Final Victim

Chapter 41

Sarasota County Real Estate Tax Board records indicated that Shirley's property had been sold in 1989 to Joseph Allen. He had died two years ago and the Allen family had put the place up for sale. Because of the bad Sun Coast real-estate market, they had not received an offer, and the house was now boarded up and empty. The lot wasn't technically in Bradenton but lay across the city line in Sarasota, at the end of a lowland island known as Siesta Key. It was only thirty miles south of the mouth of the Little Manatee River where, a few days before, Lockwood, Malavida, and Karen had piloted the rented boat-all three of them still in relative good health. The week that followed had exacted a heavy toll.

Lockwood and Malavida drove the gray Lincoln back across the tip of Florida to the west. They turned north on Interstate 75 and began the two-hour drive up the Gulf Coast. Malavida had been getting progressively worse. Lockwood had to stop the car twice so Mal could lean out and throw up. When Lockwood had tried to convince him to go to a hospital, he flatly refused.

"Listen, Zanzo," he'd said through clenched, shivering jaws, "I'm doing this. Okay? You're just John Q. Dickhead now. You can't order me around. So shut up."

That was the last thing the two had said to each other until they reached the outskirts of Sarasota. Lockwood had the map on his knees as he drove. He turned left on Clark Road and followed the humpbacked two-lane highway across the low wetlands; then he drove over the single-span Stickney Bridge onto Siesta Key.

The islet was low and sparsely populated. The road was dark with no streetlamps. They moved along looking for a shell road called Lower Key Road.

After driving for about two miles, Lockwood found it and made a right turn, heading west now toward the Gulf. The road narrowed and finally came to a stop at a crude cul-de-sac. The foliage was dense and reedy. Lockwood looked at his watch: It was 11:45 Sunday night. An almost full moon had climbed out of the eastern sky and hung there like a wedge of pale lime on the edge of dark black glass. Lockwood could see two driveways with mailboxes. He looked over at Malavida, who was slumped against the door of the car. His eyes were open but he was obviously out of the play.

Lockwood got out of the car and stumbled on unsteady legs to the mailboxes. He looked inside both and found nothing except ad brochures. The Allen house was supposed to be at 2464 Lower Key Road. He found an ad brochure with that address "To Occupant" and followed the driveway halfway down until he could see the house. It was a one-story stucco job with a slate roof. It looked like it had once been painted yellow but had faded to an off-white. The roof seemed to lean slightly. The yard was in a losing battle with the dense Florida undergrowth.

Lockwood slowly headed back up the drive to the car. He thought he was moving with slightly better coordination, but he still didn't trust himself to run or throw a punch. Maybe he could still swing a tire iron. He opened the trunk and pulled out the tool, hobbled up to the passenger side of the car, and looked in at Malavida, whose head was leaning against the half-open window.

"Stay here. Call the cops if I'm not back in five minutes."

"I'm coming…" Malavida said and opened the door, but that was as far as he got. He couldn't get out of the car. He tried to put his legs on the ground, but gave up and just slumped back with his head on the seat.

"Like I said, call the cops if I'm not back in five minutes." Lockwood took the phone out of Malavida's pocket, flipped it open, and put it in his hand. Malavida barely held on to it. Lockwood then walked carefully on uncooperative legs toward the house. Before he got ten feet, he heard Malavida's voice.

"Hey, Zanzo…"

Lockwood turned.

"I got your back."

"I can see," Lockwood said, then moved up the drive toward the darkened house.

The house was foreboding. Lockwood searching around slowly, trying desperately not to make any noise. He had been pumping adrenaline for hours to keep going, and now, when he needed an edge, he felt dull and used up. He leaned on the railing of the stucco house for a minute. He could see dust on the front porch. It covered the wood deck like a sprinkle of fine brown sugar. He could see in the pale moonlight that nobody had been on that porch for a long time. He looked around for the VW. The yard was empty, the house unused. He realized this had been just a long, time-consuming dead end. Karen wasn't here. He had failed her.

He slumped down and sat on the wood steps of the porch and stared at the dense, overgrown foliage. They had come close but they had lost her. He didn't think Karen could still be alive after the chase down Twenty-seventh Avenue. Leonard Land and Satan T. Bone would have to kill her to silence her. He sat there, used up, in the warm night… and then, suddenly, he started to cry. He tried to rein in his emotions, but he couldn't. The tears ran down his cheeks and fell on the tangled grass at his feet.

Lockwood had not cried since he was a ten-year-old boy at the orphanage. He had been pounded silly for showing his tears back then. It was perceived as weakness. In the world he was raised in, the meek didn't inherit the earth-they got the shit kicked out of them. He had not cried when he'd been sentenced to St. Charles Academy five years later or when Claire had divorced him or even when she'd been murdered. Despite the anguish of that loss, he had held himself in strict control. But he could no longer hold back the tears; he was physically and emotionally spent, and they now spilled out in silence.

He struggled to regain control of himself. He knew he was crying for all of them… for Claire and Heather, for Karen, for Larry Heath and Alex Hixon, even for Malavida, who, despite Lockwood's earlier harsh appraisals, had now gained his total respect. What he couldn't, or wouldn't, admit to himself was that he was also crying for John Lockwood, for all he had missed and all he had refused to experience.

Sitting on that Florida porch step after thirty years, John Lockwood finally lowered his guard… and it almost cost him his life.

She didn't know where the table had come from, but it was now in the center of the concrete room. She was strapped on top of it, her arms and legs tied with ropes to each corner. She tried to rock her body but the table didn't move. It was either very heavy or affixed to the floor.

"Stop that, you cunt," a voice said.

She looked up into the harsh overhead light, and then into view came Bob Shiff. He looked down at her; his ghoulish black-tattooed eyes glistened with a mixture of fear and excitement.

"Help me," Karen said softly.

He shook his head. His expression was grim. "He'd kill me. I'd rather he killed you. That was pretty smart, telling him God would punish him for killing on the Sabbath. Made him all nutty, though. He says he has to punish you. He says he wants to see into your eyes when he cuts your throat. Then this will all be over. Once the Beast is made, there is no more need. You're the final victim."

"You're wrong, Bob. This killing is a compulsion. He won't stop. He'll find another reason. This isn't over."

"Yes, it is."

"What about Tashay? She got away. She'll tell the cops," Karen said. "I won't be here. I'm going to Europe. I'm going to see Satan Wolf before he's executed."

Then Karen heard what sounded like a metal ladder, and in a few seconds Leonard Land came into her limited field of vision. He never looked at her but started unpacking his coroner's tools. He had changed into a silk kimono and his pasty white skin radiated in the harsh light. He had rubbed Vaseline over his entire body; she smelled its medicinal odor. He was selecting his scalpels now and he slowly laid them out on the concrete floor. She couldn't see them being arranged, but she could hear the metal handles ring slightly as they were laid at his feet.

Then he raised his kimono and grabbed his penis and slowly started to rock in silence, attempting to masturbate over his tools. But he did not get an erection. He remained limp and grew angry, yanking at himself with uncontrolled rage.

"I need music! Get fucking music!" he yelled at Bob Shiff, who ran quickly from the room. Karen heard him climb the metal ladder.

The Wind Minstrel moved slowly and picked up the Stryker oscillating bone saw. He plugged it in and turned it on. He held it over Karen, bringing it within inches of her face. The sawtoothed lateral blade growled ominously as it oscillated back and forth, vibrating the flesh on The Wind Minstrel's corpulent forearm.

Bob Shiff saw something on the edge of the porch and for a moment, in the pale moonlight, couldn't make out what it was. As he silently crept closer, he saw it was a man. Then he recognized him. It was the same cop who had come to the Loomis Theater and showed him Leonard's picture, the one who had attacked them this afternoon at the garage in East Miami and chased them. When he crept closer, he thought he could hear the man crying, sobbing softly as he sat on the porch. Bob Shiff moved slowly and deliberately back to the VW van, which was hidden in the middle of the dense underbrush, away from the house. He opened the door silently and retrieved the same bat he had used on Karen Dawson in the Bayfront Park toilet. He then moved back toward the house and looked again at the crying man. He was afraid to tell Leonard, because Leonard was strange. Lately anything could send him into a homicidal rage. Shiff decided it wouldn't be hard to get around behind the man if he went to the back of the house and came up on the far side, so that the man's back was to him. The grass there would muffle the sound of his approach.

It took Shiff almost three minutes before he was standing behind Lockwood. The cop was crying, his head bowed, not paying attention. Shiff silently brought the bat back and, with all of his might, he swung it…

Lockwood didn't know what warned him. Maybe it was his battle training in the Marines or an instinct from all the police work. Maybe it was moon shadows or a change in the sound of the keening insects. Maybe it was the ghost of Wyatt Earp-but he instinctively moved to his right seconds before he felt the stinging blow glance off his right shoulder. Bob Shiff saw him move and chased him with his swing. But it threw off his timing and he missed Lockwood's head by a fraction. Lockwood rolled on the ground to gain distance; he saw Shiff move toward him, bat raised high for a final strike. Lockwood was sprawled on the grass, his right leg under him, his right hand touching his left shoe. He was in a horrible position, unable to push off or gain leverage. He was two heartbeats from getting creamed.

Shiff moved in on him with the bat high over his head; then Lockwood snatched off his black loafer and, grabbing it with both hands in a two-handed shooting position, pointed it at Shiff. The moonlight glinted off the black patent leather and it froze Shiff momentarily.

"Drop it or you're dead, cocksucker!" Lockwood barked out an adrenaline-filled complete sentence and prayed this speedballing dust-bunny would go for the lame trick. In a bluff like this, attitude was everything. Then, miraculously, Shiff dropped the bat. "On stomach," Lockwood commanded. Shiff started to go to his knees but, from this position, he could see more clearly.

"It's a fucking shoe," he said in dismay and he lunged again for the bat.

Lockwood was now untangled and threw himself sideways, also grabbing for the wooden bat. The two of them struggled on the ground. In his weakened condition, Lockwood could not even control this tiny 120-pound heroin addict. He was slow and uncoordinated, and in seconds Shiff had the bat away from him. Lockwood lunged forward and awkwardly hit Shiff in the face with both hands. The blow rocked him back but didn't take him down. Lockwood now dove at him, trying to get his hands on Shift's throat. The two men went down in the wet grass, and then Lockwood rolled over the tire iron he had brought with him but had completely forgotten. Shiff pulled free and jumped up with the bat in his hand. Then, grinning, he moved in on Lockwood, who struggled up on his knees, the tire iron in his right hand hidden behind his back. Shiff swung the bat at Lockwood's head but didn't see the tire iron coming from his left. Lockwood ducked under the Louisville Slugger and followed through with the tire iron, hitting Bob Shiff in the side of the head.

The noise was sickening and Shiff went down like chopped cotton. He lay in the grass motionless. Lockwood leaned over him and took his pulse; it felt thin and uneven, and then it just stopped.

"Fuck 'em," Lockwood said, exhausted. He grabbed the tire iron and stood up, looking around. Where the hell had Shiff come from? he wondered. There was nothing out here. And then he saw a small break in the tall grass at the edge of the yard. It looked like it might be a footpath.

The Wind Minstrel had waited until past midnight to avoid God's wrath. But now, it was Monday morning and he could wait no longer.

Shirley had stopped his glorious erection. This messenger for Shirley, this look-alike, had destroyed his penile glory. He would kill her slowly to complete the Beast. He would take her head in a garbage bag back to his barge deep in the Manatee wetlands. He would assemble the Beast in the moonlight and pray to Satan for his miracle. Then he would wait for the Beast to speak and tell him how to avoid the Journey of Redemption. He looked at her, into her frightened eyes.

"Please don't. Please…" Karen said softly.

"Please don't. Please…" The Wind Minstrel mimicked. And then he put down the oscillating saw that he would eventually use to cut the spinal cord at the sixth cervical vertebra. He picked up the 10006 surgical scalpel and drew it once, seductively, across Karen's neck. Then he began his cut.

She screamed out in pain, as the scalpel sliced into her…

Lockwood was moving down the footpath but he couldn't see anything. It was then that he heard Karen's scream. He looked around but couldn't tell where it was coming from. The screaming continued as he stumbled toward the direction of the sound, until finally he was kneeling over a small vent tube with a metal Chinese rain hat over it at the foot of the garden. The pipe was only two inches in diameter but he could hear Karen's strangled cry for help coming from deep below. It was terrifying and ripped through his soul.

How the fuck I get down there? He started thrashing around looking for a way. Then he remembered Shirley's obit. Her father had been a Baptist minister who designed bomb shelters. If this was a bomb shelter, there had to be a trapdoor somewhere right above the vents. He got to his feet and quickly tried to find it. He could now hear the terrible screams coming right up through the ground below. They seemed to be coming right up under his feet! He found a metal hatch that was hinged to a concrete lip, a short distance off the footpath. He threw it back and looked down. Fifteen feet below, he could see light. The screaming was louder. He turned around and started to climb down the metal rungs of the ladder, still clutching the tire iron.

The Wind Minstrel had laid open a flap on Karen's neck but had missed her jugular vein because she had bucked violently on the table. He had hit her, knocking her dizzy, but she continued to fight him. He was just trying to make his second cut when he heard Bob Shiff coming back down the metal ladder.

"Hold her," he instructed. Then he turned and saw Lockwood standing in the small bomb shelter clutching the tire iron. He screamed and lunged at Lockwood, who swung the tire iron and missed completely. The tool hit the wall and flew out of his hand. Lockwood threw two slow, awkward punches that barely connected and did no damage; his coordination was way off. Then Leonard Land, with the scalpel still in his hand, grabbed him, threw him down, then landed on top of him, pinning him under his 367-pound frame.

"Fuck you! Fuck you!" The Wind Minstrel shouted as he rose up and stabbed Lockwood with the scalpel.

Lockwood rolled desperately. The scalpel missed his chest and went up to the hilt in his right shoulder. The tip stuck deep in his scapula bone, and then Lockwood rolled further, pulling the scalpel out of The Wind Minstrel's hand. The blade was still embedded in Lockwood's shoulder when the huge killer grabbed for the fallen tire iron and swung it. Lockwood took that blow on the side of the head and it almost put him under.

Suddenly the lights in the bomb shelter went out. At first, Lockwood thought he had gone unconscious, but the pain never left. Then his eyes adjusted and he was looking over the huge man's shoulder, right up the round hatch fifteen feet above, into the moonlit sky… Suddenly, something filled the opening. Then he saw Malavida's face in the center of the hatch.

Malavida threw himself down the opening, free-falling, headfirst.. and landed on Leonard Land's massive back.

Malavida was momentarily dazed, but he managed to snake his arm around Leonard's neck and pulled back, trying to execute a choke hold. They struggled in silence for several seconds. Lockwood's head was not three inches from Malavida's. Their eyes locked, and somehow their stares gave strength to one another. Then, in the circle of moonlight coming from above, he could see Malavida's look of fierce determination turn to desperation. The Chicano had used up all his resources. Leonard started to rise.

"My shoulder," Lockwood hissed. "In my shoulder."

Malavida's eyes went down and saw the scalpel buried in Lock-wood's shoulder. With his left hand he let go of Leonard's neck and grabbed for the scalpel handle, as Leonard rose and got to his feet. Malavida was riding his huge back, but the bloody scalpel had come out of Lockwood's shoulder and was now in Malavida's hand. Leonard spun around and slammed backwards into the wall, knocking Malavida into the concrete.

Malavida fell from the huge man's back and now, in the almost total blackness of the bomb shelter, Lockwood rolled to his feet and charged at the spot where he thought Leonard was. Miraculously, Lockwood caught him in the back with his shoulder and, with spent legs, drove him into the concrete wall as hard as he could. Then he heard Leonard scream out in agony. Leonard came away from the wall and stood in the center of the room, his eyes wide. In the dim moonlight coming down the hatch, Lockwood could not immediately tell what had happened. Then Leonard started grabbing weakly at his kimono.

It was then that Lockwood saw the scalpel buried deep in Leonard's chest. Lockwood had driven him right into Malavida's blade. The huge man shuddered for a minute in the shaft of moonlight. "Mother," he finally whispered, and then he fell forward on his face.

Lockwood crawled to Malavida, who was washed with his own blood from the ripped stomach incision. All of his stitches were now torn.

"Where's Karen?" Malavida said softly.

Lockwood pulled himself up and moved to Karen, whom he could barely see, tied to the table. Her eyes were wide but she was alive. Lockwood looked at the gash on her neck and then, in the almost total darkness, he untied her and helped her off the table.

She knelt beside Malavida. Lockwood didn't think either of them could climb the ladder. Malavida was semi-delinous and bleeding profusely.

"Called cops," Malavida said, weakly.

"You okay?" Lockwood whispered, completely spent.

The Chicano nodded. "Hey, Zanzo."

Lockwood looked over.

"Held your back."

"You sure did," Lockwood admitted.

The three of them sat on the floor, Karen between them. "Thank you," she said to them both. Neither Lockwood nor Malavida had the strength to answer her. Unexpectedly, relief filled Karen's eyes with tears. She took each of their hands and they sat there.

The three of them were still holding hands when the police arrived.