Final Victim

Chapter 22

"Yeah?" Lockwood said into the telephone.

"How you doing?" Karen's voice came back softly.

"Not good," he sighed. He was standing at the hospital nurses' station. It was nine P. M. and, after almost four hours of tossing and turning, Heather was finally asleep in her room down the corridor.

"I'm really so sorry, John," she said, and when he didn't answer, she went on. "How's Heather?"

"You tell me. She saw this guy kill her mother. She's just coming out of traumatic shock."

"That's horrible," she said, stating the obvious and feeling dumb because of it.

Karen was calling from Malavida's motel room in Tampa. Malavida had made her promise that she wouldn't tell Lockwood he was there. He was afraid Lockwood would run a team in and bust him.

"Did Heather get a good look at who did it?" Karen finally asked.

"Yeah. She said he was huge, fat, and bald. She said he was killing her mommy with a knife and that he didn't have any eyebrows. I'm not sure it's a good description. A lot of it may be mixed up with the shock."

"John, I'm in Tampa. I'm working with a friend of mine from the University of Miami. He's an ace computer cracker. We did a triangulation program down here, looking for the guy Malavida found on Pen-net. We think we picked up his cellphone location. My friend tells me it's accurate within a square mile or so…"

Lockwood straightened up and looked at the nurse who was preparing a tray of night medicine a few feet away. "You're doing what?"

"It's a long story, but we've got the location of his cellphone site pinned down to about a square mile. Unfortunately, it's in a huge swampland that's fed by a Tampa Bay river. It's gonna be hard to find him in there because it's marshy and pretty dense, but my friend says there's a way to narrow the location down further. It might go faster if we had a helicopter and some boats. I thought you could arrange that through Customs-"

"Let me get this straight. You're in Florida? You went to Tampa? You looked up an old friend from the University and you're working this headcase on your own?"

There was a long pause. "Not smart, I bet, huh?"

"It's way south of not smart, Karen."

"Well, John, it's done, and we got the fix without leaving our hotel rooms. So we weren't in much danger. If we narrow it down, I thought you'd want to be in on it," she said, knowing he wouldn't refuse.

After he hung up with Karen, he booked the 11:30 red-eye to Tampa. Then he went back into Heather's room. She was awake, looking at the door as he moved through it.

"Daddy," she said softly.

He gently sat on the bed and took her hand.

"I'm scared, Daddy. What if he comes?"

"I won't let that happen, honey."

"How do you know he won't?"

" 'Cause I'm gonna go find him and catch him and put him away where he won't be able to ever hurt anyone again."

"Daddy… I don't want him to hurt you," she said suddenly. "He won't hurt me. He can't… not ever."

"Why not?"

"Because I have your love to protect me." He leaned down and hugged her. Her face felt warm against his. He sat back and looked at her; he saw in her Claire's cobalt-blue eyes. Their legacy haunted him. "And then we'll go away and live happily ever after," he said, smiling. "Maybe on a farm. Just you and me, a few horses, some chickens and ducks…"

"And a hippopotamus." She was looking at the colorful painting on the wall.

The airplane took off on schedule, and he tried to sleep but his mind raced. He had not told Karen that he'd lost his badge, that he was now just John Lockwood, unemployed private citizen. But he was still one of the best pound-for-pound bullshitters on the planet, and, even without his badge, he would find a way to even out the terrain. He leaned back and tried to get some sleep as the jet engines hummed, but his eyes kept popping open. He felt strange, as if he'd lost something he couldn't fully calculate. It was tied to Claire's death, of course, but it was also more than that… It was as if everything was flat, with no depth or substance. It was as if he'd somehow lost a full dimension. He was afraid, unable to control his course… Like the purple hippo on Heather's wall, he felt like he was looking down with wide eyes, riding powerless under a brightly painted gas balloon.

Karen Dawson got to the airport early, had a Coke, and watched an old Roy Rogers movie on the TV over the bar in the passenger lounge.

It was 7:30 A. M. when Lockwood's plane landed and Karen met him coming off the American flight. They moved quickly out into the humid Florida morning. She led him across the street to her blue LeBaron and filled him in on how they'd triangulated on The Rat's cellphone signal, explaining the 800-megahertz band and all about null points. He listened and settled in next to her in the passenger seat while she put the car in motion.

"Okay, where to next?" he asked.

"My friend has a lot of stuff in a motel room. He says the next part of this operation is to get into that swamp and start scanning for the computer The Rat's using-"

"And how do we do that?" Lockwood said, looking at her.

"Well, my friend says that every radio, as well as every TV and computer console, acts like a transmitter as well as a receiver… He says electrical equipment in use always transmits radio frequency signals. He also thinks our killer is using top-of-the-line stuff-"

"Really?" Lockwood interrupted.

"My friend says that crackers are all equipment freaks; they need to have the latest stuff. A generation in computer technology is six months or less. If this guy's current, he'll have a TI or Toshiba Pentium 166-megahertz notebook with 128 megs of RAM, or some equivalent. Like I just told you, all electrically powered units transmit radio frequency signatures while they're on. He says there's a thing called TEMPEST;

it means Transient Electromagnetic Pulse Emanation Standard and it's the maximum amount of electromagnetic radiation the Federal government will allow high-security devices to emit.

"Even the best-shielded system still leaks. It's unlikely the killer has lined his computer and keyboard with lead foil to decrease its TEMPEST emissions, because my friend says nobody but spies and cold-war spooks ever did that."

"Who is this guy? What's your friend's name?"

Karen, who did not have a degree in bullshit, threw out the first name that jumped into her head. "Dale Evans," she said. Immediately her face turned red.

"Dale Evans? Like in Roy Rogers?"

"Yeah. In college we called him Trigger. Pretty funny what some parents will name their kids, huh?" She felt moronic, but Lockwood turned away, looking out the window.

He always thought that Florida was beautiful, even though it was flat as a table. He marveled at the white, puffy clouds that hovered over Tampa Bay, throwing dark shadows across the aqua-green water.

They arrived at the motel. Karen unlocked Malavida's room and they entered. Lockwood looked down at the electronic equipment scattered on the bed. Then the bathroom door opened and Malavida stepped into the room.

"How you doin', Zanzo?" the tall Mexican said.

"Well, whatta we got here?… Is this good ol' Mr. Trigger?" Lockwood said, his face going cold.

"That's him," Karen said, hoping the whole plan wasn't about to go ballistic.

"You're under arrest, Chacone. Turn around, put your hands on the wall."

Of course, Lockwood didn't have a gun, badge, or cuffs, but he went through the pat-down anyway. Then he spun Malavida around, shoved him against the wall, and glared at him.

"Are you through with this chickenshit performance?" Malavida said, his back to the wall.

"Karen, if you came down here with this guy, you're an accessoryafter-the-fact in a Class A felony."

"Actually he called me and invited me down."

"Hey, Lockwood, instead of fronting me off and getting your balls all puckered, why don't you calm down and listen for a minute?"

"I'm not gonna calm down. I'm gonna drag your ass right down to the Federal lockup."

"You and me got something in common."

"Yeah? What's that?"

"You made a mistake taking me to your wife's house to do that crack, and I made a mistake by being careless and not using a masking program. Between the two of us, she got dead."

"And you give a shit about that?"

"Yeah, I do. I never helped someone get dead before. I can't stop thinking about it. But I know how to get this guy, Lockwood. I'm better than him and I can do it. I can find him… but you gotta help."

"I do, huh?" Lockwood glowered. "And then what?"

"I help you get this asshole. Once we get him, you close your eyes and count to a hundred. After that, you can do whatever you want. You can go get a drink and toast my escape, or you can load up a posse and come after me. I just want a running head start."

Lockwood stood looking at him for a long time. He could see in Malavida's young face both a resolve and a sadness that matched his own.

"You really think you can find him? He already burned us once."

"Hey, Lockwood, I'm the best there is. The best cracker-jack in the world. Nobody's ever been born was better, and that includes this scalpel-wielding, tooted-up dickhead. I made one careless mistake, but it won't happen again. I'll get him, but you gotta give me some slack and a little equipment."

There was a long silence while Lockwood considered it. He knew Malavida was probably the best chance he had.

"Okay, Mal… you got my help and the head start, if and when we find him."

"We need a helicopter and some airboats," the Chicano said, still leaning against the wall.

"That's gonna be tough."

"Call Customs. Tell 'em you need 'em."

"Wouldn't help. I handed back my badge… I was about to get suspended anyway."

"You mean now you're not even a cop?"

"Oh, I'm a cop. That doesn't ever go away. I just don't have any jurisdiction or authority. The good news is, I'm not stuck fighting a bunch of regulations anymore. From now on, far as I'm concerned, Miranda is just a lady who danced with fruit in her hat."