Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

Then, as if by magic, he was somewhere else, strapped on a plank before an altar, while God screeched at him through huge speakers in a voice that growled and barked. God threatened him with more fire and scorned his weakness. The Almighty cursed his impotent wretchedness. Leonard shuddered and cried in fear. The Rat calculated his odds and schemed and lied, telling God he worshiped Christ and the Apostles. It was then that The Wind Minstrel appeared before them. God stopped screaming. Suddenly it was very quiet. Leonard was still strapped down before the altar, unable to move. He whimpered and The Rat looked over Leonard's bloated stomach at the apparition… Physically, The Wind Minstrel was exactly like Leonard, only somehow he was also very different. He had beauty and authority. He could get erections. The Rat instantly worshiped him.

The Wind Minstrel told The Rat that Leonard would always be a supplicant, always be afraid, because he believed in Christ and the Apostles. Doctrine, The Wind Minstrel explained, was inflexible. Inflexible things were brittle and could be broken. You only had to see the way. And while he slept and dreamed, The Wind Minstrel let him see. In the dream, The Wind Minstrel entered him. The Rat knew it was sexual, but it was also spiritual. While he slept, for the last time in his life, Leonard became erect, but The Rat saw true everlasting glory. He saw the way it could be. He knew God would no longer control him. From now on he would break God's doctrines. He would fight against Christ and the Apostles. Leonard never dreamed about The Rat or The Wind Minstrel again. He never remembered what they did, although they shared his body.

After the dream The Rat had a direction… That night he decided he would set fire to the house and kill Shirley.

The Tampa police set up a crime-scene perimeter around the remains of the house and started to sort through the evidence. By ten A. M Monday morning there were twenty reporters and three TV news crews. Nobody respected the police crime-scene tape.

Lockwood and Karen tried to supervise the Tampa police, but Detective Grady Raynor pulled them off the scene and made them sit in the back of his car, under threat of arrest. They watched helplessly while news crews trampled through the smoking rubble and did stand-ups in front of the missing house. Karen's mind was far away. She was thinking of Malavida. He had looked so vulnerable on the gurney. She was still having trouble sorting out the way she felt about him. Was it something to preserve, or was she again just tempting fate?

"If there's any evidence here at all, it's been contaminated by this circus," Lockwood said, interrupting her thoughts.

Karen nodded. "Maybe we oughta run some of this new stuff through VICAP," she said, bringing herself out of it. She forced herself to focus on the problem. "We've got some pretty good partial data on Leonard Land. A computer hacker, mutilations, maybe he's got a record somewhere. Maybe we even have enough to get a match on some more killings."

"Good idea, if we can get away from Barney Fife over there," he said, nodding toward Grady Raynor, who was doing a stand-up interview for a local news station.

"Lemme give that problem a little attention," she said, and got out of the car, heading over to where Grady was blowing hot air at a black field reporter named Trisha Rains.

"Right now," Raynor was saying to the camera, "we know that this property was rented by a man named Leonard Land. We're checking for State Tax Board employment records. No charges have yet been filed against Mr. Land, but this explosion was caused by unnatural products. A well-known computer criminal named Carlos `Malavida' Chacone was also involved and is critically injured…"

"Can you tell us a little more about Malavida Chacone's condition?" Trisha Rains asked, her straightened black hair bobbing and beginning to lose its tight set in the oppressive morning heat.

"He was a fugitive from justice and is now back in the hospital being closely guarded. If he survives his injuries, he will be transported back to Lompoc, California, where he was doing time before he was released by a Customs agent named John Lockwood. We're still trying to get to the bottom of that." He paused, wondering if he'd said too much. "That's about all I can say for now," he concluded.

The camera crew shut off their lights and Trisha Rains put a hand on the back of her neck, holding her hair away to cool herself.

"I need a reverse. We can shoot it over by the house. Get the smoking remains over my shoulder," she said to her crew, and they moved off, leaving Grady Raynor smiling. He then saw Karen as she held up her cellphone.

"Just got a call from my SAC in D. C. and my District Supervr down here. They want me and Lockwood back, at the Federal Building in Tampa, forthwith."

"In the words of that great American sports legend George Steinbrenner, 'Fuck 'em.' "

"Hey, Detective, I'm just a bystander here, but your best bet of holding on to this case, which is about two hours away from going national, is to set up a joint-op with Customs. If you don't, they're gonna go over your head to the Governor and you're gonna be up in the bleachers with Steinbrenner eating a foot-long."

He looked at her for a puzzling moment while his walnut-sized brain calculated the truth in her remark.

"You do this for me, and I'll do a Grady Raynor commercial at Justice," she added. Then another news crew moved in, looking for a statement. They turned on their lights. Raynor's eyes darted over to them, anxious to get at it.

"Okay. You gimme a number where I can reach you." "We're at the Best Western in Tampa, the one by the water."

"Roommates?" he said, a leer creeping up on his drganized, pockmarked face.

"Grow up, Detective," she said softly.

"Lou," he yelled at a police lieutenant in a brown uniform, "take these two back to Tampa an' drop 'em at the Federal Building. Stay with 'em."

The lieutenant handled the first part of the order, not the second.

They called a cab from the lobby of the Federal Building and slipped away from their police guard through a side door. They picked up Karen's car at the boat rental, drove over and got Leonard Land's dark blue truck at the Tampa hospital, then headed back to the Best Western, packed everything, and checked out. It was noon by the time they stood in the dense heat in the parking lot, trying to decide where to go.

"Let's get a place in St. Pete or in Clearwater," Lockwood said.

"We get out of this dickhead's jurisdiction, maybe get a little breathing room."

"I drove through Clearwater Beach yesterday. There's an EconoLodge near the water, with special rates," she volunteered.

He nodded and they drove out of the parking lot. Lockwood, in Leonard's truck, followed Karen's rental car. They crossed Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Causeway, drove through Clearwater, then took the smaller Garden Memorial Causeway over to Clearwater Beach.

They rented two rooms at the Econo-Lodge. The accommodations were clean, bland, and decorated in pastels. Both had windows that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico across a wide, sandy beach. It was almost three in the afternoon by the time they had all of this accomplished.

"I'm going to run this reg slip with DMV and load this new stuff into VICAP," she said. "I can use the modem on my laptop, then go right into the system from here."

"Okay. While you're doing that, I'll go through the truck, see if anything lives there we can use." She nodded and went inside.

He looked down and saw some of Malavida's dried blood in the truck bed. He wondered how Mal was doing. He and Karen had discussed going down to Miami and sitting there until Malavida was out of danger. After a spirited argument, he had convinced her to discard the idea as sentimentally worthwhile, but operationally stupid. He knew it would be a game-ending move for him. He was a loose cannon by anybody's calculation. Going to Miami was an invitation to an arrest. He knew, so far, he was good for at least one count of obstructing justice; probably also good for felonious malfeasance of duty, and aiding and abetting a prner during an escape. That charge was probably beatable, but not the reckless endangerment of a prner, impersonating an officer, withholding evidence… The list was endless.