An Unkindness of Ravens Read online

  “Hey, Danny,” he said when the intern answered.

  “Hi, Tyler, how was the interview?”

  “Good, it’s going to be one hell of a story when I'm done. He’s laying everything out on the table.”

  “Great,” Danny said, sounding very enthused.

  “Anything going on back there? Any more murders?”

  “There was one outside Baltimore, but it didn’t have anything to do with the case you’re covering. Some woman shot her husband who’d been beating on her.”

  “That happens more than you’d think,” Tyler said. He’d heard of this many times over his career. It was as much as those husbands deserved, he guessed, but he also knew the women who did it never got their own lives back, even if they somehow got away without serving jail time.

  “Yeah, it’s always in the news somewhere,” Danny said.

  “Any more from the police, or FBI? Is Stanver talking yet?”

  “Nothing new that I’ve heard of, and I’m checking the local online news in Petersburg too.”

  “What about the blog, anything fresh on that?”

  “No, I have that open in a tab all the time and I just refresh from time to time,” Tyler heard the click of the mouse, “but nothing so...wait!”

  “What is it?”

  “It just changed!” Danny said, excited.

  “What does it say?” Tyler was excited too, but also filled with apprehension. He had to hope the killer wasn’t going to land him in trouble again with the FBI.

  “It’s about Spekler!”

  “Spekler?” Tyler didn’t like this. “What about him?”

  “It says Spekler told you that ‘John the Baptist’ was a black man and that now Sarah Brightwater and the FBI were looking into this possibility. Did he say that?” Danny asked.

  “Something like that, but I don’t know how the hell the killer could know about it!” There were few options. There was a leak at the prison, the FBI or else his phone call to Sarah had been listened in on. Can you trust Agent Brightwater? The raspy voice in his head added.

  “You didn’t tell anyone?” Danny asked.

  “No way, this is my story Danny. You never give away the details of your story!” he felt shallow lying to the boy like this, but it would be up to Danny himself to make these decisions when he was older and a full-time reporter as Tyler felt sure he would be one day.

  “Someone at the prison must have been listening then,” Danny said, his voice fiery with accusation.

  “Must have been,” Tyler agreed. Sarah was not going to like this. He needed to talk to her, but he couldn't be sure they wouldn’t be listened in on her phone. “Listen, does it say anything else? I’ll go out and find someplace with a decent internet connection and read it myself, but just tell me if there’s more.” He could hear Danny mumbling like he was reading from the screen and then he came back,

  “That’s about all I’m reading in it, but you might see something more that makes sense to you when you read it.”

  “OK, thanks Danny. I’ll check in again soon. If anything new happens, ring me right away, you got it?”

  “Yes, Sir!” Danny said.

  As soon as he was off the phone, Tyler drove to the nearest town and settled into a coffee shop with a strong Wi-Fi signal. He ordered a coffee as his laptop started up and then opened up the blog. He read the article once in its entirety - it wasn’t long - and then sat back to think about it a moment.

  Taking up his phone, he thought about calling Sarah but stopped. That could be the source. It wasn’t a trustworthy line anymore. He leaned into his bag and took out a disposable phone and sent Sarah a text message asking her to call the number of this coffee shop (which he got from the table menu) from a payphone in the next hour. She wouldn’t know the number texting her, so he wrote T at the end of the message hoping she would figure it was him and not a wrong number.

  He read the blog post again. This time what struck him was that the killer, though letting it be known that the suspect may be a black man, was not saying anything to mock this idea or cast doubt on it. Was it possible Spekler had been right? And if so, how in the hell had he come to his conclusion? Was there something in a serial killer that helped see into the minds of others like you? Tyler hadn’t noticed anything like that before, and none of his research on the subject of killers mentioned anything like it, that he could recall anyway.

  Tyler was going to see Spekler again the next day. He supposed the inmate would have heard all about this and he wondered what he would make of it all. It was some extra fame and publicity for him after all and linked him forever into the ‘John the Baptist’ case. Tyler supposed he should be happy that so far he hadn’t heard any leaks about the victims Spekler had never been tried for.

  That was it! That was the proof that the leak hadn’t been at the prison. Spekler’s ideas of the skin colour of another serial killer were not the big ticket items of Tyler’s interview. If someone was going to leak something from the prison end, it would have definitely been the fact that Spekler killed five more people that he’d never been suspected of. The leak had to be from either the FBI or someone else listening into either his own registered phone, or Sarah’s one.

  Now he needed to talk to Sarah more than ever on a clean line. Tyler tried to think what had been exchanged between those two phones. How long had someone been listening? Did they have anything on him, and if so, why hadn’t it come up in his interview with the FBI? Unless of course, it was not the FBI who were listening in. That could leave only one person - ‘John the Baptist’!

  That, however, only raised more questions. How had he been able to do this? How much more did he know about everything than Tyler and Sarah had thought? Was he just laughing at them all this time, wrapping them both farther and farther into the lie so that both of them would come out stinking in the end - Tyler going to jail perhaps and Sarah losing her job too?

  Tyler smiled at the cunning of this killer. If it was him, he must have been planning this for a long time. What was his aim and why had he chosen Sarah and him for this? It made him think that perhaps Sarah was right, that it was in fact Dwight Spalding who was behind everything. Boy had that false promise he’d been using to get Sarah to go along with him sprung back in his face! He was going to have to be much more clever from here on out. Tyler Ford was good at everything he did, and this wasn’t going to turn out to be any different. It was a personal thing now, and he was determined to come out on top.

  Chapter 38

  Sarah saw the blog post as it went live. She’d been refreshing the blog every twenty minutes or so during her waking hours since it had been discovered. The tech heads had no luck so far in tracking down the source, but they said they were making progress. Sarah didn’t know enough about it to check if they actually were or if they were just talking themselves up so as not to look so bad.

  Her mouth dropped open when she saw what it said and at once she knew the trouble this was going to cause. Race relations in this country were bad at the best of times, and the one place in crime where black people had almost no statistics against their name was in the area of serial killing. The vast majority of perpetrators were white males. Now it was going to look like the FBI were trying to pin the crimes of a white man on the shoulders of a black one. Sarah also knew she was going to take some personal shit about this as it had been she who had been looking into the possibility.

  “Brightwater!” the rumbling roar of Bobrick shook his office walls. She stood and sighed, wondering what kind of face Malick would make at her had he been here now. She went to face the music.

  “Yes, S...”

  “What the hell is this shit?” he shouted as she walked in the door, “You’ve been searching for a black man for the crime on the hearsay of a convicted serial killer?” His face was deep purple and he didn’t look well, it was a completely unnatural colour.

  “I just gave it a cursory look over. It would have been poor police work to ignore the possibil
ity that he was telling the truth, Sir,” Sarah said.

  “White men commit serial murder, almost exclusively!” he shouted, as though drilling a lesson into her head.

  “I know, Sir, but I can’t rule anything out...”

  “And this Tyler Ford!” Bobrick shouted, interrupting her again, “Everything that tastes bad about this story has his greasy paws all over it! Why the hell is he so involved with everything? What was he even talking to Steward Spekler about this for?”

  “I don’t know, Sir,” she said, knowing how mad he’d be if she told him she’d asked Tyler to see what Spekler had to say on this case. This seemed to placate the SAIC for some reason and Sarah chose not to say anything else until he spoke again.

  “How did this blog poster find out about this, do we know that?”

  “Not yet, Sir. It’s possible Tyler Ford leaked it, or someone from the prison holding Spekler.”

  “You positive it wasn’t leaked from here?” and as Bobrick asked this question, Sarah got a gut feeling that it had leaked from the FBI side of things.

  “No, Sir,” she admitted. Bobrick sighed, and then stood up looking out the window.

  “We need a smaller team on this, too many people know what’s going on.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Half the size of the team,” he said to her. “You pick the people you want, the ones you think you can trust. If there is any more shit on this, it will be landing square on the top of your head, got it?”

  “Yes, Sir. Can I pull the team I pick from other duties so they focus on the case and not have to mix so much with other colleagues?”

  “Yes, do that,” he agreed, “I want this guy caught Brightwater. And I mean soon.”

  Sarah had escaped with much less of a chewing out than she’d expected. She knew the press would be a different matter and then thought perhaps knowing this was why Bobrick had been lenient on her. Sarah could handle the press, though. She was made of tough stuff and could ignore a lot of what they were bound to throw at her. There was nothing in her past to suggest any issue with racism or anything like it. Off hand, she couldn’t think of anything they would even be able to spin in that direction. She would just have to keep her cool and it would blow over. The real issue here was the killer, and if she had to keep reminding the press about that, so be it.

  It was going to be tough getting her team down. If she was honest, Malick was the only person at the FBI who she really trusted. Some of the team had shown aptitude, but they were the younger ones who were trying to prove themselves and didn’t have all that much experience yet.

  As Sarah was working through her list, her cell phone thrummed on the desk. It was a text message from a number not saved in her phone. Her heart raced at the idea of it being the killer getting in direct contact with her like he did with Tyler. She read the message and it asked her to call a phone number from a payphone in the next hour or so. It was signed T - that could only be Tyler she supposed, but she still wasn’t sure. A quick internet search showed her the number was a diner in California - another clue to it being Tyler.

  What did he have to say that he couldn't call her normally?

  Sarah went out and found a payphone a few streets away and dialled the number in the message. After a brief exchange with a waitress, Tyler came to the phone.

  “It’s me,” she said, “What’s all this cloak and dagger stuff?”

  “You saw the blog?”

  “Yes.”

  “The leak is from either the FBI end or someone is tapping one or both of our phones,” he said seriously. Sarah didn’t know what to say for a moment. Phone tapping was very easy and she couldn’t rule it out at all, especially since someone in the FBI may know about her dealings with Tyler Ford.

  “How do you know that?” she asked.

  “Spekler told me some stuff that was much more newsworthy. If the leak had been in the prison, that stuff would have leaked instead, or at least as well.”

  “What did he say?” curiosity getting the better of her.

  “You’ll have to wait and read it in the paper,” he said and she saw him smiling as he said it. Images of her lustful thoughts came back to mind fleetingly.

  “Ha ha,” she said as deadpan as she could.

  “Do you have another phone I can contact you on?” Tyler asked.

  “No,” she said, wondering if any of her own private cell phones might still work - she doubted it, and even if they did, those numbers would still be linked to her and might be tapped too.

  “OK, I have a few, I can give you one.”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said, “Is this not just another sign this thing we have is not working out for us?”

  “Not at all,” he answered without a beat, and then said, “Besides, how am I going to tell you what Spekler says about Dwight Spalding when I ask him tomorrow if you don’t have a secure line?” Her heart skipped a beat at the mention of the monster’s name and once more against her better judgement it clouded everything she thought.

  “How will I get the phone from you?”

  “I’ll overnight it to the bar we met in. Do they know you by name there?”

  “Put it for the attention of Rocky with a note it’s for me.”

  “Rocky?” Tyler’s tone was mocking.

  “It’s no worse than Tyler,” she said smiling.

  “I guess not,” he laughed. What was that, she asked herself, teenage flirting! “I’ll send it this afternoon. I’ll put a number in the phone where you’ll be able to call me back once you get it.”

  Chapter 39

  Stewart Spekler’s grin spread from ear to ear as Tyler was shown into the secure interview room.

  “That was an unexpected reaction to my black man theory, wasn’t it?” he laughed. Tyler smiled thinly. Since being mentioned on the blog, the news had spread like wildfire and every news agency was following up on the ‘inherent racism’ within the FBI, especially those working on the ‘John the Baptist’ case. Civil Rights groups, pastors and all kinds of community leaders had come out to complain about Stewart Spekler’s ‘clearly racist’ opinions being the basis of a search for a black culprit by the FBI. They wanted to know why a convicted serial killer - including one with a child victim - had been asked his opinion in the first place. Obviously this had come full circle to Tyler who was also getting a grilling on social media and in the press for he was assumed to be the one who spread this news in the first place (despite his own newspaper not carrying it!)

  “There are a lot of angry people out there right now, alright,” Tyler agreed. “I’m taking a lot of shit for it myself.”

  “Sorry about that, man,” Spekler said, “That wasn’t my intention.” Tyler nodded and took out his digital recorder.

  “OK to start recording now?” he asked, placing it on the table.

  “Yeah, fine,” Spekler said. He had a triumphal air about him today, like he’d been pardoned or something equally amazing had happened to him. Was this the simple buzz of being so much in the news again?

  Tyler sat down and took out his notes and paper.

  “So, how are we doing this today?” he asked Spekler.

  “We can go a little deeper on something today if you like,” Spekler said but holding up a finger added, “with one rule - we don’t talk about anything we spoke about last time, agreed?” Tyler thought about this a moment and nodded, there was plenty he could still delve into without covering old ground.

  “Agreed,” he said and Spekler smiled, settling back into his chair. Tyler thought for a moment then said, “You feel great today because something you did is all over the news. Is this how you felt when your trial was taking place?” Spekler looked at him straight in the eyes a moment then answered,

  “Yeah, it was. I found it very hard to keep from smiling throughout my trial. I was so happy everything was out in the open, that people could finally see what I was capable of.”

  “What about when you were caught?”

  “
No, I didn’t feel like that then. All I could think about when I was arrested was that I wasn’t going to be able to do it anymore, but then as time went on and I saw more and more things on the news and in the papers, I started to feel much better about it. It got to the point that I didn’t know which was better - killing or everyone knowing it had been me!”

  “Which do you think is better now?” Tyler met his gaze looking for any sign of prevarication in ‘The Spider.’ Spekler looked back deeply into Tyler as though making sure Tyler was ready and worthy of some great and sacred information.

  “The killing,” he said, “Nothing will ever come close to the killing.” At that moment Tyler could only wish he’d been allowed to use video recording for the interview. It was a fantastic soundbite - but the look in Spekler’s eyes when he’d said this was so intense and honest Tyler knew he would never forget it as long as he lived.

  “So you’d do it again in a heartbeat if you ever managed to get out of here?”

  “You bet your ass,” Spekler smiled.

  “If you were loose now, you’d kill me?”

  “I’d give it a try. You look like you might be able to handle yourself though, so it could go either way. You think you’d kill me if you had to?”

  “If it was you or me, I guess so,” Tyler answered and Spekler nodded in appreciation.

  “So many of us have it in us to kill. I can see you have it in you.” The way he said this sounded to Tyler like he was being paid some great compliment. They regarded one another for a long time, and Tyler felt sure Spekler was imagining a fight with him, wondering how he’d kill him in the end.

  “Do you think all serial killers hope for the day everyone will know what they are responsible for? Even if not consciously?” Tyler asked after a long pause.

  “I think,” Spekler said before falling into thought, “If there was some way to live free and yet for everyone to know what you’d done, few people would remain silent about any murders they’d committed.”