Spree

by Michael Morley

  Blanks were the ultimate insult for a techie like him. It was the digital equivalent of being flipped the bird.

  He looked again at the message: ONLYU&IRFIT2JUDGE.

  Social protocol demanded he reply—and soon.

  Chips wrote: BE JUST.YOUR ADMIRER.JE

  All he could do now was sit back, wait and hope the smart asshole made a mistake.

  12

  Skid Row, LA

  BE JUST.

  Shooter liked the comment. It had a ring to it. “BE JUST.” Judgelysia stood out from the crowd. He liked that, too. If only more people had the balls to speak their own minds and not behave like sheep.

  YOUR ADMIRER.

  He’d felt alone in the world until he’d seen that endorsement and read her blogs and comments. It felt good to know that someone out there thought like he did.

  Shooter went to the Launchpad on his computer. Among his hundreds of self-developed apps were many that would protect his own IP address and enable him to trace others. As well as rummaging through his victims’ physical trash cans, he also sifted their computer bins. He had devised his own mini botnet and pixeljacking programs so he could inspect and even control their browsers and emails. As a kid he’d been a loner and the computer had been his one constant friend and companion. There was nothing they couldn’t do together.

  He chose a geo-locator and ran it. Most GLs tended to be only around 90 percent accurate and were often hit or miss within fifteen miles. His was as on the money as a smart bomb. He hit longitude and latitude coordinators, then dropped them into Google Maps. Up came a big red arrow pointing at Elysia’s location.

  Watts.

  That was close.

  Shooter zoomed in. Pulled the little yellow Google man down onto the road and walked him along the curb. He could all but knock on her door.

  She was less than ten miles away. He could see her face-to-face within the hour.

  13

  Downtown, LA

  Crawford Dixon arranged for a conference room at the Justice Department to be used as a temporary incident base. He walked Angie over to the corner table where Danielle Goodman was writing up notes following her interviews with survivors.

  “Play nicely,” he told Angie. “Ruis has already broken the news that you’re back on the case and that’s all I want broken.”

  “I get the message.”

  Angie saw the profiler’s eyes had blackened and her nose was twice the size it had been before she’d punched her. “Danielle.”

  She looked up. “Oh, dear God. You come back to beat on me some more?” Her response was muffled and nasal.

  “Don’t tempt me.” Angie pulled out a chair and sat. “What can you tell me?”

  Danielle self-consciously touched the bridge of her nose. “Ruis said you were interested in the primary victims.”

  “Particularly, who’d booked the table.”

  Danielle looked down at her notepad. “Evelyn Richards. Mother of Sam—that’s as in Samuel not Samantha. It was his sixth birthday party.”

  “When had she made the booking?”

  “At least two months back.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I interviewed two survivors, waitresses who’d been working the registers. They said they’ve been booked solid for the last ten weeks. Place had been doing really well.”

  “Did they give you any behavioral information about the UNSUB?”

  “A little. They hit the floor behind the counter as soon as they realized what was happening. Apparently, when he came out of the restroom they initially thought he was either a parent having some fun, or a new member of staff they hadn’t noticed before. They were both under the impression that some kind of birthday stunt was going off because the UNSUB had gone straight to what they call Table One, which is the preferred party table.” She turned her notebook to show Angie the rough floor plan she’d sketched. “As you can see, there were three tables directly facing him when he came out, yet he turned left and started shooting in the corner at Table One, the farthest away from him.”

  “Did they see who was shot first?”

  “One of the waitresses did. She said it was the mom who booked the party, Mrs. Richards.”

  Angie had heard enough. All her suspicions about the attack being a targeted hit rather than just random slaughter had been considerably strengthened. There was a link between Evelyn Richards and Tanya Murison; she just had to find it. She got up and started to walk away.

  Danielle called after her. “Angie.”

  She turned.

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I am about Jake.” She added extra emphasis to the last part of her apology. “About everything.”

  Angie took a pace back to the table and Danielle sat back out of fear. “What you did, lady, was unforgivable and unforgettable. Sorry doesn’t get you off the hook. I’m going to have to live with the consequences of your stupidity every day of my life.”

  “I didn’t pull that trigger, Angie. It’s unfair of you to blame me like this.”

  “No, it’s not. Not at all.” She rounded the table and stood over her. “You as good as shot Jake yourself. You created a verbal stressor for a psychologically damaged murderer. You manipulated him into a state of rage and you didn’t anticipate the consequences.” Angie made a gun out of her hand and jabbed it in the middle of Danielle’s forehead. “That foolishness was the same as giving a preschool child a loaded weapon and being surprised when he pulled the trigger.”

  She hung her head. “I’m sorry. All I can do is say I’m sorry and ask you to forgive me.”

  “Forgive you?” Angie flipped the table and sent it crashing. Anger rose inside her. She wouldn’t hit the woman again, but she wanted to. “I’m carrying Jake’s child, you lousy bitch. It will be born fatherless because of you.”

  “Oh, God. I didn’t know.”

  “And if you had? Would it have made a difference? Would you have thought twice?” She studied her reaction. “No, I thought not.” Angie turned her back and walked away before she had the chance to break the promise she’d just made and really lose her temper.

  14

  South Los Angeles

  The gang on the east corner rode beat-up BMXs and slid shiny step rails near a yellow fire hydrant. Across the blacktop, dope bags were being sold by preteens through windows of slow-moving cars from out of the hood. Even younger kids were running to the stash house for extra gear. Off in the shade, the older corner boys smoked, watched the deals go down and never let their hands stray far from the guns jammed in their belts and covered with sweat tops.

  Farther back, sitting against walls where the soil stayed damp, were the wasted and the wasters. The cripples and the winos. The ones that were no threat to the young guns. Most slumped saggy-assed in groups and talked old bullet wounds and times in the pen. Those who sat alone tended to be drunks, sleeping off cheap booze and staying away from the curb where the LAPD’s black-and-whites crawled and locked glares with the homeboys.

  Far back in the dank leafy shadows, a wreck of an old man, white-haired and scarecrow-clothed, lay sprawled alongside a large empty bottle of cider. He was half in, half out of scrubbed earth, right where dog walkers toileted their animals. Not that it seemed to matter. His own pants looked more messed than the earth around him.

  Everyone who passed gave him a wide berth. Even in Nickerson Gardens, LA’s great unwashed were greatly ignored.

  Which was the way Shooter wanted it.

  For more than three hours he wallowed in the filth and watched the long rows of cheap houses. The comings and goings. He formed pictures of who lived where. The kids, the parents, the gun-toting teens.

  Number 1644 was of particular interest.

  Drapes were drawn upstairs and down. There was a newer front door, with reinforced hinges. Maybe the cops had busted the place recently and it had just been replaced. Up on the roof there was a small nonstandard satellite dish that puzzled him. The IP provider linked to Ely
sia’s address delivered its service by cable, not satellite. Maybe she was smarter than he’d given her credit for. Much smarter.

  He raised himself on one elbow and got up slowly and unsteadily, like a drunken old man. This was a neighborhood of hidden eyes. Someone somewhere would undoubtedly be watching him. He played the wino all the way to his feet, to his outstretched hand against the toilet tree to the wobbly first steps and the slow stagger that took him far out of sight.

  15

  Santa Monica Freeway, LA

  The sun slanted low in the evening sky and the slow snake of traffic slithered to a stop, level with Baldwin Hills.

  Angie sat in silence, her Toyota wedged between a battered pickup and a pink-pimped Hummer. It wasn’t only the traffic that was crowding her. It was everything. The new crime scene. The fresh blood. The dead children. Crawford’s reminder that he needed an answer on Jake’s burial at Arlington. Most of all, Danielle Goodman, thinking she could wash away a lifetime’s guilt by just saying sorry.

  She looked at her hand on the steering wheel and saw her knuckles were white. This was the bad side of her anger. She was so close to losing her cool. To exploding as she’d done as a child when she’d almost killed her abusive father. But now she knew better. Understood that the rage only masked her true feelings—helplessness, unfairness and injustice.

  Angie let go of the wheel. Put her hand to her mouth and tried to stop the cry rising in her throat. It was no good. It came out in shredded sobs. She began to cry the kinds of tears that can’t be held back or stopped. They just have to run out.

  Angie fumbled for tissues and hid her face from the car alongside. She blew hard into a Kleenex. As a psychologist, she knew the value of just letting grief go, but it was a horrible experience.

  Horns honked. Long, loud blasts. She lifted her head and saw the traffic move. A gap of ten yards opened up. More horn blasts. She didn’t care. She wasn’t moving until she was done.

  Two more tissues were needed before she could see clearly, before the Toyota could continue the slow crawl home, down the freeway into West Los Angeles and the less fashionable end of Wilshire Boulevard.

  It was a relief to park, to get out, to hide inside her own apartment and not have the world staring at her.

  Angie poured a glass of water and sat down with Jake’s phone. She wasn’t going to be dragged down. Wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity. She was going to stay busy and get to the bottom of who JL was.

  She wired the phone into her FBI laptop. Opened a record and trace facility on her desktop. Accessed Jake’s directory. There were a lot of names listed under J. Even more under L. Only three combined the two letters—James Lake, Jillian Lane and Joe Lamotta.

  She rang the woman first and hit an answerphone: “This is Jillian Lane, Bespoke Floristry. We’re closed at the moment; please leave a message and we’ll get back to you. Otherwise, you can visit us online at—” Angie killed the call. She remembered getting several birthday and “sorry honey” bouquets from Jake via Jillian Lane. It was highly unlikely someone on their reception had been given the details of Jake’s secret burner.

  She called James Lake.

  Again, another out-of-office message. “This is James Lake Sports Injury Clinic. We’re sorry no one is available to—” Angie remembered Jake’s recurring hamstring problem and cut it off.

  She thumbed her way through to the last JL listed. Joe Lamotta.

  It dialed out.

  There was no pickup. No automatic message clicked in.

  She dialed again.

  Once more it just rang in the wilderness.

  She hung up and made a third call.

  There was a click. “Hello.”

  She sensed that behind the deep male voice was some wariness, probably due to seeing Jake’s number flash up on his phone display. “Mr. Lamotta, this is Angie Holmes. I’m a friend of Jake Mottram’s.”

  She counted two seconds of silence. “Mr. Lamotta, are you there?”

  Finally he answered, and in doing so confirmed his identity. “Yes. Yes, I am. I’m very sorry for your loss, Miss Holmes. Jake was a fine man.”

  “Please tell me how you knew him.”

  Lamotta hadn’t been at all prepared for this call. He cleared his throat and filled in some of the gaps. “Well, we served together. You and I never met, Miss Holmes, but he spoke of you.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yes, and very affectionately. Jake and I didn’t meet up much these days, certainly not as much as we’d have both liked, but I know exactly who you are and what you meant to him.”

  Angie tried not to grow emotional. “Sir, I wonder if you could help me understand something.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  A glance at her computer showed her call had been routed to somewhere in Fairfax County, Virginia. Alarm bells sounded. Fairfax was Spooksville.

  “You had a question, Miss Holmes?”

  “I did, but given something that’s just come up, I wonder if you could call me on another line so I can better deal with it?”

  Joe Lamotta understood the connections she was making. “Give me five minutes and I’ll do that.”

  They both hung up.

  Angie sat in silence and stared at the computer screen. The call had gone through to a cellphone inside the George Bush Center for Intelligence at Langley, a place better known to the world as the headquarters of the CIA.

  Joe Lamotta worked there. Jake had been calling him on an untraceable burner. JL had said he’d gotten the information that Jake had wanted. And then Jake had been killed. A new dimension had been added to the inquiry. Was she blundering into a situation she didn’t understand? Getting hopelessly out of her depth?

  She knew the answer was a resounding yes. But Angie felt she had no alternative but to keep probing.

  The burner buzzed and made her jump.

  She picked it up. “Mr. Lamotta.”

  “Angie, you best call me Joe, or preferably nothing at all. I’ll be in LA tomorrow for ‘business.’ Do you know Shutters?”

  “Of course.”

  Then I’ll see you there at one. I’ll have a beach-view table in the café and I’ll be free for only thirty minutes so please don’t be late.”

  The line went dead.

  16

  Douglas Park, Santa Monica

  Chips arrived at 10:00 p.m. wearing a smile and a T-shirt that said NOTHING MEANS EVERYTHING.

  Angie studied the white on blue letters as she let him in. “I like that you’re back in your fashion swing.”

  He kissed her on the cheek. “You’ll like it even more when I tell you what it means.” He put down his laptop case and passed over a large yellow bag he’d been carrying. “There’s a little present for you.”

  Angie was surprised. “Thanks. You want a drink?” She walked him through.

  “Cranberry would be good. I put some in that big old Frigidaire of yours, which, incidentally, is unhealthily bare.”

  “I know. I’ll shop soon.” She opened the bag on a kitchen worktop. It contained a yellow cup the size of a soccer ball filled with yellow and white daisies and roses. A Mr. Happy face grinned on the side. Angie couldn’t help but mirror the smile. “It’s lovely.” She put it on the windowsill next to a framed photo of her and Jake, then got juice from the cooler and a glass from a cupboard. “I had soup for dinner—you want me to warm you some?”

  “Soup? Dear me, no thank you.” He followed her into the small galley and took the cranberry. “I’m good with just that, thanks. I hope you don’t mind, but I ate with Leo before I came over.”

  “Of course not.” She leaned back against some cupboards. “You two still getting on okay? I hope coming here hasn’t caused any—”

  “None.” He stopped her midflow. “He asked me to marry him.”

  Angie went bug-eyed. “Really?”

  “Really!” Chips flushed with excitement.

  “That’s amazing. Come here.” She opened her arms for a hug
. “I’m delighted for you both.”

  He put his juice down. “I know, it’s fantastic. I’ve never been so happy.” He hugged her, then realized he might have made a faux pas. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”

  “No, don’t be sorry.” She scowled at him. “Grab this happiness and enjoy it. Don’t you dare think of hiding any of it from me.” Thoughts of Jake rushed through her mind. The ring he’d bought her. The unplanned wedding. The baby. She hugged Chips again. “I need to be around happiness—as much of it as possible.”

  He could see she was struggling and he held her for longer than he’d ever done.

  “Thanks,” said Angie. “You know, I’d be lost without you at the moment.”

  He felt himself welling up and wafted his face. “Phew! Well don’t you worry, girlfriend. We’re going to kick the ass out of this ‘moment.’ You’ll get through it, Angie Holmes.” He looked pointedly at her belly. “You have to, for the little one.”

  She’d never told him she was pregnant. “How long have you known?”

  “Ooooh, I’d guess since right after your medical. When you were as skittish as a kitty on a hot roof and about as much fun as McDonald during a budget review.”

  “I was that bad?”

  “Worse, and you left a pregnancy page up on your computer as well.”

  “I should be a blonde.”

  “Anyway, ask me to explain the slogan on this fine new T-shirt.” He pulled up the front to show her.

  Angie read it aloud. “ ‘Nothing means everything.’ Nice, but I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’ve been far too busy for me to update you. While you were across town, you got mail. Or to be more precise, Elysia got tweeted.”

  “From the UNSUB?”

  “Well, he didn’t call himself that.” Chips picked up his juice again. “His username was JudgeMinos, which I’m pretty certain is him.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “That brings me to the T-shirt. The judge went to such great lengths not to have his tweet traced that he gave away a lot about himself.”