Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

“I don’t,” Harrow said. “But I do pay attention.”

Bestowing his guest a tight smile, Gershon said, “I will tell you one thing — I was in the Dominican Republic in 1961.”

“Trujillo?”

“You know your history. If a man knows his history, he might keep from repeating it... not that anybody in charge of this country for the last twenty years ever got that.” The breeze blew at his hair again, and the old man shivered, possibly with the cold.

Harrow sighed. “Been a lot of blood spilled in a lot of places.”

“I said you knew your history.”

“Whoever spilled that blood next door, Archie, has got to be stopped.”

“Don’t disagree. But it’s your job, not mine.”

“It is at that... and I should get to doing it.”

“You should,” Gershon said. “But if you ever want to stop back and shoot the shit again, chances are I won’t shoot at you. And if I do, I won’t likely hit you.”

Harrow gave up a lopsided grin. “Thanks for that much. And thanks for the license plate number. That should put you in solid with your pal Roberto. And I’ll get my network to pay for the damage to his vehicle.”

“And they say TV stars are just a bunch of phonies.”

Then, laughing at his own joke, the old man turned around and went into the house and joined his hound, his TV, his lounger, his books, and his guns.

For tonight’s show, Carmen Garcia — chicly businesslike in black slacks and a gray silk blouse, her dark hair pulled up in a tight bun — was about to do the live segment intro. This would be followed by a long walking shot sans teleprompter — she’d memorized a full page of script — and Carmen could not remember ever feeling more nervous. She prayed it didn’t show, or else her meteoric rise might be quickly followed by the same kind of fall...

As the assistant director counted down to the second, Carmen sent herself a mixed signal: Stay calm... and energy up!

“I’m Carmen Garcia. Welcome to Killer TV on the road with Crime Seen! ”

Hathaway, on Steadicam this time, followed Carmen down the institutional hallway, as did Nancy Hughes with her boom.

“We’re on our way to a conference room at the Rolla, North Dakota, sheriff’s office, where our team’s set up shop. We are investigating the two-year-old murders of Nola and Katie Hanson — wife and daughter of then — county comptroller Burl Hanson, who later took his own life, becoming the killer’s third victim.”

Hathaway followed her in as she moved along and around the big table dominating the room. Behind her, easels held bulletin boards arrayed with crime scene photos from the Hanson house (the most explicit had come down for the broadcast).

Cameraman Phil Dingle was already in the room, capturing tighter one- and two-shots of the others at the table — Laurene Chase poring over more crime scene photos, Jenny Blake hunkered over her laptop, Billy Choi sitting before a computer as well. Both Hathaway and Dingle’s shots were being uploaded by the satellite truck for director Stu Phillips back in LA to work his (and his staff’s) magic.

Carmen stopped next to Choi. “Bullets from the Ferguson home in Placida, Florida, match bullets from the Hanson murders here in Rolla. Firearms and tool mark examiner Billy Choi has been working on this evidence... Billy?”

The firearms expert with the perfect hair wore the now-familiar Crime Seen! lab coat over an open-collar blue shirt and navy slacks.

“Carmen, using NIBIN...” A pop-up defined NIBIN for new viewers. “...we’d already matched the bullets from the two crime scenes. But look at the slides of the two — the striations are a perfect match. These bullets were fired from a vintage Browning nine-millimeter automatic.”

“You can be certain of the make of the weapon?”

“Oh yes — the striations are made by the rifling in the barrel. Glocks, Sig Sauers, and the like have barrels struck on a mandrel, with no rifling. The Browning’s rifling gives us a way to identify it. The killer may have picked up the shell casings... but we can still get a match through the bullets themselves.”

“But this is a different gun than the one used in the murders at the Harrow home?”

“It is,” Choi admitted. “The Harrow murders and, we now know, at least one other set of murders were committed with a .357 revolver.”

“And what’s next?”

“Because of Jenny’s discovery, I’ll be looking for matches among several other gun attacks across the United States.”

“Thank you, Billy.”

Carmen turned to Jenny and asked, “What was the discovery you made?”

Her name and area of expertise superimposed at the bottom of the screen, Jenny wore not her usual T-shirt and jeans, but dress slacks and a silky blouse, her blonde hair tied back in a loose ponytail. In real life, she rarely wore makeup, but this was television and she was mildly glamorized, still looking painfully shy... but steady.

By punching some keys on her computer, Jenny brought up a map of the United States with red stars scattered around. “These mark different towns where attacks may be related to those we’ve been investigating.”

Dingle got in close on the map, showing the audience the twenty-two different towns where attacks on the families of civil servants had occurred over the last nine years.

Jenny and Carmen went on explaining the theory, as scripted, while halfway across the country, in the office of Sheriff Roberto Tomasa, the rest of the team — Harrow, Pall, and Anderson — sat before a monitor studying the map as they waited for Carmen to throw the show to them.

Till now, these attacks had been a list of names, addresses, and dates on a page. Now, displayed on a map, they started to carry weight, graphically indicating the possible extent of the killer’s carnage, and his travels. Texas, Nevada, California, Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Ohio — the red stars seemed to be everywhere. All this, plus the Iowa, Florida, North Dakota, and New Mexico murders.

Chris Anderson could only shake his head in frustration that these statistics made feeling the true weight of the tragedy so elusive.

At twenty-seven, the blond, boy-band handsome chemist had himself pegged as the youngest member of the team, with the possible exception of computer cutie Jenny Blake, and perhaps segment host Carmen Garcia (although she wasn’t, technically, a member of the team).

Turning to Pall, Anderson asked, “We could use a print-out of that map, don’tcha think, Michael?”

“I do,” the short, muscular Pall said.

“Sheriff?” Anderson said, turning to Sheriff Tomasa, who stood off to one side, waiting for Harrow to interview him during the upcoming segment.

“Yes, son?”

“Can you get someone to get me a fold-out map of the United States?”

Tomasa glanced at Harrow, to see if he had time to honor this request, and the host nodded. Then the sheriff made a quick cell phone call to one of his deputies.

Harrow called over to Anderson: “What is it, Chris?”

“I don’t know yet, sir, not for sure,” Anderson said, voice lazy, eyes alert. “There’s somethin’ about all those towns, but I can’t quite put it together...”

Sound man Ingram was counting down, and they all turned their attention to the show at hand.

Harrow introduced a short segment that included, from the bottom of the gravel drive, pieces of his encounter with Archie Gershon. The audio from Hathaway’s camera hadn’t picked up anything worth using, so Harrow had prerecorded a voiceover explanation, saying that the recluse had given them a significant lead — the license number of the perp’s vehicle.