Without Warning (8 page)

Hank came in a few minutes after I finished reading, carrying his own copy of the paper. “You saw this, right?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. And I saw something else.” I pointed to the murder book. “Check out page 129.”

He walked over to the desk and sat down, pulling the book toward him. He flipped pages until he got to the place where 129 was supposed to be. “It’s not here,” he said. Then he turned more pages and said, “Neither are the next two.”

“Right.”

“Did you take them out?” he asked.

“No.”

“Then where are they?

“I was hoping you knew,” I said.

He looked bewildered. “It’s not possible.”

“Could you have misnumbered them?”

He frowned, as if I had suggested something ridiculous. “Jake, it’s the murder book.” Then, “It’ll be in the archives.”

We called in Joanie Patrick, who was responsible for scanning documents into the computer bank and maintaining the archive. We told her what we wanted, and she sat down at the terminal at my desk. She typed something at warp speed, and within seconds signaled for us to come stand behind her.

“Okay, now what pages are you looking for?”

“129 to 131,” I said.

She scrolled down, and then shook her head. “Not here.”

“Is there any way to tell who scanned it all in?” Hank asked.

Joanie looked something up on the document, and then said, “I did.”

“So what do you think could have happened?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I just scan what’s in the book, Jake. No reason for me to look at page numbers. It’s not brain surgery.”

We talked about it, and Joanie mentioned that the computer archive was installed three years prior, which was well after Jenny’s murder. After that, documents were scanned as they were received, but this one would have been part of a backlog of files that were all put in at once.

“So the pages could have been removed any time in the year between the creation of the book, and the time you scanned them in?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

She left, and Hank and I sat and kicked around the possibilities for a while. He refused to accept the possibility that he made a mistake and was positive that the book had been tampered with. “It wasn’t under lock and key, Jake. The case was closed.”

“You think you can figure out what is missing?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“I’ll try, but I doubt it. It’s four years ago, and it’s three pages out of three hundred.”

I handed him the book. “Try.”

He took it from me and nodded. “Yeah. Looking forward to it.”

Matt Higgins was the most popular man in town. He couldn’t walk down the street without being approached and talked to by his friends, as well as people he had never recalled speaking to in his life.

His article had exploded into the town’s consciousness that morning and was already being picked up by national news outlets. But outside of his story, there was nothing more that anyone knew, and no flow of information to tap into.

So everyone looked to Matt, assuming he was plugged into the situation and had more information than he had so far revealed. While the latter part was true, he was not about to gossip about it, so he good-naturedly deflected all questions.

“Check the paper tomorrow,” was all he would say, and then laugh when the response to that was decidedly unfavorable.

After a quick lunch at the diner, during which he was approached at least a dozen times, he went back to the office to work on the story for the following day. Katie was there; she had been spending much more time at work ever since the hurricane struck and saw no reason to stop now.

“They’re swarming out there,” he said, and she knew exactly what he meant.

“Nothing like a serial killer to generate conversation.”

He laughed. “Good thing he’s our serial killer.”

“You taking this seriously enough, Matt?”

“Katie, I’ve never taken anything more seriously in my life. Time to go to work.”

He had more than enough for the next day’s story; he estimated that he’d left enough out of the first piece to leave him with at least three days worth, if he dribbled it out conservatively.

What really concerned him was the specter of the national media, who likely would soon be on the scene and digging. Matt would need to stay ahead of them, and one of the main ways he could be certain of doing so would be for Katie to keep getting information from Jake. And while he respected her strength and ability, that relationship was so complicated that he had strong doubts she could hold her own.

Fortunately, he had a back-up plan in place.

Matt labored over the computer much longer than he ordinarily would, and far more than necessary. He was an excellent writer, more than capable of telling this story effectively. In fact, the story was so powerful it could just about tell itself.

But he wasn’t writing about a boring town council meeting, or a fender bender, or any of the other banal junk that ordinarily filled the pages of the
Wilton Journal
. This was a subject more important than any he would ever write about again, and he was going to obsess over every word, and every comma.

But finally it was put to bed, and Matt spent some time reflecting on what his next steps should be, beyond writing a daily story. He didn’t just consider himself a reporter; he was an investigative reporter. And the investigative playing field couldn’t be more favorable to him; he had inside knowledge of the story and more local contacts than anyone else. Katie’s arrangement with Jake would likely prove invaluable, but Matt was also going to make things happen.

He would investigate the murders that had already taken place, and he was sure he would turn up fresh information. And when he broke the case, well, a Pulitzer was not out of the realm of possibility.

But for the moment, Matt was going to get something to eat and maybe have a drink or two. He could have done this in the comfort of his own living room, but then he would not have been the center of attention. And that center was exactly where Matt liked to be.

So Matt went to the Dugout, a local restaurant-bar with a sports theme, which was crowded most nights, but packed when the Red Sox were playing on television. They had played that afternoon, so while the place was busy, it wasn’t mobbed.

Matt’s entrance, despite the fact that he was a semiregular, created a stir. Everyone wanted to talk to him, to find out what he knew, and to give him their own opinions about what was going on, and who the guilty party might be.

He pretended not to like the attention, but sat there for two and a half hours, having dinner and then a succession of beers. The best part, he soon realized, was not that he had created a journalistic stir. No, the best part was that it seemed like every woman in the place was suddenly interested in him.

Matt had always had reasonable success with women; he wasn’t a playboy, but he had his moments, even if he had to work at it. This night was different, however. This time some of them made their interest in him very obvious, and he felt as if he could pick and choose.

So he chose a young woman named Rachel Castro. She was new to Wilton, even newer than Matt, and had worked for the last two years as a cashier at the town department store. Ironically, Matt had tried to start up a conversation with her about six months before and had gotten nowhere.

Times had changed.

It was around eleven o’clock that he asked Rachel if she wanted to go back to his house to have another drink, an offer she seemed to find very appealing. They left his car in the parking lot, as he recognized he was in no condition to drive, and his house was just a ten-minute walk from the bar.

She held on to him the entire way, and he couldn’t help reflecting on how different he was already being viewed not only by people like Rachel but also by the entire town. And this was just after one story. By the time he was finished …

They reached Matt’s front door, which he had locked when he left that morning. Even though very few people bothered to lock their doors in the small town, he had promised Katie that he would. So he took out his key, opened the door, and graciously motioned for Rachel to enter. “After you…,” he said.

“What a gentleman,” were the last words she would ever speak, as the forty-five caliber magnum shell exploded into her chest.

After the shot rang out, there was only silence. Matt crouched to the side of the open door, hearing and seeing nothing. The house was dark, but the porch light was on, and someone inside could have seen him.

He looked over at Rachel, who had been blown back by the force of the bullet. The entire front of her body was covered in blood, and she was silent and unmoving. While he was not an expert on gunshot wounds, he couldn’t imagine that she was still alive.

He couldn’t go in the house, not knowing who was in there waiting for him, so he ran to his closest neighbor, crouching low as he did so. That neighbor, Laura Rickman, had come out after hearing the deafening noise, thinking it was an explosion of some kind.

When she saw Matt, and the way he was running, she grew scared. “Matt? Are you okay?”

“Call 9-1-1,” he said, gasping the words out. “Tell them someone has been shot. We need an ambulance.”

She ran into the house to make the call, and Matt positioned himself behind a bush, so he could see the front door of his own house. He could still see Rachel lying there in the dim light, but there was no movement from her or anyone else.

Within minutes, the area was filled with arriving police cars, as well as an ambulance. Matt went out to meet them, and saw that Jake Robbins was among the first to get there. He quickly took them behind the cars, and then laid out the story as it happened.

“And you’re sure the shooter didn’t leave?” Jake asked.

Matt shook his head. “He didn’t leave through the front, but I can’t speak for the back.”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said. “It’s hard to believe that she could be. She got hit right in the chest. It was horrible.”

Jake instructed two officers to train a spotlight on the front door of the house. Rachel was, of course, still lying there, but they couldn’t see any movement in the house.

At that point Hank’s car pulled up, and he jumped out and came over to them. “We need a state SWAT team,” Jake said.

Hank nodded. “I’m on it.”

“And we have to get that woman out of there.”

Hank looked over and took in the scene, then said, “Let’s do it.”

He made the call about the SWAT team, and then he and Jake quickly decided how they would approach the house. One of them would angle toward the front door from each side, with Jake carrying a stretcher. Other officers, guns trained, would be watching the interior through the door, to detect any movement. In order for someone to shoot Jake or Hank, they would have to be visible to those officers.

But there was definitely going to be a few moments while they put Rachel on the stretcher that they would be exposed. There was simply nothing to do about that; waiting for the SWAT team to arrive and neutralize anyone inside was simply not an option, since there was always the chance that Rachel was still alive.

They headed for the house, and when they were in position, they looked back at the other officers, to make sure there was no reason to hold up.

Then Jake gave the signal, and they jumped out to where Rachel was lying, which was in the potential line of fire. Within just a few seconds, they had her on the stretcher and were carrying her off to the waiting medics.

Jake had no doubt that the effort had been in vain. He had gotten a look at the horrible wounds Rachel had suffered and knew that they were too late. He was sure that had they gotten there ten seconds after she was shot, it would have been too late.

The dire diagnosis was confirmed by the paramedics a few moments later. There were no vital signs at all, and though they quickly rushed her to the hospital and started resuscitation efforts, everyone knew it was going to be a futile effort.

The state police SWAT team arrived, and, as per protocol, Jake turned over the scene to them. They began by operating under the assumption that the shooter was still in the house, but they agreed with Jake that it was unlikely. He had had too much chance to get away, and too little incentive to stay.

It took three hours before they had enough confidence to storm the house, and they did so with practiced precision. As expected, it was empty, and they quickly understood why. A booby trap had been set up, causing a gun to be fired at the door when a wire was tripped.

It seemed obvious that Matt was supposed to have tripped that wire, but Rachel did so instead.

In the process, the prediction was foiled.

For the moment.

Katie was on the scene almost from the beginning. That was no surprise, since pretty much the entire town was there, back behind barricades that were set up to keep everyone at a safe distance. Murders and tense hostage standoffs tend to attract a crowd.

I’ve learned over the years that Katie can be rather persuasive, so I wasn’t taken aback when I saw her standing next to me, moments after the SWAT team declared an all clear.

“How is she?” were the first words out of her mouth.

I looked around to make sure that no one would overhear me, though Katie was the only private citizen in the vicinity. “She died instantly,” I said. I wasn’t sure that was the case, but based on the wounds I saw, it certainly seemed likely.

Katie’s face twitched slightly at the news, and I thought she was going to cry. If she did, it would be the first time I had ever seen her do it. But she maintained her composure, and said, “This is awful, Jake. Just awful.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea who did this?” She seemed to ask this as a formality, as if she was going to use it in the still-unwritten story.

I could have taken refuge in the tried and true, “We’re following some promising leads,” but instead I said, “Not yet.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Look, I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be together a lot, and I can’t worry about whether I’m talking to Katie Sanford the citizen, or Katie Sanford the journalist.”