Hack (30 page)

Until I heard more crunching. And footsteps. Xana coming back. I sank back. I heard her coming into the room. I didn’t look. I heard her laugh again. I hated Xana’s laugh. But this sounded different. Familiar but different. I lifted my head.

“You comfy, Shepherd?” she asked. “Looks kinda kinky.”

Ginny McElhone. She had the cleaver in one hand. She put it on the counter and took a notebook, pen and a silver digital camera out of her purse.

“Smile, Shepherd,” Ginny grinned, flashing me on my table several times, before putting the camera down. “So why did that Goth bitch tie you up—and your girlfriend in the next room?”

“She’s not Goth, she’s Emo,” I corrected her. “Is Jane…”

“She seems to be okay but really stoned, not making any sense,” Ginny said, head buried in her notebook. “Also crying, lots of tears. What’s going on? I thought the
Mail
guys did everything?”

“Ginny, thanks for coming but if you don’t stop interviewing me and cut me loose in the next three seconds I will kill you when I
do
get loose.”

She started toward me, then stopped and glanced up at the clock. She stopped.

“First, you tell me the whole thing and then I’ll cut you loose. For all I know, you’re the killer.”

I knew it was bullshit but it
was
logical.

“Okay, Ginny, but first you tell me how you got here.”

“Okay, Shepherd,” Ginny said, grinning. “After you left, I called the guy from IT and told him my computer had crashed and I needed to recover some important notes. From your machine.”

“You spied on me? Son of a bitch. I thought we were on the same team, Ginny?”

“Oh, please. I thought you were holding out on me and you were. So, the IT guy said there were no notes but there were web searches on some drug called halo-whatever and I looked it up. It said it was an animal doctor drug. You’re dating a vet, so my brothers and I went to her house and staked it out for a while but you guys didn’t come home. I found a listing for her office and we came here. We saw somebody was working in the back. I called but only got voicemail. Then I knocked and told the pigtailed freak I hit a dog with my car around the block and could she please come. She said no, I should go to somewhere else. She seemed real off. We struck out, so I thought a rock through the window might set off an alarm or something, stir things up. She came out with a friggin’ meat cleaver and threatened to cut my throat, so my brothers grabbed her ass. Then I found you. Bingo!”

“Ginny,” I told her. “You are the most sneaky, selfish, dishonest person I’ve ever met and I’m very glad you are. I owe you big-time.”

“Yes you do. Tell me the story.”

I told her. Everything. Ginny was writing it all down, like she was at a press conference about the city budget. It pissed me off but she
had
saved my life.

“Holy shit, that’s great!” Ginny gushed like a kid on Christmas. “She confessed?”

“Yeah. Neil Leonardi, Aubrey Forsythe, Cash Cushing, Matt Molloy and even Lucky Tal,” I said. “But not Badger or Pookie. Okay, that’s it. All of it. Get me out of this,” I said.

“No problem. Right after deadline,” she laughed, moving to the door. “I’ve got just enough time to get my exclusive in for the final.”

“It’s not your exclusive if you steal it, Ginny. It’s mine. You can’t leave me here.”

“Tough. My brothers are tying up the black-haired bitch on the third table. I’ll call the cops after we get my exclusive up on the web and in the paper. With pictures of you, all tied up. You’ll love it.”

“Ginny, I don’t care about the story. Let us go. What if Xana gets loose while you’re filing the story? At least let Jane free.”

“Nope. She’ll call the cops and it will go out over the air. I’ll call the cops in a few hours and they’ll get you. You’ll be fine.”

“Ginny, don’t screw around with this girl. She’s seriously dangerous.”

But she was gone. I cursed my head off until I heard another commotion outside the room. Damn. Shouting, thumping. More yelling. If Xana was loose, we were all dead.

Nothing happened for several lifetimes. I began shouting for help.

Nothing.

I caught a shadow on the wall outside the room, like an arm pointing. The hand held a gun shape. She had a pistol. At least it would be quick. The shadow got closer. A real gun and a real hand and arm appeared. It was attached to the most beautiful cop I ever saw.

“He’s in here!” Officer Augie Gumbs shouted, holstering his weapon.

“Want to tell me what this circus is all about?” Izzy asked me, stepping into the room.

Fortunately, I was able to answer him.

“Sure,” I told Izzy. “But I want it clear that I wasn’t fucking the elephant.”

As he untied me, Izzy said he did his own web crawling after I asked about the halothane. He made the link between it and veterinarians, and a quick check of the Arthur Animal Hospital website showed they also provided dog-walking services. One call to Cash Cushing’s house got a caretaker who had confirmed that Bubbles the corgi was walked by an Arthur Hospital employee, and that they had access to a key and knew the alarm code.

“I wanted to talk to your girlfriend, the one who messed up Cash Cushing’s crime scene trying to revive him,” Izzy said. “I couldn’t get you on the phone. The uniforms at her place and your place told me nobody was home, so Phil and I cruised by here. We arrived the same time as a local sector RMP, responding to a 911 call about a broken window and an alarm. That’s when we ran into your friend Virginia and her hulk brothers on the way out.”

“Thanks, Izzy. Great minds think alike.” I shook his hand and then rubbed my sore wrists.

“Great minds don’t get hog-tied by a killer,” Izzy pointed out.

“I knew it was her all along.”

Izzy looked skeptical so I changed the subject and we went to free Jane. I hugged her, not minding that she was leaking halothane tears all over me.

“Shepherd! I’m so sorry,” Jane cried. “I promised Bobby’s grandmother I would never say anything. She’s very… old-fashioned. It didn’t matter anyway, I thought. A week after Bobby overdosed, Neil Leonardi was dead and everyone was saying that Aubrey Forsythe had done it!”

I stroked her hair. “I get it. You thought that the bastard who hurt Bobby was dead and his killer, the one who knew about the abuse and said nothing, was on the run.”

She nodded. “I thought it was over. I thought it was a kind of justice. I was wrong. When you told me Forsythe was innocent I worried that somebody in Bobby’s family might be responsible but I didn’t believe it was his grandmother.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. “I was an idiot. I… I thought…”

“You suspected me—I know,” Jane said. “I was hurt and angry but it was all my fault. Xana… that monster… I can’t believe she did all this and she was going to… She told me that she had already told you about Bobby working here. About the keys and the alarm codes and everything. She was clever and I must have looked very suspicious at dinner, pretending I never heard of him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “None of it matters anymore. I want to take Skippy over to your place, have a drink and turn your husband’s picture to the wall.”

“Sounds good.”

I reclaimed our phones, which Xana had left on a counter. Then I turned to Izzy.

“Xana killed Matt Molloy and Tal Edgar,” I said. “Cut them up and put them in the incinerator.”

Izzy grimaced. “Why?”

“To save me, apparently.”

“Huh.”

“At least it’s some closure for Sean Joyce’s family. That’s why I got into this business in the first place, to get closure. Mary Catherine and I will have to visit them, to let them know that the people who drove Officer Joyce to suicide are dead.”

“First, we have some business to take care of,” Izzy said.

Jane, Izzy and I adjourned to the waiting room. A furious Xana, Ginny and the McElhone brothers were cuffed to chairs, Ginny issuing threats about lawsuits and exposés that no one was listening to. Jane went outside to free Skippy and we gave him a lot of petting to stop him from growling and snapping at Xana.

“Next time, I will listen to you, Skippy,” I told him. “Good boy.”

“Breaking and entering,” Izzy said loudly, pointing at Ginny and her brothers.

He turned to me and whispered. “We’ll drop the charges and let her and her brothers go after you file your story, okay?”

“Thanks, Izzy, I appreciate that.”

“I was rescuing them!” Ginny protested.

Izzy ignored her and turned to me. “So you got stuck in a tight spot with a crazy person? I told you not to do that.”

“Fuck you!” Xana spat, squirming and kicking like a maniacal midget between two cops. “Don’t call me crazy!”

“Seems to be the word, Xana,” I told her. “Cheer up. Unlike you, New York State does not have the death penalty. Eventually, I’m sure you’ll get your own reality show.”

At that thought, a smile spread across Xana’s mad face, becoming wider and weirder.

“Smile!” I said, snapping a picture with my phone. It would go nicely with my story.

I checked the shot. The horn-haired Hacker, putting on a bent smile for her public. The words
SAVE A LIFE
on her t-shirt stood out, nicely rounded on her chest, an intriguing mix of sex and irony.

I called the
Daily Press
to file my exclusive and emailed the photograph of Xana, which I knew would be on the front page in the morning. I loudly told a rewrite reporter to put my name
and
Ginny’s on the piece.

“Damn right!” Ginny said, rattling her handcuffs.

Then I quietly told the rewrite guy to hide Ginny’s name in tiny type at the end of the story in a tagline as “additional reporting by Virginia McElhone.” It would drive her batshit.

“You two are as crazy as Xana,” Jane observed. “Do you know that?”

“Yes I do,” I said.

“Foof,” Skippy agreed.

F.X. SHEPHERD WILL RETURN IN

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2016

With a quick tip of my press fedora to Evelyn Waugh, I want to thank my publicist, Katharine Trowbridge Carroll, for work above and beyond the call of duty. My thanks also go to my great editor at Titan Books, Miranda Jewess. I also thank my agent Jane Dystel for her help. My wife and first editor Riki made this book, and all of my books, possible and she has my eternal gratitude.

KIERAN CROWLEY is a
New York Times
bestselling author and award-winning investigative reporter, who has received communication from an actual serial killer and deciphered his secret code. He has covered hundreds of trials and thousands of murders and recovered evidence missed by police at numerous crime scenes, some of which helped bring killers to justice. He lives in New York with his family.

COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS

AN F.X. SHEPHERD NOVEL

F.X. Shepherd is juggling a new job as a PI, while keeping up with his strangely popular pet column. He is hired by a congressman who has received death threats, part of the escalating war between the Republican Party and Tea Party extremists. A series of murders of gun rights politicos at a presidential convention ratchets up the stakes, and Shepherd must fight off his liberal parents, do-anything-for-a-story reporter Ginny Mac, and a gang of mysterious gunmen.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

“An in-depth investigation… truly appalling all around: a story seemingly without goodness, except in the telling.”
Kirkus Reviews

“A fast-paced account.”
Publishers Weekly

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2016

TITAN
BOOKS.COM

A JOEL SORRELL NOVEL

It’s four months on from the events of
Dust and Desire
… Joel Sorrell has recovered from the injuries he sustained in his fight with The Four-Year-Old, but now a body has been found on a patch of wasteland in Enfield, torn apart by a killer who comes to be known as The Hack. More deaths will follow, linked to an unconventional writers’ group. Joel realises he has to infiltrate the group when he makes the shocking discovery that his missing daughter is a member. And she is next on The Hack’s list.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

“A feat of dynamic equilibrium that seems more admirable the longer I think about it.”
Locus

“A thriller of real distinction.”
Crime Time

AVAILABLE JULY 2016

TITAN
BOOKS.COM

EDITED BY

The Dead Letters Office: the final repository of the undelivered. Love missives unread, gifts unreceived, lost in postal limbo.
Dead Letters Anthology
features new stories from the masters of horror, fantasy and speculative fiction, each inspired by an inhabitant of the Dead Letters Office, including tales from Joanne Harris, China Miéville, Adam Nevill and Michael Marshall Smith.

PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR

“Williams is so good at what he does that he probably shouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.”
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“Conrad Williams writes dark and powerful prose balancing the poetic and elegant with needle-sharp incision.”
Guardian

AVAILABLE APRIL 2016

TITAN
BOOKS.COM

A FØROYAR NOVEL

Having left the Faroes when he was three years old, Jan Reyna is now a British murder squad police detective, and the Islands are completely foreign to him. But he is drawn back when his estranged father is found unconscious in an isolated spot, a shotgun by his side and someone else’s blood in his car. Then a man is found washed up on a beach, a shotgun wound in his side, but signs that suffocation were the cause of death. Is his father – who has suffered a massive stroke and is unable to speak – responsible for the man’s death? What about his half-brothers, and the signs that one of them may have been blackmailed? Jan falls in with local detective Hjalti Hentze, a man after his own heart, but as the stakes get higher and Jan learns more about the truth behind his mother’s flight from the Faroes, he must decide whether to stay and learn more, or forsake the strange, windswept Faroe Islands for good.