“I understand you people have to move quickly,” he said. “The others didn’t even have time to check out. Just blew out of town like a Texas tornado, I guess.”
“Well,” I said smiling. “I hope they at least paid.”
“Oh, yes. Agent Backus called from the airport and said just to keep it on the credit card and send him the receipts. But that’s no problem. We aim to please.”
I just looked at him, thinking. Deciding.
“I’m going to be catching up with them tonight,” I finally said. “You want me to take the receipts?”
He looked up at me from the paperwork in front of him. I could see his hesitation. I held my hand up in a not-to-worry fashion.
“It’s all right. It was just a thought. I’ll see them tonight and thought it might speed things along. You know, save the postage.”
I didn’t know what I was saying but I was already lacking confidence in my decision and wanted to back away.
“Well,” the clerk said, “I don’t really see the harm in it. I’ve got their paperwork in an envelope ready to go. I guess I can trust you as much as the mailman.”
He smiled and now I smiled back.
“The same guy signs our checks, right?”
“Uncle Sam,” he said brightly. “Be right back.”
He disappeared into a back office and I looked around the front desk and lobby, halfway expecting Thorson and Backus and Walling to jump out from behind the columns and scream. “See? We can’t trust your kind!”
But nobody jumped out from anywhere and soon the clerk was back with a manila envelope he handed across the counter to me with my own hotel bill.
“Thanks,” I said. “They’ll appreciate it.”
“No problem,” the clerk said. “Thank you for choosing to stay with us, Agent McEvoy.”
I nodded and shoved the envelope into my computer bag like a thief, then headed to the door.
34
The plane was climbing toward thirty thousand feet before I had a chance to open the envelope. There were several pages of bills. One itemized breakdown for each agent’s room. This was what I counted on and I immediately was pulled to the bill with Thorson’s name on it and began to study the phone charges.
The bill showed no calls to the Maryland area code, 301, where Warren lived. However, there was a call to the 213 area code. Los Angeles. I knew it was not inconceivable that Warren had gone to L.A. to pitch his story to his former editors. He then could have written it from there. The call had been made at 12:41 A.M. Sunday, just an hour or so after Thorson had apparently checked into the hotel in Phoenix.
After using my Visa card to pop the air phone from the seatback in front of me, I slid the credit card through and punched in the number listed on the hotel bill. The call was answered immediately by a woman who said, “New Otani Hotel, may I help you?”
Momentarily confused, I recovered before she hung up and asked for the room of Michael Warren. I was connected but there was no answer. I realized it was too early for him to be in his room. I depressed the receiver button and called information to get the number of the Los Angeles Times. When I called that number I asked for the newsroom and then asked for Warren. I was connected.
“Warren,” I said.
It was a statement, a fact. A verdict. For Thorson as well as Warren.
“Yes, can I help you?”
He didn’t know who it was.
“I just wanted to say fuck you, Warren. And to let you know, someday I’m going to write about all this and what you did is going in the book.”
I didn’t know exactly what I was saying. I only knew that I felt the need to threaten him and had nothing to do it with. Only words.
“McEvoy? Is this McEvoy?” He paused to inject a sarcastic laugh. “What book? I’ve already got my agent on the street with a proposal. What’ve you got? Huh? What’ve you got? Hey, Jack, do you even have an agent?”
He waited for an answer and I only had rage. I was silent.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Warren said. “Look, Jack, you’re a nice guy and all, and I’m sorry how this worked out. I really am. But I was in a jam and I just couldn’t take that job anymore. This was my ticket out. I took it.”
“You fucking asshole! It was my story.”
I said it too loud. Though I was by myself in a row of three seats, a man across the aisle looked at me angrily. He was seated with an elderly woman who I guessed was his mother and who had never heard such language. I turned away toward the window. There was only blackness out there. I put my hand over my other ear so I could hear Warren’s reply above the steady thrum of the plane. His voice was low and steady.
“The story belongs to whoever writes it, Jack. Remember that. Whoever writes it, it’s their story. You want to go up against me, that’s fine. Then write the fuckin’ story instead of calling me up and whining about it. Go ahead, kick my ass. Try it. I’m right here and I’ll see you on the front page.”
Everything he had just said was dead right and I knew it the moment he said it. I felt embarrassed that I had even called, and as angry with myself as I was with Warren and Thorson. But I couldn’t let it go.
“Well, don’t count on getting anything from your source anymore,” I said. “I’m going to put Thorson in the ground. I got him by the balls. I know he called you late Saturday at the hotel. I got him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t talk about sources. With anyone.”
“You don’t need to. He’s mine. Cut and dried. You want to call him after this, you might want to try the bank squad in Salt Lake City. That’s where he’ll be.”
Using Rachel’s reference to a Siberian assignment did not dull the anger much. My jaw was still clenched as I waited for his reply.
“Good night, Jack,” he said finally. “All I can say is get over it and get a fucking life.”
“Wait a minute, Warren. Answer one question for me.”
There was a pleading whine to my voice that I hated. When he didn’t reply I pushed on.
“The page from my notebook that you left in the file room at the foundation, did you leave it on purpose? Was it a setup from the start?”
“That’s two questions,” he said and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I gotta go.”
He hung up.
Ten minutes later, as the plane began to level off, I finally began to smooth out inside, too. Largely with the help of a strong Bloody Mary. The fact that I could now back up my accusation against Thorson with some evidence also served to mollify me. The truth was, I couldn’t blame Warren. He had used me, but that’s what reporters do. Who knew that better than me?
However, I could blame Thorson and I did. I didn’t know how or when I was going to do it but I was going to make sure Thorson’s hotel bill and the significance of the phone call came to the attention of Bob Backus. I was going to see Thorson go down.
After I finished the drink, I went back to the bills, which I had stuffed into the seat pocket. With nothing more than idle curiosity at that point, I began with Thorson’s and studied the calls he had made before and after the call to Warren.
He had made only three long distance calls during his two-day stay in Phoenix, all of them within a half hour’s time. There was the call to Warren at 12:41 A.M., Sunday, a call placed four minutes before to a number with a 703 area code, and a call to a 904 area number at 12:56 A.M. I assumed the 703 number was to the FBI center in Virginia, but because I had nothing else to do, I used the phone again. I keyed in the number and it was answered immediately.
“FBI, Quantico.”
I hung up. I had been right. Next I called the third number, not even knowing where the 904 area code was. After three rings the call was answered with a high-pitched squeal—the language only computers knew. I listened until the electronic wail ended. Its mating call unanswered, the computer disconnected me.
Puzzled, I called information for the 904 area and asked the operator what the largest ci
ty in the zone was. Jacksonville, I was told. I then asked if the zone included the town of Raiford and was told that it did. I thanked her and hung up.
I knew from the library stories on Horace Gomble that the Union Correctional Institute was located in Raiford. UCI was where Horace Gomble was currently incarcerated and where William Gladden had once been imprisoned. I wondered if Thorson’s call to a computer in the 904 area code zone had any connection to the prison or Gladden or Gomble.
One more time I called information for the 904 area. This time I asked for the general number for UCI in Raiford. The exchange prefix I got was 431, the same as the number Thorson had called from his hotel room. I leaned back and brooded about this. Why had he called the prison? Could he have made a direct connection with a prison computer in order to check on Gomble’s status there or to look at a file on Gladden? I recalled Backus saying he would have Gomble’s status at the prison checked. Possibly, he had given the assignment to Thorson after he picked him up at the airport Saturday night.
I thought of one other possibility for the call. Thorson had told me less than an hour earlier that Gladden had been checked out and dropped as a suspect. Perhaps his call was in some way part of that check. But what part, I couldn’t guess. The only thing that seemed clear to me was that I had not been made privy to everything the agents had been doing. I’d been in their midst, but on some things I had simply been kept in the dark.
The other hotel bills provided no surprises. The bills for Carter’s and Thompson’s rooms were clean. No calls. Backus, according to his bill, had called the same Quantico number at about midnight on both Saturday and Sunday. Curious, I called the number from the plane. It was answered immediately.
“Quantico, Operations Board.”
I hung up without saying anything. I was satisfied that Backus had called Quantico as Thorson had done to return or check messages or take care of other bureau business.
Lastly, I was down to Rachel’s bill and an odd feeling of trepidation suddenly came over me. It was a sense I didn’t have as I had studied the other bills. This time I felt like a suspicious husband checking on his wife’s affairs. There was a voyeuristic thrill to it as well as a sense of guilt.
She’d made four calls from her room. All were to Quantico exchanges and twice she had called the same number as Backus. The Operations Board. I called one of the new numbers she had called and a machine answered the call with her voice.
“This is FBI Special Agent Rachel Walling. I am not available at the moment but if you leave your name and a brief message I will return your call as soon as possible. Thank you.”
She had checked her own office line for messages. I keyed in the last number, which she had called on Sunday evening at 6:10 and a female voice answered.
“Profiling, Doran.”
I disconnected the call without speaking and felt bad about it. I liked Brass, but not enough to possibly tip her off to the fact that I was checking out the calls her fellow agents had made.
Done with the hotel bills, I folded them and put them back in my computer bag, then I snapped the air phone back into its cradle.
35
By the time I pulled up in front of the LAPD’s Hollywood Division it was nearly eight-thirty. I didn’t know what to expect as I looked at the brick fortress on Wilcox Street. I didn’t know whether Thomas would still be there this late, but I hoped that because he was the lead detective working a fresh case—the motel maid killing—that he was still on the clock, preferably behind the bricks working the phones instead of out on the street looking for Gladden.
Inside the front door was a lobby of gray linoleum, two green vinyl couches and the front counter, behind which three uniformed officers sat. There was an entry to a hallway on the left and on the wall above it a sign that said DETECTIVE BUREAU above an arrow pointing down the hall. I glanced at the only desk officer not on a phone and nodded as if I was making my nightly visit. I got to about three feet from the hallway when he stopped me.
“Hold on there, partner. Can I help you?”
I turned back to him and pointed up to the sign.
“I need to go to the detective bureau.”
“What for?”
I walked over to the counter so our conversation would not be heard by everyone in the station.
“I want to see Detective Thomas.”
I took out my press identification.
“Denver,” the cop said, in case I had forgotten where I was from. “Let me see if he’s back there. He expecting you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What’s Denver got to do with—yeah, Ed Thomas back there? Got one here from Denver to see him.”
He listened for a few moments, creased his brow at whatever information he was being given and then hung up.
“Okay. Go on down the hall. Second door on the left.”
I thanked him and headed down the hallway. Along both walls were dozens of framed black-and-white publicity shots of entertainers interspersed among photos of police softball teams and officers killed in the line of duty. The door I was told to go to was marked HOMICIDE. I knocked, waited a beat for a reply and then opened the door and stepped in when I didn’t get one.
Rachel was sitting behind one of the six desks in the room. The others were empty.
“Hello, Jack.”
I nodded. I wasn’t that surprised to see her.
“What are you doing here?”
“That should be obvious, since you’ve obviously been waiting for me. Where’s Thomas?”
“He’s safe.”
“Why all the lies?”
“What lies?”
“Thorson said Gladden was not a suspect. He said he was checked out and dropped. That’s why I came out. I thought he was either wrong or lying. Why didn’t you call me, Rachel? This whole thing—”
“Jack, I was busy with Thomas and I knew if I called anyway, I’d have to lie to you and I didn’t want to.”
“So, you just had Thorson do it. Great. Thanks. That makes it better.”
“Stop being a baby. I had more to worry about than your feelings. I’m sorry. Look, I’m here, aren’t I? Why do you think that is?”
I hiked my shoulders.
“I knew you’d come no matter what Gordon told you,” she said. “I know you, Jack. All I had to do was call the airlines. Once I knew your ETA, all I had to do was wait. I only hope that Gladden wasn’t out there watching the place. You were on TV with us. That means he probably thinks you are an agent. If he saw you come in here he’ll know we’re running a setup.”
“But if he was out there and close enough to see me, then you’d have him now, right? Because you’ve got a twenty-four-hour watch for him on the outside of this place.”
She smiled thinly. I had guessed right.
She picked a two-way radio up off the desk and called her command post. I recognized the voice that came back. It was Backus. She told him she was coming in with a visitor. She then ended the call and stood up.
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“The command post. Not too far.”
Her voice was curt, clipped. It was cold toward me and I found it hard to believe that I had made love to this woman less than twenty-four hours earlier. It was as if I was a stranger to her now. I kept quiet as we walked through a back hallway of the station and to an employee parking lot in the rear where she had a car waiting.
“I’ve got a car out front,” I said.
“Well, you’ll have to leave it for now. Unless you want to stay on your own and keep doing the cowboy shit.”
“Look, Rachel, if I hadn’t been lied to this might not have happened. I might not even have come.”
“Sure.”
She got in and started the car and then unlocked my door. It always annoyed me when people did that to me but I didn’t say anything when I got in. She headed out of the lot and up toward Sunset Boulevard with a heavy foot on the gas. She didn’t speak until a red
light forced her to stop the car.
“How did you know that name, Jack?” she asked.
“What name?” I replied, though I knew.
“Gladden, Jack. William Gladden.”
“I did my homework. How did you people come up with it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Rachel . . . Look, this is me, okay? We made, uh . . .” I couldn’t say it out loud for fear it would sound like a lie. “I thought there was something between us, Rachel. Now you’re acting like I’m some kind of leper or something. I don’t . . . Look, is it information you want? I’ll tell you all I know. I figured it out from the newspapers. Big story on this guy Gladden in the L.A. Times on Saturday. Okay? The story said he knew Horace the Hypnotist in Raiford. I just put two and two together. It wasn’t hard.”
“Okay, Jack.”
“Now you.”
Silence.
“Rachel?”
“Are we off the record?”
“You know you don’t have to ask me that.”
She hesitated a moment and then seemed to relent. She began.
“We arrived at Gladden through two separate leads that just happened to click at the same time. That gives us a high sense of reliability that he’s our man. First, the car. Automotive ID traced the stereo serial number to a car which, in turn, was traced to Hertz? You remember this?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Matuzak and Mize went down to the airport and traced the car. Some snowbirds from Chicago had already rerented it. They had to go up to Sedona to get it back. It’s been processed. Nothing usable from it. The stereo and window had been replaced. But not by Hertz. Hertz never knew about the break-in. Whoever had the car when the break-in occurred replaced the window and the stereo on their own. Anyway, the rental records put the car in the hands of an N.H. Breedlove for five days this month, including the day Orsulak was killed. This Breedlove turned it in the day after. Matuzak put the name on the computer and got a hit on the ID net. Nathan H. Breedlove was an AKA turned up during the investigation of William Gladden in Florida seven years ago. It was a name used by a man who had placed ads in the papers in Tampa offering his services as a children’s photographer. He molested the kids when left alone with them, took dirty pictures. He wore disguises. The Tampa police were looking for this Breedlove at the same time the Gladden case broke. The molestations at the child care center. The investigators always believed Gladden was Breedlove but they never made a case because of the disguises. Besides, they didn’t press it because they thought he’d be going away to prison for a long time on the other case.