Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

The skinny driver heard her moving and turned to look at her. "Keep quiet. Make any noise, you're gonna be pissing backwards."

She could see him clearly now. He was milk-white, with long black hair. The intermittent sunlight through passing trees shot lines and shadows across his gruesome, skinny features. The ghoulish tattoos under his eyes gave his hollow face a skull-like intensity. Then Baby Killer started screaming a second verse through the speakers. Satan T. Bone's raspy voice filled the van:

It ain't a nice place, So shit in her face.

She's got no place to hide, So ya rip her inside.

Let the dogs eat her eyes… Yeah, dogs eat her eyes.

The horrible serenade continued. Tashay moaned. Karen tried to gather her resources. She remembered most of it now; the driver was Bob Shiff. He had hit her with the bat… She didn't know why. What she did know was that she had somehow badly miscalculated, and now was in a desperate fight for her life. She could feel the van exit the highway and come to a halt. Then they turned right and made a stopand-go trip along a street. She could see patterns of moving sunlight on the walls and ceiling of the van. She could occasionally hear cars pull up next to them. Finally they picked up speed and Karen thought that they were on another highway of some kind. A short time later they made a hard right then pulled to a stop. She saw Shiff get out from behind the driver's seat and heard him walk to the back. The rear door opened and he leaned in. She could not turn her head to see him, but she felt him above her.

"You two make trouble, and I be shootin' on yer ass." He unhooked Tashay from the floor and dragged her out of the van by her heels. She moaned. As he got her out of the back, Karen heard her head hit the bumper. She fell to the ground and let out a cry. "Shut the fuck up!" he shouted at her.

Karen couldn't see where they were. Her head was facing in the wrong direction and she couldn't lift it up to turn around and look out the back of the van. She could feel the hot morning air, and she filled her lungs, trying to summon as much strength as she could. Somewhere far away she heard Sunday church bells ringing. Moments later Shiff was back. He poked her.

"You awake?" he said.

She said nothing, tried not to move. He reached in and over and untied her. She waited until he had unhooked her hands and legs and had started to pull her out. Then she focused all her energy, reared back, and kicked him in the face as hard as she could. He fell backwards, yelling in confusion and pain. She struggled to get to a sitting position, but she was dizzy and fell sideways. Shiff was immediately back on her, his skinny arms pushing her back into the van. Then he grabbed something. She didn't see what, but when he hit her, her head spun with the force of the blow. She felt no pain but saw a blinding light… and then nothing.

Malavida and Lockwood ordered a car from Hertz. They waited in Bungalow 7 of The Swallow Inn for the rental agent to deliver it. Lockwood had called the Miami police. He had tried to talk to Fred T. Fredrickson but couldn't get through. When he explained his concern about Karen's disappearance, he was transferred to Missing Persons. He was having trouble making himself understood, so he handed the phone to Malavida, who gave the information to a policewoman but refused to identify himself. Lockwood knew the case would be tossed on a pile with hundreds of runaways and would get little attention. After he hung up, Lockwood watched with distress while Malavida got out of bed and, using a chair for support, moved to the bathroom. Neither of them could get around at all. They moved like two old convalescents doing a Thorazine shuffle. Lockwood wasn't sure he could drive; he was still having trouble with depth perception. When Malavida returned, he sat on the edge of the bed. They surveyed each other optimistically… Each thought the other looked like hell.

"How we gonna do this, Zanzo?" Malavida finally asked. "Don't know," Lockwood replied. "Gotta find…"

"No shit."

Again they fell into silence. Then Malavida continued, "Before she went on TV yesterday, she showed me this picture of Shirley Land. It was an obit photo or something. She said she got it at the library along with some articles on how she died. I accessed the Miami library computer to see if I could pull anything up on Shirley, but this stuff must be too old. It's not in their information bank… probably on microfilm."

"Microfilm," Lockwood repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before.

"Hey, get on board here, will ya? She could be in bad trouble. We probably don't have much time," Malavida said sharply.

"I'm, ah… not… I." Lockwood couldn't get his thought out. Periodically his vocabulary just seemed to disappear. He knew what he wanted to say but couldn't find the words. And then without warning, his grasp of language would come back. It was one of the most frustrating feelings he'd ever experienced.

Malavida watched him and knew it had been a time-wasting mistake to bring Lockwood down. He was worse than useless. "We're gonna get smoked," he said. "Neither of us can move and you need a brain transplant. The gimp squad to the rescue. All we need is Martin Short to drive the car."

Lockwood sat and looked at him, still waiting for the right words to form. "You shouldn'ta loved her," he said. "Wrong verb," he added.

"And you weren't trying?"

"Shouldn'ta done it. I told you. Said she was. She couldn't…"

He stopped as the right words left him but his anger swelled. "Fuck!" he shouted.

"Hey, Lockwood, did it ever occur to you that I might be honest about my feelings toward her?"

"No."

They glowered at one another.

The rental agent showed up with the car ten minutes later. They had agreed to pay a fifty-dollar delivery charge, which, of course, would never get charged to them because Malavida had executed the whole thing by computer. All that needed to happen now was for Lockwood to take delivery of the car and sign the contract. Malavida was in a chair by the window when the agent knocked on the door. Lockwood used his hospital walker to get to the door. He folded it, placed it out of the way, opened the door, and stood teetering like the last drunk at a party. The agent took Lockwood's license and watched while he signed the contract. Before he left, the young man turned. "You guys okay?" he asked, concerned by their appearance.

"Sure are." Malavida smiled painfully.

"Upsy daisy," Lockwood chipped in, selecting the wrong cliche.

Malavida and Lockwood got into the rented gray Lincoln Town Car with some difficulty. They agreed that Malavida would drive because of Lockwood's impaired vision. Malavida got carefully behind the wheel and put his laptop on the seat. He watched the ex-Customs agent struggling to get into the passenger side.

"Get in there, cocksucker," Lockwood cursed at himself as he fumbled to get his legs into the car. Then he looked at Malavida for instructions.

"We got one choice," Malavida said. "We go to the library, see if we can get that material on Shirley Land. The picture Karen had was of the same woman we saw taped up inside that barge."

Lockwood knew there was a better move but he couldn't pin it down. He struggled to think what it was.

Malavida put the car in gear and started to pull out of The Swallow Inn.

"No," Lockwood said.

"Whatta you mean no? You got a better idea?"

"Yeah."

"Let's hear it."

Lockwood looked at him blankly. "Can't remember."

"You can't remember?" Malavida shook his head in disgust. "At least you're finally acting like a regular G-Man," he said, and accelerated out of the parking lot, heading back along the river toward the highway.

"Tashay Roberts," Lockwood finally said, "knows something."