Final Victim (1995)

by Stephen Cannell

  Lockwood opened the box and checked the clip on his .45. He had loaded the dumdum bullets in so they would be fired last, just in case the first several shots failed to do the job. The saying in law enforcement is “If you don’t get ‘em with one, you’ll be carried by six.” But Lockwood was such a bad shot, he liked a full clip.

  Karen was right. They found the tributary about a quarter mile farther up on the left. She turned into it and they headed back in the direction they had just come from.

  The channel was twisting and blocked in narrow spots by fallen trees. A few times Lockwood and Malavida had to get out of the aluminum boat and pull branches out of the stream. It was slow going, but Malavida said the computer signal was getting stronger.

  “This guy is up here somewhere,” Malavida said.

  At 4:15, the signal abruptly stopped and the needle gauge went to zero. They were moving slowly up the river. “Cut the engine,” Malavida said, and Karen shut off the outboard. They were drifting silently, the river narrowing and getting shallow. They listened to the keening insects, their ears desperately trying to peel some other sound out of the wall of noise.

  “Keep going,” Malavida finally said. “Use the paddle.”

  Lockwood put the paddle into the water and pulled them along. The late-afternoon sun glistened on the rippling water. The desolate beauty somehow managed to steal from their sense of danger. Karen found herself watching wild flowers and brightly colored swamp birds hopping from limb to limb, flying low among the river foliage.

  They rounded a corner and almost ran smack into it. Tied to a tree with a rusting chain and two ropes, it loomed in ghastly decaying ugliness. It was some sort of old metal garbage barge. Lockwood estimated it was about two stories high and maybe thirty feet wide. Painted on the stern, in faded chipped letters, was WIND MINSTREL.

  Lockwood pointed at the name, and Karen and Malavida nodded, their lips tight.

  “Okay,” Lockwood whispered, “let’s beach it over there.”

  He paddled the aluminum boat silently toward the wall of reeds and the bottom slid up on the marshy, shell-encrusted ground, making a slurpy, scratching sound as it stopped. They got out, ruining their shoes with river mud.

  Lockwood motioned with the gun, and they pulled the boat up out of sight and then silently moved away from it toward the barge. Lockwood wanted a visual reconnaissance before he moved in. They crouched in the reeds and looked at the barge in the gathering twilight. From the side, it appeared much larger than he had originally anticipated. It was at least a hundred feet long.

  “Okay, I’m going in. You stay out here and make sure I don’t get surprised… .”

  “You any good with that thing?” Malavida asked, pointing at the .45.

  “Not much,” Lockwood admitted.)

  “I’m going with you. I’m not gonna do you any good out here. At least I can throw a punch.”

  Lockwood nodded. “But Karen, you gotta stay here and watch the back door. If this guy’s aboard, that’s one thing. If he’s not, I don’t want him coming in behind us.” He handed her one walkie-talkie, which was set on Channel 72. He kept the other unit himself. “It’s on. If you need help, trigger it twice. Two static bursts and we’re back out here. If anybody’s coming up behind us, give us one.”

  “Okay.” Her voice was tight and she looked scared, but he knew she wouldn’t bolt or go soft in the clinch. He motioned to Malavida. “Okay, Ladron, it’s you and me.”

  “Let’s go, Zanzo.”

  They moved around to the right, looking for hard ground, which they found a few yards upriver. Moving in a crouch, they headed toward the small ramp that led from the ground to a door cut halfway up in the vertical face of the hull. It appeared to be a hatch that had been used to off-load garbage from amidships.

  Lockwood went first, with the gun at port arms. He moved up the ramp with Malavida on his heels. Lockwood pushed the door gently, but the rusting hinges squealed loudly. Lockwood froze and listened for movement. There was nothing, so he pushed it farther open, ducked quickly through the hatch opening, and pressed himself flat against the interior wall. Malavida came in behind him.

  It was humid and dank inside. The walls reeked with the smell of old refuse. Lockwood’s stomach leapt up in his throat. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he moved along a narrow gangplank to a descending ladderway. He glanced back at Malavida, whose face was tight and eyes large. “Here,” Lockwood said, handing him the .45. “Cover me. I’m going down the ladder.”

  Malavida took the gun as Lockwood turned and climbed down the metal ladder. His back was to the huge open hold. He was an easy target as he climbed down. His neck hairs and shoulder muscles tingled as he risked exposure. Malavida watched the dark companionway, staring out at the blackness, his mouth open so he wouldn’t have to breathe the stench through his nose.

  Lockwood reached the bottom of the ladder. “Throw it down,” he whispered. “Put the safety on first.”

  Malavida pushed the safety on and dropped the gun down to Lockwood, who caught it; then Malavida climbed down the ladder while Lockwood covered him.. .

  Karen was in the weeds and brambles, holding the walkie-talkie. She moved slowly to her right so that she could get a better view of the barge. The dense brush and thorns ripped at her ankles. Then she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned and glimpsed a shape moving some distance away through the reeds. She didn’t know if it was a man or an animal, but it was large. She turned and edged in the direction of the moving form, which had now disappeared. Her problem-solving mind instantly calculated that there must be a path over there, because she had heard no reeds or underbrush snapping as the figure passed. She moved slowly in that direction, her hand on the button of the walkie-talkie.

  She came out of the dense brush and saw there was a one-lane dirt road cut through the foliage that was wide enough to accommodate a car. She edged out onto the road and looked in the direction the shape had been moving. Off in the distance, through the dense reeds, she could barely make out something that was painted a pale shade of blue. She moved toward it, hugging the overgrown dense brush at the side of the road. Then she saw the pale-blue house… .

  It was about twenty yards away. The yard was cut from the thick surrounding underbrush; the roof was pitched and the entire structure made of wood. A well-maintained porch fronted the house and in the yard were several old cars, a bicycle, and a swing. It was picturesque … a peaceful house deep in the middle of a lush watery swamp.

  Lockwood and Malavida opened the large hull door and found themselves in the center hold of the barge. This was the main area where the garbage was once carried. The metal hatch overhead was rusting, and when Lockwood and Malavida looked up, they could see only a few pinholes of sunlight leaking through. Malavida found a light switch and turned it on.

  It was hard to believe what they saw. The computers were all brand-new warp-speed, superhighway monsters from Toshiba. There were three of them, all placed neatly on a wooden desk pushed against the rusting hull. Also on the desk was an external 28.8 modem with a line-conditioner. There were hundreds of utility disks in disk holders on a free-standing wooden bookshelf. Malavida moved to them and started rummaging through the index tabs.

  “He’s got it all … various flavors of UNIX, crackers for UNIX, VMS, Novell, ‘elite’ addresses on the Internet, CERT security advries … He’s fully locked and loaded.” Malavida glanced at Lockwood, who was moving toward a coffin-sized freezer. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Over the freezer, taped to the wall, was a large blowup of an old photograph.

  “The fuck is this?” Lockwood said. It was a picture of a woman with dishwater-blond hair. She was in a bathing suit, standing next to a tree. There was a portable pool out of focus behind her. The woman was holding a cat and smiling into the camera lens. Her body was muscular but trim; she had even rows of teeth and iridescent eyes. But her smile was mean, mixed with a defiant glare. The thing that was strange about th
e photograph was that certain parts of her body had been transected with a dark Magic Marker. The legs and arms were numbered and dated; so were both feet and the torso. Lockwood took a mental picture of the photograph.

  Then the walkie-talkie erupted with two frantic blasts of static and went dead.

  Lockwood looked at Malavida and they took off, climbing quickly up the stairs, running along the interior gangway, and exploding out of the barge into the evening darkness. The sound of night birds greeted them as they ran down the ramp. Malavida looked where they had left Karen, but she was gone. Then they heard her scream.

  Lockwood and Malavida bolted in that direction. They were moving through a wall of heavy brush, crashing through thickets, tearing their skin on brambles and thorns. They plunged on blindly, Lockwood leading the way … until the ripping thorns became too painful . then Malavida pushed past him and took the lead.

  Finally, they broke out into a clearing and saw a blue house some distance away. Lockwood, gun in hand, moved in a low crouch toward the house, Malavida right beside him.

  The sun was down but the horizon was a soft pink, lit from the afterglow in the western sky. They got to the front door. Lockwood found it ajar, kicked it wide, and ducked inside.

  A huge man lumbered out of the kitchen. He was dressed only in baggy shorts. His pale white body had no definition. He had a cellphone in a holster on his belt. His bald head gleamed in the pink light coming through the living room window. Lockwood guessed he was almost seven feet tall. Heather had been right—he had no eyebrows, no hair on him at all.

  “Get out of my house,” he said, his voice was tight and high. “Where is she?”

  “Get out …” he repeated.

  Lockwood brought the gun up. “I’m John Lockwood, U. S. Customs. Put your hands up and get on your knees, facing the wall. Do it now, you cocksucker, or I’ll blow you to fucking pieces!” It was all Lockwood could do to keep from shooting the man who had mutilated Claire.

  Then the huge man bolted out a back door. Lockwood pulled the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand. A piece of the doorway splintered. The shot missed and the man was gone … out into the backyard.

  “Find Karen, I’ll go after him!” Lockwood commanded and took off after the seven-foot apparition.

  When he got outside, Lockwood could barely see him. Then his eyes finally picked him out in the dim light. He appeared to be galloping, favoring his right side, running for all he was worth through the weeds. Lockwood covered the ground more easily and athletically, but the man was now out of sight in the reeds at the water’s edge. Then Lockwood heard an engine start. He saw the path the man had taken and ran down it. When he came out at the water’s edge, he saw the second tributary. An airboat was skimming across the marshy lowland, cutting down swampy undergrowth as it went, moving like the wind, the doughy seven-foot bald psychopath at the helm. Lockwood crouched and fired twice but the airboat was picking up speed. He knew the old army .45 automatic was barely accurate at ten yards, let alone a hundred. The shots crashed out into the dense foliage, snapping leaves and branches, before whistling away uselessly into the night.

  The Rat was flying, the air drying his teeth. He grabbed the cellphone on his belt. Holding the wheel of the speeding boat with one hand, he dialed a number. Deep in the basement of the house he had just left, a phone rang… .

  Malavida had found Karen in the kitchen. She was dazed and almost unconscious. He picked her up and carried her out of the house. When he laid her on the grass, her eyes opened.

  “Thanks,” she finally said.

  Then Malavida heard the distant sound of the phone ringing. He looked down at her. “It’s him,” he said. “I wanna talk to him.” He started back into the house.

  “No … don’t …” Karen said. Malavida hesitated for a moment, unsure; the phone kept ringing; then he bolted for it, running up the steps and into the house.

  He didn’t get far. He was two steps inside the living room when the explosion took him. It started in the basement and erupted up through the floorboards of the old house, throwing concrete and plaster into the air like papier-mache.

  The concussion rocked Lockwood, who was forty yards away, and caused him to go down on one knee.

  Malavida Chacone was blown backward out the front door. He landed ten feet from Karen, his body broken and bleeding. Karen screamed in terror as she looked over at him … and the remnants of the house rained down around them.

  Chapter 24

  THE BURDEN

  After the deafening sound of the explosion, the swamp went dead silent. Thousands of keening insects paused to listen as pieces of Leonard Land’s house rained down on the wet ground or splashed into the swamp water hundreds of yards from where the house had been.

  Lockwood was already back up and moving before the last pieces hit the ground. He could see Karen and Malavida not far away and he ran toward them. A huge piece of tin roof fell not three feet from him and stuck, edge down, into the wet ground, quivering like a thrown knife. The air was pungent with the smell of dust and cordite. By the time he got to them he could see that Malavida Chacone was critically, if not fatally, injured. He was bleeding from half a dozen serious wounds, but the thing that worried Lockwood most was the weirdly unnatural position of his broken body. Wide-eyed, Karen was staring down at Malavida when Lockwood arrived. Her eyes had the glassy look of desperation. “Oh, my God … I think he’s dead,” she said, her voice eerie as it pierced the unnatural silence.

  “Go see if that truck over there has a key in it,” he commanded. “If not, check under the bumpers for a hide-a-key box.” He knew he could hot-wire it if necessary, but he wanted to get her in motion. If there was a chance to save Malavida, he’d need her help.

  “We can’t move him,” she said, her voice shrill. “He could have spinal injuries… . He could have internal bleeding. It could kill him.”

  “He’s gonna be dead if we don’t.” He took a breath and talked to her in a calm voice. “There’s nothing here we can use to help him. He’s gonna pump himself dry if we don’t move him. Do what I said. The truck will get us to a hospital faster than that boat. We move him or lose him.”

  She hesitated for a moment and then got up off her hands and knees and ran, stumbling toward the vehicle that was parked in the yard. The pickup was sprinkled with dirt and small chunks of the house. She opened the door and looked in at the ignition. There were no keys. Then, as Lockwood had instructed, she climbed under the bumper. Sliding on her back she felt around, looking for a hide-a-key box … and under the back bumper, she found one. Karen squirmed out with the box in hand, removed the ignition key, and started the engine.

  Lockwood pulled Malavida’s light windbreaker off to get a better look at his wounds. He was having trouble finding Malavida’s pulse. He put his fingers on the carotid artery in his neck but could feel nothing. Lockwood’s hands were shaking so he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  He put his ear to Malavida’s chest. He thought he could hear a heartbeat, faint and thready. Then he felt light, raspy breathing on the side of his face. He looked up as Karen pulled the old pickup in beside them. “Be tough,” he said softly to Malavida. Then he scooped his arms under the Chicano cracker and, using all of his strength, he struggled to his knees, then finally stood and moved on unsteady legs to the truck. He knew that if there was a serious spinal injury he could be dooming Malavida to a life of paralysis, but he had done a few field triages at accident scenes, both in the Marines and early in his government career when he was in uniform and working Customs sheds at the border. He had pried people off their steering columns and out from under dashboards. He knew that Chacone was in the red zone where survival odds were meaningless. His will to live was the only cord that held him.

  As Lockwood lifted him onto the truck bed, he heard something in Malavida’s body snap. Lockwood cursed under his breath, then jumped in and pulled Malavida by his shoulders toward the front so his feet were clear. Then he scrambled back
and pulled up the tailgate. He saw Karen staring back through the window of the cab, a bloodless look on her face. He grabbed a broken brick which had fallen into the bed of the truck. “Watch out,” he yelled. “Turn around and cover your eyes.”

  She did, and he slammed the brick into the rear glass window of the cab. It shattered, spilling shards onto the seat, but clearing the opening so he could talk to her.

  “Let’s go. Get moving. I’ll stay back here with him.”

  “How’re we gonna find Tampa? That road could lead anywhere.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s go, we’ll do the best we can.”

  Karen Dawson had driven in two NASCAR. stock car races. She was a natural hot shoe with a God-given gift for driving. She slammed her foot down. Mud shot into the air. The truck leaped toward the shell road at the low end of the yard. By the time she got to it she was totally focused, her hands on the wheel at ten past ten. Her vision was searching the road just beyond the headlights, where she could occasionally see the startled eyes of swamp creatures reflected in the yellow light, just before they scurried away to escape the churning tires.

  In the back of the truck, Lockwood hung on desperately, trying to support Malavida while they jounced along the uneven road. He managed to remove his jacket and put it under Malavida’s head.

  They had traveled half a mile when Karen hit the first deep and unavoidable pothole. In the back of the truck, Malavida and Lockwood bounced hard. When he landed, Malavida groaned, opened his eyes, and looked up at Lockwood. He said nothing, but his dark eyes pleaded. Lockwood reached over, found his hand, and grasped it. Malavida held on to it in desperation as the truck rattled and banged down the rain-rutted road.

  Karen knew she had to keep the truck from bouncing. A short distance in front of her, the headlights were swallowed by the swamp’s hollow darkness. She was trying to spot the potholes in the shell road before she hit them, maneuvering and down-shifting to get around them without losing time. After ten minutes, she came to the first fork in the road. She wasn’t sure where she was or even what direction she was heading. She slowed and stopped. “Go right,” Lockwood said. But Karen ignored him and jumped out of the cab to look up at the stars. “What’re you doing?” he yelled as she scanned the starlit horizon. It was a clear night, and the starscape glittered like pinholes shot through black velvet.