here, bevel the ends, keep it short back on your nape, but longer here on the sides and maybe streak it here, see? All you do is scrunch it. Shampoo, towel it off. Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am!'
'Whack it off,' Julie Hilliard told her, looking into the mirror but seeing the bulletin board above Llewelyn's disaster-area of a desk.
'Well, at least let me spike it.'
She finally took her freshly shorn head, and all the rest of her well-distributed 127 pounds, and got in her unmarked unit, returning to 1125 Locust. At headquarters, she immediately headed for the squad room, She nodded to people on the way up, and familiar faces in the hallways, but did not speak until she was inside the door marked Metropolitan Major Case Squad, which was the real name of the unit, but which nobody ever used.
Leo and T.J., the only other female detective on the squad, and the El Tee, were occupied elsewhere. Marlin Morris had been waiting for her so he could brief the three detectives present at one time. Michael Apodaca and his partner George Shremp, nicknamed 'Abba-dabba' and 'Jumbo' respectively by the other cops, and Julie Hilliard—who normally worked alone—were the only dicks in the room. Sergeant Morris did not have to refer to notes.
'Honcho's with Leo 'n' T.J. They're working the firebombing. We've got thirteen people on Boyles. Rotating teams.' Boyles was the name of the file on the 'pro' hits, as they were perceived, beginning with the slaughter of a guy who appeared to have no ties to anyone, a colorless loner of a person, a part-time cabby, a twenty-three-year- old man named David Boyles. 'That's not counting us. Right now we're going to concentrate on Mr. Dillon and see what we can break loose.' He handed out a photocopy of a two-page report and a composite of twelve shooting victims' pictures. There was a second composite showing thirteen faces of young gang members killed in the firebombing/shooting incident. 'I think an obvious possible tie is Tom Dillon to the bike gang. He coulda been dealing easy. He was a thief. Maybe he was selling or fencing stuff through the gang? Anyway let's look at everything. Show those pictures. See if anybody makes anybody.' They knew what he meant.
Detective Sergeant Morris, a thirty-year-old lifer with a droopy semi-Fu mustache and thinning hair, a hardcore casemaker, talked about the weapon that had been used on some of the bikers outside their clubhouse, and discussed the reports on the various victims, speculating as to what had killed them. Julie Hilliard made notes as he spoke, realizing she was just doodling, really, as she saw she'd written
'Neither the regional crime lab nor the FBI has anything yet?' Jumbo Shremp asked. She was thinking the same question.
'Huh-uh. Negative, so far.'
'Some kind of rifle grenade,' Shremp said. 'That's what I think. Fits the pattern. A pro.'
'Are we—' Julie heard her own voice. 'Is anybody asking the military? This guy obviously has a background—a military service record, right? Couldn't we put it on the computer and program it through to give us likely names on who has the expertise for all this stuff…uh, you know, capabilities. Demolition. Firearms. And then run those names against the vics? Would that work?'
'Yeah,' Morris said. 'That wouldn't take more than about ten million hours to program. No—it's probably the way to go.' He shrugged. 'But we gotta narrow this thing down first. You got too many guys in the services know this shit. We probably need to start trying to get some patterns here. I don't think this is random work. I think we're gonna find Dillon and some of the bikers tied together.'
'I know one thing about the son of a bitch. He's hitting too close to home,' Apodaca said.
'Yeah.' Connally's was two blocks from the police headquarters.
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14
A person can disintegrate in two seconds or they can fall apart over a period of months—even years. Shooter Price had appeared to implode, going off the deep end and killing a dozen times within the span of a few days, killing as he never had, randomly and without purpose. What had pushed him so far? Surely not one more rejection by a woman, or his inability to consummate the act of intercourse. Time, frustrations multiplied by time, the aging process, the cumulative effect of the last couple of months as he tracked a killer even crazier than himself—these were only some of the root causes of his falling apart.
This was, for whatever reason, some semblance of the old Bobby Price who awoke bright and early, feeling refreshed and rather guiltless, hitting the floor and beginning his normal regimen of calisthenics and isometric exercises.
He pulled on old clothes and went out to the car, put the top down, and drove to Hospital Hill Park. There was a place he'd seen where he could work unobserved.
He parked as close as he could to the site he'd found, and carried a new shovel to a place flanked by shrubbery. He stripped off his shirt and began digging, first scoring the earth in a large, fairly round circle, then making a smaller interior circle, which was not to be cut. He was digging earth with a vengeance, his powerful body glistening with sweat as he tossed full shovels of dirt around the hole. This would be a loose berm.
The center would be left as a gun post, a roughly cylindrical form around which he could move, but with a base for SAVANT to rest on her collapsible bipod, which he seldom used.
When Price had dug down a couple of feet, he made yet a third circle and started digging between the central cylinder and the outer edge of the hole. He dug far enough down that when he'd finally removed most of the dirt he had a large hole with a built-in seat that ran around the outermost edge of the gun pit. He could sit comfortably and sight the weapon at his leisure. The only problem was that the berm was up higher than the gun would be. He took a break, toweled off, and climbed out to fix the loose collar of dirt that surrounded the pit. When he was satisfied, he covered the pit with a large, but very lightweight bush net, and broke off long branches of leafy limbs from surrounding bushes and trees, which he used to drape between the gun post and the outside edge of the pit. When he'd finished, it was fairly well camouflaged.
While he dug, some of the same physical changes occurred in Bobby Price's biochemistry that once took place due to drug usage. When Shooter was doing cocaine, certain things happened when he sniffed lines: the white lady would jam the pump that regulated his system, overstimulating neurons, fucking with his brain, kicking him in the chest to get his heart started, floating in his synapses, jabbing his brain in the ass with massive paranoia and hard-charging psychoses. He was there again, but this time without the zip of the blow. One could see it in his eyes, and in his frenetic movements. Neurons were shooting at him inside his mind; lightning from a mental electrical storm was about to strike. Brain nerves fired and Shooter Price jerked as if his mind was exploding.
By the time he'd finished he was stoked with crazy nervous energy. He got back in the car and drove around aimlessly. When a neon tavern sign caught his eye he stopped and parked.
He got out of the car and went in, instantly overwhelmed by the salty booze smell.
When he became accustomed to the darkened interior his gaze was drawn to a woman sitting alone at the bar. She was hard looking, but apart from the fact that she exuded a powerfully feral sexuality, something about her reached out for him. He walked over to her immediately, bending close enough that he wouldn't have to speak loudly to be heard over the music.
'Is it okay if I sit here?' he asked. The woman acted as if she hadn't heard him, ignoring the question. He sat down. Price was sure that he could smell her, an untamed animal scent that—together with the booze smells—was making him hot.
'My name's Bobby Price. Would you mind if I bought you a drink?' he asked her respectfully. Down at the end of the bar three stools from them, an office girl in a colored dress had breezed in and ordered a drink. She smiled at him invitingly but she wasn't what he wanted at all. He ignored the offer, and it was as if the woman next to him sensed it, and she grinned at him for the first time.
'I don't want another drink, but thanks.' When she smiled, she looked a lot older, and he wondered if she didn't smile much—thinking it made wrinkles around her mouth or eyes. There were quite a few lines in her face, but he thought she was stunning.
'You're the loveliest woman I've seen in a long time,' he whispered to her softly, 'and I mean that in the nicest way. I hope you don't think I'm acting disrespectful.'
She looked at him funny, cocking her head to see what was going on in his face. She looked back and seemed to be lost in thought for a second. Then she did something that almost made Bobby flip out right there at the bar.
