Spree

by Michael Morley

  She snapped out of her melancholic reminiscences by typing three words in the search box: ABORTION CLINICS LA.

  What followed made difficult reading.

  First came the commercial onslaught of people vying for her “business,” then an oily slick of slogans to pull her in. Most managed to use the same phrases—Your Life. Your Decision—Make the Smart Choice—Forget Don’t Regret.

  A click or two later, she found a community site run by women who’d had abortions in the LA area and had left comments and ratings. One was so full of praise she made it sound like a trip to a spa. Angie suspected it had been written by one of the clinic owners. Another left her speechless. A woman complained that because she’d had very little money she’d been forced to use an unlicensed clinic. The whole affair had been agony. Only when she was recovering did she discover they did liposuctions during the day, and in the evenings just switched nozzles for the abortions.

  Angie felt a wave of revulsion wash through her.

  She dealt with death on a daily basis but none of the traumas of her work had prepared her for a situation like this.

  Blood pounded in her temples. Anger rose inside her. She had to pant to let go of the building tension. Angie was on autopilot now. It was the mode she’d often gone into when she was a kid. It was how she’d gathered her mental strength when her father came in drunk or angry and started throwing his weight and fists around. It was her defense mechanism. Her way of pulling down the shutters and squaring up to whatever stood in her way.

  She dialed Suzie Janner.

  She was ready to tell her she’d made up her mind. She knew what she wanted. What she had to do.

  23

  Moorpark, Ventura County, LA

  A low evening sun had drizzled gold on the strawberry fields by the time Jake and Ruis decided to call it quits and head back to the Explorer.

  Pryce had pulled out an hour earlier. He’d left a SWAT team to work the wider fields with deputies from the sheriff’s department but by now, everyone believed the shooter was gone.

  The next twenty-four hours would be critical.

  They’d be spent interviewing the traumatized kids and teachers, scrapping around for a description of the UNSUB, canvassing locals about whether they’d seen anyone or anything unusual, running door-to-door inquiries and weapon checks, processing forensics and hoping there were prints on the slug Pryce found in the fence. Most of all, they would be spent praying for a break.

  You needed more than luck when you were hunting a Spree.

  One thing was for sure: sooner or later, they always surfaced and came back crazier than ever.

  The men banged their boots against the tires, then climbed into the Ford. Ruis kicked off the inevitable back-to-the-office discussion about the case. “What d’you reckon happened out there? The cops messed up and he slipped through their lines? Or you think he’s still holed up close by and playing Mr. Normal in some unsuspecting family?”

  “Maybe the latter. If the UNSUB’s local, he could have dropped the gun into a shit pit and run home before the first cops even got there.”

  Ruis drove with one hand on the wheel and searched the center console. He found a pack of gum and offered Jake a stick of spearmint.

  “No thanks.”

  He took one himself, then shared some of his thoughts. “I’ve been thinking about what you said about the shooter being an amateur.”

  “And?”

  “And what if it’s a kid? A teenager with a grudge against the folks who run Strawberry Fields Farm. He grabs his old man’s rifle and goes out on a revenge mission because they sacked him, or maybe just refused him a job.”

  Jake wasn’t convinced. “Pryce said the farm manager claimed they haven’t sacked anyone for years.”

  “They’ll certainly have turned down people for jobs, though,” added Ruis. “And with Sprees, rejection is often the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”

  “I hate camels.” Jake pulled a face. “Reminds me too much of Afghanistan.”

  “They fight them like dogs, don’t they?”

  “They do. Both the Turks and the Afghans love camel fighting. Thousands of people turn up for the big bouts and there’s a massive amount of illegal betting on it. I tell you, man, it’s brutal. The owners whip all sense out of the big dumb lumps and make them butt and crash into each other until one drops dead.”

  “And this is a country we sought to liberate?”

  “Hey, don’t start me on that topic.”

  They made small talk all the way back to the office. Ruis promised to put in the case report while Jake headed over to Angie’s office. He took a deep breath as he walked the corridor. Light spilled from her room and he could hear the TV playing.

  He rapped on the door and walked in.

  She sat at her desk, a cup of coffee held in both hands, staring out of the window.

  “Hi.”

  She looked shocked to see him. “Hi to you, too. You been on this kiddie shooting?”

  “Uh-huh.” He took a chair and swung it round so he leaned over the back as he sat. “Spree’s gone to ground but I suspect not for long. How are you?”

  “Ha.” She looked back out the window to Wilshire. “How am I? I guess I’m kinda screwed up.” She popped the cap off a bottle of water and swigged. “Thought you might have rung.”

  “I was with people all day and didn’t have a chance. I came straight over as soon as I got free.”

  She nodded. He could have made time. They both knew it. “You managed to think a little?”

  “I’ve done nothing but.” He blew out a deep sigh. “To be honest with you, Ang, I don’t see myself as a dad. I’d never thought about it until yesterday and now I have, well, I just don’t think parenting is a mission for me.”

  “A mission?”

  He hated it when she repeated words like that. “Bad phrase, maybe. I’m sorry. Listen, you wanted to know how I feel. Well, I feel the baby’s a bad idea. We were good how we were. How we are. Doesn’t make sense to change things.”

  Angie sat in silence.

  She had to go over everything he’d just said. Discover whether deep down she felt the same. Before he’d come over she’d rung Suzie Janner, but the doctor had been out. If she’d been in, Angie would have confessed that she was leaning toward keeping the baby and wanted some advice.

  Jake got up and wandered around to her side of the desk. He squatted so he was at her eye level. “I love you, Angie Holmes. I really do. And I don’t want this—or anything, for that matter—to come between us.”

  She knew what it cost him to say that. Twice in twenty-four hours and no phone to hide behind or threat to his life to prompt it. In other circumstances, she’d have seen his words and openness as big progress in their relationship.

  He took her hand and tried to leave her in no doubt about his feelings. “I’ve never felt like I do with you with any other woman. I want what we’ve got to last but I just don’t see a kid helping out on that score.”

  She couldn’t stop herself pulling away from him. “And what if I told you that I wanted the baby?”

  “What?”

  “I’m not repeating myself, Jake. You heard me clearly enough.”

  He didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve been thinking about it. For and against.” She found herself smiling at her clunky way of summing up her feelings. “And the more I think, the more I’m for.”

  He shook his head. “Have you forgotten how fucked up your childhood was—to say nothing about mine?”

  “I’ve tried to. I try to forget it every day.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “D’you know what? I actually thought because of all that shit, we might make great parents. We might be able to finally bury our own ghosts and rise above all that psychological baggage. Stupid me. What a dumbass.” Anger fizzed in her blood. “Crazy bitch that I am, I’d talked myself into thinking that maybe this was a good thing for us. Admittedly, a hell of a surprise, but a good thing.�
�� She laughed sarcastically. “Get this—in my madness, I thought it might complete us.”

  “Complete us?” His eyes widened in shock. “Well, I felt pretty damned complete before this shitstorm broke over our heads. Turn back the clock a couple of days, Angie. Remember how it was. Then you try to tell me that we felt incomplete.”

  She glared at him. He’d touched a nerve and they both knew it.

  “Well, things aren’t as they were. They’re as they are. So what happens now, Jake? You want to break up? Because I sure as hell don’t need another part-time parent in my life.” She struggled—not for words, but for the restraint not to let them out.

  Her desk phone rang.

  “Take it,” he snapped. “I’ll wait.” He backed away and stood around the other side of the desk.

  Angie picked up the phone. “Holmes.”

  It was O’Brien. “Bad news, Doc. Lindsey Knapp died ten minutes ago. Our rapist just became a killer.”

  Part 2

  Slayer Rising

  1

  California

  Shooter woke with his brain buzzing.

  His mind zinged with static from yesterday’s murders.

  The thrill of the kill still pumped in his heart. He’d slept well. The best rest he’d ever had. Now he was relaxed. Satiated. Like he’d made love all night, then slept all day.

  But it had been better than sex.

  Less effort. More pleasurable. Less physical. More spiritual.

  And another thing—any dumb fuck can have sex.

  Few can do what he did.

  Take a life.

  Lives to be precise.

  The media had announced that there’d been three deaths. Two teachers and a child. Others injured.

  Shame.

  He’d aimed to kill the running man, the balding teacher with the tires of belly fat, but had pulled his shot at the last minute. It had been the excitement. Distractions. Inexperience.

  Next time he would do better.

  Better and better.

  Until he achieved what he wanted.

  Perfection.

  Murder, thought Shooter, is like art. You have to suffer for it. Work hard. Stamp your mark. Not mind that some assholes won’t recognize the beauty of what you create. You have to have a plan and a structure. Something important to say. But you must be able to improvise as well. That’s where the flair is.

  Shooter shut his eyes and drifted back to the scene.

  The shade had felt cool after the long walk in the sun, his throat dry from the dusty tracks he’d worked his way down. The woods smelled of Douglas fir and wild garlic. He’d settled in the long grass between trunks of evergreens and trained his telescoping sight on the strawberry fields.

  He’d controlled his breathing. Learned to be patient. Caught himself listening to the rustle of birds in the dense green canopy of branches and leaves. He’d focused. Cut everything out. In his hands he’d felt the cool metal of the AR-15. Panned the rifle left and right. Taken practice shots like a golfer swinging a club.

  Then came that wonderful thump of rifle stock against shoulder. Like an arm punch from a friend. And that delicious crack as the cartridge exploded and the slug smacked the air.

  Shooter relived it all in slow motion. Birds screamed and scattered in the faultless blue sky. A hundred yards away the first of the pickers went down.

  His pick of the pickers.

  The memory made him smile. Those kids around the female teacher had sniggered at first. They’d thought she had slipped, looked stupid, spilled her basket of berries. Gotten strawberries all over her face and hands. Something to smirk about for the rest of the year.

  Then they’d seen the red spurting from her back and chest and the little fuckers had screamed holes in the clouds.

  Shooter stretched out on his rough bed and remembered his second shot.

  He’d stayed calm and taken it well. The young male teacher had been staring in horror at his colleague when he’d squeezed the trigger and dropped him in the dirt.

  Then there’d been panic. Screams he could hear from all the way across the fields. People running everywhere. Through the chaos, he’d killed the girl in the bright dress and injured the fat boys and the baldy teacher. It hadn’t been good. Not how he’d wanted. Not clean. Not accurate enough. He’d lost his calmness. It had been like their panic had infected him. He’d snatched the shots. Swung the rifle like he’d been swatting flies. It had been bad.

  Next time he’d do better.

  Much better.

  Shooter counted his blessings. He’d gotten away. The cops had been even less effective than he’d expected.

  Looking back, he could see that crazy fuck at the Observatory had done him a favor. He’d figured chasing dumbasses like Corrie would drain the LAPD and FBI of their best men. Tire them out. Make them slow to respond.

  He’d been right.

  The first law enforcement teams to get to the Strawberry Fields slaughter had been the hick-town sheriffs and the leather-clad motorcycle riders of the California Highway Patrol. He’d watched them later on the TV news, with their puffed-out chests and heavy gun belts. An S&M drag show. What a joke. They hadn’t an investigator’s brain between them.

  Shooter had slipped away before they’d even gotten there, let alone closed down the area.

  He’d been back in his hideout, sipping soda and watching events on the news, long before SWAT had rolled into town with their armored meat wagons and big egos.

  He got out of bed and smiled. Today was a new day. He was a different person.

  He was famous.

  2

  LAPD HQ, LA

  Serial rape–homicide.

  Every cop in the world knows SRH is almost always the trump card in the grand game of winning all the resources needed for an investigation.

  The only thing that beats it is child murder.

  Once Lindsey Knapp died, Lieutenant Cal O’Brien found his penny-pinching chief more than willing to staff up his investigation to the level he’d asked for several months back.

  As a result, psychological profiler Angie Holmes found herself at LAPD HQ, standing at the front of an incident room full of cops, presenting her insight into the offender who’d raped five times and killed once.

  All those gathered across the four rows of chairs had been copied on her preliminary profile. They’d been warned in writing that it was a filtering device for investigators who had possible suspects in mind. It wasn’t a magical divining tool that would pull offenders out of the ground.

  “What you have got,” Angie told the room, “is a psychological profile, not a psychic one. It’s based on best guesses, formulated off the back of half a century of compiled statistics and operational experience, but they are still guesses. So, please do not exclude lines of inquiry, or suspects, solely on the grounds of the assumptions I’ve made. Use the profile to prioritize. Look first for people and things matching my outlines, but do not exclude anything that you would have investigated if you’d not had this profile.”

  Once she’d finished, she turned to the task O’Brien had given her of providing them with a better understanding of the nature of the UNSUB. “Can you dim the lights please?”

  A hand hit a bank of switches at the back of the room. Dust floated in a shaft of white projector light.

  Angie looked across the pensive audience and began. “Rapists fall into four principal categories. Every half decade or so it’s fashionable to change these names, but I work on FBI diagnostics that existed way before any of us were born.” She pulled up the first slide.

  TYPES OF RAPIST

  Power Reassurance.

  Power Assertive.

  Anger Retaliatory.

  Anger Excitation.

  “Type one is by nature a sneak and weakling. He usually lives in the same area as the victims he attacks. He may have snooped on them. Once this type of offender has begun his criminality, he will feel the need to regularly offend.” She took a pause to mak
e sure they were all paying attention. “The perp you are chasing started as a Power Reassurance rapist, but as you’ll see, he has a dangerous mix of other categories as well.” She walked into the light of the projector and tapped the screen. “Type three—Anger Retaliatory—he’s loaded with badness from here, too.” Angie changed slides.

  ANGER RETALIATORY

  Attack duration is short.

  Attack is extremely violent.

  Violence is used before, during and after rape.

  His main goal is to vent his cumulative aggression.

  “Make no mistake,” she continued, “the death of Lindsey Knapp will not have frightened or deterred him. To the contrary. He will have found it deeply satisfying.” She drifted even closer to the dropdown screen and tapped the fourth point. “He vents his anger by making the victim represent what he’s angry about. Remember this when you are interviewing suspects. He may be furious with a boss, a relative, a coworker or a symbol of authority, but he cannot attack that particular individual. He can’t do it because he has a reliance on them or he knows he would be immediately arrested as a suspect. So instead, he selects victims who symbolize them.”

  A hand went up in the shadows. A young female detective with auburn hair managed to catch Angie’s eye. “Doctor Holmes, do you know who our elderly victims represent to the offender?”

  “It’s a good question but I’m going to partly duck it because I want to validate a few things and it’s important you find the answer yourself. What I will say is I suspect there is a racial component to the crime, but I don’t want to go into details until my research assistant has validated some things.”

  She saw Cal O’Brien scowling as she pulled up a third slide. “This is the Anger Excitation Rapist. The next stage of our perp’s evolution.”

  ANGER EXCITATION (aka SADISTIC)