecting.”
“I laid that on him before. That might not be strong enough anymore.”
“Then
make
it strong enough,” he said sharply.
Victoria took a deep breath, quelling her anger. “How do you suggest I do that?”
He lit up another cigarette. “Tell him the truth. Tell him that if he wasn’t scared shitless talking to the informant before, he’d better be now. Because evidence is piling up that the informant is the killer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The tapes. We compared the voice of his informant 144
James Grippando
to the tape Sheriff Dutton gave us. That’s why we decided to tap Posten’s phone in the condo—to hear the informant. Both the electronic analysis and psycholinguistic examination point to one conclusion: The same person made the calls.”
“How can they be so sure? The Hainesville caller was obviously disguising his voice, and it was a terrible recording on a little Dictaphone held up to the receiver.”
“I trust our experts,” he said flatly.
“All right. Assume they’re right. Why does that lead you to the conclusion that the informant is the killer?”
“
Why
?” he said incredulously. “Because he
said
he was the killer when he called Dutton. Now, I know that’s not a hundred percent conclusive, but we can’t just dismiss it.”
“But he’s
not
the killer.” She moved forward in her chair, speaking with resolve. “The informant could have been lying when he told Dutton he was the killer, just to throw us off the trail. Logically, the longer it takes us to catch the killer, the longer his gravy train keeps on running.
But more important, calling the sheriff is just like the other kind of pranks I’ve been talking about from the very beginning. The man we’re after isn’t nearly playful enough to resort to gimmicks like the Ernest Gill checkbook journalism thing. And he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks either, like sneaking into the
Tribune
to leave a clue on Posten’s computer terminal or calling the sheriff’s office to confess to the crime. Those are the juvenile pranks of some lightweight who’s trying
way
too hard to be clever.
145
THE INFORMANT
We’re not looking for a rambunctious gamesman. We’re looking for a smooth, efficient killing machine.”
“Well, let’s hope you’re right,” Shapiro said, seething,
“because I’m telling you: Heads will roll if it turns out we’re actually paying a serial killer for information on his own crimes. That was the reason I nixed this arrangement in the first place.” Shapiro made a visible effort to calm himself. “Look, just put your ego aside for a minute, okay?
Let’s say you’re wrong, and everyone else is right. Tell me: How are you going to keep the killer from getting away with the taxpayers’ money?”
“So long as the funds stay in the banking system we can track them. I’ve got sources at CHIPS, FedWire, and SWIFT to cover wire transfers, and I’m working with FinCEN out of Detroit to follow the CTR trail for large cash deposits and withdrawals.”
“What if he goes international, tries to hide behind bank secrecy?”
“Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties will help us there.
They cover most of the major bank secrecy players—Switzerland, Mexico, the Bahamas, and twenty-some other countries.”
“Suppose he goes someplace obscure.”
“Then we’ll have to count on bank insiders. Informants.
I know that sounds a little risky, but you have to remember: The only way we get into a jam is if it turns out he’s the killer
and
somehow I lose track of the money.”
“Wrong. That’s not how
we
get into a jam. That’s how
you
do. You’re the one who wrote the memo to Assistant Director Dougherty, assuring him the informant wasn’t the killer.”
146
James Grippando
She swallowed hard, then nodded with assurance.
“That’s right, sir. I wrote it. And I stand behind it.”
“Yes,” he said as he crushed out his cigarette. “And you stand alone.”
Sunday afternoons were normally Mike’s quiet time, but not today. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing since his latest exclusive hit the newsstands. He was growing tired of the attention, and by four o’clock he’d stopped answering the phone. By five o’clock his answering machine stopped picking up because there was no more room for messages. A few calls came and went with a half-dozen rings. One, however, wouldn’t stop ringing. Somewhere after the twentieth ring, Mike picked up the phone.
“You’re the hottest thing in print now, aren’t you, wonder boy.”
The voice was scrambled by some kind of electronic device, making Mike bristle. It sounded a little like his informant, but it was too mechanical to be sure. “Who is this?”