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“Goodbye... in real life.”
“As opposed to the virtual world,” said Jack, following it.
“Right. In real life. But using the abbreviation that people type when they’re texting: I-R-L: ‘goodbye irl.’”
Jack suddenly recalled the testimony of the handwriting expert. “That’s why the ‘g’ was smudged. You realized you screwed up and tried to rub it off before you chained Tyler’s body to the piling.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Doesn’t matter. But this means the pirate killer is writing ‘goodbye girl’ on his new victims only because you screwed up. The prosecution and the FBI are right. He truly is a copycat.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“But why is he copying you? And who is he?”
Paxton leaned forward, resting his forearms on the tabletop. “Will the FBI help me at my parole hearing if I have an answer to that?”
“Do you have answers?”
“Nuh-uh. You want me to make something up?”
“No, I want real answers,” said Jack. “In real life.”
Chapter 55
Jack watched the sunset from an altitude of thirty thousand feet, and his flight from Jacksonville landed in Miami well after dark. The tail end of rush-hour traffic was flowing against him, out of downtown, as he drove toward home on Key Biscayne. Not until he was at the eighty-foot peak of the William Powell Bridge, surrounded by the moonlit bay, due south of where Andie and the Miami-Dade Police had recovered Tyler McCormick’s body, did it hit him: he suddenly remembered where he had seen “irl” before.
At the end of the bridge, he steered into the parking lot at the Rusty Pelican restaurant and turned the car around. He drove to his office in record time, paying no mind to the speed limit.
“Bonnie?” he said as he entered the lobby. It was wishful thinking. Trying to find old trial exhibits without his trusted assistant was like drilling for oil without a geologist.
Jack went to the storage room behind the kitchen and switched on the light. This was where old trials, won and lost, went to die. Anything more than three years old was shipped off to a warehouse in Hialeah, but Jack wasn’t looking for anything nearly that old. Luckily, Bonnie had made his task easy. She’d already boxed up and labeled all exhibits from the hearing before Judge Stevens in the case ofNichols v. Nichols.
Jack pulled the bankers box from the shelf, carried it into the kitchen, and placed it on the table. He found what he was looking for in a file marked “confidential.”
His cellphone rang, piercing the silence, startling him so badly that he nearly dropped the file on the floor. It was Andie, so he answered.
“Hey, where are you?”
“I just landed,” she said.
“Great. Righley is going to be so happy.”
It was the kind of remark that, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have made him think twice. But things being what they were, he felt the need to clarify. “And I’m happy, too,” he said, which only seemed to make things more awkward.
“Sounds like we’re all happy,” said Andie. “Is Righley there?”
“No, I’m not at home. I’m at the office.”
“Who’s with Righley?”
“Abuela.”
She groaned. “Jack, really? Your grandmother is getting too old for that much responsibility. Her bedtime is an hour before Righley’s.”
“That’s such an exaggeration.”
“She ordered Righleygoatmilk instead ofoatmilk from Instacart.”
