The Murder Channel (13 page)

All behavior has a context. Explosive violence has a complex choreography and usually an intrapsychic script. When the victims are strangers,
they have walked onstage in act 2, or 3, or 5, without knowing their lines. Only the aggressor knows what is going on in his head and on his stage.

“You’ve talked with Zrbny,” I said.

“Many times. He has a story to tell. There are questions that he wants to answer.”

“He’s a fugitive. He can’t pop in off the streets to titillate your viewers.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Wendy, he’s already killed today. I don’t know what trips his wire, but when he goes, more people will die.”

“I think you’re wrong,” she said. “People do change.”

“Sure. He’s killing at a slower pace.”

Legs in her white linen suit crossed, hands planted firmly on the chair arms, Wendy Pouldice knew something that no one else knew. I suspected that it was not enough to keep her from getting killed.

“You’ve seen him since he escaped,” I said.

She continued to smile. “Lucas, we’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Forget the rest of the speech,” I said, and shoved myself from the back-killing chair.

I unfolded the copy of the Escher print that I had found in Zrbny’s desk and dropped it on the glass table. “Recognize anyone?”

She leaned forward and stared at the black-and-white forms plodding their way through stone
emptiness—oblivious and alone. Pouldice grabbed the print and focused on the face at its center, the faded publicity shot.

“I had a midday show and anchored the evening news back then,” she said. “Where did you get this?”

“Fifteen years ago your crew was the first at Ravenwood.”

“Lucas, answer my question.”

“Zrbny called you that day, didn’t he?”

She dropped the print on the table, slammed her hands to her hips, and stared at the ceiling.

“Wendy, you’re going to get yourself killed, and you’re exposing others to that risk.”

“We’re all going to die, Lucas. I don’t plan on doing it soon.”

“When do you expect him?”

As if on cue, Braverman strode into the room and stood at the door.

“That guy is amazing,” I said.

I retrieved the Escher print.

“If we can’t talk about Zrbny, what about Dermott Fremont?”

She glanced quickly at Braverman. “Vigil,” she said. “We’ve been reporting the courthouse story since this morning.”

“Fremont?”

“What about him? I don’t know the man. My people have tried to interview him. He refuses.”

I looked at Braverman. “Donald, what sort of guy is J-Cubed?”

The big guy’s answer was to pull open the door and hold it for my exit.

“You’ve got him well trained,” I told her.

“The business has changed, Lucas. We don’t just report the game. We’re players now.”

Wendy Pouldice was setting herself up as an accessory to whatever horror Felix Zrbny visited on the city. “You’re not at the zoo,” I said. “You’re not watching animals behind an electric fence and across a moat.”

She said nothing.

Braverman cleared his throat and I left.

ON THE TWENTY-MINUTE DRIVE FROM THE
Towers to Bolton’s office, I began to have a feel for what churned at the back of my mind. Vigil was not making a political statement with its assault on the courthouse. Albie Wilson, however crazy he was, had his half-brother driving the only car that concerned Wilson. The second car and driver were for a different passenger, one who had not arrived in court. I was convinced that Vigil wanted Zrbny free and alive. What I did not know was why.

Bolton met me at his door. “The little guy in there is Benjamin Moffat,” he said. “He just survived a face-off with Zrbny.”

“Is he reliable?”

“He’s a ward attendant at the criminal psych unit. Worked with Zrbny for five years. He was on his way home from his shift at the hospital, saw Zrbny and pulled over.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The Riverway, off Huntington.”

“I was just out there,” I said, thinking that Pouldice and Zrbny now shared the same cage.

“Zrbny aimed a gun at him and told him to go home. Moffat says there was a witness, a young woman standing in an apartment doorway. I’ve got units at both ends of the drive, and two unmarked cars moving onto the street.”

I followed Bolton to his car and climbed in. “Why didn’t he shoot Moffatt?” I asked.

“You’re supposed to tell me that.”

Bolton made the turn onto a deserted Hunting-ton Avenue. “I have a tactical unit on standby,” he said. “We’re treating this as a hostage situation.”

“Is Zrbny holding the woman?”

“Moffatt doesn’t know. Zrbny was on the street. The woman was in the doorway. He said it looked like she lives there. Moffatt didn’t know the street number, but he described the area well. He was happy not to be shot. He drove off. Zrbny just stood in the road.”

It made sense that Zrbny would hole up somewhere. He was a killer on the run in a crippling snowstorm.

SABLE SAT IN THE DARKENED APARTMENT.

The aquarium’s rainbow colors had washed to a mud gray. The gentle noise of bubbling water was gone.

“The electricity went off,” Sable said. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

I stood at the door and watched the road. Someone had followed me from the Towers. I noticed him when I crossed the bridge. When I stopped at the corner, he froze in the shadows a hundred yards away. I did not see him now.

A car moved slowly past and parked. The engine idled, and no one got out of the car.

“Mr. Guzman sent flowers,” I said, dropping the bag on the sofa beside her.

I retrieved the shotgun from the bathroom and returned to the front window.

“Felix, what’s going on?” Sable asked.

“He said you should put them in water.”

A TV satellite truck stopped on the other side of the river.

“Go into the kitchen,” I said. “Now.”

I heard her leave the room.

A van turned onto the Riverway and came fast, sliding to a halt thirty yards away. Four men climbed out, talked briefly, then dispersed toward the buildings. The TV truck’s klieg lights snapped on and illuminated the street and the blowing snow.

I moved back through the apartment to the cellar door.

“Felix?”

“Stay away from the front,” I said, and stepped into the cellar.

I followed emergency lighting through the subterranean corridor. In each building’s cellar, metal barrels overflowed with cans, milk cartons, bottles, tins. Some tenants had not bothered with the barrels and dropped their debris on the floor.

I had not gone far when I heard noise behind me. Someone opened Sable’s door. I waited until the door slammed shut.

Ducking pipes and wires, I ran the length of the hall until I reached the last cellar. That’s when I heard gunshots.

I climbed stairs to the first-floor entry. Three teenagers stood outside the door watching the action on the street. More shots were fired.

When I pushed open the street door, one kid looked at me, then at the shotgun. “They after you, mister?”

I nodded.

His friends turned. “That’s Vigil,” a second one said. “You don’t want to fuck with them. They got a shootout going with the cops.”

The third kid, a tall, gangly adolescent, spoke up. “If you don’t shoot me with that, I’ll show you another way out of here.”

I nodded.

“C’mon.”

I followed him into the building and down the stairs. He crossed the hall, dodged garbage mounds, and slipped behind the furnace to the wall.

“You reach up there,” the kid said, “you’ll feel loose boards. Slide ‘em to the right, then haul yourself out. There’s a fence with a hole ripped in it. Go through there, between the two buildings, and you’ll come out on the next block.”

He moved aside, and a voice shouted, “Freeze.”

The kid backed across the cellar.

“I don’t want you. I want the big guy.”

The kid turned to run. Automatic weapon fire cut him down.

I waited until the shooter stepped cautiously into sight beyond the furnace, then fired two rounds from the Mossberg. He caromed off the wall on his way down.

More men approached, running through the corridor. When they were only yards away, I stepped from behind the furnace and fired.

I SAT IN THE CAR WITH BOLTON WATCHING
tactical officers escort handcuffed vigilantes to a van, and listening to muffled bursts of gunfire from somewhere inside the building. Our back seat was the temporary repository for seized weapons, mostly Mac-10s and Uzis. At random intervals, the door opened and a cop contributed to the arsenal.

There was one knife in the pile of metal—a bone-handle with a twelve-inch blade that was at least two inches across and sharpened on both edges. “Asshole was hunting bears on the River-way,” I muttered.

Bolton glanced through the snow at the TV lights on the far side of the river. “How did BTT get here so fast?” he asked.

I followed his gaze. “It’s their neighborhood.”

“That truck was parked there when my units came on the scene. Then Vigil came sliding in and turned the street into a battle zone.”

“Scanners?”

“We used a scrambled channel.”

I shrugged. “Any sign of Zrbny?”

“Nothing yet.”

A tac officer tapped on Bolton’s window. “We found a woman inside. She’s incoherent, hiding under a table in the kitchen. She doesn’t appear to be injured.”

We followed the cop through the basement apartment. A female officer leaned against the sink. She aimed her flashlight at a row of pill bottles on a shelf, Thorazine and Mellaril among others, prescribed for Sable Bannon.

I looked under the table where the young woman lay in the shadows, curled in fetal position and facing the wall. Her meds were antipsychotics. I had no way to know what reality she had created for herself when Zrbny passed through followed by Vigil and a cadre of heavily armed police officers, and gunfire exploded in and around her home.

My own experience, and the work of pioneering Scottish analyst R. D. Laing, had taught me that I had to enter her world. With gunfire echoing in the cellar, I had to work fast. My first step was to lower myself to the floor and sit, to be physically on the same plane with her.

“Ms. Bannon, my name is Lucas.”

I expected no response, and I received none. It was time to acknowledge the obvious.

“You’ve had a difficult day. When you are ready, you can tell me about it. I’d like to hear your voice, to hear what you have to say.”

The embedded instructions defined our roles: she will be able and willing to talk; I will listen.

I waited a moment, then verbally tugged at the frightened woman. “I didn’t think my knees were going to allow me to sit down here. They don’t always cooperate. This time they did.”

“I forgot to feed my fish,” she said.

“I’d like to help you do that now. You’ll have to show me where you keep the food, and how much you feed them.”

“That’s when I take my pills.”

It was a paired association, something that I had often seen among my patients.

“I noticed the medications on the shelf. Would you like to do that now?”

“Fish first,” she said, peering over her shoulder at me.

I extended my hand and she grabbed it, holding tight as she twisted around and slowly emerged from beneath the table. A burst of radio chatter from the hall startled her.