Savant (28 page)
"Um, Vic…you really believe that? You think I'd work in a place where they tapped their employees' phone lines? Jesus."
"You might not know about it," Trask verbally shrugged in a lame voice. He sneezed and coughed.
"Get Bill Higgins for me," Flynn said into the telephone. "Thanks."
Trask looked down at his shoes. He was really fucking up. The whole thing was becoming too much for him. The buzzing phone sounded like a snake striking. He felt watery inside.
"Hi. Thanks. Yeah—are you real busy at the moment? I want to reassure one of my people—a valued employee who thinks his phone may have been tapped or his office bugged. Could we have some of your time? I appreciate it. Yeah. If you could."
"He's coming up. Just forget all that stuff about Barb, man. She's not out to get you."
"Everybody always said, you know, she and Babaloo…" He let it go. This thing was lost.
"Babaloo is old enough to be her father, for one thing. They're friends. They go way back—from Memphis-they've been a team for a long time. I can assure you they don't have anything going. Not like you're inferring. Vic-what can I tell you?"
There was a brief period when no one spoke. Trask could hear music, talk, ringing phones, faraway conversations, the Mystery Tramp typing. "Hi," he heard.
"Hello." Inspector Higgins of the Yard. Another mustached, receding hairline type. "Hi."
"Hi."
"Bill—Vic has concerns. He feels a phone call may have been bugged. Maybe a mike in his office. He worries about rumors he's heard about KCM having a policy involving the monitoring of conversations—things like that. I thought perhaps you'd set his mind to rest."
"Sure. Do my best." Higgins had such a warm, trustworthy smile. They hadn't exchanged fifteen words in all the time Trask had been with the station, but he instantly liked and trusted the man—suddenly. Perhaps because he seemed so open.
"It's bullshit, I guess," Trask said. Defeated. "I've always heard that—you know—there were hidden mikes."
"Not bullshit at all," Higgins said. "When I came here there were units in all the office intercoms. The general manager back in the old days—I don't have to tell you-had a penchant for eavesdropping. He had it fixed so that all the office intercoms doubled as microphones. In theory, they were always on, and all he had to do was flip a selector switch and he could listen to any office from downstairs. We had all those mikes removed."
"Everybody said—you've heard, I'm sure—that you guys tape everything with the camcorders and stuff…" He was no longer even bothering to form complete sentences so incoherent were his thoughts.
"The camcorders are for your protection. Programs such as Sean's are often controversial or provocative in nature and—even the newscasts—will sometimes be capable of generating a degree of anger in the listener. You know, I'm sure, about the dangerous lunatic fringe of any large audience, be it radio or television or whatever. This is why stations like KCM have to have security staffs. We're not watching you, we're trying to keep you safe. I'd be glad to take you down right now and show you how we operate." All of this in the friendliest, most open manner.
It ended up that Trask, Flynn, and Higgins had to troop downstairs en masse and take the fifty-cent guided tour of Internal Security. Somehow Trask made it through the rest of the afternoon and early evening without collapsing, even if half his time was spent on the throne in the men's potty. By nightfall, he was home—violently ill—and within twelve hours he was getting flu shots, albeit too late. Mercifully, he was dead to the world and missed the next couple of editions of the local papers and the various electronic media newscasts. The news would have only made him sicker as he'd have had to watch others slide the pieces of his jigsaw together for him.
S
hooter Price, SAVANT in his arms, had managed to escape unscathed. It filled him with self-confidence, to have so easily evaded an attack by an adversary as cunning and deadly as Chaingang. Those fucking shitheels had used his own tracker to locate him. But he had fooled them! He was alive and well, with his incredible weapon and plenty of rounds for her hungry maw, and he would show all of them what payback meant—starting with that fucking hippo.
Back in Illinois, Dr. Norman did not think of Daniel as a hippo so much as a huge, angry bear. He shuddered as he read of the killings, and of the attempt to get their sniper. Like maddened polar bears who have invaded the same huge ice flow, they were now circling each other in the dance of death. One, armed with a sniper weapon without equal, the other with presentience to warn him of danger; each seemingly invulnerable to attack from the other. But Norman knew, as he read the account, precisely what the outcome would be. He knew that there was no living human who could go up against Daniel and live. And he understood the prison wisdom that stated "Chaingang has nothing but his hatred." He was sure that the knowledge of the implant had only amplified that, if anything.
Bunkowski, the man, was precisely the reverse of Danny, the little boy. In Chaingang's world, he rules and you are the victim. The cons always said there were three codes inside: the penal code by which the prison operated, the inmate code by which cons coexisted behind bars, and the survival code. The last code transcended the others, the one that Chaingang practiced as a religion.
In Kansas City, Missouri, it was another day. The dawn had come up gray and wet-looking. Shooter felt tough and privileged. He did a few half-hearted push-ups, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He showered, shaved, and dressed with some care, dressing for success.
Price wore sandwashed bronze linen slacks from Côte d'Ivoire, a metallicized anaconda Western-style belt with verdigris-patina buckle by Mark Cross, and a River Crest Pro Shop pullover in mulled claret. He pulled on pale yellow silk socks from Neimann's, and antique gold, woven ostrich quill skimmers. The sniper as fashion plate. It wouldn't matter. He was going down in the pit, under full camouflage.
Shooter in Missouri and Dr. Norman in Illinois both began their morning with the same news. Neither man happened to turn on their respective television sets. Each read, with divergent reactions, the substantially identical accounts of the previous day's violence. One from local law-enforcement agencies' reports to the various data-collection terminals such as NCIC and VI-CAP. The other from the Kansas City papers.
"Six More Killed in Bloody Massacre" was the headline of the
Star
, and Bobby Price smiled when he read the stories under the subhead "Police Confirm Mass Killer on Rampage."
A lone gunman is believed responsible for six murders and one attempted murder in midtown Kansas City, Thursday, as the spate of bloody homicides continued, pushing the city's violent death record to an all-time high. In what were termed sniper killings, a man that witnesses called huge, over six feet tall, weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, is thought to have taken six more lives using a long-distance rifle of some type. Lieutenant John J. Llewelyn of the Kansas City Homicide Division of the Crimes Against Persons Unit said that he is believed to be using some kind of high-explosive projectiles such as rifle grenades.
Llewelyn confirmed that the killer's weapons and methods appear to match those employed in twenty-nine recent slayings. He's probably got automatic weapons, grenades, and is familiar with various explosives.
Kansas City Homicide has called in a special department of the FBI for assistance with the case, which may or may not be drug-related. The shootings and firebombings that resulted in thirteen dead in an attack on a biker gang's headquarters, and the grisly ritual mutilation and murder of three other bikers at Mount Ely, have lead to speculation that drug dealers may be involved with the slayings. The biker-gang members had a history of drug arrests, both for possession and distribution of drugs like crystal meth.
Fatally wounded Thursday were Mark Berkemper, forty-two, a professor at State Business College; a Jane Doe of approximately twenty-six years of age, Dick Thompson, thirty-three, an advertising consultant with Saveth-Blackman-Grant; E. L. Campbell, twenty-six, a driver for a lawn center, George D. Unwin, fifty-seven, U.S. Army, Ret.; and Phyllis Guthrie, thirty-eight, a clerk employed by the Kansas City Housing Authority. Neither the Kansas City Police nor the FBI would comment further as to any possible connection between these killings and what were called random murders. The deaths brought to 173 the number of homicides in the city since January 1.
Price laughed at the crude police composite sketch that was prominent in both papers. The eyes and mouth were all wrong. Gangbang was even fatter and uglier than the drawing. He read the other account in which he was described as a "motorist."
"The so-called Crucifixion Killer," the caption under the drawing began, "as described by witnesses to a high-speed car chase that ended in gunplay in midtown Kansas City Thursday."
After killing at least six more persons with what are believed to be rifle grenades, the giant-size mass murderer attempted to shoot another motorist, who was able to elude him after the killer first tried to ram his car, then fired at him as he fled on foot.
Shortly after the car chase, the escaping motorist's car was struck by a truck, in the vicinity of 28th and The Paseo. At this point, the killer fired approximately fifty rounds from a silenced machine gun, failing to hit the fleeing motorist. The driver of the truck was not injured.
Witnesses told police that the huge man, who wore a dark blue shirt and green trousers, then threw a grenade into the motorist's empty vehicle, and sped away in a late-model red car. No one was injured in either the attempted shooting or subsequent explosion.
Shell casings found in the vicinity may be tied into the recent biker-gang slayings as well. Detective Sergeant Marlin Morris told reporters the abandoned car's registration is being checked to determine the motorist's identity."
If Chaingang wanted to find him, he thought he'd make it as easy for him as he could. He'd bring the fat piece of shit out in the open and blow him into a million pieces of rendered lard.
He called a cab and asked to be driven to a car-rental agency. After he'd fixed himself up with a ride, he loaded his best girl and drove to the concealed sniper hide near Hospital Hill Park.
Oddly, he thought, it made him hot to consider how much power he had at this moment, assembling the weapon in his camouflaged gun pit. The cops wanted him, SAUCOG wanted him, fucking Chaingang wanted him, but he was like The Invisible Man—untouchable, unseeable, and all-powerful. What a turn-on! He could do any damned thing his heart desired and get away with it. Who was left to stop him?
"
This round is particularly effective against vehicles, buildings, walls, barricades, and other hard targets
." He loaded a SHARP-HEX round into the breech.
"
Red Rock Match Grade ammunition
…" His mind went blank. He felt a wave of nausea that came over him and vanished as quickly as it had lapped up against his senses. He peered into the Laco scope.
He saw a youth in a black car, maybe a Trans-Am, gone now behind a truck. A black man wearing a dark jacket; a fellow in work uniform, standing on the bumper of a trailer truck. Another peered under an open hood. He moved to other visions: a couple of people talking on the street; a nurse; the crimson of a sweatshirt on a jogger attracts him like a red flag waved at a bull, and as he focuses he spots a movement near a cement mixer. A man steps out and Price flings him into the air from a mile and a half away. "Way to
get
some!" What was once a man has now become paint, and it drips from the blasted belly of the cement mixer. The exploded man has become a red-and-silver streak. They sound like comic-book superheroes to Shooter: The Exploded Man and The Red and Silver Streak, in this adventure-filled issue of Gangbang Comics! He loads an antipersonnel round and peers into the 40X scope. A used-car salesman stands with a prospective customer under a row of pennants in front of a dealership. A woman walks to her car flanked by a Safeway bagboy. Shooter lets the crosshairs touch him. Keeps moving. Passes over a maintenance man in shirt and jeans, working beside the roadway.
"I exorcise thee, unclean spirit…tremble, 0 Satan, enemy of the faith, thou foe of mankind who hast brought death to the world." He sees the chocolate-over-beige prefab of an armed forces recruitment center. He sees a uniform and squeezes. He prays for Chaingang to find him now. "
In nomina patris
…" His mind wanders.
"The removable accessory vault, located in the butt of the stock, forward of the shoulder recoil pad, is accessed by removal of the butt base plate, and by releasing the serrated latch detent which is housed in the upper edge of the recessed butt chamber. Slide the base plate forward and grasp the lip inside the base plate, pulling the accessory vault down and out."
"That's how I get into your butt," he whispers into the black hole of his own madness.
The implant was all but forgotten for the moment. It was less than a sublevel awareness, excepting those moments when he felt a fleeting tingle of alien discomfort somewhere between the giant roll of fat at the back of his immense neck and the top of his scarred, hard skull. He would take these ones who needed killing step by step: Mr. Price, Mrs. Garbella, Dr. Norman—his sissy friend The concept that Norman would be monitoring his movements on a distant electronic screen could have upset his gyro, and he would not let that happen again. He was doing Dr. Norman's bidding, on his team for the moment, and their immediate goals were not antithetical.
Chaingang knew that he would prevail over the sniper with his miracle gun, all else being equal. But it was vital to act with celerity now, since Shooter Price was obviously far over the edge, and the police were under the impression that he—Daniel—was the sniper. One more preposterously intolerable event in a chain, which he would now begin to break.