Final Victim (1995)

by Stephen Cannell

  “I’ll be right back,” she finally said and reluctantly left the room. Lockwood waited till the sound of her footsteps disappeared; then he turned to Malavida, who was still packing the suitcase.

  “Let’s me and you get something straight… .”

  “What’s that, Zanzo?” His back was to Lockwood.

  “You wanna help. Okay, I’m gonna take you up on it ‘cause, frankly, I’m outta options. You want a running head start when this is over… . Okay, I hate it, but that’s the price of the ticket. But you better stop giving Karen back rubs. She needs a massage, I’ll find a tall Swedish guy.”

  Malavida stopped packing and Lockwood continued: “She’s in over her head. She hasn’t got a clue what she’s signed on for. You an’ me, we’ve spent time around sprung motherfuckers like The Rat, but this is just a field trip for her. He could kill her without raising his heartbeat. She needs all her senses focused on the game.”

  Malavida turned now, and Lockwood saw he was smiling. “Something I said was funny?”

  “You fuckin’ amaze me, John. You left your badge upside down in a bucket of shit, so let’s you an’ me get something straight. I don’t have to listen to your bullshit. I’m a wanted man, but you’re harboring a fugitive. You’re also fucked up and operating illegally. The reason I’m doing this isn’t so I can bump Karen Dawson. I’m doing it ‘cause I wanna make up for getting your ex-wife killed. You, I could give less of a shit about. You got some limited law enforcement skills and they might come in handy, but dating advice you can stick up your ass. Back off or I’m shutting my end down, and without me, you won’t get him.”

  They stood glowering at one another. The silence grew heavier in the room, but neither had anything else to say. Lockwood hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours and his eyes were grainy. He moved to the window and looked out at the Florida interstate.

  “How’s your little girl?” Malavida asked, his tone softer. “She wants her mommy. So do I …”

  “We’ll get this guy. Let’s just not forget what’s going down between us. Things have changed.”

  Lockwood realized he was right. He looked at the young Chicano and believed he had come down here for the right reasons.

  “Are you strapped?” Malavida broke through his thoughts.

  “No, they took my gun in D. C. I need to pick something up. I’ve got a friend down here, Ray Gonzales. He’s in Jackson Memorial Hospital with a leaky kidney, but I think he’s got family in St. Pete. I’ll make a call, see if I can line something up.”

  “Get one for me.”

  Lockwood smiled. “That’s just what this caper needs … another unlicensed shooter.”

  Lockwood got in touch with Ray Gonzales in the renal ward at Jackson Memorial in Miami. Ray told him that his nephew would deliver something. Lockwood gave him a list of favorite handguns, starting with a nine-millimeter Beretta and working down to an S&W Chief with a two-inch barrel. It was the same piece Customs had issued to him, and although he’d never been able to hit anything with it, at least the short muzzle didn’t poke him when he sat.

  “How you feeling, Ray?” Lockwood asked his friend at the end of the call.

  “I’m hoping I can get out of here in a month. Then I gotta take it easy for a while. I only got one kidney now, and it ain’t looking so hot.”

  “That means you’re gonna have to stop drinking all that cheap Cuban rum, amigo.”

  “I’d rather float face-down in the bay.” Gonzales’s voice grinned at him over the line.

  Ray’s nephew, Enrique, showed up in the motel parking lot two hours later. He turned out to be a sixteen-year-old hardcase with a bad complexion and a surly attitude. He handed Lockwood a box wrapped in brown paper.

  “Ray, he say you some big-time coco-cop. You the one gonzoed all them meltdowns at Miami Airport, shoot up the place, go crazy, fucking cowboys an’ Indians. Mi do works with cops, whatta fuckin’ nut.”

  “Your uncle’s diamond-hard. He’s a man. You should try and be like him,” Lockwood volunteered lamely.

  “You think?” the boy said sullenly. “I think he’s a buster.” Then he moved off, bobbing his head slightly, his long black hair bouncing. He got into a primer-patched car with two other Cuban boys and they roared off, leaving a trail of blue exhaust on the asphalt.

  Lockwood opened the box in the parking lot. The gun was a twenty-year-old army-issue .45 with a weak clip spring. There was half a box of ammo. Somebody had started cutting dumdum crosses in the soft lead noses of the slugs. “Great,” he said to himself in disgust.

  He climbed the stairs and reentered the motel room. Karen showed up twenty minutes later with the walkie-talkies. All they needed to do was rent an outboard tomorrow, get into the Little Manatee River, and wait. It was already Friday afternoon. It seemed hard for Lockwood to realize that all of this had happened in less than a week.

  That night, Karen was sitting on the bed, looking at Malavida and Lockwood.

  “I know you guys are sort of humoring me,” she started, “and that the only reason I’m still here is because we have a severe lack of manpower.”

  Lockwood forced a tight smile; Malavida remained expressionless. She picked up her yellow pad, which now had pages of annotations and profiling information.

  “I thought before we go get this guy, we should try to understand a little about him. I already told you I got Leslie Bowers out of the VICAP computer. Using her murder and Candice’s and Claire’s, I’ve got a beginning read on this guy, plus a couple of pretty good hunches… . Wanna hear ‘em?”

  Both Lockwood and Malavida nodded.

  “Okay. To begin with, aside from being big and ugly, I think The Rat could also be a multiple.”

  “Multiple personalities? Where’d that come from?” Lockwood asked.

  “It’s a little oblique, but follow me on this.” They both waited. “We have two killings that fit one pattern, and one killing that fits a completely different pattern. All of them, we’re reasonably sure, were done by one man. Candice Wilcox and Leslie Bowers were killed by a very sophisticated, very organized, highly intelligent perp. This guy used his computer to set the stage and change the time frame. He used trash bags; he used a blitz attack, taking the first two victims quickly and killing them instantly with one stroke from behind, using a narrow blade which we know, or suspect, is one of his scalpels.”

  “So?” Lockwood said.

  “Pre-, peri-, and post-offense behavior was exact and planned in detail … very obsessive. The UnSub who killed Candice and Leslie is manipulative, compulsive, and dominant. In short, a control freak. Claire’s murder, on the other hand, was sloppy: He walked in the back door, neighbors say he left his car parked in plain sight across the street. He probably didn’t case the crime scene… . He failed on his opening blitz attack, which looks like it happened in the kitchen and ended up with her still alive and fighting in the bedroom. He hacked and slashed at her in a frenzy. It was a mess. Then, to top it off, he got walked in on by Heather. There’s no post-mortem mutilation, there’s no masturbation, no sexual substitutes.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Lockwood said. His heart was skipping beats as they talked about Claire’s murder. He was determined not to let his voice or face betray the frightening loss he was feeling. “If Heather walked in, the UnSub wouldn’t have time. He killed Claire for lurking in his computer chat room. He was trying to eliminate an eavesdropper… . That’s why there’s no ritual.”

  “I understand,” she said, “and I agree, but the guy who did the first two murders, in my opinion, wouldn’t have done the third. The first guy would still have tried to control the scene. He gets nothing for doing a hasty, sloppy job—he put himself at risk.”

  “So you think he’s got two personalities?” Lockwood said slowly.

  “Or more,” she said. “We know he’s on a week or ten-day cycle and he’s degenerating. Maybe he’s different people at different times in the cycle. When he sees us in the cha
t room, he’s the wrong guy. But he has to move, he’s panicked. So he comes out to L. A. and does his thing, but it’s not with the same control or preparation… . It’s spur of the moment, amateurish. Off the cuff and sloppy. But we know the murderer is the same physical being, because he used the same weapon all three times.”

  “That’s pretty farfetched,” Malavida said. “What if it’s two guys?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “My gut tells me this guy’s a loner.”

  “I think she’s got something,” Lockwood said, giving it careful thought. “I mean, maybe it’s not exactly right, but it fits the crime scene information. Psychiatrists always start with a personality and infer behavior, but you can make mistakes that way. The way she’s doing it is better. You start with the behavior, what he actually did, and infer personality from his acts.”

  “Another thing,” she said. “He kills quickly. One strike to the chest, attacking from behind; they’re dead in seconds. If he’s seven feet tall and as big as Heather says, he could easily control his victims. Why the blitz attacks?”

  “I give up, why?” Malavida asked.

  “I think he’s afraid of women—not in a physical sense, but in an emotional one. He’s been hurt, possibly terrorized, by a woman as a child. He’s afraid of emotional or mental contact. If he was abused by a mother or older female adult when he was young, that could fit in with the split in his personality. He becomes a multiple, splits into a separate new personality, so he doesn’t have to deal with the pain of the abuse against him by the adult female.”

  “Why do we need to know all of this?” Malavida said. “We just go out there and level this bastard.”

  “Because this is not somebody who will act or react the way you think he will. We have to study The Rat, learn who he is, to be able to anticipate him.” She said, “Look, this is my field, I’ve spent years learning this. It’s all in DSM if you wanna plow through it.”

  “What’s DSM?” Malavida asked.

  “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Drders,” Lockwood explained. “And I’m listening. As a matter of fact, I’m impressed. You got anything else?”

  She looked down at her yellow pad.

  “He’ll probably drive a dark blue or black van or truck.” “Oh, come on,” Malavida said.

  “He’s orderly and compulsive. Orderly and compulsive people like dark cars … ask any car salesman. Repeat killers tend to prefer windowless vans or trucks; it gives them a work space and room for the body if they need to move it. That, by the way, is a computer-generated fact.”

  Malavida leaned back on the bed and smiled at her as she went on.

  “The last thing you need to know is he’s got what we call, in the language of mental drders, an assassin’s personality. He’s a loner, nocturnal, extremely compulsive, and is probably an incessant journal writer. He’s probably got books full of his ideas and rantings. If we find them, his handwriting will be cramped and tiny. When cornered he will be ferocious beyond description, vicious beyond belief. He has no empathy for anything. He lives in a world he’s created. He’s shut out most human contact.” She turned the pad over on the bed and looked at them for a moment. “I’ve got some other things here, but they’re still too farfetched to really talk about, till I get more.”

  “That’s a hell of a start, Karen,” Lockwood said.

  “Here’s a problem you can work on.” Malavida moved from the bed over to the direction finder on the table. “We can only home in on this guy while he’s using his computer… . We could be drifting around out in the swamps forever, waiting for him to get hot, which is the only time we can read the electrical leakage from his equipment. I’d sure like to narrow the time frame, or we’re gonna be using a hell of a lot of bug repellent.”

  “I think we should be out there at about the same time we first intercepted him,” she finally said. “That will be day after tomorrow, say four-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “Why?” Lockwood asked.

  “There was something about that call that seemed like it was scheduled,” she continued.

  “What it seemed like to me was a lotta sick, rambling bullshit,” Lockwood corrected her.

  “Satan in Oslo said, ‘You have severed her limbs, which are worthless, lustful appendages. How did it feel? Did you taste her blood this time? It has been a week. How did it feel?’ A week. Maybe he’s saying it’s been a week since they last talked.”

  Again, Malavida and Lockwood were both impressed by Karen’s total recall of Satan’s message on the monitor. It was becoming obvious that she had a photographic memory.

  Lockwood stretched out on the adjoining bed and laced his fingers behind his neck. “He could have been talking about a week since The Rat’s last kill, not since his last call.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that too. But after The Rat unrolled all that religious gobbledygook about the wicked not suffering punishment in eternal hell, Satan said, ‘Enough about this. I’ve told you each session I can’t use your religious rantings.’ Each session … A session is generally by appointment. I was wondering, what if these two freaks have a weekly date to talk on the Internet?”

  “This guy is in Oslo, Norway. Why wouldn’t he just send e-mail to talk to The Rat? Why would it have to be by weekly appointment?” “I think he’s in prn,” Malavida volunteered.

  “He’s where?”

  “In prn. I did a UNIX ‘who is?’ on Pennet. I found he was on from the Inselbrook State Penitentiary in Oslo. The number he was calling from is in the law library. They wouldn’t tell me who was there last Sunday at midnight.”

  “If he’s got a prearranged time,” she said, “we could just show up out in the wetlands when they’re chatting on the Net. We’d have a much better chance of catching The Rat if we knew the exact time.” Lockwood knew Karen was right. He sat up on the bed.

  “How come you didn’t come up with this?” Malavida said.

  “Cut me some slack. I’m just here with my limited law enforcement skills,” Lockwood said, and then suddenly all of them were smiling.

  Lockwood slept all day Saturday and into Sunday. He woke up a few times and saw that Karen was watching television while Malavida was working on his equipment. At noon Sunday, he called Heather in the hospital in Hollywood, but was told by the nurse that she was sleeping.

  At two P. M. they drove south, toward the Little Manatee River, on Interstate 75. A few miles north of Sun City, they saw a wooden pier with a small shack that advertised boat rentals, and pulled into the gravel parking lot. They went inside the shack and rented a fifteen-foot aluminum boat with two wooden benches and a fuel-stained twenty-horsepower Evinrude outboard. The man who rented it to them was as stringy as alligator bait, with the name “Gilbert” stitched on his greasy shirt. Lockwood asked him about the roads in the wetlands and if there was a map.

  “Ain’t no road map. Them roads change ever’ season. Y’all try an’ take that blue LeBaron in there, y’gonna be buyin’ it from Mr. Hertz straight off”

  The man took forty dollars cash and Karen’s driver’s license as a deposit, and told them that the Little Manatee River was about a mile farther down the bay. After warning them to stay out of the marshlands, and that if he had to come pull them out it was an extra hundred, he gave them a quick instruction course on how to operate the tired motor, and then he wandered back up the pier to his shack.

  They needed to change the plan. Since the roads weren’t marked and Lockwood would be at a distinct disadvantage in the car, they decided to go together in the boat.

  They loaded in the equipment. Lockwood hit the starter button and the Evinrude coughed to life. Malavida untied them, jumped aboard, and pushed off. Lockwood had little experience with boats and was delighted to find that Karen Dawson came from a family of recreational fishermen; he readily handed over the helm.

  A mile down the bay they found the mouth of the Little Manatee and glided into its reeded silence. Karen idled the engine down and they s
lid along the placid waterway. The dense reeds on both sides lined the channel like slats on a picket fence. It was as if they had moved back in time. The muted colors were washed and cooked pale from the Florida sun. Once they saw a gator slide off the bank and submerge itself in the pale-brown water by the edge of the river. Blue herons sat on dead logs and watched with curious, frightened eyes, their long necks stretched forward like old men in church. Water bugs slithered across the surface, their large, winged bodies making the feat seem impossible. The ever-present keening of insects was overpowering.

  Lockwood was trying to keep his senses alert, although the placid scenery had a dulling effect… . The marshy wetlands were desolate and beautiful in their peaceful lation. Occasional deciduous trees hung out over the river, gnarled stick figures pointing the way.

  At ten past four, Malavida, who was in the bow, held up his hand. “Hold it. Got something.” He was looking at a volt-ohm meter attached to the radio receiver. “Turn right,” he commanded and Karen swung the boat right. “Hold it, hold it!” he shouted. “Shut off the engine.”

  She did, and then they were drifting. Lockwood grabbed the paddle in the boat and put it into the water to stop their turn.

  “Back to the center,” Malavida said, and he waited while Lockwood made the correction.

  “See this?” He pointed at the little digital display on the meter attached to the radio receiver. “That’s a very weak, fluctuating electrical signal. It’s consistent with the kind of TEMPEST output we should get from a new TI or Toshiba notebook. It’s coming from that direction… .” He pointed at a wall of reeds on the side of the river.

  “We’re gonna need a dozer to get through there,” Lockwood said. “Maybe there’s a tributary farther up that heads back around,” Karen ventured.

  “Okay, let’s look,” Lockwood said.

  She hit the starter and the engine coughed and turned over, running roughly, choking on unused gas and oil. She smoothed it out and they continued on up the river, which was now beginning to snake back and forth as it transected the watery swamp.