Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

When the screen went dark in Claire's den, it took a moment before the three of them said anything. The first to speak was Malavida: "That is one very sick puppy.

"I told you this remailer was a cesspool!" Karen said in triumph.

"It could just be a couple of white squirrels getting off, trying to horrify each other," Lockwood said, not really believing it. The ungodly nature of the messages rang true.

Karen got up from her seat and started pacing around the room. "You don't believe that and neither do I… All that religious stuff, all that ersatz fire and brimstone, that's Grade A sexual repression. 'The wicked do not suffer punishment in the eternal hell and are not destroyed or annihilated in a special mosaic of cleansing.'… That sure ain't 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' "

Karen Dawson impressed Malavida more and more.

"Listen, guys… this is something. I know it," she said. "The Rat sounds like a serial psychopath. According to him, he's on a two-week degenerating cycle. He said the coveting begins much earlier now, and he has to slow it down by mailing totems."

"What's a totem?" Malavida asked.

"It's a trophy," Lockwood said. "A body part… In this case, it sounds like he sent someone a hand."

"Get the fuck outta here," Malavida said in shock.

"Look, we've gotta go cross-check this through the FBI's VICAP serial crime computer in Washington," Karen said. "He said he killed and mutilated somebody in Atlanta. There's got to be a record of that.

Let's get outta here." She moved to the desk and started to help Malavida unhook the modem from the phone and disconnect the monitor from the PC.

"We gotta get Malavida back to Lompoc," Lockwood reminded her. "I gotta drop him at the Burbank sub-station. I've made arrangements with the L. A. Sheriff to transport him up there tonight."

Malavida had been dreading this moment and now he made his play. "You're making a mistake, Jefe," he said. It was one of the few times he looked straight at Lockwood.

"I'm sure I am, but it happens all the time, so I don't let it bother me."

Malavida finished unhooking the computer and they moved the stuff into the living room, where Claire was standing with Heather.

"This guy constructed an invisible chat channel on the Internet," Malavida continued. "You know how hard that is to do? Forget for a moment that he's going around killing people. This guy is a real ace computer hacker. Nobody but me would have ever found that room, let alone gotten in there. He may even know we cracked in." That thought had been bothering Malavida. In his haste, he had not bothered to mask their location. "If he does know we were lurking, he'll be even tougher to find. If you ever want to catch him, you're gonna need me. Nobody else could do it. Certainly not that bunch of middle-lane road dogs you got working for you in Customs. I'll shoot this puke down… You got the Snoopy double-your-money-back guarantee."

"That's great, but I still have to get you back to the Federal pen or take a pile of heat, and I still have to catch the six o'clock flight out of Burbank to make my Internal Affairs hearing Monday morning."

"Take me with you, Karen," Malavida said, his eyes turning soft as a puppy in the pound. "I can help you. Honest, I can. What good am I gonna do you in prn? You'll be wasting a generic resource."

"Wasting a generic resource?" Lockwood said, amazed.

Then Karen nodded her head. "You should've seen him. He went through that computer's security like he had Nintendo magic mushrooms. I can't do what he can. Our only other choice is to just walk away from this, and I think this Wind Minstrel guy, or Rat or whoever he is, is white-hot. He's degenerating. If he's for real, he could kill again in two weeks or less."

"Okay," Lockwood said after almost no thought. "I'm probably gonna get benched by IA tomorrow anyway. I might as well go ahead and clobber my pension while I'm at it."

They loaded the stuff in the trunk of the LeBaron, and Lockwood went back to say good-bye to Heather. Claire was standing by the door with her hands on her hips and watched while he hugged and kissed his daughter. Then he faced Claire. She was so beautiful he was momentarily stopped. The afternoon light played on her face and made his heart ache… How could he have let this divorce happen? He could find no words, so he walked back across the street, but she dogged him. When he turned and faced her, he was looking into ice-cold Nordic blue eyes.

"Thanks for bringing a convict over to meet our daughter, John."

"Claire, he's just a computer hacker. He wouldn't hurt anybody."

"One of these days, you're gonna get a sobering experience. I just hope it grows you up before somebody else gets hurt." Then she turned and walked back across the street and into the house. She never looked back.

At seven o'clock Sunday evening, the blue-and-white Citation jet climbed out of a dingy brown smogbank that was choking L. A. and headed east across the San Gabriel Mountains.

Before it was seized by the U. S. Customs, the plane had belonged to a Colombian drug dealer who had outfitted it with a TV, videos, and electronic games. Malavida had found some Nintendo software and hooked it up. He had his feet up on the couch, halfheartedly playing Donkey Kong, gonzoing dinosaurs and collecting massive bunches of electronic bananas, while Karen began to construct a criminal profile of the man they had found on Pennet. She took out a yellow legal pad. Under "The Rat," she wrote: "a. K. A. 'Wind Minstrel'-male, probably Caucasian. Twenty-five to thirty-five, organized, compulsive, bad self-image… nocturnal?"

Across the aisle, Lockwood was on the Airfone trying to hose down an angry Harvey Knox.

"Look, Harvey, I know what you're saying and, believe me, if I could have gotten him back there by Sunday night, I would have. But this thing just started growing on me. I can't let him go back for a couple more days. You gotta call the prn for me, give 'em the big okey-dokey from DOJ."

"John, you kill me. I told you this was in the margin to begin with." Harvey's voice squeaked over the Airfone.

"Yeah, I know, but he's in custody, cuffed to a bed. Wanna talk to him?" He didn't wait for an answer. He put his hand over the receiver. "Hey, Malavida, pause that thing. This is Mr. Harvey Knox… He's your stay-out-of-jail card, so be nice. The answer to any question he asks is: 'Mr. Lockwood told me I can't say anything about that.' "

Malavida paused the Donkey Kong and moved back and took the phone. "This is Malavida Chacone. It's a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Knox," he said in perfect, unaccented English.

"Where are you guys? You in Lompoc?" Harvey asked.

"Well, sir, Mr. Lockwood said I can't say anything about that." He looked over at Lockwood who raised his eyebrow and nodded approval. "But, sir… I'm being very well guarded, and I promise there will be no problem, and I think I'm really helping the U. S. Prosecutor with this case."

"Who's prosecuting? Who you working with?"

"Mr. Lockwood said I can't say anything about that." Chacone repeated the sentence again as Lockwood smiled, put his feet up on the facing chair, and picked up a newspaper.

"Mr. Chacone, would you be kind enough to put that son-of-abitch Lockwood back on?"

"Yes, sir. And it was a pleasure making your acquaintance."

Malavida handed the phone to Lockwood and went back to Donkey Kong.

It took Lockwood another five minutes to strike the right note with Harvey, who reluctantly agreed to make the call to the prn. The phone connection started to get weak as they passed out of California.

"Where're you calling from? This line sounds funny. You in the air? You're in the air, aren't you, you son-of-a-bitch!"