It was showing a news clipping from that day’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution-a small item, the kind they stuck down at the bottom of a back page because it wasn’t really news anymore.
CALAMITY JANE MURDERS STILL A MYSTERY
Atlanta-The murders of prominent businessman David Bodewell, his wife, and four employees last November 19-dubbed the “Calamity Jane murders” because Bodewell’s collection of rare, so-named golf clubs was later found among the homeless in downtown Atlanta-are no closer to being solved.
“There’s not much to work with-no motive and no evidence,” an anonymous source inside the police department has stated. “Whoever did it was either real lucky or real careful.”
Police are continuing to pursue the investigation aggressively…
“No, it’s not okay,” Shrinkwrap said hotly. “There’s a million fucking doctors out there. Why’d you have to pick Coil’s dad?”
“Because Coil’s dad won’t take a chance on sending his kid to prison.”
“When’s he going to get that chance? Don’t tell me you’re going to let him go.”
“I want him to think I will. And you never know, he might come in handy down the line.”
“What the fuck are you saying-‘down the line’?”
“Some of the shit Coil’s told me, Monks has got a crazy streak,” Freeboot said, with a mocking edge. “Maybe he’ll come around.”
She stood up from her chair and stabbed toward his chest with a shaking finger.
“Quit fucking around, man. A dumbass trick like this could bring us down,” she said.
Freeboot gave her a heavy-lidded, measuring look. Shrinkwrap was a psychologist and very smart, but her buttons were easy to push.
“Where’s Coil?” he said.
“In our cabin,” she said warily. She knew the gaze she was seeing.
“What’s he doing?”
“Getting high, probably.”
“I need him to find me some insulin.”
“Hey, lighten up. He just got back from a mission.”
“I’m trying to make him feel more like a maquis, Shrink. Let’s face it, he’s a mama’s boy.”
She flinched. She was more than fifteen years older than Glenn Monks-the latest in a long series of the bad boys she craved.
“What are you going to do, B &E a drugstore?” she said sullenly. “There’s no place within a hundred miles of here open this time of night.”
“Don’t you think maybe I know that?” Freeboot swigged from the mescal bottle again, still watching her.
She lowered her gaze, defeated.
“Have him hack the local pharmacy records and find somebody around here who buys that stuff,” Freeboot told her. “Old people, or a woman living alone. Then call down to Base and tell Callus to go get it. Mask and gun, scare the shit out of them. Take everything they got, needles, the works. Give them a couple hundred bucks and tell them if they keep quiet, he won’t be back. They call the sheriffs, he will. And I want everybody moving with the fucking speed of light, starting now.”
Freeboot watched her thin blue-jeaned ass hurry up the ladder. He drank again from the bottle, a long burning pull, then leaned over the computer’s keyboard and brought up a master file.
“Where you think Hammerhead’s at?” he asked Taxman. Hammerhead wasn’t hell for brains, but he was fierce and loyal.
“He did okay tonight,” Taxman said.
“I’ve been working him up, about Marguerite and Captain America.”
“He’s right on the edge, for sure.”
“You want him in on this next one?”
“Let’s have a scalp hunt tomorrow night, give him a chance to get savage,” Taxman said. “If he makes it, I’ll take him along.”
He spoke with his usual quiet drawl. Somebody who didn’t know better might mistake it for timidness. Taxman was ex-Special Forces, who’d left the army in disgust after the Gulf War because there wasn’t enough close-range killing. Now he got his fill of it, leading the almost thirty maquis that he had trained so far. The most experienced ones were out there in the world, unknown to anyone but each other-drifting, quietly stirring up anger in homeless camps and ghettos, and waiting to be summoned for their next mission.
Freeboot turned back to the computer screen and scrolled. A collage of newspaper headlines appeared, dated several weeks apart over the past months.
SEDONIA STUNNED BY KILLINGS
GROSSE POINTE POLICE TIGHTLIPPED
DOUBLE MURDER IN DARIEN
There were eleven sub-files from the past two years, made up of clippings about the killing of rich citizens in different parts of the country. The outrage tended to start as long front-page reports, only to shrink and disappear as police admitted their frustration.
The “Calamity Jane” file was the latest one. Freeboot transferred the clipping from the disc to the master folder. He had an online search done daily for news about any of the murders, and he read it all carefully. It was important to stay on top of developments.
“I think it’s time for us to let The Man know what he’s dealing with,” Freeboot said. There hadn’t been any reason for police to link the killings yet, at least officially. The maquis had played it safe at first, choosing low-security targets while they perfected their operations.
Taxman nodded. “Let’s jack it up a notch.” He knew a lot of ways to get under people’s skins. Dumping the golf clubs at the homeless camp had been his idea.
“What you got in mind?”
“Pull up Emlinger on the screen.”
Freeboot scrolled farther down the master file, to an alphabetical list of names. There were several hundred of them, mostly men but a few women. Each name was followed by a short description.
He paused at an entry that began:
Emlinger, Robert James, b 1951.
Res 1155 Laurel Lane, Atherton, CA.
Pres/CEO of several companies since 1985. Restructuring/outsourcing specialist w history of diverting assets to execs in bankruptcies/laying off employees wo benefits.
Atherton was a several-hour drive south of here. The FBI knew that serial killers tended to start close to home, then branch out geographically. Freeboot had been careful to do it the other way around.
He double-clicked on Emlinger’s name, bringing up a longer file. It included photographs of Emlinger and his family; a plan of their spacious house and grounds, including the security system; city and area maps; and a detailed analysis of their personal habits and daily routines. Emlinger looked like a generic corporate executive, with gold-rimmed glasses and perfect teeth, brimming with confidence in his own net worth. Mrs. Emlinger was a Stepford-type trophy wife, almost twenty years younger than her husband, and very good-looking.
“She’s got a thing about jade jewelry, antique Chinese stuff,” Taxman said, tapping her photo with his finger. “He bought her a collection of it for a wedding present-used to belong to the Princess of Monaco, or some such shit. If that ends up in a Dumpster, they’re gonna read the mail.”
He stepped to a dinner plate where several lines of white powdered meth were laid out. The tiny crystals glittered like broken glass.
Freeboot took a closer look at the computer photo of Mrs. Emlinger. She was a green-eyed blonde. No doubt jade looked good on her.
“I like the way you think, young man,” Freeboot said. “You got a future with this company.”
“I’m going to name you Circe, baby,” Freeboot told the girl who had been in the sauna with him earlier. They were naked, lying face to face, in the afterglow of energetic sex. “You know who she was?”
She shook her head shyly. Her eyes were big liquid pools of adoration, pupils dilated from the finger hash that came from picking sinsemilla buds.
“A witch. She turned dudes into animals. And you turn me into a wild beast. A swine.”
He lunged face first into her breasts, growling and nuzzling her with his bristly beard. She squirmed, cooing with delight like a child.
They were in the structure that Freeboot had named the Garden. From the outside, it was a log building, like all the others here-a crude bathhouse, with a big stone basin for the hot springs that flowed from the ground at a perfect 112 degrees. But inside, he had transformed it, stocking it with things that he hadn’t even known existed until he was able to buy them. Then he learned about them fast.
The rough log walls were hung with old tapestries from Europe. Thick Persian rugs carpeted the plank floor. A two-thousand-year-old Greek statuette sat on top of a Chippendale console. The central piece was the Louis XV king-sized bed that Freeboot and Circe were lying on. Part of a wall had to be chainsawed out to get that in. The moisture and warmth from the hot springs maintained a jungle of exotic potted plants. There was every kind of liquor and every kind of dope. Freeboot wanted the feeling in here to be overpowering-lush. But above all, the Garden was for sex. The brides were a reward for the maquis who performed their missions well, and a tormenting lure to recruits.
It was Freeboot’s own version of the garden of delights of the Old Man of the Mountain, chief of the original assassins. That old dude was slick. He had drugged young men with hashish and brought them into a place that had every delight they could imagine-women, wine, more drugs. He promised them that if they died for him, this would be their heaven for eternity.
The world had changed since those days. Not many people were going to settle for pie-in-the-sky anymore. But the basics still worked. Freeboot, and Shrinkwrap with her psychological savvy, carefully handpicked the young people they drew in. All of them were aimless and hungry. The men wanted power; the women, love; and they all wanted to feel superior. It was perfect raw material for shaping into devotion, and the two of them knew just how to do it-break down the personality, then rebuild it with increasing status and privileges as they got more bonded, until finally they believed that they were godlike-while totally obedient to Freeboot. During the process, Taxman trained the men up into skilled assassins. The women didn’t need much physical training. Most of what was required of them came naturally.
“Now, we’re going to do with our souls what we just did with our bodies,” he murmured to Circe. He played gently with the damp strands of hair that curled down her neck, stroking her hypnotically, coaxing her to relax against him. “I want you to open up like you never have before. Make yourself bare, and let me in.”
“I don’t know how.” Her voice was muffled, a little frightened.
“I’ll show you. Just don’t fight me.”
Freeboot had learned a long time ago, using LSD, that he could separate a part of his mind from the rest-like a tentacle, like a snake-and send it into other minds. The younger and more stoned they were, the easier it was. It was like opening the door to somebody’s living room and seeing them sitting on the couch watching TV, so wrapped up in it, they’d forgotten where they were. There were several screens, broadcasting the different channels of thoughts, memories, feelings, everything that went on in their heads.
Feelings were the most important. They were what ruled. Freeboot could see them, beaming out from that TV set-fear, hate, love, doubt, all the pressures that built up in people’s lives, mixing together to push them into what they did and said.
And he knew how to push those feelings. He didn’t know how he knew, he just did. He shone his energy, his power, on the ones he wanted-love for the women, aggression for the men, jacking up fear in a maquis who was getting cocky or devotion in a bride who was restless.
When he went back out that door and closed it again, they didn’t know what had happened, didn’t even know that he’d been in there. But that energy he pumped in was him. As those feelings got stronger, Freeboot was the hidden essence of them, like oxygen in air. Every breath they took contained him.
When he finished with Circe, she was trembling a little.
“That was good,” he said. “You’re going to be a sweet bride. But one thing you got to understand-some of the other girls are going to be jealous of you. You have to keep yourself above that.”
“Okay,” she breathed.
“Good girl.” He petted her once more, then stood. “I’ve got to step out a while. Go ahead and toke up some more of that hash. I’ll be back.”
He pulled on his jeans, then took a money clip from his pocket and laid five one-hundred-dollar bills beside her on the bed.
“When you get back to town, buy yourself something pretty,” he said. Devotion might be a matter of the spirit, but it rolled more smoothly on wheels well greased with things that could be touched.
Circe got up, too, and slid luxuriantly into the stone bath. Lying back, with the clear water rippling over her young body, she was a luscious sight.
“Freeboot?” she said. Her face was childlike with seriousness. “Can you make me stop dreaming about flunking out of high school?”
He grinned. “Don’t worry, baby. Pretty soon you won’t even remember it.”