Final Victim

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "You don't know that for a fact."

  "All the profile points indicate it. We can argue about bullshit or we can get in business with each other," she said hotly. "I'm coming to you for help. Chacone is pretty small stuff compared to this serial killer. Whatta ya say we try for big game?… The old eight-point hat rack.

  "You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?" he growled. "I've only been in law enforcement for forty years, so I don't need a lecture on criminal priorities from some Princeton Ph. D."

  "Then why are you talking to me about Chacone? You know I'm right… I need help, so help me. I have a way to get this guy out in the open, but you gotta pitch in."

  "Let's hear it," he finally said, feeling sure he would come to regret it.

  After he heard her plan, Captain Fredrickson's voice was full of amazement. "Of course you're kidding," he said.

  "I've done a very specific background check on Leonard Land. This started with his mother and her religious fanaticism. She passed her sickness on to Leonard. I think she killed her first foster son in Mississippi, in the early eighties. His name was Robbie Land, he's never been seen again."

  "That case is twelve or fifteen years old. What you're talkin' about now is much different."

  "Everything is tied together… You can't look at one piece without looking at them all. Captain, I want you to agree to meet with me. Hear me out. I think, once you see my whole profile, you'll agree that it's the only string we have. But If I'm right and we pull this off, he's going to react. I'm doing this with or without you. I just figured that you'd want to be in on it."

  The Wind Minstrel sat in his underwear and stared at the walls of the barge in a rage. The Rat had betrayed him.

  "The god of fuck and mutilation must be appeased," he screamed at the rusting walls. The Wind Minstrel's skin was on fire; the rash was all across his chest and under his arms. He shrieked with pain in The Rat's rusting, stinking garbage barge. He looked up at the picture of Shirley Land on the wall. He glowered at The Rat's neat lines across the picture, at his scribbled dates. "You have desecrated the timetable, you have shit on the resurrection of the Beast." His voice ricocheted in the cavernous metal room. "I am here but you give me nothing to possess," he screamed at The Rat's memory. He moved, in pain, to the large blowup picture of Shirley. He hated the bitch more than he hated his own existence. Her religious rantings were worthless hypocrisies-blatant, primal non sequiturs. He stood before the picture of his foster mother holding the cat he had strangled long ago. The cat was the first living thing he had destroyed, choking it till its tongue curled. His fire-ravaged skin glowed and looked almost purple from the low light thrown from the portable TV that flickered in the far corner of the barge. He slammed his head savagely into the crotch of the picture, which was taped to the metal bulkhead.

  "Rat, you have betrayed me. We will be annihilated in the fire that follows my Second Coming."

  Then he looked up at the picture. He saw a smear of his red blood on Shirley's crotch. "The bitch bleeds!" he screamed, as his own blood now dripped down his face and splashed between his toes.

  Then he turned and saw something that shot a chill across his burning, ravaged skin. There, on the TV, was his long-dead mother. She was talking to some nigger bitch. He was staggered by the vision. He moved on quivering legs and knelt, as if in prayer, before the television set.

  Chapter 34

  LIVE REMOTE

  Earlier, Captain Fred T. Fredrickson had pulled in four off-duty police officers to work the detail. They had been cooling their heels at the Ramada Inn parking lot, in two surveillance vans. All four of them were in black flak-vests, holding Ithaca shotguns, and watching Karen's room through their smoked-glass windshields.

  Inside her motel room, Karen was in the bathroom with Trisha Rains and a redheaded make-up girl from WTAM-TV named Marlene. Marlene was looking at the picture of Shirley Land, which was taped to the mirror. They had already cut Karen's hair and dyed it with Lady Clairol's sunset blond. It had ended up coming out a mousey dishwater color that Karen hated.

  "I don't know," Marlene said, looking at the picture. "It could be strawberry-blond, it could be mid-brown. Hard to tell from this blackand-white picture." She continued to work behind Karen with a hair dryer.

  "It's okay. We'll just do the best we can," Karen said. "I couldn't find a color shot of her, so we've gotta guess."

  Marlene began to re-style Karen's hair, looking at the picture. She turned it under as she blow-dried it, shaping it closer to her head. "Pretty frumpy do," she said off-handedly.

  Marlene finished and Karen stood in front of the mirror in her slip, looking at her new short, light-brown hair. "I've gotta use makeup to do the rest," Marlene said. "I can add a little mole like she has on her cheek easy enough… and maybe, with shading, I can narrow your face slightly… arch the eyebrows."

  They worked on her makeup, until they got it as close as time would allow. Then Karen put on a print dress with long sleeves and a lace collar that resembled the one in the obit photo. She had bought it that afternoon at a second-hand store. She finally walked out of the bedroom, where Captain Fred T. Fred was waiting. He got up as she entered and looked at her carefully.

  "What a transformation. You look…" He stopped.

  "Like the Church Lady?" She smiled. Then she sat with Trisha on the stained green sofa.

  "I think this whole thing hinges on Revelation 13:13 to 15. If I'm wrong, I've screwed up a great haircut for nothing."

  "Revelation 13:13 to 15? How do you know?"

  "Under the brand on the dead women, it says, 'R. 13-15.' At first I thought it was some computer designation, or maybe it stood for `revised' or Rat or something, but then on a hunch I looked up Revelation in the Gideon. Those sections are about building a beast."

  "You think he's building a beast?" Trisha asked.

  "It's probably more of a religious incarnation. I'm banking that he hasn't finished it yet."

  Twenty minutes later they moved down into the parking lot and set up so that the TV camera could photograph the Ramada Inn sign and the building behind them. She was sure The Rat had been there before and would recognize the setting. He had to have followed Lockwood there, to phone in the anonymous tip that almost got them killed.

  They stood in the parking lot in the warm Miami night, while the cameramen adjusted the lights and cleaned up the signal on the remote feed with the news director in Tampa.

  At ten minutes past ten, the anchor, Hal Savage, threw the newscast to Miami. "Trisha Rains is standing by in Miami with an interesting update on 'The Rat,' South Florida's mutilation murderer."

  "Thanks, Hal," Trisha said, looking into the camera. "We're here in the parking lot of the Ramada Inn in Miami, with noted criminal psychologist Dr. Karen Dawson. She's here to discuss a psychological criminal profile she's written on Leonard Land, the fugitive serial killer also known as 'The Rat.' " Trisha turned, and the shot widened to include Karen, who was sitting on a director's chair next to Trisha. "So, tell us about this guy. Why is he doing this? What makes somebody go out and repeatedly kill and mutilate?"

  The shot was framed so that the lighted Ramada Inn sign was just over Karen's shoulder.

  The Wind Minstrel was inches from the TV screen. He could tell, now that he was closer, that this was not Shirley. His heart rate slowed. For a moment, when he first saw her, he had panicked. If Shirley had been resurrected, then that would mean she had been chosen by God to come back and torture him. It would mean she had been given the power of the angels.

  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."r />
  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 Bay-front 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.