Robert Bidinotto - Hunter

Then he took the coiled cable from his shoulder and fed one end through the pulley. Holding that end, he let the rest of the coil drop to the ground. Then he slid down the pole, taking the end of the cable with him.

He checked his watch; just ten minutes before the next patrol.

Moving fast, he looped a free end of the cable several times between the legs of the corpse, then up and around the chest, very tightly under the arms. He tied it off securely in the back. Dragging the body to the base of the flagpole, he added a final touch. From an envelope in the other zipped pocket of his windbreaker, he extracted a clipping of the article in Sunday’s Inquirer. He balled it up and shoved it into the mouth of the corpse.

Then, with his last great effort of the night, he braced a foot against the pole and hauled away on the cable. He had to half-wrap it around his forearms to prevent it from slipping; it bit painfully into his hands and wrists, despite the gloves. When the body at last reached the top, he tied the other end securely around the halyard fastener at the base.

He was panting hard; his hands and wrists were numb and his arms and legs quivered from the effort. With just five minutes to go, he gathered up the blanket and checked to make sure he’d left nothing more incriminating than his footprints. Then he half-trotted, half-staggered back to the cart.

As he started the engine, he took a last glance. And had to grin.

Silhouetted against the pink hints of the coming dawn, the body of a remorseless killer hung over the home of a corrupt judge.

*

Just before five a.m., the phone on the regional news desk at the Inquirer began to ring. Because the editor who usually sat there was off grabbing coffee, a young proofreader at the next desk picked up. Before he could say a word, he heard a metallic, distorted voice. It sounded like a recording.

Thirty seconds later, the editor returned and the kid rushed over to him, pale as raw newsprint.

“Alan, can we get a helicopter? And a photographer? I mean, right now?”

“Why?”

The kid told him.

His coffee sloshed onto the tile floor as he ran to his phone.

*

Judge Raymond R. Lamont was having a most pleasant dream about his mistress when he heard a thundering noise. Light, bright light, blasted against his closed eyelids. His wife, Corrine, was punching his back and yelling something.

His eyes opened to an incomprehensible scene. Outside his window, in midair, hung a large, dazzling light, accompanied by a deafening, thumping roar. He squinted and blinked.

“Ray! Wake up, dammit!” she was shrieking. “What in God’s name is happening?”

Lamont was not easily shaken, but he was now. He threw off the covers and swung his bare feet to the floor. “Stay here!” he shouted to her.

He moved to the side, out of the blinding beam pouring into the room, then huddled against the wall beside the window. Trembling, he peeked around the curtain and looked outside.

Then sank to his knees.

“Ray! What is it?”

He couldn’t speak. He heard her hurried footsteps padding toward him.

Then her screams, her nails digging into his shoulder, as she too saw the madness just sixty feet away.

A helicopter hovering low, a powerful spotlight aimed at their flagpole.

A man’s body dangling from the pole, right at his eye level, spinning crazily in the propeller wash…

Falls Church, Virginia

Saturday, September 20, 9:35 a.m.

When she opened her door to him this time, she wore a chestnut-suede jacket over a cream-color sweater, snug brown slacks, and brown suede boots. She carried a garment bag and a look of mischief in her eyes.

“I’ve missed you,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. She grinned and shoved the garment bag at him. “Me too. But if we expect to see any wineries today, we’d better get going.”

“Sadist,” he said, taking the bag. She also handed him an “accessory bag.” That’s what she called it. He suppressed a smile. Where he came from, they were called “overnight bags.”

He helped her into the Forester, then hung her garment bag in the back, against his. As he settled into the driver’s seat, he recalled the late-night phone conversation of almost a week before, when he’d invited her to spend this entire day with him, to culminate with dinner at a famous five-star inn. “You’ll have to bring along some dress-up clothes for the evening,” he’d told her.

She had not asked where she would change and get ready for dinner; nor did she ask when they might return. The unspoken questions and the implied answers filled a long silence before she said: “It sounds wonderful.”

The unspoken hung between them now, during the quiet moments. He drove onto Route 66 and headed west. He had a jazz station playing quietly and asked if she’d prefer something different, but she smiled and said it was fine.

It was well over an hour’s drive to the first of the wineries scattered along the Shenandoah Valley. During the ride, she wanted to know about the fallout from the latest killing.

“That judge up in P.G. County has taken an indefinite leave of absence and gone into seclusion with his wife someplace out of state,” he answered.

“I heard on the news that several of the criminals you profiled have vanished. Apparently, they don’t want to be next.”

“Good thinking.”

“So, Dylan Hunter, ace investigative reporter: How does it feel to be provoking all this uproar?”

He shrugged. “I have mixed feelings, Annie. I’m not weeping about what happened to those criminals. On the other hand, for an investigative reporter, it’s best to maintain a low profile. But the people doing these killings-they’re making that impossible for me now.”

“You say ‘people.’ Do you think it’s some kind of organized group?”

“That’s what the cops think. They told my editor that, given the quote sophistication unquote of the crimes-especially the latest one in Bowie-it has to be a team. Apparently, a variety of weapons are being used, and different vehicles, too. They think that it would take several people to conduct all the surveillance, planning, logistics, and do the killings, too.”

“Do they have suspects?”

“Not yet. But the theatrics with the flagpole raised this to a whole new level. I understand they’ve called in FBI profilers to come up with a psychological portrait of the perps. Since the shootings have taken place across several jurisdictions, they’ve also set up a joint task force. Perhaps by pooling their resources and information, they’ll get somewhere.”

“How’s the management at the Inquirer reacting to all this? Are you in trouble?”

He shook his head. “At first, the publisher was upset. He was fielding calls from prosecutors, mayors, even police chiefs urging him to shut me up. They told him I’m inciting people to take the law into their own hands. Fortunately, though, he answers to shareholders and readers, not to public officials. And our shareholders and readers love all this. Circulation is up over twenty-five percent during the past couple of weeks. So, our dear publisher has suddenly become a champion of my First Amendment rights.”

She chuckled. “How noble of him. Think he’ll give you a raise?”

“I’m not doing this for the money.”

“I know, Dylan.”

*

They talked about music, wine, the Smithsonian museums, travel. She spoke of a week-long trip she’d taken to western Ireland. About the “fairy trees” and an old Irish storyteller; about a vast region of bare limestone known as “the Burren”; about the spectacular Cliffs of Mohar and the rugged, rock-strewn islands off the coast.

When she asked where he’d traveled, he chose to tell her of a trip ten years earlier through Switzerland, when he’d stayed in the small town of Meiringen. “That’s the place Arthur Conan Doyle chose for Sherlock’s fight to the death with his arch-enemy, Dr. Moriarty,” he explained. He described the majestic Reichenbach Falls, where Doyle’s embattled fictional antagonists supposedly plunged to their deaths. How the locals had turned the tale into a tourism bonanza, painting a white cross on the cliff to mark the spot, and opening a Sherlock Holmes museum in the basement of a quaint little church.