Final Victim

by Stephen J. Cannell

  hoyt login:

  He typed in:

  root

  And the computer said:

  Password:

  He typed the most common supervr password, which was:

  GOD

  And the computer responded:

  WELCOME TO HOYT TOWER

  You are logged in to host hoyt as root. Good evening, root.

  Malavida smiled, then scanned the directories on the host computer. He saw one called /urs/bin/building and moved into that directory. There he saw a program, EnviroLog, which he knew contained all of the major systems in the building including phone, security, fire, etc. He typed:

  EnviroLog

  And in a few seconds the system said:

  EnviroLog Version 3.1.2 Enter your password:

  "I could get into the guts of this thing if I had my tool kit," he said, "but I left it on the plane…"

  "What are you looking for?" Karen asked.

  "I won't know till I see it. But we already know this guy is a master hacker, and all these new buildings are run by computers. I was thinking, what if he gronked that alarm, triggered it somehow, then bogused the time when it started ringing…? That wouldn't be hard to do. He could set a different time of death by accessing the security program for the building. I can crack in here by random trial and error, but it could take hours. The other way is, we get the building supervr outta the sack and try to get him to do it, but he won't probably get here for an hour. Then he's gonna wanna get permission from the building's owner, who won't get in till noon. So why don't we save all the hassle and get my metal suitcase full of cracker-jacks."

  Lockwood looked at his watch and then at one of the patrolmen who was standing near the elevator, staring at his shoes. It was already 4:30 in the morning. Lockwood was supposed to be in the D. C. fifth-floor conference room at 9:00 A. M. to face his IA trial board. If he missed that, he'd be dust. He wondered why he didn't give a damn. "Could one of your guys run Miss Dawson out to the airport and back?" he finally asked a patrolman, who glanced at Stiner. Stiner nodded his approval and Karen left with him.

  Forty minutes later, she was back with Malavida's metal suitcase. The Chicano cracker opened it up and started selecting disks. The sun was just coming up on the cloudy horizon as he started, hunched over his keyboard. He was still in handcuffs. Malavida knew he needed to get them off if he was going to get loose from Lockwood. He looked over at the Customs agent. "Can't we lose the jewelry, Hoss?" He said, smiling. "I'm not going nowhere."

  Lockwood hesitated.

  "For God's sake," Karen said sharply. "What are you worried about? You've got a gun. Where's he gonna go?"

  Malavida held up his manacled hands, and finally Lockwood unhooked the handcuffs from the waist chain to give him more mobility, but he didn't take them off.

  "You're very careful, Zanzo," Malavida said as he turned back to the computer and Karen glowered at Lockwood.

  Malavida had tried the system supervr password, GOD, but the EnviroLog program's password was different and would have to be obtained from scratch. He worked patiently as time clicked silently off everybody's wristwatch.

  At 5:50, Lockwood picked up the phone, dialed the Executive Air Terminal, and got Red on the line. When Karen had returned to get Malavida's suitcase, she'd seen him sleeping there on the sofa and decided not to wake him.

  "Look, this is taking a bit longer than I thought," he told the pilot.

  "I gotta go at six-thirty, John. I got the D. O. C. coming back to Washington. I'm on standby for him. If I'm not in the Ready Room when he calls to use his bird, my ass gets transferred back out in the field, and I'll be taking nut-pucker rides under Doper Cessnas again. This is the best job I've had in this outfit and I'm not gonna lose it."

  "Six-forty-five," Lockwood pleaded.

  "I'm wheels-up at six-thirty, with or without ya."

  At six-thirty, just as Red roared down the Atlanta runway in the empty Citation and lifted off for Washington, D. C., Malavida finally got into the building computer and began surfing around in the security system, while Lockwood and Karen and Detective Stiner all watched over his shoulder. He accessed the records for Saturday morning, April 13, the day the police thought Candice had been killed. The security profile for that morning showed that the Center Street fire door alarm had gone off at 7:30 A. M., just as the police said. Malavida moved on. When he finally got to the environmental log, he wasn't paying too much attention so he almost missed it. He had already scrolled that log off the screen when his mind caught up with his vision. Had he seen a slight jitter on one of the log files? He opened it again and began to study the information more carefully. He saw that the building environment was broken up into forty different zones. The one that said 4-W had a slight quiver when he scrolled by it. He leaned in and looked at it more carefully. Then he backed the log up to April 12 and looked at 4-W.

  "What is it?" Karen asked.

  "I don't know. There's a phase jitter on this EnviroLog data. On 4-W, for April thirteenth… but not on the twelfth. Snoopy smells dogshit."

  "What's 4-W?" Lockwood asked.

  "Not sure, think it's the west side of the building, fourth floor," Malavida said.

  "That's this office. We're on the west side," Stiner said.

  "No shit." Malavida grinned. "So what do we have here, Curado?" he said to the screen. Then he started to bring up other file information… under Power Monitor: no surges, no sags, nothing… Phone Usage: nothing… Then he opened the time and temperature log again and paged down. He leaned closer, scrolling the log quickly up and down… He saw something. There was a minute difference in how one of the columns of data lined up on one part of the temperature log.

  "Something isn't right about the temp log," he said, looking at the time and temperature readings for April 12-13, from 10:30 P. M. Friday night to 7:30 A. M. Saturday morning.

  "What?" Karen asked, leaning in.

  "I think there's some kinda bogus log that's been substituted for the actual log, giving out its own information. Just a minute…" He typed:

  restore-I add EnviroLog. Log/April 12-13, 22:30-07:30 extract

  And like magic, the bogus log that The Wind Minstrel had laid down in place of the temperature log disappeared.

  "Hola," he said. And they all leaned in.

  "It went up to a hundred and six degrees in here," Karen said. "My man changed the temperature." Malavida grinned. "He cranked it up to a hundred six; then, look here… at six-thirty it starts going down again. At seven-thirty, it was back to seventy-two degrees." "How'd he do that?" Lockwood asked.

  "Crafted some program to overwrite the files," Malavida said. "Can you get that program? Download it?" Lockwood asked. "It's probably not here," Malavida said as he looked around for the bogus EnviroLog. "But that's not surprising. If I was going to do this, I'd put in some kinda odor eater to erase the thing after it's done its work. He couldn't erase the temperature listing, so he just stuck a bogus log in front of it for camouflage. Unless a very clever vato was sniffin', you'd never see it," Malavida said, exposing some ego.

  A minute went by as Lockwood stood, thinking. "Okay, so when did he kill her? He obviously was trying to alter the time frame to give himself an alibi."

  "The temperature started changing at ten-thirty Friday evening. That's gotta be the new time of death," Karen said, looking in at the screen.

  "Shit… wait a minute, I got an idea," Malavida said, and he surfed back into the security log and searched until he found the exact time the alarm was set off… 7:31:07.

  Malavida accessed the Southern Bell accounts log. He was looking for a long-distance call to the building phone number that came in at exactly 7:31:07 Saturday morning. It took him only ten more minutes to find it. The call was made from a cellphone, so he could only trace it to its general area code; half an hour later he determined that the call had been made from Tampa, Florida.

  Chapter 14

  LEONARD

  Leonard Land had
awakened in the basement of his house. He didn't know why he was there, but he knew he had to hurry. It was 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. He grabbed a suitcase and drove his dark blue pickup straight to the Tampa Airport. He bought a ticket in coach on the American Airlines 5:30 flight to Los Angeles.

  His row was halfway back in the L-1011. He had the aisle seat, but his huge body overflowed it; twice the flight attendants tripped over his legs as they rushed back and forth on their important pre-flight tasks. Manufactured air came out of the nozzle above his head and spilled down on him like the cold breath of redemption. He looked at his green corduroy pants, stretched tight over his huge, corpulent thighs. He was wearing a Disney World ballcap to hide his shiny naked head, but no matter how hard he tried to camouflage his grotesqueness, people still stared at him.

  Leonard tried not to exist. In the back room of the computer store, sometimes he could concentrate so hard on a program, it was almost as if he ceased to be. Leonard could be free of himself in cyberspace. When boxes of new components arrived at ComputerLand from IBM or Texas Instruments, it was always Leonard whom Mr. Cathcart asked to assemble them. When he was working with new equipment, he could disappear, completely transported by the challenge… but afterward, inevitably, he would return. He would go to lunch and people pointed at him and whispered behind their hands. Leonard was forced to wear his awkward ugliness like a sandwich-board.

  He missed his mother. He'd read in an old newspaper that she had burned to death in a fire. He couldn't remember the day it happened. Sometimes the anguish of missing her was so great, he lay in his bed and cried… Tears would roll down his hairless cheeks onto his sheets. Leonard was very alone, always frightened and confused. He couldn't remember long periods of time; sometimes whole weeks would disappear from his memory like misplaced keys. Like waking up in his basement with a mission to go to L. A. and not knowing why. He had become terrified of these huge blacknesses… these holes in his existence. He wondered where he had been. His time cards at ComputerLand said he had been at work, but he couldn't remember any of it. Once he had found dried blood all over his torso and legs. He didn't know why or where it had come from.

  He wasn't sure why he had to go to Los Angeles, but he knew his very survival was at stake. He had an address and a message written in his spiral notebook… It was in his own handwriting but, try as he would, he was unable to remember writing it.

  The seat-belt sign was turned off and he struggled up out of his seat. He took his small notebook and lumbered to the lavatory. He went inside and locked the door. The fluorescent lights shone down on him, finding only ugliness on his huge, fat face… his sagging eyelids, his horrible burned and scarred ears. He sat on the lavatory seat and opened the notebook:

  GO TO 1265 MOORPARK STREET, STUDIO CITY. CLOSE THE DOOR OF REDEMPTION.

  He looked at the note again, reading it over yet one more time. What door of redemption? he wondered. What does it mean?

  Leonard found the small wood-frame house on Moorpark, then parked the rental car across the street. He didn't know why he was there. He looked at his watch. It was 12:30 A. M. in Tampa, but only 9:30 P. M. here in Los Angeles. He reset his watch. Was that important? Was the door of redemption in the house across the street? He was frightened, confused, and alone.

  He put his head back and touched his nipples. They were stinging slightly against the fabric of his shirt. He watched as a tall, beautiful blond woman with very short hair drove her blue Volvo into the garage, got out with some groceries, and walked toward the house. She entered and closed the door. He put his head back on the headrest and, in minutes, went to sleep.

  The Rat woke up at ten and moved across the street, clutching his case. His eardrums pumped the rhythm of his heartbeat. He knew where he was and what he'd come to do. He moved in darkness around the small house, looking in the windows. The Rat had never killed. He had coveted but never possessed. He was frightened of his mission. He knew The Wind Minstrel was three or four days from coming, but he couldn't wait. He had to close the door of redemption. He walked to the back of the house. A child's easel was set up there. He looked at it and wondered where the child was. Then he saw, through the window, that a blond woman was preparing food in the kitchen. He moved to the back porch and stood, listening. The eavesdropper had been calling from this address. Could the tall, beautiful woman in the kitchen be Karen Dawson, who had been lurking in his chat room?

  As always, The Rat had taken his sneaky precautions. After he had found the eavesdropper, he had made his plan. He had tracked the LAPD number long distance from Tampa and begun cracking into the police computer, while frantically packing The Wind Minstrel's tools for Leonard to take. He had finally broken through the LAPD's computer security and had saved the entire dialup and login sequence to the Police Mobile Digital Terminal system for Studio City. He stored it in a fully automated script on his PC which he could recall at any time.

  He now put his fat, hairless hand on the back doorknob of the house in Studio City and tried it. It was open. The Rat took out his gloves and put them on. He set the suitcase down on the dewy, wet grass and popped it open. He removed the shiny scalpels that The Wind Minstrel used to possess. They seemed awkward and heavy in his hand. He closed the suitcase and carried it with him as he moved to the back door. Could this tall, beautiful woman work for U. S. Customs? he wondered. Could she possibly be clever enough to penetrate the mysteries of his secret room? Had Shirley sent this bitch to open the door to his twothousand-three-hundred-day Journey of Redemption?

  He opened the back door and silently entered the sun-room. He set down the suitcase and moved toward the kitchen. Finally, he pushed open the swinging door. He carried only the long scalpel with the number 10006 blade. He put the surgical instrument between his teeth. He was not coveting. He was not possessing. The Rat was fighting to protect his immortal soul. Before he killed her, he had to ask her questions. He needed to know the answers.

  She had her back to him when he entered the kitchen, but she heard footsteps.

  "Heather, how was the movie? I didn't hear Mrs. Klein's car pull up." She was turning, smiling when he attacked her. He grabbed her and clapped his big, meaty hand over her mouth, cutting off her scream. Then he hit her hard with his fist. She sagged in his arms but did not go down. She fought him savagely as he tried to control her, slashing wildly in fear with his knife.

  The Rat dragged her into the bedroom, tipping over a bedside table, breaking a lamp. He threw her on the bed and hit her again, knocking her unconscious. He pulled down all the blinds and stood in front of her, whimpering. He didn't know how to wake her. He needed to know the answers. Then he placed his hand over her mouth and held her nose. She choked, coughed, and opened her eyes.

  "Why were you in my secret room?" he asked.

  "What…? Who…?" Claire was struggling to get her mind to focus. She was looking up at a huge man she had never seen before. She fought to control her spiraling emotions. Panic would only make things worse.

  He leaned down close to her; his breath was sour. "I see only what he lets me see. The final vision is hidden. I. Don't understand the cleansing, but I will not suffer," he told her. "I will not suffer or be tortured for six years. So, you answer me," he said in a deadly whisper.

  Claire had seen him too late to defend herself in the kitchen, but now, lying on the bed, she started to take stock of her situation. He was huge but slow, and obviously deranged. She was strong and quick, with good upper-body strength. She hoped she could mollify him until she got her senses back in order. He had hit her hard and she was still fighting to clear her mind.

  "I have the mark of the Beast on me," The Rat told her. "The mark of the Beast is for unclean sinners. It cannot be refuted or changed. But I will not be tortured for crimes I was told to commit," he said, as if that would explain the scalpel and his presence in her bedroom.

  "I understand."

  "Were you the one who eavesdropped?"

  She didn't know what to
tell him. She didn't know what he was talking about.

  "You will answer."

  "I don't… I-"

  And he swung the scalpel, slicing her right arm open. She screamed in terror and pain as he hit her again with a short, chopping blow. It knocked her back into the headboard. And then he heard a high scream behind him. He turned and, standing in the bedroom doorway, there was a beautiful blond girl, about ten. He lumbered up to grab her, but the woman on the bed kneed him in the groin, grabbed him, and, with a strength he would never have thought she possessed, pulled him back on top of her. Her blood-soaked right arm found her left wrist behind his huge back. She clung to him.

  "Leggo… leggo me," he gasped in panic. The Rat had no experience. He had never killed. The girl had seen him. The Wind Minstrel would never have made such a mistake.

  "Heather, run! Call the police!" the woman screamed. The Rat pulled half-free, enough so he could grab the scalpel on the bedspread where it had fallen. The little girl ran. He knew he had to move fast to catch the child, but the woman was struggling to keep him from following. She held him with the strength of a demon. He lifted the scalpel high over his head.

  Claire saw his hand come down, but barely felt the scalpel as it plunged into her chest. She was holding on, gouging with her nails. She knew if she could only hold him for a few more seconds, Heather would have time to get away. She heard her daughter screaming for help in the front yard. Claire desperately held on. She felt the pain when the scalpel was pulled from her chest, and then she saw it coming down again. This time, her heart exploded when it plunged into her. She felt a terrible agony shooting in all directions… through her chest, her arms and legs, out to the tips of her fingers. She felt a convulsion rack her. Then, as if somebody had pulled a curtain on her life, she saw black and let go of the man attacking her. Her last hope was that she had saved her daughter's life.