Spree

by Michael Morley

  “I called your cell.” He sounded annoyed. “Twice.”

  She hadn’t noticed the missed calls. “Sorry, our UNSUB struck again.”

  “I just heard.”

  “Did Bolt give anything up on Hendry?”

  “Just a punk-ass smile. Said—I quote—‘I ain’t no snitchin’ nigger.’ ”

  “Even though Warren Hendry set him up for a murder-one jab in the arm, he still wouldn’t turn on him?”

  “Not a degree. Best I could get was that he knew him. Knew his brother, too. I called a contact in Anti-Gangs and he says Winston was a gun dealer. He was the guy to go to for an untraceable weapon, or to dispose of a hot one.”

  “And brother Warren?”

  “No gang profile. He was an outsider.”

  Angie started to form a picture of the fraternal relationship. Two brothers growing up in gangland LA without parents. It was a common enough story. One went bad but tried to keep the other good. He became the parent. Took the falls. Winston would have brought in the money, put food on the table, tried to push the kid brother to get properly educated and make something of himself. Warren would have felt a need to show his gratitude, prove himself. But not physically. He’d have done it with technology. He’d have hacked accounts, unlocked phones and ripped off credit cards to show his gang worth. Still Winston would have kept him away.

  Angie was sure the big twist of fate, the fatal step toward today’s terrors, would have come when Winston got busted. Big brother would have elicited undertakings from the rest of the gang to keep Warren straight. Only that just built up steam in the kid. He would have felt an acute loss of brotherly love at having to watch his only role model rot away inside.

  Winston would no doubt have spun some shit about being innocent of the murders, about him being made an example of and how the government had fixed the jury. He’d probably thought he’d spend decades on Death Row, but the elections had come rolling in and the lack of executions had turned into a political issue.

  Angie noted that Hendry had gone to the chair just two months before the state had gone to the polls.

  The voters reelected the hard-line, hang-’em-high governor. In the process, they’d unwittingly created a new breed of serial killer. The Hybrid.

  29

  Skid Row, LA

  “What do you drive when you’re off duty?” Shooter shut the gates behind the cop and walked him toward the doors of the sanctuary.

  “What do I drive?” Mike Hanrahan laughed and kicked stones as he pulled level with him. “Why d’you wanna know? You selling stolen cars as well as computers?”

  “Just asking.” He stopped and used his smartphone to disarm the outer alarms.

  “Okay, I’ll tell ya. I’ve got a late-model Dodge Charger.” The cop picked up a chunk of broken brick and threw it wide of an old oilcan some twenty yards away. “I got it cheap, friends in the trade, you know what I mean?” He dusted his hands and eyed the smartphone. “That’s a snazzy piece of kit. Did you just disable the security system with that?”

  Shooter passed him the phone. “Yeah. It’s easy to rig. I can fix an app for your phone if you want to do it for your garage or home systems.”

  The cop slid his finger back and forth along the glass and pressed an icon or two. “I know diddly squat about tech like this, but it’s cool.” He handed it back.

  Shooter took it and pulled open the door. He knew this was the point of no return. Once the guy crossed the threshold, there was no way he could let him come out again.

  Hanrahan stepped into the cool inner shade. “Neat place. If you’re a rabbit and like living in the dark.”

  “Sorry, the bulb blew. I meant to get a replacement while I was out.”

  The rookie put a hand against a wall to guide himself. “How much you paying to rent this?”

  “Got a start-up grant. It’s virtually free for the first year.” Shooter shut the door and now the place was as black as an unlit coal mine.

  “Hey, you keep your freakin’ hands to yourself,” joked Hanrahan. “Vice Squad warned me about guys like you.”

  “You should be so lucky. Just stay close and follow me. I’ll guide us to the kitchen.”

  The cop put an arm on Shooter’s shoulder and tagged behind.

  Shooter passed the converted washrooms and turned left. If the policeman pushed a door round here, he could walk into Death Row. That couldn’t happen.

  Or could it?

  He stopped and waited.

  Hanrahan stumbled around the narrow corner.

  “You want to see something that will blow your mind?”

  “My mind was born to be blown, buddy. But I doubt you have anything in here that could do the job.”

  Shooter stepped away from the touching hand, slipped his fingers beneath his tracksuit, and drew the weapon he’d used to shoot the Paynes. “Here we go.” He clicked open the door to Death Row and then concealed the weapon as he switched on the light.

  Hanrahan blinked from the sudden glare. “Fuck!” Instinctively he stepped into the room.

  Shooter could see him now. There’d be no mistake. He had room and time for a perfect shot. He held his fire. Watched the cop stare at the different groups of photographs on the wall and the flickering electric candle on the shelf that eerily illuminated them. His head turned right and he saw another picture. It was of a face Hanrahan would have recognized sooner if a prison number had run across the bottom.

  Winston Hendry.

  He turned around. “What the fuck is this?”

  “It’s where I keep the dead.” Shooter lifted the Glock and shot him in the head. “There you go,” he said calmly. “I told you I’d blow your mind.”

  30

  Trinity Park, LA

  Two Bomb Squad officers stood sweltering in astronaut-style blast suits. The kit was state-of-the-art, lightweight ballistic armor, but it was still hot as hell inside the foam-cushioned helmets and full-face visors.

  The NATO standard military suits were fitted with articulated spine protectors, groin guards and neoprene-coated Kevlar knee and elbow pads. The helmets had full comms packs and were linked to the support truck that had been set up behind a series of blast shields.

  Ruis Costas sat in the vehicle alongside the unit’s head, Tom Jeffreys. On a bank of small monitors they watched the men move slowly toward the Paynes’ home. They entered the garden and set up their equipment. A telescopic arm, so they could bore a hole through the front door, insert a remote camera and see what lay beyond the wood and brick. They also deployed an extending robotic claw, the type used to dismantle IEDs, and a laser-guided water jet disrupter, powerful enough to destroy many explosive devices.

  Ruis felt the minutes tick slowly by as they manipulated the equipment. A second monitor in the truck fizzed into life. The microbore probe had gone through the door. The extended camera showed a man and woman lying unconscious. Pools of blood glistened. A large yellow box gleamed in the half-light. One of the men outside pushed the camera farther. It advanced slowly, iron bar straight, into the cold hallway, above the bodies and over the box.

  Jeffreys gave instructions to lower it.

  Everyone watching held their breath.

  The camera wire slackened and the lens dipped.

  Ruis and Jeffreys could now see the middle seam of the box, where panels folded together. The lens slowly made its way toward the cardboard.

  It touched.

  There was no explosion.

  An emboldened operative manipulated the extended wire.

  The lens head dipped inside the box and rotated.

  “Nothing.” Ruis stood from his seat. “It’s empty.”

  “Put the door in,” Jeffreys told his men. “Put it in, then stand back.”

  Ruis was already out of the truck. He spoke into his radio. “We have a go. Repeat—go, go, go.”

  Three armed men in SKU blacks hurried from behind the blast shield.

  A Bomb Squad suit popped the front door with
a sledgehammer.

  Ruis waved the waiting paramedics into action. He prayed to God that he hadn’t left things too late, that Nate Payne was still alive.

  31

  Skid Row, LA

  He’d killed a cop.

  The lifeless corpse confirmed Shooter’s membership in what he knew was an elite club. Cop Killers Anonymous. A group that topped the FBI and LAPD’s Most Wanted lists.

  He figured Hanrahan had been off duty and wouldn’t be missed until tomorrow. At best the day after. But he would be missed. Then his friends in blue would start tracing his last steps. Triangulating his cellphone. Looking for his car. Searching street camera footage.

  Shooter knew he had to cover his tracks. Shift the body out of there. Get everything cleaned up.

  He’d done it with Dudek. He could do it again. It was messy. Sickening. But it could be done.

  At least that’s what he told himself as he went for the sheeting and the cutting tools.

  But he couldn’t.

  The horrors of sawing and chopping through Dudek’s flesh and bones jarred in his mind. The severed limbs, the coils of intestines and puddled fluids. He couldn’t go through all that again.

  Shooter looked at the wall above Hanrahan’s body. Blood and brains were spattered across the photographs he had so carefully fixed there. Even that was enough to turn his stomach. He put his hand to his mouth and almost heaved. Cold sweat prickled the back of his neck. It was a sign that things were getting to him. He couldn’t let that happen. But everything was mounting up. It was all so relentless. Endlessly stressful.

  Shooter left the room. Leaned against the wall in the kitchen galley. Took deep breaths. He had to get his head together. Stay focused. Before he tackled the disposal of the corpse, he needed to clean up. He filled a bucket with hot water and detergent, grabbed cloths and towels and returned to the body.

  He started with the walls. Wiped down pieces of brain and bone. Rinsed his cloth and watched the fleshy detritus float in the bucket. He mopped the wall until the paper peeled, red rain fell and dark puddles hogged the corners of the floor.

  Shooter glanced at his brother’s picture and sensed disappointment burning in his eyes. A thousand times he’d heard the words, “You just stay out of it, Warren. You’ll only fuck things up and fuck yourself up.”

  “It’s not fucked up! It’s not.” He banged the bucket down. Watery blood slopped and splashed.

  Damn the cop!

  He kicked the pulp that remained of Hanrahan’s head.

  Winston laughed at him. “You’re losing it, bro. Get your shit together.”

  Shooter covered his ears.

  “You’re useless, bro. Useless.”

  Things weren’t going to plan. It was his fault. He shouldn’t have improvised.

  “You ain’t cut out for this.”

  If he’d stuck to what he’d researched, what he’d intended, then none of this would have happened.

  “Warren, I told you—stay out of things. Now look what you done.”

  He sank to his knees and pleaded with his brother’s picture. “I just wanted to do right for you. Make them all pay for what they did.” Shooter sat back on his heels and sobbed.

  Down the corridor his computer dinged.

  He didn’t move.

  It was her.

  Elysia.

  He got to his feet and stepped over the corpse. Stood in puddled blood. Walked it into the corridor. All his efforts at forensic cleanliness were falling apart. Bloody footprints followed him to the computer room and the incoming message.

  32

  South Los Angeles

  Angie was still in the Jeep when a text message beeped.

  It was from Chips. NEW TWEET. CALL ME. C.

  She pulled over and dialed straightaway. “Hi, what’ve you got?”

  The young profiler sat at his desk, impotently running search programs to nail the elusive IP address. “What I’ve not got is a fix on Minos’s whereabouts. But he has just tweeted back to our message. He said, ‘Am not okay.’ ”

  Angie was disappointed. “Is that all?”

  “It is. Only he wrote it as just seven capital letters and no spaces—‘AMNOTOK.’ Not even I apostrophe M.”

  She thought on it. “Sounds like his ego is waning. A loss of self. Maybe even some doubt creeping in.”

  “How do I reply?”

  “In the same way he wrote. Mirror his language. In his own pathetic way, he’s looking for Elysia to engage more closely and offer her support. Be blunt. Just type back, ‘WHY?’ ”

  Chips hit the four keystrokes and return. “Done it.”

  “He’ll be watching his screen.” Angie imagined him hunched over a laptop, waiting for some connection through the darkness of cyberspace.

  “Incoming,” announced Chips as his computer pinged.

  “What’s he say?”

  “Not much. ‘IHURT,’ that’s all.”

  “Good.” Angie imagined how she’d really like to hurt him.

  “Again, there’s no separation of the words,” continued Chips. “What’s that lack of spacing about?”

  “He’s really pressured,” explained Angie. “Uptight. Condensed. Closed down. All writing betrays behavioral clues, even impersonal computer caps. It’s bringing out the fact that he’s feeling things are pushing in on him. Write back, ‘HOw.’ First two letters in caps, then lowercase, no question mark, though, make it look sloppy, more sincere, as though rushed and eager.”

  Chips entered “HOw.”

  Again the reply was quick.

  “He’s virtually instant messaging,” said Chips. “He replied ‘HEADANDHEART,’ again all caps.”

  Angie understood. “He’s stuck in the mood for now. Depressed. The word ‘head’ suggests he’s worrying. Perhaps we were closer to catching him today than we thought. ‘Heart’ is a reference to his brother.” She stopped for a second and pushed herself to think like the killer, to imagine his isolation and his fear. “I think he’s being torn apart by natural grief on one side and some sworn unnatural promise to avenge his brother’s death on the other.”

  Chips was taking notes as well as replying. “Shall I write anything back, or just leave it?”

  “No. He has to be the one to cut our communication bond. Say, ‘I feel your pain. You are brave.’ ”

  “Brave?” Chips felt a wave of revulsion. “Are you sure you want to write that, Angie?”

  “No, it’s the last thing I want to write. I want to say to him, ‘You are the scum of the earth, go and put a gun in your mouth and save us all a lot of trouble,’ but I can’t. This is psychological fishing; nothing is certain. Mix the cases and spaces and do it quickly, Chips. We can’t let him sense any hesitation.”

  He clacked out the characters: “IFEELyurPAIN—ITHINK ur BRAVE.”

  Thirty seconds passed.

  Nothing came back.

  The young profiler’s fingers hovered on either side of his keyboard. “I’m refreshing the feed.”

  Another minute slugged by. Angie grew impatient. “Anything?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.” She knew Hendry would be walking an emotional tightrope and wondered if they’d overplayed their hand and opened up to him too soon. Or annoyed him by answering too slowly.

  “He’s replied.” Chips sounded relieved. “All in caps again. It says, ‘THNX. WHERE RU?’ ”

  Angie allowed herself some renewed optimism. “He’s certainly trying to engage—and if you’re right about him tracing our address, maybe he’s also calling our bluff. Just write the word ‘home,’ all lowercase, make it seem mundane and unexciting.”

  Chips fired off the tweet.

  Another heavy silence fell.

  This time it seemed to last forever. Chips refreshed the browser again.

  Minutes passed.

  He cracked first. “There’s no response, Angie.”

  “Then we just have to wait. He’s trying to locate Elysia. Wants to be absolutely sure she
’s where he thinks she is before he does anything. If this were a chessboard, Chips, he’d be moving in for checkmate, worrying all the while that he’s about to make a fatal mistake. Let’s hope he does.”

  33

  Trinity Park, LA

  The ambulance sped away. Sirens busted eardrums. Ruis watched it disappear into a haze of heat at the end of the street. Robyn Payne was long dead and Nate, her husband of fifteen years, was only a fading heartbeat away from joining her.

  The acting head of the FBI’s Spree Killer Unit felt as if his soul had been hollowed out.

  He rarely prayed but right then he made the sign of the cross and begged God not to let Nate die. At the back of his mind were Angie’s words, her warning that there was no bomb—just a trick to slow them down. Her desperate urgency to get in there and save Payne before he bled out. If Ruis had gone with her instincts, the husband’s life wouldn’t be so precariously in the balance.

  The world seemed a lonely place as he walked past the Bomb Squad officers, now stripped from their blast suits and cooling down. Ruis was finding making decisions a whole culture shock away from simply following orders. He couldn’t help but wonder what Jake would have done.

  It didn’t take much thinking about.

  The big guy would have gone tearing in, much as Angie had wanted to. It was in both their natures. But Ruis wasn’t Jake, and he wasn’t going to run SKU or his life the way his former boss had done.

  The first line of curious residents passed through the now-broken blockade. Homeowners gossiped and pointed up the street to where CSIs were already engrossed in forensic searches.

  The FBI helicopter was little more than a dot in the distance. It was circling wide and using high-powered cameras to scour the sidewalks for anyone looking remotely like the video grab Chips had given them. Ruis had told them of Angie’s warning that the delivery uniform might be a ploy. That he might look black—or white—male or female. It had gotten to the point where they were damned near looking at everyone and anyone who was on his or her own.