I came to an office that reminded me of my ex-captain’s in my Seattle PD days. It occurred to me how similar a newsroom and a police department were, most noticeably the number of criminals present. I surmised the office was that of Alex’s she-boss seeing as Queen Bee was stenciled where Editor in Chief had been scraped off.
I rapped on the glass—the white shutters on the inside swayed—and a hollow female voice yelled, “Come in.”
I did a quick inventory of what I wanted to express to this woman. I wanted to make sure no more of Tristen Grayer’s heroics showed up in the paper. The papers were our allies, not his. This yellow journalism, this sensationalism needed to be stopped. Although to be honest, every scrap of print thus far had been unexaggerated and accurate. But lucky for me, we weren’t being honest, we were rationalizing. Big difference.
I pulled the door open, took two steps inside the modest office, and took an overview of the woman behind the desk. She was quite attractive and I felt like I knew her from somewhere. She motioned to the chair in front of her desk and said, “Have a seat.”
I sat down, crossed my left leg over my right, and said, “So, you’re Queen Bee.”
Alex smiled. “I bought the paper.”
I returned her smile. “Of course you did.”
Chapter 28
When Alex walked out of the Waterville Tribune building the sun was crashing into the western mountains.
I followed Alex home, put the car in park, and then called Lacy. She said that she and Conner were quote “Doneskee.” The Prescott-Dodds era had come to a bitter end. She and Caleb were on their way to pick her stuff up from Conner’s and take it to his house. I told her to be careful and hung up.
Gleason called and he went over the same information Conner had filled me in on. He said he heard I had a couple students working for me and asked which women I was staking out. I gave him the names and we both wished each other luck. We were on different teams, but we still played in the same conference. He asked if I wanted to talk to Todd, and we both had a hearty chuckle.
I called Caitlin, not expecting an answer, and left a message on her voice mail to be circumspect of the FBI’s game plan. At 7:30 a black sedan with tinted windows pulled up two car lengths behind me. Yippee, my FBI goon had arrived.
After I’d let him stand outside his car for close to a minute I opened my door and stepped out. Professional courtesy and all that. My Fed was a young buck somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five. He had charcoal black hair cut short, almost orange eyes, and, apart from the thin scar running down the right side of his face, he would’ve made a good Colin Farrell stunt double.
We shook hands and he said, “Gary Strinteer, two ‘e’s.”
“Thomas Prescott, two ‘t’s.”
How chummy.
Gary smiled and I asked, “How was the drive?”
He shook his head, “Twenty-seven black Caprices in a row and it wasn’t even for a funeral. You’d have thought Mangrove himself had gone to Bureaugatory.”
I liked this kid, he didn’t seem all that keen on his peers. We had a lot in common and traded a couple FBI jokes, neither of us noticing Alex’s Jeep until she nearly ran us over. Gary gave a quick salute and we both moved briskly to our respective vehicles. Out of my peripheral I thought I detected a slight kink in Gary’s gait. Nothing obvious, just a heaviness in his step.
I’d never heard of the restaurant Alex spoke of, and it ended up being located in old Portland, or Old Port. Alex parked in the Freddy’s Fresh Fish lot, which served two other similarly themed shanties. I parked on the side of the road closest to the restaurant, and Gary the Fed did a U-turn, parking on the far side.
Alex stepped from the Jeep, dressed in blue jeans and a lime green tank top. She didn’t look my way and I juggled with the possibility she was actually meeting someone. Where was my gun?
A minute passed. I knew I would go in eventually, the debate was whether it would be before or after Alex ordered the appetizer. I double buckled, popped the hood, the trunk, and the gas latch. By the time I unbuckled and closed all three, Alex would have her credit card out, right?
I rolled all the windows down, turned the wipers on, and locked the doors. Just bought myself another thirty seconds. I was opening the moon roof when a car passed and drove into the restaurant lot, parking alongside Alex’s Jeep. The door to the Passat opened and Caleb stepped out. He walked around to the passenger side and helped a beautiful young lady, rumored to have 0/0 vision, out of the passenger seat. I’m not big on conspiracy theory, but something here was amiss.
By the time I unbuckled, turned the wipers off, rolled the windows up, unlocked the doors (then locked the doors), closed the gas latch and the trunk, Caleb and Lacy were through the weather-plagued doors.
I put my cell phone in my pocket, grabbed the extra walkie-talkie from the backseat, and walked across the street to the black sedan. The darkly tinted window rolled down and I said, “I’m going in there for a while.” I handed him the extra walkie-talkie, “If anything happens I’ll be on channel nine.”
He nodded.
I walked across the street, took a deep breath, and approached the maître d’. I inquired, “Is there a party of three awaiting a Thomas Prescott?”
She checked a list and said, “Follow me.”
We didn’t have to go far. Alex, Caleb, and Lacy were sitting at the closest booth, all three huddled against the window. Alex was prying the wooden shades open with her hands and I asked, “What are we looking at?”
The three of them turned in unison. Alex smiled and said, “Oh, just some idiot who left the hood up on his Range Rover.”
I knew I forgot something. I stared at Lacy and the smirk on her face told all. I asked, “Was this your stupid idea?”
“Just trying to get you laid, bro.”
We all gave a nice uncomfortable laugh. That’s what we Prescotts do best. We don’t feel comfortable unless everyone else’s faces are flushed and they’re having heart palpitations. I said, “Not that I don’t appreciate it, Lace, but next time can I have a little advance notice? If you had sent me a memo, I could’ve asked Tristen if we could do this whole stakeout/murder thing next week.”
I couldn’t get that upset. Lacy was at arm’s length from Caleb, and I didn’t mind Alex arm’s length from me. We put the stakeout on the backburner, and the four of us dined as if the world was in the hands of the PBS executives. I cut Caleb and myself off after one beer, the girls more than making up for our lack of alcohol intake.
Alex and Lacy were into their second bottle of Chianti when Caleb pulled the shutters apart and said, “A guy just walked across the street, shut your hood, and got into a black sedan.”
“Oh, that’s Gary. He’s Alex’s FBI tail.”
Caleb appeared dazed. He looked at Lacy, “Didn’t Conner say the Feds could only get twenty men so they weren’t going to put a man on the women Thomas had covered?”
She nodded. “Yeah, Conner said that he told some guy named Gleason that you had your students working for you and Gleason was pulling the tails off those women.”
That would explain why a black sedan hadn’t followed Caleb’s car into the parking lot. So that’s why Gleason had called; he wanted to confirm the women I had covered. But still, he wouldn’t be so callous as to yank a man off Alex or Lacy and put them on Margery the bookstore owner. Then again, he was a Fed at heart.
This was easy, I would simply call Gleason and have him run Gary’s name. I’m sure it was a simple miscommunication. Problem was I forgot Gary’s last name. I pulled the walkie-talkie from my hip and said, “Hey Gary, you there?”
There was static, then, “Where am I gonna go?”
“Right. What did you say your last name was?”
“Strinteer, two ‘e’s. Why?”
“Just curious.” I clicked the radio off and said to myself, “Gary Strinteer, two ‘e’s.”
I pulled out my cell phone and Caleb grabbed my arm, “Wait a minute. I need a pen.”
Alex pulled a pen from her purse and handed it to him. He scribbled something on a napkin, then peered up, his mouth gaping, “You might want to look at this.”
He slid the napkin in front of me and I stared at it in horror. Caleb had crossed off the letters:
G-A-R-Y S-T-R-I-N-T-E-E-R and written T-R-I-S-T-E-N G-R-A-Y-E-R.
Gary Strinteer was Tristen Grayer.
Caleb flipped the shutters open, but oddly enough the black sedan was gone.
Chapter 29
I couldn’t believe it. I’d shaken hands with Tristen Grayer. I’d shaken hands with the devil. How insolent was this guy? He was goading. “Here, take a good look because you’ll never be this close to me again, Thomas Prescott. Let me shake the hand of the poor sap whose life I’m ruining, who can’t even come within a stone’s throw of a clue.”
The both of us knew the next time we crossed paths, only one of us would be coming out alive.
I started to notice the unnoticables about my friend Gary Strinteer. He had a thin scar running down the length of his right temple to his lower jaw. I looked at my right thumb and recollected the large amount of skin they’d scraped from beneath the nail. Also, Gary had an awkward gait, and running the clip back in my head, he appeared to drag his left leg. Funny, I’d shot a man in the left patella a year ago. One does not forget the sound of a bullet blistering a kneecap.
I shook off my anger at Tristen and channeled it to my friends at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Here was a prime example of the FBI’s parsimonious disposition. Had they informed me they were pulling their agents, I might have found Gary Strinteer a wee bit suspicious and maybe, just maybe, put together that his name was an anagram of Tristen Grayer. Truthfully, I had my doubts I would have pieced it together if he’d said his name was Gristen Trayer, but I wanted to be pissed at my friend Todd Gregory. Wait, it’d been Gleason who’d pried the information out of me. Damn it, Glease.
Caleb asked, “What should we do?”
We could jump in the car and canvass the neighborhood, but the chances were slim we’d pull up next to Mr. Grayer at a stoplight. I could call Wade Gleason, tell him what happened, and see how he wanted to play it. Or I could try to get Tristen on the walkie-talkie. I wasn’t in the mood to swap info with the Feds and I had a feeling Tristen wanted to talk.
The three of us packed into the Range Rover. Lacy sidled up with Alex in the backseat and Caleb jumped in shotgun. Lacy asked, “Where’s Baxter?”
“He’s around.” I hope.
We looked for the pug, but he was, in fact, un-around. I pulled the walkie-talkie up and everyone fell silent. I pushed the button to talk and said, “Tristen, stealing a blind girl’s pug is unethical even by serial killer standards.”
A voice broke in, “I didn’t steal him. I went to close your hood, and when I got back he was asleep on my dash. Listen, that was really a nice piece of detective work you did back there.”
“Don’t mention it.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Not you. The kid, Caleb. If it wasn’t for him, you probably would’ve invited me back to Alex’s for after-dinner drinks. Tell me, Thomas, are you going to fuck her tonight? I would. And you can be assured I will.”
I looked into the backseat at Alex, her lip was quivering. I yelled into the mouthpiece, “What you do to these girls will be nothing compared with what I do to you. Just keep that thought in the back of your head.”
Lacy ripped the walkie-talkie from my hand. “Listen, you asswipe, you so much as touch that dog I’ll see to it you choke to death on your own dick.”
Tristen gave a shrill laugh. “Lacy Prescott. I was hoping your brother would be nice enough to introduce the two of us. Well, in due time. Listen, I’d love to chat, but I have a date with a beautiful young lady.”
The walkie-talkie went dead.
Lacy was crying and Alex was trying to console her. Or vice versa. It was hard to tell. The walkie-talkie crackled, “Professor, was that who I think it was?”
I went to speak, then thought better of it. Caleb saw I didn’t want to communicate on our present channel and said into his walkie-talkie, “Everyone go to the channel of UM’s back-up goalie.”
University of Maine hockey had a cult following. Caleb looked at me and said, “Channel forty-one.”
I turned to forty-one. “Everybody here?”
Everyone was there. “To answer your question—yes, that was exactly who you thought it was. First things first, I want everyone to go and touch their mark. Don’t check back until you have their shirt in your hand.”
A tense minute and a half passed, but all the women were accounted for. The ten of us were spread out in about a twenty-five mile radius and smack-dab in the middle was the town of Waterville. I looked over my shoulder at Alex and asked, “You haven’t gone to print yet, have you?”
Alex gave a puzzled look, then smiled.
We arrived at the Waterville Tribune building at almost 11:00 p.m. On any other night the paper would have gone to print around eight but Alex had postponed it for some reason or another. Imagine that.
When a witness goes to the police station to give testimony for a composite sketch they use a computer program called Sketch-a-Villain 6.0 which can shrink ears, enlarge noses, tint skin, and make zillions of tiny adjustments until the witness is content with the image. Lacy and I would have to go old school. One shot at glory.
Alex rummaged up some pencils, a set of pastels, and a sheet of gloss paper. It took thirty minutes for Lacy to complete the sketch. After she was finished, she handed the piece of paper over. Lacy’s and my efforts had produced a near spitting image of the face I’d seen less than an hour earlier. I found myself staring into the sunset orange eyes of Tristen Grayer. My demon.
Chapter 30
We pulled into Alex’s drive to three cars parked in the middle of her yard. The three girls from my class gave me hugs and asked why I hadn’t involved them in the case. Anyhow, Kim is trim, Ali is a lot of woman, and Holly is mole-y. I promised them from that point on they would each have a stake in their own survival.
The clan—Kim, Ali, Holly, Lacy, Caleb, Blake, Tall Tim, and Fat Tim—followed Alex into her house as I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Gleason.
The phone was answered on the first and half ring, “Gregory, Special Agent in Charge.”
Piss. “Where’s Wade?”
“Getting some coffee? What can I do for you, Mr. Prescott?”
Hold your breath until you die for starters. “I shook his hand.”
“Whose hand?”
“His hand. Tristen Grayer’s.”
I could hear him straighten up in the car seat. “When?”
I recounted the events for him. Now while the facts weren’t completely sober, they would have passed a breathalyzer. A thought occurred to me that hadn’t yet, and I said, “He was in a black Caprice with FBI plates, so you might want to check to see if all the men in your platoon are accounted for. I’d be willing to bet you come up one PFC short.”
If one of his goons was gone, it was safe to assume the woman the goon had been staking out was also gone.
Todd started cranking up his drawbridge, “Our men have been checking in every half hour.”
You know how I’d been having the kids say “check” to check in? I’d filched this wizardry from the Feds. I asked Todd, “Are you asking for their social security number every time they check in? That’s how my bank ensures that it’s me on the phone and not a serial killer impersonating me.”
“I’ll call you back.” Fill the moat. Get the gators.
The phone rang a minute later. It was Gleason. Not a good sign. If all the men in Todd’s army had been accounted for, Todd would have called. I skipped over the fundamentals, “Which woman was your man staking out?”
“Samantha Jackson.”
Samantha Jackson was one of ten black girls in the entire state of Maine. She was a waitress at a small diner in Camden. Gleason said, “We’re sending our closest man right now.”
“Don’t. He might be thinking along those lines and be waiting for a man to abandon his post.”
“Good point. How do you want to play this?”
I must be hearing things. Did the FBI just ask for my input?
I said, “He knows everything we do. He knew we had twenty-seven women as possible victims, he knew Caleb was working for me. Hell, he probably knows what kind of toilet paper you wipe your ass with and where Todd keeps his strap-on. Listen, I know where Sam lives. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I jumped in my car and skidded out of Alex’s drive. This didn’t fit the mold. Samantha was a waitress who’d waited on me ten, maybe fifteen times. Conner had come up with her name simply because he’d eaten with me at her restaurant on a couple occasions.
I knew Tristen, or at least I knew how his mind worked. Each kill had to be bigger, better, and bloodier than the last. He couldn’t move down the ranks from Ashley Andrews to Samantha Jackson. Maybe this, my driving to her house this instant, had been his ploy. I called Caleb and told him to be on the lookout.
I exited US 1 northbound and entered the town of Camden. I’d driven Samantha home once when she’d gotten food poisoning from her shift meal. I’d taken her home, then gone back for the meat loaf which, coincidentally, had been the very meal to make her ill. Go figure.
I pulled up to Samantha’s, a small row house, sitting in the epicenter of a class-six earthquake of a yard. I jumped out, pushed a hotwheel and a scooter out of my way, and knocked on the thin door. I watched the hand on my Tag tick full circle. A pessimistic streak in me had the thought, “It’s hard to answer the door when your feet and ankles are in different rooms.”