Strangled - Brian McGrory [39]
I flipped the stereo off and the room went quiet except for the sounds of the ocean breeze pushing against the outside window — at least I hoped it was the breeze that was nudging the window. Who knew anymore?
Pleading with a killer for an exclusive story. Another day in the life of the intrepid reporter, and it would quickly get worse from there.
12
The day came bright and breezy, the breeze carrying with it more than a hint of spring. The sun caressed my cheeks with its golden fingers. The grass was even turning from winter brown to a pale shade of green.
So why, then, did I still feel such doom as I strode from Atlantic Avenue into Columbus Park at about two minutes to nine on this Wednesday morning? Well, first off, there are the obvious answers. I suspected the day would bring with it more death, most likely of yet another innocent young woman long before her time.
Second, I was still infuriated at my own newspaper for blowing a blockbuster story and putting me in this kind of bind with an admitted killer. And I wasn’t exactly pleased with myself over the unseemly telephone negotiations that I carried on that morning with this man who called himself the Phantom Fiend.
Third, there was no small amount of trepidation that I was being set up here on this park bench by whoever tried to kill me on the Charles River two nights before. Or maybe that’s whomever. I can never figure these things out. That said, I hoped that since he picked a place so prominent and a time so public, he wouldn’t be trying anything funny.
Finally, this was the park where I used to bring Baker virtually every day for the past many years to romp and fetch a tennis ball until his tongue was hanging to the ground. Baker was my old golden retriever, dead a little more than a year now, but never a flicker of the memory from my mind. We always saw the first red leaf of autumn together, the first flake of winter, and the first bud of spring. We were an item then, and I thought we always would be, until the day when he was diagnosed with advanced cancer at Angell Memorial Hospital and taken from me before I barely had a chance to say good-bye.
Okeydoke. So, we’re off to a perfectly terrific start to yet another wonderful day, one that would surely include murder and at least a little mayhem, as well as lame excuses from my newpaper higher-ups for their colossal screw-up, pleas for dinner invitations from Vinny Mongillo, and maybe a face-to-face meeting with a past and present serial killer who calls himself the Phantom Fiend. What was my alternative — to have gotten married to a beautiful woman and jetted off to a resort in gorgeous Hawaii? Then again, Maggie Kane hadn’t left that alternative on the table for me, not as she was fleeing on a connecting flight through the Atlanta airport to God only knows where. Maybe she was in Hawaii, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, because at least someone would be getting use of a hotel that I had already paid for.
Ah yes, a great day getting even greater.
I found my way to a bench in what I believed was the far northwest corner of the park. It looked out over the grass, through a bare trellis, toward a part of Boston Harbor where I once swam in pursuit of an escaping intruder in the middle of the night, in what I guess I’d now refer to as the good old days. Now that I thought of it, I should apply for hazardous duty pay. Either that or enroll in swimming lessons at the YMCA and send Peter Martin the bill.
So there I sat, thinking, waiting, and wondering. I wasn’t there but two minutes when my cell phone chimed. When I answered, all I heard was silence.
Well, not exactly total silence. I heard what sounded like a young calf chewing on its cud.
“Mongillo?” I asked.
“Oh, hey, sorry, Fair Hair. I’m on the treadmill and didn’t hear you pick up.”
“Are you eating and running? Isn’t that illegal?”
“Just a PowerBar. And no, I’m being careful.”
He was out of breath, I noticed. I mean, really out of breath, as in, I was half tempted to ask