Public Enemy Zero

30

Detective Rios parked his police car in back of an evidence van near the car lot. He’d just finished taking statements at the diner and come to take a look at the mayhem. Firefighters had cordoned off an area around the downed power line while workers tried to get power back on.

Mobile work lights hooked up to generators illuminated the damage the out-of-control tractor-trailer truck had caused. Lying on its side on top of a row of crushed cars, it looked like a giant sea creature that had been beached. The shadows of balloons and waving flags on the building behind made it look like one of the accidents his son would stage with his toys.

Rios walked over to the cab of the truck where Simmons was kneeling. “What the hell did the kid do now?” he asked.

“The people at the diner confirm it was him?” asked Simmons.

“The ones inside did. The ones outside that chased him away are a little confused.”

“Like the people back at the mall?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Rios stood back and looked at the lot from a different angle. He looked at where the trailer had ripped open. There was another row of smashed cars in front of it not visible from the street. A utility worker in a bucket at the end of a crane arm worked to unhook the power cables from the broken pole.

Simmons stood up. “Any idea what he was doing at the truck stop, besides planning the world’s worst joy ride?”

Rios shook his head. “I don’t think he was after the truck. One of the other rigs was broken into. It didn’t look like he was trying to steal it, though. The driver is a bit disoriented right now and can’t tell if anything is missing.”

Simmons waved an arm at the rig. “If all he was after was petty theft, then why go through the trouble of stealing a tractor-trailer truck, driving it a quarter mile and then causing a million dollars worth of property damage?”

“He’s a one-man doomsday machine. It’s what he does,” said Rios.

Simmons shook her head. “I don’t buy it. The kid’s got no priors. No history of domestic abuse. Nothing even marginal. Unless some Facebook photos pop up of him wearing women’s underwear while reading ‘Soldier of Fortune,’ I think we’re dealing with a person who is just reacting to everything that happened today.”

“Sometimes people just snap,” said Rios.

“I don’t buy that. People with erratic behavior sometimes go way out of line and do something horrific, but there’s almost always signs there before.”

“The breakup with the girlfriend,” replied Rios.

“What about it? Everybody goes through breakups. I think we’re just looking at it as a convenient explanation.” Simmons paused for a moment. “I saw his girlfriend’s face, but I also saw the boyfriend, too. I don’t know if it’s what it looks like. We’ve been so focused on the mall, we haven’t even done any proper forensics.”

Rios folded his arms. “What about the parking officer?”

“I don’t know. We just don’t know yet. When you talked to the people at the diner, the ones inside, did they say anything different than what other witnesses have said?” asked Simmons.

“They could identify him. Not much else.”

Simmons bit the edge of a nail as she thought. “What did they say about the people who chased after him?”

Rios pulled a notebook from his back pocket and looked at it. “They said it looked like they wanted to kill him, which is understandable.”

“Did they say ‘kill’ specifically?”

Rios looked back at his notes. “One of them said ‘murder.’ Another said ‘tear apart.’”

“Those are some pretty harsh words for someone doing a smash-and-grab.”

“I think after what happened at the mall today half this city would like to murder him.”

Simmons held up a finger. Something just came to her. “You said the people chasing him didn’t know who he was?”

“Yeah, but they saw the other man chasing after him.”

“The trucker with the gun? They didn’t know him, either?” asked Simmons.

“Yeah, he was the one who caught him breaking into the other truck.”

“Wait a second.” Simmons looked down the street toward the truck stop. “If you hear a gun go off and look out the window and see a man running away from another man with a gun, who do you think the victim is, assuming the guy with the gun isn’t a cop?”

Rios arched an eyebrow.

Simmons continued. “The men in the diner who went outside, automatically, without hesitation, go into vigilante mode and decide to chase after Mitchell Roberts? They ignore the man with the gun and decide they have to murder the guy trying to run away? That’s messed up. It doesn’t make sense.”

Simmons walked over to the hood of the truck. She kneeled down to look at a bloody smear near the driver’s side door. “Did the men who chased him have any injuries?”

“A few. I saw some cuts on their faces and a lot of bloody knuckles.”

“From what?” asked Simmons.

“Trying to get him out of the cab, according to the people in the diner.”

“Who uses their forehead to try to smash open a window?” She pointed to a bloody print on the metal bracing around the windshield. “Or beats their hands into a pulp smashing a steel frame?”

Rios shrugged. “I’ve seen that lots of times.”

“On someone who wasn’t psychotic or on drugs?”

“Well…”

“Me neither. Let me ask you another question. When you saw the men back there, what made you think it was Mitchell Roberts? Was it the statements from the people in the diner? And I’m not talking about the fact that we’re only two miles away from one of the stakeouts.”

Rios got her point. “The injuries on their faces. They reminded me of this morning and the mall.”

“What can we say about the injuries here and at the mall as far as cause?”

Rios nodded. “For the most part, they were self-inflicted while they were pursuing the suspect. He paused for a moment. “So you think the injuries this morning were self-inflicted, as well?”

“It would seem to fit the pattern. All of the injuries were the result of chasing Roberts,” said Simmons.

Rios shook his head. His mind went back to the grisly scene at the escalator and the people who fell off the roof. “You saw what happened back at the mall. Who in their right mind would let that happen?”

“Someone scared, Rios. Someone running for their life who can’t stop to look back.”

Simmons pointed to the bloody knuckle prints on the hood and then took a step back from the wrecked tractor-trailer truck. “These people weren’t chasing the devil. He was running from it.”