Hack (14 page)

I told him about the blood money and the de-wigging.

“The blood money’s not bad. ‘Fatso strikes again.’ The hair is brilliant.
That’s
The Wood. I’ll put you on to rewrite. You know, against my better judgment, I’m beginning to like you, Shepherd.”

“Thank God for that.”

“But no cannibalism this time?”

“Nope. He looks whole. Except for the hair.”

“Pity.”

Izzy was unhappy. We were standing outside in the tiny townhouse yard inside the fence, as the CSI folks worked on the crime scene inside. Izzy became angry when Jane explained her resuscitation efforts. It was getting colder and she was shivering.

“So, you’re not a doctor. You’re a vet. And you just decided to roll around in my crime scene like a chocolate Lab with a bone?” Izzy accused her.

“I had a responsibility as a medical person, and just as a person, to try to preserve a life,” she told him calmly.

“Bull. Look at that thickening blood. This guy has been lying there for hours. He’s as dead as they come. What possessed you to shove a pen into my victim’s throat?”

“You’re saying I should not have tried to save this man’s life? His airway was cut. That was the only way I could get air into him,” she explained.

“Enough. How do I know you two didn’t kill Cushing? I only have your word you didn’t. Look at you—you’re soaked in the victim’s blood.”

Jane looked down at her cocktail dress, tacky with hardening blood, and groaned.

I laughed. I showed Izzy my text from Aubrey and explained we had another witness, my photographer, Ernie.

“Really? Terrific. So where is he? Putting pictures of my crime scene in your paper?”

“Yes. He is,” I admitted.

Izzy cursed, a string of suggestions on how to insert cameras and lenses up inside the human body. I noticed he always seemed to curse in Spanish, his father’s second language, not Yiddish, his mother’s second tongue.

“You can’t do that,” Izzy protested.

“Why not? I heard you say you had notified Cushing’s sister of his death.”

“Yeah but she won’t officially identify his body at the M.E.’s office until the morning.”

“Is there any doubt?” I asked.

Izzy ignored me. “I’m too tired for this
mishegoss
. I need statements from both of you and elimination prints in the morning at the precinct.”

Jane asked if she could go home and take a shower. Izzy agreed and pointed her towards a cop car for a ride. I was going to kiss her goodbye but her face was still smeared with Cushing’s blood. We promised to speak in the morning.

“Thanks for an interesting evening,” Jane smiled, as she closed the squad car door. “I usually don’t do this on a first date.”

“How do I know that?” I asked her.

“You owe me one cocktail dress,” she said, waving goodbye.

I couldn’t wait to pour her into a new one.

Phil appeared and I followed as he and Izzy walked back into the townhouse.

“You two got any more questions for me?”

Izzy thought about it for a while.

“Off the record, okay?” he said, turning as he opened the front door.

“You saw the Altoid?”

He grunted what might have been a
yes
.

We entered the crime scene and I shut up and watched from a discreet distance as Izzy did his thing.

“So, Cash, where did the money come from?” Izzy asked the dead man. “Your pockets are inside-out. Did he leave the bills and coins after you were dead? Why didn’t you struggle? You just lay down on the floor and let him slash your throat open? Looks like it. Blood spray by the sofa. You bled out. Were your eyes open or did he open them after you were dead—for effect? Why would Aubrey Forsythe kill you? Because you insulted him at the funeral? So, he kills Neil Leonardi and eats him because he kicked the dog and talked back. He wasted you because you’re against gay marriage and insulted his husband—who he also killed? Nolan, buddy, this does not make any freaking sense.”

“I agree,” I said.

“And what’s with the mint?” Izzy continued.

“Maybe he’s saying our friend also had a hint of mint?”

Phil smirked.

Izzy shrugged, noncommittally.

“The mystery of the mint. It made some kind of sense when it was a food critic’s husband and there was cannibalism involved. This time, it’s what? Social comment on Wall Street? Now it makes no sense.”

“Except as an identifier,” I said. “The mint thing is not out there. Well, Aubrey knows about it but nobody else. He wants us to know it’s the same guy but I don’t think it’s Aubrey.”

“But Forsythe called you here and voila! Another body with stupid visual jokes,” said Izzy. “Aubrey wanted you to find this.”

“Maybe. Aubrey didn’t call. He texted.”

“Right,” said Izzy. “Whatever.”

“No,” Phil pointed out. “Maybe it wasn’t Forsythe.”

“Just someone with his phone, maybe, I get that,” Izzy said.

“Right,” Phil said. “Unless Forsythe came here and found the body and then texted Shepherd.”

“Maybe my photographer scared Aubrey away,” I suggested.

“Hey, Cash, why would Aubrey Forsythe come to your house?” Izzy asked the corpse. “Were you boys secret pals?”

He got no answer.

“If he alerted his favorite reporter to a killing he didn’t commit, how come he didn’t mention the murder in the text?” Izzy demanded. “Why didn’t he stick around, so we would know he was innocent?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Izzy said.

I was a star for another week but then it just stopped. At least the killings did. My
New York Mail
front page, with Ernie’s photos of Nolan’s flipped wig, went around the world, complete with a nifty nickname for the killer:

Followed by Ginny and the
Daily Press
, Izzy and Phil explored every avenue of inquiry, with me occasionally tagging along. Aubrey was Public Enemy Number One and was expected to strike again at any moment. The most likely victim-to-be was Aubrey’s other arch-enemy from Neil’s funeral, Tea Party TV pundit Harley Himmler—who surrounded himself with armed guards, courtesy of our mutual boss, billionaire Trevor Todd. No one could find Aubrey, who didn’t call me, no matter how many messages I left on his cell phone.

Every day without Aubrey, or another murder, enraged Badger and Tal Edgar, who bugged me more and more about my lack of exclusives—as if I controlled the news. They threatened to fire me daily. Having worked at the
Mail
for two unpleasant weeks, I realized that was just their management style—threaten to fire everyone without an exclusive every day, as a motivational tool. I ignored them and went back to writing my neglected pet column. I delved into grave issues such as what to do when your female cat hisses at your beloved sister, a devoted cat-person, every time she comes over. (Have her wear freshly laundered jeans and shoes that do not smell like her male cat at home. Also, catnip on the socks is a big help.) It was relaxing and I did not care if I never saw another corpse again.

I got into a routine with Skippy, with his morning and evening walks and his new job as leftover food gobbler. It took me a while to cure him of barking every time anyone walked past the apartment door and longer to convince him that a human being could not sleep with a seventy-pound Siberian Husky on their face.

I spoke to Jane several times on the phone but she always seemed to be busy when I asked her out on a second date. It was beginning to look like events during our first encounter had put her off. Go figure.
Dear Facebook Friends, after you discover a hacked-up body on your first date, how do you get past that?

Mary Catherine quickly bonded with Skippy and she helped me walk him every few days, so we could talk about the lack of progress on our project.

“Tell me about Tal Edgar,” she said, as Skippy sniffed one of the pathetic trees on my block.

“A bully, like his hatchet man Badger, but much cooler,” I told her. “Actually, he reminds me of a warlord. You know, everybody scurrying around trying to kiss his ass or hide from him while he calmly considers who his next victim will be. He obviously digs it.”

“And Badger?”

“Details and dirty work.”

“So you like him for this?”

“Most likely. I have the intercepts he gave me from Aubrey and Neil’s phones. That’s illegal.”

“Yes but we have no evidence for our case?”

“Nope. Why don’t I really piss them off and see what happens?”

“You’re getting bored,” she scolded. “That’s dangerous.”

“Maybe. But maybe dangerous is the only way,” I suggested.

“Not officially. What did you have in mind?”

“No clue.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll think about it,” I promised her. “I’ll come up with something.”

It was all very relaxing until one morning, after one of our walks, Mary Catherine and I ended up on the front page of the
Daily Press
.

A question mark. In America, you can’t say someone is a child molester without proof. But, if you ask it as a question, you can call anybody anything. Is the president a traitor? The
Daily Press
had a photo of me in shorts and a t-shirt, holding Skippy’s leash and Mary Catherine in one of her power-dress suits and heels, looking hot outside my apartment building. We were laughing and the competing newspaper twisted that, too.

The photo caption read “Strange Bedfellows? Intrepid
Mail
reporter Francis X. Shepherd and married Manhattan Federal Prosecutor Mary Catherine Donovan, right, share an intimate laugh outside Shepherd’s Manhattan apartment, along with fugitive Aubrey Forsythe’s dog, Skippy.”

The words made it sound like even Skippy was involved in criminal activity. The use of the word “right” was a dig, as if readers would confuse Mary Catherine with the dog. As if. Of course, the byline was Ginny McElhone’s, and the story was dripping with slime:

New York Mail
reporter Francis X. Shepherd seems to have experience with murder. As a U.S. Army sergeant, he commanded a gang of GIs who, some sources say, slaughtered innocent civilians in Afghanistan a year ago, in an incident those sources say may have been hushed up by Pentagon top brass.

At least 11 people, including children, died during the firefight near the city of Khost but no one was ever charged in the killings.

If his close personal friendship with an attractive female federal prosecutor in Manhattan, a former Army buddy of Shepherd’s, had anything to do with his getting off the hook, no one is saying.

No one is saying because no one ever asked. It was like a gossip column item. The story came as a complete surprise; Ginny hadn’t asked for comment before going to press. I laughed but Mary Catherine didn’t.

“Didn’t I warn you that raising your profile was a bad idea? This is just the beginning. Keep your head down. This is only the
Daily Press
. Now that the
Mail
knows, and Badger and his boss Edgar are on it, it’s going to get busy. Keep your balls to the wall, Shepherd.”

“You, too, Mary Catherine.”

She paused for thought. “This is bad but it could work to our advantage.”

“I told you I’d think of something.”

“You gave her the story?”

“No. She must have found some paperwork from the VA or the army when I was in the shower. When she stole that DVD of Aubrey in McDonald’s.”

“You were supposed to keep your place clean.”

“My mail was diverted here. I get stuff from Walter Reed. My guess is she found paperwork from the hospital to get her started and the rest she googled.”

“You got sloppy,” she snapped.

“How did she find out we were ‘Army buddies?’”

“I don’t know. If you didn’t tell her, it could have come from my office or my home.”

“I didn’t tell her.”

“Okay, maybe
I
got sloppy. Could have been someone around me. My assistant maybe. I’ll take care of it. Meanwhile, get ready to rumble.”

“Yes, ma’am. Meanwhile, anything from your people on Aubrey Forsythe?”

“No, not a whisper. Who cares?” she asked.

“I care. Even the U.S. Marshals, with their surveillance net and flying cell tower, got nothing? No credit card use, car rental, video facial recognition, phone intercepts, cell phone chatter, cell tower hits, Netflix rental?”

“Nothing. Zip. I told you.”

“That’s strange.”

“Duh. He’s running from two murder charges. He’s hiding,” she pointed out.

“Yeah but you should have found him in a day or two, tops. This bozo couldn’t hide in a clown convention. He has no fugitive skills and is a big, rich, nasty, spoiled baby.”

“I thought you said he had a huge wad of cash to live on so he could stay off the grid?”

“True.”

“He is not your problem,” Mary Catherine reminded me. “Focus.”

“Yes, I agree they may try to focus.”

“You’re not funny, Shepherd.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You never laugh.”

“I laugh at funny.”

“Have you ever seen funny?”

“Not yet.”

“Have you seen me dance?”

“That’s not funny. That’s just sad.”

“Who are you?” Tal Edgar asked me in a menacing whisper.

Three smells washed over my face with his words, in succeeding waves. The first scent was bad breath, which the other two—cheap whiskey and expensive cologne—had failed to mask. On the desk before him was the
Daily Press
“MASSACRE?” story. I politely asked Edgar to speak more loudly, which made his face go red and twitch in a weird way, like dogs do when they have nightmares.

“WHO THE FUCK
ARE
YOU?” he shrieked at the top of his lungs.

My ears hurt. My nose hurt. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see heads turn in the City Room on the other side of Edgar’s glass office wall. Now I knew what the glass was for. Threat display. Next to me, in a matching visitor’s chair in the big transparent corner office, Badger jumped involuntarily at his master’s roar.