Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

"That's real helpful," Lockwood said, smiling. "But we'd like to get in touch with Tashay Roberts. We checked the address on Court Road in Tampa; nobody answers the door."

"She and Shiff are down in Miami. He's got a gig down there. Left last night. She dropped by an' gimme two tickets… like I'm gonna go down there an' listen to that stringbean holler into a twenty-dollar sound system. I can hear better music sitting right here, listening to drunks fart."

"If you're not using the tickets, we'll take 'em," Lockwood said.

"Let's see here…" He reached into his pocket slowly; then, not finding them, into his desk drawer. He finally extracted two tickets and held them up. "Twenty dollars gets you into seats C-16 and 17, front an' center. Ear and nose plugs are extra."

Lockwood pulled out his wallet and dropped the twenty on the desk. "That hand she got sent, is it still in the Tampa morgue?" he asked as Zeno handed him the tickets.

"Far as I know. But it ain't got no fingertips so y'can't print it…"

"I wanna get a blood type and tissue match. I think it came off a dead woman in Atlanta."

"You go on up there an' talk to Deke Sanders. Dr. Death… dead bodies, bad jokes, and Muzak. Runs that icebox like it was the fuckin' Tonight Show. You laugh at his jokes, he'll give you anything you want."

Lockwood looked at Karen. "Anything more you wanna ask him?"

"Down here," Zeno said, "the men do the investigatin' an' the ladies string the yellow tape an' chalk up the sidewalk." He turned and smiled at Karen. "But go on an' ask anyway, Honey."

"You ever sleep with your stepdaughter?" Karen deadpanned.

Zeno sat up straight in the chair. It was as if she'd lit him up with a thousand volts. Then he started to flush and stammer. "Uh… I… What you talkin"bout? What the hell kinda dumb-ass question is that? 'Course not. Why don't you two get outta here? I got a heapa things to attend to."

Karen got up; as they left, a light sheen of sweat had already started to form on Carl Zeno's forehead.

Outside the sub-station, Lockwood stopped her before they got into the car. "Bull's-eye, but where did that come from?"

"Guy was pissing me off"

"How did you know?" He grinned at her.

"Picture of his family behind the desk. I figured the sexy one was Tashay. He was holding her closer than his wife. And that story about her dropping off the tickets… She drives all the way down here to give that slimeball two tickets instead of mailing 'em? And the way he said she was easy on the eyes. I don't know, it just hit me as possible."

Lockwood smiled as he got into the car. The best cops always had that instinct: the ability to play streaky hunches that sometimes defied logic but hit the 10 ring. Often that ability could make a case. You couldn't teach it; it didn't come with a uniform or badge, or in the long, tedious classes at Quantico. You got issued that instinct by a higher power.

He'd once been trying to arrest a child pornographer in a small Georgia town. The investigation had led him to a psychologist who treated disturbed children. He'd been there just to get background information, but he'd looked at the photographs of children on the wall and knew instinctively that he was talking to the perp… It was such a long shot, it was off the boards. But he knew the child psychologist was molesting the children. There was something strangely sexual about the innocent pictures. Lockwood couldn't describe it or say how he knew, but he did. He set up a stakeout and busted the doctor two nights later.

The five o'clock news had the whole story. The Rat watched it on the television in the darkened hull of the rusting barge. The generator hummed outside, causing a pleasant vibration in the hull. He saw what was left of his house on the newscast… scattered debris, the smoking ruins. He saw the picture of Malavida Chacone with his prn number across his chest. The field correspondent, Trisha Rains, said Chacone was a famous computer criminal. And then The Rat knew where he'd heard the name. The black eyes of the Mexican convict stared straight at him from the TV and bored holes of pain through The Rat's head. Malavida was a famous cracker, some said the best ever. He'd read about the "Mac Attack" in computer journals. The Rat now knew it was Chacone who had penetrated his secret chat room on the Internet. Killing the woman in Studio City had solved nothing. It had only made things worse, because now there was this other man, this Customs agent whom the newscasts had mentioned.

The Rat had been clever and lucky. The bomb in his basement had gotten Chacone. The newscast said that he was hanging between life and death in a Miami hospital. The Rat wondered if he could use his computer to find a way to cut the cord. Then the story switched to John Lockwood. It showed a picture of a handsome, dark-haired man standing at the crime scene. Next to him was a woman. Her back was to the camera. She was identified as Dr. Karen Dawson. The Rat moved closer to the TV screen and leaned in, looking intently at the woman. Then she turned and he could see her more clearly. It was the woman he had caught snooping at his house. He was troubled and frightened. The newscast ended, but The Rat remained unusually agitated for a long time.

Malavida Chacone, John Lockwood, Karen Dawson… What was the significance? Was it a sign? What should he do?

"When cornered, The Rat fights." His voice echoed in the hollow barge. Then he turned to his shelf of cracking tools. He selected his best UNIX cracking kit. He booted up his Toshiba notebook. When it was up, he slipped the program into the machine. He would start with John Lockwood and the Government computer at U. S. Customs. He hunched over his keyboard, his body damp with sweat. His fingers danced on the plastic stage before him…

The Loomis Theater was on Fourth Street and Miami Avenue, a half block from the downtown bus terminal. It was in a bad neighborhood. Taggers had scrawled bizarre artwork everywhere. The old theater had been shut down for almost two years, giving up its audience to the busy mall Cineplex Theaters. The Loomis had three hundred seats and a steeple tower that rose two stories above the marquee. Pasted onto the billboard was a sign scrawled in Magic Marker on butcher paper:

BABY KILLER FEATURING SATAN T. BONE TONIGHT 8:30 P. M.

The doors opened at eight and approximately a hundred lost souls wandered into the theater, high-fiving each other and laughing too loud. Outrageous colored hair was hiked and spiked. The audience wore leather, see-through tops, tattoos, punk rock jewelry, pimples. The concert started, as promised, at eight-thirty.

The sound was discordant and horrible. Lockwood and Karen pulled up and parked across the street, then moved toward the Loomis. Even outside they could hear Satan's horrible, raspy voice. There seemed to be almost no melody to the music. Percussion, bass guitars, and a hammering keyboard competed viciously with each other. Satan screamed out the lyrics like an umpire calling out a slide at home plate.

Cut off their tits while they sit on your dicks. It's a burnout, brother, burnout.

Make 'em be brava while they suck-a your flava. It's a burnout… baby, burnout.

Righteous and rich, bloody the bitch.

It's a redneck burnout, yeah.

There was nobody to take the tickets at the door, so they just went inside and stood near the back. The theater was musty and underlit.

Faded red-velvet curtains lined both walls. To both Lockwood and Karen, the spectacle was close to indescribable. Satan T. Bone strutted on the stage like a wild animal. His long, stringy black hair and the tattoos under his eyes made him ghoulish. He was, as Zeno had said, only about a hundred pounds, and was stripped to the waist, wearing leather pants. His nipple jewelry swung against his hairless, skinny, sweat-soaked chest. He harangued the audience, screaming and growling into the mike. Behind him, on the small stage, the other members of Baby Killer were beating on their instruments as if they hated them. Lockwood thought they didn't even seem to be playing the same song.