Final Victim

Chapter 40

They were huddled in the basement of the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library. The room was too cold and the stone, turn-ofthe-century architecture didn't offer much warmth. Malavida was in bad shape, still bleeding from the opened incision. They couldn't get it to stop.

"Leaking like a Mexican fishing boat," he said through gritted teeth.

Lockwood attempted to put his hand on Mal's forehead to check his temperature but Malavida knocked it away. He looked flushed.

They had been plowing through microfilm for an hour, looking for the obit on Shirley Land. Finally, an article about her death came up on the screen. The date was July 10, 1984. There was a small picture with the article, which was the same one Karen had shown to Malavida. They both leaned in and read the story quickly…

The article gave a brief description of the fire that had burned Shirley to death. There was very little about Shirley Land's personal history.

The article said she was the only daughter of a Baptist minister, who also made a meager living by designing underground bomb shelters in the fifties. It noted that she was survived by a son, Leonard, who was fifteen years old. It went on to say that she had been active in church affairs and that she was being buried at the Old Manatee Cemetery in Bradenton, Florida.

"Dead end," Malavida said. He started shivering and now Lockwood was sure he had developed a fever.

"You gotta go to the hospital, man, before you shake apart and die from infection," Lockwood said, forming one of his first complex sentences since the halon attack.

"Shut up. I'm in this," Malavida said, determined to hang tough. "Your funeral," Lockwood said, then added, "We're down to seeds and stems here."

He knew if he were working a regular investigation for Customs and had time, he would do a full search for Tashay Roberts. He would have choppers searching the Manatee wetlands for The Wind Minstrel's barge. And he would check all the old addresses where Leonard Land had lived, hoping to interview an acquaintance who could give them more information. But he had lost his power base. The cops would arrest both of them on sight and they were out of time. Karen might be dead already. Lockwood knew they had to get some traction and get it fast.

"Sometimes," he said, forcing the words into the right slots in the sentence, "sometimes delusional people will go someplace they feel safe, like home…"

"He won't go back to that bomb site near Tampa," Malavida said. He was now shivering so badly he was having trouble staying on the chair. "We'll never find that Barge again. There's a hundred square miles of swamp he could hide in… We're flicked."

"Maybe here," Lockwood said, pointing to the article about Shirley's burned house in Bradenton, Florida.

"He burned that house down, and we don't have an address. It was twelve years ago…"

"County records! Your computer?" Lockwood said.

"Okay," Malavida answered and then, without warning, he threw up on the stone floor.

When she woke up, she was in a new place. A twenty-foot-square windowless concrete room. She had been unconscious when they brought her here. The last thing she remembered, Leonard Land had held her down on the floor of the van while Bob Shiff pried her mouth open and forced her to swallow two pills.

She was no longer tied. She slowly regained her senses, struggled to her feet, and went to the metal door at the far side of the room… It wouldn't budge. She stood silently in the center of the room and listened. Her entire body was quivering. She then realized that it was absolutely quiet. The quiet was unrelenting. The room was frigid. There were no ventilation ducts except for two small tubes that came into the high ceiling five feet above her head. She put a hand out and touched the concrete, which was extremely cold. For the room to have such cold walls and be so deathly quiet, she suspected it was underground. She remembered her profile of brown rats, written six days and two lifetimes ago. Brown rats lived underground. Was this The Rat's hiding place? She fought back a powerful urge to just sit down and cry. She knew that she had very few tools left to use against him. The only thing she had was her profile on The Rat, gathered with guesswork over the last week. She thought she understood his sickness.

She had to use her ability as a psychologist and apply her knowledge effectively. She needed to buy herself some time.

She looked at her watch. It was 10:30 Sunday night, or at least she thought it was… unless she had slept the night through and it was now Monday morning. She had no sunlight to tell her for certain. She had to assume the pills they had given her would last only four to six hours. They had forced them down her throat sometime around five, so she deduced it was probably Sunday night. In a pinch she might be able to use that. She tried desperately not to let her thoughts ramble or turn to self-pity. She tried not to think about the horrible pain in her mouth. With her tongue, she carefully touched her broken teeth, crying out and almost fainting as she struck the exposed nerves. Then she kneeled down on the floor and prayed to God.

"Dear Lord," she said in a whisper, "forgive my sins. Help me to withstand this pain. Help me to find a clear vision. Lead me out of this darkness. In the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen." And then she sat in the corner farthest from the door and composed her thoughts, steeling herself for whatever would come.

At eleven the door opened and Leonard Land was standing there. The harsh fluorescent lights turned his pale, rash-reddened skin an ugly purple. His grotesque body filled the opening, his ghastly bald features glowering. Then he reached behind him and turned a dimmer rheostat, bringing the lights low so that he was no longer clearly visible, only a huge outline in the doorway. His smell reached across the small room, gagging her.

"Don't stare at me, you bitch, turn your eyes away. You cannot conceive my glory, for you have told many lies." His voice was thin and high and his speech was singsongy.

She struggled to get to her feet, and, once standing, she pressed her back against the cold concrete wall. "I haven't lied to you. I've never met you before."

"You were sent by Shirley. In her likeness, and with her message." He smiled but the smile was leering. "I will use that against you after you become part of the Beast."

Karen listened carefully and finally she nodded. She had to get him to talk. Information was power. She thought he was constructing a woman in his mother's likeness but she needed to find out why to gain leverage. "Go on," she said.

"You told me there was one God, one personal glorified being… but you lied."

"I lied?" she said, watching closely.

"You spoke of the Devil, but never defined his glory. He is also Lord, the Anti-Christ. In the numerous chain of prophecies only the closing scenes are hidden… and you will tell me what they are and how to avoid the Journey of Redemption."

"I see," she said. Her legs were quivering with fear, but she tried to hide it from him.

"You told me that the doctrine of the world's conversion and the terminal millennium is a fable of these last days. But you lied about that too. It is written that this doctrine is calculated to lull men into a state of carnal security and causes them to be overtaken by the great day of the Lord as if by a thief in the night," he said.

He was reciting. She could tell by the monotonous phrasing that this was memorized doctrine… but from where? She didn't recognize it.

"You said the wheat and tares grow together," he continued in the same voice, "and that evil men and the seducers wax worse and worse. You said the inevitable day of cleansing is coming. You told me God had given you the message and told you. how to avoid the Redemptive Journey. You must tell me the secret. I will not walk through the Hall of Sleeping Spiders or take a two-thousand-threehundred-day Journey of Redemption through hell." He lumbered ominously toward her.

"Okay, I will give you the truth," she said quickly.

"It is not so easy," he said and took a syringe out of his pocket. "Before you speak I must place your head on the Beast. The Beast, it is written, will tell the truth. She cannot lie. The Beast will tell me how to avoid the fires of hell."

Karen knew he was completely delusional, lost in some apocalyptic religious struggle. She couldn't quite get a handle on why, but she was out of time. She had to make a move. He took another step toward her.

"Stop!" she commanded in a loud voice and he flinched, throwing a hand up to protect his face almost as if she had hit him. Then he straightened and glowered at her.

"You are not Shirley. I don't have to do what you say."

It sounded to Karen as if he didn't quite believe that. She decided to take her one last shot. "On the Sabbath," she said firmly, "the Lord has commanded all to rest." Her legs were unsteady, her chest heaving, her teeth killing her.

"I don't give a fuck what He wants!" The Wind Minstrel shouted.

"Then you are a fool," she said. "The Lord will not countenance this crime on his special day. He will seek double vengeance against you. He will find you, and He will double the Journey of Redemption." She didn't know what the hell the Journey of Redemption was, but it sure had an effect on Leonard, because he took a step back and covered his ears.

"I will not listen to more of your lies. The Rat hides in daylight. God doesn't know where I am."

"God has seen you. You went to Robbie's in the daylight. God knows all about Robbie; Shirley told him. He's been watching Robbie, waiting. He has followed you here and he knows what you are doing. Do not make the mistake of desecrating the Sabbath. If you do, you will take his full redemptive wrath. The fires he will use on you will burn slowly. You will roast for a thousand years." She was trying to use the same meter; give the content of her words biblical proportion.

He rubbed his eyes and looked undecided. He was still holding the syringe in front of him. Then he moved toward her. She tried to get out of the way but the room was small; he grabbed her arm and threw her back into the wall, then pressed his corpulent body against hers, pinning her. His stench was overpowering. Her stomach leapt and she almost vomited. For a moment she thought he might try to rape her, but then he grabbed her arm, shoved the needle in, and depressed the plunger. She fought for several seconds, knocking the empty syringe out of his hand onto the floor… and then, for the third time that day, she was fast asleep.