Rage Factor (33 page)

Dixie shivered, and knew it wasn’t from the chilly wind.

“Anything you can tell us about
our
guy? The fact that he copied another stalker’s letters, does that indicate anything?”

“Shit if I know. Copycats get a hard-on for the ‘famed felon,’ see themselves improving on their hero’s techniques, certain they won’t get caught. Burrows was a hometown nurse, not a TV actress. Husband, three toddlers. Eckers had a ten-year-old picture of his older sister, who looked amazingly like Burrows, taped to his mirror—where he took the snapshot of himself with the needles.”

Dixie filled her notebook with information as fast as Crews spit it out. She’d sort out the relevant parts later, along with the stuff Ramón had given her. Right now nothing was making any sense.

“Les, I’ve dealt with plenty of stalker situations, but none where I was the one in charge of keeping the principal safe. Anything you can tell me?”

“Yeah. Think of the most sensible thing to do and do the opposite. You already know that responding to a stalker-returning unopened letters, changing the phone number, getting a judge to issue a restraining order—all of that only makes the goober more obsessed. So does having a bodyguard. They obsess on waiting for that instant when the principal is unguarded. Then they strike.”

Dixie whipped her gaze to Sarina, still sketching her scene.

“The good news,” Les continued, “is that most stalking cases extinguish with time.”

True. Dixie had told many an anxious woman to be patiently wary, and eventually the jerk annoying her would give up. But Burrows had been kidnapped and raped while Crews and the local officials were trying to get enough evidence against Eckers to arrest him.

“One more question, Les, if you have another minute. You heard about our Avenging Angels, I take it?”

“‘Citizen participation in crime prevention’ is the official term, Flannigan. Posse comatatus committees.
Vigilantes.
Effective. Visit Montana, Idaho, South Carolina, see how they claim to have cleaned up their states through ‘citizen participation.’”

“And what kind of behavior would I look for in a … vigilante suspect?”

“Hmmmm. Number-one thing to remember, vigilantes justify their actions on the grounds that
not
acting would’ve made them victims rather than victors. Every vigilante perceives some kind of danger. Just because the rest of us don’t see it, doesn’t mean the danger isn’t real to them.”

“And after the perceived danger is past?”

“If it’s one individual? Might end right there. Your ‘Angel’ goes on with everyday life, probably with increased enthusiasm. If it’s a posse, then you’re dealing with different dynamics. The leader sometimes becomes addicted to the power. Won’t let go. Shared responsibility makes their actions appear just and reasonable. Klansmen actually pass a weapon from hand to hand, demanding everyone handle it. The rush, the sense of self-importance, puts more and more ‘evildoers’ on their hit list, until the smallest infringement demands punishment. Remember the Salem witch-hunts?”

Crews sounded as if he was into one of his lectures. Dixie knew all this, but couldn’t help being fascinated by Crews’ passion.

“I love this quote,” Crews chuckled, “from an American sergeant who joined in the interrogation of Vietcong prisoners. ‘First you strike to get mad, then you strike because you
are
mad, then you strike for the sheer pleasure of it.’”

Mob rage. Dixie felt another chill. “I doubt the Angels were into pleasure when they assaulted Coombs.” But she wasn’t sure she believed it. “And the man was a rapist—”

“Of course! Deserved every swinging blow. When Fran-cine Hughes took her last beating, poured gasoline around her husband’s bed, set it afire, and walked away from a murder charge, women started believing their only escape from being a victim is to be the victor. Don’t walk away, kill the bastard.”

“Coombs wasn’t killed.”

“No, Flannigan, but are you dealing with an individual or a posse? If it’s a posse, you might not’ve seen the end of it.”

That’s what Dixie hadn’t wanted to hear. Loser Boggs had seen four figures in Memorial Park. One would be Coombs. Did three constitute a mob? “What do I look for in questioning suspects?”

Crews seemed to think about that for a few seconds. “I know you want a checklist, like with serial killers, but the truth is, vigilantes are ordinary people. What you look for is the suspect who appears more self-assured than usual. Satisfied. Unafraid. That is, if it’s an individual. In a posse, group dynamics will either create such a feeling of self-righteousness that someone eventually brags to a friend. Or guilt causes someone to want out. When that happens, you get to scrape up the pieces.”

“Intriguing conversation you had there.” Casey’s camera clicked off shots at Dixie. “Pardon my eavesdropping, but that’s what I do best. Somebody wound you up and aimed you toward the Avenging Angels?”

Dixie hated being photographed, never knowing what to do with her face. She was tempted to stick out her tongue, but figured that’d be precisely the shot to end up on the front page of the
Houston Chronicle.

“I can see your headline, Casey: ‘Cousins Visit Arboretum.’ Must be a slow day for news.”

“You’ll lead me to a juicy piece, Dixie. I have faith.” She snapped off a few more shots of Sarina. “These just might surface in my gallery collection. The kid has the same body lines as her famous mother did in the early days, like a young gazelle, gangly and bursting with energy. This is the first time I’ve caught her totally still.”

True, the kid could make you tired just walking along a path, the way she darted ahead and skipped from side to side.

Casey let the camera dangle from her stumpy neck. “Joanna did her best work in those early days. Goldie on
Guerilla Gold?
Always was a talented bitch. But then, you’d know that, being her
cousin.”
An evil grin stretched the reporter’s lips, somehow displaying pink gums without showing any teeth.

“Bitch?”

“Isn’t that what we label every woman who claws her way to the top, Counselor?”

Dixie didn’t miss the jab. In her own career, she’d been frequently referred to as the State’s Courtroom Bitch. “Joanna has talent, beauty—”

“So do thousands of dewy-eyed dreamers in Hollywood. Three actresses starred in the pilot. Like the Three Little Pigs, they dropped one by one, each time replaced with lesser talent. Except for Joanna.”

“You’re saying she sabotaged her co-stars?”

“Joanna was smart enough to have a tough agent.” Casey’s piggy eyes narrowed at Dixie. “What did you think about our Angels striking again, big time?”

The fine hairs on Dixie’s arms bristled. “Big time? What does that mean?”

Casey’s camera flashed. Dixie cursed herself, falling for the reporter’s bait.

“One down, one dead. Sid Carlson, Gary Ingles, respectively, as they say. I don’t know any more than that. What about you, honey? Know anything I can use?”

“How would I know anything about the Angels? I’m curious, like everybody else.”

“Everybody else is hoping these guys do a Batman and Robin number on the city. Interesting, isn’t it, how our biggest heroes are vigilantes, cleaning up crime the cops can’t deal with? Superman? The Lone Ranger? Wouldn’t surprise me to find Dixie Flannigan on that list.”

“You can’t believe I had anything to do with what happened to Coombs or Carrera, much less Carlson and Ingles. My God, Casey,
murder?”

“Heart failure is the early diagnosis on Ingles. While enduring the sort of beating the Ramirez girl suffered. And, honey, if you’re not an Avenging Angel in fact, you are in spirit. Isn’t that why you left the legitimate world of crime fighters, because you couldn’t punish the offenders enough?”

A rush of heat filled Dixie’s face. Casey had struck too close to the bone.

“I’m not part of any self-appointed justice committee. And if you print one word that suggests I am, Casey, you’ll regret it.”

“You know a lot more than you tell. No one else has figured Patricia Carrera as one of the Angels’ targets.”

Damn!
“It’s only a hunch.”

“I’ve known you awhile, Counselor. You don’t shoot in the dark without infrared. Like these photographs.” She drew a packet from her coat pocket. “What’s in these that has your hackles up?”

Dixie glanced at Sarina, still engrossed in her prehistoric sketch.

“Like I said, Joanna wants them. Something about a scrapbook.”

Casey rolled her eyes, smiling toothlessly, and handed over the photographs. Dixie flipped through them, careful not to seem particularly interested.

“If you spot anything prime in there,” Casey grumbled, “you’re better than I am. Wasted day, except for the spats between director and crew—too clichéd to get excited about.”

But Dixie had already found the photo she wanted. She flipped on past, then slipped the glossy prints back into their envelope. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“Don’t think I won’t collect, honey.”

Dixie’s thoughts flipped back to Casey’s news.

Gary Ingles, dead.
“How do they know it’s the Angels this time?”

“Who else? Think we got two gangs of hotheads running around Houston?” She cocked her head, as if listening to
an inner thought. “Come to that, maybe it’s an angle—anything’s possible in this town. Police aren’t saying, only that they found the pair in a liquor warehouse, both beaten, the dead one sexually used and abused, as they say.” She handed Dixie a folded page torn from a small notebook. “That other thing you wanted—and for this you owe me big time. The story that Joanna Francis was a doper came from an anonymous tip. I sweet-talked the reporter into giving me a description of Mr. Anonymous—not the name, but with this hairball I could probably have gotten the name, too, if he knew it. He didn’t.”

Dixie opened the notepaper. She wasn’t surprised to learn that the anonymous tipster who nearly ruined Joanna’s career a year earlier fit the description of a person in one of Casey’s snapshots taken on the set two days ago. She tucked the note away with the photos.

Meanwhile, her mind raced with the news that the Angels had gone as far as murder. A liquor warehouse—to symbolize the Ramirez liquor store Sid and Gary robbed? One dead, as they’d left the old man dead. One raped, as they’d raped the old man’s niece?

“What kind of shape is Carlson in? Can he talk?”

Casey shrugged. “Alive. That’s all I know.”

Maybe he’d be able to identify his assailants. Dixie waited for Casey to leave, then called Sergeant Benjamin Rashly at the HPD’s Homicide Division. She and Rashly had worked together when Dixie was with the DA’s office.

“Rashly.”

Dixie heard the clink of Ben’s pipe against his teeth.

“Thought you’d quit smoking.”

“Who’s this? Flannigan?”

“Quitters Anonymous. Remember the old
Twilight Zone
episode?”

“Never watched that show.”

“Fellow signs up to quit smoking. He lights one cigarette, and his wife is abducted and tortured—given an electric hotfoot.
Second time he’s caught, she loses her little finger. Third time … Well, you get the picture.”

“Jesus! That’s nuts! What kind of idiot would sign a contract like that?” His smoker’s voice was rough as a file.

“It was just a TV show, Rash.”

“Now I remember why I never watched it. Flannigan, you didn’t call to needle me about smoking.”

“What’s the story on Carlson and Ingles?”

He took his time answering. “Did I miss something? Mayor appoint you Chief of Police while I wasn’t looking?”

Rashly never parted with information easily. Searching her mind for a scrap of street info to use as a bargaining chip, Dixie recalled a tidbit Brew had passed along about a connection between a DOA at the Port of Houston and recent burglaries in North Houston. It wasn’t much.

But Rashly hesitated a second too long. He was interested.

“If you know something, Flannigan, don’t do-si-do with me.”

“Maybe it’s nothing. Who can believe street talk?”

Dixie counted the seconds while Rashly gnawed the stem of his pipe—unlit, of course. Always grumpy, he’d become downright irascible after the city vetoed smoking in public buildings. But during Dixie’s years as ADA, Rashly earned her respect with his dogged investigation techniques.

“What’ve you got?” he said, finally.

Dixie kept the report short and factual. The scratch of a ballpoint pen told her Rashly was taking notes. He didn’t have to ask her source. One reason the local police never came down hard on the Gypsy Filchers was the useful information they occasionally provided.

Then she asked about the Ingles murder.

“You’re a civilian now, kid. Got no business messing around in murder cases. What’s your interest?”

Dixie wondered how much she could say without implicating Brenda.

“You noticed similarities, I take it, between the Carlson-Ingles beatings and the Coombs assault in Memorial Park.”

“Homicide is on speaking terms with Sex Crimes, if that’s what you’re asking.” Hearing the faint thumps and scrapes as he cleaned and refilled his pipe, Dixie could almost smell the fragrant Middleton’s Cherry Blend he preferred over more exotic tobaccos.

“What about the disappearance of Patricia Carrera? Anything turn up on that?”

“Carrera? That’s a civil case, Flannigan. Protective Services stepped out of it months ago. You going to ring in a divorce or two next? Try to tie it all up with organized crime, maybe some kind of government conspiracy?”

“Just a hunch, Rash.”

“And I’m supposed to poke around in a civil lawsuit on one of your hunches?” But Rashly believed in the intuitive processes people in law enforcement often developed. “I’ll kick it around. Doubt there’s anything we can use there. Now, why are you telling me?”

“Thought you might reciprocate.”

“Ask, Flannigan, or get off my phone.”

“Coombs claimed one of his assailants was a woman. Did Sid Carlson get a look at his assailants? Male, female, how many?”

“Said there were three, all dressed in black clothes and wearing knit caps pulled low, covering their hair. He thinks two were women. The third he wasn’t sure about.”