Inmate 1577 (54 page)

Flames licked skyward from behind the foliage and brush along the coastline, extending past the vacant Officer’s Club, and beyond.

“Backup saw the explosion and called the Coast Guard. We’re heading down to the dock to help with deployment.”

“If we’ve got service,” Burden said, “we’ll keep you posted.”

The two men moved off. And Vail, Burden, and Dixon looked at one another.
Now what?

They didn’t have to ponder that too long, as another text arrived:

Probly confused abowt nowe
you weakish speller ;-)
i can see clearly now
im on top of the world

“What’s the deal with the misspelled words?” Vail asked.

“Who cares about—”

“No, Roxx—it’s significant. He did this once before, in the—”

“That manifesto,” Burden said. He pointed at her BlackBerry. “You have it on there?”

“I got it,” Dixon said. She brought it up on her iPhone, and Burden and Vail crowded around the small screen.

Burden reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pad and pen, then began scribbling. “Shit...” he whispered. And then his face went ashen, his skin instantly pimpled in sweat.

“What’s wrong?” Vail asked, reexamining the document.

“This sentence. It’s an anagram, a classic example. And I missed it.”

“What sentence?” she said firmly.

Burden jabbed a finger at the screen. “He wrote, ‘I am a weakish speller.’ And then he just wrote it again. Do you see it?”

“I’ve played enough word games, Burden. Just tell me.”

“Puzzles, right? I do
number
puzzles, but I started out doing word pattern games. Palindromes, metonyms, pangrams, all that shit. But I got bored with them, and then a buddy turned me on to Sudoku. I didn’t get those clues before because they were cryptic riddles. But this one was so goddamn simple, I should’ve gotten it. It was right in front of my eyes. ‘I am a weakish speller’ is a classic anagram. Rearrange the letters and you get
William Shakespeare
.”

“So?” Dixon asked. “What’s Shakespeare got to do with this? The answer’s in one of his plays?”

“No,” Vail said, “maybe he left other anagrams or word patterns for us. And we missed them.” She wiggled her fingers at the pad. “Let me see that.”

“Give me your BlackBerry,” Dixon said. “I’ll pull up all those texts he sent us.”

Vail handed it over and started writing down possible clues from memory. “No, this isn’t right.” She looked at the phone in Dixon’s hands. “It’d be something more significant. The ‘weakish speller’ thing was aimed at you, Burden. To clue us in, a slap in the face to pay attention. But it wasn’t the answer. And I don’t think the answer’s in those messages he sent us. Maybe...”

Burden looked at the pad, then the BlackBerry. “Maybe what?”

Vail wrote on her pad, Walton MacNally. “MacNally’s our prime suspect—with Scheer dead, our
only
suspect. What if...” She started drawing slashes across the name and writing something below it. But then she stopped. “Doesn’t work. Not enough letters.”

“What doesn’t work?” Dixon asked. “What are you thinking?”

Burden brought a hand to his forehead. “Oh, my god.”

Vail looked at him. “If you’ve got something—”

“Yeah, I’ve got something. It’s been there, right under our noses.” Burden kicked at a rock and sent it skidding down the sidewalk. “Son of a bitch! For me. It was meant for me.”

He turned away from them, but Vail grabbed his shirt. “Burden, so help me god. Tell us what you’re talking about or I’m gonna wring your neck.”

Staring into the fog’s suffocating cover of homogeneity, he said, “I know who the killer is.”

Burden clasped his hair in both hands. “I didn’t see it! Why couldn’t I see it?”

“Who’s the killer, Burden?”

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” Burden spun back toward her. “It’s Clay.”

Vail stood there staring at him. Then she looked down at the pad, at Walton MacNally’s name.

“It’s an anagram,” Burden shouted. “Walton MacNally—”

“I tried that,” Vail said, studying the pad. “Not enough letters. Clay Allman—”

“That’s because his full name is Clayton W. Allman. Remember? You saw it on his byline in that article we read.”

Word play wasn’t Vail’s game, but one particular four-letter noun flooded her thoughts.

She grabbed her phone back from Dixon and dialed Yeung, hoping the call would go through. “We need all available agents, cops, inspectors, everyone—looking for Clay Allman. I’m betting he’s somewhere on the island. Use extreme caution—he’s the Bay Killer.”

After a beat of silence, Yeung said, “Come again?”

“You heard right. Clay’s our UNSUB.” Vail pressed END, then started up the hill toward the cellhouse. “There was more to his message.” She tried to steady her hand long enough to read the text: “‘I can see clearly now’ is another dig at us—can’t we see what we’ve been missing? But he’s ‘on top of the world’...” Vail craned her neck up at the structure that stood on the highest point of the island. “The cellhouse roof. Yes?”

“Yes,” Burden and Dixon said simultaneously.

They took off running, toward the building’s entrance.

“There,” Dixon said, pointing to an open set of barred doors along the side of the institution. Above the entrance, a green sign read, Main Cellhouse.

They jogged through what was once a sally port and saw a park ranger standing at the end of the long hallway that led to the Showers and Clothing room.

“FBI,” Vail said, holding up her creds. “What’s the fastest way to the roof?”

“East Gun Gallery,” the woman said. “Why?”

“Take us,” Burden said. “Fast.”

As they ran up the adjacent staircase and entered the cellhouse at Times Square, Carondolet appeared. He jogged with them down Broadway and over to the corner of Park Avenue and the end of C-Block. They entered the East Gallery via a ladder, then climbed three more flights before emerging on the roof, handguns drawn.

The fog was beginning to lift, as Vail saw the city poking out across the Bay. Behind them, the lighthouse was working overtime.

A blast from the foghorn sounded off in the distance, and the scream of scattering gulls filtered up from the old parade ground below.

Using hand signals, the four of them spread out in a V formation, Burden and Dixon on Vail’s and Carondolet’s flank, slightly ahead of them. They advanced slowly, toward the north end of the roof.

To their left stood two massive, horizontally mounted black metal cylindrical water tanks perched atop concrete stands. They moved past them onto the largest, and widest, section of the roof.

Carondolet held up a hand and they stopped. He pointed at the brick and glass structures that extended into the distance lengthwise along the roof and said, in a near whisper, “These are the cellhouse skylights over Broadway, Seedy Street, and Michigan Avenue. And there’s the vent Morris and the Anglins climbed through in ’62,” he said, gesturing at a flat, welded-shut metal plank.

“Can the Park Ranger tour,” Vail said. “Useful information only—what are we looking at with this roof?”

“I’m getting to it,” Carondolet said.

“Get to it faster.”

He frowned at her and continued: “The height of the skylights on the east and west ends limit our fields of vision to only what we can see in that particular aisle. There are also pipes that run the length of the roof, circular vent outlets, and two large skylights down there, over the hospital. Plenty of places to hide behind.”

Vail did not think Clay Allman was interested in hiding—that’s not what this was about.

“And the roof drops off up ahead, over the hospital wing,” Carondolet said.

Vail peered into the thinning fog. “So there’s a big blind spot.”

“Exactly.”

Vail tightened her grip on the Glock.
Now that’s useful.

Burden looked over the area in front of them, then said, “Let’s each take an aisle and move forward, toward the hospital. Roxxann, clear that east section. It’s blind from here, so we’ll wait for your signal.”

Dixon moved to her right and pushed her back up against the flat end of the skylight. While the others waited and stood at the ready, eyes prowling the remainder of the expansive rooftop, Dixon spun toward the hidden section, her SIG extended, knees bent, anticipating—anything. But seconds later, she gave them an all-clear hand signal.

They shifted left, toward the west end of the building, and headed down the remaining three aisles: Burden to the left, Vail along the middle section, Carondolet one section over to her right, and then Dixon. They moved slowly but methodically forward, toward the narrow portion of the roof, which at that point spanned approximately forty yards in width and about a hundred in length: the hospital.

Carondolet’s description was correct: there was a substantial drop-off in the roofline. As they approached, the skylights ended and the four cops had a view of one another.

Vail held up a hand and they all stopped; she pointed at the hospital roof, fifteen feet ahead, then held out her Glock in a Weaver stance.

“Come out, Clay. Slowly.”

Clay Allman backed away from the blind spot. “About fucking time. You people are so damn stupid, you know that?”

Allman was holding a pistol in his right hand and what looked like a Boker stiletto knife in his left. But he was not making any threatening moves.

“Clay,” Burden said. “What the hell?”

Vail knew that to get the most out of this discussion, she needed to play to his grandeur. But she was not interested in learning about Clay Allman...or whatever he chose to call himself. At the moment, all she really wanted to do, deep down, was put a bullet in his brain. She shoved those visceral thoughts aside and said, “You understand you’re not in control anymore, right, Clay?”

“Depends on how you look at it. I’ve accomplished most of what I wanted. I blew up the island. Officers, cons, didn’t matter to me. They were all here today. It was, I have to say, a perfect day to take care of business. I’ve been planning this for a long, long time, Vail.”

“But you didn’t blow up the island. You can’t see what’s going on down there, but we drained the tank before the bomb went off. You caused some damage, yeah. But when the fog burns off, you’re gonna see. Everyone’s safe—the former prisoners, the officers—they’re below us, eating breakfast.”

Allman’s face stiffened and his grip tightened around his pistol.

Vail knew he was using every bit of self-discipline to keep from lashing out at her—because that would, in effect, give credence to what she was saying: that he had lost control.

And she knew he would not yield that power to her.

“Let me describe it to you, Clay. You knocked out the corner of the Powerhouse, and there’s a brush fire. But the buildings are still standing. No one died.” She tilted her head. “You accomplished nothing.”

“Scheer’s dead. That’s something. I saved the city from a second rate reporter who got his lunch handed to him by a crime-writing serial killer.” He chuckled—a forced attempt to cover his anger. “What kind of headline would that make?”

“I have to give credit where it’s due,” Vail said. “You had me. All of us—we had no clue. And that thing with Mike Hartman. That was very, very smart.”

“I figured you’d make that connection, and I also knew you wouldn’t ask him about it. According to him, it was pretty embarrassing for you. And it posed a bit of a risk to you and your cushy career. It was patently obvious that you two didn’t like each other. It was a calculated risk for me, but I know you better than you know yourself.”

Don’t bet on it. You guessed right this time, but that’s it, pal.

“
So I established a connection between Scheer and Hartman, so that you’d see they talked. Because I knew you’d look at his phone logs. See, I’ve been hanging around Homicide for thirty years. I know how you people think, how you run investigations. I knew what you were going to do before you did it.”

You framed Scheer. And you ran us ragged because you knew we couldn’t help ourselves. Texting us right under our noses, a dozen, two dozen feet away. Fuck you, asshole.
She wanted to say that—but held her tongue. Instead, she pursed her lips and nodded slowly. “I have to give it to you Clay, you got us good. Even faked your own death. That was particularly astute—for a kid, that’s impressive.”
Actually, it’s goddamn scary.

“I still remember that day, when I figured it out. What an awesome feeling, to know I could set things in motion and then observe the cause and effect. That’s when I realized the power of the media. I could make people do things, lots of people, all by myself. So I acted distraught for a few days. Didn’t talk to anyone. Then I told a couple kids I was gonna jump off the bridge, where and how. Then that night I snuck out of the orphanage, and waited. They went ape-shit looking for me. They finally must’ve questioned those kids, because they swarmed the bridge and the water. Pretty funny to watch.”

“I don’t think they found it funny,” Vail said.

Allman contorted his face as if she had just spoken gibberish. “They didn’t give a shit about me. I was a bastard of a kid, no one liked me. But people did come. I watched what happened, how the cops showed up, how the reporters came, too, scribbling on their notepads, taking photos. And the article in the newspaper the next day. The town, coming out and laying flowers on the bridge. The power! What a fucking rush. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Vail nodded. “Yeah, Clay. I get it.”

“Do you really? The media ruled. A journalist—he writes something and people believe it. Right? I mean, now we have the Internet and blogs and anybody can write shit and the idiots of this country think these ‘experts’ know what they’re talking about. But!” he said, raising the knife as if to make a point, “until a few years ago, the journalist—the real journalist—interpreted. Analyzed. Composed—and controlled the news.

“I knew then, back in 1963, that I could do what I wanted. I dreamed of working alongside the police and killing people—and laughing at the cops’ ignorance. And then to have the ability to legally return to the crime scenes and see everyone’s reaction, to objectively view my work—and then write about it afterwards for hundreds of thousands of people to read. How fucking awesome would that be?”