Fair Warning (Jack McEvoy #3)(93)

Lastly, we had Emily Atwater on the phone, calling in from her unknown spot in England and ready to answer questions as well.

We had calls on hold before the scheduled hour even began. This did not surprise me. The podcast had steadily grown an audience. More than half a million people had already listened to the prior week’s episode, when the live event was announced.

We gathered around the table, and Ray Stallings, the engineer and owner of the studio, handed out headsets and checked and adjusted the microphones.

The moment was awkward for me. It had been almost three months since Robinson Felder’s attempted abduction. In that time, I had only seen Rachel once and that was when she had come to my apartment to collect some clothes she had left there.

We were no longer seeing each other, despite my apologizing and taking back the accusation I had made against her on that last night. As she had warned, my accusation ruined everything. We were now finished. Getting her to appear on the final podcast took an email lobbying campaign that was a digital version of begging and groveling. I could have easily proceeded without her on the episode, but I hoped that getting her into the same room with me might spark something or at least give me the chance to once more confess my sins and seek forgiveness and understanding.

It wasn’t a complete shutdown of communications because we were still inextricably bound together by the Shrike. She was my source. She had access to Metz and the FBI investigation; I had access to her. Though we communicated by email only, it was still communication, and more than once I had tried to engage her in a discussion outside the bounds of the source/reporter relationship. But she had thwarted and deflected such efforts, with the request that we keep things on a professional level from now on.

I watched her as Ray positioned the microphone in front of her lips and had her say her name a few times while he checked the sound levels. She avoided eye contact with me the whole time. Looking back, I was as mystified by this turn of events as by anything else that had occurred in the case. I could not figure out what I had or didn’t have inside me that would lead me to doubt a sure thing and look for the cracks in its foundation.

Once we went live, I began with the scripted intro I used at the start of every episode of the podcast:

“Death is my beat. I make my living from it. I forge my professional reputation on it … I’m Jack McEvoy and this is Murder Beat, the true-crime podcast that takes you beyond the headlines and on the trail of a killer with the investigators on the case.

“This episode wraps up our first season with a live discussion featuring the investigators, attorneys, and journalists who all played a part in exposing and hunting a serial killer known as the Shrike …”

And so it went. I introduced the panel members and started taking listener questions. Most of them were routine softballs. I acted as moderator and chose which participant to throw each question to. Everybody had been prepped beforehand to keep their answers short and precise. The shorter the answer, the more questions we could get to. I directed more than an equal share to Rachel, thinking that somehow it was like engaging her in conversation. But it felt hollow and embarrassing after a while.

The most unusual call came from a woman identifying herself as Charisse. She did not ask a question about the Shrike case. Instead, she said that eleven years earlier her sister Kylie had been abducted and murdered, her body left in the sand under the Venice pier. She said the police never arrested anyone for the crime and there was no active investigation she knew of.

“My question is whether you would investigate her case,” Charisse said.

The question was so out-of-left-field that I struggled to answer.

“Well,” I said. “I could probably look into it and check on what the police did with it, but I’m not a detective.”

“What about the Shrike?” Charisse said. “You investigated him.”

“The circumstances were a bit different. I was working on a story and it became a serial-murder case. I—”

I was interrupted by a dial tone. Charisse had hung up.

I got the discussion back on track after that but the episode still went long. The advertised hour stretched to ninety minutes and the only time we veered away from questions from listeners was when I had to read advertisements from our sponsors, which were mostly other true-crime podcasts.

The listeners who called in were enthusiastic about Murder Beat and many eagerly asked what the next season would be about and when it would start. These were questions I didn’t yet have an official response to. But it was good to know that there appeared to be an audience out there waiting. It buoyed my sinking morale.

I have to admit that I secretly hoped that I would hear from him. The Shrike. I had hoped that he was one of the podcast’s listeners and that he would feel compelled to call in to taunt or threaten the journalists or the investigators. That was why I let the session go long. I wanted to get to every caller just in case he was there waiting to speak.

But it never happened, and when we answered the last question and killed the live feed, I looked across the table at Metz. We had talked previously about the possibility of the unsub—FBI-speak for the unknown subject—calling in. He shook his head at me and I shrugged. I glanced at Rachel, who was sitting next to Metz. She was already taking her headphones off. I then saw her touch his arm and lean toward him to whisper something. The gesture looked intimate to me. My morale sagged further.