Final Victim (1995) (18 page)

"It's caused problems in my life, in my marriage. I've been cruel to people I love."

"You're wrong," she said softly. "Cruelty and sentimentality can sometimes be companion traits . . . but never cruelty and love." She touched his arm. "Don't be so hard on yourself, John. You know something . . . ?"

He looked at her in a different way . . . seeing different qualities. "If you let it happen, you might actually turn out to like who you are," she said.

There were four men whom Lockwood had never met before waiting for the Delta flight at Dulles Gate 12. They introduced themselves as members of Laurence Heath's administrative staff and then walked without speaking, next to Karen and Lockwood, out into a surprisingly cool April day. A wet, gusting wind was scattering the brown and gold leaves of spring, occasionally lifting them in eddies of air, swirling them around in tiny, twisting tornadoes. Lockwood watched a one-foot-high twister whirl across the parking lot and spill into a Chevy hubcap . . . mindless motion followed by an abrupt collapse. The perfect metaphor for his career.

They got into two cars. Karen sat beside him on the backseat as they pulled out of the huge Dulles Airport and took the forty-minute trip through Virginia's countryside into Washington, D
. C
.

Lockwood had been expecting to be taken to the IA floor on five, but instead they went to SES on three. He was led into Laurence Heath's office. Bob Tilly avoided his eyes when he looked at him. Oh boy, Lockwood thought, they're not even gonna give me a blindfold this time.

Laurence Heath was standing with his back to the door, looking out the picture window at ominous clouds and the White House administration annex. His hands were clasped behind him and the Teutonic wrinkles in the back of his head bristled from a recent haircut. When he turned, Lockwood saw a different expression from the one he had been expecting. Heath had sad compassion pasted on his rough tank-commander's face. His blue eyes seemed watery and distant. "Sit down, John."

He didn't sit. He wasn't going to take this on his ass. "Do I get a last meal and a cigarette?" Lockwood said, trying to find the right tone for the final note of his career.

"John . . . I have bad news . . ." Heath started slowly. "There's been a tragic circumstance. There's no easy way to get to this, so I'll just say it straight out. Claire has been murdered."

Lockwood stared at Heath. . . . The words failed to penetrate his brain. "What?" he said, even though he'd heard Heath clearly.

"She's been murdered. A man broke into the house in Studio City and killed her. It happened Sunday night. It's been kept off the news until you and her family could be notified."

"Heather . . . Is Heather okay?" he said. His mind was reeling now; his body starting to sweat uncontrollably. It was a cold sweat that turned his stomach sour. "Is she . . . is she . . . ?" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"She's okay. Well, not exactly okay . . . She apparently walked in while the man was . . . while it was happening. She wasn't attacked but she's in traumatic shock. She's at Children's Hospital in Hollywood... under sedation."

There was a long silence. John's thoughts swirled like leaves in the wind. His emotions were at war with this devastating news. He looked at his boss, who was shaking his head sadly.

"Heather . . . Heather is . . . in a hospital?" Lockwood finally managed.

"Yes. In a hospital . . . Children's Hospital. The body, Claire's body, is with the L
. A
. Coroner. She was killed with a narrow blade of some kind. At least that's the Coroner's initial description of the wound. He believes she died quickly."

"A scalpel," Lockwood said dully. He felt himself begin to sag. He caught the arm of the sofa and sat down on it heavily. One thought kept trying to penetrate his churning emotions. Claire was gone. She was really gone. He would never see her again . . . not in love or i
n a
nger. He would never see those Nordic blue eyes; eyes that could smile without her lips moving. He would never again hear the husky rasp in her breathing when she made love. He had lost her forever. He had left her in his own selfish wake, and now there was nothing he could do but hate himself for his senseless behavior.

"I want to go see Heather. I want to go now," he said softly. "I've arranged for a plane. It's standing by at National." Lockwood tried to stand but his legs wouldn't hold him. Larry Heat
h m
oved to him and helped him to his feet.

"Bob, get in here!" he yelled.

Tilly arrived on the run and, with the two of them holding on, they walked Lockwood down the hall.

"She's okay," Heath said. "Your daughter's okay. She's just in emotional shock. The doctors know how to deal with it. We'll get the man who did this. I promise you, John, we'll find him."

"I know where he is," John Lockwood said. "I'll get him myself . . ."

"You know . . . ? How do you know? Who is it?"

"I don't know . . . not really. I just . . . Look, Larry, just let me go, will you?"

They moved down to the elevator and Heath pressed the button. The four men in suits who had met Lockwood at the airport were waiting on benches nearby. They stood immediately to go with him.

"John, you can't get involved in this investigation. If you know anything, tell me now."

"Just get me out to L
. A
., Larry, okay? Don't tell me what I can't do."

"It's policy, man. You can't work on a case involving a loved one." "Fuck policy!"

"You've been suspended, John. I wasn't going to tell you that until later, but IA suspended you when you failed to show up this morning. Kulack had the hearing without you."

The elevator door opened and one of the gray suits caught it. They all stood there, not knowing what to say . . . frozen in a tableau of embarrassed silence.

"When I first saw Claire, we were at the park," Lockwood finally said. "It was a summer day and I was there with some guys and we were drinking beer and looking for girls. I saw her and I thought, that is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen--"

"She was beautiful," Heath interrupted.

"Listen to me," Lockwood said sharply. "I don't know if I can say this so you'll understand, so I'll understand. I saw her there, backlit, wearing a white sundress, and with those blue eyes . . . and I said, 'God, if you'll let me have this woman, I won't ever ask you for anything else again.' And I guess God was listening, because it happened. He gave me Claire. I . . . I loved her, but I didn't deserve her, Larry, because everything in my life was always so hard and cynical . . . from the institutions that raised me to this job. I never let her have the good parts of me because I was always playing defense, trying not to get hit. That's the way I was taught to survive. And now, for the last few months, I've been seeing how unfair I was to her and to Heather and hating myself for it. I gave her my promise of love, but I never shared myself with her. And now, when I want to . . . when I've been dreaming about finding a way back to her . . . it . . . it's too late."

There was a long silence. The four gray suits shifted their weight.

"There's only one thing I can do for her now, Larry. Only one thing. It's too late and too little, but I'm gonna do it, nonetheless .. . and not you or Customs or anybody else on this planet is going to stop me." He reached into his pocket and handed Larry Heath his badge an
d h
is plastic ID. He pulled his government-issue S&W .38 out of its holster and handed it to the DOAO. Then he turned and walked on rubber legs into the elevator. The four men trailed in behind him, and in seconds the door closed and John Lockwood was gone.

Malavida was in a truck-stop motel in Macon, Georgia, when he saw the story on TV. The lacquer-haired commentator said that the release of the woman's name and picture had been withheld until the family could be notified. Then, up on the screen came Claire Lock-wood's beautiful face.

"The L
. A
. Coroner estimates that Claire Lockwood was killed at approximately ten o'clock last evening. She was stabbed in her bedroom several times and was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank at eleven-fifteen P
. M
., Sunday. Her ten-year-old daughter may have witnessed the crime but is in traumatic shock at Children's Hospital in Hollywood."

"Motherfucker," Malavida said out loud, his heart sinking.

The news anchor continued: "The L
. A
. Coroner says that the penetration and track of the wound indicates a very narrow blade, perhaps a fruit knife."

"Scalpel," Malavida said under his breath."

. . . Mrs. Lockwood was recently divorced from her husband, John Lockwood, a Customs agent who, police say, was in an airplane with other Customs employees when the murder took place and is not a suspect."

When the story was over, Malavida turned off the TV and sat in the dark. He didn't move for almost an hour. He thought back to that Sunday afternoon, working his cracking program from Claire's French Provincial desk in her sunny study. He'd had a feeling even then tha
t i
t had been a mistake not to put a masking program on his UNIX host's address, but he'd been in a hurry and had wanted to impress Karen. He was being Snoopy, wire-walking in cyberspace, performing his amazing magic, working carelessly without a net.

Now he sat in the dark motel room in Macon. Over and over, he replayed the events in his mind, looking for another explanation. But there was no denying it. He punished himself with one thought: It was his fault that Claire Lockwood had been murdered.

Chapter
17

"It's a small world after all . . ." leaked musically out of recessed speakers. The song was stepped on by occasional doctor pages coming through the same sound system. A few children on crutches or in wheelchairs moved down the brightly colored hall to the skylighted playroom at the end of the floor. The area managed to be both cheerful and sad at the same time.

Lockwood moved out of the elevator with a young, earnest woman named Beth something-or-other. She was a volunteer who said she was getting her master's in child psychology.

"She's in emotional traumatic shock and she's blocking the whole event. Dr. Levitt says the best thing is to just let her come out of it naturally. Right now, when she gets agitated, we medicate her slightly."

Lockwood heard almost none of it as he plowed on blindly, looking for his daughter's room.

"It's in here," Beth said, taking his arm and turning him as he moved aimlessly up the hallway.

He entered a small room with two beds and a window that overlooked a concrete courtyard. The room had wallpaper with lots of little multi-colored balloons on it. An artist had painted animals everywhere. A large hot-air balloon dominated the far wall. Purple hippos with wide eyes looked over the side of the honey-gold basket. Heather was lying in the far bed, staring up at the animals on the ceiling.

"Daddy," she said, turning her head to him as he entered the room. "Daddy, it's all over and I didn't feel a thing . . . well, not really, but almost. I don't have a sore throat or anything. . . .,
,
He moved to her and gathered her up in his arms and hugged her. He clung to her desperately. Heather struggled slightly to be free. She pulled back and looked at him with stern wisdom.

"I thought it was going to hurt because of what Lenore said when she had it done, but I woke up and it was almost like nothing happened. I tried to call Mommy but I guess she's at work. . . ."

He sat on the bed, held her hand, and looked down at her. She seemed excited and happy, but there was a tightness around her eyes that betrayed everything; a shrillness in her voice that he had never heard before.

"So anyway," she continued, "they wake you up and make you take icky, syrupy medicine that's supposed to taste like cherry but doesn't . . . but they also wake you up all the time and feed you ice cream . . . and there was this girl, Sara, that was my roommate, who fell off her bike and hurt her head. But she went home yesterday. . . ."

Then it dawned on him what she was talking about. She was back almost a year when she'd had her tonsils out. It had been at this very hospital. She was pretending desperately that it was a year ago, that the operation was over, and that explained why she was there. H
e l
ooked into her pale-blue eyes, Claire's eyes, and felt tears come into his own.

"You wouldn't believe this neat doctor I got. His name is Dr. Dumbbell. . . . That's what he told me and Mommy his name was. . . "

Lockwood knew she was talking about Dr. Dumbolten, who had performed the tonsillectomy last year.

"Isn't that a stupid name, Dr. Dumbbell? I think it's very stupid, but he's a good doctor anyway, because I don't even have a sore throat. I called Mommy and I tried to tell her, but I can't find her anywhere. She's not at home or at the office. I talked to Mrs. Watkins, that's her new secretary, and she kept crying and wouldn't say where Mommy is. And I'm ready to go home. . . . Where is
Mommy . . . ?"

Lockwood looked at his daughter, then at Beth, who shook her head in a gesture that said, Don't tell her. He didn't. They talked about her year-old operation and they talked about her cat, Fluffy, which had been run over by a car last summer but which was now still very much alive in Heather's mind. Then she said something that almost doubled him over with anguish.