Final Victim (1995)

by Stephen Cannell

  “If it’s true that Satan is only the author of sin, then why, dear Shirley, in the fires of the last day, was he not reduced to a state of nonexistence?”

  The woman, whose desk plate read CANDICE WILCOX, lay silent before him. The Wind Minstrel was lost in ritual fantasy. “You told me he would perish, but he hasn’t. Would you explain that, please?” he demanded.

  He turned on the saw and cut the humerus bone just below the pectoralis minor muscles on the shoulder. He worked for twenty minutes. When he was through, he carefully loaded what he had removed into garbage bags—turned the twisties and packed everything into the large suitcase he had brought with him. He arranged the body, putting some books beneath her torso so that the head was lower. This, he knew, would allow the blood to drain from the body and eliminate lividity—discoloration from the collection of blood in the lower extremities. It turned the skin a deep purple and took almost nine hours to occur. He knew the police used lividity to fix time of death.

  The Wind Minstrel needed to claim the whore as his divine work. He pulled out his branding iron with the special head. He had made it from a woman’s electric curling iron. He plugged it in, waited for a minute till it got hot, and pressed it to Candice Wilcox’s left breast. When he could smell flesh burning, he removed it and looked at the brand:

  R. 13-15

  The Wind Minstrel put his branding iron away, pulled out The Rat’s notebook PC, disconnected the incoming phone line from the fax machine on Candice Wilcox’s desk, and hooked it into The Rat’s PC.

  Once again, he typed in the system username, root, and the password, GOD. After a few seconds, the system logon welcome message came on the screen. Then he typed in:

  EnviroLog

  The environmental log was in the building’s computer under the EnviroLog program. In a few seconds, up on his screen came the building’s forty zone listings. He was on the west side of the building in Zone 4-W. He had already prepared a program on his own computer and stored it for this moment. He had named the program WindLog. He uploaded the program into the building computer. WindLog would override the climate control for Zone 4-W. This new program would first drive the heat in that sector as high as it would go, approximately 110 degrees. The Wind Minstrel knew that this would keep the dead body’s temperature high while he was on his way back to Tampa. Since the police also used cooling body temperature to fix time of death, the heat would throw them off. But he also knew that if he left the heat on, the police would be alert to his deception, so he had instructed WindLog to shut off the heat in 4-W at 6:30 A. M. and turn the air-conditioning on full, driving the room temperature back down to approximately 70 degrees by 7:30. Then his program would reset the environmental control to the normal temperature of 72. But The Rat was clever, and he knew that there would be a record of this wild temperature fluctuation, so he had written another program, which he had named BogusLog. It would quietly replace a section of the building’s environmental log and show a normal temperature record for 4-W. As its last act, WindLog would erase itself and leave BogusLog to reflect the incorrect time and temperature information, leaving no trace of The Wind Minstrel’s magic.

  He waited until he felt the heat come on, then unplugged the small computer and packed it in with his other treasures. He left the office by the fire stairs, never bothering to look back at the mutilated body of Candice Wilcox.

  He went down the stairs and exited through the first-floor door on Center Street, never coming close to the security guard. He was careful to leave that door slightly ajar. He walked to his truck and put the large suitcase into the front seat. He would have to drive quickly to get back to Tampa by dawn. He stopped only once in Thomasville, near the Florida border, to get gas.

  It was 7:28 A. M. when he got to the computer store where he worked in Tampa. Sitting in the parking lot, he made the last call to the building’s computer. Again, he used the root password, GOD. Once in, he accessed the security module of the computer. He added the Center Street door back into the system and erased his original deletion. He watched as the perimeter-breach alarm flashed on the computer graphic, indicating a breakin through the Center Street fire door. He then watched as the automatic dialer notified building security and the Atlanta PD.

  The Rat knew that when the body was found by the Atlanta police, the liver temperature would still be close to its normal 102 degrees. He knew that all homicide units measure liver temperature for time-ofdeath estimates, because it is the hottest organ in the body. The police would find no lividity and no loss of liver temperature, even though almost nine hours had past since the murder. The Rat knew they would place the TOD at approximately 7:30 A. M., when the alarm triggered. He had a perfect alibi: He was at work more than four hundred miles away. The Rat was cunning and shrewd. His skin didn’t hurt him now. His nipples didn’t ache or sting, but he was again wretched and foul. He hurried into Tampa ComputerLand, where Leonard was a part-time PC repair tech. He punched in. His time card said 7:36. All he had left to do was call and tell Satan that he had possessed the arms.

  Chapter 4

  AWESOME DAWSON

  She was standing naked in the cold shower, while icy water hit her face and ran like cold tentacles down her ribs, between her legs, to the tile floor. She had just come back from her morning five-mile run. Her skin vibrated with the needle-cold spray. She was beginning to suspect that her new job was another in a long line of disappointing mistakes. It always started with the decision to take up the challenge, then came the false euphoria and the fantasy expectations. But reality and boredom always followed. Despite all of her accomplishments, boredom always hovered, beating wings of emptiness and scaring her with its dark promise. Boredom was her dangerous stalker. She knew, of course, it explained a lot of things about her: the need to push herself, the life-threatening sports … The risks seemed to bring her alive. She had a doctorate in psychology and knew that her symptoms signaled a deep inner problem, yet she couldn’t fathom why she could find nothing to hold her interest.

  She reached out and took her razor, turned the water warmer, then slid down, feeling the cold tile against her back. She sat on the floor of the shower, with the spray hitting her shoulders, and stared at the razor. It had been her father’s, an antique with a twist shaft that released the blade. She had inherited it from him, along with his huge, unwieldy intellect.

  She opened the razor and let the water wash the blade. It danced in its open carriage as the spray hit it. She looked at the blue steel and thought how easy it would be to just let go … to put the boredom to rest. She closed the razor and began shaving her legs, and then, as seemed to happen more and more frequently in the morning, she started to cry. Tears racked her as she sat on the tile floor.

  “Fuck!” she said out loud as she nicked herself. The blood ran down her calf and onto the tile, then circled the drain, disappearing like all her expectations. She watched it in fascination, the sobs still caught in her throat.

  Ten minutes later, she was dressed in jeans, a silk blouse, and a sweater. The colors didn’t match and she didn’t care. She looked at herself in the hallway mirror. Auburn hair and a clean athletic frame. Men seemed to find her pretty. It baffled her. All she saw was emptiness. It was on her face like clown makeup. It was in her life like pon. And now, after hoping to add excitement with her new job in law enforcement, she had been assigned to update computer data in the basement, with an agent who was being punished because he was a notorious fuck-up. She’d accessed John Lockwood’s service record by using her newly acquired interagency computer clearance. He had been under constant Internal Affairs scrutiny for misconduct, mostly rule bending and insubordination. His ID picture showed a narrow-faced, dark-complexioned man with black hair and a Roman nose. She supposed he could be called attractive, and she was sure he thought he was.

  To her, he only looked like trouble. There was, however, one thing in his file that intrigued her. He had been involved in apprehending the infamous Carlos “Malavida
” Chacone.

  She grabbed her purse and left the apartment, hurrying on shapely legs to the elevator and into the underground garage, where she got into her Honda and drove the ten blocks to the U. S. Customs building on Constitution Avenue.

  Lockwood heard her way before he found Room B-16.

  “This fucking piece of cyberjunk!” Her voice carried down the narrow basement hallway.

  He followed its acerbic timbre until he found the open door and Karen Dawson.

  “Damn. That’s not the password either?” She slammed the computer console with her fist.

  “Nice jab, but I’ve found that model PC is a sucker for left-handed uppercuts.”

  She spun around and hit him with two hundred watts of amber-eyed fury.

  “Hang on a minute… .” She turned back to the computer and punched in something. The screen said:

  login incorrect

  Connection closed by foreign host.

  “Shit,” she murmured under her breath, but didn’t hit the terminal this time.

  “So you’re Karen Dawson, Ph. D., RNDNSC, CCSB … more letters than the Chinese alphabet.”

  “Chinese doesn’t have letters, it has characters,” she said without emphasis or a second look back at him.

  She studied a manual on the table next to her, logged out, shut off the computer, turned it back on, then logged back in, and typed:

  telnet ring2ice. Anon. Pennet. No

  They both watched as the system said:

  Trying 172.24.168.10 …

  “Trying Norway?” he said.

  “How did you know that? It’s not on the screen.”

  “The last two letters in the Internet address, the `. No.’ That’s Norway.”

  She hesitated and looked at him again as if seeing him for the first time. “Don’t let it throw you. I’ve just worked a couple of international computer scams. I’m John Lockwood.”

  “I figured. I’m Karen Dawson. Welcome to Fort Nowhere.”

  Lockwood had never met Awesome Dawson, but he knew about her. She was a civilian employee who had been at Customs only three months. Already, however, she had created a fair-sized legend. Lockwood knew from the ip mill that she had an IQ that was so high it went off the chart. It had been guessed at over 180. On top of that, at the tender age of twenty-five, she had a double doctorate in abnormal psychology and criminal profiling. She was rumored to be two races away from getting her NASCAR license and had a black belt in some kind of Oriental kick fighting … all in all, a dizzying resume. He’d been expecting a bull-necked, short-haired woman with pug-nosed determination. The thing that instantly struck him as strange was that nobody had mentioned she was a knockout. He immediately calculated it must be a tribute to her immense skills, that beauty was so far down her list of assets it didn’t even rate a mention.

  “You’re in my light,” she said, pointing to a Tensor lamp that he was standing in front of.

  “You need light to swear at this stuff?”

  “Hey … please. Okay? I know we’ve been assigned to work together, but spare me the breezy bullshit.”

  The computer got a “timed-out” signal and she turned to try it again.

  He leaned over, picked up her crib sheet, and glanced at it for a moment. Written on the top was “Pennet.” “What’s Pennet?” he asked.

  “It’s a remailer computer program in Oslo, Norway. You know what a remailer is?”

  “Yeah. It’s a computer that masks the identity of the senders. You can send a message to somebody through a remailer and it will encode your name and then send it on, hiding your identity from the receiver.”

  “Not exactly.” Her tone seemed to say she was already tired of him.

  “I thought you were supposed to be updating data for a new program for sex offenders on the VICAP computer… .”

  “I’m caught up to everything Operations gave me. They’re sending down some new packets. So until they come, VICAP can wait.”

  VICAP—the Violent Criminals Apprehension Program—was a computer system originally designed by an L. A. cop named John St. John. St. John had reasoned that since serial criminals often had fractured personalities, they might also be nomads and wander. With that in mind, he had convinced police departments all over the country to put any unsolved, brutal, ritualistic sex killings into a computer data bank. The idea was that if these killers were wandering around, committing murders all across the country, then maybe the similarities in their assaults would go undetected. The computer would match them up and see a serial crime where local police might not. Because of VICAP, serial murderers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy had been discovered.

  “What’re ya doing, messing around with a remailer computer in Oslo?” Lockwood finally asked.

  She looked at him with her jaw set and no apparent intention of answenng.

  “That’s an official question posed by your new shit-for-brains Fort Nowhere teammate.”

  She seemed to be evaluating him; then her body language changed slightly.

  “Okay, look … I’m sorry. I’m mad, but not at you. I’m mad at the situation. They’ve got me updating old cases. I’m a doctor of abnormal psychology and criminal profiling. I didn’t agree to a job here so I could update old computer data. I thought this remailer might be more challenging, so I’m free-lancing it. Don’t burn me, okay?”

  “How you doing?” Lockwood asked, not really caring but looking for friendly ground.

  “I can’t get through password security. I’m trying to crack in, but they’ve got some kind of three-try limit on passwords. At this rate, it’s gonna take me fifty years.”

  Lockwood didn’t know much about computers, but that wasn’t something he shared with many people. In the new age of law enforcement, computers were a growing tool. Computer illiteracy all but disqualified you from the hunt. He had picked up some rudimentary stuff, but it was mostly camouflage. He was still what the chipheads called a bagbiter—somebody who created problems on the system. So he left the hacking and cracking to other people, while he stood on the sidelines and tried to look wise. He pulled out his handbook of limited knowledge and asked a few ground-level questions.

  “Are you using your own username?” he asked.

  “No … I’m Redwitch, but I’m not using it. For this, I’m DarkStar—it’s a name of one of our informants—and I’m using the U. S. Customs host computer.”

  “What cracking program are you using?” he added.

  “I downloaded Crack off the Internet. But I’m a hacker, not a cracker, and this stuff is tougher to break through than I thought.”

  “Crack is a dictionary of computer passwords or something, right?” he asked.

  “Right. The way it’s supposed to work is, you dial into the computer you’re trying to penetrate, and this little program starts jabbering passwords at it. You’re supposed to just leave it on. I’m using a dictionary of over ten thousand common passwords. Crack runs through the whole dictionary until it hits one that the other computer accepts. It’s supposed to be eighty percent reliable, but I’m S. O. L. so far.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know. I log in, I do the opening dance, then my Crack program shoots three passwords in, and I get this ‘login incorrect’ shit from Pennet in Oslo, and I’m out.”

  “Lemme see …”

  She turned, typed li and hit Enter. The li command told the UNIX operating system on the host computer to repeat the last command issued:

  telnet ring2Ice. Anon. Pennet. No Trying 172.24.168. 10 …

  They waited. The room was very small and windowless, and he could smell her perfume. One detail intrigued him: She wasn’t wearing any jewelry, not even earrings. Claire never wore jewelry, except for her wedding ring, until she threw it at him. After a second, the hookup was complete and the screen read:

  Connected to ring2ice. Anon. Pennet. No Escape character is ‘AF

  SunOS UNIX (ring2ice)

  login:

&nb
sp; She typed in “darkstar.” They waited. After a few seconds, Pennet responded with:

  password:

  She then activated Crack on her computer and it made three password attempts. After the third attempt the screen read:

  login Incorrect

  Connection closed by foreign host.

  Then some line noise put some garbage on the screen:

  *R#W8c^41%

  “What’s all that jabberwocky?” John said, leaning in. “It’s pissed. I think it’s swearing at me.”

  Then the screen shouted:

  DARKSTAR, you have excessive invalid logins. You are locked out for fifteen minutes.

  NOTIFYING SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR.

  And the screen went black.

  “Cheese it, the cops!” Lockwood said, grinning.

  “Look, you may think this is funny. I don’t. Why don’t you just go get some coffee?”

  “You gonna keep trying with the Systems Administrator watching?” “What’s he gonna do, jump on a plane from Oslo, come over here, and knock me in the dirt?”

  “Good point.”

  They waited fifteen minutes. It was a strange lull, because she seemed to have nothing to say to him and he couldn’t think of anything to say to her. So they waited in silence, with their eyes on the wall clock. The basement room was cramped and underlit. The ornate Customs building had once been Washington’s Department of Labor building. It was a stone-faced edifice with Corinthian columns and a brass front door. But the decorating scheme ended below the first floor. The basement would have made a good set for a Bela Lugosi film. There were exposed pipes running along hard concrete hallways.

  The last minute clicked off the clock and, without saying anything to him, she telnetted to Pennet, again. They were back in the good graces of the remailer computer. The screen said amicably:

  Connected to ring2Ice. Anonspennet. No Escape character Is ‘,V