By Blood Written (31 page)

“Agent Powell?” the gruff voice said.

“Hello, Max. I’ve been waiting for your call.”

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Bransford offered.

“Which do you want first?”

Hank felt his chest weigh down.
Damn
, he thought.

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go with the good.”

“I’ll fax you the whole report, but the bottom line is we got a match. The blood in the trunk positively matches that of Allison May Matthews. It’s going to take a couple of weeks to get a full DNA workup, but right now it looks like the same blood was at the murder scene, on the coveralls we found in the Dumpster, and in the trunk of the rental Schiftmann had when he was in Nashville.”

“That’s it,” Hank said, the heaviness in his chest lifting.

Not lifting, but releasing, exploding, like a fireworks display that, for a brief moment, let him drop his professional detachment. “Max, we’ve got him! We’ve got the son of a bitch! He’s toast.”

“I know, Hank. We did it. All of us. The DA is taking the case to the grand jury after their lunch break. They’ve already heard all of the evidence except the blood match-up.

After they get that, the DA will get the indictment processed, issue a warrant for Schiftmann’s arrest, and start extradition proceedings.”

Hank gripped the phone tightly and realized he was smiling so hard his jaw hurt. “Fantastic! This is incredible. But wait? You said there was bad news.”

“The bad news is somebody leaked the story to the press.

Andy Parks from the Chattanooga paper—”

“The same guy who wrote the other story,” Hank interrupted.

“Yeah, that’s him. He went to the DA with everything that had gone on in the grand jury room.”

“Jesus, how’d he get that?”

“I don’t know, but when the DA finds out, I wouldn’t want to be in their moccasins. He’s loaded for bear. But Collier made him a deal, if he’d hold off on printing the story …”

“He’d give him a heads-up on the indictment.”

“That’s it,” Bransford said.

“When’s the story supposed to break?” Hank asked.

“Sometime this weekend.”

“That means Schiftmann will have advance warning.”

“Maybe not,” Bransford said. “It’s just the Chattanooga paper.”

Hank shook his head. “No, not this story. This one’ll be all over. Probably be the lead story on the networks Sunday night. Schiftmann’s going to find out for sure. No telling what he’ll do.”

“Think he might rabbit?”

Hank shrugged. “Who knows? He’s got money, resources.

He’s smart.”

“Yeah, and he’s famous. His picture was in
Entertainment
Weekly
and
People
magazine last week. How’s he going to hide?”

Hank sat silently for a moment, thinking.

“You there?” Bransford asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here. Max, we already know how smart this guy is. He’s killed at least thirteen people we know of.

He’s bound to know that sooner or later, something like this could happen.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking this guy’s already got an escape route. He’s got a Plan B in place, and if we’ve got a chance of actually seeing him in court, then we better not let the SOB out of our sight between now and the time the New York City police take him into custody.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting,” Hank offered, “that I call the NYC Field Office and have this guy put under twenty-four-hour surveillance. I don’t want him to go into a public bathroom without one of my guys standing outside the stall waiting for him.”

“All right,” Max Bransford said. “Let’s nail this bastard.”

Hank smiled. “It’ll be a pleasure.”

Andy Parks woke up early that Sunday morning, dressed quickly, and left his apartment at the Metro Manor. He drove his rusting Datsun 280Z out of the basement garage and turned left onto the James Robertson Parkway. At seven A.M. on a Sunday morning, there was practically no traffic.

The day held promise of warm spring sunshine and clear skies. Andy’s stomach churned in anticipation. This was the biggest story he’d ever covered in his life. If this story broke like he hoped, a little resume dusting-off would be in order.

He had worked like a demon these past four or five days.

He’d researched Schiftmann’s life and work, read three of his books, checked and cross-checked every element of the story. He had kept his word to the district attorney, and Collier had done right by him.

Andy sped up to make the light at Broadway, then turned right and headed toward Vanderbilt University. There was a small coffee and bagel place on Twenty-first Avenue across from the law school that got the Chattanooga paper every day. Five minutes later, he pulled the 280Z into a parking space out front and almost jumped out of the car.

He opened the door, nodded to Gretchen behind the counter, and went straight to the long rack of newspapers against the far wall. The wooden bins held the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and papers from Birmingham, Atlanta, Miami, and, at the far end of the bins, Chattanooga.

“The usual, Andy?” Gretchen called.

“Yeah,” Andy nodded, preoccupied. He grabbed the top copy of the
News-Free Press
and smiled. There, in sixty-point bold block type, over the lead story for the Sunday edition, was the headline that Andy had suggested the afternoon before:

BEST-SELLING AUTHOR TO BE INDICTED

IN BRUTAL DOUBLE MURDER

Andy laughed out loud and flapped the paper open, scanning his lead to see if the editor had changed it.

NASHVILLE, March 27—The Davidson County Grand Jury will indict
New York Times
best-selling author Michael Schiftmann on two counts of first-degree murder tomorrow in the brutal February slaying of two MTSU coeds. District Attorney T. Robert Collier will make the announcement at a press conference scheduled for 10 A.M. Monday.

Andy folded the paper under his arm and stepped between the empty tables over to the counter, where his double latte with an extra shot of espresso was already waiting for him.

Gretchen, the thin, dark-haired Vanderbilt sophomore with an eyebrow ring, gave him a look as he approached.

“What’s going on with you?” she asked. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary. What, did you get lucky last night or what?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it,” he said. “I got lucky.” He reached into his wallet and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Keep it,”

he said.

“Wow, you did get lucky last night,” Gretchen said.

Andy started to walk away, then turned back to her, grinning again. “Gretchen, you ever hit a home run before? I mean, really hit one out of the park?”

Sunday afternoon, Manhattan

Taylor Robinson’s violent retching echoed down the hallway of her empty office building.

Inside the women’s restroom, she was on her knees in a stall, her hands wrapped around the cold porcelain, not even bothering to hold her hair back. A ferocious wave of nausea swept over her once more, carrying her torso forward as she vomited again. This time, there was little left inside her. A thin trail of slime hung out of her mouth, into the putrid water.

She’d never felt so ill in her life. Her chest hurt; her ribs ached. Her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head. Her face and neck had broken out in a frigid sweat.

She struggled to get her breath, to try and relax before her heart exploded in her chest.

Then it hit again, a rolling, convulsive paroxysm that began deep in her gut and echoed throughout her abdomen and up into her throat. Her belly was empty, wrung completely out. Nothing came out this time, but the spasm rolled through the top half of her body. As she leaned over the toilet, the almost inhuman noise that came out of her sounded like a disembodied, continuous, agonizing wail.

Inside her head, she backed away from it all, as if she were watching someone else from the outside. The pain in her body seemed to lessen. She wondered if it was possible to die from retching.

And then it seemed to pass, at least for a moment.

Taylor leaned back, her hips on the floor, her back against the metal partition, her legs folded up, her knees against her chest. She tried to loosen her chest, to breathe slowly and deeply, to stop the panicked, shallow panting.

She stared at the scratched gray paint in front of her. This seemed suddenly like a dream, as if this couldn’t really be happening.

No
, she thought, the voice in her head shouting.
This is
happening! This is real!

The only thing she could be grateful for at this moment was that at least she was alone. She had time to gather her wits, to try and get her head around this.

Brett Silverman, Michael’s editor, had called her, tracked her down on the cell phone. Brett had a friend down the street from her brownstone in Chelsea, a gay clothing designer who lived in the London Towers, who had moved to Manhattan from Cleveland, Tennessee, in Hamilton County just north of Chattanooga. He never missed home—Cleveland, Tennessee, being less than hospitable to openly gay clothing designers—but for some reason or other, he compulsively read the hometown paper.

He had been the first to call.

Brett, panicked, had called Taylor’s apartment. Michael answered the phone. Brett, thinking perhaps faster on her feet than she ever had before, simply asked for Taylor. She’d gone into the office, Michael said. Something about having some quiet time to clear up some paperwork.

Seconds later, Taylor’s cell phone went off. She answered it, and a few short sentences later, was running down the darkened hallway for the restroom.

Taylor reached up and tore off a couple of feet of toilet paper, wadded it up and blew her nose into it. She folded the wad in half and wiped off her forehead.

Then she crossed her arms over her bent knees and rested her head wearily on her forearms. The day that Jack died, she threw up that hard as well, for what seemed like hours, until her body simply gave in to exhaustion.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

She put her hands flat on the cold, dirty tile and pushed herself up a few inches, then cocked her legs and stood up slowly, unsteadily. She was dizzy, off kilter, wondering if the retching was about to start again. The acid taste of bile backed up in her mouth from her throat, which would, she feared, be raw and sore for days.

Taylor held on to the door as she slowly walked out of the stall. It was dark in the restroom, the only light coming from a translucent window honeycombed with chicken wire.

She flipped the light switch on. The harsh fluorescent light flickered painfully. She quickly snapped it back off.

She walked over in the dim light and stared at herself in the grimy mirror. Her hair was wet on the ends, matted, a tangled mess. Even in the low light, she could see that she looked pale, washed out. She’d have to pull herself together before she left.

She turned on the cold water, leaned over, and splashed some in her face. It felt good. A shiver went up and down her back, and she realized she’d been sweating all over. She drank a small sip of the cold water. It tasted wonderful, made her throat instantly feel better.

And it stayed down.

She blotted her face with a paper towel, then walked back to her office almost in a daze. She was grateful that no one else had come in. As she pulled out her keys and opened the front door of the office, the phone started ringing.

Taylor walked over to the receptionist’s desk and reached for the phone, but at the last minute held back. She heard the answering machine inside the desk answer with the standard greeting, then a beep, followed by a muffled voice.

“Yes, this is Harry Greene of the
New York Post
. I’m trying to reach Taylor Robinson. It’s very important. Please call me back at—”

My God
, she thought, walking away from the desk,
it’s
already started.

Taylor went back to her office and shut, then locked, the door behind her. She sat down at her computer, brought up her Internet browser, then Googled “Chattanooga newspapers.” A couple of clicks later, she was at the Web site.

She felt a spasm in her chest as Michael’s picture appeared line by line on her screen. She saw the headline and thought for a moment that she was about to vomit again.

“Oh, Jesus,” she whispered. Her forehead broke out in sweat again.

She forced herself to read the story, all of it, including the sidebar on Michael’s seemingly meteoric rise to fame and fortune as the Chaney books took off. The reporter even quoted from some reviews that she remembered and considered glowing at the time, but now seemed eerily foreboding.

“Schiftmann’s Chaney makes murder fun,” one reviewer wrote. “Who would have ever guessed that something so completely evil could be so charming?”

She leaned back in her chair, trying to take all this in. The initial shock was slowly beginning to wear off. She’d read the story, and the essence of the article was that Michael was going to be indicted for murder. But the case itself had not been laid out. There were few details, few specifics about the evidence against him. It was, of course, impossible to believe that any of the accusations were true. But what was undeniable was that Michael, and she, had a fight on their hands.

“Joan,” she said out loud. “Call Joan.”

She reached for her office phone, then held off. No, not Joan. Not first.

Michael.

She picked up her cell phone and punched 1. The cell phone’s speed dial went to work, and a few seconds later, her home phone was ringing.

“Hey, you,” Michael said. His voice was relaxed, normal.

“How are you?”

“You’re still there,” she said.

“Yeah, I was just reading the Sunday paper. Waiting for you to get home. What’s up?”

“Have there been any phone calls?” Taylor asked.

“Brett Silverman called, but that’s—”

“I talked to her,” Taylor interrupted. “Listen, we’ve got to talk. I want you to stay there, don’t leave the apartment.