by L T Vargus
“Think that was a brush-off?” Spinks asked.
It took Loshak a second to figure out what Spinks meant.
He glanced around to make sure no one was within listening distance, then lowered his voice.
“You mean like conspiracy brush-off?”
“Obviously I mean that. She should’ve been jumping at help from the guy who solved the Zakarian case, but instead she basically gave you the ‘we’ll see’. When someone says ‘we’ll see,’ what they mean is, ‘I’ll put you off until you forget you asked so I can go on with my evil shit.’”
Loshak glanced down at the form in his hand. It was a standard report format with the Bureau of Detectives seal and the task force number filled in at the top.
“I don’t think so,” he said.
They pushed through the door to reception. Lennie was at the desk, finger-pecking at the computer. She grinned when she caught sight of them.
“Didja figure out who did it?” She cackled, this time with just a little phlegmy catch in her throat, then pawed the air dismissively. “I’m just joshin’ ya. Hey, you make sure you get that winter coat, honey,” she said to Spinks. “Temp’s gonna drop like a brick tonight. Wind chill of minus 18 ain’t nothing to jack around with.”
“Will do,” Spinks said, wiggling his fingers at her. “You have a good one, Lennie.”
With the reporter taking care of all the conversation, Loshak settled for giving the steel-haired officer a smile and nod.
She raised her whole arm to wave back.
“You boys stay warm.”
On the way out to the parking lot, Spinks turned to Loshak.
“You’re serious about the doctor-lawyer angle?”
Loshak nodded. “Some occupation requiring a high level of intelligence and accomplishment.”
“But why would somebody so capable want to lash out at society? I mean, this guy’s got to feel like he’s got everything going for him.”
Spinks pushed through the door first, letting in a blast of icy wind. Loshak hurried to pull on his overcoat.
“In a lot of cases like this, it’s the wounds from the past they can’t get over. Then some recent triggering event — a break-up or divorce, maybe trouble at work — reopens those old wounds and pushes them over the edge.”
But the reporter didn’t stick around to listen, he shot across the parking lot to the rental.
“For the love of God, unlock the car. My spleen is getting frostbite.”
Loshak dug the fob out of his pocket, his fingers already red and a little clumsy from the cold. Maybe he should invest in a good pair of gloves while he was out here, too.
The rental chirped, and Spinks ripped open the door, dropping inside and slamming it shut behind him.
When Loshak got in the opposite side, Spinks was hugging himself but appeared much calmer.
“Sorry, please continue. You were talking about open wounds.”
Loshak started the engine.
“You have a guy like Ted Bundy. Generally considered decent-looking, some might even go so far as saying he’s handsome. Law school student. He even had the governor of Washington write him a letter of recommendation. Sounds like a guy on top of the world, right? The world is his oyster. But he couldn’t get over a long-term girlfriend who had dumped him some years before.”
“The triggering event?” Spinks asked.
“Yes. At least in part,” Loshak said. “Though I doubt it’s usually one isolated incident.”
The reporter held up a finger.
“More like the cherry on top of the proverbial shit sundae?”
Loshak chuckled.
“Sure. If you want to put it that way. Anyway, the thing about Bundy was he was born out of wedlock. Grew up not knowing the identity of his birth father. But he believed him to be from a wealthy family,” Loshak continued. “Well, this longtime girlfriend who dumped him also happened to be rich. So he takes these two puzzle pieces and fits them together, and now he’s got a bigger picture. A story he can tell himself about how he’s been rejected by everyone, cast out by the upper class that should have been his birthright. He internalizes that sense of being unwanted, of society stealing something from him. His rightful place, his privilege, whatever.”
“And then he rapes and murders a bunch of women,” Spinks said. “That’s a logical leap if I ever heard one.”
“Some people like to emphasize that many of his victims bear some resemblance to the girl who dumped him, I think because it’s easier to go with the literal in this case. The things we can observe easily.”
Spinks nodded. “See that makes sense to me. You’re saying it’s wrong?”
“Not wrong exactly. Just simpler. If I hand you a photo of a forest and ask what you see, it’s not wrong if you say, ‘trees.’ But I might argue that it’s an oversimplification. The more complex explanation of Bundy is that he felt the world had humiliated him, victimized him, taken his rightful identity from him. In reality, he had plenty of opportunities and accomplishments and even people who cared about him. He just couldn’t accept it. The rejection story he’d told himself was imprinted too deeply. No amount of affection or status or accomplishment could seem to dislodge that as the central component of his identity, the movie version of his life that played on in his head.”
“Some people like seeing themselves as the victims,” Spinks said. He turned the heat onto High and stuck his fingers in the vents. “If they can pretend they’re powerless, then they don’t have to try to change anything.”
“Well, I think to some extent Bundy thought he was changing his story by committing these crimes. The violence was a way of raging against the world that had wronged him, a way of disrupting the story. Recasting himself in the powerful role.”
“That,” Spinks said, “is fucking bonkers. ‘Raping and murdering innocent women’ll show the world how great I should’ve been.’ It’s like the villain from a shitty action movie.”
“It is bonkers, but it reassures them that they’re powerful. They can control life and death. It’s the perfect antidote to the powerlessness they feel at their core. They can have some agency on the most sacred level. What they do affects the world around them. Shooters like our guy have the same rage fetish, but they express it on a mass scale. Unleashing their rage on the public, targeting humanity at large. The more damage they can do in a short period of time, the more proof they have that they matter.”
“That’s still fucked up.”
Loshak nodded.
“Of course it is. Especially considering they’ve probably got someone who admires them. Someone giving them validation. But whatever they are getting, it’s not enough in their minds. They’ve still got to prove that they’re something special with a gun.”
Chapter 9
While Loshak navigated the traffic back to the mall, Spinks got in touch with George Whitley’s brother.
“He’ll meet us this afternoon at the penthouse,” Spinks said when he’d disconnected.
“That fast?” Loshak hit the brakes to avoid a Corvette changing lanes without a signal.
Spinks squirmed.
“He said he wants to do anything he can to help us catch this asshole.”
A finger of guilt twisted in Loshak’s gut. They were technically working the shooting investigation by speaking with the brother, but it still felt underhanded, going in like this to see whether Whitley was connected to the Kansas City case. In spite of the fact that he was supposed to be a cold-blooded investigative reporter who would do anything for a scoop, Spinks didn’t look any more comfortable with the situation.
They made the rest of the drive to the mall in silence. Loshak pulled into the shopping center where the mall security cams had lost the shooter, got turned around, then headed for I-290, focusing in on the things their shooter had seen.
Typical suburban sprawl, well-kept businesses and yuppie apartment complexes that slowly deteriorated into run-down houses and projects. Here and there a dead-l
ooking tree stuck up out of the snow like a skeletal hand. All of which would’ve been too dark to see at the time the shooter was driving through. Would he even have been paying attention to the scenery? Loshak doubted it. He would’ve been riding high on his first attack, probably keeping an eye out for law enforcement.
As Loshak drove, concrete quickly took over the residential area, becoming a series of over and underpasses, the branching veins of the city coming together and shooting off in every direction. Then they were merging onto I-90, the second crime scene.
The shooter made it a full seventeen miles from the mall before he started firing the Uzi out the passenger side window. Loshak caught a glimpse of yellow crime scene tape fluttering from a piece of exposed rebar. The wreckage had since been cleared away, but the smashed concrete wall and orange traffic cones stood like a warning that blood and metal had covered this place not too long ago.
The people driving past couldn’t make up their mind whether they wanted to slow down and rubberneck the spot or zoom through as fast as possible in case the shooter came back to try again. Loshak had to alternate between braking and speeding up to keep from rear-ending anyone.
The shooter hadn’t had the same problem the other night. Interstate monitoring cameras had shown him picking up speed after the first shot, swerving in and out of traffic and flying through a toll plaza, firing off shots for the next mile and a half. From there, he took the Addison Street exit toward Wrigley Field. The traffic cams lost him after the first intersection.
Loshak took the same exit. He doubted that the area around the exit was significant to the shooter — the guy wouldn’t be dumb enough to lead them right back to where he lived or worked — but Loshak made a mental note to follow up on it anyway. Uniforms would need to search the area for the car. With this guy’s attention to security, he would’ve made sure to dump it somewhere the traffic cams wouldn’t see.
Chapter 10
“They need a mirror over here in the Coats section,” Spinks said. He pinched the multi-layer parka shut over his stomach and headed around the corner, looking for the mirror. “Obviously guys are going to be trying these on, so what’s the point in making them walk all the way over to Hats every time?”
Loshak followed him, shrugging. This was the third winter coat Spinks had tried on. They all looked warm and thick enough to protect against the severe Chicago weather, but none so far had met Spinks’ high standards for visual appeal.
Shoppers passed in the wider aisles, wet snow boots creaking on the tile. Most looked as if they wanted to get to the exit as quickly as possible, though Loshak suspected it didn’t have as much to do with hating Sears as it did with a general nervousness about the shootings. It wouldn’t have been in character for the shooter to charge into this end-of-the-mall store and open fire. There were too few people out in the open, too many shelves to block his shots. No, their guy liked gathering spaces. The food court, the interstate at rush hour. Places where people clumped together intentionally or against their will.
The sight of Spinks twisting and turning in front of the mirror pulled Loshak’s attention away from the case for a minute. For some reason, the reporter checking the coat from the front, both sides, and every angle reminded him of the first time he’d met the reporter. Seeing Spinks’ pastel shirt and thinking that he was one of those guys who could get away with wearing something like that.
“You like clothes shopping?” Loshak asked him.
Spinks smiled at his reflection.
“Do I detect a hint of frustration, agent? Patience is a virtue, you know.”
“I’m not trying to rush you. I was just thinking about how you have a really specific, clean-cut style. Not a lot of guys could pull off salmon or lavender.”
“And look good doing it,” Spinks said, holding up a finger. “I’m a natural summer, so the lighter shades set off my dusky complexion.”
Loshak chuckled.
“I was actually thinking that maybe what people — myself included — respond to when we see you wearing those shirts is your confidence. Being at home in your own skin.”
“Nope.” Spinks shook his head. “It’s my beauty.”
He smoothed the coat down.
“This one’s not gonna work. It ruins the lines of my dress.”
Back to the coat section they went. Spinks took off the one he’d been trying on and returned it to the rack, then started pawing through the type Loshak always thought of as bubble coats. Thinner than they should’ve been, with puffy ridges. Then on to a set of flannel jackets advertising their “Sherpa lining.” When Loshak was younger, they just called it wool.
“I actually think you’re onto something, though,” Spinks said, unhooking one of the red flannels. “Because if I wore this, I’d look ridiculous. Know why?”
“Because you don’t have the beard to be a lumberjack.”
“Because I think I’d look ridiculous, so I’d be wearing it like I must look ridiculous.” He returned the flannel to the rack and moved on to the leather jackets. “Same with these. I would think I looked like somebody trying to look cool, which we all know is the essence of uncool. When I was a kid, and we still lived in the suburbs, there was an old guy on my street who never left his house without a hat on. Mr. Jimenez. Different one every day. The kind of toppers that would make a kid look like they were dressing as a pimp for Halloween. So, I talk to Mr. J about it, tell him I wish I could wear hats, because I love them, but they don’t love me. And he tells me there’s a secret to wearing hats.”
The reporter turned to face Loshak, wagging a finger like an old man pontificating and slipping into a throaty Dominican accent.
“‘Jevon,’ he says, ‘you gotta wear that hat. You let it wear you—’” Spinks whistled and made a slashing motion with his hand. “‘—it’s already too late.’”
“Good advice.” Loshak scanned the racks and racks of coats. “So, why don’t you pick one of these coats at random and wear it?”
Spinks grinned.
“Because I’m human. I still feel like I’ve got a certain style to adhere to, even though I know I shaped that style with my own preconceptions about myself. Oh, I could fake it ’til I make it, but a lot of time that does more harm than good. In the interim, I’d know I was faking it, and people would pick up on that insecurity. Nothing smells fishier than artificial confidence.”
He grabbed a multi-layered black coat advertising its inner liner and rain-repelling technology and shrugged it on. It looked as if it were made out of wetsuit material.
“To the looking glass!”
Again, Loshak followed him.
“Case in point,” Spinks said, sweeping back both wings of the coat and putting his hands on his hips. “I want to be warm — really, really badly — but I still want to know that I could be taken seriously as an investigative journalist and consultant for the FBI. What we think we look like mixes with these notions we have about society at large and our own personal preferences.”
The reporter grabbed a knitted stocking cap with a pull-down balaclava and tried it on. A QuiClava, according to the tag. With the tactical material and the black wetsuit coat, the getup reminded Loshak of SWAT gear without the body armor.
“You’re going to want the matte black Mechanix gloves,” he said.
Spinks cupped his chin, appraising his reflection. “But do I have the raspy Batman voice to pull off this much black?”
“It’s bullshit is what it is,” a woman’s voice said, somewhere on the other side of the shelves. Hangers squealed against a metal rack. “I almost called in sick today. They can’t catch a single fucking shooter they saw on ten million security cameras? If they’re not going to do their job, then I shouldn’t have to, either.”
“Probably busy stuffing their fat faces with donuts.” The second voice was lower, male. “Sitting on their butts, collecting a paycheck, while the common man’s out here dying.”
“No, you know what it is?” the woman said. �
�It’s a fucking conspiracy. Like that Las Vegas shooter. Have you ever noticed nobody ever talks about that guy anymore? They don’t even speculate what his motives were. Just ‘nope, we’re done investigating him, forget him forever now.’ You bet your ass he had somebody high up on the totem pole on his side.”
Spinks slow-turned his head to Loshak, one brow raised in disbelief. Loshak gave him a silent shrug. It wasn’t the first time he’d witnessed this kind of public reaction with mass shooters. And it wouldn’t be the last, either.
“Same with this asshole,” she said. “They’ll pretend to look for a while, then he’ll conveniently be forgotten. Probably some politician’s son or a mobster or something.”
The guy chuckled.
“What’s the difference?”
“You’re fucking telling me. Should line all the assholes with badges up and gun them down. See how they like it.”
Their footsteps retreated, the conversation fading with them.
Spinks pointed at the shelves.
“And you think I’m a conspiracy nut,” he said in a low voice. “That chick’s a certifiable psycho.”
Loshak shook his head.
“She’s just scared, looking for a way to feel in control. Anger is a way to do that. You can’t control what you’re afraid of, but you can control your reaction to feeling fear. So you take that insecurity and loss of control and make it into something aggressive. Lash out.”
“By making insane threats against cops?”
“Ninety-nine percent of people who say something like that would never act on it.”
“In Chicago, I think that percentage drops off a bit,” Spinks said. “Maybe Illinois at large.”
“Well, you have to figure this place has been known for corruption since before Capone made it famous.”
Spinks considered this for a second.
“Millhouse,” he said. “You think she’s in somebody’s pocket?”