in stunned silence. The media had hired “experts” to second-guess APD’s forensic team, the ME’s office, the crime lab, the detectives. They even questioned the way the uniformed officers handled the scenes. My name was tossed into the pot with a psychic APD had once consulted years ago and we were all put under a microscope. The talking heads made it sound like Rauser had hired a bunch of drunks and palm readers to consult on the Wishbone murders. Dan made an appearance, explaining gently and with tears in his eyes that my drinking had destroyed our marriage and that my FBI job might have been too big for me. They cut to a clip of Neil leaving our office carrying an open beer. Families of the victims were shown all this for an on-camera reaction, and they were understandably shocked and outraged by our glaring ineptitude. Tears were shed. The public was cautioned to be wary while a killer stalked Atlanta’s streets.
My phone started ringing even before the credits rolled. Rauser called to check in. He hadn’t watched. Better things to do, he said. He had been ordered to lay low. The mayor, the chief, and APD’s spokesperson, Jeanne Bascom, would handle the press briefings from now on. He told me he was sorry, so, so sorry he’d gotten me into this. He wanted me to agree to regular reports regarding my location. Rauser’s view was that there was physical danger to me. My view was that the killer was getting exactly what he wanted from me at the moment. The headlines, the TV clips, the chief wanting me to disappear, the email, the roses, all of it orchestrated by him, designed to embarrass APD and me, to outsmart, to gloat. All of that fun would come to a grinding halt the moment he seriously hurt me. I was betting that was not part of his plan.
Dan called to console me after he’d seen the “embarrassing” special report documenting my precipitous decline from Special Agent to hostile rehab patient. He claimed he couldn’t have known it would be that kind of show, that his words had been taken grossly out of context. He had told them a story of strength and recovery, he said. The truth was, he confessed, he had just wanted some face time on camera to kick his career back into gear. He’d had no idea it would sound the way it sounded. This, unfortunately, could have actually been the truth.
Mother called. My father isn’t really a telephone guy. He’s more of a grunt-and-nod guy. “I swear, Keye, you could have buttered us up and called us biscuits, we were so completely astounded. We were watching Joyce Meyer and your father, you know how he is with that remote control, started flipping around. He’s intimidated by women preachers even though he won’t admit it. Admit it, Howard. You don’t like women to have any power at all, do you? Anyway, all of a sudden we see you. Our daughter on television! And the things they said! Oh my Lord. Bless your little heart. Your brother called too. He said the story was picked up way up in Washington. You believe that?”
“Sonsofbitches, reporters,” I muttered bitterly.
“Keye, for heaven’s sake, when did you start talking like that all the time? It’s just not attractive. Howard, did you hear that? I hope you’re happy. Your daughter talks exactly like you.”
I asked Neil to drive Diane home. The alcohol was settling in on her. She had been very quiet for the last hour. I didn’t want her behind the wheel, and I couldn’t wait to sink into my own bed with White Trash, stare at mindless television. In the last couple of weeks I’d picked pieces of glass out of my neck and forearms with tweezers after being shot at by a bail jumper with a pump-action shotgun, been hit in the back of the head by a flying coffee cup, and shot at by an angry skinny woman over a crummy witness subpoena. I’d stumbled on a Wishbone murder scene, wrestled an accountant who sank his teeth into my shoulder, been hurled through the bullet-wounded windshield of my Impala, officially fired, hospitalized, released and handed over to the media, watched my ex-husband on TV dissecting our dysfunctional marriage, watched strangers on TV discussing my rehab and FBI records. And I was getting roses, white roses, from a violent serial offender. Oh joy. What was the significance, I wondered, staring