Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(82)

Rachel took a steady-handed draw of her martini, put the glass down, and then composed herself.

“I spent most of the day at the FO in Westwood with the ASAC,” she said. “I was treated as a leper at first, but when they started going through the checkable facts of the story I was telling, they started seeing the light.”

“ASAC?” Emily asked.

She said it the way Rachel had—A-sack.

“Assistant special agent in charge of the L.A. Field Office,” Rachel said.

“You said his name is Metz?” I asked.

“Matt Metz,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I already told you that they’ve linked at least three other cases by cause of death and then Gwyneth Rice, the only known survivor.”

“Were you able to get the new names?” I asked.

“No, that’s what they’re holding back to trade with you for pushing the story back,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get them.”

“That’s not going to happen,” I insisted. “We’re going to publish tomorrow. Putting out the warning about this guy is more important than any other consideration.”

“You sure that the scoop is not the most important thing to you, Jack?” Rachel shot back.

“Look, we’ve been over this,” I said. “It’s not our job to help the FBI catch this guy. Our job is to inform the public.”

“Well, you might change your mind when you hear what else I got,” Rachel said.

“Then tell us,” Emily said.

“Okay, I was dealing with this guy Metz who I knew from when I was an agent,” Rachel said. “Once they legitimized what I brought them they started putting together a war room and attacking this from all angles. They found the other cases and one team was working on that. There’s also a case in Santa Fe where they’re going to do an exhumation of the body tomorrow because they think AOD might have been missed at autopsy.”

“How could they miss a broken neck?” I asked.

“Condition of the body,” Rachel said. “I didn’t get the exact details but it was left out in the mountains and animals got to it. AOD may not have been seen for what it was. Anyway, another team was looking at Hammond and the Dirty4 angle, trying to pull all of that together.”

Rachel broke off there to take another sip of her martini.

“And?” Emily prompted.

“Through the site, they IDed Hammond’s partner,” Rachel said. “At least they think they did.”

I leaned in over the table. This was getting good.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“His name is Roger Vogel,” Rachel said. “Get it? Roger Vogel becomes RogueVogue in the digital universe?”

“Got it,” I said. “How did they find him?”

“I think his fingerprints—digital, that is—are all over the site,” she said. “They brought in a cipher team and I don’t think it was that hard. I didn’t get all the details but they were able to trace him to a stationary IP address. That was his mistake. He did some maintenance of the site from an unmasked computer. Got lazy and now they know who he is.”

“So, what is the location?” I said. “Where is he?”

“Cedars-Sinai,” Rachel said. “It looks like the guy works in Administration. That’s the location of the computer he used.”

At first I felt a jolt of excitement at the prospect of confronting Vogel before the FBI grabbed him. But then the reality hit me: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was a massive, high-security complex that covered five entire blocks in Beverly Hills. It might be impossible to get to him.

“Are they picking him up?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Rachel said. “They’re thinking that having him loose might work to their advantage.”

“As bait for the Shrike,” Emily said.

“Exactly,” Rachel said. “It’s clear he wanted to take Vogel out and made a mistake with the guy up in Northridge. So he may try again.”

“So,” I said, thinking out loud. “If the bureau is watching this guy, there is nothing to stop us from going in there and confronting him. Have they traced him to his home or other locations?”

“No,” Rachel said. “Thanks to you giving Vogel the warning about the Shrike, he’s taking all precautions. They had a loose tail on him and lost him after he left work.”

“That’s not good,” Emily said.

“But here’s the thing,” Rachel said. “He’s a smoker. He is taking precautions but he still has to go outside to smoke. I saw surveillance photos of him at a smoker’s bench outside the building. There was a street sign in the background. It said George Burns Road. That goes right through the middle of the complex.”

I looked across the table at Emily. We both knew exactly what we were going to do.

“We’re going to be there tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get him when he comes out to smoke.”

Emily turned to Rachel.

“Would you recognize this guy off the surveillance photo you saw?” she asked. “If you saw him at the bench, I mean?”

“I think so,” Rachel said. “Yes.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then we’ll need you to be there too.”