Next Victim Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART TWO

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART THREE

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Author’s Note

  Next Victim

  Michael Prescott

  Copyright © 2002 by Douglas Borton.

  Published by E-Reads. All rights reserved.

  www.ereads.com

  For my parents

  For they have sown the wind,

  and they shall reap the whirlwind.

  —Hosea 8:7

  PROLOGUE: 1968

  The standoff was in its fourth hour.

  Mason Howard, sheriff of Valencia County, stood under the noonday sun in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson’s Motor Inn fifty miles west of Albuquerque. Not far away, traffic rushed past on Route 66—truckers on long hauls, locals running errands, families taking road trips. And maybe, every once in a while, somebody in flight from the law.

  Somebody like the woman whose Buick Grand Sport was parked outside room 24 of the HoJo, the woman who had locked and barricaded herself in her room and was holding a gun.

  Howard lifted the bullhorn in his left hand—he was keeping his right hand free in case he had to draw his sidearm in a hurry—and tried again to get through to her.

  "Mrs. Beckett." His amplified voice rippled across the hot macadam. "There’s no need for anyone to get hurt, ma’am. We can settle things nice and reasonable if you’ll just come on out here."

  The window of room 24 was open, although the drapes were drawn. Music played inside the room—the same damn song, over and over.

  Above the music rose a high, quavering reply: "Leave me alone!"

  Howard lowered the megaphone. He glanced at Deputy Trilling, standing beside him against the open door of a department cruiser. Never having been in a shoot-out, Trilling seemed to believe that the door would offer cover if the lady opened fire. He was wrong. Bullets could cut through a car door as easy as a knife through cheese.

  Howard decided not to disabuse him of the notion. All he said was, "She’s losing it."

  Lloyd Trilling made a snorting sound, his nearest approach to laughter. "I’d say she lost it a long time ago. ’Round the time she amscrayed with the kid and went on the lam."

  The kid. Right there was the nub of the problem. If Melinda Beckett had been alone in the motel room, Howard would have been content to wait her out indefinitely.

  But there was the kid, Melinda’s eight-year-old boy, trapped with his suicidal mom. Yesterday she’d abducted the boy from her estranged hubby, a Mr. Harrison Beckett of Casper, Wyoming, and driven six hundred miles while an APB was put out across all the western states.

  At seven-thirty this morning Deputy Trilling had spotted the gold Grand Sport convertible with the flashy red stripe in the HoJo’s parking lot. After confirming the license number, he’d radioed for backup. Howard had hoped to take the woman by surprise when she checked out, but one of the arriving deputies had made the mistake of driving past the window. Melinda had seen the squad car and figured out what was going on.

  Now she was holed up inside with a gun and a kid and a bunch of psychotic thoughts racing through her head. And she was playing that stupid record again and again.

  "What the hell is that song, anyway?" he muttered.

  "The one she’s hooked on?" Trilling was a pop music buff. "It’s the Surfaris, Mason. God, weren’t you ever young?"

  "If I was, I don’t recall it now. What or who are the Safaris?"

  "Surfaris," Trilling corrected. "Rock ’n’ roll band out of California. Like the Beach Boys. You heard of them, haven’t you?"

  "I may have. You still didn’t tell me the name of the song."

  "‘Wipe Out.’ That’s what they call it."

  "Great. ‘Wipe Out.’ That sounds mighty encouraging."

  There was a pause, and then Trilling asked, "So what the hell we gonna do, Mason?" He kept his voice low so the other deputies positioned around the parking lot, eight in all, couldn’t hear him address the sheriff by his first name. It was an informality Howard permitted no one else while on duty. He and Lloyd went back a ways, and besides, Lloyd had married Howard’s sister.

  "We keep talking," Howard said stolidly.

  "I don’t know. She’s losing it, like you said. She might just go ahead and pop that little munchkin of hers."

  "She loves the boy. That’s why she snatched him."

  "Love makes a woman do crazy things."

  Howard couldn’t argue with that. He’d been through two wives and was working on his third, and as far as he was concerned, all three had been as nutty as a pecan pie when love got hold of them.

  "If she gets the idea that we’re gonna take the kid away from her," Trilling went on, "she could shoot him just out of plain spite."

  "Well, what do you propose we do, Lloyd?" Howard meant the question to be rhetorical or sarcastic or whatever the word was, but Trilling was ready with an answer.

  "I say we go in through that open window."

  "There’s a lady on the other side of that window with a firearm that may be loaded."

  "Here’s how I see it. You talk on the bullhorn, right? She has to get near the window in order to shout back and be heard over that song. Me and Thompson and Donnigan, we’re waiting, crouched down, right outside. When she yells to you, we’ll know pretty much exactly where she is. We go in through the drapes, and I tackle her just like Dick Butkus bringing down Bart Starr."

  "That’s great, Lloyd. Then while you’re rolling around on the floor with her, she snaps off a round and plugs you in the chest."

  "Hell, she’s a woman. I’ll pin her to the mat before she can do a damn thing."

  "Forget it. I’m not making Barbara a widow."

  "We got to do something."

  "We are doing something. We’re keeping her contained. We’re wearing her down."

  "You might wanna think twice about that, Sheriff."

  The voice belonged to Deputy Arnold, who was supposed to be minding the station house and was instead creeping up behind Howard’s cruiser.

  Howard reminded the deputy that he had left his post, in a tone that strongly suggested he’d better have a good reason.

  He did. "Two pieces of news for you, and neither one of ’em ought to go out over the squawk box. First off, Darnell over at the Trib has got wind of this and he’s coming over. And if Darnell’s in on it, you know Lucy can’t be far behind."<
br />
  "Damn." Lucy Pigeon was a reporter for Albuquerque radio station KKOB, and she and Tom Darnell of the Albuquerque Tribune were engaged to be married. "So we’ll have two reporters on the scene, one of ’em broadcasting live."

  "It gets worse."

  "How can it?"

  "The husband of Ma Barker in there"—Arnold jerked a thumb at the motel—"called me from the Texaco in Alcomita. He’s coming to the station house. Been on the road ever since the cops in Casper told him we’d located his wife and kid."

  Howard shook his head. This was a pickle. The press, a radio reporter—and Harrison Beckett, the hostage’s dad. The town of Alcomita was only a few miles from the sheriff’s station in Grants. Mr. Beckett would be there in no time. And once Lucy began airing the story, every radio and TV station from here to Flagstaff would be sending a crew. Things would get ugly in a hurry.

  "See, Mason?" Trilling blurted. "We got to make our move."

  "Don’t call me Mason, Deputy," Howard snapped for Arnold’s benefit.

  "Sorry, sir. But we can’t wait her out. It’ll be a circus soon. We’ll lose control of the situation."

  We never had control, Howard wanted to say. It was just like that mess they had going over there in Vietnam. There was the illusion of control, of a strategy, but all the time circumstances were conspiring to shoot the generals’ careful plans all to shit.

  He thought for a minute as a seam of sweat stitched down his cheek.

  "Okay," he said. "We’ll do it your way, Deputy Trilling. Get Thompson and Donnigan together and fill ’em in."

  Trilling scooted away to find the other two.

  "And you, Deputy Arnold—get back to the station. When Mr. Beckett shows up, stall him. Keep him the hell away from here. And if you need to reach me again, use the damn radio. I don’t care who picks up the signal."

  Then Arnold was gone, and Howard was alone by the side of his car. He adjusted his hat, licked his fingers so he’d have some traction if he had to draw his gun, and hoped he had made the right decision. In the distance that damn song kept playing. "Wipe Out"—he hoped it wasn’t an omen.

  Two minutes later he saw Trilling, Thompson, and Donnigan approach the motel door, hugging the wall. Their revolvers were out, sunlight glinting off the barrels. Thompson and Donnigan looked wary. Trilling seemed to be enjoying himself. He was a hot dog, that one. Get himself killed someday.

  Howard waited until the three were in position by the window. Then he switched on the megaphone.

  "Mrs. Beckett? We can wait all afternoon if you like, but I don’t see how that’ll accomplish much. You and your boy must be getting hungry. How about you open up and we get you both some breakfast?"

  Only music from the room. Trilling glanced at Howard, who tried a second time to elicit a response.

  "Even if you’re not hungry, ma’am, I’ll bet your boy is. They got a good restaurant here at HoJo’s. What do you say I have them fry up some eggs and nice crispy bacon?"

  Still nothing but the song.

  "Mrs. Beckett?"

  Sunlight reflected off the megaphone onto Howard’s face. The heat and glare were something awful.

  "Come on, Mrs. Beckett, I’m making a very reasonable offer, don’t you think?" He tried a little joke. "It’s not every day you get a free breakfast."

  All she had to do was curse him out, tell him to go to hell, say anything that would allow the three deputies to establish her position before they climbed through the window. But she wasn’t talking.

  Howard figured he’d give it one more try. If it didn’t work, he’d call off the forced entry and go back to his original plan, and if Lucy Pigeon made it a circus, so be it.

  "I know what you’re going through, Mrs. Beckett. I know how hard it can be." He thought this approach just might reach her. "Nothing’s fair in this world, but—"

  A sound cut him off. A faraway sound, not loud but easily recognizable. To an unpracticed ear it might have been the snap of a clothesline on a windy day or the smack of a screen door slapping shut, but Howard knew it was a gunshot, and it had come from room 24.

  "Mrs. Beckett—"

  A second crack of sound.

  The drapes in the open window rustled in a breath of wind.

  Trilling was looking at him. Howard shouted, "Go in!" and broke into a run, covering yards of hot macadam, while the deputies arrayed around the parking lot scrambled to follow.

  By the time he reached the window, Trilling and the other two were already inside. The drapes had been thrust apart, and even before climbing into the room, Howard could see the sprawled shape of a woman’s body on the carpet, a dark pool like an oil stain spreading around her head.

  She was finished. Over the years Howard had seen enough of death to know it at a glance.

  But there had been two shots, damn it.

  "Where the hell’s the boy?" Howard yelled over the blare from a portable phonograph as he swung both legs over the window frame.

  "In here."

  Trilling’s voice. Low and shaky.

  Howard muscled Thompson and Donnigan out of his way and entered the bathroom. Deputy Trilling stood over the tub. Howard moved closer and saw soapy water sloshing against the porcelain sides, water dyed pink with slow spirals of blood.

  The boy lay faceup in the bath, nude, a toy submarine floating near him.

  "God damn," Howard said.

  "Like I told you." Trilling barely whispered the words. "Just out of plain spite."

  Howard marshaled his professionalism. "Get the boy out of there. Check for a pulse. Try mouth-to-mouth and chest compression."

  It was hopeless, but procedures had to be followed. Howard left Trilling with his arms in the bloody water and returned to the main room. Donnigan was nearest the phone.

  "Call for an ambulance," Howard ordered.

  Donnigan blinked. "Is the boy…?"

  "Just do it."

  He looked at the record player, resting near the window. One of the deputies, scrambling in, must have jostled the machine and scratched the disk. The stylus was stuck in one groove, repeating the same sound over and over—someone’s giggly falsetto saying, "Wipe out…!"

  His radio crackled with Deputy Arnold’s voice. "Sheriff?"

  "Wipe out…!"

  Howard thumbed the transmit button. "I copy, over."

  "He’s here, sir. Mr. Beckett is here."

  "Wipe out…!"

  "Turn off that fucking thing," Howard said to the nearest deputy.

  A screech as the stylus was yanked across the platter.

  "Sheriff?" Arnold again. "You read me?"

  "I read you, Deputy."

  "What should I tell him, sir? What do I tell Mr. Beckett about his wife and boy?"

  Mason Howard stared out the window and wished he knew the answer to that.

  PART ONE

  1

  She was running hard down an alley with her Sig Sauer 9mm in her hand, her shout echoing off the high brick walls.

  "Stop, FBI!"

  The suspect did not stop or even turn to look at her. His shoes slapped the asphalt. He was pulling away, blending into the nocturnal shadows. Soon he would be only another shadow himself.

  She put on some speed. There was no point in shouting again. She would only waste her breath.

  Yards ahead the alley opened on a street streaming with traffic. She saw the suspect as a silhouette, his figure limned by rushing headlights.

  If he reached the street and made a dash through the traffic, he would lose her.

  But she wouldn’t let that happen.

  With a rush of adrenaline she lengthened her strides, closing the gap until finally she reached out with her left hand and grabbed his shirt collar.

  She gave it a hard yank and jerked him off balance like a dog surprised by a sudden tug on its chain—and like a dog, he snarled as he whipped around, and she saw a flash of teeth.

  Not teeth. Steel.

  A knife.

  The blade drove at her
. She spun clear and almost fired at him, but she was afraid that a shot at point-blank range would kill him, and she didn’t want him dead.

  Instead she chopped his wrist with the side of her hand, splaying his fingers. The knife fell, and before he could retrieve it, she’d taken a step back and fixed him in the pistol’s sights.

  "Don’t move, you are under arrest."

  She still thought he might try something, and she was ready to try for a nonlethal shot, in violation of her academy training, in which the advisability of always taking the kill shot had been emphasized.

  But he surprised her by raising his hands in submission. Then she heard footsteps behind her, approaching at a run. She didn’t want to take her eyes off the suspect, and especially the suspect’s hands, the two danger points, so without looking back she called out, "Who’s coming?"

  "LAPD," a male voice answered.

  Must be the uniformed cop she’d seen on Melrose. It didn’t escape her notice that it was a patrol officer, not the two special agents sharing surveillance duty with her in the van, who’d come to her aid.

  "I’m FBI," she said, still watching the suspect. He remained in silhouette. A lanky figure, medium tall, with close-cropped hair and wiry arms. She could not judge his age or ethnicity. If he was a white male around forty years old, she would be very happy.

  The patrolman trotted up beside her and gave his name—Payton.

  "Tess McCallum," she said.