Final Victim

Chapter 26

Sheriff Carl Zeno leaned back in his metal chair and put a dusty boot up on the corner of his desk. He sucked loudly on a toothpick and spun his wide-brimmed Smokey hat insolently on his index finger as he looked at them.

"Tashay, she gets herself in with some pretty strange people," he said, dropping the hat on the desk. "I'm her stepdaddy and that gives me some rights, I spose, but you know how that is… I ain't blood, so I do what I can t'help her mom, Cherise, with her… but it don't always go down the way I want."

They were in the Sheriffs sub-station in Fort Myers, Florida. Karen had shown Zeno her Customs ID and introduced Lockwood as a Customs Inspector. Zeno had written down their names but had not asked to see Lockwood's badge. The office was a five-man cop-shop in a one-story brick building. Yellow linoleum floors, metal desks, and the smells of disinfectant and tobacco smoke completed the ambience.

Carl Zeno was blond, with a rock-hard handshake and a Sam Brown gun harness stretched tight over a potbelly. He had good-ol'-boy charm that barely hid a nasty disposition.

Karen thought she'd hate to be pulled over by this guy on an empty highway and say the wrong thing.

" 'Course she's got this Bobby Shiff guy she lives with now," he said sneering. "Hosed off and naked, that freak don't weigh a hundred pounds. Tashay, she's real easy on the eyes, but you oughta see Shiff… looks like an extra in a vampire movie. He sings in a Death Metal band called Baby Killer… calls himself Satan T. Bone. Don't y'love that?"

Karen looked over and caught Lockwood's eyes.

Zeno caught the glance. His gaze was lazy and insolent, and there was a small smile playing at the side of his mouth.

"What'd you say your name was again, sugar?"

"You wrote it down. It's right in front of you."

He smiled at her. "We don't get good-lookin' lady cops in this unit. All we got is bats with hats. Got one patrol woman on this shift, looks like Mike Ditka."

"That's real helpful," Lockwood said, smiling. "But we'd like to get in touch with Tashay Roberts. We checked the address on Court Road in Tampa; nobody answers the door."

"She and Shiff are down in Miami. He's got a gig down there. Left last night. She dropped by an' gimme two tickets… like I'm gonna go down there an' listen to that stringbean holler into a twenty-dollar sound system. I can hear better music sitting right here, listening to drunks fart."

"If you're not using the tickets, we'll take 'em," Lockwood said.

"Let's see here…" He reached into his pocket slowly; then, not finding them, into his desk drawer. He finally extracted two tickets and held them up. "Twenty dollars gets you into seats C-16 and 17, front an' center. Ear and nose plugs are extra."

Lockwood pulled out his wallet and dropped the twenty on the desk. "That hand she got sent, is it still in the Tampa morgue?" he asked as Zeno handed him the tickets.

"Far as I know. But it ain't got no fingertips so y'can't print it…"

"I wanna get a blood type and tissue match. I think it came off a dead woman in Atlanta."

"You go on up there an' talk to Deke Sanders. Dr. Death… dead bodies, bad jokes, and Muzak. Runs that icebox like it was the fuckin' Tonight Show. You laugh at his jokes, he'll give you anything you want."

Lockwood looked at Karen. "Anything more you wanna ask him?"

"Down here," Zeno said, "the men do the investigatin' an' the ladies string the yellow tape an' chalk up the sidewalk." He turned and smiled at Karen. "But go on an' ask anyway, Honey."

"You ever sleep with your stepdaughter?" Karen deadpanned.

Zeno sat up straight in the chair. It was as if she'd lit him up with a thousand volts. Then he started to flush and stammer. "Uh… I… What you talkin"bout? What the hell kinda dumb-ass question is that? 'Course not. Why don't you two get outta here? I got a heapa things to attend to."

Karen got up; as they left, a light sheen of sweat had already started to form on Carl Zeno's forehead.

Outside the sub-station, Lockwood stopped her before they got into the car. "Bull's-eye, but where did that come from?"

"Guy was pissing me off"

"How did you know?" He grinned at her.

"Picture of his family behind the desk. I figured the sexy one was Tashay. He was holding her closer than his wife. And that story about her dropping off the tickets… She drives all the way down here to give that slimeball two tickets instead of mailing 'em? And the way he said she was easy on the eyes. I don't know, it just hit me as possible."

Lockwood smiled as he got into the car. The best cops always had that instinct: the ability to play streaky hunches that sometimes defied logic but hit the 10 ring. Often that ability could make a case. You couldn't teach it; it didn't come with a uniform or badge, or in the long, tedious classes at Quantico. You got issued that instinct by a higher power.

He'd once been trying to arrest a child pornographer in a small Georgia town. The investigation had led him to a psychologist who treated disturbed children. He'd been there just to get background information, but he'd looked at the photographs of children on the wall and knew instinctively that he was talking to the perp… It was such a long shot, it was off the boards. But he knew the child psychologist was molesting the children. There was something strangely sexual about the innocent pictures. Lockwood couldn't describe it or say how he knew, but he did. He set up a stakeout and busted the doctor two nights later.

The five o'clock news had the whole story. The Rat watched it on the television in the darkened hull of the rusting barge. The generator hummed outside, causing a pleasant vibration in the hull. He saw what was left of his house on the newscast… scattered debris, the smoking ruins. He saw the picture of Malavida Chacone with his prn number across his chest. The field correspondent, Trisha Rains, said Chacone was a famous computer criminal. And then The Rat knew where he'd heard the name. The black eyes of the Mexican convict stared straight at him from the TV and bored holes of pain through The Rat's head. Malavida was a famous cracker, some said the best ever. He'd read about the "Mac Attack" in computer journals. The Rat now knew it was Chacone who had penetrated his secret chat room on the Internet. Killing the woman in Studio City had solved nothing. It had only made things worse, because now there was this other man, this Customs agent whom the newscasts had mentioned.

The Rat had been clever and lucky. The bomb in his basement had gotten Chacone. The newscast said that he was hanging between life and death in a Miami hospital. The Rat wondered if he could use his computer to find a way to cut the cord. Then the story switched to John Lockwood. It showed a picture of a handsome, dark-haired man standing at the crime scene. Next to him was a woman. Her back was to the camera. She was identified as Dr. Karen Dawson. The Rat moved closer to the TV screen and leaned in, looking intently at the woman. Then she turned and he could see her more clearly. It was the woman he had caught snooping at his house. He was troubled and frightened. The newscast ended, but The Rat remained unusually agitated for a long time.

Malavida Chacone, John Lockwood, Karen Dawson… What was the significance? Was it a sign? What should he do?

"When cornered, The Rat fights." His voice echoed in the hollow barge. Then he turned to his shelf of cracking tools. He selected his best UNIX cracking kit. He booted up his Toshiba notebook. When it was up, he slipped the program into the machine. He would start with John Lockwood and the Government computer at U. S. Customs. He hunched over his keyboard, his body damp with sweat. His fingers danced on the plastic stage before him…

The Loomis Theater was on Fourth Street and Miami Avenue, a half block from the downtown bus terminal. It was in a bad neighborhood. Taggers had scrawled bizarre artwork everywhere. The old theater had been shut down for almost two years, giving up its audience to the busy mall Cineplex Theaters. The Loomis had three hundred seats and a steeple tower that rose two stories above the marquee. Pasted onto the billboard was a sign scrawled in Magic Marker on butcher paper:

BABY KILLER FEATURING SATAN T. BONE TONIGHT 8:30 P. M.

The doors opened at eight and approximately a hundred lost souls wandered into the theater, high-fiving each other and laughing too loud. Outrageous colored hair was hiked and spiked. The audience wore leather, see-through tops, tattoos, punk rock jewelry, pimples. The concert started, as promised, at eight-thirty.

The sound was discordant and horrible. Lockwood and Karen pulled up and parked across the street, then moved toward the Loomis. Even outside they could hear Satan's horrible, raspy voice. There seemed to be almost no melody to the music. Percussion, bass guitars, and a hammering keyboard competed viciously with each other. Satan screamed out the lyrics like an umpire calling out a slide at home plate.

Cut off their tits while they sit on your dicks. It's a burnout, brother, burnout.

Make 'em be brava while they suck-a your flava. It's a burnout… baby, burnout.

Righteous and rich, bloody the bitch.

It's a redneck burnout, yeah.

There was nobody to take the tickets at the door, so they just went inside and stood near the back. The theater was musty and underlit.

Faded red-velvet curtains lined both walls. To both Lockwood and Karen, the spectacle was close to indescribable. Satan T. Bone strutted on the stage like a wild animal. His long, stringy black hair and the tattoos under his eyes made him ghoulish. He was, as Zeno had said, only about a hundred pounds, and was stripped to the waist, wearing leather pants. His nipple jewelry swung against his hairless, skinny, sweat-soaked chest. He harangued the audience, screaming and growling into the mike. Behind him, on the small stage, the other members of Baby Killer were beating on their instruments as if they hated them. Lockwood thought they didn't even seem to be playing the same song.

After each ghastly number, the audience would go wild, trying to rip out the seats and throw them, swinging each other around, leaping on the backs of the chairs.

Satan raised his arms like a drug-crazed Anti-Christ and drank in their adulation, screaming insults at them through the mike. "Eat shit, pus heads!" he screamed. "Swallow my cum!" Then he'd launch into another braying, discordant song, which seemed even more horrible than the last. All the lyrics were about death and dismemberment. Huge pictures of Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer hung from ropes in the center of the stage.

"They don't mean it, they're just kids having fun," Lockwood said sarcastically between numbers. They were looking for Tashay Roberts and hoped they could recognize the pretty blonde from her photograph in Zeno's office. At one point, two teenaged boys with spiked hair, tattoos, and pierces everywhere moved up to Lockwood and Karen.

"Twist a braid, dude," the larger one said.

"Whatever the hell that means." Lockwood smiled.

"It means get outta here, you don't belong. Get sideways, fuck-face." "What're you guys supposed to be, comedy relief?" Lockwood kept smiling.

"Event Security," the bigger one said. "Go before you get wrecked." When Lockwood didn't move, he took a swing without warning. It was maybe the worst right cross Lockwood had ever seen. It was wide and so slow, he ducked under it by just bending his knees. Then he hit the boy with a vicious uppercut. He didn't need a follow-up punch; the boy woofed out stale air and sat down right where he was standing. The other bouncer looked at Lockwood.

"I suppose you want some of this too?" Lockwood said.

Satan had begun the next song; the noise level rose. The smaller boy held both palms up, moved backward, and disappeared out the front of the theater.

"I think we should wait at the stage door. I've seen enough of this to last me forever," Karen said.

"You'd think guys who looked this grungy could fight a little better," he said, as they moved through the lobby to the door.

"Eat me, fuckers…" Satan T. Bone screamed at his cheering audience, but by then Lockwood and Karen were back in the street.

Parked in the alley near the backstage door of the theater was a brown primer-patched VW van.

"Looks like ye old band bus to me," Lockwood said and circled it, checking the doors.

"Don't you need a warrant or something to look in there?"

"Yeah, probably… but I'm not a cop anymore, so this is just gonna be a straight felony B and E." He pulled out a pocketknife. Using the short blade, he pried up the rubberized strip on the door and pushed his finger through the opening, popping the lock and opening the van. "Didn't it bother you at all that John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Uncle Charlie's pictures are hanging up in there?" Lockwood said disgustedly.

"You mean instead of Abraham, Martin, and John?"

"Here we are working a possible serial killer, and three maniacs turn out to be the mascots for this band of jerk-offs."

Lockwood started looking around in the van. He pulled the registration slip out of the holder on the vr. "Bob Shiff. Same Court Road address." He returned it and started looking under the seats. He worked his way around until he got back to the front seat on the passenger side. It was a hot night and his shirt was beginning to stick to his back. He found what he was looking for in the glove compartment.

The three brightly colored balloons were knotted at the neck. He pulled them out and poked the knife blade through one of the balloons. He poured white powder into his hand. He smelled it, then tasted it. "Heroin. But it's flea powder, been cut way down." He put the balloons back inside the glove compartment, rummaged around in there some more, and this time pulled out a syringe. He laid it on the seat in plain view, closed the door, and relocked it, putting the strip back on.

"Y'know, John, if this is the way you did the job, no wonder IA was all over you."

"We're not gonna arrest anybody. We're just looking for information. You always do better if you get them playing defense."

He moved to the chain-link gate and closed it, blocking the alley from the front of the theater. He found an open padlock hanging on the fence, slipped it through the gate, and snapped it shut.

Two hours later the stage door opened. Bob Shiff and Tashay Roberts came out. Tashay was wearing a lace see-through top and denim shorts cut so that there was almost no back on them. She was holding on to Bob Shiff's skinny arm. Behind them were the other members of Baby Killer, all of them lugging their instruments. Some of their fans were now moving around to the back and hanging on the fence Lockwood had padlocked shut.

"Hey, man, open the gate," they shouted.

"Who locked the gate?" Shiff asked, looking at Tashay. Lockwood stepped out from behind the van.

"Who the fuck're you?" Shiff said.

"Space Patrol… You guys look like intergalactic travelers. Wanna roll up your sleeves, show me your arms?"

"You got a warrant?" Shiff said.

"Don't need one. Got probable cause for a search. You left your pump on the seat there." He pointed through the window at the hypodermic. "Gimme the key to the van or I'm gonna knock out more than your window," Lockwood said.

After a slight hesitation Shiff handed the key to Lockwood. "Those aren't my works, man. I never saw that before."

Lockwood opened the van and started to look under the seat, working his way up to the glove compartment. He opened it and pulled out the three brightly colored balloons. "Somebody having a birthday party?" he drawled, then took the balloon he had already slit open and poured some of the heroin into his hand. "Looks like Mexican marching powder."

"That's not mine," Shiff whined.

Lockwood spun and grabbed his wrist, turning it palm up so he could see the vein in his skinny arm. There were track marks all over it.

"Bullshit, Bob. 'Less you're a diabetic, you been slammin'. I think if we went down to the station you'd 'Jones' in two hours…"

By this time there were thirty hopped-up kids rattling the chain-link fence. Shiff looked over at them, a gleam in his eye. "Hey," he yelled, "come get this guy off me…"

The crowd of fans yelled out and surged at the fence. Two of them started to climb over; two more were climbing around the sidepole. Lockwood pulled the old.45 out of the back of his belt and fired one shot at the wall of the theater. The report of the gun was deafening in the concrete-and-brick-enclosed alley. All motion stopped. The kids on the fence froze. Lockwood turned to Shiff "Why don't we have this discussion somewhere else?"

Lockwood parked the band bus in Bayfront Park. The moon was full and shimmered across the water on Biscayne Bay. A light sea breeze vibrated a palm frond next to the van. He turned around in the driver's seat so he could see Bob Shiff and Tashay.

"Nice concert," he said, looking at them carefully. "If you don't mind pukey lyrics and a fistfight with a downbeat."

"You a music critic?" Bob Shiff protested. "I thought you were a cop."

Karen reached into her purse and. Pulled out her ID, flashed it at him, then returned it before he could see that it was a civilian ID.

"We're working a murder case… I understand you got sent a woman's hand," Karen said, looking at Tashay.

"What the fuck you talkin' about? What hand?" Shiff said.

Lockwood leaned toward him. "Carl Zeno said Tashay gave it to him. It's been booked as a partial Jane Doe in the Tampa Coroner's Office."

"Tash, you got a fuckin' hand sent to us and you didn't tell me?" An amazed look spread across his narrow face.

"Hey, Bobby, we're getting a lotta wet packages. It's very cool an' everything, but I was afraid that whoever sent it was over the edge… y'know? So I called Carl. He made me give it to him."

They sat looking at one another for a long time. The silence became overpowering.

"We think the killer we're after may be the fan who sent you the hand. Maybe he came to one of your concerts?" Karen said.

"Lotta people come to our concerts," Shiff said insolently.

"This guy you wouldn't miss," Karen said. "He's almost seven feet tall, weighs three hundred seventy pounds." She reached into her purse, pulled out the printout of Leonard Land's DL picture, and handed it to them.

"Ever see him?" Lockwood asked.

Shiff studied the picture. "Ugly son of a bitch," he said, without interest.

Then Lockwood handed it to Tashay, who looked at it for a long time, her features furrowed in thought. "I don't think I seen this guy. You seen him, Bobby?"

Shiff looked at the picture again. "No, I'd remember. Can we go home?"

Lockwood took the picture back. "How 'bout the mail? You say you get wet packages. If he delivered this hand to you, maybe he sent you something else before this. You keep the mail?"

Tashay looked over at Shiff and he shook his head.

"No, we throw it away," Shiff mumbled.

They sat there for a long moment in a dark no-man's-land… A full moon lit the horizon to the east; the illuminated buildings of Miami framed the city behind them. A boat without running lights whined at high rpms somewhere out on Biscayne Bay.

"If you see this guy at one of your concerts, get in touch with us. This is my beeper number." Lockwood handed one of his cards to Tashay and then one to Shiff.

"Look man, it's real late. I need t'get home. Have we done this or are you gonna bust me?"

Without answering, Lockwood put the VW van in gear and drove out of the park and back along Miami Boulevard, past the graffiti-lined buildings, to the Loomis Theater. He knew they were probably lying.

They were out on the edge, where bizarre behavior blends with anarchy. He was a cop and the enemy.

Lockwood set the hand brake and moved around the van as Shiff got behind the wheel. Lockwood slid the door open and Karen jumped out. Before he could close the door, Tashay Roberts stuck his business card back into his hand. She closed the door and Bob Shiff, a. K. A. Satan T. Bone, pulled the van out, squealing the tires slightly for effect. Lockwood looked down at the card… Tashay had written something in cramped handwriting on the back. He held it up in the dim light of the street lamp. "Call me, 555-6245. I know something," he read.

He spun back just in time to see the van speed around the corner and out of sight.