“Yeah, it was there.”
“Was she—was Rachel home when it happened?”
“She said she was upstairs in her bedroom sleeping when she heard the shot. In her king-size bed. She got scared, said she didn’t come down for an hour after the shot. Then she found him. This is according to the reports.”
“What about the mother?”
“There was no mother. She’d taken off years before. Rachel was left alone with the father then.”
I thought about that for a few moments. His mention of the size of her bed and something about the way he’d said the last line bothered me.
“What else, Dan? You’re not telling me everything.”
“Jack, let me ask you something. Are you involved with this woman? Like I told you, I saw on the CNN how she wal—”
“Look, I’m out of time! What aren’t you telling me?”
“Okay, okay, the only other thing noted in the reports that was strange was that his bed was made.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His bed. It was made. The way it had to’ve worked was he got up, made his bed, got dressed and put on his coat and gloves, like he was going to work, but then instead sat down in the chair and put a bullet through his head. Either that or he stayed up all night thinking about it and then did the job.”
I felt depression and fatigue wash over me in a wave. I slid off the chair to the floor, the phone still held to my ear.
“The guy who worked the case is retired but still around. Mo Friedman. We go back. I was just coming up in dicks when he was near the end. But he was a good man. I just got off the line with him a few minutes ago. Lives up in the Poconos. I asked him about this one and what his take on it was. His unofficial take, I told him.”
“And he said?”
“He said he let it go because either way he figured Harvey Wallbanger got what he had coming.”
“But what did he say his take was?”
“He said that he thought that bed was made because it never was slept in. Never used. He said he thought the father was sleeping with the daughter in the king-size and one morning she drew the line. He didn’t know about anything after that, none of this stuff that’s been going on lately. Mo’s seventy-one years old. He does crossword puzzles. He said he doesn’t like watching the news. He didn’t know the daughter became an FBI agent.”
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even move.
“Jack, you still there?”
“I gotta go.”
The field office operator said Backus had left for the day. When I asked her to double-check, she put me on hold for five minutes while I was sure she was doing her nails or touching up her makeup. When she came back on she said he was definitely gone and that I could try back in the morning. She hung up before I could say anything else.
Backus was the key. I had to get to him, tell him what I had and play it whatever way he wanted. I decided that if he wasn’t at the FO, he might be back at the motel on Wilcox. I had to go there anyway to pick up my car. I threw the strap of my computer bag over my shoulder and headed for the door. I opened it and stopped dead. Backus stood there, fist raised, ready to knock.
“Gladden wasn’t the Poet. He was a killer, yes, but not the Poet. I can prove it.”
Backus looked at me as if I had just reported that I had seen the Marlboro Man wink at me.
“Jack, look, you’ve spent the day making some strange calls. First to me, then to Quantico. I came by because I’m wondering if there’s something maybe the doctors overlooked last night. I thought maybe we’d take a ride over to—”
“Look, Bob, I don’t blame you for thinking that after what I asked you and Hazelton today. But I had to hold things back until I was sure. Now, I’m sure. Pretty sure. I can explain it now. I was going out the door to find you just now.”
“Then sit down here and tell me what you’re talking about. You said that I had a fox in the henhouse. What did you mean?”
“What I meant was here you people are, your job is to identify and catch these people. The serial offenders, as you call them. And there was one in your midst all along.”
Backus let out his breath loudly and shook his head.
“Sit down, Bob, and I’ll tell you the story. If you think I’m crazy when I’m done, then you can take me to the hospital. But I know you won’t think I’m crazy.”
Backus sat down on the end of the bed and I started spinning the story, recounting the moves and calls I had made through the afternoon. It took me nearly a half hour just to tell that part of it. And just when I was ready to begin telling him my interpretation of the facts I had gathered, he interrupted me with something I had already considered and was ready for.
“You’re forgetting one thing. You said Gladden admitted killing your brother. At the end. You said this yourself and I read it in your statement this afternoon. You even said he recognized you.”
“But he was wrong. I was wrong. I never told him Sean’s name. I just said my brother. I told him he had killed my brother and he thought one of the kids was my brother. You see? That’s why he said what he said, that he killed my brother to save him. I think what he meant was that he killed those kids because he knew that once he’d been with them they’d be fucked up for life. Just like he was fucked up by Beltran. So in his mind he thought that by killing them he was saving them from becoming like he was. He wasn’t talking about the cops, just those kids. I don’t think he even knew about the cops.
“And as far as him recognizing me, I was on TV. CNN, remember? He could’ve recognized me from that.”
Backus looked down at the floor and I watched him try to compute this and I saw by the expression on his face that he found it plausible. I was getting through to him.
“Okay,” he said. “What about Phoenix, the hotel rooms, all of that? Where do you see that going?”
“We were getting close. Rachel knew it and needed some way to either derail the investigation or make sure it pointed only to Gladden when we got him. Even though every cop in the country wanted him dead, she couldn’t be sure that would happen.
“So she did three things. First, she sent the fax, the one from the Poet, from her computer to the general number at Quantico. She wrote it in a way that she knew the information it contained would become the definitive link between Gladden and the cop killings. Think back, remember the meeting on the fax? She was the one who said it tied all the cases together.”
Backus nodded but said nothing.
“Next,” I said, “she thought that if she leaked the story to Warren, it would trigger my story and the rest of the whole media stampede. Gladden would have to see the story somewhere and he’d go underground, knowing that he was being blamed not only for the murders he did commit but the cop killings that came after. So she called up Warren and gave him the story. She must’ve known that he’d gone to L.A. to peddle the story after he got canned at the foundation. Maybe he had called and left her a message about where he was. You follow all of this?”
“You were so sure it was Gordon.”
“I was. And with good reason. The hotel bills. But the drugstore receipt shows he wasn’t even in his room when the calls were made and Warren told me today his source wasn’t Thorson. By then he had no reason to lie. Thorson was dead.”