The Murder Channel

by John Philpin

  I pulled back the revolver’s hammer. Fremont heard the click and looked down.

  “How should I know where that psycho is?”

  “You’ve got vans filled with true believers, armed with everything except pitchforks, looking for him.”

  He leaned forward. “If I knew where he was, why would I have to look for him?”

  “Something went wrong at the courthouse.”

  The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem replaced Dennis Day on the jukebox.

  “Albie Wilson didn’t get himself killed to make a political statement,” I said.

  “Look, I already told the cops I don’t know Wilson, and I don’t know shit about what went down.”

  “That’s not what his brother Noonan says.”

  Fremont leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know no Noonan.”

  I fired the thirty-eight into the floor. Fremont yelped and bounced on his chair. There was another brief disturbance at the bar.

  “I never could get into the game of chess,” I said. “The idea of a stalemate disgusts me. There should be a winner and a loser.”

  “You’re crazy, old man.”

  I fired again.

  “Cut that shit out,” Fremont screamed.

  I leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “I hate to lose,” I said.

  Fremont was a small fish in a large pool, a piece of shit floating in an urban drainage pipe waiting to be flushed out. He oozed control and self-importance, and the half-wits who stood in his shadow worshipped him. From the time I was a kid on the Roxbury streets, I wanted only to bring down people like Dermott Fremont.

  “The next time, I take out a kneecap.”

  “Albie Wilson acted on his own. It had nothing to do with Vigil. He got his brother to drive him. That’s it.”

  “Van just pulled up, Doc,” Waycross said. “Five males.”

  “Shoot them,” I said.

  Fremont’s eyes flitted from the front window to Waycross and back to me. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  “Willy, where’s my Guinness?” I called.

  “Albie misjudged the security. That’s the only way I can figure it. There wasn’t supposed to be any hit, only fireworks. He must’ve panicked.”

  This time the disturbance behind me was louder and longer as Waycross disarmed Fremont’s band of merry men and escorted them to a table.

  Willy’s hands shook as he placed my mug of Guinness on the table.

  “’Tis a fine brew,” I said. “So, what was the second car for?”

  Fremont blanched. “What second car?”

  He quickly held up his hands. “Don’t fuckin’ shoot,” he said. “Insurance, okay? Albie wanted to know that he had a way out.”

  “Who drove the second car?”

  “I swear I don’t know.”

  I considered what he had told me. It was a start, but not much more than that. Another time, I thought, I would have a more private heart-to-heart with J-Cubed.

  “Mr. Fremont, you and I are going to meet again,” I said, pushing myself away from the table. “When that happens, it will be immaterial to me whether you answer my questions, or I blow off your fucking head. Have a pleasant evening.”

  WAYCROSS AND I WALKED TO MY RENTED Ford Explorer.

  “Bolton used to say you needed a leash,” he said. “I think a cage might be more appropriate.”

  “Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke,” I said.

  Waycross’s laughter was muffled.

  “You choking?” I asked him. “Need a whack on the back?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “I never thought to ask, Neville. What are you using for a weapon?”

  “My service nine. I’ve kept it all these years.”

  We stepped into the parking lot, where Danny Kirkland leaned against my car. “Hey, Doc,” he said. “I had to see if you’d come out of Riddle’s alive.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  “You’re reinventing the wheel. Have you asked yourself the next question yet? ‘Why shoot up the courthouse?’ If it ain’t a hit, what the fuck is it?”

  “What do you want?” I asked him.

  “What I’ve been saying right along. I know stuff. You know other stuff. We compare. I save you some steps. You give me the whole story.”

  “Move,” I said.

  “Will you admit that there’s more to this than Zrbny?”

  “I’ll get rid of him,” Waycross said.

  “No, Neville,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Let’s not compound our felony.”

  Kirkland stepped away from the car. “Good advice, Brother Waycross,” he said.

  Waycross and I slipped into the Explorer.

  “Might be you gotta dig deeper, Doc,” Kirkland said.

  “Kind of you to point that out, Danny,” I said.

  “Might be you gotta go back fifteen years.” I slammed the door.

  “Neville, I don’t like cities,” I said, guiding the vehicle through the snow. “I concur with my daughter Lane’s assessment that I should not be allowed to roam freely through them. Anything might happen. This time it’s your former boss’s fault. I should be hibernating. I especially do not enjoy cases like this one.”

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “I’m going to drop you off. I’ve got a date with a media mogul.”

  “I don’t get to watch?” Waycross asked with a chuckle.

  “Ha, now you’ve got the spirit,” I said. “No.”

  He was silent, gazing at the snow.

  “You enjoyed the confrontation back there,” I said.

  He hesitated. “I felt like I was doing something, getting somewhere.”

  “You didn’t feel that in the Brotherhood?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Mostly it was like walking through a war zone and not being able to fire back at the snipers. Guess I never lost my cop’s head.”

  “What did you do with the anger?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You weren’t drinking, you didn’t return fire, and you stuck with the good-works mission.”

  “I seldom get angry,” he said. “That’s never been a problem.”

  I CLEARED SECURITY AND RODE THE EXPRESS elevator to twenty.

  Wendy Pouldice had the only apartment on the floor. I stood outside her door with a bag full of the makings of dinner. She answered my knock immediately.

  “I’ll be damned,” she said. “You made it through the blizzard.”

  “Crab curry?”

  “And calisthenics?” she asked with a grin.

  “We need to talk.”

  She shrugged, and the leer disappeared. “C’mon in, Lucas. I’ve already eaten.”

  I gave her the bag. “Freeze it. We’ll do a rain check.”

  Braverman lay sprawled on a white sofa. He had graduated from Bawdy Boston to People.

  “Later, Donald,” Pouldice said.

  The big man climbed from the sofa and let himself out.

  “He doesn’t say much,” I observed.

  “He’s dependable,” she said, lowering herself into a chair. “Sit.”

  I circled a low glass table and sat in a matching chair. “Felix Zrbny,” I said.

  “You’re so single-minded, Lucas.”

  I shrugged. “Past behavior is still the best indicator of future behavior. Zrbny is dangerous.”

  In my years of practice, a patient’s assertion of an intent to change was the least reliable forecaster that she would cease her drinking, or that he would stop abusing his wife and children. Psychological testing was a reasonable sample of a person’s thoughts, attitudes, and feelings at the time of test administration. Characterological idiosyncrasies often emerged from an expertly administered and interpreted Thematic Apperception Test, a series of storytelling pictures developed by Henry Murray at Harvard in the 1930s. The trend in psychology, however, was away from projective testing and toward whatever could be measured. The field was counting it
s way to irrelevance.

  Many times in court, I had been asked about the likelihood of a defendant’s repeating the behavior that had brought him before the court. Occasionally I had a response; most often I admitted that I had no idea.

  There was no doubt in my mind what the city would be dealing with if we did not get Zrbny off the streets.

  All behavior has a context. Explosive violence has a complex choreography and usually an intrapsychic script. When the victims are strangers, they have walked onstage in act 2, or 3, or 5, without knowing their lines. Only the aggressor knows what is going on in his head and on his stage.

  “You’ve talked with Zrbny,” I said.

  “Many times. He has a story to tell. There are questions that he wants to answer.”

  “He’s a fugitive. He can’t pop in off the streets to titillate your viewers.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  “Wendy, he’s already killed today. I don’t know what trips his wire, but when he goes, more people will die.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” she said. “People do change.”

  “Sure. He’s killing at a slower pace.”

  Legs in her white linen suit crossed, hands planted firmly on the chair arms, Wendy Pouldice knew something that no one else knew. I suspected that it was not enough to keep her from getting killed.

  “You’ve seen him since he escaped,” I said.

  She continued to smile. “Lucas, we’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “Forget the rest of the speech,” I said, and shoved myself from the back-killing chair.

  I unfolded the copy of the Escher print that I had found in Zrbny’s desk and dropped it on the glass table. “Recognize anyone?”

  She leaned forward and stared at the black-and-white forms plodding their way through stone emptiness—oblivious and alone. Pouldice grabbed the print and focused on the face at its center, the faded publicity shot.

  “I had a midday show and anchored the evening news back then,” she said. “Where did you get this?”

  “Fifteen years ago your crew was the first at Ravenwood.”

  “Lucas, answer my question.”

  “Zrbny called you that day, didn’t he?”

  She dropped the print on the table, slammed her hands to her hips, and stared at the ceiling.

  “Wendy, you’re going to get yourself killed, and you’re exposing others to that risk.”

  “We’re all going to die, Lucas. I don’t plan on doing it soon.”

  “When do you expect him?”

  As if on cue, Braverman strode into the room and stood at the door.

  “That guy is amazing,” I said.

  I retrieved the Escher print.

  “If we can’t talk about Zrbny, what about Dermott Fremont?”

  She glanced quickly at Braverman. “Vigil,” she said. “We’ve been reporting the courthouse story since this morning.”

  “Fremont?”

  “What about him? I don’t know the man. My people have tried to interview him. He refuses.”

  I looked at Braverman. “Donald, what sort of guy is J-Cubed?”

  The big guy’s answer was to pull open the door and hold it for my exit.

  “You’ve got him well trained,” I told her.

  “The business has changed, Lucas. We don’t just report the game. We’re players now.”

  Wendy Pouldice was setting herself up as an accessory to whatever horror Felix Zrbny visited on the city. “You’re not at the zoo,” I said. “You’re not watching animals behind an electric fence and across a moat.”

  She said nothing.

  Braverman cleared his throat and I left.

  ON THE TWENTY-MINUTE DRIVE FROM THE Towers to Bolton’s office, I began to have a feel for what churned at the back of my mind. Vigil was not making a political statement with its assault on the courthouse. Albie Wilson, however crazy he was, had his half-brother driving the only car that concerned Wilson. The second car and driver were for a different passenger, one who had not arrived in court. I was convinced that Vigil wanted Zrbny free and alive. What I did not know was why.

  Bolton met me at his door. “The little guy in there is Benjamin Moffat,” he said. “He just survived a face-off with Zrbny.”

  “Is he reliable?”

  “He’s a ward attendant at the criminal psych unit. Worked with Zrbny for five years. He was on his way home from his shift at the hospital, saw Zrbny and pulled over.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The Riverway, off Huntington.”

  “I was just out there,” I said, thinking that Pouldice and Zrbny now shared the same cage.

  “Zrbny aimed a gun at him and told him to go home. Moffat says there was a witness, a young woman standing in an apartment doorway. I’ve got units at both ends of the drive, and two unmarked cars moving onto the street.”

  I followed Bolton to his car and climbed in. “Why didn’t he shoot Moffatt?” I asked.

  “You’re supposed to tell me that.”

  Bolton made the turn onto a deserted Hunting-ton Avenue. “I have a tactical unit on standby,” he said. “We’re treating this as a hostage situation.”

  “Is Zrbny holding the woman?”

  “Moffatt doesn’t know. Zrbny was on the street. The woman was in the doorway. He said it looked like she lives there. Moffatt didn’t know the street number, but he described the area well. He was happy not to be shot. He drove off. Zrbny just stood in the road.”

  It made sense that Zrbny would hole up somewhere. He was a killer on the run in a crippling snowstorm.

  … residents attempting to purchase handguns, and when they realize they can’t, buying large hunting knives, crowding hardware stores for lengths of pipe, and garden centers for everything from hedge clippers to chainsaws. Community humane societies like this one in suburban Need-ham report hundreds of applications from people seeking to adopt dogs, the bigger and more vicious, the better. The city is in a panic. There can be no question about that. We’re in for a long night….

  SABLE SAT IN THE DARKENED APARTMENT.

  The aquarium’s rainbow colors had washed to a mud gray. The gentle noise of bubbling water was gone.

  “The electricity went off,” Sable said. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

  I stood at the door and watched the road. Someone had followed me from the Towers. I noticed him when I crossed the bridge. When I stopped at the corner, he froze in the shadows a hundred yards away. I did not see him now.

  A car moved slowly past and parked. The engine idled, and no one got out of the car.

  “Mr. Guzman sent flowers,” I said, dropping the bag on the sofa beside her.

  I retrieved the shotgun from the bathroom and returned to the front window.

  “Felix, what’s going on?” Sable asked.

  “He said you should put them in water.”

  A TV satellite truck stopped on the other side of the river.

  “Go into the kitchen,” I said. “Now.”

  I heard her leave the room.

  A van turned onto the Riverway and came fast, sliding to a halt thirty yards away. Four men climbed out, talked briefly, then dispersed toward the buildings. The TV truck’s klieg lights snapped on and illuminated the street and the blowing snow.

  I moved back through the apartment to the cellar door.

  “Felix?”

  “Stay away from the front,” I said, and stepped into the cellar.

  I followed emergency lighting through the subterranean corridor. In each building’s cellar, metal barrels overflowed with cans, milk cartons, bottles, tins. Some tenants had not bothered with the barrels and dropped their debris on the floor.

  I had not gone far when I heard noise behind me. Someone opened Sable’s door. I waited until the door slammed shut.

  Ducking pipes and wires, I ran the length of the hall until I reached the last cellar. That’s when I heard gunshots.

  I climbed stairs to the first-
floor entry. Three teenagers stood outside the door watching the action on the street. More shots were fired.

  When I pushed open the street door, one kid looked at me, then at the shotgun. “They after you, mister?”

  I nodded.

  His friends turned. “That’s Vigil,” a second one said. “You don’t want to fuck with them. They got a shootout going with the cops.”

  The third kid, a tall, gangly adolescent, spoke up. “If you don’t shoot me with that, I’ll show you another way out of here.”

  I nodded.

  “C’mon.”

  I followed him into the building and down the stairs. He crossed the hall, dodged garbage mounds, and slipped behind the furnace to the wall.

  “You reach up there,” the kid said, “you’ll feel loose boards. Slide ‘em to the right, then haul yourself out. There’s a fence with a hole ripped in it. Go through there, between the two buildings, and you’ll come out on the next block.”

  He moved aside, and a voice shouted, “Freeze.”

  The kid backed across the cellar.

  “I don’t want you. I want the big guy.”

  The kid turned to run. Automatic weapon fire cut him down.

  I waited until the shooter stepped cautiously into sight beyond the furnace, then fired two rounds from the Mossberg. He caromed off the wall on his way down.

  More men approached, running through the corridor. When they were only yards away, I stepped from behind the furnace and fired.

  I SAT IN THE CAR WITH BOLTON WATCHING tactical officers escort handcuffed vigilantes to a van, and listening to muffled bursts of gunfire from somewhere inside the building. Our back seat was the temporary repository for seized weapons, mostly Mac-10s and Uzis. At random intervals, the door opened and a cop contributed to the arsenal.

  There was one knife in the pile of metal—a bone-handle with a twelve-inch blade that was at least two inches across and sharpened on both edges. “Asshole was hunting bears on the River-way,” I muttered.

  Bolton glanced through the snow at the TV lights on the far side of the river. “How did BTT get here so fast?” he asked.