Rampage

by Roy A. Teel, Jr.

  Sara said, “It’s three thirty in the morning. I take it you two can’t sleep?” They both shook their heads. John looked at Karen and asked, “Are you taking Chris for a walk down nightmare lane?” Karen nodded fast, trying to hold back tears. John stepped into the kitchen and walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She put her hand on top of John’s, and he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. He whispered into her ear, “You’re safe now. The black angel has you.” She smiled a big smile and looked over into John’s piercing blue eyes and whispered, “I…know…” She was choking back tears and whispered, “I’m trying to help Chris understand that he can’t save everyone. I know that first hand.” John stroked Karen’s hair. He was misty and noticed Sara was, too.

  “Well, you two kids try and finish up your conversation before the sun rises, okay?” They nodded, and John went to walk out with Sara but stopped. He turned around and looked at Chris who could not make eye contact with him and said, “You fucked up, and a young girl is dead. You can beat yourself up over it, or you can learn from it. You have to grow a thick skin if you’re going to be in the business of justice. I’m not angry with you. You were just trying to do your job. Listen to what Karen has to say about her own life and experiences. She knows what you’re going through, and she is good counsel.” Chris nodded and said, “All of the reassurance in the world doesn’t change what happened last night. A girl is still dead, and I am the reason.”

  John looked at him and said, “No… you made a mistake, but you weren’t the one who chose to take that girl’s life. A sick twisted guy decided to do that. Now take all of that anger and misery and put it to good use and help me find this guy and his cohorts before a lot more innocent men, women, and children die at their hands.” Chris nodded, and John and Sara left.

  Sara looked at him as they got into bed and asked, “Do you think that Chris has what it takes to be an agent?” John laid down beside her in the darkness and took a hold of her hand and drew a deep breath and said, “I not only think he has what it takes to be a great agent, I think he has the capability of meting out justice in his own way and in the footsteps of the Iron Eagle.” Sara put her head on John’s shoulder, and the two fell fast asleep.

  Karen and Chris were still sitting in the kitchen at four thirty. She said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m sleepy.” Chris nodded, and Karen said, “We are only going to get a few hours before the world comes crashing in on us.” Chris nodded and said, “Yes…but now that I know the type of world you came out of, and who saved you, I know there is hope in the darkness.” Karen smiled and took Chris’s hand and said, “I’ve never been with a man I cared about, but I care about you. If you feel the same about me, then I would like to sleep in your bed this morning.” Chris leaned in and gave Karen a gentle kiss that turned warm and passionate. He picked her up and carried her to his bedroom and gently kicked the door closed behind them. She felt the power in his arms and said, “I have a feeling this is the beginning of a hell of a love affair!” Chris nodded as he removed Karen’s shorts and shirt, and the two became one in the early morning fog that was rolling over the house on the edge of the sea.

  Jim was awakened by his cell phone and rolled over to pick it up off the night stand. He looked at the clock, and it was six fifteen a.m. He grabbed it and laid back down on the pillow and said, “What?” “Good morning, Sheriff!” Jim recognized the voice right away. “Riggs, what the fuck are you so chipper about at this hour of the morning?” “I’m standing at a crime scene that I think that you and Agent Swenson will find interesting.” Jim sat up on his elbows with the phone to his ear and said, “Hang the fuck on…I’m in bed.” Jim got up and walked out onto the deck overlooking the pool and the sea and sat down in one of the patio chairs, grabbed a cigarette from a pack on the table, lit it and asked, “You got a homicide?”

  “Yep, and it’s none other than Charles Pinskey.” Jim took a hit of the cigarette and asked, “Charles Pinskey? The father of Jerry Pinskey?” “Yep, and he’s dead.” “Well, no fuckin’ shit, Sherlock. Would you be calling me if he wasn’t?” “Man, you’re on fire this morning, Jim…he’s either dead or he has some new type of skull to brain air conditioning system though he has no pulse.” Jim let out a laugh and asked, “Suicide?” “Homicide, Jim. Homicide. Pinskey got his head blown off, and based on my review of the scene, it was his kid who killed him.”

  “How the fuck would you know that?” “Because the body is in a chair in his kid’s room, and the room is pretty messed up.” Jim laughed, putting out the cigarette, “If there’s one thing I know about teens is their rooms are never neat and clean. What’s the address?” Jim wrote it down and asked, “Is Jade Morgan on scene?” “No, but I have a call in to her, so she should be here shortly.” “Okay, Riggs, hold down the fort. John and I will get there as fast as we can.” Jim quickly called John.

  “Swenson.” John’s voice was bright and awake. “Jesus, man, do you ever sleep?” “I was asleep. Now I’m awake again because of you. What’s up?” “I just got a call from Riggs. He has a crime scene at the Pinskey home.” “Did the kid off himself?” “Nope. Looks like the kid offed his old man.” “Shit…what’s the address?” John was typing it into his phone as Jim gave it to him. “Is Jade on scene?” “Not yet. Riggs said she is on her way.” “Okay…I’m on my way out of here. Did you get to Margo Dell last night?” Jim looked back into the bedroom where Margo and Barbara was sleeping nude on his bed. “Um…yeah…you could say that.”

  “What do you mean, ‘You could say that?’” “I have her in protective custody.” John stood up and was walking into the bathroom. “You were supposed to get her out of the house while the Eagle did his work.” “I got her out of the house alright. Did the Eagle do his work?” “It’s not all finished yet. What the hell did you tell her?” “That she was in danger, and that I was there to protect her.” “And she went with you without a fight?” “Oh yeah…seems Barbara and Margo know each other really fuckin’ well…they were lovers at one point when Barb met Jill.”

  “Okay…so what does that have to do with anything?” “Nothing for you…it meant some hot sex for me with Margo and Barbara, and now I’m getting run out of the house for the Pinskey murder. I want to get me more of that.” John started laughing and said, “You can die happy. You finally got your threesome. Was it everything you imagined it would be?” Jim sighed, “Better. Way mother fuckin’ better, man. What a morning.” John walked into the bathroom and said, “I’ll see you on scene,” and hung up. Sara called out to him and asked, “Is everything all right?” “I have to go to a crime scene. Can you make sure that the Eagle’s guest naps until he returns?” Sara let out a big yawn and asked, “How long do you want him out?” “Give him a slow drip of sedation. It will most likely be a chunk of the day.” “Yeah…no problem.” Sara put on her robe and headed for the lair while John brushed his teeth and dressed.

  They met in the kitchen, and she said, “Okay, the Eagle’s guest is in a low grade coma.” John was taking a swig of a Coke Zero and asked, “Was he awake when you walked in?” “Yes, sir, he was. He gave me a little lip, and I set an IV and put him to sleep.” “His wife will report him missing any time now.” Sara smiled, pulling the coffee pot from its stand, “So…we know where he is, and that’s what matters.” John kissed her on the cheek and walked down to Chris’s room to get him up to the crime scene. He opened Chris’s bedroom door to see him and Karen asleep in each other’s arms.

  “Hey lover boy!” Chris opened one eye and then shot up in the bed. He moved so fast he threw Karen on the floor. “What, um…sorry John…um.” Chris’s eyes were glazed over, and he looked around the bed but didn’t see Karen. “Oh shit, that was a dream.” Karen’s voice rose from the side of Chris’s bed and said, “No, Chris, it wasn’t a dream, and you just gave me a hell of a wakeup call.” Chris shot out of bed and grabbed Karen off the floor and put her back on the bed. Her nude body was
lying on top of his bed sheets, and John looked at Chris and said, “Let’s go, man. We have a murder scene, and it’s the father of the guy who killed your witness last night.” Karen just laid on the bed looking at the two men as Chris ran around putting on clothes.

  He leaned down on the bed and kissed her on the lips and asked, “Can I buy you dinner tonight?” She stretched out her arms in a yawn and said, “You’re damn right you’re buying me dinner. I put out, and I got no meal or smooth talking before it.” Chris said he would see her at six, and she said okay. John looked on and asked Karen, “You put out without a date?” “What can I say, John. I’m a hopeless romantic.” “No, you’re a horny young woman who hasn’t had sex in a while.” “So shoot me…” John turned to leave the room with Chris behind him, and Karen called out, “Chris is an amazing lover, John.” John never looked back. “How the hell would you know, Karen. He’s your first.” “Not true, not true at all. I had some boyfriends in college.” John was shaking his head as the two men walked out the front door. He called back to Karen and said, “I don’t want to know. I will try to have your new…friend back for dinner.”

  Sara called out to John as she ran across the foyer, “Hey Agent Swenson, you want this laptop?” Sara had closed it, and John asked, “Did you shut it down?” “No…it has an interesting screen though…it also looked like it had some data hits.” Chris was looking at John and Sara as they spoke. She handed him the case and asked, “TOR huh? What are you looking for in the deep web?” John’s face became grave, “Killers, Sara. Savage, young, cold-blooded killers.” Sara turned to walk back into the house and said, “Well, I think you have some interesting information on that screen, Agent Swenson.”

  Chris and John got into his truck, and Chris asked, “Are you mad at me?” John smiled and said, “No…Karen could do a lot worse.” Chris smiled, and John said, “Open my laptop. Sara thinks I made some hits on these guys on TOR.” Chris opened the case, and there were four names. “You have hits on Jerry Pinskey, Alan Marks, Tim Elliott, and Deborah Atwater.” John smiled and said, “Read me what the reports say.” Chris started reading as John hit the gas and headed out onto PCH for the Pinskey home.

  Chapter Twelve

  “He painted this uncanvassed

  wall with his father’s brains.”

  “Twenty four, seventy two, fifty eight, forty five. This will allow you access to Anchor Store five at Northridge Mall. This will only allow you to unset the internal alarm. The mall cameras are on a separate circuit, and you can’t crosscut it, or you’ll set the whole place alight with police, fire, and paramedics. I’ve had two storage containers set near the store’s rear entrance, and they have all of the contents you ordered for your pipe bombs and hand grenades. Payment has been received; good luck gentlemen.” Tim was reading the message on his TOR instant message board from user ‘terror55.’ It was half past seven, and Jerry and Alan were asleep on the floor in the living room. Debbie was asleep with her head on his lap, and he was sitting on a sofa that had not been sat on in a really, really long time. He looked around the room; it was as if he had been sent back in time. The whole home décor was late nineteen seventies, and he felt like he was sitting in a mausoleum.

  Jerry was asleep on the floor on the other side of the room, and Tim looked on at him and whispered, “You would think that you didn’t have a care in the world. You killed your father, you sick fuck.” Tim’s voice roused Debbie who slowly sat up and looked at him and then his watch and asked, “Where are we, and what are we doing?” Tim smiled and said, “Just give it a second, and it will all come flooding back to you, I promise.” Tim saw the look on Deb’s face as the horror of the past several days grew across it. “There’s no way out now, is there?” He shook his head solemnly and said, “No…not a chance…it’s all in motion now, Deb. We have to see it through.”

  Jerry roused as did Alan, and Jerry sat up and asked, “Have either one of you heard from Mark?” Tim and Alan just shook their heads. Jerry said, “Fuck…I bet you that little faggot blew his nerve and told Dell the plan. Shit…now we are in even deeper.” Tim closed his laptop and said, “Jerry, we are already in too deep. There is no turning back from here. I received the information to enter the store, and ‘terror55’ has had two storage containers with pipe bomb manufacturing goods delivered to the site. We have access, so we need to get over there ASAP and set up the first round of kill zones.”

  Jerry nodded and said, “Well, we need some damn food. Alan…you’re the least known of all of us.” Jerry handed him a hundred dollar bill and said, “Go to the store and get us some food. Shit we can microwave or eat out of a box. We don’t have a lot of time to waste.” Alan took the bill and left. Tim stood up and stretched his legs and said, “You know the cops are crawling all over your house and your dead neighbor’s house right now.” “Yeah, yeah…what the fuck. They won’t even know it was me. They will chalk it up to a random act of violence.”

  Debbie laughed, and Jerry asked, “Did I say something funny, princess?” “Yeah, actually you did. You don’t think that the cops and the feds aren’t going to place you at the scene of the crime?” “No…why? Do you?” “Oh yeah!” “And just how will they do that?” Tim handed Jerry his tablet. The screen was black, and Tim told him to press the middle of the screen. When he did, it was as if he was watching some brutal murder movie. Jerry was watching himself killing his father and then a split screen of him killing the neighbor. “Where the fuck did you get this?” Tim laughed, “Well, it wasn’t very difficult. Several of the kids in your neighborhood found the footage when they learned of the kills and posted them to live TV vision on the net, and it’s all over TOR, so everyone gets to enjoy watching your father and neighbor getting killed.”

  Jerry watched the footage a few more times then handed the tablet back to Tim. “I forgot about the cameras in the house and the neighborhood.” Debbie laughed a little and said, “Obviously…you’re an Internet sensation. You did some major killing.” Jerry just stared at her saying nothing, waiting for Alan and the food.

  The Pinskey home and neighborhood was overrun with law enforcement and media. They had local LAPD, LA County Sheriff, FBI, homeland security, DEA as well as the ATF. Jim was standing in between the Pinskey home and Marilyn Pruitt’s home. Her bullet-riddled front door was open, and her body sprawled out on the foyer floor. John and Chris pulled up, and John jumped out of the truck with Chris on his heels, heading for Jim. “This scene has plenty of attention,” John said, watching the bustling people. He saw Jade out of the corner of his eye as she was walking out of the Pruitt house with a bag of evidence. Jade saw them and asked, “You guys just show up?” John nodded. Jim looked at her and said, “No…my ass has been here for nearly two hours. You see those fuckin’ news crews over there?” He pointed a finger in the direction of yellow crime scene tape covering the street and keeping the press at bay. “Yeah,” Jade said casually. “I get to go over there and try to placate them with an explanation for the double homicide that happened here this morning. Care to join me?”

  Jim pulled a cigarette out of his top left pocket and lit it, snapping his Zippo shut. Jade walked over and took the cigarette out of his mouth, took a quick hit off it, then kissed him on the cheek and said, “Not at all…you are so good with the media. I would never want to take that away from you.” She put the cigarette back in Jim’s mouth and looked at John and Chris and asked, “So what are you two brain surgeons up to?” “Who’s the corpse?”

  “That, John, is Mrs. Marilyn Pruitt, a widow and long time neighbor of Charles and Jerry Pinskey.” John looked on at the house and damage and said, “Let me guess…Jerry and Ms. Pruitt didn’t get along?” Jade laughed and said, “Wow. You are on fire this morning. Was it the bullet-riddled house or the proximity to the Pinskey home that gave it away?” Chris let out a laugh, which drew a frown from both John and Jim. John said, “Okay, smartass, if you keep up the comedy skits, I’m going to have
to make you give a statement to the media…I know that you love the media almost as much as Jim does.” Jade raised her hands in the air and said, “Sorry, I’m sorry. The old bird over there is a widow who liked Charles but not the son. I haven’t talked to anyone yet, but I have heard interviews with a few of the other neighbors who said that she and the kid’s old man had a thing, and that the kid hated her. I guess, Jerry, that’s the son of Charles if I didn’t mention it...” Jade was staring at Chris when she said it, “Jerry must have decided not to just ice Dad but girlfriend and favorite neighbor, too.”

  “Do you have an estimated TOD?” John asked. “I don’t have to estimate. I can tell you exactly based on the security footage that caught both killings. Dad at three twenty-two a.m. and Mrs. Pruitt over there at three thirty-three a.m.” “Who’s got the footage?” Jade laughed and said, “The fuckin’ world. Someone posted it online before the cops were even on scene.” John and Chris walked over to the Pinskey home with Jade on their heels. Jim shook his head and pressed his heel into the cigarette he threw on the ground and said, “It’s going to be a long fuckin’ morning.” The four walked into the Pinskey home and into Jerry’s bedroom. Jade said, “The kid is an artist.” She pointed to the walls covered in canvas paintings all signed by Jerry. “Yeah…and he is pretty damn good,” John said as he walked over to Charles’s body. He leaned down, looking into the cold dead eyes of Charles Pinskey staring back at him and said, “He painted this uncanvassed wall with his father’s brains.”

  Chris looked at the three of them and asked, “Is it always like this?” Jim asked what he meant. “I mean, are you guys like this on every crime scene? I would think there should be a little respect for the dead.” That drew a loud and hard laugh from Jim who looked at Chris and said, “You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right? Our respect for the dead is to untangle a crime scene and bring the killer to justice. Fuck, kid, I really don’t know if police work is for you.” Jade looked at Chris and smiled a sad smile and said, “Levity, Chris. It’s what keeps all of us sane in these situations, and while Jim is a sick twisted fuck, he’s right. The way we serve the dead is by finding their killers.” John leaned down and looked at the two bullet wounds and said, “Patricide is serious business, folks. If this kid will kill his own father, he will kill anyone.”