Stephen Cannell - Final Victim

"Who's Tashay Roberts?"

Lockwood remembered now that Malavida had been in the hospital when he and Karen had talked to Bob Shiff and Tashay. He slowly formed the words, telling Malavida who they were and that Tashay had tried to contact them with information about Leonard Land. "Don't know address," he finally said.

Malavida pulled over, grabbed his cellphone out of his pocket, and called Tampa and Miami Information. There was no listing for either of them.

"These punk kids got unlisted numbers? Why?" Malavida complained.

"Owe money… junkies," Lockwood finally managed to say.

Malavida grabbed the computer off the seat beside him. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, took out a small leather cracking kit, then removed a fone-phreaking diskette. He hooked his cellphone to the computer's external modem and started to go to work on the phone company's computer. Lockwood was sweating in the late-afternoon heat. He put down the window but it was still unbearably hot in the gray sedan. It took Malavida twenty minutes to break through. There was no listing for Tashay Roberts, but Bob Shift's number was there. The billing address was 1818 Coral Grove Road, Miami… less than ten minutes from where they were parked.

This time when Karen woke up she was surprisingly alert. She still felt horrible and her head and jaw ached. Her muscles screamed at her, but her senses were tingling. Even before she opened her eyes she could smell mildew and dust. She knew she was tied up, sitting on a cold floor. She could hear Tashay crying. Karen's hands were lashed behind a wood post. She opened her eyes and looked around; there were boxes and junk piled everywhere. She determined that she was in a garage, but there was no room for a car. The garage had been completely taken over as a junk room. She could hear Tashay but couldn't see her. Karen craned her neck and finally saw that Tashay was standing, slumped over, her hands tied to a chain under an old block-and-tackle that was hooked to the heavy center beam. Tashay was half hanging by her wrists, sagging with her knees bent, her head tilted down, her gaze on the floor between her legs.

Karen took a moment and pushed everything but her terrible dilemma out of her mind. Her mouth was a pulsating bright spot of agony. The broken teeth had exposed nerves that screamed in pain. Karen knew she had to blot it out in order to function. She knew from past experience that if she acknowledged the pain, it would control her. She had been through bouts of agony before. She knew she had to put it on another level. Focus hard on something else. In the hospital, after the ALFA Wing fiasco, she'd had a lot of time to practice. She now focused her mind on her current dilemma and tried to dial the pain down. Her mind started to rapidly collect facts. She looked over at Tashay and saw that she had stopped bleeding. The blood that was on the floor between her feet was caked and dry. That told her they had been there for at least an hour. Satan T. Bone must be waiting for someone or something, she reasoned. Where were they? she wondered. From what she could see, the garage was a mess. Extremely drganized She didn't think the mess belonged to Leonard Land. She had profiled him as compulsive and obsessive. He would be a neat freak; this garage would drive him nuts. She now focused on Tashay, who had stopped crying.

"Tashay," she said, her voice low and whispery.

"Oh, God… oh, God… Why is he doing this? Why?" Tashay said and started to cry again, but she didn't look up.

"Tashay, you've gotta stop it. We've gotta get something going here." Karen tried to straighten up but her arms and shoulders screamed at her. She winced as she struggled to push herself up the wood post. She was still dizzy, so she stopped and sat back on the cold concrete.

"Oh, God… What'd I do? I was helpin' him, why is he doin' this? Why… why?" Tashay was becoming even more emotional, choking back huge, sobbing breaths.

"Stop it!" Karen commanded loudly. "He's going to kill us. You've gotta stop crying." And then finally Tashay brought her gaze up from the floor and looked at Karen. One of her eyes was completely swollen shut. The blood that had been flowing out of the cut in her head had stained her silk blouse. She was in short-shorts and had dried blood on her legs and thighs.

"I need to know what's going on," Karen said. She struggled to keep her voice calm. She could see Tashay was in panic, on the edge of hysteria. Karen surprised herself that she had such a firm grasp on her situation after having been knocked unconscious twice. "Why is Bob Shiff doing this?" Karen asked in a calm voice.

"I don't know… I don't know." Her voice was slurred through swollen lips. "I swear. He's been actin' strange since you asked us about that guy… the big, ugly one…"

"Leonard Land?"

"Yeah. You were right, he came to all our concerts, but never to the house. Now, he's been here twice this morning. He's creepy. He calls Bob 'Robbie.' "

"Robbie?" Karen said… and then she knew who Bob Shiff was. He was the missing foster brother, Robbie Land. She and Lockwood had wrongly assumed he was killed in Mississippi in the early eighties. If Bob Shiff was Robbie Land, it answered a lot of questions. Her mind was reeling with this information, fitting it into the puzzle. She knew that serial killers are not born but made, usually by parental abuse. Of course, the right psychological pre-dispositions and stressors have to exist, but, if Shirley had raised Robbie the way she had raised Leonard, it was not at all inconceivable that they could come out with similar pathologies. It also explained the Death Metal lyrics and the worship of other serial killers like Gacy and Dahmer. She wondered if it was possible that Leonard and Bob worked as a team-like Kenneth Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buono.

"Tashay, is Bob helping Leonard commit these murders?" "What murders? Oh, God, why would he hurt me like he did?"

"Can you move your hands? Can you get loose at all?"

Tashay looked at Karen for a long moment, as if the idea hadn't even occurred to her.

"I hurt… I hurt so bad," she said.

"Tashay, see how close to me you can get."

Tashay Roberts moved slowly across the garage toward Karen. The block-and-tackle chain allowed her to get almost three feet nearer.

"Lemme see if I can get up," Karen said, and again she struggled to stand. She worked her legs under her and then started to rise up. This time, with careful effort, she controlled the dizziness. Her arms were lashed behind the post but she could slide them up slowly. The wood was rough and gouged her with splinters as she worked her way to a standing position. Then she rotated around until she could face Tashay.

"We ain't never gonna get loose… We ain't never," Tashay moaned, and again she began to cry.

"Tashay, stop it. Stop it right now!" Karen knew that her only chance of getting away was to include Tashay. She had to get her focused on the idea of escape and away from feeling sorry for herself.

From this new position on her feet, Karen could see the rest of the garage. She looked up and saw that some gardening tools had been thrown up on the rafter beams overhead. The beams were only a few feet above where Tashay's hands were tied to the block-and-tackle.

"Okay, Tashay, you see above your head… the gardening tools up there?"

Tashay looked up but didn't answer.

"See if you can jump up and knock them down. See that hedge clipper? See if you can knock it off the rafters and over toward me."

Tashay looked at her again. "Bob and me was in the grip, y'know? We was rollin' deep. He says to me, `Tash, we gonna get outta this bonk town, go to Europe.' He's alla time talkin' to me about the Riviera and goin' to see Satan Wolf in prn. So why's he goin' and shootin' on me like this? Why's he wanna go ruin it? Why?"