Strangled (25 page)

“Who is it?” I yelled, my voice reverberating off the two walls. Again I got no answer, but I didn’t think I would; part of the reason for yelling was so Hank Sweeney could hear me out on the street.

I rose into a crouching position and felt around my knees — carefully. But just as I made contact with my hands, whoever it was, whatever it was, lunged at me, driving into my waist and chest, trying to take me down onto the undoubtedly urine-stained floor of this ancient passageway yet again.

I retaliated hard, quite literally fighting for my life. I grabbed he/she/it, forcing it off me, and then pinning it to the ground as I climbed on top of it, my face grazing one of the side walls. But still it wouldn’t give up, thrashing as it was. It felt solid. It felt muscular.

It felt, um, furry.

So I cupped my hands, ran them across the squirming figure, up and down in unison, until I felt an unmistakable shape I’ve felt thousands of times before: a dog’s head.

I felt its forehead. I felt its muzzle. I felt its floppy ears. I was relieved until the second I wasn’t, which was when it occurred to me that it could be a vicious pit bull or an aggressive rottweiler, sent into this enclosed space to tear me apart like the lions used to kill Roman peasants.

I grabbed whatever it was by the muzzle and held it closed with one hand, hearing a soft whimper in response. I patted around the animal’s neck with my other hand until I felt a collar, and I slipped my fingers inside. I struggled awkwardly to my feet, with both my hands otherwise involved in this creature, and began yanking him toward the direction from whence I came.

He or she was a willing prisoner, and reasonably polite, given the circumstances, passing along with me as I backed toward the entrance. My shoulders kept colliding with the walls, sending me staggering, but I never lost my grip on his nose or his neck.

And finally, I felt a little breeze on my neck and the sides of my face. The air became softer, less pungent, and a streetlight glowed from above. My eyes readjusted for a long moment, and I looked down at my hands to see a singularly frightened but particularly handsome black Labrador retriever staring at me with his enormous brown eyes. I let go of his muzzle, but not his collar.

Immediately, he hung his jaw open, gulping at air, panting hard. I knew how he felt. Then he voluntarily went into a sitting position in front of me, his eyes never leaving mine.

“What the hell were you doing in there?” I asked him.

He didn’t respond.

Well, actually, that’s not entirely true. He banged his tail hard on the pavement about half a dozen times, still staring at me staring at him.

For Hank Sweeney’s benefit, I said, “What’s a good dog like you doing in a dark alley like that?”

More tail thumping. I let go of his collar and he didn’t move away from me. Instead, he scratched at my leg with his left paw.

I crouched back down, this time in a show of peace. He licked me hard across my face, his grainy tongue seeming to pause on my cheek before it swept against my nose. I laughed, which was no small feat on this night, and memories, nice memories, wonderful memories, of my own golden retriever, Baker, dead a year now, washed through my head. So I pressed my face against his and rubbed the soft underside of his chin.

Which is when I felt it, an object jutting out of the bottom of his collar, much like a cask a Saint Bernard would carry. I maneuvered his collar around until the object was illuminated by the streetlamp. It was an envelope, business-size, folded over, fastened by a pin. I pulled it off delicately so as to not prick my new friend. Through the dark haze, I saw that the envelope bore the name Jack Flynn. I think I’ve heard of the guy. Tall. Handsome. Brave.

I was getting punchy, obviously, or maybe just relieved that I got out of that passageway alive. I pulled the dog by the collar down to the near end of Winter Place, out onto Winter Street, and toward Boston Common. I didn’t want to let go, because I didn’t want him to get hit by a car. He walked agreeably, nearly appreciatively, beside me.

Out on the main intersection, where the passing traffic gave me the feeling of safety, I pulled him into a Bank of America storefront that contained an ATM. It was relatively clean, and bright, and enclosed, all good things at the moment. We were alone in there, so I let go of his collar. He sprawled out on the floor with a short groan, followed by a long sigh, as I opened the envelope. I tried to be careful in tearing the paper in case there was any forensic evidence involved.

Inside, I felt a heavy laminated card, and my heart immediately sank into my stomach: a driver’s license, another dead woman, killed on my watch, as I did too little to stop it. I held the license in my hand for what felt like a long minute without looking at it, frustration and helplessness seeping through every pore of my exhausted body. My prior relief devolved into contained fury. The dog sprawled on the floor with his eyes at half-mast. A car honked its horn out on Tremont Street. A group of teenagers laughed as they strode past on the sidewalk.

I slowly lifted the license to my eyes. I wasn’t in any rush to see the next victim, because it didn’t really do me — or her — any good to know. My only job here, courtesy of the Phantom, wasn’t to help or to stop or to investigate, but merely to convey. Another day, another license, another dead woman somewhere in Boston. How many more women would die before this story came to an end?

I flicked the license over and stared at it, but what I saw didn’t fully, immediately register. The face, it was familiar, the way her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Her eyes were piercing, and she was giving this look as if she was about to call out my name, not in any sort of plea, but casually, like she had a million times before.
Where do you want to eat. What movie do you want to see. Let’s go grab a drink after work.

I melted at her image, almost as if I hadn’t realized yet why I was seeing it.

And then I did, and I screamed, except nothing would come out. Finally, with blurred vision and with trembling hands, I read her name, just to be sure I hadn’t lost my mind, that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on my brain. But it was there in black and white, the newest victim of the Phantom Fiend.

Elizabeth Riggs.

Next
thing I knew, the door of the ATM storefront blasted open, and I looked up to see Hank Sweeney, sweating and panting, lunging toward me. Much later, I’d ask him why he didn’t simply buzz the door open with his bank card rather than kick it down with his foot. And at that time, he’d explain to me that he didn’t carry a card because he didn’t trust what he called those “fancy-schmancy financial gimmicks,” adding, “I’m a cash-and-carry kind of guy.”

On his end of the two-way radio connection, he thought I was a man in distress. And I was, just not in the way he expected. I was hunched over the counter with the ATM deposit envelopes and the pens chained to the faux-wood top. I showed him the license in my hand and he said, “Oh God. That son of a fucking bitch.”

By the way, alarms were sounding, courtesy of Hank and the broken door. I have virtually no doubt that our images were clearly captured on the two surveillance cameras inside, and soon enough, our faces would be hanging on bulletin boards in post offices as far away as Nebraska and Wyoming.

He grabbed me by the arm and the two of us bolted out the door and across Tremont Street toward his parked car. When I put my fingers on the door handle, a synapse fired in my brain and I exclaimed, “Fuck!” I looked across the roof of the car at Hank and said, “I’ll be right back.” And I bolted across the street from whence I came, weaving amid the late-night traffic.

When I got to the ATM, the dog was still inside — sitting by the glass door, which was broken but shut, just staring out into the dark street. When he saw me approach, he stood up and began to pace, his tail furiously wagging. When I stepped inside, he was crying with joy.

I scooped him up in my arms, all seventy or so pounds of him, and scampered back across the street, carrying him all the way to Hank’s car, his head resting placidly on my shoulder, his wet muzzle pushing against my ear. When I pushed him into the backseat, Hank flatly said, “You’re going to put that beast in my nice clean car?” I gave him a look.

Hank asked, “How do we know he doesn’t bite?”

I looked back at the dog, who had already spread himself out across the seat, panting softly, staring straight ahead in contentment. I said, “Hank, he’s wondering the exact same thing about you. Shut up and drive.”

So he threw the car into drive — Hank, not the dog, though where we were heading, I neither knew nor particularly cared. I pulled my cell phone out, located Elizabeth Riggs’s cell phone number on my speed dial, and pressed Call.

It took an agonizing moment to connect, and finally I heard a ring. Then another. And another — five times in all. Her recorded voice came on the line and said, “You’ve reached Elizabeth. You don’t need me to explain what to do.” And then a beep. The futility of this exercise was starting to overtake me, yet I left a message anyway. You don’t have anything when you don’t have hope.

“Elizabeth, Jack. This is an emergency. Call me immediately. Immediately. Please.” And I hung up.

I located her home number on my speed dial and pressed Call. Same drill — another agonizing moment, then a ring, followed by several more, followed by her voice saying, “Sorry I’m not around. Let me know who it is, and we’ll talk soon.”

“Elizabeth, Jack. Sorry for the hour, but this is really, really important. Call me ASAP on my cell.”

I stared at my cell, willing it to ring. In the meantime, I punched out 411 and asked an operator to connect me to San Francisco Police. I thought of that night at the San Francisco Airport, her sidling up to me, the casual banter, the look she gave me after I kissed her on the cheek, her bombshell announcement that she was pregnant.

And then it struck me like a lightning bolt that someone had followed me out to Las Vegas, and had seen me in the waiting lounge with Elizabeth. He undoubtedly assumed we were lovers, and that’s why he targeted her now.

“Hold the line, please, for the San Francisco Police Department.” That was the woman from directory assistance, patching me through.

Another woman answered the phone and informed me that this call was being recorded. I told her that someone in her city might be in trouble. She asked, skeptically, what I meant. Good question. I told her I had received an ominous threat. She asked the address. I gave it to her. Then I gave her my number.

That call ended, I looked at Hank and said, “Where are we headed?”

“The newsroom. It’s where you do your best thinking.” And then he added, “You need to call Boston PD.”

I did. He was right. But something was holding me back, that something known as distrust. Still, his first simple answer — “the newsroom” — jarred something in my head, and I pulled my phone open again, dialed 411, and asked for the number for
The New York Times
.

After an infuriating five-minute session with the newspaper’s automatic telephone system, a real live human being finally picked up a phone, announcing in a bored voice, “National Desk.” It was now 1:45 a.m. I suspected they were just past deadline for their final edition.

I said, “This is Jack Flynn. I’m a reporter for the
Boston Record
. Is the national editor on duty around?”

“You’re talking to him.” No name, no nothing. His voice remained every bit as bored and almost painstakingly unimpressed by the announcement of my identity. I mean, I assumed everyone at
The Times
knew who I was, dating back to that botched presidential assassination deal a few years back when I kicked the shit out of them for a month straight on the biggest story in the world. And here I was at the heart of another story that was increasingly national in scope.

I said, “Sir, this is something of a life-and-death emergency. I’m the
Record
’s reporter on the Phantom Fiend/Boston Strangler story. I desperately need to contact your San Francisco reporter, Elizabeth Riggs, but she’s not answering her home or cell phone number. Do you know if she’s on the road? Have you talked to her recently?”

“Tell me your name again.”

Good Christ. Your name would have to be Bartleby Hornsby III to have any impact on these clowns, and then the most he’d probably ask is if I had a brother who went to Deerfield or Exeter.

“Jack Flynn,” I said, gritting my teeth.

Hank was steering through the Theater District now, such as it is in Boston, heading toward the highway for the short jaunt to the
Record
.

“And why do you need her?” Bored as ever, the words coming out of his mouth like marshmallows.

I said, “She may be in grave danger. Look, I’m a
Record
reporter. I’m covering this story. If it helps at all,
The Times
has twice offered me a job.”

Working in the company cafeteria.

I fell silent. I could hear him pecking around a keyboard, presumably with his fingers. And then he said, sleepily, “Our file shows she’s in Boston on assignment.”

My heart fell even further, if that’s possible, and I didn’t think it was. One more bit of bad news and the thing would be beating in the soles of my feet — or not beating at all.

I said, “When did she get here and where is she staying?”

More silence, though I could again hear the pecking in the near background.

He cleared his throat. “Tell me your name again,” he said.

I did. Then he said, “The Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. I have her down in Room 533. She was supposed to have arrived yesterday.”

I hung up without saying good-bye, and all but screamed at Hank to point the car toward Copley Square, which he did.

On the way crosstown, on the virtually empty streets, I punched out 411 again and asked for the hotel number. It rang through and a man in an unfamiliar accent — probably best known as hotelier — answered the phone. When I asked for Elizabeth Riggs’s room, he hesitated for what felt like forever, asked me to spell it, put me on hold, and then got back on the line.

“I’ll put you right through, sir,” he said. And he did.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, then four, before it kicked over to an automated voice system with a generic woman’s voice.

“Elizabeth, Jack. Call me,” I pleaded.

I hung up. We were about a minute out, zipping through the South End, Hank intent behind the wheel, the dog stretched out and sound asleep already in the back, and me just about climbing onto the roof of the car.

About thirty seconds out, and my cell phone rang. Hank whispered, “Thank God.” The dog raised his head. I waited until the second ring, saw that the caller ID said “Unavailable,” which could well be the designation for a big hotel, and answered the phone with high hopes.

“Jack here.”

Silence.

Well, not exactly silence, but a muffled noise, which could have been a woman fighting off an attacker, fighting for her life in a hotel room that might be the last place she’d ever see.

I just about shouted, “Who’s there?”

More muffled sounds, as if someone’s hand was cupped over the phone to mask the commotion in the background. And then I heard a vaguely familiar male voice say to me, “Jack, I’m in some trouble. I need your help.”

Vinny Mongillo.

But the thing was, it sounded nothing like the Vinny that I knew so well. This Vinny was seriously distressed and somewhat embarrassed. He sounded exhausted, and scared.

I said, “Vin, I’m in the middle of a world of trouble right now. Tell me fast.”

And unlike the typical Vinny Mongillo, who would have imparted some sort of sarcastic or even caustic comment here, he did.

“I’ve been taken into custody by the Boston Police. They’re about to charge me with something in relation to the Boston Strangler case. It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think either.”

Hank was wheeling around the hotel, pulling up to the side entrance. My mind flashed to Vinny’s letter in the garage on Rodeo Road — a letter that was still in my pocket at that moment. Was I missing something? Was there a link I hadn’t made, a connection I couldn’t grasp? Was Vinny capable of doing something that I couldn’t even imagine?

He continued, “I’m going to need a lawyer and some bail. I’m in headquarters. This is the only call they’re giving me. And you and I desperately need to speak. Can you get here as soon as possible?”

This was a lot to process. By now the car was stopped. Hank was out his door. I said, “Vinny, soon as I can. I have something else I’m taking care of right now, but soon as I can.”

And I leapt out. Hank and I dashed side by side through the door. Inside, I slammed my hand against the elevator call button. A bell dinged, the doors opened, and we were in business. The ride up felt like we were climbing Mount Everest. When we hit the top, we ran left, then right, then right again, and there we were, the two of us, Hank and me, standing directly outside of Room 533. He glanced at me and I glanced at him. That’s when I reached out and firmly knocked.