Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

"Keep going," Malavida finally said. "Use the paddle."

Lockwood put the paddle into the water and pulled them along. The late-afternoon sun glistened on the rippling water. The desolate beauty somehow managed to steal from their sense of danger. Karen found herself watching wild flowers and brightly colored swamp birds hopping from limb to limb, flying low among the river foliage.

They rounded a corner and almost ran smack into it. Tied to a tree with a rusting chain and two ropes, it loomed in ghastly decaying ugliness. It was some sort of old metal garbage barge. Lockwood estimated it was about two stories high and maybe thirty feet wide. Painted on the stern, in faded chipped letters, was WIND MINSTREL.

Lockwood pointed at the name, and Karen and Malavida nodded, their lips tight.

"Okay," Lockwood whispered, "let's beach it over there."

He paddled the aluminum boat silently toward the wall of reeds and the bottom slid up on the marshy, shell-encrusted ground, making a slurpy, scratching sound as it stopped. They got out, ruining their shoes with river mud.

Lockwood motioned with the gun, and they pulled the boat up out of sight and then silently moved away from it toward the barge. Lockwood wanted a visual reconnaissance before he moved in. They crouched in the reeds and looked at the barge in the gathering twilight. From the side, it appeared much larger than he had originally anticipated. It was at least a hundred feet long.

"Okay, I'm going in. You stay out here and make sure I don't get surprised…"

"You any good with that thing?" Malavida asked, pointing at the.45.

"Not much," Lockwood admitted.)

"I'm going with you. I'm not gonna do you any good out here. At least I can throw a punch."

Lockwood nodded. "But Karen, you gotta stay here and watch the back door. If this guy's aboard, that's one thing. If he's not, I don't want him coming in behind us." He handed her one walkie-talkie, which was set on Channel 72. He kept the other unit himself. "It's on. If you need help, trigger it twice. Two static bursts and we're back out here. If anybody's coming up behind us, give us one."

"Okay." Her voice was tight and she looked scared, but he knew she wouldn't bolt or go soft in the clinch. He motioned to Malavida. "Okay, Ladron, it's you and me."

"Let's go, Zanzo."

They moved around to the right, looking for hard ground, which they found a few yards upriver. Moving in a crouch, they headed toward the small ramp that led from the ground to a door cut halfway up in the vertical face of the hull. It appeared to be a hatch that had been used to off-load garbage from amidships.

Lockwood went first, with the gun at port arms. He moved up the ramp with Malavida on his heels. Lockwood pushed the door gently, but the rusting hinges squealed loudly. Lockwood froze and listened for movement. There was nothing, so he pushed it farther open, ducked quickly through the hatch opening, and pressed himself flat against the interior wall. Malavida came in behind him.

It was humid and dank inside. The walls reeked with the smell of old refuse. Lockwood's stomach leapt up in his throat. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he moved along a narrow gangplank to a descending ladderway. He glanced back at Malavida, whose face was tight and eyes large. "Here," Lockwood said, handing him the.45. "Cover me. I'm going down the ladder."

Malavida took the gun as Lockwood turned and climbed down the metal ladder. His back was to the huge open hold. He was an easy target as he climbed down. His neck hairs and shoulder muscles tingled as he risked exposure. Malavida watched the dark companionway, staring out at the blackness, his mouth open so he wouldn't have to breathe the stench through his nose.

Lockwood reached the bottom of the ladder. "Throw it down," he whispered. "Put the safety on first."

Malavida pushed the safety on and dropped the gun down to Lockwood, who caught it; then Malavida climbed down the ladder while Lockwood covered him…

Karen was in the weeds and brambles, holding the walkie-talkie. She moved slowly to her right so that she could get a better view of the barge. The dense brush and thorns ripped at her ankles. Then she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned and glimpsed a shape moving some distance away through the reeds. She didn't know if it was a man or an animal, but it was large. She turned and edged in the direction of the moving form, which had now disappeared. Her problem-solving mind instantly calculated that there must be a path over there, because she had heard no reeds or underbrush snapping as the figure passed. She moved slowly in that direction, her hand on the button of the walkie-talkie.

She came out of the dense brush and saw there was a one-lane dirt road cut through the foliage that was wide enough to accommodate a car. She edged out onto the road and looked in the direction the shape had been moving. Off in the distance, through the dense reeds, she could barely make out something that was painted a pale shade of blue. She moved toward it, hugging the overgrown dense brush at the side of the road. Then she saw the pale-blue house…

It was about twenty yards away. The yard was cut from the thick surrounding underbrush; the roof was pitched and the entire structure made of wood. A well-maintained porch fronted the house and in the yard were several old cars, a bicycle, and a swing. It was picturesque… a peaceful house deep in the middle of a lush watery swamp.

Lockwood and Malavida opened the large hull door and found themselves in the center hold of the barge. This was the main area where the garbage was once carried. The metal hatch overhead was rusting, and when Lockwood and Malavida looked up, they could see only a few pinholes of sunlight leaking through. Malavida found a light switch and turned it on.

It was hard to believe what they saw. The computers were all brand-new warp-speed, superhighway monsters from Toshiba. There were three of them, all placed neatly on a wooden desk pushed against the rusting hull. Also on the desk was an external 28.8 modem with a line-conditioner. There were hundreds of utility disks in disk holders on a free-standing wooden bookshelf. Malavida moved to them and started rummaging through the index tabs.

"He's got it all… various flavors of UNIX, crackers for UNIX, VMS, Novell, 'elite' addresses on the Internet, CERT security advries… He's fully locked and loaded." Malavida glanced at Lockwood, who was moving toward a coffin-sized freezer. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Over the freezer, taped to the wall, was a large blowup of an old photograph.

"The fuck is this?" Lockwood said. It was a picture of a woman with dishwater-blond hair. She was in a bathing suit, standing next to a tree. There was a portable pool out of focus behind her. The woman was holding a cat and smiling into the camera lens. Her body was muscular but trim; she had even rows of teeth and iridescent eyes. But her smile was mean, mixed with a defiant glare. The thing that was strange about the photograph was that certain parts of her body had been transected with a dark Magic Marker. The legs and arms were numbered and dated; so were both feet and the torso. Lockwood took a mental picture of the photograph.

Then the walkie-talkie erupted with two frantic blasts of static and went dead.

Lockwood looked at Malavida and they took off, climbing quickly up the stairs, running along the interior gangway, and exploding out of the barge into the evening darkness. The sound of night birds greeted them as they ran down the ramp. Malavida looked where they had left Karen, but she was gone. Then they heard her scream.

Lockwood and Malavida bolted in that direction. They were moving through a wall of heavy brush, crashing through thickets, tearing their skin on brambles and thorns. They plunged on blindly, Lockwood leading the way… until the ripping thorns became too painful.** then Malavida pushed past him and took the lead.