Strangled - Brian McGrory [38]
“Who’s calling?” I asked, blurting out the words.
“Are you listening to the Barry Bor Show?” Again, the words had that slightly synthetic quality to them.
I said, “I am. But who is this?”
“Why didn’t you write about me in today’s newspaper?”
Now my shoulders reflexively shuddered and my head clouded anew. I kind of knew how Barry Bor felt. I’ve talked to presidents and senators and even killers after the fact. But I’ve never talked to an unknown murderer who was vowing to kill again.
I said, “I was trying to get you in today’s paper. We didn’t think we had enough information.”
“You know Lauren Hutchens is dead. I killed her. You know Jill Dawson is dead. I killed her, too. And I’m going to kill again.”
The way he said kill, the k tripped over itself and the ll had a long echo to it, making it sound somewhere far beyond macabre, especially since I was reasonably sure he would follow up on his threats. I shook my head and pushed my shoulders back, silently attempting to get a grip on myself, and I said, “Why did you call Barry Bor?”
Now, I’ll admit, there were a lot of lead questions I could have posed to this admitted murderer, not the least of which were: Why are you killing? When will you kill again? Who will you kill? Will you give yourself up? I could have even asked the completely self-interested question: Did you try to kill me, or if not, do you know who did? But here I was, worried not so much about the safety of Boston’s female population as I was about the competitive position of the Boston Record.
The caller replied, “I contacted you first. You ignored me.”
“I didn’t ignore you. We need more information from you. I’m not a damned radio talk show. I deal in facts, and I need more of them.” I hesitated here, hesitated at the thought of what I was about to do, then said, “And we need you to work exclusively through the Record.”
I used the word work, as if what he was doing was political fund-raising or maybe whistle-blowing on some unraveling government project, everything polite and aboveboard and squarely on the side of virtue. But the reality was that I was trying to sell my paper and myself to a killer so we could get the exclusive story. There are some days I think I probably would’ve been better off if I had followed an old girlfriend’s advice and gone to law school. This day was foremost among them — and it wasn’t even six in the morning yet.
He remained silent, so I filled the void with “We can work together, but that won’t happen if you’re talking to inflammatory talk show hosts who aren’t going to treat your information with the respect that the Record would. And because you’re dealing through a medium that no one takes seriously, people, the public, aren’t going to take you seriously.”
Here I was, giving my full-on sales pitch to a guy who had strangled two women, actually stood there tightening a ligature around their necks and watching the life leave their panicked eyes. And I was trying to sell him on a relationship with the Record. I made a mental note that I was a complete asshole.
“What kind of information?” he asked.
Good question. What was I going to say, Hold the line while I call the damned publisher and ask her what the hell else she needs before we put this story into print? I wisely, even uncharacteristically, bit my tongue and instead asked, “Are you the Boston Strangler? And why are you doing this?”
The caller said, “Go to the bench in the northwest corner of Columbus Park at nine a.m. Don’t get there a minute beforehand or you’ll never hear from me again. Don’t call the police or you’ll never hear from me again. Bring your cell phone.”
He hung up. I could still hear the n vibrating on the word phone because of the synthesizer he was using.
As I put the receiver down, I listened to Barry Bor say on the radio, “Ladies and gentlemen, the chosen few, you are listening to talk radio history here today. We, meaning you and me, are making history. I have been talking to a gruesome murderer who is vowing to kill again, and