Final Victim (1995) (36 page)

"Halon? Doesn't that shit eat oxygen?" Lockwood said, as the switchboard finally took him off hold.

Then over the screaming Klaxon they heard vibrating coming from the vents above them. They looked up. A white gas was flowing from vents in the ceiling and cascading down off the file cabinets like dry ice vapor. It started to swirl and pool on the floor.

"Department of Justice," the operator chirped in his ear.

"This is a medical emergency. I'm with Customs DOAO Laurence Heath. We're trapped in the basement of this building. The door's jammed! He's had a heart attack! Get down here fast! Break the door and bring oxygen!"

"I'm sorry, sir . . . what?"

"Do what I said. Now! He's dying."

Lockwood had instantly decided not to try to explain to her what was really happening. He had read only one report on halon gas and it had stuck in his mind. A system in Denver had accidentally gone off and killed several people in less than three minutes. If the heavy fog-like substance continued to pour into the room, within minutes there would be no breathable air left in the sub-basement. Already Lockwood felt a shortness of breath . . . a ringing in his ears.

"Hold your breath," he said, "don't breathe this shit. If it gets in you, you're gonna lose oxygen."

They were all backing away from the halon, which was rollin
g t
oward them, flowing freely from the ceiling. The cloud of gas was expanding as it flowed into the elevator, where they had retreated. It began to fill the box. Even the air above them was dissipating. It began to climb rapidly in the enclosed space.

On the monitor The Rat watched the suffocation of Lockwood and the four strangers with rapt interest. He was rocking back and forth, his huge body causing the wooden chair to creak loudly.

He watched as the first death occurred. The narrow-shouldered man dropped his armload of folders and fell to his knees. He reached up and grabbed at his shirt collar, ripping at his tie. His mouth was open, his teeth protruding. The Rat remembered the cats he had strangled as a boy. . . . They also died with their mouths wide open, their tongues curled and out. Then the narrow-shouldered man was clawing at his neck. Lockwood reached out to pull him up, but before he could get to him, the man fell sideways into the white fog. The Rat could barely see him in the mist. The man bucked once in a final convulsion, swirling the cloud of gas, then fell beneath its deadly blanket.

In the elevator, Lockwood was holding his breath. His lungs were aching, his nose and throat burning. The halon was now all around them. He tried to reach up and punch the top out of the elevator ceiling but, when he hit it, it rang solidly, sending a bolt of pain down his arm.

Heath was beginning to gag and foam at the mouth. "Can't breathe," he gasped. Then his barrel chest heaved five times as he sucked in huge lungfuls of nothing. He grabbed at his chest and, with his mouth wide open, fell forward on his face.

Kulack went down seconds later. Both of them disappeared unde
r t
he heavy blanket of white gas. Lockwood and his lawyer, Alex, were the last ones standing. Both holding their breath, looking across and through the sea of halon with bulging eyes. Finally, Alex couldn't hold his breath any longer and took one gulp of the deadly lifeless atmosphere. He looked at Lockwood for a moment and then, in panic, took another gulp, and another. He convulsed while still standing. His wire glasses fell off his face. His brain was dying. He started to lose consciousness . . . falling slowly to one knee. He reached out to Lockwood, who grabbed his wrist to hold him upright. The gas was now chin high and the oxygen around them was dissipating. Then Hixon fell backwards, slipping from Lockwood's grasp, dropping from sight.

Lockwood could hear pounding somewhere in the basement. He slowly let out all of his breath. His lungs were empty. His reflexes were screaming at him to breathe, while his iron will was forcing him not to. He couldn't hold his breath any longer. He was seconds from death when his hand brushed against his side coat pocket and he felt something. His allergy inhaler! He yanked it out and jammed it against his nose, then took one life-sustaining inhalation, sucking the little plastic vaporizer empty. He almost choked on its pungent fragrance, but he had quarter-filled his lungs with the aerosol mist. Then, seconds later, he began to lose consciousness. Falling forward, he grabbed the elevator rail, his chin just above the deadly fog.

As Lockwood floated into the tunnel of death, he thought he saw the fire door at the far end of the building fly open. He thought he saw Heather rushing toward him, carrying an oxygen bottle, but she was too far away to save him. "Daddy, Daddy, don't leave me," she cried, but it was too late.

Lockwood fell forward into the deadly mist.

The Rat shut off his computer and went up on the deck of the barge. He climbed down the ladder into the water. He rolled in the shallows next to the rustling hull, to cool his blazing skin. The salt water stung him, bringing tears to his eyes. He could bear the pain no longer. Finally, he rolled up on his knees. He raised his hands over his head.

"The Wind Minstrel is coming," he screamed at the heavens, "and He is God!"

A flock of herons broke from the treetops and wheeled in crazy circles above him.

Chapter
31

Karen had visited Malavida for an hour on Thursday night. He was conscious but very weak. The Federal agent sat outside the door with one ear cocked, but they were talking so softly that he finally gave up and went back to the book he was reading.

Karen filled Malavida in on the close call he'd had with his blood type, and the one she and Lockwood had had at the Ramada Inn.

"Where's Lockwood now?" he said, his voice raspy from the anesthetic tube he'd had down his throat for ten hours yesterday.

"He got arrested," she said softly. "They took him back to Washington Tuesday. He's having a hearing tomorrow at nine, for a bunch'a stuff they say he did. . . . It's all bullshit. In the meantime, I'm going to get you out of here."

Malavida lay there looking at the ceiling for a minute. She watched him and, when he didn't comment, she went on. "Look, I think if you stay here with all the shit they're pumping into you, you're taking a bi
g c
hance. The Rat will out-think this bunch'a white coats. You'll be getting battery acid in your coffee or some damn thing."

"You're gonna move me? I feel like hell. I can't even sit up."

"I got chummy with the surgical nurse. She said the surgery was a success. They have you scheduled for X-rays tomorrow at ten to check their work. The big danger for you now is peritonitis, 'cause your intestine got ruptured. They've been pumping you full of vancomycin. But they're slacking off now. If you start running a fever, I'll bring you back. Another thing . . . that Fed out there isn't gonna let you get your hands on a computer, and I need you to help me get The Rat."

"Am I the Lone Ranger or Tonto?" he said softly.

"You're Snoopy, remember?" She smiled at him and took his hand. "They say they're gonna keep you in here for another three days. According to the nurse, all they're gonna do is watch you, take your temperature. I can do that . . . and remember, Mal, in three days, you're on your way back to Lompoc." She knew he would do anything to avoid that.

"I'm a Federal prner," he said softly. "You bust me outta here and you're gonna be guilty of conspiracy, and aiding and abetting. Both felonies. You could get five years yourself."

"I don't want to go to jail . . . but in case you haven't noticed, I can handle risks. And I've developed an affection for you, so shut up." He smiled at her, and she reddened slightly and rushed on: "I also think The Rat is about to go hot again. It's been two weeks since Candice Wilcox died. I don't want another woman killed and mutilated. We said we were gonna get him for what he did to Claire. I haven't changed my mind; I hope you haven't."

Malavida finally nodded. "Okay, you're on."

"I've been working at the library all afternoon. I found some pretty interesting stuff in the newspaper morgue."

"Like what?"

"The woman you saw in the barge, the blowup taped on the wall with the markings and dates on it . . . ?"

"Yeah?"

Karen dug into her purse and pulled out a Xerox of an old Tampa Tribune newspaper article she had found at the Miami Public Library that afternoon. "Was this her?" she asked and held up the picture.

Malavida was looking at a shot of the same woman he'd seen on the wall of the barge. "It's her. . . . Who is she?" Malavida finally said.

"Meet Shirley Land, Leonard's foster mother. That's the obit photo. She died in a fire twelve years ago. Shirley had quite a history. She was a seventies hippie who turned away from sex and drugs, and found religion. According to this, she was a Seventh Day Adventist, but the church in Water Valley, Mississippi, where she lived, threw her out for bizarre behavior. Apparently she was religiously obsessed. She had a foster child in 1980 named Robbie Land. I checked with Social Services in Water Valley, and their records said they'd been out there a bunch of times 'cause Robbie's grade-school teachers said he looked beaten up. One time, when he was twelve, his hair got set on fire. Shirley said he'd done it himself, playing with matches. Social Services was getting set to take him back when Robbie ran away, never to be seen again. Shirley took off and left the state. My guess is Robbie is dead, buried in a shallow grave somewhere. Shirley moved to Florida and applied for and got another foster child. That was Leonard Land. Nobody checked with Mississippi, 'cause she never told 'em she was from there. She bought a house out in the boonies not too far from the Everglades. There were no Social Services complaints on Leonard's condition. Then, twelve years ago, her house caught fire and she died. Leonard disappeared, end of report," she said. "Not too hard to read between the lines, is it?"

"That's pretty good." He smiled weakly.

"It all fits the profile of a killer dominated by a violent female adult. The blitz attacks are because he's afraid of women, he needs to kill them before they have a chance to dominate him. His 'relationships' are all post-mortem. He probably feels he can only interact with women once they're dead."

"Did you call Lockwood with this?"

"I'm gonna get in touch after his hearing tomorrow," she told him. "You didn't call him because he'll put the kibosh on this nutty idea of breaking me out of here, right?"

She started to smile and he smiled back.

"How you gonna do it?"

She sat next to his bed and filled him in.

At 8:30 that night, Karen pulled off her first computer crime. She was sitting on the bed at the Ramada Inn, talking with Malavida in the hospital on her cellphone. With the hard line from the Ramada phone, she had hooked up Malavida's computer and modem. Malavida talked her through a computer crack into Jackson Memorial Hospital. It was harder than they had anticipated because the hospital administrator had already started to upgrade his security. Malavida finally found a hole in the system, going in through the Payless drugstore in the hospital lobby. The drugstore had a link that interfaced with the hospital billing records. He used that to move into the Jackson Memorial computer network and, before long, he talked Karen right into the Patient Records Log. She found Ray Gonzales's ID number and deleted it, then put Malavida's ID number in its place. She found Malavida's account, deleted his number, and supplanted it with Ray's, completing the switch. She then found Ray Gonzales's medical record. . . . It was extensive. She scanned it, feeling guilty as she snooped. Ray's prognosi
s w
asn't good. He was going to need a kidney transplant soon. Then she skipped to the bottom of Ray's records and started typing. She scheduled him for an X-ray at ten the next morning.

Karen was dressed and checked out of the Ramada Inn by 6:30 A
. M
. She had rented a Ryder van and was now driving around looking for a motel room that would work. The early morning traffic was surprisingly light. Beautiful white clouds drifted like whipped cream across the blue Miami sky.

She finally found a place that looked good. It was called The Swallow Inn and was on the Miami River, of Fourth Street, two blocks from Highway 9. She drove around it once, looking it over. It was an old wood-frame bungalow-style motel. The bungalows were private, set away from one another. She needed privacy. She decided the best unit for her needs was Bungalow 7. It was well away from the others and close to the service road, which would give her a back way in and out. She parked the step van on the shell drive and walked across the crunchy surface to the office.

A room cost nineteen dollars a day. She asked for Number 7 and got it. She registered under an assumed name, Karen Styles, and paid cash. She took her key, stepped back outside, and looked around.

She knew from the map that the Miami River went inland for about three miles, then became so narrow and marshy it was more of a swamp than a river. The wide mouth of the river was in Biscayne Bay. The river was like no place else in Miami. It could have been in a third-world country. She glanced at two Haitian freighters that were tied to wharves across the river. They were big, ugly, rusting hulks piled high with junk that would eventually be bound for Haiti. A favorite item seemed to be plastic Clorox bottles. They were strung b
y t
he hundreds on ropes and draped along every convenient rail. She couldn't imagine what they would be used for. To carry water maybe? The freighters were also stacked high with old mattresses, broken furniture, and stolen bicycles.