Then the woman spoke: “Leonard Land is a seven-foot-tall, twenty-seven-year-old, fat, bald man who is pitiful and cowardly,” she began.
The words devastated him. Shirley had always screamed words like that at him.
“I will not be pitied,” he screamed back at the bitch on TV.
“My profile shows him to be sexually inadequate. He believes he is the Anti-Christ or something approaching it … maybe even a disciple of the Devil.”
As she spoke, The Wind Minstrel fought to hold down a rising tide of emotions.
“So, Dr. Dawson, you say he’s fixated on his mother, who tortured him. What would she have done or said to him to produce this kind of horrible psychosis all these years later?” Trisha asked, providing Karen with her transition.
“I can only approximate these thoughts, but she might have said …” Karen turned to the camera and looked directly into the lens. She switched to the first person, using all she had learned about Leonard and his foster mother. She talked to him directly, as she hoped Shirley might have: “Leonard, you are ugly! Pitiful, filthy, foul! You are the Anti-Christ! Fire is all that will cleanse you. You will burn in agony in God’s Apocalypse.”
In the barge, the words hit The Wind Minstrel like a fist. He screamed in anguish, “Bitch! You’ve come back!” The Wind Minstrel was standing now. His long, fat legs rubbed together at the thighs as he began pacing. He no longer felt the pain on his nipples and skin. His mind was consumed with anger and distress. If this wasn’t Shirley, then it was Shirley’s ghost, or it was Shirley in the body of a whore cunt who looked and sounded just like her.
“God will strike you down!” Karen continued angrily.
The Wind Minstrel shrieked again in anger as he threw himself into the rusting walls, slamming his head against the steel bulkhead to get the painful sound of her voice out of his ears.
“I am the god of fuck and mutilation. You cannot punish me. You cannot burn me with Trinity candles. You are my victim!” he yelled. And then he paced in the small room, trying not to look at the Shirley person on the TV. He paced in a frenzy, trying to get his mind to focus on his plight.
“God rules the sunshine. But The Wind Minstrel rules the night,” he whispered.
When the newscast was complete, Trisha packed up her equipment. They stood in the parking lot for a long moment.
“Thanks,” Karen finally said.
“You’re baiting this sicko. I wouldn’t be you for nothing.”
Then, after Trisha got into her car and followed the remote truck out of the lot, Karen went up to the Ramada Inn. Two of the off-duty police were now positioned in adjoining rooms. The connecting doors to her room were unlocked, so they could get in fast. The other two policemen were outside in the stairwell. She turned out the light and, still dressed, stretched out on her bed and waited. At midnight, she called Malavida. He had seen the TV newscast.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to do anything stupid,” he said.
“Look, Mal, I’m covered. I have cops all around.”
“This guy isn’t going to hit you where you think, Karen.” “You’re wrong. He’s gonna come at me like he came at Claire .. sloppy, no planning, no organization.”
“You think that your profile lets you get inside his head. That’s ego, Karen; ego can get you killed. You can’t predict him.”
“Did you take your temperature?”
“Don’t change the subject,” Mal answered.
By 4:30 in the morning, she had begun to lose some hope. It was now Sunday. She wondered what Sunday meant to The Rat. According to followers of the New Testament, Sunday was the day of rest. Seventh Day Adventists observed the Sabbath on Saturday … but Leslie Bowers had been killed on a Saturday… . Sunday was the day The Rat talked to his friend in Oslo. What did that mean? Although Leonard Land killed Claire on a Sunday, Karen wondered if the “personality” that had dismembered Candice Wilcox would also kill on a Sunday. She was positive The Rat was nocturnal. Once the sun was up, he would be dormant. She wondered if she had misjudged him.
And then the phone rang.
Chapter 35
TASHAY
“Is this Ms. Dawson?” Her voice was*tinny, she was whispering. In the background, Karen could hear her Death Metal music screaming. “Yes,” she answered. “Who’s this?”
“It’s Tashay … Roberts. You met me with Bob Shiff, only he don’t like me to call him Bob anymore.”
“Hi,” Karen said. “How are you doing?”
“That Lockwood guy, he really got fucked up big in Washington. They say on the news he ain’t never comin’ back from the bird farm.” “But we can hope.”
“First I was expecting him to call. I handed him a note that night with my number, but then I heard on the TV that he was in Washington and that he got … Wait a minute,” and her hand was cupped over the receiver. Karen could hear a muffled man’s voice and then Tashay was back on the phone. “Sorry, that fuckin’ guy won’t leave me alone. I’m backstage, we just finished a concert. Satan roared tonight. Cold-blooded shit … really out there.”
“That’s nice,” Karen said, sitting up. “You had something you wanted to tell me … ?”
“I seen this guy you’re lookin’ for. He was here, backstage, tonight. He’s been to see Baby Killer a buncha times. A big son of a bitch .. . no hair, really looks broke to the curb. Ugly fucker.”
“Is he there now?”
“He left. See, thing is, if I’m gonna help you, Satan’s gonna be maximum pissed. He don’t like cops. He told me not to call… . If I roll on him, it’s like a major L-12.”
“L-12?” Karen asked. Tashay sounded ripped.
“It’s like loco times twelve.”
“What do you want?” Karen asked.
“Two things. First, it’s just gotta be you and me. We gotta meet someplace where the T. Bone won’t see us. And you gotta bring a thousand dollars.”
“And what does that buy me?”
“It buys you this big, ugly prick’s address. He gave Satan his address ‘cause he wanted an autographed picture. Can you believe it? An autographed picture. We don’t have band shots, but Satan took his address anyway … and I copied it down.”
“Where do you want to meet?”
“I don’t care. I just don’t want nobody to see us. And if there’s any cops around, you can twist a braid, sugar, ‘cause I ain’t gonna say shit to the cops… . If Satan finds out I done that, my thing with him goes orbital.”
“How about we meet here, at the Ramada Inn?”
“You kiddin’ … where you did the TV thing? Check that. How ‘bout Satan’s house tomorrow morning. He ain’t gonna be awake. He sleeps till almost four in the afternoon.”
“Now you’re kidding,” Karen said. She searched her memory for a good place, some place public but where people wouldn’t pay much attention. Then she remembered the park where they’d all gone after the Loomis Theater. “How about that park on Biscayne Bay,” she said, “the one we went to.”
“Bayfront Park … okay. What time?”
“Nine A. M.,” Karen said.
“Shit, honey, I don’t get up till two. I’m in the music biz.” “Now you’re in the information biz. I’ll have cash. Be there at nine, if you want it.”
Tashay sighed loudly; then she was talking to somebody else. “… the fuck you lookin’ at, Martin?” Her hand went back over the receiver and Karen heard a loud muffled conversation. Then Tashay was back on the phone. “That asshole’s been suckin’ my flava all week.”
“Nine A. M.,” Karen said firmly.
“Okay, nine. But bring the grand in cash.” And she hung up.
Karen decided not to tell Fred T. Fred yet. She had two reasons: First, she didn’t think she could control Fred. He’d want to play it his way, and that might spook Tashay into clamming up. Second, Tashay wasn’t very smart, but she was shrewd. She probably would be very careful before she gave up The Rat’s new address. Karen was sure she
could handle it.
She lay back on the bed and waited for the jolt of excitement to hit. It had always been risk that her life craved. But now, as she lay there, she felt nothing … no fire, no adrenaline, only a vague sense of distress and foreboding. She tried to pump up her engine. She told herself she would do it the way she always did: alone, with tools of her own invention.
Malavida had received the call from Karen at twelve midnight. After she hung up, he continued cracking into the computer at D. C. General Hospital in Washington. He finally managed to break through at about three A. M. In ten more minutes, he had John Lockwood’s medical records up on the screen. He determined several things as he read them, including the fact that Lockwood was far from being comatose, as the TV had reported. He had come out of it and taken physical therapy. Malavida scrolled the doctor’s notes:
John Lockwood’s current prognosis is mixed. He has suffered damage to all four regions of the brain due to loss of oxygen for a sustained period of time (estimated five minutes). This has resulted in the loss of brain cells and has left him with multi-diminished capacity. This includes difficulties in memory, speech, and coordination, due to brain oxygen starvation in the orbital gyri of both frontal lobes, as well as the cerebral choroid plexus. The lack of oxygen carried by the occipital artery, as well as the parietal branch of the superficial temporal artery and the deep temporal artery, has caused some damage in the infraorbital nerve affecting speech, as well as the superorbital nerve and the facial nerve. The patient’s prognosis over time is good; however, he will require physical and mental therapy to regain normal functions.
It was signed Dr. Lawrence Sikes.
Malavida wanted to talk to Lockwood, but there was no phone in the Customs agent’s room. It was then that Mal saw that his next scheduled therapy was at ten on Sunday morning. Malavida was determined to reach him.
The next morning, Fred T. Fred made things easier when he discontinued the surveillance of Karen, due to a light Sunday shift and a division commander who would not approve the overtime. The cops left after she promised not to move around and to call in periodically.
It was quarter to nine in the morning when Karen arrived at Bayfront Park. She was looking for the brown VW band bus that belonged to Baby Killer. She drove slowly past the park on Highway 41, scanning the area for any sight of it. From the highway, she could see Biscayne Bay. A brisk, gusting wind was pushing big sailboats across the angry water, driving their lee rails under, as they cut through the morning chop. As she drove on, she thought she saw the brown VW van parked next to one of the restrooms at the south end of the park. She pulled her rental van onto one of the access roads and drove toward it. As she got nearer, she could definitely tell that it was the same van that had been parked behind the Loomis. She drove toward it and stopped a few feet away.
The van appeared to be empty. She got out and looked inside. She could see nothing, so she knocked on the side door. “Tashay, it’s Karen,” she called out.
Nobody answered.
She looked at the restroom, which was a few feet to the right. After a moment’s hesitation, she moved to the door, pushed it open, and called inside. “Tashay, it’s Karen,” she called again.
There was still no answer, so she carefully entered the ladies’ room. Her heart was pounding in fear, not excitement, her own blood roaring in her ears.
The ladies’ room stank. It was small and dirty. Wadded paper towels overflowed the metal basket like dead brown roses. There appeared to be nobody inside. “Tashay … ? It’s Karen!” she called again.
And then she heard the faint sound of somebody moaning from inside one of the stalls. She moved to it and looked under the door. She could see a girl’s bare feet.
“Tashay?” she called. She heard more soft, painful moaning. Then she reached out and touched the stall door. It was unlatched. She pushed the door open.
At first, she couldn’t tell whom she was looking at. There was somebody in the stall … a woman. Her long hair was streaked with blood. Then the person looked up; her face was beaten and swollen. Several of her teeth were missing. It took Karen a moment to realize she was looking at Tashay Roberts. Karen’s mind quickly started collecting facts: Tashay was seated on the closed toilet. Her arms were tied behind her back. She was barely conscious.
“Oh, my God,” Karen said as the pitiful half-closed eyes of Tashay looked up at her.
Karen rushed into the stall to pull the girl off the toilet seat. Then she was staggered by a terrible blow from behind. It knocked her sideways. As she went down she saw a hideous man grinning. He had ugly black tattoos under his eyes and he was holding a baseball bat. He swung it again.
Just seconds before she lost consciousness, she realized that her assailant was Satan T. Bone.
Chapter 36
SHADOWLAND
Lockwood was struggling to stay on his feet. He had crossed half of the linoleum floor of the room on a walker. He was dizzy. His vision was so distorted that he had been fighting nausea for almost an hour. Ginger, his muscular PT nurse, kept shouting encouragement, but the words and the task reminded him more of the obstacle course in Marine boot camp than anything else.
The phone had been ringing for almost a minute before Ginger snatched it up. “PT, Ginger Cortland speaking.”
“This is Dr. Chacone, I’m a cerebral control specialist,” Malavida said with dignity. “The Lockwood case has been referred to me by Dr. Sikes. I understand the patient is with you. I’d like to speak with him, if he’s available.”
“Sure,” she said and looked over at Lockwood. “If you can get your butt over to the phone, sweet cheeks, you can take this call and buy a rest.”
Lockwood turned the walker around and put it out in front of him, shuffled forward, then repeated the motion. He could barely make his feet respond to mental commands. Once he was in the general vicinity of the phone, Ginger took pity and moved the rest of the way toward him, handing him the receiver.
“Yeah,” he said weakly.
“This Lockwood?”
“Yep, Lockwood,” he said, slurring his words and concentrating to keep them in the right order.
“How you doin’, Zanzo?” Malavida said. “You sound limp as a plate of pasta.”
“The fuck,” Lockwood said, grinning.
“My thought exactly. You okay to talk?” Malavida asked. “You alone?”
“No. Ten feet standing Hitler me from is.” He took a deep breath. “Fucked up my punch line,” he said, depressed.
“Look, we gotta problem. It’s Karen. Listen to me and tell me what you think—”
” Kay.”
“She’s down here taunting The Rat. She’s been on TV, insulting him, trying to sound like his mother. I couldn’t stop her.”
“Got to stop her.” He grimaced.
“I’m flat on my back, Zanzo. I can’t go to the bathroom without calling in a committee. She snuck me out of the hospital, moved me to a motel on the Miami River called The Swallow Inn. Technically, I’m still a fugitive. I called the police department, pretending to be her brother. They told me they called off the stakeout this morning. She didn’t come back here, so either this asshole got her or she’s walking around without cover. Nobody knows where she is. She’s way overdue.”
“Shit,” Lockwood said, the imminent danger helping to connect a few dots in his ravaged nervous system. He knew Karen was a daredevil. He prayed that she was safe.
“Look, Zanzo, I’m up for most anything, ‘cept I can’t get out of bed.”
“Mal … I’m … my head works weird. I don’t . . can’t remember stuff.”
“Can you drive? Can you get on an airplane? I don’t have anybody else. We call the cops, I’m back in Lompoc.”
“I don’t know… . I’m … I can’t. Hold on.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and looked at Ginger. “Could you water me?” He smiled, then looked embarrassed.
“Don’t blush, I know what you mean, sugar.” She pushed herself off
the table and went to get him water. As soon as she was gone: “Mal … driver … need car …”
“I’ll send you a limo. I’ve been stealing limo rides since I was sixteen.”
“Fly … I can’t get …”
“I know. I can handle that too. There’s an Executive Terminal at National Airport. The limo will have your jet’s tail number. John .. . can you focus on this? You know what I’m telling you?”
“Trying.”
“Can you get to the main hospital entrance?”
“Think so.”
“Be there at twelve noon today. I’ll have a car waiting. I’ll set the whole thing in motion and have you delivered to my room here, just like a basket of fruit … no disrespect intended.”
For Lockwood, the hardest part of the trip was putting on his pants, then moving the twenty or so yards from his room to the main entrance of the hospital in Washington. He scraped the metal walker along the yellow linoleum floors and shuffled after it. He finally made the front door, where a black stretch limo was waiting. He was delivered to National Airport and a Malavida-supplied charter jet. Lockwood had to hand it to Malavida; the cracker was amazing.
At three o’clock Sunday afternoon, John Lockwood was delivered to The Swallow Inn on the Miami River. He struggled to get his walker out of the cab, unfolded it, and told the driver to go on. He made a slow, awkward trip to Bungalow 7, pushed the door open, and shuffled in. He found himself looking into the much thinner, but smiling face of Malavida Chacone.
“You look like the last reel of a Frankenstein movie,” the Chicano said.
Lockwood shuffled across the room until he was looking down into Malavida’s dark eyes. “Least don’t need a tube to piss,” he replied.
Then, exhausted, Lockwood collapsed in a chair, and Malavida brought him the rest of the way up to date.
Chapter 37
TRIP
At first it sounded like something growling. It vibrated, shaking her whole body. She tried to ignore it, to push it down into her subconscious, but it would not go away. As her mind began to focus, she realized there was more. Drums and guitars, discordant and angry, and then something else … a low whimper that ended with a strangled high whine. She tried to move but couldn’t. Her head throbbed horribly with the constant vibration and, as she came closer to the surface of consciousness, she began to realize she was badly hurt. Her jaw was in agony; her whole body ached. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened. She had loose pebbles in her mouth… . She wondered why. Slowly she moved her tongue to touch them. In horror she realized they were pieces of her own broken teeth. She spit them out and slowly opened her eyes.
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