| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Thinking Aloud |
| Date: | Tue, 10 Mar 1998 00:20:04 +0000 |
>>>>>[I admit, having the Bitch along is useful. She does spot things we
miss... but why does she have to be so annoyingly _right_ when she
chooses to be?
Because she only chooses to be when she _knows_ she's right, I know. If
I didn't know the answer I wouldn't ask...
+++++begin trideo
Lilith, sitting at the hotel room's desk, studying the screen of a
portable computer.
Quinn, feet floating inches off the ground, drifts unnoticed towards
her, reaches out to cover Lilith's eyes-
The Coyote shaman flies away, spinning in all three axes and cackling
happily, as Lilith lowers her hand: somehow she'd sensed the approach
and batted Quinn away. "One day I'll hurt you when you do that, bitch."
The insult seems more a term of endearment.
Another merry cackle. "And it'll hurt you more than it hurts me, I know,
I know. Multiple killers." Quinn slows her gyration and drops to land
comfortably on her feet.
"What?" Lilith stubs out her cigarette in an ashtray already
overflowing. "You're making even less sense than usual, Quinn."
"The two main groups of Pentagram killings? The scatter around town, and
the hotel cluster? Different killers. The dead detective was killed by a
third guy. The floaters were too gone for really detailed work." The
Coyote shaman holds up a sheaf of handwritten notes. "No magical link,
no magical involvement detectable. They did want my expert, oh-so-
skilled opinion - but then who wouldn't? - about a case a little while
ago. Guy gets out of a car outside the Bingham Mall with a Enfield AS-7
and a couple of pistols and a hell of a lot of ammo. Kills the guards on
the door, walks in, starts shooting everyone he sees. Twelve dead,
thirty-seven wounded, over two hundred rounds expended. He was walking
around looking for wounded to finish off when the cops arrived in force,
so he opened up on them too and Miami SWAT promptly gave him a .338
lobotomy."
Lilith shakes her head. "I see not one thing there that demands your
dubious talents, Quinn. Were you going to explain the relevance, or make
me guess?"
"Well, they wanted my advice on whether the guy could have been under
magical compulsion? You see, this was kind of weird, the guy was a
fashion designer."
"A fashion designer on the rampage with an assault shotgun. I confess to
surprise." Lilith is definitely interested now. "Unusual. Not unheard
of, but baroque and out of the ordinary."
"That's not unusual compared to the next part. He saw his parents
murdered when he was a boy? He was nine. During a riot, a bunch of guys
broke into his house. His mother managed to hide him while they were
smashing the door, and the bad guys were too busy amusing themselves
with her and stealing the trideo to look under the table. Long
tablecloth, hid him well. So he's huddled under there listening to,
sometimes watching, these three or four guys taking turns to hurt his
mother.
"His father had put up a fight, so they gut-shot him and kneecapped him
and left him to bleed to death, about six feet from the kid. When they'd
all had a turn on Mom and had finished stripping the house of portable
valuables, the riot outside was winding down. So they blew her head
apart and ran away with the trideo and a few other goodies. Kid was
still hiding under the table six hours later when the cops noticed the
broken door and went to check. Perpetrators never identified or
apprehended."
"So, I'll guess he doesn't like guns much?" Lilith muses.
"According to his friends and co-workers, he got cold sweats from seeing
a policeman or rentacop with a holstered pistol. He sees a shotgun, he
has to be helped away, damn near collapses. He was a fierce gun control
campaigner, _hated_ firearms, got the shakes and the shivers near them,
and sure as hell never fired one. Also totally impotent, allegedly, but
that was harder to get proof of. The best part, though, from when his
parents were killed. All he really remembered with any clarity was the
shotgun they used. Guess what he splattered the mall with?" Quinn offers
a manic grin.
"An AS-7, no doubt?" Lilith sighs. "If you're going to break a phobia,
use the biggest hammer you've got. So, why was he suddenly hosing down a
mall, for no reason, with a decent degree of skill, using the weapon
that murdered his beloved parents? Magic?"
"Yeah, they thought that, but no way. You can't make someone into a
marksman with a spell, and his shooting in there was pretty decent. I
got a copy of the footage from the mall someone, he's had practice. Nice
slick mag changes, he got two stoppages and cleared them without missing
a beat, he knew guns."
Quinn rummages in her pockets: after several false starts (a battered
paperback novel, a bag of jelly babies, a pocket sundial) the Coyote
shaman comes out with an optical disk. Blowing fluff off it, she hands
it to Lilith. "Now, if he doesn't know guns, you can't teach him, not if
you're running his mind for him. And if you're puppeting him, he's
clumsy, you don't have the feedback to be a marksman and he's fighting
you anyway. I don't see either there."
"I'll check MagicNet, but I believe you. So, what _do_ you think?"
Lilith raises an eyebrow at her friend.
"I think of Heinrich, a nice polite businessman who suddenly turns up
dead after robbing a jewelry store and committing a couple of murders.
So out of character. So unusual. And guess what, no head. This guy at
the mall. No head left, at least not after SWAT finished. In fact,
decapitation's a pattern for these guys, though I grant the mall
psycho's maybe accidental. I'm thinking some implanted control
mechanism."
Lilith sighs. "You'll have to do better than that. One of the Heinrich
boaters? Killed shooting up a nightclub?" The same control system,
perhaps? Something like the Doctor's, but to a different end. More
direct, more focussed. And you know what? It took-"
"A headshot." Quinn grins.
"Okay, Quinn, write it up and send it to Achilles. Not via Matrix.
Quiet, secure. make sure D'Arkan and only D'Arkan sees it. Might not
help us, but it might help them. I'll talk to Bernie and the Feds. We've
got something for them to _really_ dig into now."
+++++end trideo]<<<<<
-- 1Lt L R W Lynch <00:12:34/03-10-59>
Strategic Intelligence Gathering Agency
