Brian Haig - PrivateSector

He replied, reluctantly, “Uh…” Well, I squeezed a bit harder, until he said, “Yeah. She said that.”

“You see?” I informed Pilcher. “Hey, I’m not even armed.”

Well, Detective Sergeant Pilcher still did not like this, and even frisked me to be sure I was both weaponless and harmless. He then spent two minutes briefing me on my role, which could be neatly summarized as stay the fuck out of his way.

We then waited five minutes, too keyed up to speak, staring off into the distance. Pilcher had a miniature mobile radio unit under his cassock, with a mike pinned to his chest and a tiny receiver in his ear. He used the wait to test his commo with his ops center. It either worked or he enjoyed talking into his own chest and nodding his head. But Spinelli’s cell phone finally rang and he answered, “Yeah… Uh-huh… okay, good…” Then, “All right, we’re moving.”

Spinelli was conversing with Janet, and he didn’t punch off, because from this moment on, he and Janet would stay connected through their cell phones. Jerry-rigged operations make me nervous, and I briefly wondered what would happen if somebody’s battery died, or we ended up passing through one of those dead-space zones. Anyway, we began moving, Spinelli and Pilcher keeping their right hands tucked inside their cassocks, no doubt gripping their pistols. Pilcher moved down one side of the street. Spinelli and I cruised down the other, until we all ducked into doorways within sight of Aunt Ethel’s house.

Pilcher must’ve informed the ops center we were in position, while Spinelli informed Janet that it was time to start the gig, because Aunt Martha’s front door flew open and Janet stepped out. She hugged Aunt Ethel, kissed her sisters, and they all somehow managed to swallow their anxieties and make it appear like a natural parting scene.

Then Janet walked in our direction, her cell phone held to her ear with one hand, the other stuffed in her coat pocket, hopefully gripping a knife. I actually caught my breath. The day was cold and breezy, her hair was blowing behind her, framing her face, and she looked extraordinarily beautiful. Was I in lust, or what?

She passed Pilcher without a sideways glance and kept going. I looked around for anybody following her. Aunt Ethel’s house was three blocks off Harvard Square, and Janet moved in that direction, then took a right and headed toward the Charles River that divides the obscenely wealthy College of Harvard from the obnoxiously wealthy Business School.

We trailed a block behind her until the streets suddenly became thick with Harvard students and pedestrians and window-shoppers. We lost sight of Janet for a few scary seconds, so we sped up and closed the gap to half a block.

This was the riskiest leg of her journey. The killer could blend in with the pedestrians and slip a knife into her ribs as they passed.

We had discussed this possibility at length but finally theorized that he wouldn’t strike here because the street was too crowded. There’d been no witnesses in any of the other killings, making it fair to assume he took great care to avoid exposure. But the problem with assumptions and theories is they’re only right until they’re wrong.

Janet walked briskly past a large red-brick building. The sign by the road declared this to be the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which is where they train eggheads to screw up the government, but to sound really smart as they do it. She then hung a left onto the walking path that borders the Charles River.

We quickly reached the path and ended up walking side by side, a trio of thoughtful clerics contemplating the serene beauty of the heavenly river God created, or something like that. To our left was the Harvard Law School. I recalled that both Janet and Lisa had graduated from that school, and now we were hunting her murderer in the shadow of its walls.

I don’t believe in fate, kismet, or cosmic coincidences, but I did pick up my pace and sharpen my senses a bit. In fact, I had this weird premonition that this guy possessed a sense of irony, or poetic symmetry, and wanted to whack Janet right here. The basic idea-the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is located some two miles downriver from Harvard in the direction Janet was walking. A bridge over the Charles River connects MIT’s campus with Boston proper, and on the Boston side of that bridge is a subway stop. Janet had flown into Boston and been picked up by Carol, who had rushed her to the hospital. It seemed perfectly natural for Janet to leave her sisters with her aunt and catch a train to return to her apartment. If she survived the trip to her apartment, a more foolproof trap was being laid there by the Boston PD. It is a rule of thumb that protecting a stationary target is easier than protecting a moving one. We were sort of hoping to make it to that point without incident.

But clearly the choice wasn’t ours. And therefore the Boston PD had sprinkled undercover cops from their narcotics unit at intervals along the route. Narcotics cops go the extra mile to look seedy and scummy, and while I was assured they were there, I hadn’t detected any, which I regarded as a good sign. As long as it didn’t mean there’d been a minor communications problem, and they were all on the other side of the river. This sometimes happens.

Anyway, it was a spectacular day for a stroll along the river; the temperature was cool, the sky clear and sunny, a nice breeze made the water ripple and sparkle. An occasional scull raced by on the water. A biker sped past us. Then a few more bikers, followed by a middle-aged, overweight male jogger. A minute later, a pair of chubby girl joggers wearing stretch pants huffed and puffed past us. The idea was, we would watch Janet’s back, and she’d watch her front. Her cell phone was still at her ear, and she was chatting intermittently with Spinelli, appearing to all the world like a modern young executive, oblivious to the beauty around her, tied to her office, too driven and ambitious to stop and smell the roses, or whatever.

Two more joggers chugged past us, a guy and a girl. The guy was about six foot four, with long, dark hair, and in terrific shape. The girl was svelte with thick blond hair, and that bouncy run and well-toned body of the former cheerleader. They were chuckling and chatting as they sped past, the modern generation’s version of foreplay. Ah, to be young, fit, and in lust.

Spinelli turned to me and asked, “See the sweet ass on that one?”

“Huh?… Oh yeah. But don’t you think he was a little tall for you?”

He chuckled. “Fuck you.”

I added, “He’s a good match for Pilcher here, though.”

Pilcher also replied, “Fuck you.”

Obviously they were both pleased to have me along.

I watched Janet again. Three male joggers ran past us as the cheerleader and her big running partner passed Janet.

I studied the three men. The one in the middle, I noticed with a nasty jolt, was fairly short and very well built, with knotty shoulders and thickly muscled arms. But what really got my attention was the long, stringy ponytail bouncing off his back. He fit the precise physical description of the L. A. Killer and it struck me that Spinelli’s copycat theory could be wrong. I mean, nothing I had discovered actually ruled out the L. A. Killer. Spinelli elbowed me in the ribs, indicating he also had noticed Mr. Ponytail and the possibility here. As the three men closed the distance to her, Spinelli said to her, via his phone, “There’s three guys coming up behind you. Look around and keep your eye on the guy in the middle, the one with the ponytail.”

Janet somehow managed to maintain her poise and glance casually back over her right shoulder. Pilcher’s right hand was nearly out of his cassock pocket, ready to drill Mr. Ponytail if he made a wrong move.