Strangled - Brian McGrory [78]
I looked at him, at his neatly pressed blue blazer and tan pants that were in sharp contrast to his wrinkled face and hands, old but young, stern but happy. He was between wives, was his line, meaning he was between his fourth and fifth wives, assuming the next one would come along, which she undoubtedly would. I pictured him sitting in a neighborhood tavern after work beside a date twenty years his junior, explaining to her how he had pulled the paper’s kiester out of the fire again that day as he single-handedly tried to make this city safe for its entire female population. Retirement my ass.
“You know you’re doing one hell of a job on this, right?” I said this in all seriousness.
Edgar replied, “I’m just doing my job, Jack. It’s you who’s putting yourself at risk and writing this great stuff.”
I shook my head. “I don’t really have much of a choice. I’ve been put in the middle here. You — you could be off playing golf or throwing baseballs with the grandkids.”
“Ah, my golf game is awful and my grandkids are brats.” He hesitated, then added, “They’re good kids, actually. They’re just not into sports.”
We were at the top of the escalator now, walking toward the newsroom, still shoulder-to-shoulder, moving fast. Edgar pulled a white envelope from inside his jacket pocket. He held it out in front of us and said, “Jack, this came for you via courier about twenty minutes ago. My guys were under orders to grab me before any courier left. They did. I questioned him and he said the account was paid in cash, and he has no name, and no return address. He picked up the package from a man who he said he couldn’t identify, on a street corner in Downtown Crossing. I haven’t opened it. Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s starting to fit a pattern, and I thought you’d want to see it right away.”
He handed me the sealed envelope with my name typed on the front in small letters in a familiar font — familiar because it was the same size and font as the type on the envelope that contained Jill Dawson’s driver’s license four days before.
Four days. Seemed like four weeks, or four months, a veritable lifetime ago. You’re going to help me get the word out or other women will die. The Phantom Fiend. That’s what he wrote at the time, and I still wasn’t sure what he meant. The only thing I was sure about was that other women had died, and more women were undoubtedly about to. As a matter of fact, I was probably holding either a death sentence or a perverted death certificate in my very hand. What the “word” was, how I was supposed to help get it out, whether I could help, these were the things I didn’t know.
Until now.
We were walking into the newsroom, toward my desk. Edgar said, “Do you want me to stay with you while you open it?” He nodded toward the envelope as he spoke. “You know, could be anthrax or some other chemical.”
“Not his style, if this is even from him,” I answered. “Give me a moment with it.” He peeled off. I made my way through the maze of desks in the busy newsroom at the start of another news cycle.
Once I settled in, Martin, of course, arrived in about three nanoseconds with a whirl of questions, expectations, and instructions. I asked him to give me a minute, perhaps not as politely as I might have. Oddly enough, without questioning me, he did, and walked away.
I carefully opened the envelope with a painfully familiar sense of dread. Another correspondence, another dead woman, whether it be Jill Dawson or Lauren Hutchens or Kimberly May. Maybe I should have been invigorated to be injected this far into the biggest unfolding story in the country, but what I really felt was a gloomy sense of futility, and the worst thing a reporter can feel is futile, even if we so often are. I heard about each of these women after they were no longer alive. My reporting only brought bad news. My published words could do nothing to help