a nurse say they think that’s what caused her heart attack. Who knows? So young, so sad. I guess her mother is going to donate her brain to a medical school, so maybe they’ll find out.
“God, I want a drink. John, can you get me something to drink? Not water, I mean. Something with a bit of a kick. Maybe a glass of wine. Something to relax me. I’m dying for a drink.”
Winnie’s voice drifted to the back of my mind. I could hear her talking but wouldn’t have been able to repeat a single word she said. I could feel the cogs of my brain beginning to turn, slowly at first, but quickening as the momentum began to build. I needed to leave the hospital right away. I needed to find Clegg. I looked up at the clock on the wall and shuddered.
I had twenty-four hours to produce a victim of the SHS Killer or Ruby would die.
And now I knew how I could do it.
CHAPTER 55
The War Room, the centralized meeting place for coordinated information exchanges about the SHS Killer, was located in the basement of the Boston police headquarters at One Schroeder Plaza. Gathered around a long conference table, and eyeing Clegg with a mix of curiosity and suspicion, were all the people essential to locating this predator. Chief Higgins sat across from me, red-faced and paunchy, and to his right were detectives Gant and Kaminski. Special Agent Brenner was also seated at the table, along with a few others from the FBI, the state police, and other agencies with acronyms that were meaningless to me.
I should have expected the hostile reception. Only Clegg knew about my plan, and it was his idea to call this gathering together without first providing details or specifics. Less chance of getting it shot down during one big powwow than if we piecemealed the approvals, he assured me. So nobody here knew what we were going to propose. This was my plan, and it explained why and how Clegg got me a seat at the table. He didn’t want anything getting lost in translation, and neither did I.
Looking around, I could tell by the fidgeting fingers, long stares, tapping toes that most viewed this impromptu meeting as a giant distraction and profound waste of their time. Of course, they were wrong. The Fiend might have been a step ahead of me before, but this time things would be different.
Following the arrival of some last-minute invitees, Clegg began to speak as soon as the conference room door closed. These people understood the Fiend had kidnapped my wife. They knew that every tick of the clock brought Ruby that much closer to death, but they were not aware that the Fiend wanted me to commit murder in exchange for Ruby’s life. As of that moment, we had less than twenty hours to make everything happen.
Papered on the wall behind Clegg were various maps, photographs, timelines, and charts—all the stuff of an investigation that I knew was going nowhere.
“We’ve heard from the SHS Killer,” Clegg began, using the moniker most familiar to this group.
Brenner stood, palms flat on the table, face brightening. “When? How?”
Before this meeting, I had worked things out with Clegg and advanced the lie using some rudimentary computer scripting. Technically, we had obstructed justice by not revealing the Fiend’s initial demands from the get-go. Since Clegg worried that we might need to produce an actual victim in exchange for Ruby’s life, we couldn’t have told them what we needed and produced that very thing without having suspicion cast right on me.
“I think it’s best that John tell you what happened,” Clegg said.
“Why? He isn’t a cop,” somebody shouted from the back of the room.
“No, numb nuts,” Clegg barked. “He’s the guy who came up with a plan to save his wife’s life. So show him some respect, or show yourself out the door. Sound good?”
Nobody debated, so I stood up and went to the front of the room while Clegg passed around copies of the e-mail that I wrote myself.
“The person who kidnapped my wife contacted me through my game One World,” I began. “He used Elliot Uretsky’s game account to send me a message.”
I had modified the transaction logs for my game server so that the IP address could not be traced. I figured the BPD forensic guys, or the FBI, for that matter, would try and track down the Fiend’s location by IP, so I faked them. They were