Free Outburst by R.D. Zimmerman Page A

the left.
    Behind him he heard the gentle hum of an engine, and he glanced in his rearview mirror. The street itself was straight and in decent repair, the curbs looking no more than two or three years old, and down it now came a small red car. Behind the wheel was a woman with long blond hair, that much he could tell, and when she passed him she seemed not to notice anything out of the ordinary, that his car didn't belong here. Focused on her, he watched as she drove three houses past the duplex, pulled to the right, and parked. Reaching for a pen and the yellow legal pad on the seat next to him, the man jotted it all down: the red car, the blond woman, the return home at—he noted, checking his watch—six thirty-three.
    Very good.
    He now had almost this entire midsection of the block accounted for, and in turn a reasonably good idea of the pattern of the lives of the people who lived here. The only house that he really couldn't tell anything about was the white clapboard one just next door to the duplex. With peeling white paint and the curtains drawn, it didn't look as if anyone was living in the structure. Then again, it didn't look completely abandoned, for there were no newspapers or flyers lying about on the front steps or tucked in the front door, there were no envelopes bulging out of the mailbox. As far as a car, perhaps it was stashed in the garage off the alley. So someone could be living there, easily so. An old person. Right, he surmised. Someone frail. Someone who didn't get out much. Someone who didn't have anything better to do all day than peer out the windows and see who and what was lurking on the block.
    So be careful of that one, he admonished. Absolutely.
    Suddenly the door of the duplex opened and his next target stepped out. Wasting not a moment, the man in the car calmly pulled a newspaper from his lap and looked at it as if he were reading. With his face concealed, he watched just over the top of the pages as the other descended from the front porch to the street. Noting the fresh shirt, pressed pants, and slicked-down dark hair, he gathered that this guy was going to meet someone, undoubtedly for dinner. And the man in the car easily guessed just who that might be.
    This was good. Very good. He needed to find out which door this guy primarily used. And now it was clear: the front one. Which meant he'd lay his trap in the rear.
    Yes, thought the man in the car as he watched Sergeant Steve Rawlins climb into his silver Taurus. This one's going to be easy, very easy.

10
     
    After he did it at five, he did it at six.
    And in a few hours—at ten, to be precise—he'd do it again on WLAK's 10@10. A live intro to the story, followed by the package recounting the murder of Mark Forrest.
    If there wasn't anything new from the police by then, Todd schemed as he drove into town for dinner, he'd try his best to put a fresh spin on it, add a few things of his own, kind of spice it up a bit. Viewers, after all, always had to feel as if they were getting the latest, that there was some payoff for tuning in. And Todd was determined to give it to them.
    The great stories, the ones every reporter dreamed of, were the ones that grabbed you by the throat. The ones you couldn't get out of your head. The ones that made you hunt obsessively for the truth. Although he'd never voiced it, the things that made Todd realize how thoroughly he loved his job were the kidnappings, the beatings, the murders—the more bizarre the better. If that body is really him, that Russian stockbroker, then where's the head? The hands? Or how could that young, attractive mother really have done that to her kids, set the house on fire with them in it? Was it in fact the stepfather? Or how could a son have done that to his mother, drugged her up on pain medication and then buried her alive in the tomato patch?
    He'd never admit it, but the extremes of the human condition were what Todd feasted on, and this, a strange cop-killing, was a