Crush - Alan Jacobson [112]
Vail and Dixon shared a look. “Yeah, we went through all that. Your buddy the painter.”
“No, no,” Friedberg said, shaking his head urgently. “Its less glamorous side.”
Dixon faced him. “I don’t follow you.”
“It’s the most prevalent place in the country to commit suicide. Over twelve hundred a year. And those are just the ones we know about. Because of the dense fog we get here, and, well, times when no one’d see a jumper, like at night, some cops think the number’s much higher.” He pointed at the bridge. “Someone supposedly hooked up motion-detecting cameras that recorded the jumpers. Confirmed the theory that the rate was worse than we thought. Kind of morbid, don’t you think?”
“Inspector,” Dixon said. “The point?”
“Two days after we kicked Lundy, he jumped. Right there, by the north tower.”
“Any chance he survived?” Vail asked.
“Who knows? I think a couple people have lived to talk about it over the years. But let’s say the odds are against it. It’s a two hundred-fifty-foot drop. He’d be going eighty-five miles an hour when he hit the water.” Friedberg took another long puff, then held up his cigarette and examined it. “At least this kills me slowly.”
Vail thought about that a moment, then said, “Yeah, I guess that’s something.”
THIRTY-NINE
John Wayne Mayfield finished “work” early—when Dixon and Vail headed out of town, he felt the risk of following them was too high. If one of them had taken note of his vehicle behind theirs in Napa, and the same vehicle happened to still be following theirs on the highway, thirty or more miles later, the chances of them dismissing it as a coincidence plummeted to unreasonable levels.
So when Dixon and Vail headed out of Napa, entered Vallejo and then Highway 37, Mayfield turned around and headed home. Now, as he settled down in front of his computer, a glass of fine ’02 Cakebread Cellars Cabernet by his side, he had thinking to do—and tasks to complete before he planned his most high profile murders. There was considerable risk involved and there would be no turning back. He could still stop right here and come away clean. With what?
No, as he thought about it, there really was no turning back . . . even if he never killed again—which was just not going to happen.
He sat in front of the keyboard, staring at the screen. Took a sip of wine and let it linger on his tongue, savoring the complex Cabernet borne from Rutherford’s exceptional soil and climate. He swallowed, then woke from his reverie. His task called to him, and though fraught with risk, it required his attention.
Everything had been leading up to this. He had no choice. He had to do it. He wanted to do it.
But wait.
As he sat there, an idea began to form. Perhaps there was another way. He’d give it one more shot, put forth one last effort, before he chose what he considered the “nuclear option.” He thought it through, examining it from all angles, role-playing how it would go down once he contacted the cops.
This might just work—at considerably less risk. He’d take precautions, give them what they wanted . . . so long as he got what he wanted. It was a trade. Equitable. Fair. Just a reasonable business offer.
If he was going to do this, he had to do it right. He made a phone call to gather the particulars, then checked the wall clock. He had barely an hour before this copy was due. Not much time. And he didn’t want to screw up, not this late in the game. Even if this was the path of lesser risk, if he wasn’t careful it could end in disaster. He took a deep breath to calm his thoughts.
Then he opened a new document and started typing.
FORTY
Dixon and Vail had left Robert Friedberg with a copy of his file in hand. They were headed back to
Napa and their appointment with Ian Wirth. At the time prompt from Dixon, Vail had called and given the man the promised thirty-minutes’ notice.
As they pulled into the circular drive of Wirth’s three-story brown brick and stone-faced home, Vail tucked Victoria Cameron’s file beneath the seat and pulled