Strangled - Brian McGrory [44]
I’ll admit, it would have been a hell of a lot easier to have called him on the phone instead of flying nearly three thousand miles to knock on his door, except that I subscribe to the theory that in newspaper reporting, and life in general, it’s always better to show up. If there’s only one thing I’ve learned in twenty-plus years in the information negotiation business, it’s this: People tell you things in person that they wouldn’t on the phone. They’re not as likely to slam a door in your face as they are a receiver in your ear. They admire the effort made in pursuit of knowledge, and generally reward it.
I also thought it was a pretty opportune excuse to get the hell out of Boston, given that people kept dying the worst possible deaths, with at least one of those deaths apparently intended to be mine.
The day had been a tense one. Peter Martin, Vinny Mongillo, and I listened to Justine Steele’s rationalization for not running the story that morning, reporting the fact that a serial killer named for the Boston Strangler had murdered at least two women and reached out to a Record reporter to warn that more deaths were on the way. I guess being publisher means, among other things, never having to say you’re sorry, because an apology she did not give. What she did give, though, was a promise to run the story the following morning.
That led to the question of whether to report the fact that I had been contacted by someone claiming to be the Phantom who directed me to go to a location — the Boston Public Garden — in which someone was murdered. On this we collectively decided to withhold information, based on reasons I thought were just. It was all too circumstantial. It looked like we were trying too hard to inject ourselves into the story. And the tipster may not have been the Phantom at all. Truth be told, I didn’t think he was.
Which brings me to the most significant question in all this, at least in regard to me: Who wanted me dead, and why? I was reaching the conclusion that it was preposterous, if not downright impossible, that the same figure tipping me off about the strangulation deaths of young women was also trying to kill me. Why guide me with letters and try to kill me in person?
So I updated the story for the following morning’s paper to include the fact that the Phantom had also contacted radio host Barry Bor and led him to a website that contained photographs of a murder scene. That done, I sneaked to the airport in the back of Vinny Mongillo’s car and boarded a nonstop Delta flight for Vegas. Normally I’d be over the moon about an all-expense paid trip to Sin City — a couple of nights in a five-star hotel, dinner at Craft-steak, blackjack at the Wynn Las Vegas, maybe a cocktail or two at the Ghost Bar. But on this particular trip, all I wanted to do was get safely to my room, sleep for seven hours, and make it to Bob Walters’s house in one living piece the following morning.
On Walters, I had an address, courtesy of Hank Sweeney, also retired from the Boston Police Department. I had a brief description that he could be ornery and impatient, but was also regarded as brilliant in his day. I think that actually describes me as well. I also knew that he was eighty-five years on this earth, not all of them particularly good to him.
Once in my room at the Venetian, I gave myself a little tour of the various luxuries, from the motorized drapery opener in the sunken sitting area to the bathroom that was roughly the size of my condominium on the Boston waterfront. I ordered a twenty - seven - dollar - room - service hamburger. I could already hear Martin asking if I paid for the entire steer. I checked my voice mails and realized with another pang of depression that Maggie Kane had not yet bothered to call. In a fit of either