by Rex Miller
"Sorry. Go ahead."
"Thanks." Patronizing bitch. "If it isn't an assassin hired by a drug gang, then the alternative is that we've got one of the worst serial murderers of all time killing people right and left. Am I right?"
She laughed again in spite of herself. He looked so serious. With his charts and amateur detective bullshit.
"Too much TV, Vic. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We run into it all the time. You've taken stories about certain homicides and made a neat scenario like a television show, and there's nothing to it. Sorry." She smiled.
"What do you mean certain homicides? I've taken every violent homicide in the Kansas City area within the last four weeks—and there's one black in the lot."
"First, the stories you clip out of the paper or that you get from the press room at headquarters are only a portion of what actually goes down. Number one: not everything is released to the press for dissemination, surely you know that?" The chill was thick in the air between them like a layer of frost on a windowpane.
"You're saying—"
"I'm saying you don't show Jeffrey Hawkins, or James Copeland, or DaVelle Yates, or Tyrone Phelbs, or Manuel Calderon—just off the top of my head—and none of them are white, and each is a violent death that occurred in the last few weeks in Jackson County alone. You get out into Clay, and Platte, or Cass County—"
"Hawkins—and these other killings—how come they never made the news?"
"Homicides are frequently kept confidential, depending on the nature of the investigation. I thought you were aware of that—being in the business as long as you have."
"I'll bet Adam David would be surprised to learn he's not being given access to all the news. I never heard of such a thing."
"I'm giving you background information—strictly off the record—and expect you to treat it that way. We know each other. If I thought you'd act irresponsibly, or put it on the radio, I wouldn't even be talking to you. But that's the truth of it. Some investigations are of a nature that preclude the dispensing of those stories to the press while the cases are being made." She looked up as a waitress came to take their order.
"Would you folks like something?"
"Just coffee."
"Nothing. Can't stay," she said.
"One black coffee, please."
They sat mutely waiting while the waitress brought him a cup, poured, and asked if there'd be anything else. He told her no and she left. The two of them were taking up a booth for the price of a cup of coffee, and the waitress was doubtful the guy would even leave a tip.
"These aren't gangbanger shootings. They're random incidents, Vic. Believe me."
"I know if they're not drug related it's gotta be the work of a serial killer. Got to be." He had his teeth in this story and he wasn't giving up.
"Hawkins was shot in the projects Friday night. Small caliber pistol to the back of the head. We're working a black suspect," she whispered to him, wondering if he was wearing a wire. She'd have to have, the El Tee put a "copperstopper," a deletion order, in his information bottle when she went back to the shop. She didn't want to hear all this bullshit voice-tracked in the six o'clock newscast. "All this is strictly confidential and sensitive, not to be repeated, okay? But I'm just showing you. Yates took a shotgun blast in the face. Blew the kid's head off, darn near. We know who did it. Calderon and Phelbs were both stabbing victims and we're looking for the doer. Again, the person is known to us. You just happened to research some homicides in an unusually busy time frame and when, coincidentally, some of the homicides involving blacks were ongoing or sensitive investigations. Understand?"
"The killings are all drug related, though." He tried to hang in, as somehow he saw his entire theme show concept eroding if she shot him down on the serial theory.
"Vic, all homicides are either over drugs or money or women—I mean going back for years and in every major city in the country."
"Maybe so but…" He couldn't think. Jesus! "What about your ballistics department? Isn't it true that all the so-called random shootings are with the same two or three weapons?" He was fishing.
"First, it isn't a ballistics department, okay? Ballistics refers to the trajectory of projectiles." That patronizing ha-ha voice of hers was making him nuts. "The department is Firearms and Toolmakers and, no, the random violence is just that. There is no common link with respect to forensics or lab findings, or match-ups on bullets and so forth. There's just a lot of violent crime going on—not just Kansas City. I know the statistics for other large population areas are much worse. No—"
"You guys never talk about serial murders anyway, right? You wouldn't tell me if it was a serial killer, would you?" He had her on that one.
"Well," she said, breathing deeply, "I'm sure you're aware that the policy of the department is not to identify serial homicides during investigations because of obvious reasons. We know that such publicity very often fuels more killings, or if not feeding and stimulating the ego of the killer or killers, it can also create copycats."
"Is that what you have here—copycat killers?"
"No," she said with a pinched-up face, really selling it to him. "These homicides aren't related in M.O. or any other way. Every one is a different story."
"Okay, what about the biker gang and the three who got crucified? Those are tied together—everybody knows that."
"You know I can't talk about specific details on that one. That's still ongoing." He took a sip of his coffee and she used that second to slide out from the booth. "Gotta run. Believe me," she said, "you're off on the wrong track."
"Thanks for your time."
"No problem," she said, and with a curt nod was gone.
She hadn't even bothered to read his background stuff. He knew things about David Boyles and some of the others that he was sure the guy's casual buddies hadn't told the cops. They hated cops. But she didn't want to hear it. She couldn't be bothered. He'd go over her head. To the chief of detectives. He paid his check, left a dollar tip, surprising the waitress, and went out to his car.
The El Tee was gone when Hilliard returned to the squad bay, and she was wading through paperwork when Victor Trask's voice startled her.
"Long time no see." He was standing at her desk.
"Yeah, really." She made no effort to keep the irritation out of her tone.
"I forgot to give this to you—and you were in a hurry, so it didn't dawn on me until you'd left." He handed her one of the copies of the page on HOMICIDE VICTIMS WITH BACKGROUNDS AS DRUG DEALERS. She looked at it and was mildly surprised at the information.
"How did you get this?"
"Interviews with the decedent's acquaintances. People will tell reporters and researchers things they won't always tell cops."
"Um." She appeared stone-faced as usual. "Well, I'll see this gets passed along, okay. Thanks."
"You didn't have that information, did you?"
"I really couldn't say," she said. "Was that it?"
"Yeah." He turned and started out the door, cursing her mentally. There were three men and Hilliard in the squad room. Each working at a desk. He saw computer terminals and files everywhere, but little else. He could hear a telephone ringing. As he walked out of the metro squad section, he passed a closed office door with a lieutenant's name on it. He tried the knob and peeked in, prepared to say, "Oh—I thought this was the way out" or some dumb thing. "I can't read English." Something. Nobody at the desk. Trask did something with a piece of equipment about the size of a large push pin, and turned, leaving, and a man filled the doorway.
"Can I help you?"
Trask just about let it go in his pants. "No." He laughed, as if this fellow had just told him the funniest joke in the world. "I took a wrong turn." He stepped back into the hallway feeling the man's eyes burn into him. "Which way to get back downstairs?"
"Right there to your right. You here on business, sir?" There was an official edge to the man's voice.
"I'm an old friend of Hilliard's," Trask
said. Big smile. He waved as he turned away. "Thanks."
"Uh-huh."
Trask kept going, waiting to hear the command to stop, but none came. His bed was made and there'd be no unmaking it now. The bug from Bob's Electronics was stuck under a shelf in Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn's office—for whatever that was worth.
Outside on the street, he bought a couple of papers. In one of them he saw the headline "Police Deny Mysterious Slayings Related to Sixteen Gang Killings." Clearly he hadn't been the first person to go fishing in this particular stagnant pond.
"Hey, Snooze," Sean Flynn called out from fifty feet away, as Trask rounded the turn to Production and Programming back inside KCM. Flynn, obviously in a good mood, was coming from the conference room. He only used his nicknames when he was in a good mood, which was-fortunately or unfortunately—almost never.
"Yo.
"Got a hole next week. Whatcha working on?"
"Right now?" Trask was ready for him this time.
"No. Not right now. What were you working on last February? Yeah, right now," Flynn said brightly.
"Telecommunications for the deaf. I've got a whole thing on the technology, the various devices, the way the operators work, the backgrounder—I've got staff and management types lined up. There's an eight-hundred number tie-in. A thing about prejudice against the deaf—they don't like the phrase 'hearing impaired,' by the way—and I, uh—"
"That's good. What else?"
"I got a thing on how parents, students, and media people have been acting as a pressure group, trying to get the U.S. Education Department to change its position on releasing crime reports at colleges and universities."
"Borrrrrrr-ing!"
"No. Wrong! Wrong, 0 mighty Flynn of the night. I got a bitchin' hot interview set with this gal who edits the student newspaper. She took 'em to court and won. It's perfect for you—the ant kicks the elephant's ass, so to speak."
"That is good. You're right. It's unboring as hell. I take it back. I stand chastised. Work that up. Like maybe three examples—each with a guest."
Sure.
"One other thing," Trask said, "I know what really killed the dinosaurs."
Flynn's handsome puss broke into a big smile. "Yeah? What's that?"
"They died trying to find a parking space."
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20
Bobby Price had slept on the floor of a deserted office and woke up stiff in most of his joints, no pun intended. He could not force more than one push-up out of his muscular bod, so gripped he was by a languorous, listless, languid, lovely, lethargic lassitude. He was up on those hard, extended arms, toes erect, frozen in midpush, thinking of lazy words that began with L: lazy, languishing, lambasted, lard-assed, latency. Latent—couldn't that suggest dormant? He was latent. A fucking latent. This lonesome longhorn, this lithe and lank lad was lamentably limp in the lap. Was he a motherfucking latent? Lordy, lordy, lock and load.
The shooter was a neuter, nude and unscrewed, and he had a need to see folks bleed. Bobby Boy had gone bye-bye yesterday evening, and a deliveryman in white coveralls had conned his way into the Kansas City Convention Center, pushing a large, heavy white box (marked FRAGILE) on a dolly. Bullshitting his way in with a big, foxy grin, getting into the building's knickers, finding a floor with nobody home, finding a place that was just the right space.
The deliveryman's costume was on the floor next to the box and the dolly. Hello, dolly, how's your box? He had the case open, his lady screwed together, his tool kit out. He decided to pull his clothes on—the carpet had left his skin with an itchy feel. He needed a hot bath, and a long shower. He felt unclean, and the stink of chemicals from the carpeting was strong in the room. Nanny li'l Bobby don't feel so good today. Tan I stay home fwom school, pwease?
He used the glass cutter and popped a good-size chunk of glass out, with some effort, keeping low and close to the corner. "Red Rock Match Grade Ammunition is available in two classifications of sniper rounds: Super-Hard-on and Anti-Pussy." He forced his mind back into the groove. "Super-Hardened ARmor-penetrating Projectile, High Explosive cartridges." He loaded a SHARP-HEX round into his sweet baby. Eye to the Laco. Careful to keep the tip of the silencer and flash attachment nearly flush with the glass. Far below, he saw a man driving a shiny new car and he blew the fucking thing to kingdom come.
"They consist of an incendiary detonator, a high explosive charge, a super-hard-on tungsten-carbide penetrator…" He snicked the spent shell case out onto the stinking carpet and slid an APEX(X) into her. Eyeballed the Laco. Red Nissan it looked like. Bus. Dizzying pan of vision. Woman in white shirt in front of a self-service gas station pumping her gas. A young girl getting out of her car. Why not? Squeeeeze. Ooh, grue.
Businessman in shirt and tie. Watch him die. Yeah! Reload, Paunchy man in green shirt, blue cap—time for your nap…surprise!
Keep this up all fuckin' day. Man on cherrypicker, two guys beside a truck but they move and spoil the shot. Billboards for the Missouri lottery and the virtues of diesel. Man walking. Squeeze…blood in the trees.
Load and look. Another dizzy arc as he searches for targets. Creme Pontiac Grand-Am. Distant image of a kid on a bike—a good two miles away. He sees a man and woman coming out of a building. Hallmark Greeting Cards, Inc. Imagines them talking about Hallmark signing Shaquille O'Neal of the Orlando Magic; the woman—she's into basketball players, the guy—he writes those sentimental verses inside cards. Roses are red, crosshairs on your head, here comes the lead…now you're dead. Hold still Sam, alakazam…wham, bam! Guts and jam.
To Shooter, at this moment, those who'd warned Columbus of a flat earth were dead right. It was flat, and the end of the world was marked by the horizon line in the far distance. Squinting into the 40X sighting scope, rubbing a sleep cinder from the left corner of his right eye with a thumb, he was amused to feel himself trembling.
The sun had come up the color of blood: a bright red fireball rising in the dark gray beyond the flat edge of the world. Blood red against gray. Far down below him, over a three-and-a-half- to four-mile radius, people were screaming, sobbing, hollering, becoming panic-stricken, telling other people what they'd seen or thought they'd seen, calling the police, calling for the doctor, calling for the nurse, calling for a lady with an alligator purse. But none of this was why he was trembling.
He saw a sign of movement near the locus of his focus and the word lollygag came back into his head after thirty years. He could recall nasty Nanny telling him "not to lollygag." Lollygag? He couldn't spell the fucking thing—but it was another lazy L word. Lollygag!
In Fort Worth, you heard folks talk about how they was gonna "sashay" over to so-and-so. He hadn't heard the word sashay in a hundred years. Sashay, lollygag, traipse. Traipse! There was a dandy. He hadn't traipsed in a coon's age. Traipse? He hadn't traipsed in a month of Sundays. He felt himself jerk, watching for the bright flashes from the mortar tubes. Shit! This was gooder'n sex. But he looked back to rub his eye again and saw all the empty brass on the floor and it snapped him into action.
He took his honey apart and put her back in the fitted case, and began to strap the whole shebang onto the dolly. He was out of there.
Chaingang had started to go roaring after Shooter Price to find him and kill him, but he'd immediately felt his governor stemming the hot tide of fury before it washed over him beyond the point of return. His legal wheels, the precious previously owned Oldsmobile, was a perfectly street-clean ride with sanitized, checkable title. The endless unnecessary aggravation he'd put himself through replacing the vehicle initially stopped him. He needed to take a car that he could dump after he was through with Shooter. Trade his Olds for something a bit more upscale. The implant kept intruding on every plan he made.
In theory, it was extremely difficult to engineer surprises for Dr. Norman, since he had an access to monitors that detailed Daniel's movements. But there were other ways to handle things: third parties, for example, who could be
easily manipulated into doing his bidding. He needed to think, plan, and—when he'd done his homework—act.
First stop was the Kansas City Public Library, main branch. A glorious place full of tasty treats for the epicurean information addict. He took Dr. Norman's thoughtfully detailed dossier, replete with schematics, and dressed in his finery, he spent the morning researching. There was the matter of the OMEGASTAR mobile tracker, which he knew could be defeated, and the implant, about which he had no such confidence.
The overlarge fellow was an obvious student of some sort, the reference librarian observed. Clearly intelligent. It just showed you—you couldn't judge a book by its cover. But up in the hidden stacks, the quality of mansuetude and academic devotion was shrugged off, momentarily, while Chaingang licked a diagram, found it irresistibly delicious, and began eating it. It was a sight the gentle librarian would never have forgotten—Chaingang ripping a page from a library book and chomping down on it with those ugly, yellow fangs of his. My God! Such a thing had no possible earthly explanation. It fell outside of one's acceptance cone. Perhaps somewhere in the universe—beyond Mars, a few black holes away—maybe there they ate books. It just wasn't done here.
He was still hungry when he finished at the library, and—driving in the direction of a nearby mall—he spotted a fruitseller set up on a busy sidestreet. He pulled over and bought a half peck of Heartland Orchard Red Hearts. "Fancy sweet yellow flesh" had caught his eye. They were great for canning, the crate assured him, and he thought of his pleasant days spent in the home of a woman named Mrs. Irby, whose extensive canned goods he'd once ravaged.
As he thought of her, he demolished the fresh peaches, his system crying to him for more fruit, and he vanished them in a continual, wet sucking. His huge hands would grab a peach and he'd appear to swallow it whole, a three-part noise accompanying the ingesting of the fruit and skin, and the spitting of the pit: slurrrp-fwahp-ptttht! Slurrrp-fwahpptttht! He sucked them down, inhaling the delicious meat, biting into their bloody hearts, slurping them down with juice running from his chin, sucking peaches, spitting pits, wiping the sticky blood from his face with the back of a huge hairy paw. He noticed someone watching him from across the way—an old man—and he spit a peach pit at him, plopping back in his ride with a groan. Twenty-one peach pits littered the sidestreet. So much for his appetizer. Now he needed to go get some red meat. Chaingang's hunger rumbled in his massive gut like summer thunder. He mashed the radio dial, trying to take his mind off food, and some monkey man was raving about "the game next weekend in Arrowhead Stadium." He smashed the noise off, hating the monkeys for their childish fascination with the trivial and mundane.
