The Nature of the Beast (32 page)

They
’
d whisper his name forever.
He
’
d be on those true-crime cops shows all the time. Be the guy at the top of the Most Evil list.
Maybe even become a computer game, with millions of kids following along as he exacted his retribution.

He brushed the ringlet of
hair from his eyes and pulled his admission ticket from his pocket.
“
Right this way…
”
someone said above the rush and rustle of the crowd.

__

Eighteen years of producing the Harvey Winter Show had seriously expanded this guy’s horizons. Jeff Vickers listened intently to what Jackson Craig had to say and then pushed the attached microphone away from his mouth, slid a metal clipboard under his arm, and pursed his lips.

“You realize what you’re asking me?” Vickers checked the time. The red digital reader board above the stage entrance read 9:52 and 23 seconds in numbers as big as your head. “We’re eight minutes from air time and you want
me
to pull the plug.” He emitted a short derisive laugh. “You gotta be kidding.”

Craig shot a glance at his partner. “Believe me, sir…we talked it over,” he said. “The negative career ramifications are not lost on us.”

Audrey held up her hand. Girl Scout’s honor.

“If you’re wrong we all make You-Tube history,” Vickers said.

“Can we take that chance?” Audrey asked.

“No,” Vickers said immediately. “We can’t.” He threw an angry hand into the air. “Wait here,” he said over his shoulder as he hurried off down the carpet.

Two minutes passed before a pair of security guards came jogging by.

Craig pulled his government issue Blackberry from his pocket. Dialed. Spoke. Waited. “Tell him it’s Special Agent Jackson Craig. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

“Yes,” Craig said after a moment. “Sergeant Leonard…it’s Craig. I realize this is really out of line…” Craig suddenly stopped talking and listened intently. “Yes,” he said again, “… but quietly. He gets jumpy and he’s going to push the button. Yes. Yes. We will,” Craig assured him.

Craig thumbed away the connection and looked over at Audrey. “CPD dug a body out of a dumpster about two blocks from here. Stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Somebody named Leona Hearns. Fifty-six, single, and presently going through chemotherapy. Neighbors say she was a card carrying Harvey Winter fanatic. They say she comes down here every week and gets herself a ticket for the Wednesday show. Hasn’t missed one in years. Leonard sent a unit to her apartment. They found a big gym bag full of military weaponry and a pile of men’s clothes on the living room floor. Leonard’s on his way with the cavalry.”

At the far end of the hall, Harvey Winter strode out into the corridor wearing a green make-up smock and his patented sneer. Six foot-three, weighing maybe nineteen pounds. Harvey Winter hurried in their direction, looking like if you bumped into him, you’d come away torn and bleeding.

“We got some nut with a bomb?” he demanded.

“Yes,” Audrey answered. “I’m afraid we do.”

No hesitation. “Any way we can get this on tape. I mean this is…”

Audrey cut him short. “We need get everyone outside of the building.”

Winter opened his mouth to protest, but Craig cut him off.

“I need your cameramen to leave the studio cameras in such a way as to give us a real-time picture of the audience,” Jackson Craig added.

“We can control the cameras from the control booth,” Vickers said. “Come on.”

They followed him to the first door on the right and stepped into a veritable maze of the latest digital video equipment. Six seats. Six separate banks of screens. He put his hands on his hips and turned around.

A nod from Winter and Vickers began whispering commands into his mouthpiece. The original pair of security guys had mutated into eight or nine. One with a gold shield said, “Everyone out the Jefferson Boulevard exit,” and people began to speed walk. Backstage began to fill as the green rooms emptied and puzzled camera crews made their way back behind the curtain.

A line of security officers directed bewildered green-room guests and camera crews down the carpeted hallway and around the corner to the Jefferson Boulevard exit. The whole backstage evacuation took just under four minutes.

The cameras divided the audience into three sections, each section displayed on a separate flat-screen monitor. Craig moved his eyes from one screen to another, moving from left to right and back again, row by row, face by face. Zooming in, zooming out. Two hundred people in the seats. Probably a hundred and eighty of them female. A microcosm of American womanhood. Big, little, old, young, black, white and yellow, from downright fashionable to bag-lady frumpy.

Audrey Williams excused herself and stepped in front of Jackson Craig, walking past the center screen, moving all the way to the monitor at the far left. Craig side-stepped to his right, bending closer to the images on the screen, squinting at each expression, searching for a telltale nuance… something…anything…”

“Nobody stands out,” Audrey groused.

America’s favorite muckraker leaned over their shoulders and squinted at the screens. “What now?” he asked. “We can make an announcement over the …”

“No,” Craig said immediately. “No announcements.” He turned to face Harvey Winter. “No bells, no whistles, no sirens. We’re better off if we surprise him.”

“What, then?” Winter demanded.

“Have your people open up every exit in the building. I want those people to be able to get out as quickly as possible.”

Vickers began to issue orders. A tense minute and a half passed.

“Done,” Vickers said.

Craig pointed to the ceiling. “Turn on the fire sprinklers,” he said.

“They’re synced to a siren and a…”

“Just the sprinklers,” Craig interrupted.

Vickers turned his back and began to whisper urgently into his headset.

A minute passed. “Say when,” he said finally.

“Three, two, one…” Craig recited.

It began as nothing more than a low hiss. And then a gentle mist began to fall…rising in volume and ferocity until, within half a minute it had become a full-fledged summer thunderstorm.

Jackson Craig stepped closer to the TV monitors. The audience was frantic, squealing and flailing indignant arms as they whooped and hollered and covered their heads with whatever was at hand and tottered for the exits.

Half a dozen stubborn souls clung to their seats like barnacles, sneering as their counterparts cringed and shouted and filled the aisles with shuffling feet. Even these stalwart souls, however, eventually gave up the ghost, one here and one there, as the volume of water flowing from the ceiling thundered down unabated, eventually leaving a single soaking woman sitting alone. Big blonde woman. Aisle seat. Third row center.

All three cameras zoomed to close-up. The visage was astounding, harlequin and horrible. Pagliacci on PCP. The blonde baby-doll wig was about to slip from his head. Mascara, rouge, and lipstick and all of it melting down over his face in colored rivulets.

The sprinklers suddenly slowed and then phased off entirely. Solitary beads of water dripped from sprinkler heads all over the studio. Craig stepped closer to the screen, peering intently at the woman in the third row. Now that the veil of falling water had stopped, it was obvious that Colin Satterwaite was crying. Big gasping sobs wracked his body. Craig felt a shoulder brush by his own and looked to his right.

Harvey Winter had, once again, bellied up to the monitors. He studied the face on the screen. “Shoot the son of-a-bitch,” he said.

Craig continued to stare at the image.

“Just blow that shit-head away.” Winter demanded. Whatever he had to say next was squelched by the arrival of Sergeant Leonard, who came jogging down the hallway.

“I’ve got an ATF bomb squad in the lobby and snipers in place,” he announced. He spread his big hands. “Just say the word and we take him out.”

Audrey was aghast. “Aren’t you even going to
talk
to him?”

Winter was incredulous. “Talk to him? Wadda you think this is honey, a chat room?”

Craig checked the screen again. The blonde wig had made its escape. His buzzed- off hair was dark and thick. Three separate red laser dots danced on Colin Satterwaite’s forehead. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Doesn’t he at least get
a chance
to surrender?” Audrey wanted to know.

“Take him out,” Harvey Winter growled again. “Guy’s a boil on the ass of humanity.” He gestured angrily at the monitors. “Lookit that piece of shit.”

After an intense moment of silence, Craig finally shook his head. “That’s not what I’d imagined I was chasing,” he said. “Right now, I’m not too sure what I had in mind.” He pointed at the screen. “…but
that
sure as hell wasn’t it.”

Vickers handed Jackson Craig a wireless microphone. Craig brought the microphone to his mouth, hesitated for a moment, and then thumbed the switch.

“This doesn’t have to end like this,” he said.

His words seemed to come from everywhere at once. The face on the screen opened its eyes and stared into the bank of cameras. “Yes it does,” Colin Satterwaite said in a soft voice. “It has to end right here.”

“Listen…” Craig pressed. “Listen…we can…”

Colin Satterwaite sat forward in the seat. Looked like he was going to stand up. “Nobody came for me. Nobody. They just left me there.”

Craig’s voice took on a harder edge. “Stay in your seat please. Please stay right where you are.”

“They left me there,” Colin said. “For all those years…nobody ever came.”

“They didn’t know,” Craig said quickly. “Nobody knew where to find you. They thought you were dead. If they’d known where you were, they would have come.”

Colin Satterwaite grabbed the arms of the seat and pushed himself to his feet. “That would have been nice,” he mused. “Very nice.”

“Colin,” Craig started.

“Don’t call me that.”

“What should I call you then? Derrik maybe?”

“I don’t have a name.”

“Everybody has a name,” Craig insisted.

“Fuckboy. Call me Fuckboy. That’s what he called me.”

“I won’t call you that,” Jackson Craig said.

“He lied to me.”

“Yes, he did,” Craig agreed.

“He said I’d be a man if I did my duty.”

“You’re already a man,” Jackson Craig said.

Colin looked directly into the camera. “No,” he said.

They watched the monitors as he unbuttoned his long cloth coat and pulled it from his shoulders. The floor length white dress was completely soaked through and transparent. You could clearly see the white brassiere cradling a pair of menacing rectangular breasts. M18A1 stenciled across the fronts.

“Oh God,” Audrey whispered.

“Listen to me…” Craig began. “This wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have…”

“That boy…” the image stammered. “He’d have learned to please.” He looked directly at the control booth. “He was no better than me. He’d have…” He stopped talking and shook his head, as if to say there was no point in going on.

“We can get you some help down here,” Craig said.

Their quarry didn’t seem to hear and instead began to reach down the front of the dress with his left hand. After a bit of groping, he found what he was looking for, then looked at the camera and smiled.

Every hair on Jackson Craig’s body stood up and tingled. He’d seen that smile once before. Outside the Al-Omari Mosque in Beriut
.
The morning a sixteen-year-old suicide bomber blew himself and half a dozen of his fellow citizens into the great beyond. His knees went weak.

“Down,” Craig screamed. He threw one arm around Audrey Williams and the other around Harvey Winter and dove for the rug.

A single flat report filled the speakers in the half-second before the front window of the control room threw itself on them. The building shook from the force of the explosion. Hundreds of puncturing impacts sounded around them. Spent projectiles fell to the floor like steel rain. The sound of hissing sparks and the insistent tinkle of broken glass lasted for a full minute as they cringed face down on the carpet. An alarm began to sound.

__

They stood and watched as a trio of Coroner’s Office technicians bagged the scattered remains and wheeled them out through the lobby door.

“Blew him clean in half,” Leonard said. “Parts of him everywhere.”

Jackson Craig looked around. The front half of the studio was shredded. Every piece of glass shattered and twinkling on the floor. Wires and sound insulation hanging down from the shattered ceiling. The black window fronting the control booth had mostly disappeared, leaving a jagged jack-o-lantern mouth that looked to be laughing.

A pair of workman came crunching up the aisle carrying a ragged section of ceiling. Jackson Craig and Sergeant Leonard stepped into the seats as they passed.

“Hell of a job with the evacuation,” Leonard acknowledged. “You saved a lot of lives here today.” He clapped Craig on the shoulder. “Sorry if I was a bit…”

As if on cue, Jeff Vickers came walking out from behind the scenes, talking into his mouthpiece as he walked. “You’ve got an hour,” he said.

He listened briefly, shook his head. “You let me worry about that. You just take care of the network feed,” he said. “Yes. An hour.”

Catching sight of Jackson Craig and Sergeant Leonard, he stopped in his tracks. He surveyed the carnage in the room and smiled.

“Technical difficulties beyond our control,” he said with an ironic grin.

The sound of glass being crunched underfoot pulled everyone’s attention toward the rear of the studio, where the king of shock TV was picking his way carefully down the studio aisle with Audrey in tow.

“They ready to go?” he asked Vickers.

“One hour,” he answered.

Vickers turned his attention to Sergeant Leonard. “Sergeant, we’re going to need to get across the street to the old studio. I was hoping…”

“When?” was all he asked.

“Fifteen, twenty minutes,” Vickers answered.