From bec@gis.net Fri Oct 25 15:02:30 1996 Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 19:33:12 -0400 From: Brian Eirik Coe Reply-To: tsa-talk@netbase.t0.or.at To: "tsa-talk@netbase.t0.or.at" Subject: Who Hunts the Hunter? Part One [The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] Well, despite my better judgement, I've decided to do a short serial. This one shouldn't be anywhere *near* as long as "Paranoid" was. This part is a slightly longer than originially intended introduction to the series. This is, in a way, my responce to the challenge to write a Halloween story, though more in the vein of horror than anything else. Needless to say, this story is going to get seriously *wierd* very fast if it goes in any direction close to what I intend. Then again, it'll likely get seriously wierd no matter what.... As usual, a couple comments follow. ************************************** Who Hunts the Hunter? By Brian Eirik Coe The screech of tires was deafening as the Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser slid practically sideways onto Laurel Lane. Its engine roared as the black and white car sped to catch up with the dark red Ford Taurus racing ahead. "Victor-7, he^Òs now headed south on Laurel at Taylor! Where^Òs that damn chopper?" shouted officer Bilroth into her radio. She dropped the radio receiver and gripped the steering wheel again as the Ford ahead made a mad swerve around a parked delivery truck, and she followed suit. Then came the voice on the radio, "Base Station. The chopper is in the air. Keep on him until then. Charlie-12 and Mary-9 are on their way to you." She cursed lightly under her breath. They were heading down a fairly busy street, with pedestrians and cross traffic, at speeds close to 100 miles per hour. Even here in LA the chases rarely got up to that speed. A helicopter typically kept the suspect in site while other officers closed down the area, or he ran out of gas. But most suspects weren^Òt wanted for 43 murders. The stolen Taurus suddenly slammed on it^Òs brakes and went into a sideways skid. The driver, whoever he was, was good. He timed the turn perfectly onto Fifth. Bilroth followed close behind. She reached for the radio to call in the change in direction when the rear window of the Taurus disintegrated in a shower of glass, followed by star shaped patterns on her own windshield. She ducked lower, keeping most of her head below the dashboard, but never lost pursuit. She shouted into the radio, "Shots fired! Shots fired! We^Òre now heading east on Fifth, crossing Burin now!" The gunfire stopped and she ventured above the dash a little more. There were at least five bullet holes in the windshield. She felt the funnel of wind blowing into her face from a few of them, and a few flecks of glass pelted her sunglasses. The radio came on again. "Mary-9, I^Òm west on Fifth, about five blocks north. I^Òll try and block him at Centennial." "Base Station, roger Mary-9." Bilroth sped up her cruiser and got within five car lengths of the car ahead. The driver never looked back, though she swore that she should see the reflection of his eyes in the rearview mirror. She saw another form apparently slumped and unmoving in the passenger seat. ::Probably the cars owner::, she thought. She saw the lights of Mary-9 ahead, and began to back off a little. There was no telling what this guy might try. There was a line of cars on the eastbound side waiting for a red light to change, and a lot of cross traffic. Mary-9 slid into position blocking the westbound lanes. There were two large buildings on either side of the street. The suspects only real option was to stop or risk slamming into one of the buildings by taking the sidewalk. He chose option three. The red Ford suddenly sped up, quickly going more than 100 miles per hour, and aimed straight for the cruiser blocking his path. Sergeant Bell seemed to realize it at the last moment himself, and Bilroth saw the rear wheels spin madly as he floored the cruiser in a vain attempt to get out of the way. It was too late. There wasn^Òt much left of the police cruiser. It had effectively been split into three major chunks, with the engine being thrown fully 100 feet through the front window of a furniture store. The shattered bits of red and blue plastic that had made up the flashing light bar on top ended up scattered all over Bilroths cruiser as she slammed on the brakes. The stolen Taurus fared little better. It flipped into the air, spraying bits of engine, undercarriage and glass all over the intersection before coming to a halt against a light standard. It fell to the ground upside down, its roof crushed under the force of the blow. Neither car caught fire. Bilroth yelled into her portable radio as she jumped out of the car, "Send EMS! Send EMS! Intersection of Fifth and Centennial! Officer down! Suspect down!" She raced to the nearest hulk, what had been the passenger cabin of police unit Mary-9. She didn^Òt have to get too close to see that Sergeant Bell was dead, beyond help. Almost as an automatic motion, she drew her gun and started over to the crushed Taurus. Several bystanders were beginning to approach the car. "Get back! Stand back now!" She jogged over to the car, jumping lightly over pieces of red fiberglass and twisted metal, as the bystanders stopped to gape at her. She looked around the car quickly. The roof was crushed low, and the doors jammed shut. It was going to take the jaws of life to get the two people out of this car, dead or alive. The rear passenger window was still off the ground high enough to look inside. Carefully leading with her gun, she crouched to the ground and peered in. She saw the body of a middle aged woman resting on the roof of the car. Since she already knew that her suspect was a man, this had to have been the cars owner. She was dead, her neck twisted at an odd angle. But there was no other occupant. Biroth stood and looked around furiously as the sound of other sirens started to come closer. The intersection was littered with bits of both cars, but no other bodies. She raced into the center of the intersection and looked around in a circle. No sign of him. She looked at the nearest witness. "Did you see anyone get thrown from this car?" He shook his head no. "Did anyone?" More no^Òs from the crowd. She cursed and clicked on the radio again. "Seal off the area! The suspect may have gotten away." She walked back to the Taurus as her call was confirmed. She slammed her fist into the side of the smashed sedan out of frustration when she realized that she heard a familiar sound. Looking up, three helicopters were circling the intersection. Looking fast between them, she saw a light blue chopper with a large white "5" on the side, another with a "7" in a large circle, and another with a large "4" situated above a multicolor peacock. The local media. They had undoubtedly been following the chase for at least a little while, and each of the crews was probably ecstatic about capturing such a spectacular crash on tape, just in time for the five o^Òclock news. But if the suspect had managed to flee, then should be keeping him on tape. Why were they still over the intersection? ** The debriefing had taken a long time. Lisa was sure that some of her superiors wanted to blame her for what happened. They had a dead officer, five more dead civilians and the suspect had apparently vanished into this air. They needed a scapegoat. But they simply couldn^Òt find fault with anything that she did. Not yet, anyway. All three local news stations had caught the crash on tape, and even from three angles, no one could see what happened to the man wanted for so much death. Lisa^Òs own cruiser had been equipped with a small camera mounted above the rearview mirror. That tape showed the suspect still in the drivers seat 1/16th of a second before impact. Chillingly, the brake lights were not on at that moment. ** The media had just given him a name. The Hunter. He was up to 49 now. Men, women, chidden, it seemed to mean little to him. The majority of them were shop keepers or clerks, but there were people from all walks of life, from all races. This guy seemed to show little favoritism. He^Òd hit fifteen targets in the last six weeks, from gas stations to jewelry stores. His largest single haul was close to $250,000 in gold and gemstones. His smallest, $15 from a walk-up hot dog stand. Despite all that, there wasn^Òt a single witness. Or at least, a single living witness. Whatever he did, he was fast. He seemed to know what places had their surveillance equipment on battery back-up, and so far had avoided those. He^Òd managed to cut the power to the stores that he did hit, killing any cameras. Then he would enter and apparently kill anyone inside. He typically seemed to use a gun, but sometimes he killed more than one way. A knife, a blunt object, and a couple others. He would leave with whatever loot was handy. He didn^Òt always grab it all, but enough to let everyone know he^Òd been there. The closest thing to a witness at this point was the grainy pictures taken by a nearby ATM machine one evening. It had so far been one of his only mistakes. The machine had been able to get a basic description of him out, he was male, about 6 foot 1 inch and weight about 200 pounds. That narrowed it down to about 3 million people in the LA area. But the Hunter had gotten unlucky this time. Officer Bilroth had happened to see him leaving a small convenience store right after the loss of power had triggered a silent alarm. He ran as she came into sight and jumped into a nearby car, apparently killing the occupant and pushing her out of the way. She had guessed that this was the monster they were looking for, and the investigation that followed confirmed that. But, it seemed that he vanished off the face of the earth. ** Lisa had slipped out of the station house after the debriefing as dawn approached. With the help of some other officers, who distracted the press, she managed to get to her car and leave without being followed. She didn^Òt want to have to deal with them at the moment. She had a feeling that someone may be waiting for her at home, so she decided to stop for a little while at a coffee shop and gather her thoughts away from her superiors and the press. She sat in a out of the way booth and ordered coffee and asked for a menu. She didn^Òt feel all that hungry, but she wanted something in her stomach. She eventually decided on a blueberry muffin. She stared out the widow while she ran over the chase in her head again. Perhaps an hour later, a voice brought her out of her funk. "Officer Bilroth?" She turned her head. She found herself looking at a middle aged man in a poorly pressed, but apparently relatively new, brown suit. He had a wide face and thinning hair. He was carrying a tan raincoat with him, but it was draped over one arm. Something about him screamed "cop". He extended a hand, "I^Òm Detective Kyle Folkerson of the Dartmouth County, Maryland Sheriff^Òs Department. Mind if I sit down?" Lisa looked at him for a moment, then shook her head a little absently. "No, go ahead. What brings you to this coast, detective?" He tossed his coat onto the far side of the booth and sat down. "I understand that you chased a suspected armed robber slash mass serial killer today." She paused a moment, "Forgive me for asking, detective, but I^Òm not sure I should talk about this. Do you at least have some ID?" He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out his shield and identification. Lisa looked it over. It seemed legit. "Why are you asking?" "Last year, starting about mid September and running through the end of October, we had a string of seemingly unrelated armed robberies through the county. All types of stores were hit, there seemed to be no correlation between them. Different amounts of money, sometimes property, were taken. Even a few different methods were used to kill the victims. The only linking factor was that this guy apparently left no survivors. He killed 8 people before he stopped. Sound familiar?" She nodded. "What stopped your guy?" He shrugged, "The planets went back into alignment? He remembered to wear his tin foil hat? Who knows? All I know is that he seems to have resurfaced here, in LA, and that you are in grave danger." ** He laid out the scene for her. In Maryland, this killer had apparently jumped from store to store, about one a week, for five weeks. As it happened, he hit stores that had just one or two clerks on duty at the time, and never a customer. No one could be sure if that was by design or accident. He always disabled the cameras somehow first, typically by killing the power. It went like that until the last week of October. "Then," said the detective, "we caught our first real break. Someone heard the gunshots at a gas station and called the police. An officer responded to the call, and managed to get to the scene just as the getaway car, a stolen Toyota Previa, pulled out of the station. There was a chase. Just like yesterday, it ended with a rather spectacular car accident, that time, though, the result of a blown tire on the Toyota that sent it out of control and into a tree." He reached into his coat and produced a wrinkled yellow file folder. He opened it and dropped an 8x10 color picture of the wreck. It was obviously the kind that no one walks away from. She looked back at him, "You didn^Òt find a body, did you?" He shook his head. "No body, no blood, no evidence. It was like he vanished." "So, what does this have to do with me being in danger?" He sighed and produced another photo. This one was of a man, at least, it looked like one. The body was horribly mutilated. Lisa had been on the force almost 10 years and had never seen anything even close. "That is the officer that chased this guy. Starting about two days after the chase, he started talking to friends about some strange things going on. Odd dreams that he was having, things that were deeply disturbing to him, but that he couldn^Òt remember. He said that it was a feeling that he just couldn^Òt shake, like something was wrong with the universe. Over the course of the week, he talked about more and more strange things. A few of us thought that he was just feeling the stress from the chase and accident." He shrugged, "It happens. The stuff he talked about was simply strange. He talked about animals, wild and domestic, that simply seemed to stare at him, unmoving. He started talking about conversations, bizarre conversations, with friends. The friends didn^Òt recall the conversations, though." He picked up the pictures and dropped them back into his folder. "On October 30, he called the station to tell them that he wouldn^Òt be in the next morning, that he wasn^Òt feeling well. When they asked what was wrong, he hung up. They sent an officer over to investigate and found this mess." She shuddered a little at the thought. "What makes you so sure that this is the same guy? That the person that killed your officer was the same one out here?" "At first, nothing. We certainly investigated the link, but frankly there wasn^Òt much to go on. We didn^Òt have any idea who this guy was, what he was doing. Anything. Then, while checking information about another case in Wisconsin, I happened across this article in a local paper." He handed her an article from a newspaper, dated four months ago. It was one of those retrospectives that papers often run, looking back at a time of tragedy. Nearly twenty five years ago, this small community had been rocked by a series of murders, all taking place in businesses. No survivors, no witnesses. Lisa skimmed the article quickly, then stopped about halfway down and looked at the detective, who nodded grimly. It seemed that the killer in Wisconsin had the misfortune of leaving a scene just as a local cop arrived. A chase ensued, in which the suspect car slammed into a bridge railing and fell into a river. No body was ever found, and the suspect was presumed dead. The article noted, though, that the pursuing officer had been found dead himself only seven days later. A grisly murder still unsolved. Lisa looked back at the detective, "What^Å?" Her voice trailed off as he produced a stack of papers. They were arranged in order, starting with a photocopy of the article she had just read. The oldest article was from 1958. A few years were missing, but the twenty or so present had locations from all over the nation, almost all of them in small towns or counties. She skimmed a few. The stories differed in details, in body counts, in the total amount of stolen property. But they all ended the same way: A high speed chase, a massive accident, and a dead officer. The Hunter had been around a long time. And now, she was his prey. ************************************** And so it begins. :-) If I'm lucky, I'll have this done by Halloween. (and "Paranoid" was going to be done before I started school....) Couple of random comments. For people who aren't aware, a car chase in LA is a bout a three time weekly event. The local media typically follows them with a phalanx of helicoptors. I actually pared down the number that would be over a chase...there would easily be five TV stations and two radio stations. The patrol unit designation "Mary-9" was lifted from "CHiPs". :-) (Okay, it was 7-Mary-9 on that show...close enough...) Just to be cute, I sorta borrowed an anatomical term for the name of my heroine. There is a part of the body called a "Cord of Bilroth", and if I'd known what it was, I'd have gotten that question right on my exam yesterday. :-) Other than that, not much else to say, for the moment. Keep an eye out for the upcoming parts... -- ->>Brian Eirik Coe<<- ->>http://www.gis.net/~bec<<-- ->>NEWENCO Optometrist-in-training<<- "Nothing happens unless first a dream." -Carl Sandberg "Not even God Himself could sink this ship!" -Overheard on Titanic That which does not kill us, has made its last mistake! ------ The discussion list for the Transformation Story Archive --------- The TSA is at: http://www.t0.or.at/~thomash/tsa for help write to: tsa-talk-request@t0.or.at all administrative questions to: thomash@t0.or.at WWW-List-Archive at: http://www.t0.or.at/cgi-bin/thomash-lwgate/tsa-talk