Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

"You're wanted for a double police murder in Illinois and you put a round in one of my men."

"You came through the door waving a machine gun. You never identified yourself as a cop! Who taught you your hard-entry tactics? You fucked up!" Lockwood shouted back.

Both of them were still yelling as the Watch Commander hit the scene. He was a bull-necked sixty-year-old captain named Fred T. Fredrickson. In Miami police circles, he was known as Fred T. Fred. He had thirty years on the force, a command persona, and a no-nonsense, take-charge presence in a crisis. The minute he arrived, everybody settled down.

As the sun came up over Miami, Lockwood and Karen were transported to the Dade County Sheriff's Office in the backs of two separate squad cars. They drove past The Rat, who watched from his rental car across the street. He had heard the gunfire and been sure they would be killed. His nipples were on fire. They had been burning all afternoon; his skin was tender and growing red. A sign that The Wind Minstrel was coming. As he watched Lockwood and Dawson being taken away, he wondered if they were archangels, sent from heaven. How else could they have managed to survive?

Vic Kulack arrived in Miami with Lockwood's Federal arrest warrant in his pocket. The last time Kulack had been in South Florida had been a disaster for him. He had left in defeat with an official reprimand because of the cluster-fuck during the take-down on Operation Girlfriend. All of his troubles after that had been courtesy of John Lockwood. It was one thing to have Lockwood go stress-related and have him run through a head check in Washington… but this was too good to be true. This was the all-time, outta-the-park, bounce-it-in-the-parkinglot home run.

He was picked up by an IA-ASAC from the Miami office named "Pecos Bill" Broder. Broder had been raised in Texas and had an accent you could hang a Stetson on. He had been Kulack's second-incommand on the IA investigation on Operation Girlfriend and shared Kulack's hearty dislike for Lockwood. As they rode across town to the Dade County Sheriff's Office, Broder filled Kulack in.

"They got our boy strung up t'the barn door," Broder drawled. "The list a'shit he's pulled this time is impressive, even by his standards. In descending order: He put a hole in a SWAT commando, hit a cop at Jackson Memorial, and ditched a police escort at a crime scene. He also moved evidence, the suspect's truck, I think. Dade Sheriff's recovered it last night, but as evidence, it's vomit. Got Malavida's blood and everybody's prints, including Karen Dawson's, all over it."

"Ah, yes," Kulack growled, "Awesome Dawson…" Kulack knew that since she was a civilian, there wasn't much he could get her for. Aiding and abetting, or maybe some after-the-fact bullshit. He'd elected to leave her off the warrant because she had juice at DOJ.

They arrived at the Dade County Sheriff's Office, and, once Kulack had checked in with the Extradite Transfer Office, he left Broder downstairs and was taken to a tobacco-colored room on the third floor. The Sheriff's main building was in downtown Miami, and Kulack thought the place looked like it had been designed by Plains Indians. It was a bunch of big, square structures with flat roofs that looked like a series of huge shoe boxes, which were called annexes because they'd been added over the years as the department grew to accommodate the ever-increasing need for South Florida law enforcement.

Kulack sat impatiently in a wood-backed chair in the windowless, badly ventilated interrogation room and waited.

His prner was finally led in by a detective. Kulack noted with displeasure that Lockwood wasn't in restraints, even though he had been arrested for a handful of Class A felonies.

"Shouldn't this piece of shit be handcuffed?" he said without waiting for an introduction.

The last to enter the room was the Watch Commander, Fredrickson. He closed the door behind him.

"I'm Captain Fred T. Fredrickson," he said, extending his hand. Kulack made no move to accept it.

"This douchebag walked a Federal convict out of Lompoc Prn using bad paper," Kulack said. "Then he gets him critically injured. He's not an active Customs Officer anymore, but he's down here pretending he's on the job, which is a violation of Title Eighteen of the U. S. Penal Code, Section Nine-Twelve: Impersonation of a Federal Officer. That's before he even gets around to plugging one of your guys and swinging on some poor schmuck working a folding chair at the hospital."

"Why don't you slow down," Fred T. Fred said as he found an empty seat and plopped down in it. "You're filling this little room up with exhaust."

"I got the paperwork here. I wanna get moving. I got a plane t'catch." Kulack pulled the warrant out of his pocket and smiled over at Lockwood. "If you're hoping that the DOAO is gonna pull your flaming gonads outta the campfire again, you're in for a big shock."

Lockwood let it all fly past. He saw no need to start up with Kulack. The game was over.

"You're a little rigid, friend," Fred T. Fred said, looking with disgust at Kulack's bulging, throbbing neck veins. "What happened down here was a mistake. Our SWAT team had bad information. Looks like this Leonard Land character hacked into the Customs computer, stole Lock-wood's picture and prints, then put it all in the NCIC database, along with a phony Illinois police report saying he killed two cops… Didn't happen. I think we should-"

"Not to be rude or undiplomatic," Kulack broke in, "but I really don't give a flying fuck what you think. This turkey is stuffed and already cooking. I wanna get him outta here."

"I think," Fred T. Fred said slowly, "we may have a serial killer operating in Southern Florida. I think this guy wants Lockwood, and John's agreed to be the bait."

"Unless you wanna file some paper with the A. G.'s office, it'll have to wait. I'm taking him with me now."

Kulack stood, pulled out his cuffs. "Turn around," he barked and, when Lockwood did, he slammed the bracelets down on his wrist. Lockwood hadn't been in cuffs since he'd been caught stealing cars as a juvenile. Yet this was the third set of bracelets he'd had slammed on him in less than twenty-four hours.

Kulack yanked him around and pushed him toward the door.

"You have to pick him up at the prners' exit. That's where the paperwork gets signed," Fred T. Fred told Kulack, who grunted and left them all standing there.

Lockwood rode down in an old, slow Otis four-man elevator with Captain Fredrickson. "Listen, Captain, you seem like a pretty okay guy… I'm worried about Karen Dawson.. "

"She's still upstairs. She'll be fine. She's about to get released."

"I know… but this guy who came after me, he probably was coming after both of us. She's a civilian. If I'm not here, she'll be walking around unprotected."

"Why don't you ask Kulack to take her back to Washington as a material witness?"

"He won't do it."

"Whatta you want me to do?"

"You've gotta put somebody on her… somebody who won't get faked out. The Rat is smart and he's dangerous. That computer of his is lethal. It's an offensive weapon. He can strike from long range through the phone lines. He almost got Malavida and he almost got me. We're only alive 'cause we got lucky."

The elevator door opened and Fred T. Fred looked at Lockwood. "I'm short-handed. I'd like to help, but I can't supply bodyguards to everyone who might get attacked. You should convince her to go back to Washington."

"I tried," Lockwood said. "She won't go."

"Then there's nothing I can do."

Kulack signed the papers and took custody of Lockwood minutes later. He shoved him out the door into the bright Florida sunshine.

Karen had been naked and sound asleep when the door to her room in the Ramada Inn had been kicked open. She caught a glimpse of three men in black rushing at her, but before she could sit up, they landed hard on top of her and pinned her to the bed. Then they dragged her up, naked, and cuffed her. She hadn't been patted down. Without any clothes on, she clearly wasn't armed. She'd been Mirandized, and for the next hour she'd been forced to sit in the backseat of a Miami Sheriff's car in a Ramada Inn terry-cloth robe and answer questions about the murder of some cops in Illinois. They had quizzed her repeatedly about her relationship to John Lockwood. She had endured it till sunup, when she'd been officially arrested and taken to the Sheriffs Office, where the interrogations began all over again. After a while, she guessed she was not going to be formally charged. She waived her right to an attorney to help calm things down, and eventually things seemed to get straightened out. She was told around ten that they had been arrested because Lock-wood's picture had been placed in the computer at the National Crime Information Center, along with an APB for his arrest for a double police homicide. Miami's SWAT team had received an anonymous tip. The minute they said the word computer, she knew it was the work of The Rat.