Without Warning (9 page)

She smiled. “How about Katie Sanford, the friend?”

“That would be my first choice.”

“Good. Then unless you tell me something is on the record, everything you tell me is off. Okay?”

“Perfect.” It was my turn to smile. “Thanks, friend.”

“You’re welcome, buddy.”

With the SWAT team leaving the scene, I was back in charge, and I sent Danny Martinez and his team into the house to do their work. I had my officers take Matt back to the station, to wait for me, while Hank and I surveyed the scene.

There was a first-floor window open in the back, and Hank said, “Easy to get in and out through there.”

The ground below the window was paved, and the dirt around it dry and hard. “I don’t think we’ll get footprints,” I said, “But give it a shot.”

We sent officers around the neighborhood to canvas people, asking if they’d seen anything unusual. I was particularly interested in the streets behind Matt’s house, since it’s likely that’s how the killer exited. They caught the Son of Sam because his car got ticketed on the street near a murder; I doubted very much that we were going to be that lucky.

“He could have waited in the house, shot Matt, and made it out with no problem,” I said. “But he’s very conservative, not taking any chances.”

Hank just nodded his agreement. “Yet opening the capsule seems to have provoked him, made him speed up his pace.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said. “George Myerson yes, but Matt might be different. He might be angry at Matt for today’s article, or he might be afraid that Matt will uncover something about him. Problem is, we won’t know until we know.”

I left Hank at the scene to supervise the officers on-site as well as those canvassing the neighborhood and then went back to the station to interview Matt. He was sitting alone in the interrogation room when I arrived. He had some of Rachel’s blood on his shirt, and appeared badly shaken by the experience. Anyone would have been badly shaken by that experience.

“She’s dead, isn’t she,” he said, not as a question.

“Yes. Why was she on the scene?”

“She was impressed by me,” he said, shaking his head. “How’d that work out for her?”

“This is not your fault, Matt.”

“Of course it is.”

I needed to be his interrogator, and not his shrink, so I repeated, “Why was she on the scene?”

“We met at the Dugout, had a few drinks, and I invited her back to my house. Unfortunately, she accepted.”

“How long were you out of the house today?”

“All day. He could have come in at any time and set things up.” Then, “You know, I’m sitting here talking to you, and I can’t remember her name. She died because she wanted to be with someone who doesn’t even remember her name.”

“Rachel Castro.”

“Rachel Castro,” he repeated. “Rachel Castro.”

I took him through the days since the capsule was opened, to see if anything had happened that might give him an inkling who the killer might be, or why he was a target.

He didn’t have a clue, which put us on equal footing.

“Do you have any idea what the killer was talking about when he accused you of lying?”

“No, and I’ve reread all of the articles. Except for the … the murder of your wife … there was nothing having anything to do with violence. I was fairly new to the job, so I was covering mostly everyday, small-town stuff.”

We talked for another hour, and I told him he would have to dictate and sign a statement. He agreed readily; the evening’s events had removed much of his combative tone. At least for the moment he was a citizen looking to the police for help, not a journalist fighting the system.

“You have to assume you’re still a target,” I said.

“I know; I’ll be careful.”

“We’ll watch your house as much as we can, but we don’t have the manpower to do it full time.”

He nodded his understanding. “I’ll put in an alarm system.” Then he shook his head again. “A little late for Rachel Castro.”

I was not trying to clear Roger Hagel. That was not the purpose of my investigation. My goal was to find the person who murdered Jenny, and in order to do so I was assuming Roger’s innocence. In light of what we found in the capsule, it had the additional benefit of being a logical assumption.

But there had been conclusive evidence against Roger, and that was a factor I did have to consider. Because if he didn’t do it, then someone planted that evidence, someone who probably wanted to deflect attention from himself.

The fact that Roger was himself killed in prison was an interesting aspect of the case. I was not aware of anyone being convicted of that crime, and I had assumed it was a prison fight, or grudge killing. I always considered it a form of justice that he suffered the same fate as Jenny, and it had never entered my mind that his murder had any other significance.

Neither I nor our department investigated Roger’s death; it happened in a state prison and was out of our jurisdiction. But now I needed to know a lot more about it. When I called the state police, they told me that the investigating officer was Sergeant Ryan Tillman, who had retired a year after Roger’s murder.

Tillman was still living in Maine, in Lewiston, and I called him. After I introduced myself, I said, “I’d like to come talk to you about a murder.”

He laughed. “My favorite subject. Has it happened yet, or are you hiring me to do it?”

“It’s happened. Guy by the name of Roger Hagel, murdered in his cell at Warren.” Warren was and is the location of the Maine State Prison.

“Hagel,” he said.

“Right. You remember it?”

“You know how many murders I investigated in thirty-seven years?”

“Nope.”

He laughed again. “Me neither. But I sure as hell remember Hagel.”

We decided to meet at Jackson’s Diner, just outside Lewiston, for lunch. It was almost a two-hour drive for me, so I left right away. There was only one car in the parking lot when I arrived, even though it was at the height of the lunch hour. The fact that the sign on the front of the diner advertised the “best lobster rolls in Maine” clearly did not impress the people of Lewiston, probably because there are at least five thousand restaurants in Maine that all claim to have the ‘best lobster rolls in Maine.”

Strangely enough, there were four tables filled with people having lunch, and I had no idea how they got there. I doubted strongly that there was a subway stop behind Jackson’s, and there were few places in the surrounding area that people could have walked from. I didn’t agonize over the issue, though, because sitting alone at a table in the back was a man I figured was Tillman.

It was. And he had a folder on the table in front of him.

I introduced myself, and he asked, “You like lobster rolls? They got the best in the state here.”

“So I heard.”

We both ordered lobster rolls and sodas, and he said, “What do you want to know about Hagel?”

“Everything you know.”

“Why?”

“Is that important?” I asked.

He nodded. “The ‘why’ is the only thing that’s ever important.”

Fair enough. There was no reason for me not to tell him. “We have reason to believe that he was wrongly convicted in the first place. He should never have been in that prison.”

“He didn’t kill your wife?” When he saw my reaction, he picked up the folder and held it up. “It’s all in here. I do my research; always did. You think I’ve been sitting here trying to decide what to order? I always get the lobster roll.”

“No, I don’t think he killed my wife, which is why I want to know why he was killed.”

“This about the capsule thing?”

“More research?”

He nodded. “On the computer before I got here. That Google thing is amazing.”

“Yes, because of the capsule. Any chance we can get to what you know?”

“Everything I know is in here,” he said, pointing to the folder. “This copy is yours.”

“Thanks, but first I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Okay. I know that Hagel never felt right to me.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was the prison nerd. Stayed to himself, never antagonized anybody, never even talked to anybody. Every guard in the place said the same thing.”

“How did it go down?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say for sure. There was some kind of commotion in the mess hall. Lot of people milling around, with Hagel caught in the middle. Then it stopped as fast as it started, and he was on the floor, with an ice pick in his heart.”

Our waitress brought the lobster rolls, and we stopped talking to bite into them. As far as I was concerned, they were in fact the best lobster rolls in the state of Maine.

I finished mine in about four bites and then asked, “Was there video?”

“There was,” he said. “But it was inconclusive. We narrowed it down to three possibilities, but nobody talked, and there was no way to tell for sure.”

“Any of the three have a grudge against Hagel for any reason?” I asked.

“As far as I could tell, none of them had anything to do with him. But I didn’t push it that hard, because nobody except me gave a shit either way.”

“Why not?”

“Because all three were already serving life sentences. All another trial and conviction would have accomplished would be to cost the state money.”

“So what did you think?”

“Because you’re sitting here talking about it, I think the purpose of the hassle in the mess hall was to kill Hagel; he was the target. Which means that a lot of people were in on it, not just the killer.”

“Why?”

He smiled. “That ‘why’ thing is a bitch, isn’t it? Well, I don’t know why.” He pointed to the folder again. “And you ain’t gonna find it in here.”

Matt Higgins adjusted his views on personal security. Seeing someone die from a bullet that was meant for him seemed to give him something of a different perspective on the matter, as it could be expected to do.

The other motivation for the change was his boss, Katie Sanford, and she laid the situation out with typical clarity. “The paper will pay for someone to watch out for you. If you refuse, then you’re off the story.”

Even if he were not inclined to accept the offer, the threat to take him off the story would have compelled Matt to cave. The “Capsule Case,” as they called it around the office, was his to cover and he wasn’t giving it up to anyone.

But he didn’t go down without a fight. “It’s my story, Katie. Now more than ever.”

“I understand that, but if you’re the next victim, then someone else is going to write it anyway.”

He finally cut a deal with her. She could provide security at his home, and when and if he were out socially. But when he was working the story, he worked it alone. “I can’t talk to informants with someone watching.”

His attitude amused her; it always did. “You have informants?” she asked.

“I will.”

Once they had agreed on the arrangement, Katie left to hire the bodyguard for Matt, and he set out to write the story. It was going to be personal, as the headline “Rachel Castro died instead of me” indicated.

Matt reached out to a few of Rachel’s friends, people he had met at the bar that night. The truth was that he hadn’t known Rachel very well at all, having only spent that brief time with her. But he wanted it to seem as if he knew her, and wanted the readers to feel as if they knew her as well.

He was not going to write the story of a woman who died in the middle of a one-night stand; he was going to write about a woman whose life had value, and who had lost that life much too soon.

And he did. The story was touching and heartfelt, and accomplished what he set out to do. But it also did more; it related the murder back to the capsule predictions and made it obvious that he was meant to be the next victim.

He was careful not to say anything that would seem to be provoking the killer, but also took pains to say that he would not be letting go of the story any time soon. Or ever.

The phone rang a few times while he was writing the piece, but he let it go to voice mail; he needed to concentrate on what he was doing. The capsule case was going to have repercussions for a very long time, and he imagined that every word he wrote would ultimately be scrutinized as a part of history. So he wanted it to be perfect.

Once he finished, he merely pressed a key and the story went up on the website. It represented the difference between modern journalism and the field in prehistoric times, meaning ten years ago. The printed version wouldn’t be available for hours, but it was already up on the web for the world to see.

When Matt checked his messages, he received evidence that the world was, in fact, watching. He had been invited by the
Today Show
to appear the next morning to talk about the case.

Matt instinctively knew that he was at a turning point, and would have to make decisions about how he would handle things from that moment on out.

He had always been ambitious, and he certainly recognized that the capsule story was sent from heaven. It provided a perfect opportunity to make him a journalistic star; he knew that already, but the interest of outlets like the
Today Show
left no doubt.

But this couldn’t just be about celebrity; he also wanted to work the story until he broke it and laid it out for the world. As a sports fan, he was familiar with the use of the word “scoreboard”; it meant that it didn’t matter what you did, all that counted was what the scoreboard said.

In the same fashion, his fame would be fleeting if there was not real substance behind what he wrote. Every journalist in the seventies wrote about Watergate, but it was Woodward and Bernstein that people remember, because they had the goods. And they got those goods not by appearing on television, but by working hard, and working smart.

Of course, neither Woodward nor Bernstein was an expressed target of a violent killer, so that added another dangerous and complicated piece to the puzzle. He had to be always cognizant of that fact, always aware of what was going on around him.

So it would be a balancing act for Matt, but one that he felt he could handle. He was going to be a respected journalist, and he was going to be a celebrity. The two were not mutually exclusive.