Strangled (11 page)

The
day dawned with a chain saw ripping through the darkness and heading toward my handsome head. I bolted upright to see who or what was attacking me, and for that matter, where I had been taken hostage, when I realized I was in a hotel room, a pretty nice one, actually, and the urgent sound emanated from my cell phone, which was lying on the nightstand. I squinted at the alarm clock’s lighted red numbers and saw it was 3:15 a.m.

“Peter, it’s the middle of the fucking night here,” I said, my voice still thick from a sleep that had barely begun.

In response, I heard no response, just silence. I said, “Hello?”

The caller cleared his throat, hesitated, and asked, “Is Jack Flynn there, please?” It was one of those deep voices that called attention to itself, like Ted Baxter’s on the old Mary Tyler Moore show, but with more of an edge.

I replied, “He is.”

Again, no response, not immediately, anyway. The caller cleared his throat again and said, “May I please speak to him?” He calls me at three-fifteen in the morning and he keeps using the word
please,
as if he’s being polite.

I said, “You are.”

“Great. Jack, if I may call you Jack, this is Walt Bedrock from the WBZ-TV morning show. Terrific story in today’s
Record
. Terrific read. We’re interested in getting you on the air so you can tell people about it.”

The name was familiar to me in the way that the names of dozens of lightweight television reporters and anchors are familiar to me, which is to say it was barely familiar at all. Put them all in a room together and you’d discover an immediate cure for even the worst TV addict.

I asked, “Didn’t I already tell people about it — in the
Record
?”

Again he hesitated. Sometimes you’re on someone’s wavelength, other times you couldn’t possibly be further away. Walt Bedrock and I, it was immediately apparent, were like fire and ice, though it was either too early in the morning or too late at night to tell who was which.

“Possibly,” he said, “but —”

I cut him off and asked, “Walt, if I may call you Walt, what’s your viewership over there on the WBZ-TV morning show?”

Don’t ask me why I was this angry at this hour. Maybe because of the hour, though poor Walt Bedrock didn’t know I was trying to sleep 2,800 miles and three time zones away, and he never would. More likely it was my visceral disdain for reporters interviewing reporters, an increasingly common practice among the laziest denizens of my world.

“We are watched in a hundred and ten thousand households a morning.” He said this proudly.

I replied, “The
Record
prints five hundred and twenty thousand papers each day, with an average readership of 1.7 people per paper. Plus there’s however many hundreds of thousands of people who read the
Record
online, freeloaders that they are. Why don’t I just stick with my medium and you stick with yours?”

He hesitated yet again, and then said, “Because this is TV.”

Good answer. Perfect answer. Couldn’t have imagined a better one coming from a guy who undoubtedly sits in a studio for his entire three-hour workday, reads a script, and moves his hands and facial muscles exactly like the producers tell him to through an earpiece that’s never as well hidden as they think.

I said, “Walt, I’m going to do you a favor. We’ve never met, but I’ve got the kind of face that was born to be in newspapers. Trust me, you put me on the air and you’ll shrink to sixty thousand viewers that day, most of whom would have the last name of Flynn. And it’s not a particularly desirable demographic for advertisers. Thank you anyway.”

And I hung up. No sooner than I had sprawled out anew did the phone ring again.

“Jack Flynn here,” I said.

“Jack, you’re a superstar. You’re a real fucking superstar, but you probably know that already.”

“I do. Who’s calling?”

His voice, by the way, was inexplicably strong and nasally at the same time, like a football player addicted to Afrin.

“It’s Brett. Brett Faldo. Senior producer from the
Today
show. Meredith and Matt asked me to call you. They absolutely love your story in today’s paper. They want to get you on the air ASAP, as in this morning. We’re not even going to make you go into the remote studio. We’ll send a crew over to your place to make this easy on everybody.”

“Who are Meredith and Matt?”

He laughed his nasally, jocular little laugh, incredulous, as if I had asked who Christ was. He said, “Just give me an address. You’re a hero, and you’re going to make this a great show.”

I’m a hero. I’m a superstar. A killer emerges from a four-decade hibernation, or maybe a new killer comes along with a passion for history, decides to contact me with a couple of cryptic notes and the driver’s licenses of a pair of dead women, and that makes me, in the eyes of the broadcast-news media world, not merely a superstar but a hero as well.

I should have anticipated this, and I guess to a certain extent I probably did. But there’s a difference between anticipating something and preparing for it. I had no set answer, which may have been just as well, because that brought me to my default answer whenever a television show asked me on as a guest, which was, in a word, no. What I had said to Walt Bedrock about having a face meant for newspapers wasn’t entirely untrue — though maybe a little bit so.

I said, “Meredith and Matt, they’re on really early, right?”

“Every day, yes.” Proud of this. Very proud.

I said, “The problem is, I don’t get up that early.”

He gave me that same laugh. I’m betting he used to give Tom Brokaw that same laugh regardless of how bad the jokes may have been. Brian Williams, that’s probably a different story; he’s supposed to be legitimately funny, though I bet Brett, his nose constantly twitching for the next story or office politics vibration, can’t tell the difference.

“Like I said,” he said, his tone clicking ever so slightly from solicitous to demanding, “we’ll make this easy on everyone. Meredith and Matt really want this to happen. I’m not going to tell them it can’t. I’ll have a crew over to your place in thirty minutes. Just tell me where.”

“I could, Brett. But the problem is, I’m not there. I’d love to help you, Meredith, and Matt out, but I’m working on a story for tomorrow’s
Record
. I’ve got my own job to do, Brett. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to run and do it now. Thanks for your kind offer.”

I heard him whining into the phone as I hung up.

Not ten seconds later, the phone chimed again.

“Yeah, Flynn here.”

“Jack, Regis Philbin here…”

Seriously, it was Regis Philbin. I love the man, I really do, but now was not the time to profess it. I write a story destined to rock my native Boston right to its parochial core, and this is how it begins to unwind, with a bunch of TV people wanting to piggyback on what they don’t have. And I thought it was newspapers that were in trouble. Well, okay, maybe we are as well, but at least there’s some honor to it.

As soon as I extricated myself — politely so — from that offer, I turned my phone off, rose from bed, and gazed out the window at the flashing neon up and down the Vegas strip — Paris to my left, New York–New York and the Bellagio across the street, the outdated Bally’s to my right. I wondered if my gamble would pay off today, not just for me but for women I didn’t yet know, women who were marked to die. Which is when it hit me. Most stories, truth be told, were little more than an exercise in this grand and illustrious business of reporting. If you get it, terrific, you make a splash, maybe cause some humiliation, perhaps even a resignation. Believe me, been there, done that, with mayors and governors and even a president. But this one, this one was different. People’s lives were on the line, people I didn’t know. A killer might have been playing games with these notes and driver’s licenses and all that, but it wasn’t a game at all. I was in the middle of it, but felt like a mere conduit, working on behalf of people I would probably never know.

I did know this, though: I needed a good hand, I needed it fast, or more people, myself possibly included, were destined to die.

At
about nine o’clock, I slowly drove down Rodeo Road, a street, I’m fairly certain, that was pronounced like the sporting event with the cowboys on the bucking broncos, and not the more affected shopping boulevard that runs through the heart of Beverly Hills. I once quite literally bumped into Angelina Jolie on that boulevard, but that’s not really the point here. I’d bet Mongillo’s lunch money that I wasn’t going to run into her today.

Still, the houses surprised me for their size, which is to say they were large, as well as for their condition, which was well kept. These were nice homes painted in subtle, sophisticated colors with wide, irrigated lawns and freshly trimmed fauna. All very un–Las Vegas — although what did I expect, giant lighted flamingos in residential developments? Some of the houses had big bay windows, others had triple-car garages. It appeared very quiet, this neighborhood, meaning there weren’t kids running around the streets playing kick the can, but maybe that’s because kids don’t play that anymore.

Anyway, 284 Rodeo Road was a gray center-entrance house with two levels and a brick driveway. More important, it was also where Bob Walters had come to live after retiring from the Boston Police Department, which gets back to the point about me being surprised. This didn’t look like the kind of street where old men on a public-service pension could afford to retire, but maybe he bought at just the right time, as it was being built, or maybe he had family money on one side or the other. People and money, I’ve learned in life, will always surprise you in ways good and bad.

I glided past the house to get a sense of what I was dealing with, as well as to stall for a little more time, and a block or two down pulled a U-turn and circled back. The garage doors were closed, as was the center door. The windows were all pulled shut, some of them darkened by drawn shades or curtains. The sprinklers were not on, but then again, they weren’t on any other lawns, either. Maybe that whole thing about not watering the grass while the sun beats down on it is true. But how would I know? I live in a downtown condominium.

All of this is to say that it didn’t look like there was anyone home, or if there was, it didn’t appear that they had jumped out of bed and happily embraced the new day, as I had nearly six hours earlier. I knew Walters’s phone number and could call, but why would I do that after flying all the way across the country to knock on his door? If he wasn’t home, I wouldn’t leave a note, because the element of surprise was an advantage I wasn’t ready to cede. No, I’d end up staking out his place for pretty much the entire day if I had to. The big problem would come if he and his wife were away on vacation, but they already lived in Vegas — where the hell would they go?

I pulled up to the curb next to the neat sidewalk and parked. “Hello, Detective, Jack Flynn, it’s an honor to meet you. I’ve come a long way to ask you a few questions and am hoping you can be of help.”

That was me, practicing. I don’t usually do that, but I was uncharacteristically nervous over this encounter, if they were home to have one. I needed to get this right.

A couple of more sessions like that, and then I opened the door, pulled myself out of the rental car, and walked up to the house, carrying just a blank legal pad in my hands. The day, by the way, was nothing shy of brilliant, with a big sun floating in the shallow blue sky and temperatures that felt like the low seventies, cooled with just a whisper of a desert breeze. Beats the hell out of a Florida retirement, that’s for sure.

I rang the doorbell but didn’t hear the chiming sound inside, so I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t get any sort of response. I stood for several long seconds waiting, then opened the screen door and knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again. Still nothing. No dogs barking, cats meowing, home owners threatening me to get off their property. Just empty, dead air, sonorously punctuated by a few birds chirping from a distant tree.

I knocked a final time, to the same lack of response, so I shut the screen door and walked back to my car. I didn’t like the feel of this, but couldn’t figure out why.

I fidgeted with my cell phone, wondering if I should call Walters’s number to make sure he wasn’t home. He was probably running errands with his wife, or at a doctor’s appointment. My worst case, he was on that vacation I feared, maybe off visiting a grandchild back in Massachusetts. We could have passed each other at the airport here or in Boston, or maybe our planes roared by each other thirty-three thousand feet in the sky. If so, at least I got the frequent-flier miles out of the trip.

Then something occurred to me: Maybe he was inside, dead. Maybe whoever had been trying to kill me killed him. It wasn’t necessarily a rational thought, but these weren’t necessarily rational times. People kept indiscriminately dying, or, as in my case, nearly dying, and there was no logical reason to think that pattern was about to stop or change.

I started to punch out his phone number, urgently now, when a red van pulled up to the curb behind my car, stopping abruptly a few feet from my back bumper. For some reason, it made me think of how I had declined the insurance at the car rental counter, because I’m told that’s what you’re always supposed to do. Anyway, the driver’s-side door flung open and a twentysomething kid, a guy, in loose jeans and a T-shirt, trotted up to the front door holding a small brown paper bag. He opened the screen door and left the small bag in the gap between the doors. Two seconds later, he was gone.

I sat in my idling car with the cell phone in my hand and my sunglasses off, wondering what to do next. I didn’t wonder for long. Maybe a minute later, the heavy storm door opened about halfway. I could see the face of an older woman through the screen. She looked around her yard quickly, picked up the bag, and shut the door tight. That was that.

I jumped out of the car, walked briskly back to the front door, and knocked. Again, no answer. So I knocked louder. No answer. If I’d knocked any louder, I’d have ended up knocking the fucking door down, so I backed off, quite literally, and walked across the lawn and around to the rear of the house.

I’ll be honest here: I wanted to look in the windows. If you look in the front windows and a neighbor happens to see you, you’re what’s known as a Peeping Tom. If you look in the back windows where no one sees you, you’re what’s known as an intrepid reporter. They don’t teach you these things at the Columbia School of Journalism, though they do at my alma mater, the School of Hard Knocks.

The backyard, by the way, was as lush and well kept as the front, with a carefully edged garden tucked close to the foundation of the house, and a stone patio leading to the back door. I walked up to the door, which, unlike the front, had two big windows, and looked inside.

I was looking into the kitchen, which seemed to be in need of some updating. My eyes were scanning along the cabinets and countertops and appliances when I saw a flash of movement. Sitting at a small table pushed up against a wall was a woman, undoubtedly the same one who came to the front door. She was sitting alone, sipping from a glass.

On the table before her was a bottle that looked to be vodka, and not one of the fancy new labels from countries I’ve never been to, but some plain old call brand. Beside the bottle was the brown paper bag on its side. The delivery had been from a local liquor store. I gazed back at the counter and saw that a similar but empty bottle sat next to the sink.

As I watched, she unscrewed the bottle and refilled her lowball glass, taking a long swig as she stared straight ahead at the pale green wall. I noticed on the wall some sort of embroidered poem that involved the words
home
and
love,
a piece of household kitsch, but was too far away to read anything more.

I stood in the back doorway, the warm desert sun on my neck, playing the unintentional role of the voyeur in what I immediately understood was this woman’s sad and painful life. If anyone saw me, I was as good as arrested, though maybe the Las Vegas jail might be the safest place I could be. I watched as she finished off her drink and tilted the bottle into her glass yet again, spilling a few drops of vodka on the wooden top of her table. She drank again as she stared at things I would never be able to see.

I knocked. It was a soft knock at first, three times against the window in the door. I didn’t want to startle her, and I didn’t. She slowly turned her head in my direction. When her gaze set upon the door, she squinted as if she couldn’t understand what she saw. She didn’t move, though.

So I knocked again, a little harder this time. She slowly pulled herself to her feet and walked unsteadily across the tiled kitchen floor. She was wearing that kind of floral housedress that old ladies tend to wear, formless and unstylish. My guess was that she hadn’t been planning on seeing anyone that day.

When she got to the door, our eyes met through the glass. Hers were bloodshot, exhausted, and slightly confused — yet still oddly serene. She looked at me for a long, awkward, silent moment, and then simply opened the door.

“I thought I left my MasterCard number with the clerk,” she said. Her words were soft yet lurching, the end of one running into the beginning of another.

“I’m not with the liquor store, Mrs. Walters.”

Unfazed, she said, “Come in.” She walked unsteadily back to the kitchen table, took her seat, and asked, “Then who are you?”

I was still standing awkwardly in the doorway. I asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

She motioned to the chair. I sat and gave her my whole Jack-Flynn-from-the-
Boston
-
Record
thing. She remained entirely unimpressed, with my presence, with my position, with the distance I had traveled to be here.

“What is it you want?” she asked.

Her words came out lazy and a little bit warped. She took a sip out of her glass, the bottle still tall before her, doing nothing to hide the fact she was drinking vodka, straight up, at nine-thirty in the morning.

“I was hoping to talk with your husband,” I said.

This finally got a rise out of her.

“My husband,” she said dramatically, slurring even more the louder she spoke. She squinted at me and added, “You want to speak to my husband?”

Sometimes, in journalism, you have to play along, so I nodded and said without an ounce of disrespect, “Yes, Mrs. Walters, I was hoping to have a word with your husband.”

She took a long gulp of vodka and refilled her glass, never offering me any, not that I would have accepted. She was looking down at the table for so long that I was starting to think I had lost her. Then she cast a glance at me and said, “About what?”

“The Boston Strangler.”

I mean, why lie? Why wander down all sorts of hazy dead-end avenues with a woman too drunk to guide me on a clear path to the place I needed to go? At least the truth would set me forth in the right direction.

Well, maybe not. She coughed loud and hard, reflexively grabbing at her chest in that melodramatic way some people have of showing their distress. When she collected herself, she walked over to the kitchen sink and poured water from the tap into a glass. When she got back to the table, she put the glass down, untouched, and took another sip of booze.

Finally, she said, “You want to speak to my husband about the Boston Strangler?”

Her face was contorting as she spoke, her words slurring more now than the few minutes before when I arrived. This was not going as planned, but should be just a small obstacle, provided I didn’t lose patience.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “That’s why I came out here from Boston.”

“What about the Strangler?” she asked. Her words were so wobbly, they almost fell out of her slanted mouth and smashed on the floor.

I fidgeted now, growing uneasy, thinking for the first time that Mrs. Walters might prove to be a bigger obstacle than I had anticipated. I said, “Lots of things, ma’am. I’d rather just ask your husband.”

In one shockingly smooth motion, she picked up her lowball glass and flung it across the kitchen. I whirled around to see it explode against her wooden cabinets, the force sending a spray of booze and shards in all directions.

She screamed, “Damn my husband. Damn the Boston Strangler. And damn you for asking about them.”

All right, so this wasn’t precisely the reaction I had expected to get. I had expected to be greeted at the door by a diminutive elderly woman who would show me into a television room where her husband, a retired Boston Police detective, would pull out his scrapbooks and relive the case with me as his wife readied us some raisin scones in the kitchen.

I wanted to get the hell out of this house, and, for that matter, get the hell out of Vegas, but I sure as hell wasn’t in a position to do that now. I said, “Mrs. Walters, I’m sorry for upsetting you. But what is it? What about the Strangler upsets you so much? That was forty years ago.”

As I was asking this, it occurred to me there might be an obvious answer: He killed people. He violated the civility and livability of a city. He defeated her husband. Maybe she meant all that, but here’s what she said: “He ruined my life.” And after she said it, she looked down at the top of her wooden table and began to sob — one of those tearful, shoulder-shaking sobs that can’t be comforted.

A moment later, she looked back up at me with glistening eyes and said, “He ruined my whole damned life. He took my husband from me. He took my marriage from me. He left me with nothing to look forward to but my next glass of booze.”

“How, ma’am?”

She raged, “Fuck you. Fuck you for coming into my life and questioning what I have to say.” Then she sobbed again.

I asked, “Ma’am, is your husband here?”

“Fuck him, too. Go tell him you want to talk about his Boston Strangler. Go tell him that. And tell him that they ruined my life, both of them.”

“Where, ma’am? Where can I find him?”

When she looked at me, there was fury in her eyes. I feared that she might throw her water glass, or even the half-filled bottle of vodka.