Rampage

by Roy A. Teel, Jr.

  Jim threw his hands down at his sides and said, “You’re talking in riddles, John. I don’t understand what you’re saying…we have one note from a crime scene from last night. This scene does not appear to be in any way connected to the school issue. Unless you can make a connection for me, I have to look at this situation as just a matter of some bad people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It happens every day, my friend, and you know that.” John nodded and asked Jade to try and do autopsies on the victims as soon as possible. He asked Jim to see if he could learn who the next of kin was and to let him know if they find any other evidence on the killers.

  He jumped into his truck and drove off, headed for the freeway. Jade looked at Jim and said, “I don’t know about you, but John just scared the hell out of me!” Jim nodded slowly and said, “Let’s have our teams comb through the crime scene carefully. John saw something, but it seems that it has confused him. Let’s leave no stone unturned. We have to sort this situation out fast.” They shook hands, and Jim walked back to his car and headed for his office.

  Chapter Four

  “They hacked my webcam on

  my laptop two weeks ago.”

  Sara and Karen had been running like two crazy people trying to keep up with a rush of patients that had been coming into the ER at Northridge Hospital over the past twenty-four hours. Things had gotten a little settled, and the two women walked back to the doctor’s lounge and sat down in two plush chairs with a cup of coffee, in silence. Linda Elliott followed them in and poured herself a cup of coffee and said, “WOW! Now, that was a rush. I was supposed to be off shift two hours ago.” Sara laughed and said, “Well Linda, you’re the only one who seems to take our work and the work of saving lives seriously. Several nurses ended their rotations and left the hospital at the shift change, only you and one other stayed to make sure we had an extra set of hands.”

  Linda laughed while sitting down on one of the sofas in the lounge and said, “With Gary overseas fighting and Tim fighting his own battles at school, I feel like I’m in a war zone all the time.”

  Karen looked at the clock in the lounge, and it was a quarter to nine. She asked Linda, “How do you manage your career, raising your son, and dealing with your husband who has been deployed to the Middle East for what…his second tour?” “Fourth…Gary is a full bird colonel in the Marine Corps. He is over there because he keeps agreeing to go in the hopes of getting that all important rank of general. With Gary, war and the corps is an ego trip. He is far out of harm’s way, doing what he calls, ‘Shining a seat with his ass’ work. But he has nearly thirty years in, and there’s been talk that his promotion to general is going to happen.”

  Sara chuckled, drinking her coffee, and said, “When John was in the corps, he just wanted to survive and get out. Don’t get me wrong. He loved his duty, and he loves his country...you two will never know how much John loves his country. But he was never looking for the accolades of military life. Rank meant less to him than taking care of his men and the missions he was assigned to.” Karen looked at Sara and asked, “John was a Marine?” “Yes ma’am, for nearly ten years. John was what is called a black operative. He did undercover missions all over the world, most of it he can never talk about.” Linda sat up and said, “Your husband was a black op?” Sara nodded, and Linda said, “Well, who knows, our husbands could have served together at some point in their careers. Does John stay in touch with any of his old unit?”

  Sara smiled and said, “Yes…they don’t see as much of each other as they did in years past, but all but one of his old buddies live here in LA, and they hang out every once in a while. John’s not much for a lot of friends; he’s more of a loner when he’s not chasing down the bad guys at his office with the FBI.” Linda laughed and said, “Your husband is a hero to a lot of people, Sara. My son, Tim, really looks up to him. He has kept a scrapbook of everything that the great FBI profiler John Swenson has done over the years.” Karen laughed and said, “I really never understood John’s role in the world until recently. He has made a huge impact on a lot of lives.”

  Sara was silent for a moment, and Karen also got quiet as Linda looked on and said, “Did Karen say something wrong? John is a great role model.” Sara shook her head and told Linda that she was just tired. Linda asked, “I read an article in the paper that the FBI is working with local and state law enforcement on an anti-bullying campaign.” “Um…yeah…I really don’t know much about it, Linda. It’s one of those public service things that the government throws together every now and then.” Linda stood up, stretched, and said, “Well, I would love to have him come and speak at Tim’s school. My son is not the most popular kid, and he gets a pretty hard time from some of the bullies. Could you ask John if there is a way he could get involved with Tim’s high school in Reseda?” Sara told her sure, and the three women left the hospital for home and some much needed sleep.

  Jerry Pinskey was sitting in Tim’s bedroom when he and Debbie walked in just before eight. “Where the fuck have you two been?” Tim pulled the guns out of a backpack and said, “Eliminating Rocky Marick and friends.” Jerry looked at Debbie who was sheet white. “And friends? What the fuck are you talking about, Tim? You were supposed to kill Rocky and Billy.”

  “Billy wasn’t there. He’s away with his family. Rocky was, and he’s dead.” “Well who the hell are these ‘friends?’” “We ran into some trouble with the plan…I got Rocky, but he had guests, and they tried to rape Debbie, and when all was said and done between me and Deb we killed six people. Rocky is dead, so I accomplished what I set out to do.”

  Jerry had a dazed look on his face, “You deviated from the plan and killed more people than you were supposed to? Dude…not cool, not cool at all…you’re going to end up getting the cops climbing all over us. Who else did you kill?” Tim was putting a gun away in his closet and said, “I don’t know who the fuck they were. They attacked Deb, and I killed them all.” Jerry looked at Tim and said, “Not cool, man…one or two kills in a week, okay, but multiple murders in the same house is going to bring the wrath of God down on us.”

  Tim laughed and said, “If there’s one thing I can tell you for sure is that God has nothing to do with this, Jerry. We started this movement with the goal of punishing those who have wronged us and teaching the general populace a lesson about picking on people. My old man always tells me to stand up for myself, to be strong, and to not back down from a fight.”

  Jerry was reclining in a zero gravity chair that Tim had and said, “Yeah…well, your old man is over fighting a different type of enemy. He isn’t getting his ass kicked and raped and fucked up like we have been our entire lives. Just because we are smarter than the average person doesn’t mean that we should be treated the way we have been and continue to be.”

  Tim put the guns in the false wall in his closet and then walked over to a small computer table and opened a laptop that was on it. He struck a few keystrokes and said, “Read this post on my Inter-friends account.” Jerry got up and walked over to the table, and as he did, Debbie sat down in the chair. She hadn’t said a word since walking into the room. Jerry looked down and read the note to Tim from an unknown poster. “Why don’t you just die, loser…kill yourself and the world will have one less dweeb in it.”

  Jerry laughed and said, “So what’s new with that? I get those kinds of posts on my account and my ain’t-speak account daily. You know who’s sending the messages. It’s Brian and his crew…though there are two less of them now. You can’t let this shit get to you, man.” Debbie spoke and said, “They hacked my webcam on my laptop two weeks ago.” Tim and Jerry looked over at Debbie and said, “You never told us about that. What did they get?” She stood up and walked over to the laptop and punched in an IP address, and a whole litany of nude photos came up. She put in her name in the search field, and there on the screen were tons of nudes of Debbie from her bedroom and bathroom. Tim looked at her and asked, “Wh
y the fuck didn’t you tell me about this?” “It’s not your business…besides, I don’t care. Take a closer look at the site.”

  Jerry and Tim began to navigate it, and as they did Tim’s face turned to one of horror. “Oh shit…shit, man…they videotaped the ass fucking they gave to all of us five years ago, Jerry.” The two boys watched the video and heard the sounds of the threats and the grunting and crying that they were doing during the scout trip rape. The header on the file had all four boys’ names and said, “These faggots liked getting it up the ass!”

  Jerry walked away from the laptop and into the middle of the room in silence. Tim was still searching the site and said, “Man, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of videos and still shots of kids and teens on here. How the fuck did they get this up?” Debbie walked back over and typed in a few IP addresses and said, “This is the deep web…this IP is encrypted in the onion of the World Wide Web. You just can’t find it with a regular web browser. You have to know how to navigate the deep web.” Jerry turned around with rage in his eyes and asked Tim, “Did you blow that fucker’s cock off?” Tim nodded. Jerry walked back over and looked at the site and then ran a source code scan in the deep net to try to pick up the site’s location.

  After a few minutes of hacking, Jerry said, “These assholes made the tape, but they didn’t put it up here. They don’t have the brains or know how to have set this up. They fed this to someone else, and that person is uploading and managing the site.” Debbie walked back to the chair and sat down. She said, “It’s a pedophile running this site, and there is no way to find him or her. They just take the smut and post it and then share it with other sickos, so they can get their rocks off.”

  Tim closed the laptop and asked, “Alan and Mark are probably at school.” Jerry nodded and said, “That’s where we need to be. If we start missing classes now, it’s going to set off warning bells, and we don’t want to attract attention.” Tim and Debbie nodded, and the three stopped the conversation, showered and dressed, and went to school.

  It was just before third period when an assembly was called at the high school. Classes filed into the auditorium, which seated nearly three thousand. Dean Bradshaw, the school principal, was on the stage along with several members of law enforcement and other members of the faculty and staff. Rumors had been running rampant about Brian’s murder from the night before and that Rocky Marick had been found killed earlier in the day. Dean stood up before the school and said a few words about the issues. There were a few laughs in the audience from some students and several more who clapped when they heard that Brian and Rocky were dead.

  Bradshaw didn’t see the humor and said, “While I know that there was a fair amount of our student body that didn’t get along with these two students, they are dead, and their families are suffering right now. I have set up for counselors to be here at the school for the next week if anyone needs to talk about their feelings in this troubling time.” Instead of the sympathy Dean thought he would see, he noticed a profound sense of ease in the audience. There wasn’t a tear in the house, and no one was raising a hand to ask questions.

  When the assembly was over, Dean broke off in conversation with some of his senior faculty and said, “I don’t know about you, but I get the distinct impression that no one in that building could have given a damn about these two students’ murders.” Ashley Hines, the head of the school psychology program, chimed in and said, “Most likely, Dean, what we are seeing is a delayed response to the gravity of these murders. Kids don’t show their true colors and emotions right away. I’m sure even though these two students weren’t popular, over the next several days or weeks, more and more students will reach out for help and try to understand what happened and seek comfort.”

  Trisha Warren, the head of student services, let out a laugh and said, “These kids are thankful these two thugs are dead. You don’t know these two dead students like I knew them. They were rotten. I mean rotten to the core. They both had violent histories and not just for bullying other kids. They had police records that just sealed in the past few months when they turned eighteen. No…I don’t think that you’re going to see an outpouring of sympathy over these two boys. If anything, what you’re going to see is a campuswide state of relief. These two ran in a small tight-knit group of thugs. There are only two of them left alive, John Belk and Billy Stone.

  “Those two guys are the worst of the four, and I would venture a guess that they are not in school today as they try to regroup and figure out who did this to their friends and how they can extract their revenge.” Dean asked Trisha to would update the school’s world-friends page and to put out a condolence to the families of the two slain students. She said she would, and she would send out a message on ain’t-speak letting the families know that they were in their thoughts. Dean said, “It’s a whole new world with all of this social media. There are no secrets between people anymore, are there?” The two women shook their heads as the group broke off to do their business.

  Chapter Five

  “I think we should focus

  on killing them all.”

  All was quiet at Forest Lawn cemetery in Los Angeles. Two workers were cleaning burial placards around the mausoleum. It was the only noise that could be heard amid the hedges and well-groomed lawns. It was half past three p.m., and the workers went about their business unaware that two young men had slipped inside one of the crypts and were sitting silent, waiting for them to move on out of their area. It took a few minutes, but they cleared the area, and Johnny Beck and Billy Stone huddled in a corner of the crypt alongside the coffin of a famous celebrity. The two boys had tablets and had been chatting by keystrokes while the workers tended to the hedges.

  When they were alone, Johnny asked, “So, what the hell are we going to do now? Someone has targeted our small group of friends to be killed.” Billy was typing away on his tablet as if not listening. Johnny yelled, “Billy, did hear me, man? Some fuckers are out to kill us, asshole…what the fuck?” Billy put down the tablet and said, “Yeah…we are definitely high profile targets. We can’t go to the cops because if they find out some of the shit we have done we could be tried as adults. We have to take care of this situation on our own.” Johnny asked, “And just how the hell are we supposed to do that? We don’t have any idea who killed Brian and Rocky.”

  “Well, it’s going to be hard to narrow down because so many people at school hate us, so rather than narrowing it down I think we should focus on killing them all.” Johnny got a confused look on his face and asked, “Are you saying to shoot up the school?” “Do you see another option?” There was a long pause, and Johnny said, “Where the hell would we start, Billy? I mean, you want to kill everyone at school? What if the killers are not from the school? What if they are outsiders who have learned of the things we have done over the years, the things we have not been caught and charged for? Maybe they are the ones doing the killing?”

  Billy took his tablet in his hands and typed in some information and handed it to Johnny. He looked down and said, “Well, I guess when you put it this way, there is little doubt that it’s someone from the school.” What Johnny had pulled up was a video of the meeting of the school about the murders, and there was no one who was in the least upset. Johnny handed the tablet back and asked, “So, how are we going to do it? School isn’t safe for us and home isn’t safe, so how do we plan to kill everyone when we can’t go home or to school?”

  “We do it from Rocky’s house…only a handful of people knew that he was a trust fund kid. He got his hands on the money when he turned eighteen. He told me that his family was killed when he was a kid, and they left a huge trust fund for him. I have spent a lot of time with him at his house over the past few years. He had a Mexican maid who worked for the family that helped to look after him along with some foster parents, but he dumped them when he turned eighteen and was living back in his folk’s home. We can base out of his house. The maid
knows me, and she will have no problem with me staying over. She also knows you, so I think that is where we start.”

  “What about school? If we don’t show up, sooner or later they are going to start looking for us. Don’t you figure the cops are going to want to talk to us about what happened?” There was a thoughtful look on Billy’s face, and he said, “Yeah, you’re right. We will have to go back to school tomorrow. I’m sure the cops are going to want to talk to us, but we don’t know shit…we can then work to set up a plan to take out the school and the fuckers that are targeting us.”

  The two slipped out of the cemetery and headed for Rocky’s house. They had a lot of work to do and a short time to get it done.

  John was looking over photographs from the two crime scenes when his phone buzzed. “Swenson.” “I have two weeks off from Quantico before graduation. You need any help?” Chris Mantel’s voice was a friendly sound to John’s ears. “Well, hell yeah. Where are you?” “Downstairs. They’re busting my balls because I’m not real FBI. Can you get me a pass, sir?” John walked down the hall with his cell phone pressed to his ear, speaking to Chris as he got on an elevator and headed for the ground floor. The doors opened, and he could see Chris’s towering figure, lean and powerful, standing in a corner being harassed by a few of John’s officers.

  John called out and said, “Okay…okay, enough already. The man is about to graduate from Quantico, and he will be working in this office in a few short weeks.” The men separated, and John walked up and gave Chris a hug and a firm handshake. Together, they walked back to the elevator and up to his office.