Strangled - Brian McGrory [7]
I looked inside the envelope and saw nothing else, so I unfolded the small piece of white paper that was lying on my desk. The words were in the same kind of printed font as my name on the cover.
“You’re going to help me get the word out or other women will die.”
Two blank lines below that were the words “The Phantom Fiend.”
It was written just like that — no commas, no periods, no real sense. I read it and then reread it and for good measure read it again. I looked at the envelope for any other markings I might have missed, but saw none. This was likely some stupid prank, yet I felt a pit growing in my stomach, growing into the size of an orange, then a grapefruit, then something bigger.
Obviously, prank or not, a few questions needed to be answered — for instance, what was the word? What other women would die? Who was the Phantom Fiend? Why was he sending this to me? And most urgently, given his use of the word other, did this mean that Jill Dawson was already dead? If she wasn’t, was she about to become an unwitting target?
Jill Dawson — the name was unsettlingly familiar. I’d heard it. Maybe I had read it. I quickly started typing into the Record’s online library system, but got one of those maddening dialog boxes on my screen that said it was down for weekly maintenance. So I snatched up the phone and punched out a number to an old source at Boston Police headquarters in Schroeder Plaza.
“Sergeant Herlihy here,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
“Reporter Flynn here.”
“Mother of God. Let me put you on hold for a sec. I need to call my wife and tell her I’m talking to someone famous.”
This is the kind of bullshit I put up with every day in my valiant and unswerving pursuit of news.
“If you can knock off the stand-up comedy routine for half a second,” I told him, “I have a quick question.”
“For a celebrity reporter, anything.”
“The name Jill Dawson mean anything to you?”
Sergeant Kevin Herlihy, a longtime source of mine dating back to when I was a young crime-and-grime reporter and he was a cop walking a pretty dangerous beat, mulled over that question for a moment, or at least he mulled over whether he wanted to answer it.
After a moment he said, “Check your own morgue. Murder victim. Found dead in her Beacon Hill apartment on January third. Case unsolved, last that I know. Homicide has revealed very little information, even to us grunts in uniform.”
“As always, thank you.”
I quickly hung up before he had a chance to take a parting verbal jab.
What had started as a pit was now a watermelon. I was holding the driver’s license of a murdered woman, along with a note that said there’d be more victims unless I helped get some mysterious word out.
I hated to say it, but this certainly solved one problem, or, more accurately, delayed it. I snatched up the phone and punched out the cell number to Maggie Kane. I expected to get her voice mail, but instead she picked up on the third ring. I heard an announcer’s voice in the background cutting through the din of commotion, telling people something about a final boarding.
“Maggie, hey there.” I paused, still listening to that announcer. “Hey, where are you?”
“The Atlanta airport,” she replied. Her words came out flat, uncertain.
“Are you traveling on business?” Soon as I asked this, I felt ridiculous. Maggie Kane teaches third grade.
“No, Jack. Listen, I was about to call you.”
My head was spinning so fast I thought it might fly off my neck. My vision was actually blurred. On what was supposed to be our wedding day, the happy bride-to-be was sitting in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and I think it’s a pretty safe conclusion that she wasn’t getting on a plane bound for home. Admittedly, the happy groom was planning to kibosh the whole deal, but that’s not really the point here.
“Jack,” she said before I could say anything. “Jack, I was about