Spree
The Complete Novel
Michael Morley
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Part 1
Strawberry Fields Massacre
1
LA Athletic Club, LA
Psychological profiler Dr. Angie Holmes was sprinting.
Not jogging.
Not running.
Flat-out sprinting.
The kind of bust-your-lungs, sweat-yourself-ugly exertion that only happened when she needed to exorcise the ugliest of demons.
The former Californian track star was twenty-eight, but when she was mad or stressed, the years rolled back and she ran like she was seventeen.
Today she was fired up enough to smash a personal best.
Two things were driving her crazy.
First off, the man in her life, FBI Special Supervisory Agent Jake Mottram, had left a message on her phone saying he loved her. In itself, not a bad thing. Except he only said those words at a time like this. As he strapped on a Kevlar vest and went gun-to-gun with a Spree.
Sprees were the worst.
A special breed of killer who appeared out of the blue and slaughtered indiscriminately. No rhyme or reason. And since Sandy Hook, Santa Monica and the other public shootings, Jake had been the man in charge of catching the worst of the worst.
The Bureau set up the SKU, the Spree Killer Unit, under direct orders from the White House. Since then, it seemed like Jake worked at least a case a month.
Angie broke her stride and put her hands to the back of her head. A bunch of shoulder-length auburn hair had flopped out of its tie band. She fumbled it back in and regained her rhythm. Stretched tense muscles. Stepped up the pace. Felt her heart hammer against her ribs.
All was becoming good.
Adrenaline masked the worry.
She glanced at her wrist as the white line slid toward her Nikes.
Five-twenty.
Damn.
She could go faster. Faster meant more pain in the body and less in the head. It was a good trade.
Angie breathed deeply. Filled her lungs. Lengthened her stride.
Jake should take a desk job.
The thought came up like a hurdle. He was ten years older than her, the right age for his ass to polish an office chair.
He’d be safe.
She’d stop worrying. They could settle down. Not that he’d ever mentioned doing that. Three years together and not one hint of the M word. In fact, not even the E word. But no worries, they were solid. Of that, she was sure.
Thinking about him threw up a picture of the Spree he was hunting. Corrie Chandler. Former soldier. Former security guard. More bull than man. Now out of work and out of his mind.
A bad combination.
One day after he got laid off, his drunk of a wife walked out on him.
Corrie walked after her.
Shot her in the back.
Pumped a hole through the head of a neighbor who stood gawping while gardening the patch of dirt that divided their homes.
Then Corrie got in his old Jeep and disappeared.
After twelve hours of eluding the LAPD, he’d been found by Jake and his team. Hence why Angie was wearing out the track of her local club.
The lap line came into view. She checked her wrist again.
Five-zero-five.
Christ, she was feeling old. She should be able to bust that five-minute mark. And Jake sure as hell should know it was time he quit the fieldwork and drove a desk. That way he could look after her.
Her and the baby she’d just found out she was carrying.
That was the second thing she was worrying about. That and the fact she hadn’t yet found the right moment to tell him.
2
Griffith Park, LA
It looked like a convention of hard-asses. Top marksmen from the LAPD and FBI gathered outside the gates of one of America’s biggest urban parks. All getting their respective shit together.
Gun checks. Body armor checks. Comms checks.
Check, check, check.
That was what these guys did in the downtime. The nervous, laugh-too-loudly time. The last guaranteed moments of your lifetime before stepping into the crosshairs of a crazy with a gun.
Up in the cornflower blue California sky, two helicopters hummed and circled like mating dragonflies. Beneath them, staring out at three thousand acres of forests, lawns and trails, were the operational heads of SWAT and SKU.
Thirty-eight-year-old FBI Special Agent Jake Mottram stood six five and two hundred pounds. Connor Pryce, the thirty-two-year-old, newly appointed LAPD commander, was seven inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter. Little and large, both licensed to end their mutual problem with deadly force.
As a former soldier, Mottram knew only too well the value of studying the terrain as closely as the psychology of the enemy inhabiting it. He and Pryce had halted their squads at the edge of the Ferndell side of Griffith, a Jurassic Park patch of dense greenery with towering trees and jungle-thick foliage.
The FBI man used field glasses to stare through the gnarled oaks and leafy undergrowth at a famous building way off in the distance.
The place Corrie Chandler had holed up.
He let the glasses fall from his pale blue eyes and thump on their strings against his broad chest. “Seems ironic.”
“What does?” Pryce felt edgy and had started to pace.
“Us, observing an observatory.” He pointed into the distance. “Mr. Crazy over there is most probably staring right back at us through a free-standing scope, or even that big Zeiss thing that can watch fleas crap on Mars.”
The cop didn’t answer. He was worrying about the press and how they’d crucify him if this didn’t end quickly and without any more loss of innocent life.
Jake was relaxed but focused. Totally at home in an environment where shots were likely to be fired at him. He looked around and took in the beauty of the park. “I came here some time back with my girlfriend. We did all the tourist shit. Used scopes to find the Hollywood sign. Rode white horses down a wooded trail.” He turned to the smaller man. “You ever been inside the Observatory?”
Pryce had found a thumbnail to chew. “No. Saw it in Terminator Salvation. I think it was even in The Simpsons.”
“Man, I love that show. I remember now, they called it the Springfield. I can picture parts of the layout but not all of it. I’ve got one of our techies pulling together film clips to add to the schematics so everyone knows the place inside out before we go in there.”
Pryce had gotten to worrying about the Spree’s background. “Chandler was military, right?”
“Right.”
“Was he a marksman?”
“No. Just a grunt. But he was in a top outfit.”
“Which?”
“Tenth Mountain.”
“That infantry?”
“And some. As well as mountains, they’re specialists in Arctic survival. Real tough mothers. You can lock these guys naked in an icebox and they’ll ask you for sunscreen.”
Pryce arched an eyebrow. “Great.”
Jake studied the cop. He was too uptight for a guy of his rank. “Did you come up through SWAT or through admin?”
“SWAT.” Pryce brushed off the insinuation. He too
k a second and then decided to come clean. “Only arrived a year ago, though. I’m what I believe the squad call the ‘smart’ guy.”
Jake laughed. He knew what the phrase meant. Pryce was a desk jockey. University-educated and fast-tracked to senior command. During an armed raid, he would be the last in and first out. Five years from now, if he lived that long, he’d probably be in the running for chief.
A young agent appeared at their sides. Jenny Dickson blanked the cop and spoke to her boss. “We’ve got feeds from the mini-drones, sir. Looks like at least five dead on the observation terrace.”
“Fuck!” Pryce put his hands to his temples as though an explosion had gone off.
Jake’s voice stayed measured. “Were the fatalities in the east or west of the building, Jenny?”
“The east, sir. And we think there’s a further fatality just by the entrance for wheelchairs, at the back of the Planetarium.”
He raised his field glasses and studied the white building in the distance. The sun was high and would be casting long shadows for at least another two hours. This was no time to be running an assault. “We got any eyes and ears in there yet?”
“Ears, yes. We’ve got dishes up on all points of the compass. Our only eyes are the drones.”
Pryce consoled himself out loud. “At least we got the public clear.”
“Only coz he let us,” added Jake. “I guess he emptied his anger when he let off that magazine out on the terrace. It gave everyone else a chance to run.”
Pryce squinted up into the sky. “That a news copter up there?”
Jake swung the glasses to the blue. “Yeah. Fox’s eye in the sky.” He dropped them to his chest again. “Jenny, get someone to tell the station to shift that bird before I ask the military to do it for them. Have our press people tell the channel heads I don’t want pictures of us onscreen. Anyone blows you off on that, tell them I said they best book themselves a hospital bed.”
“Sir.” The young agent scurried back to the truck.
Pryce’s cellphone rang. He patted down the jacket of his blue suit until he found it. “Hello?”
Jake watched him again. He was sweating and it wasn’t down to the heat of the day. Only time and experience would take nerves like that away. He remembered the first time he’d shot someone. It had been in Afghanistan. A sniper covering a strip of road that wasn’t worth jack shit to anyone had killed two members of a three-man unit patrolling it. Jake had been the third. He’d spent the next four hours in the baking sun hunting down that asshole. Then, when he got the jump and it came to pulling the trigger, he’d hesitated. Only for a split second. But long enough for his enemy to spot him and almost get a shot away.
Jake Mottram never flinched again.
By the time he left the army, he’d killed thirty-two people in five different locations.
Pryce finished his call and slid the phone back in his jacket. There was a smile on his face. “Chandler’s made contact. He’s on a line from inside the Griffith.”
3
LA Athletic Club, LA
Angie showered and toweled dry. She slipped on her brown skirt suit and mentally reran her “routine” appointment that morning with Bureau doctor Suzie Janner.
The profiler had completed her annual physical and had mentioned—more in passing than anything—that she’d been “feeling out of sorts.”
Doctors being doctors, Suzie inevitably ran a list of questions about stress, diet and alcohol.
Then she got to pregnancy.
“Pregnancy?” Angie had almost laughed her ass off. “There’s more chance of Jake being pregnant than me. I’ve been on the pill since I was fifteen and never missed taking one.”
“No contraceptive—except abstinence—is one hundred percent effective.” She handed over a testing kit. “Now go pee.”
Ten minutes and a whole seismic shift in the world later, Angie returned with a blue stick and accepted she was “with child.”
Fortunately, Suzie Janner was more than her doctor. She was seven years older than Angie but they were friends. Members of the same female business groups. They’d even cowritten papers together. In short, she knew her well enough to ask the big question: “How do you feel about the news?”
Angie stared into space, as though the answer was an elusive star lost in a cloudy night sky.
“Angie?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” She’d finally looked at her friend. “Is that pathetic? I mean, what do people usually say?”
“Usually?” Suzie had smiled reassuringly. “There’s no such thing as usually. If the pregnancy hasn’t been planned, then the reaction is often the same as yours.”
Angie nodded sadly. “I feel bad.”
“Bad how? Sick bad?”
“No. Screwed up in my head bad. Guilty bad.”
“Guilty?”
“Yeah. Not getting pregnant is kind of thought of as the woman’s job…”
Suzie shot her a stern look of disapproval.
“And I feel bad about feeling confused. I mean, I should either be overjoyed, right? Or”—she struggled to complete her thought—“or I guess we should be talking termination.”
“We shouldn’t be talking anything. Not yet. You should just be absorbing the news. Getting used to it. Thinking about what it means to you—not only in the next months and years, but also for the rest of your lifetime.”
“You mean I should think like a psychologist, not a shell-shocked lunatic?”
Suzie laughed. “Something like that. There’s really no mad rush. Take your time. Get used to the idea, then decide. You’re what—twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine in a month.”
“Still young. You ever thought about being a mother? Just before thirty is a good age.”
“Hell, no!” Angie responded more strongly than she’d meant to. Of course she’d thought about it. But not long enough to get used to the idea. “Suzie, you know my background.” She slid her gaze to the thick file on the desk. “It’s all in those notes. Parenthood is not something I was cut out for.”
“That’s nonsense. You’re the shrink, not me. You know that having an abusive father doesn’t mean you’re going to be abusive yourself. You’re not some poor, weak-willed waif, caught in a deprived and unbreakable circle. You’re one tough lady who’s kicked ass all her life.”
“I know all that. It’s just that, being a mom”—saying the words out loud shocked Angie—“being a mom will open doors to rooms I had shut. Locked and nailed up for good. Living through a new childhood might make me live through my own, and I don’t want that.”
“Motherhood might be the greatest thing that ever happened to you. It was for me.”
“Was it?” She sounded skeptical.
“Absolutely.” She eyed a silver-framed photo of a gap-toothed blond girl on her desk. “I’d die for Bethan. She’s just everything.” She enjoyed the thought of her daughter before she moved on. “You won’t have to give anything up, Angie. You’ve got a great career—and a great guy from what I hear. Now, if you want it, you can be a great mom as well.” She smiled warmly. “Most people would say that’s game, set and match. But listen, it’s really all down to what you want. Don’t let me, Jake or anyone pressure you.”
“Jeez, I haven’t even got round to thinking about Jake.”
“How do you imagine he’ll take it?”
She widened her eyes and shrugged. “God knows. He’s as much a screwup as I am. No parents. Orphanage and army raised—and you know what that means.”
“Emotionally locked in.”
“Hard as marble, stubborn as a mule.”
Suzie felt obliged to bring some balance. “He’s also a war veteran. Purple Heart hero. Decorated by the freakin’ president. I mean, what kid wouldn’t want him as Pop and you as Mom?”
Angie scratched at her neck until she felt raw. A nervous habit since childhood. “Do you have to tell McDonald about this?”
Suz
ie looked sympathetic. “I can’t keep it out of the report, and the assistant director is certain to read it. But I can hold back the file for a few days.” She tipped her head to a mountain of paperwork. “It needn’t get put through until all that’s cleared.”
“Thanks.”
The physician sensed it was time to change the subject. She picked up the results of the medical. “Aside from the pregnancy, you’re in great shape. Blood tests are good. Heart and lungs of a teenager. Protein count and cholesterol better than fine. You get a clean bill of health from me, Doctor Holmes.”
“Thank you, Doctor Janner.” Angie stood and pinned on a smile. “Anything I can’t do, given the development?”
“Development?” The word made her smile. She pulled a stack of leaflets out of a tray. “Read and digest. Main thing is don’t smoke and you don’t, so no problem there. Oh, and cut out the alcohol. All of it.”
“Shit.”
Suzie hiked an eyebrow. “Yeah, that one hurt me, too.”
Angie took the leaflets and slid them into her purse. “Can I run?”
“No problem. Watch the weights, though. Technically, even that’s okay at this stage. I just suggest you be sensible.”
“Sensible would have been not getting knocked up.” She glanced at her watch and then looked up with bravery in her eyes. “I’m gonna go tell Jake straightaway.”
“Best of luck.”
All that had been some hours back.
Only Jake hadn’t been around to tell.
His cell had been turned off.
Never a good sign.
When she’d called his unit, they’d told her exactly where he was and she’d felt sick to the pit of her stomach.
A Spree.
The thought had made her dizzy. For an hour, she’d sat and watched the news in her office, and then she’d headed to the track.
Only it hadn’t made things better like it normally did.
And now she was at her wits’ end.
Angie Holmes, seven weeks pregnant, stared at herself in the locker room mirror. She smoothed her skirt and turned sideward.
There was nothing to see.
Spree Page 1
