Макс Коллинз - You Can’t Stop Me

Back on camera, Harrow said, “Meet Michael Pall, one of the premier scientists in law enforcement.”

Pall’s thick black comma of hair hung Superman-style, his black glasses giving him the right professorial look, a white shirt and dark tie peaking from beneath his Crime Seen! lab coat. The sleeves of the white jacket seemed stretched to the limit by the compact man’s muscles.

Pall was, Anderson knew, a zealot about his workouts. Even with their hours mostly spent on the bus, in the semi-situated lab or in a motel, Pall always seemed to find a place and the time to lift weights. The guy was a good twenty years older than Anderson, but had more energy than a crate of Red Bull and no apparent need for sleep.

“So, Dr. Pall,” Harrow was saying, “what can you tell us about the license number Mr. Gershon gave us?”

Looking at Harrow and not the camera — as he’d been taught in the crash course in TV technique the network had provided — Pall said, “Oklahoma plate registered to a Honda Accord owned by a seventy-year-old woman in a little town called Clinton.”

“Probably not our suspect,” Harrow said.

“No, but when the Oklahoma Highway Patrol got to her house, they found the license plate on her Fusion was actually a Kansas plate, and the woman hadn’t noticed the switch.”

“She hadn’t noticed that her car had a license plate from a different state?”

Pall shrugged. “The OHP discovered that the only plate that had been switched was the rear, and it had just escaped her attention.”

“Was that the plate from the truck Gershon saw?”

“No — the Kansas plate was registered to a Dodge van belonging to an out-of-work female bartender in Pratt.”

“And the license plate on that van?”

“We haven’t found it yet,” Pall said. “The bartender’s ex-boyfriend said she packed up her stuff and hit the road to find work. No forwarding address, no nothing.”

Off-camera, a deputy came in and handed Anderson a fold-out map of the country. The chemist continued to listen while he quietly unfolded the map and compared it to the list of crime scenes.

Harrow was asking Pall, “But she was driving the van when she left?”

“She was.”

Anderson got a Sharpie out of his pocket, then started marking the different towns around the country where attacks had occurred.

Harrow said, “Mr. Gershon said our suspect was likely a man.”

Pall nodded. “We have two puzzle pieces. That they don’t fit together doesn’t mean that we’re not closer to solving the puzzle.”

Anderson looked up at the boss. Even though Harrow knew all this before they went on the air, and the dialogue had been loosely scripted (no prompter, but essentially canned), the host still looked gravely disappointed.

Was that just good acting? Anderson wondered.

Turning to the young chemist, who rose from his chair, Harrow introduced him to the viewing audience.

Anderson tried to keep his breathing even as he did his best to ignore the black hole in the center of the camera. He was also conscious of the hovering boom mike, but managed not to look up at it.

“Chris, have we had any luck matching the tire marks from this crime to the ones Billy Choi sent you from North Dakota?”

“They don’t match — at least not completely.”

Harrow appeared confused (for the sake of the TV audience, anyway). “What do you mean, ‘not completely’? Either they match or they don’t, right?”

Harrow had set this up for Anderson to look good, and the young man appreciated it.

“The tires in North Dakota were nearly bald, Mr. Harrow. Though the tires here in New Mexico show some wear, they’re nowhere near the same age as the Dakota tires.”

“So they don’t match.”

“That’s right, sir — they have the same tread design, which means they’re the same brand, Michelin, and they’re the same size, 275/70R18. It’s possible that the suspect has changed out the old tires for new ones on the same vehicle.”

“Are there other possibilities?”

“Sure. There could be two separate suspects, who both own light pickups that have the same brand tires — one worn, one fairly new. But if you believe that... and remember we have two separate gun matches... then the killer in North Dakota killed a public servant’s family in Florida, and a different killer murdered the families of George Reid here... and yours, Mr. Harrow, in Iowa.”

“That would make one hell of a coincidence.”

“Yes, sir, it would. Particularly since forensics evidence indicates the same gardening implement was used in the removal of the wedding-ring fingers of both Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Reid. Distinctive characteristics of one garden-shear blade, and plant DNA, make that conclusive.”

“Thanks, Chris,” Harrow said, moving slightly to let Arroyo get the sheriff into the shot, so the boss could interview him.

With his part finished, Anderson dropped back into the chair, Sharpie in hand, as he went back to the list and the map.

He had something — he didn’t know what — but he had something.

In his dreary, dusty living room, sitting on the edge of his seat, the Messenger watched Crime Seen! intently. When it had gone off the air with J.C. Harrow’s familiar “war on crime” homily, the man of the house kicked back in the aged Barcalounger and smiled.

Finally!

After years of planning and delivering his messages, and fearing that these fools could never stop him, he finally had someone’s ear — someone who could make everything all right.

Despite a slow start, J.C. Harrow seemed to be the one who could and would put the pieces together... though it did take plenty of help. No matter by what process, however, at last the Messenger’s signals were coming through. Maybe the help Harrow was receiving from his much-vaunted team was the key to making sure the world eventually understood completely.

He had watched the young woman who co-hosted with special interest. What was her name? Carmen Something. He would rewind the tape and get it.

She might prove just the one to help him deliver his next and, he hoped, final message.

His sighed and allowed himself a relieved smile. After all these years, the end was in sight. He had to clean the house, and there was planning to do, one more trip to make, one more message to deliver...

After all, company was coming.

The Crime Seen! viewer tip line had received calls about every single blue Ford F-150 in the United States — or at least so it seemed to Jenny Blake.

As the team’s computer expert, she was the beneficiary of this sort of grunt work, tracking down the vehicles in tips and running checks on them. Funny how they’d all been hired as “superstar” forensics experts, with the media playing that up, the Internet too. But none of the Killer TV team had any underlings to pass off work to.

The chemist, Chris Anderson, had said it best: “We got a great starting line-up, but no bench!”

Still, she wasn’t complaining, though the tip line stuff tended to come to her, and while the team was obviously making progress, she was feeling a very small part of that. She wanted to do more.

Her drive to succeed, to please, and her loyalty to Harrow and his cause, kept her going. The Wyoming crime lab had provided her plenty of tough cases, but never a challenge this great.

At least being with new people gave her a new chance to overcome her shyness. So far she hadn’t been able to take much advantage of the new start; if anything, she felt more isolated, living on the road with strangers.