The Upright Man (24 page)

I pulled a chair over to the end of the booth where Nina and Monroe sat opposite each other with untouched sodas.

Monroe stared at me. “Can I help you?”

“I hope so,” I said. “I’m a friend of Nina’s. I’m going to ask you the question she doesn’t want to ask.”

“Nina, do you know this guy?”

“Yes.”

“Your name is Charles Monroe. My name is Ward Hopkins. I’m one of only two people who can back up what Nina’s eventually going to tell you. Probably the only one you’re going to listen to, as you’re unlikely to take John Zandt’s word for much.”

“I’ve no intention of listening to you either, whoever the hell you may be. Nina—”

“You will listen,” I said. “After you’ve explained to us how you knew there was a body to be found in the Knights.”

He wasn’t expecting that. He tried to stare me down, but it’s a funny thing: since my parents died, it’s a lot harder to scare me. It was never that easy, and now it’s pretty hard. It’s like a part of me, right deep down, doesn’t really give a shit anymore.

Nina was watching him carefully. “Are you going to answer him?”

He didn’t say anything, and I saw the change in Nina’s face, and realized she suddenly believed what I’d suggested.

“You bastard,” she said.

“Nina . . . I don’t know what this guy’s told you, but . . .”

“Really?” I said. “Here it is in black and white. If a cop gets killed, it’s LAPD’s problem and job and business. It’s not an FBI matter unless the cops choose to make it so,
which they won’t. The feds are the big brother they never wanted; this isn’t the
X-Files,
where you get called in on parking offenses or for spelling mistakes or just anything at all that looks juicy and like someone in a suit might help. Robbery Homicide has a special section dedicated to high-profile killings—they have entire
divisions
who’ll drop everything to go after someone who killed one of their own. So what were you doing there? And so fast? How come you were on the scene before anyone went into the motel room? Before anyone knew there was something to be found?”

Monroe shook his head. “This is ridiculous. Nina, this guy’s crazy and we’re in enough—”

“Charles, look at me and shut up.”

I didn’t even recognize Nina’s voice. It was a sound somewhere between a hiss and a ragged growl, like some large nondomesticated cat, long-caged, finally tired of being screwed around.

Monroe looked at her. I did too.

“Charles, where are my hands?”

He stared at her. “Under the table.”

“What do you think I’m holding?”

“Oh, Christ, Nina . . .”

“That’s right. And I will shoot you right here and now unless you start saying things I can believe.”

“People know where I am.”

“No, they don’t,” she said. “No way you’re going to compromise your precious reputation by advertising you’re coming upstate to talk to me, not with this crap about John floating around. Unless you’ve brought other people with you, of course, which so far it doesn’t look like you have.”

“Of course I haven’t,” Monroe said, momentarily looking so angry it was hard not to believe him. “For God’s sake—we’ve worked together for a long time. We owe each other.”

“Right. That’s what I thought. Until I was suspended yesterday. By you.”

“I had no choice. You know that. Zandt has compromised you too much.”

“Compromised? Talk to me about being compromised, Charles. Start by answering Ward’s question. My hands are still right where they were, and I still mean exactly what I said.”

Monroe went quiet, staring down at his place mat. It held oversaturated pictures of high-fat food, and I knew it wouldn’t be able to hold his attention for long.

“Things are going wrong,” he said, in the end. His voice was quiet. “And not just for you.” He looked up. “But it’s your fault. It’s whatever personal mission you’re on. Why wouldn’t you just tell me what happened last year?”

“To protect you,” she said. “There was nothing you could do to help, and we didn’t know who we could trust. If anyone.”

“Sorry, that just sounds like paranoia.”

“It isn’t,” we said, simultaneously.

Monroe looked at me properly for the first time. “Who did you piss off? Who the
hell
were you dealing with?”

Nina looked at me. I nodded.

“They’re called the Straw Men,” she said. “We don’t know how many there are, or even who they are. They used to own a big chunk of land up in Montana, which is the place that got blown up.”

“
You
did that?”

“They did. It was wired,” I said. “It was a field of evidence. Bodies. Many bodies. These people kill for fun. They had a chain of victim supply using people like Stephen DeLong. The man you once called the Delivery Boy was another one of their procurers—the most important of them, a serial killer in his own right, and some part of the overall organization. He’s also my brother. He calls himself the Upright Man. He was key to one of their other sidelines. You remember the explosion at the school in Evanston last year?”

“Yes. They got two kids for it.”

“It wasn’t them. It was him. Also other events and shootings in Florida, England, Europe, going back twenty years. Maybe longer. The group already existed back in the
mid sixties. They do these things and set up other people to take the fall.”

Monroe looked bewildered. “Nina—do you believe this?”

“Belief is irrelevant. This is all true. There is a group of people who live in the cracks of this country, and who have done so for a long time. They are powerful, and they kill.
That’s
who we pissed off. And now, for the last time: tell me about Jessica.”

He only hesitated for a moment. His decision was made.

“I got a call,” he said quietly.

Even though she’d known it was coming, I think she still nearly shot him. I think Monroe thought that too.

Then there was silence for a long time.

MONROE
EVENTUALLY OPENED HIS MOUTH TO
speak again. His voice clicked. He took a sip of soda, then changed it to a gulp.

“I got the call the evening before,” he said. “To my cell—the personal one. Not many people have the number. I assumed it was you, in fact. I was at the theater with Nancy. It was the intermission, we were in the bar, it was very noisy. A man’s voice said something, but I couldn’t really hear him properly and by the time I was outside he’d hung up. I had no reason to . . . Then next morning I was on the way to work and I got a second call. Again it was a man, and he asked what the hell was wrong with me, was I not interested? I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. He told me a cop had just been shot, and I should go to the Knights motel right away. It . . .”

“It would be good for you,” Nina said, as if Monroe had just admitted he wanted to feed crack to babies while beating off.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what he said.”

“The same number that called you the night before?”

“Yes. For all I knew it could have been someone in the department.”

“Without declaring their identity? Yeah, right.”

“If it was going to be good for me it would also be good for the bureau.”

“Talk to the hand, Charles. I don’t believe you and I don’t care. You went there because you were tipped off that there was something worth your while, something good for your career, and you pulled me into something you knew was tainted. You told no one that you had prior knowledge. You maneuvered Olbrich into assembling a task force and you worked it for a couple of days until it started looking like it wasn’t going anywhere. When we were in the McCains’ house and I asked if we were sure the cop-killer also murdered Jessica, you already
knew
the two could be different.”

“The fact that they could be didn’t mean they were.”

“Oh, come on. You even tried to push me away from the idea. Then the morning after John suddenly made the Most Wanted List for the Ferillo killing, you get another email. Untraceable again, I assume?”

“It doesn’t matter how it came, Nina. It’s real. And get off your horse, for God’s sake. You knew. You
knew
that Zandt had killed DeLong and you withheld the evidence.”

“I didn’t know at the time. He only told me late last year.”

“Whatever. The minute you heard, you were an accessory after the fact, so don’t—”

I interrupted. “Who was that man with you when you showed Nina the film?”

“I don’t know,” he said, bitterly. “He arrived that morning and already knew all about it. About everything. He had NSA security clearance but yesterday I tried to trace him and they claim he doesn’t exist. I pushed on it and shouted at some people and . . .”

“And now things are getting shaky for you too,” Nina said.

“Only indirectly.” He breathed out heavily. “The Gary Johnson file is being reopened.”

“What?”

“Some attorney in Louisiana is suddenly claiming he has evidence we tampered with the forensic reports. Specifically, that you did and I looked the other way.
Someone wants you discredited, and as the senior agent on that case I’m going to share the ride. Satisfied?”

“You compromised yourself, Charles. Don’t blame me.”

“And don’t you claim any moral high ground either. You withheld knowledge of a homicide, lied about what happened last year—and do you really think I don’t
know
you took Jessica’s disk out of evidence for forty-eight hours? Either is enough to ruin you, and both were your choice and your fault.”

“Now there’s been another killing with a disk,” I said. “Did you get a warning of that too?”

“
No.
And look—who the hell are you, anyhow?”

“Ward’s parents were killed by the Straw Men,” Nina said. “He helped us save Sarah Becker’s life, and he’s the only person in the world that I trust right now. I think that’s enough. Tell me about the new killing.”

“Nina . . .”

“You got pulled into this through Jessica. If this is another murder by the same man, then we have some small chance of solving them, which is the only outcome that stands a hope in hell of making your life right again.”

“And yours.”

“Mine’s flushed already. That pisses me off. I want to find the people who’ve done it. Ward and I have business with them.”

“Her name was Katelyn Wallace,” Monroe said. “She worked the night shift at the Fairview in Seattle. Someone came and snatched her out of a hotel full of guests and with a night janitor right there on duty with her. She was found forty miles east, in some bushes in a small town called Snoqualmie. We have half a registration number for a car seen passing through late that night, but it’s a rental and it’s a vacation area. Katelyn’s body was more messed up than Jessica’s. The belief—and yes, it’s a profilers’ opinion, but the photos bear it out—is the killer is getting more out of control. He hadn’t bothered to dress her for comfort and this time the disk wasn’t just resting in the mouth. It had been shoved into a hole he’d made in her head. It had the same piece of music on it as Jessica’s.”

“Was there a note?”

“No. Three long-distance landscape pictures, low quality. A webcam. Of Pittsburgh, believe it or not. So the bureau there is now on alert, but who knows what it means, if anything.”

“What do you know about the woman?” I asked.

“She was from San Francisco. Forty-two now, moved up to Seattle twelve years ago. No partner, but plenty of friends and a cat, and nobody who can think of anyone who might have done it. So far as we can tell, she’s a random victim.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Why travel halfway up the country to pick someone random, and then stamp yourself all over it with the same M.O.? There has to be a connection between them. Nina told you about the missing photograph in Jessica’s apartment?”

“Yes. We tracked down all three of the men in the videos. Two were regulars at this bar called Jimmy’s, the other was someone she met at a party in Venice Beach. None look good for it, though one did confirm she had a picture of her parents beside her bed; he seemed to get a kick out of the fact. But now this Webdaddy slimeball, Robert Klennert, thinks he
might
have a recollection of someone trying to trace Jessica’s location via an email to his main portal site, about two months ago. It happens all the time, apparently, all his girls get it. He just bounces them back. He didn’t remember there was one for Jessica in particular until he started going through his files. It may not mean anything.”

“Or it could be the killer trying to find a way in. That’s a long lead time, isn’t it? Is there any sign that anything was taken from Katelyn Wallace’s place?”

“How are we going to know? We don’t have the lucky chance of a slew of images this time. Katelyn wasn’t a web whore. She was a stable woman who worked hard.”

“They die too. But . . . we’ve been assuming that the killer took the picture as a random souvenir. Something personal, a way of getting his fingers into the life of a woman he was intending to kill. What if it was more than that?”

Nina was looking at me. “What are you thinking?”