Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

All week he had worked to make a new program that would be even more secure. It would protect him by using a leapfrog Internet address which was designed to work as an electronic trap. Anybody backfingering to that address would be busted by his alarm program and he would be alerted before they could get to him, allowing him to disconnect from Pennet and vanish into cyberspace.

The Rat knew it was time for a new coveting to begin. He would go back into the SurgiCyberNet, which was where he made all his parts selections for the Beast. It was where he had been given the message almost two years ago that told him how to proceed. He logged on and typed in the name of his electronic trap:

Iogflnger

He then telnetted to Pennet at:

rIng2Ice. Anon. Pennet. No

And his screen said:

Connected to rIng2Ice. Anon. Pennet. No Escape character Is 'Ar

SunOS UNIX (rIng2Ice)

login:

And the password:

Mutil8oR

And was quickly accepted into Pennet:

WELCOME TO PENNET, rat

He checked the private chat channel to see if Satan might be there, typing:

bbs/nick WIndMInstrel

And was greeted by:

WELCOME TO PENNET CHAT, WIndMInstrel

When he saw Satan wasn't there, he left chat and shot through Pennet and out into cyberspace, then cracked the SurgiCyberNet system with a username/password he had already cracked months ago. SurgiCyberNet was a network for plastic surgeons, who left "before" and "after" pictures of patients and procedures so that they could share new techniques. The Rat had found the SurgiCyberNet chat line two years ago and had begun scrolling avidly through pictures of naked women. Its symbol on the Internet was G. The symbol had fascinated him. The S inside the C seemed to beckon him. S was Shirley's initial; C and S stood for cyberspace, which was his most powerful universe. Could this be a sign? As he looked at the pictures of naked women, his mind was still on the symbol. Then, by accident, he came across a picture of a woman who had unshaven legs and stocky, Shirley-like ankles. Shirley had never shaved her legs, because she said shaving one's appendages to attract sexual favors offended God. The Rat looked at the picture of the woman with Shirley's ankles for hours. Her name was Leslie Bowers and she was scheduled for liposuction on her thighs. It was almost as if Shirley's lower legs were there on the screen. His heart pounded and he wondered how two people could have identical calves and ankles. Had God also told this woman not to shave her legs? Then a mind-numbing thought hit him: Unless Shirley and the woman had a genuine correlation in the universe, unless they were part of the exact same eternal mosaic, how could they have calves and ankles that looked exactly the same? He knew that no two faces or fingerprints were identical. With legs, of course, there were far fewer identifiers, but still the thought intrigued him. It buzzed in his head like a broken speaker for days. It plagued him at night and kept him awake.

He had returned to the SurgiCyberNet chat line every evening. Each time, he would find Leslie Bowers's picture and surgical data. Then one night, he saw the message! Under the picture of Leslie Bowers, it said:

Surgery date 1/13/94 And below that:

Had the surgery date been revised from the thirteenth to the fifteenth?

He wondered if it could mean something else. Could it be a clever message? The Rat had learned that numerals were often disguised messages. And then the true meaning screamed at him… How could he have missed it? He ran upstairs and found Shirley's Bible. His hands shook as he looked up chapter 13 of Revelation and read verses 13 and 14:

And he doeth great wonders… And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth, by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

He read on to verse 15, his throat dry, his mouth open:

And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

It had taken a great deal of effort not to shout his joy. He had found the answer. He should make the image of a Beast… He had long known that he had the mark of the Beast on him. Shirley had told him, when he got the sickness and all of his hair fell out, that he had been marked by the devil. Revelation 13:15 said that he had the power to give the miracle of life unto the image of the Beast, that the image of the Beast should speak, and that all who would not worship the image would be killed… He knew this message this from the Anti-Christ, and the clever devil had used the Lord's own testament to send it, using a woman who had Shirley's unshaven legs as the messenger.

From then on, his mission had been clear. He would construct the Beast. Shirley had all the answers and so it was Shirley to whom he had to give life. That prophecy in Revelation had been made clear to him two years ago. It had been the beginning of the reconstruction and resurrection. The Rat had learned to covet and The Wind Minstrel had come forward in all his glory to swing the sword of reckoning. The first victim had been Leslie Bowers. She lived in Detroit. Her fat calves and ankles were in a freezer not ten feet from where he now sat in the rusting garbage barge. There had been five others who had contributed to the Beast; everything was there but the head. But the head was a special problem. It had to look exactly like Shirley. The head would be his final victim.

Malavida had driven Karen across to St. Petersburg early the next morning. She had checked into the Comfort Inn, which was well positioned, right on the bay. They had stood in the parking lot, holding hands in silence. "I better get back," he'd finally said. They both felt awkward, wondering if they had true affection for each other or had just taken care of long-overdue emotional and biological needs.

"I'll call you. Get all that stuff set up on the balcony," he'd said, then gotten into his rental van and driven back to Tampa. That had been four hours ago.

In his motel room, Malavida's computer picked up the tones of The Rat's login and rang an alarm, bringing him in from the balcony where he'd been setting up his direction finder. He grabbed his phone and dialed Karen Dawson's cellular. Karen picked up on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"He's hot." Malavida looked at his computer screen, which had captured the exact frequency of The Rat's cellphone:

876.000 MHz

"See if you've got anything on eight-seventy-six megahertz," Malavida said, and both of them were silent as they carefully twisted their antennas. He could now hear the sound of electronic static, indicating that on 876 megahertz he had a cellphone in use with a modem somewhere on the Tampa pod. "I got it!" he said.

"Me too," she answered.

"Find the null point and gimme the degrees," he commanded.

Karen had her radio unit and loop antenna out on the tenth-floor balcony of the Comfort Inn, overlooking the windswept bay. She twisted the antenna loop until she could no longer hear the transmission static, quickly finding the null point. She laid the Boy Scout compass that Malavida had given her on the table and rotated it to line up with the loop antenna.

"One hundred and sixty-four degrees," she said into the telephone. Malavida, with his phone cocked under his ear, also found the null point. His compass said 193 degrees.

"Hold on a second," he told her and ran inside. He laid his compass on the map. He found Karen's coordinates first. He had marked her hotel's location at the end of the Howard Frankland Bridge on Highway 275 with a big X. He marked a course 164 degrees from that location and drew a line with a pencil and ruler. Then, from his own location, he found 193 degrees and drew another line.