It was no time to panic. The good news was that he was in no immediate danger of being recognized. In the old mug shot, he was fifty pounds heavier. The extra weight, together with the full beard and mustache, hid most of his facial features. He’d grown facial hair after the rape precisely for that reason, just in case the victim had gotten a look at him. He wasn’t sure whether they’d connected him to the Antigua murders, since he’d missed the first part of the broadcast—but even if they had, the disguise he’d worn would have had them looking for a Middle Eastern-looking man named Eric Venters.
Too, he reminded himself he was
just
a suspect.
Somehow, somebody had figured out that all of the victims were passengers on the cruise ship where he’d committed a rape. But it took more than motive to prove a man a killer. One thing was certain: The police would never find any physical evidence linking him to the murders. His were the
perfect
crimes.
He was smiling, about to order another drink, when his expression went cold. He suddenly realized that he’d overlooked the fact that, as CNN had just 347
THE INFORMANT
reported, the police had somehow linked the serial killings to the woman in Atlanta from whom he’d taken the diamond ring.
Valerie had the ring.
He closed his eyes, regretting the day he’d given it to her. It had seemed like a harmless, titillating little ploy at the time—mutilating one woman to win the heart of another. He’d resisted those fetish urges with each of his tongue murders. He’d forced himself never to take anything from the crime scenes, having heard of too many serial killers who’d been caught with their
“trophies”—jewelry, photographs, body parts. He’d never dreamed, however, that they’d connect an isolated robbery in Atlanta to the killings.
He sighed, considering his options. He could do nothing and hope that Valerie would never realize the “Charlie Ackroyd” she fell in love with was actually Frank Hannon.
She wasn’t
that
stupid, though. The average person might never recognize Hannon from the photographs on CNN, but Valerie
knew
him—up close and very personal. What would she do, he wondered, if she saw a resemblance?
Having heard nothing from him in more than a week, she’d probably get suspicious. She’d start to wonder about all of his out-of-town trips on supposed interviews. She might even hire a private investigator to check out “Charlie Ackroyd”—to find out who he was, and where he’d gone.
The investigator would tell her that Ackroyd never existed.
Then she’d go to the police.
But if she heard his voice—Charlie’s voice—she’d be reassured. She wouldn’t get suspicious, and she’d never call the police.
348
James Grippando
Hannon slid off the barstool and headed inside, convinced there was only one thing to do. He composed himself as he headed toward the bank of telephones on the main deck, considering what he’d say. Then he closed the door to the phone booth, paid for the ship-to-shore call with Captain Ellers’s credit card, and dialed the number.
“Valerie, it’s me.”
“Charlie! Where’ve you been? I was so worried.”
Hannon felt a rush of relief. She obviously hadn’t been watching the news, or at least she hadn’t made any sort of connection. “Sorry I haven’t called. Something terrible has happened.”
“What!”
He sighed audibly, as if it were difficult to tell her. “It’s your Volvo.”
“Did you have an accident? Are you okay!”
“I’m fine. But the car was stolen. I’m really sorry. I’ve been working with the police, trying to track it down. I know I should have called, but I just—I was just putting off calling you, hoping they’d find it. But it’s gone. I’m sorry, Val. Will you forgive me?”
“Oh, Charlie,” she gushed. “I don’t care about a stupid car. I was so scared. I thought you were dead or in a hospital, or…” Her voice cracked, then trailed off.
Hannon sensed her anxiety. “Or what?”
“That you’d left me. I thought you were with another woman. I found a napkin in your book, where she’d written her phone number. Someone named Victoria.”
Hannon blinked hard, hiding his anger. “Victoria?”
349
THE INFORMANT
he said, pretending not to know it. “I did meet a Victoria at an airport a few weeks ago. We just talked. I never asked for her phone number. She must have just stuck it in there when I wasn’t looking. You know how pushy some women can be.”
“I really want to believe that.”
“I would never lie to you.”
There was still only silence. Hannon took a deep breath. He could sense she was on the fence. The wheels turned quickly in his head, searching for the right words.
The ring—of course!
He softened his voice, the way he did on the night he’d come back from Atlanta and given it to her. “Valerie, I gave you my own mother’s engage-ment ring. The only thing of value I own in the whole world. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
She was sniffling. “Of course it does, darling.”
“So,” he said coyly, “you won’t change the locks on me?”
She sniffled again, laughing with affection. “No. Come home, darling.”
“Two more days.”
“Why so late? Come now.”
“I’ve been running around so much trying to find the Volvo, I’ve hardly scratched the surface on that computer virus.”
“Well, then…why don’t I come up and stay with you?”
“No,” he said firmly. “You know how I get when I’m working.”
“It’ll be good for you. Come on, Charlie, don’t you want to see—”
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James Grippando
“I said
no,
damn you.”
The tone was extremely harsh, like something from his other side. He drew a deep breath, calming himself.
“Sorry, Val. I’m just under a lot of pressure right now.
All these accountants screaming at me. I’m doing everything I can to get their computers back up to speed.
It just wouldn’t be good for you to come. But I’ll work fast. I’ve got four days of work left; I’ll cram it into two, three at most. Then we can be together. Okay?”
“Okay,” she peeped.
“Just try not to touch yourself between now and then.
I want you to really want me.”
“Charlie!” she said with mock astonishment.
“Love ya, babe.”
“I love you, too.”
“Gotta go,” he said, then hung up the phone. He sighed, then rolled his head, loosening the muscles in his neck.
His hand was still gripping the phone as he sat in the booth, thinking. A part of him—a very small part—wished there were some other way to handle the only woman who’d never embarrassed him, who’d never pressured him for something he simply couldn’t deliver. She’d been perfectly content with his tongue and the vibrator, never even trying to coax him out of his underwear. She’d just always known when to dim the lights, close her eyes, and turn her backside submissively, where he could have his way with no one watching, where the fit was tight no matter the size.
There was no erasing from her mind, however, the little things that could convict him. Cybil Holland’s 351
THE INFORMANT
ring. His supposed business trips out of town that, if anyone were to check, would turn out bogus and would coincide with the murders. And now the FBI agent’s phone number.
The only question left was
how
he would kill her.
His eyes brightened as he walked away from the telephone, and his mouth curled into a smile of anticipation.
Might as well enjoy it,
he thought.
352
o
ne floor directly below the Academy’s gun vault, Victoria was at her cluttered desk eating an early lunch or, quite possibly, a late breakfast. For all she knew it was dinner. Her watch said eleven-fifteen, but her internal clock still thought she was in Antigua sparring with the local police. This morning’s shower had been at the locker room at the Academy, and she was wearing the spare suit she kept in her office closet. She wasn’t sure when she’d be home again. This was why she had no pets. Hell, this was why she had no life.
While sipping a Diet Coke she scanned complete background checks on the passengers on the Lower Deck of SS
Peninsular II
. Ten had already been killed at the hand of Frank Hannon. Another six had died of natural causes. Her eyes popped when she saw the report on cabin 515.
She immediately dialed Mike’s pager. He called back in thirty seconds.
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“Nice exclusive you guys gave to CNN,” he said. “I would have thought I at least rated a courtesy call.”
“I’m in no mood for shit from anyone, okay? I would have called you if it had been our plan to take this story to the media, but it was a damn leak from one of our field offices that put it on CNN. Believe me, that was the last thing we wanted. We’ve lost the element of surprise. It’ll be ten times harder to catch him now. Anyway, don’t be giving me hell about not calling
you
. Why didn’t you call
me
about passenger Karen Malone—your wife’s maiden name?”
Mike sighed, chagrined. “I was about to call you.”
“She’s on our ‘Hot List’—people within Hannon’s targeted area. Her cabin was across the hall from the rape, down just a few doors. She’s in potential danger, Mike.”
“More than you think. She was my informant.”
Her jaw dropped, but she said nothing.
Mike spoke first, heading off her anger. “I haven’t been playing games with you. I just found out this morning it was her. That’s between me and Karen, and I don’t want to get into all that. The only thing you need to know is that she’s the one who saw him. It was three o’clock in the morning. She was a little seasick and couldn’t sleep.
She thought she heard a scream and looked out the peephole. That’s when she saw Hannon coming out of 503.”
Victoria’s brow scrunched in thought. “Could Rollins have known your wife was the source? Is that why you were the reporter he chose to feed his information to?”
“I considered the possibility, but it’s too much of a 354
James Grippando
stretch. Rollins probably did make the connection between the choice of victims and Hannon’s rape conviction—it would have been easy enough to get hold of Hannon’s police record. But prior to the payoffs, his financial situation wasn’t healthy enough to permit background checks on all the likely passengers. Remember, just following Hannon from place to place was expensive.
My guess is, Rollins came across my name in the coverage of Hannon’s trial, and picked me as a kind of dig. It has the smell of one-upmanship. It’s possible the two knew each other and there was no love lost.”
“It makes sense,” said Victoria. She glanced up at the ship diagram with the cabin configurations. “Better that Rollins never knew, I’d guess, because Hannon might have wormed it out of him. If I had to guess, the only reason Karen’s still alive is because Hannon hasn’t figured out yet that Karen Malone is Karen Posten.”
“I know. That’s why I’ve been brainstorming for a way to throw him off the trail. Maybe I could write an article saying my informant is deceased. I don’t know. There’s ethical issues there, too. I’d be writing a lie.”
“Just don’t do anything, okay? I think he’s in a down cycle right now, after the Antigua murders and the CNN
coverage. If he reads that the informant is dead, you could set him off into a rage that’s worse than anything we’ve seen.”
“Yeah,” he said pointedly. “That’s a possibility. The other possibility is that Karen Malone is the next name on his list. Do you really expect me to sit around and do
nothing?
”
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THE INFORMANT
Victoria sighed. “Just talk to me before you do anything.
Please.”
“Deal. So long as
you
talk to
me
before the FBI does anything.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“And you know I can’t give you a veto over what I print and don’t print.”
“All right,” she said with a reluctant sigh, “I’ll give you this much: You won’t know everything, but from here on out, you won’t hear a thing on CNN that you don’t already know.”
“Sure,” he said. “You know how to reach me.”
They said good-bye, but as Mike hung up the phone he had no illusions. He knew what she was really saying.
From here on out, she wasn’t telling
anyone
squat.
The phone conversation with Mike left Victoria with an uneasy feeling. She wondered whether, with his wife a potential target, he could simply report events and not try to influence them.
She managed just two bites of her pita-pocket sandwich when a young agent with his ID clipped to his white shirt appeared in the doorway.
“I have the Hannon photos you asked for,” he said proudly.
She smiled politely and waved him in. He couldn’t have been more than six months out of the Academy, and he looked about six months out of high school—something that Victoria took as a sure sign of her aging.
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“Thanks, Marc,” she said as she took the manila envelope. “Shapiro went ballistic when he saw that CNN
broadcast this morning. I think the only thing that pissed him off more than the leak was the lousy old photograph CNN dug up. They might as well have run that old sketch of the Unabomber. Probably about as good a likeness.”
He watched eagerly as Victoria opened the photo envelope and removed the glossies. “The top one’s from his high school yearbook, which is pretty old,” Marc volunteered. “But at least he doesn’t have a beard and mustache, like he does in his mug shot and prison photo.”
“He also looks thinner,” said Victoria.
“Yeah. The lab guessed he put on about fifty pounds after high school. That’s why the real gems are on the bottom, the face-aged computer likeness created by headquarters. They based it mostly on the old high school yearbook photo, since he’s covered with facial hair in every picture we have that’s more recent. The computer enhanced the lines in his face, made the skin a little less pink, gave him a more contemporary haircut.”
Her expression froze as she stared at the image. The hair was blond, the eyes were blue. But she could see past the things that hair dye and colored lenses could easily change. “It’s him,” she said quietly, almost to herself.