Malicious

by Jacob Stone

  The officer examined the device. “You think this is a detonator for a bomb?”

  “I think it’s possible. If it is, I’d bet the bomb is somewhere on Rodeo Drive.”

  The officer groaned at the thought of that. “We’ll have to shut down the drive. A lot of store owners and shoppers are not going to be happy.”

  Morris appreciated that this was a massive understatement. Shutting down Rodeo Drive anytime would be a headache, but shutting it down on a Saturday was going to cause an uproar. He left the officer to worry about the logistics of that and headed into the boarded-up store to join Walsh and Malevich. The SWAT team had left minutes earlier after determining the store was empty.

  Morris brought the toy car with him, and when he saw the elaborate system of pulleys and levers that had unleashed the car, he couldn’t help letting out a short, bitter laugh.

  “What?” Walsh asked.

  “That psycho has been cheating,” he said. “He doesn’t have a middle name. R. G. Berg stands for Rube Goldberg.”

  Walsh gave him a blank look, not getting it.

  “This contraption is what’s called a Rube Goldberg machine.”

  “Is Rube short for Reuben?” she asked.

  “It is,” Morris said, angry at himself for not making the connection earlier.

  Parker began making agitated grunts. He stared up at Morris, then lowered his head and attempted to bull his way forward to the back of the building. Morris let go of the leash and watched as Parker ran to the back wall and started pawing at it. Malevich had joined them, and he commented that the bull terrier’s behavior seemed odd.

  Morris asked, “Do the dimensions of this room look right to you?”

  Walsh pursed her lips. “Now that you mention it, it looks shallower than it should.”

  They knocked on the back wall. It was only a drywall partition, and there was something behind it.

  A call was put in for a sledgehammer. When it arrived, Malevich did the honors. After breaking a hole in the drywall, they saw Faye Riverstone. More of the drywall was knocked down revealing that the actress was sitting naked on a chair. Her eyes were open and they held the same empty look as glass, and it looked as if someone had wrapped a narrow red ribbon around her waist. Nobody had to feel that her skin was ice cold to know that she was dead. On closer examination, she didn’t have anything wrapped around her, and the reason her bottom and top halves were slightly askew was because the killer had used the circular saw to cut her in half at the waist. He also had used thin wires to hold her in place so it would appear as if she were sitting. One of the killer’s business cards had been pinned to her naked belly.

  Scrawled on the card was the message: Guess what, Brick, I lied, but you’ve been lying too.

  “He wanted her found,” Walsh said. “So why bury the body behind drywall?”

  “He knew we’d be calling the bomb squad, and he didn’t want them finding the body. He wanted me to be the one.”

  Morris’s voice had sounded heavier than usual for a good reason. The killer’s latest message had hit him like a punch to the gut, leaving him wondering whether Faye Riverstone would still be alive if he hadn’t said what he did to Margot Denoir on The Hollywood Peeper.

  “Sick bastard,” Malevich spat out. At that moment, he looked like he could’ve torn the drywall apart with his hands.

  In another half hour the building was going to be filled with crime scene techs probing every square inch for evidence that Morris knew didn’t exist. He had no intention of sticking around to watch them.

  “I’ve got to see where this toy car would’ve gone if Parker hadn’t attacked it,” he said. “Do me a favor. When Roger shows up, ask him to make narrowing down the time of death a priority. I want to be called as soon as he has an answer.”

  Annie Walsh started to say something along the lines that it didn’t matter what Morris had said on TV. Faye Riverstone was as good as dead the moment the killer grabbed her. Morris raised a hand to stop her.

  He didn’t want to hear it.

  Chapter 41

  They cleared Rodeo Drive. After that, the toy car was brought back to its original starting point and released. Police officers had been interspersed along Rodeo Drive to spot it, while Morris and Annie attempted to follow it.

  The car did what Morris thought it would do as it took a right onto Rodeo Drive and proceeded to race down the bike path.

  “It must be following a set of programmed GPS coordinates,” he said.

  He was suspicious when the toy car passed by a parked van that had the business name Hollywood Party Favors painted on it along with three balloons, but when the car passed an identical van half a block away, he was sure they had found what they were looking for. Walsh elbowed him when it zipped past a third identical van on the next block.

  “The bombs must be in those vans,” she said. “Did you notice the red, green, and blue balloons painted on them? RGB. This joker’s initials.”

  “Jesus,” Morris whispered. If Parker hadn’t knocked over the toy car, hundreds of people would’ve been around the vans when whatever was inside of them was activated.

  The bomb squad was brought back to investigate. When they broke into the first van, they didn’t find a bomb. Instead they found an M60 machine gun attached to a tripod made up of two wrenches pivoting on an automatic garage door opener, all of which was mounted to the bottom part of a swivel chair. The gun was locked and loaded with what turned out to be two hundred live rounds. One of the bomb squad members pointed out the road bike cassette that had been attached to the garage door opener. “That’s for gear reduction,” the officer explained.

  Morris said, “This psycho is now ripping off Breaking Bad.”

  The officer shrugged. “I never watched the show.”

  “They used the same setup in their last episode. Would this have worked?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  The ammunition was removed, and when the remote control device came within fifty feet of the van, the garage door opener activated, and the machine gun started moving back and forth in a semicircle. If they hadn’t removed the ammunition, the area would’ve been sprayed with bullets. When they broke into the other two vans, they found identical setups.

  A new business card from R. G. Berg was left in one of the vans. The message scrawled on it read: Brick, this is just a taste of the devastation that’s coming.

  * * * *

  Surveillance video showed a car being towed away and one of the vans being parked in its place. The van driver wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and kept his face hidden when he left the van. The odds were he was the killer in disguise, and catching him on video wasn’t going to help them, but they were able to get the name of the tow truck company, and after showing the video to the company’s owner, they had the name of the tow truck operator. When they brought him to MBI’s offices, he at first tried to profess innocence, but after he was shown the surveillance video, he broke into a big smart-alecky grin and held up his hands in a mock surrender.

  “Okay, you got me,” he admitted.

  “No kidding,” Morris said. “Pretty open and shut case for conspiracy to commit mass murder.”

  The driver was a wiry sort named Ed McGreevy, and from his thick New Jersey accent he had to be a recent transplant. His grin turned into more of a suspicious smile.

  “What are you talking about?” he said. “A guy needed some spots for a company event, so for a little money I moved a few cars for him. No real harm, right?”

  “The vans that were moved into the spots were meant to kill hundreds.”

  “You’re making this stuff up,” he insisted.

  McGreevy was trying to maintain his smile, but it froze into something sickly, and as he looked at the stone-faced expressions from Morris and Walsh, a panic set in. “I swear I knew nothin
g about it,” he said, talking in a rapid-fire way. “I was just trying to help out what I thought was a local businessman and make a little extra cash for myself. That’s all I thought I was doing. Do I need to be talking to a lawyer here?”

  “Not if you tell us everything you know.”

  Walsh shot Morris an annoyed look for making that offer, but she didn’t contradict him.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll tell you everything.”

  McGreevy proceeded to do just that. A little before noon he was approached by a man in his early thirties who was desperate for three parking spots on Rodeo Drive. The man claimed he’d been hired to provide props for a flash mob dance scene that was scheduled to take place, and that he was royally screwed if he couldn’t get those spots. McGreevy was paid two grand, but claimed he really did it out of the goodness of his heart. “The guy told me he’d be going out of business if I didn’t help. Any decent soul would’ve done the same.”

  A police sketch artist was brought over, and while the sketch showed a clean-shaven man with short brown hair, a larger nose, and a different-shaped mouth, Morris had no doubt that it was their killer. The shape of the head and the eyes were the same, and the mouth probably looked the way it did because of fake teeth.

  When they had gotten all they could out of McGreevy, he asked if he was free to go.

  Walsh said, “I’m still going to book you for illegally towing those cars.”

  “Fair enough,” McGreevy agreed.

  While Morris and Walsh were dealing with McGreevy, Bogle had tracked down R. G. Berg’s landlord, but he didn’t bother bringing him back to MBI.

  “The guy knows nothing,” Bogle told Morris. “Everything was done through the mail, and payment was made with cash.” Bogle showed a tight-lipped grin, a look that Morris knew reflected anger instead of anything related to mirth. “You’re going to hate this part of it,” Bogle said.

  “Try me.”

  “The killer used your home address in his correspondence. So that’s where the rental agreement was sent.”

  Morris’s home had a mailbox instead of a slot in the door. Most days both he and Natalie were out, and one of them always took Parker with them. It wouldn’t have been hard for the killer to check his mail for a rental agreement, nor for him to go unnoticed while he did so.

  “You’re right. I do hate that part of it.”

  “I’m psychic that way,” Bogle said with that same tight-lipped grin.

  “He rented the store five months ago, right? Do you know when the agreement was mailed out?”

  Bogle consulted his notepad and gave Morris the date. “I think you were in Italy then,” he added.

  Morris nodded. He and Natalie were on what was really a belated honeymoon since it was the first vacation of that type they’d ever taken. Rachel was house-sitting during that time—really pet-sitting Parker. Morris involuntarily shivered at the thought of the killer coming to their home while Rachel was there alone.

  Bogle asked, “Are you okay?”

  Morris shifted his gaze from Bogle, knowing otherwise his investigator would be able to tell he was lying.

  “Yeah, I’m just thinking how he must’ve been checking my mailbox every month for the rental bill.”

  Bogle said, “He wouldn’t need to do that. He paid six months’ rent upfront. So what now? Should I keep looking at movie producers?”

  “No. We need to track down those vans. Also, the M60s. Pick one and I’ll give the other to Polk.”

  “I thought the FBI was looking into the M60s?”

  “They are, but I still want one of us involved.”

  “Okay, I’ll take the vans. A guy could get shot looking into stolen guns. Better to let Polk have that. What about Fred?”

  Morris made a halfhearted damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t gesture. “I still want him to keep doing what he’s doing. More and more this is looking like Gloria’s right and this psycho has some sort of grudge against me. I just can’t figure out what it is.”

  “The guy’s a whack job. You’ll never figure it out. Is what I heard true? Faye Riverstone was already dead before he pulled his ‘sawing a woman in half’ magic act?”

  “That’s what Roger claimed. Death was caused by a massive coronary and not the systemic shock she would’ve suffered when he used a circular saw to sever her body. He was able to narrow time of death between late Thursday night and early Friday morning.”

  Bogle rubbed his cheek as he considered that. “The coronary must’ve happened as a result of him cutting off that poor woman’s hand. In any case, she died before your interview with Margot. If you’ve got nothing else for me, I have some vans to look into.”

  The look Morris gave Bogle had him turning back with a raised eyebrow.

  “It’s nothing,” Morris said. “Just that Rachel mentioned to me she’s seeing a new guy. That it’s someone I know.”

  No crack in Bogle’s poker face. If he was who Rachel was seeing, Morris wouldn’t be able to divine it from his expression. While Bogle was smart, solid, and a good-looking man, he was also forty-five and divorced with two kids, and Morris had heard stories when he was married about his womanizing. Because of that he was hoping it wasn’t his top investigator.

  Bogle asked, “She won’t tell you who it is?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Do you want me to look into it?”

  If Rachel was seeing Bogle, he didn’t give any hint of it. If he suspected that Morris was worried he might be seeing Rachel, he likewise gave no hint. He played it as if it were an accepted fact that he wouldn’t betray Morris’s confidence by dating his daughter. Or maybe that was just the way it was. Morris had learned long ago never to get into a poker game with him, at least not if he didn’t want to lose his shirt.

  Morris said, “If you happen to hear something.”

  “Sure. If it’s Polk, I’ll also put a bullet in his ass. That will sideline him long enough for your daughter to come to her senses.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Chapter 42

  Parker stretched and plodded over to Gloria Finston, his tail wagging. The FBI profiler, who had just entered Morris’s office, favored the bull terrier with a smile and consented to scratch him behind the ear.

  “I understand you’re a hero,” she said to the dog.

  “He might’ve saved hundreds of lives today,” Morris volunteered.

  Parker grunted contentedly, his tail picking up speed.

  “That’s what I heard,” Finston said. She turned her smile to Morris. “Quite an eventful day, huh?”

  “To say the least.”

  He had already given her the major bullet points over the phone, but he hadn’t told her yet the meaning of the killer’s R. G. Berg alias. He did so now, and it seemed to fascinate her. As she listened, she chewed lightly on her thumbnail, her small dark eyes glistening.

  “It adds up,” she said. “I was wrong about him trying to tell a narrative. At least in a sense. What he’s doing is constructing a kind of Rube Goldberg machine.”

  “He’s killing these actresses so he can use them as dominos?”

  “In his own perverse way, yes. Each of these events are designed to lead you to the next, and this latest one was meant to have you trigger the next event where M60 machine guns would’ve fired hundreds of rounds into pedestrians and shoppers.”

  “Except it didn’t work.”

  Finston left Parker to take the chair across from Morris’s desk. The bull terrier followed along after her and plopped down next to her.

  “Thankfully,” she said.

  “Natalie told me this psycho’s trying to move me around like a piece on a chessboard.”

  “Your wife’s a perceptive woman.”

  “She is that,” Morris agreed. “So what happens now that his demented Rube Goldberg machine has gone bust
?”

  “I’m sure he’s spent years dreaming of doing this, and I’m also sure he’s wrapped much of his ego and sense of self-worth into it. He expects the world to gasp at his brilliance, and it will be a blow to him now that his masterpiece has been marred. But he’s not going to give up.”

  Morris expected her answer. “Because he’s still got his grand finale.”

  “Correct. Today was only supposed to be a taste of the devastation that’s coming,” she said, quoting the killer’s last message.

  Morris made a face as if he tasted something bitter and unpleasant. “So this psycho’s expecting to kill thousands instead of the hundreds who would’ve died today if his plans had worked out. Quite a piece of work.”

  Parker interrupted them by making an excited grunting noise. He flipped himself onto his feet, his tail wagging, and he scampered to the door. A second later a knock came, and Greta opened the door enough to inform them that the food had arrived.

  “Do you want me to bring you yours and Parker’s?” she asked.

  “Not necessary. Why don’t you leave it all in the conference room?”

  Parker followed Greta out of the office.

  With a heavy grunt, Morris pushed himself to his feet, and explained to Finston that he had ordered takeout from the Oak Grill. “An army travels on their stomach, right? Anyway, I ordered plenty, including their Caesar salad with wood-grilled sea scallops, which I remembered you liked last time.” Morris checked his watch. “I still have an hour before I need to head off for my prime-time special with Margot Denoir. How about we continue strategizing over some food? See if we can get to the conference room before Polk finds the Caesar salad?”

  “An excellent suggestion.”

  Polk and Adam Felger had beaten them to the conference room. Polk, at least for the time being, had left the Caesar salad alone, and grabbed one of the prime rib sandwiches for himself. Felger, who was the only vegetarian in the office, had snared the grilled asparagus and portabella mushroom wrap. The fact that Rachel was also vegetarian made Morris look at Felger a beat longer than he normally would’ve, but he otherwise kept his suspicions to himself. He nodded to his two employees. Felger, who had his mouth full, gave him a thumbs-up sign for ordering the grilled veggie wrap and offered Finston a nod. Polk, who also had his mouth full, didn’t let that stop him from saying “Hi ya” to Finston, and telling Morris that he already had an answer about the M60s. “I’ll tell you what I found after I have a couple more of these.”