Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(84)

He threw his cigarette down and jumped up from the bench. He started to head back toward the Administration Building. I raised my hands as if to stop him.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I just want to talk.”

Vogel hesitated.

“About what?”

“You said you know who the Shrike is. We need to stop him. You—”

He pushed by me.

“You need to talk to us,” Emily called.

Vogel’s eyes darted toward her as he realized she was with me and he was being tag-teamed.

“Help us catch him,” I said. “And then you’ll be safe too.”

“We’re your best chance,” Emily said. “Talk to us. We can help you.”

We had rehearsed what we would say on the ride over from the office. But the script, as it was, did not go much further than what we had just said. Vogel kept walking, yelling back at us as he went.

“I told you, none of this was supposed to happen. I’m not responsible for what that crazy person is doing. Just back the fuck off.”

He started to cross George Burns Road.

“You just wanted the women to be fucked over, not killed, right?” Emily called. “Very noble of you.”

She was standing now. Vogel pirouetted and strode back to us. He bent slightly to get right into Emily’s face. I moved in closer in case he made a further move toward her.

“What we did was no different from any dating service out there,” he said. “We matched people with what they were looking for. Supply and demand. That’s it.”

“Except the women didn’t know they were part of that equation,” Emily pressed. “Did they?”

“That didn’t matter,” Vogel said. “They’re all whores anyway and—”

He stopped as his eyes found the cell phone Emily held up in front of her body.

“You’re recording this?” he shrieked.

He turned to me.

“I told you, I want no part of this story,” he yelled. “You can’t use my name.”

“But you are the story,” I said. “You and Hammond and what you’re responsible for.”

“No!” Vogel cried. “This bullshit is going to get me killed.”

He turned again toward the street and headed to the crosswalk.

“Wait, you want your lighter?” I called after him.

I held it up in my hand. He turned back to me but didn’t slow down as he stepped into the street.

“Keep—”

Before he could say the next word, a car swooshed by and caught him in the crosswalk. It was a black Tesla with windows tinted so dark it could have been driverless and I would not have been able to tell.

The force of the collision at the knees threw Vogel forward into the intersection and then I saw his body swallowed by the silent car as it ran over him. The Tesla bounced as it went over Vogel. His body was then dragged underneath it into the middle of the intersection before the car could finally break free of it.

I heard Emily scream behind me but there was no sound from Vogel. He was as silent as the car that took him under.

Once free of the body, the Tesla hit top takeoff speed and screamed across the intersection and down George Burns Road to Third Street. I saw the car turn left on a yellow light and disappear.

Several people ran to the crumpled and bloodied body in the intersection. It was, after all, a medical center. Two men in sea-foam-green scrubs were the first to get to Vogel and I saw that one was physically repelled by what he saw. There were drag marks in blood on the street.

I checked on Emily, who was standing next to the bench she had occupied, her hand to her throat as she gazed in horror at the activity in the intersection. I then turned and joined the scrum that was gathering around Roger Vogel’s unmoving body. I looked over the shoulder of one of the men in scrubs and saw that half of Vogel’s face was missing. It had literally disintegrated while he had been dragged facedown under the car. Vogel’s head was also misshapen and I was sure that his skull had been crushed.

“Is he alive?” I asked.

No one answered. I saw that one of the men had a cell phone up to his ear and was making a call.

“This is Dr. Bernstein,” he said calmly. “I need a rescue ambulance to the intersection right outside the ER. Alden and George Burns. Somebody got hit by a car out here. We have major head and neck trauma. We’ll need a backboard to move him. And we need it now.”

I became aware of the sound of sirens nearby but still outside the medical complex. I hoped that those were FBI sirens and they were descending on the Shrike, running him to ground in his silent killing machine.

My cell phone buzzed and it was Rachel.

“Jack, is he dead?”

I turned and looked up at the garage. I saw her standing at the third-floor balustrade, cell phone to her ear.

“They’re saying he’s still alive,” I asked. “What the fuck happened?”

“It was a Tesla. It was the Shrike.”

“Where’s the FBI? I thought they were watching this guy!”

“I don’t know. They were.”

“Did you get a plate?”

“No, it was too fast, unexpected. I’m coming down.”

She disconnected and I put my phone away. I leaned back over the men trying to help Vogel.