Chapter 10E

The building was so gutted that I couldn't tell what it used to be. I looked around and then dragged the three menaces to society into a small windowless room to wait for them to regain their senses - what few they possessed.

I stood in the doorway and looked at the haul from my first fishing expedition. It wasn't very impressive. They all looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Their shabby clothes looked to be that way deliberately, rather than from actual wear, so I assumed that they weren't orphaned street children who had fallen into crime as a means of survival. These looked to be your common, garden-variety thugs who preyed on old women because they were too lazy to have higher goals or even to go after bigger prey.

I intended to see that this time they got far more than they bargained for. My problem was that I hadn't expected such quick success from my ruse and I didn't have a plan for dealing with them. While their eyes stopped rolling around in their heads, I thought over what I could do to them that would make them reevaluate their choice of profession without causing them any serious physical damage.

I was fresh out of creative ideas so I went with the first thing that came into my head.

"Well, lookee here," I cackled. "Three fine, strapping young men. We're going to have some fun tonight, yessirree!"

One of them sat up and stammered, "Wha... what do you want?"

"Why, I want you, young man! It's been a long time since I had a nice young fella like you. You're going to make old granny mighty happy." I feigned undoing my belt. "Now you boys hurry up and get out of those clothes. I've got an itch and you've got just what I need to scratch it!"

All three of them looked like I'd told them they were going to be executed at dawn. They started crawling away from me. I reached down and snatched a hold on the ankle of the slowest. He tried to squirm away from me, but I dragged him slowly closer while reaching for the crotch of his jeans. When I put my hand on the bulge in his groin, he made a noise halfway between a squeek and a whimper.

"Yes, it's been a loooong time," I said, squeezing his balls like they were ripe fruit in a produce bin. "Now you boys get those clothes off, you hear!"

When nobody moved, I unfastened the belt of the one I was holding and before he could move, I took hold of the waistband and ripped his pants open halfway to his knee. He looked like he was about to cry. I couldn't tell if it was from shock or because I had ruined his favorite pair of jeans.

Still nobody moved, so I used the same technique I had used on Dave. I grabbed the thug on the floor by the thigh muscle and started to squeeze. His friends watched him thrash about for a while, but when the light dawned on them that they were next for this treatment, they started shedding clothes.

I had to yank off one pair of boxers, but eventually I had them mother-naked in front of me.

I looked at them and shook my head, "You boys sure are a disappointment. I thought I had some serious cocks here, but instead, I got little pricks." I picked up a pair of pants and stripped the belt out of them. I had been thinking about playing with them some, messing with their heads, but they looked so wretched and so scared that I just wanted to get it over with and get out of there.

"I thought we could have some fun, but it looks like the only fun I'm going to have is whipping your butts. C'mere you!" I reached for the thug furthest from the door. In doing so, I stepped out of the doorway and gave them a way to escape. The first one dashed through quickly, but the second bent down for his clothes. I snapped the belt across his ass and he reordered his priorities and ran after the first.

The last one I chased around the room, flailing the belt at him. It wasn't until the second time around that he thought to make a break for it as well. I ran after him as far as the door of the building and watched him run down the street after his friends. Then I went back inside and collected their clothes into a bundle. Carrying it with me, I resumed shuffling down the street at my own slow pace.

No one else bothered me and I reached the store without further incident. There was a small crowd out front and I could hear people laughing and snickering. I walked up to the front of the store and held out the bundle of clothes for everyone to see.

"Anyone see three boys run past here with their peepees flapping in the breeze?" I asked of the crowd. This produced more laughter.

One woman flipped the ash off her cigarette and said, "Sure did! They just ran past here like the Devil himself was after them."

I dropped the bundle on the oil-stained parking apron in front of the store and said, "Well, if any of y'all know those boys, you might give them their clothes back. Or not. It makes no nevermind to me. Oh, and if you see them, tell them I'll be back to visit again real soon."

I trundled into the store to check it out. It looked really nasty from the outside and no better inside. The walls and ceiling had either been painted the ugliest shade of brownish-yellow that could be found, or the paint had just faded to that shade over the years. The place had an atmosphere of age and decay that made me feel dirty just being in it. It looked like the only thing that had changed in the last eighty years was the stock, the flickering fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling, and the heavy wire mesh over the front door and windows. Certainly there had been little effort to keep the place clean. The floor was so grimy that it was hard to tell if it was wood or linoleum.

Most of the place was devoted to stacks of cases of beer and overpriced snack food. There was a wooden magazine rack near the single register that held pawed-over copies of garish porn magazines. On the wall behind the counter was a large display of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, along with some things that I figured must be drug paraphernalia. Who buys plumbing supplies in a convenience store?

The man behind the counter looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. He had short gray hair above a deeply creased face. He wore a stained, wife-beater undershirt and had in a holster on the front of his belt a very large, very shiny revolver. The wooden grip looked worn, as though the man had the habit of rubbing it with his hand. He was looking at me with curious and habitually suspicious eyes.

I shuffled up to the counter and gave him the once-over. "You the owner?" I asked.

He nodded. "Name's Winslow," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Good evening, Mr. Winslow. I came to give you some news. There is something out there." I waved my hand toward the door and cackled, "It's mean. It's ugly. It's horrifying. It's coming, Mr. Winslow. The Dragon is coming. And it's hungry."

I shuffled toward the door. When I reached it, I put my hand on the bar and looked back. "You tell them, Mr. Winslow. You tell them The Dragon is coming. Ask them if it's coming for them. And while you're at it, ask yourself. Is it coming for you, too?"

When I went back outside, the bundle of clothes had vanished. Somehow I doubted that some Good Samaritan had hurried off to return them to their owners.

As I walked away from the store, I could feel the eyes following me. I tried to look weak and defenseless, but after I had gone another two blocks, there were still no more takers.

I reached the spot where Neeka was waiting for me without so much as seeing another person.

"Everything all right," I asked her.

"Fine and dandy," she said. "A couple of guys tried to pick me up. They were about to insist on my company when there was a call on the radio. They suddenly remembered that they had a pressing engagement elsewhere."

"Bad guys?"

"Just pushy. I've met jocks that were worse about not taking a hint. I could have handled them even if the radio hadn't scared them off. It's odd; I think that in this neighborhood, running from the cops is a reflex. How bad does the place have to be for you to grow up doing that?" She shrugged. "Now, what was all that 'The Dragon is coming' business? I thought you were going to tell him help was on the way."

"I was. But when I got in there, something didn't smell right. The place is really run down. It can't be worth anything. Why does he stay? Loyalty to the neighborhood? Give me a break. Business too good? If so, why not use the profits to keep the place up better. Business bad? Then where did he get the money to buy the stock he has? All those cases of beer stacked to the ceiling. Something's not right. I want to know more about Mr. Winslow before we assume he's on the right side. It's possible that he's not the victim we assumed he was."

I resumed my normal face and pulled off the disguise. Neeka stowed it in one of the storage compartments on the bike. I might be able to use it again. The fishing trip idea had worked out better than I had hoped. Old ladies on this street would be safe for a while.

During the ride back home, I thought about how well the disguise had worked. In the dark of the street, I had passed. The crowd outside the store hadn't had a much better look at me, so I passed there too. Winslow had the best look, under the harsh fluorescents in the store, but even if he hadn't bought the 'old lady', even if he saw straight through it, what had he seen? My height? Maybe. I had tried to hunch over, but you can only fudge your size so far. My hair? Hidden under the cowl and the scarf. Skin tone? The suit covered my skin except for my face. The suit was colorless. It would be the average of the color in the room. In dim light, it was impossible to see. In the store it had looked brown — halfway between the filthy floor and the walls. My shape? Distinctive in normal clothes, my outline and contours were hard to make out under the suit. Just as the dazzle-art on the walls of the workshop made it hard to judge the size of the room, the suit made it hard to see my body under it. If I was moving, it would be impossible to say much more than I was small and possibly female.

My face? That was my ace. I could make my face look like anything at all. My ability to do the moving dragon so effectively was the best demonstration of that. The uneven gray, seamed complexion I adopted along with the clothes completely obscured my true appearance.

I decided that I didn't have to have Oscar-caliber acting skills or an elaborate collection of makeup appliances. I didn't need to be a credible old woman, or whatever disguise I wanted to use. I just needed to be unrecognizable as me. I was sure I could handle that.

Thinking of handling things reminded me of the way I had handled the three young thugs who tried to steal my purse. I was disappointed that I couldn't think of something better than taking their clothes and sending them home naked. It seemed kind of juvenile. Still, until I had much better control over my strength, I wanted to avoid thumping people unless there was a real good reason for it.

Maybe taking their clothes wasn't too bad a lesson anyway. It was embarrassing, it was memorable, and it made them feel as defenseless and vulnerable as their victims felt.

When we got home, Bambi was waiting for us in the workshop.

"You were gone longer than I expected," she said. "I decided to listen to the radio to see if anything was going on."

"We went fishing," Neeka said.

"Unhunh. Why do I get the feeling that no worms were harmed on this fishing trip?"

"Hey," I said, "speaking on behalf of bait in general, I object to that sarcastic tone! Us woims have a tuff life, OK?"

"So, did you catch anything?" Bambi was trying hard to hide how concerned she was that I had been out putting myself deliberately in harm's way. She really wanted to know how close I had come to being in actual danger, but she couldn't just ask right out.

"We caught three little fishes, but I skinned them and threw them back," I said.

"You what?" She got lost in my metaphor, but she still laughed.

"I caught three hoods who tried to steal my purse. I let them go, but I kept their clothes. It must be hard to pass yourself off as a tough guy when you've been stripped and run through the streets with your shortcomings on full display."

"That's funny!" Bambi giggled. "But why not just have them arrested?"

"I thought about that," I said. "But since I was the victim, it would mean pressing charges, testifying, the whole legal scene. I can't do that, obviously. Also, in their peer group, being busted just gives you status and credibility. Crooks are a stupid bunch, generally. You'd think that a crook that didn't get caught would have a higher status than one that did, but apparently it works the other way around. Failure is success. Bad is good. Getting caught just means more people know what you did. Their whole psychology is upside down."

"Yes," Neeka agreed, "someone who preys on defenseless old women is going to have some very messed-up values. We're not going to be able to persuade these people to trade their life of crime for being productive members of society unless we can first convince them that they are miserable failures as criminals."

I said, "And one way to do that is to show them that they can be made into victims, too. Another would be to show them that they are up against something so much tougher and stronger than they are that going straight is the easy way out.

"All of this is fine in theory, but hard to do in practice. As Deputies Murphy and Rosario pointed out to us tonight, crooks can be as hard to find as cops, when you want one. We got lucky tonight. Finding predators is possible when you know whom they prey on and where their prey is going to be found. For crooks that choose their victims randomly, or have a large territory that they work in, it's going to be much harder to track them down. We can't open a bank and wait for it to be robbed. We can't buy a house and wait for it to be burgled. We can't..." An idea came to me and I stopped to think it over.

"Uh, oh," Bambi said. "I hear the wheels turning."

"Well, the gears are grinding, anyway," Neeka said.

"I was about to say what we can't do, but it occurs to me that we haven't tapped all our resources."

Neeka sat down at the desk and started going through the manuals that had been sent over from the Sheriff's Department. While she logged into the databases we needed, I explained to Bambi.

"I was about to say that we can't pin down specific crimes to specific locations, but maybe we can. The local law enforcement agencies will certainly have records of the crimes reported in their jurisdictions. If we can narrow down the area, we might be able to pull our fishing stunt on someone other than purse snatchers."

Neeka was already well into the maze of menus and options. Bambi and I watched over her shoulder. She seemed to be very much at home on a keyboard.

After a few minutes, she said, "There is a general database of all crimes committed locally. It has a crappy Access-based front end, but I can get the information we want. It seems to be pretty current. The problem is that it isn't connected to the GIS."

"GIS?" Bambi asked. I was glad she saved me from asking.

"Geographic Information System," Neeka said. "Basically, a map of the city that will show statistics that you give it. But it doesn't look like they linked the two systems together in any useful way. I think the underlying database is SQL, so maybe I can export the query results and then import it into the GIS."

"Oh," Bambi said. Then she mouthed at me, "sequel?"

I shrugged. "Neeka, are you a nerd?" I asked, half jokingly.

"I think the term you want is Geek," she said. "As in Computer Geek. And I am planning on majoring in Computer Science when I go to college.

"OK, here we go. I've imported my query result into the GIS. The key field is the case number. The mapped value is where the crime was committed. The different types of crimes will show as different colored dots and each type is on a different layer so we can turn them off or on, individually or in any combination. What do you want to see first?"

"Well, let's see it all to start," I said.

Neeka clicked the mouse and the screen came up with a map so covered with colored dots that it was hard to see the streets.

"That's a lot of crime!" Bambi said. "I'm going to stop complaining about paying my taxes."

"Darn!" I said. "That is a lot. How far back does this go?"

"Um, let's see," Neeka said, scrolling through a second window on the screen. "Oh, I see. This is ten years of cumulative data. I guess we need to filter it down. Filter... filter... here it is. Now, what can we leave out?"

"Closed cases, for one," I said. "If the crime has been solved, then presumably the criminal is off the street. No sense looking for them if they're already locked up."

"And misdemeanors," Bambi suggested. "No speeding, littering, public drunkenness, or spitting on the sidewalk."

"And I'll limit it to just the last two years," Neeka said. "We want to be sure we aren't looking for someone who moved on to other things years ago. Now, 'apply' and 'redraw' and here we are."

The new map was much less cluttered than the first one. The dots started to show as groups. Different colors were showing different patterns. The riot of color still made it hard to distinguish a pattern.

"What do the colors mean?" I asked.

"Red is murders. Blue is residential burglaries. Green is robberies. Yellow is auto theft. Magenta is sexual assault. Cyan is arson. Orange is assault with a deadly weapon. Purple is commercial burglaries. I guess burglars specialize in one type or another."

"Lets look at them one at a time, then."

Neeka unchecked all the boxes on the bottom of the screen except for the red one and clicked on redraw. Now that she had done the hard part, I could see how easy the GIS system was to use. When the map came up again, there was a scattering of red dots all over the place, with small clumps in a few places. I studied the map carefully, but I could not see anything useful.

"I'm not getting anything," I said. "Are either of you?"

Bambi and Neeka both shook their heads. Neeka went on to the next category — residential burglaries. This map was more understandable. The dots appeared in residential neighborhoods and tended to cluster in relatively small areas. Bambi traced her finger down the screen, following a street.

"There have been eight burglaries in this neighborhood in the last two years?" she said in an astonished tone. "I'm going to have the alarm service come out and check the system."

"Makes you want to let Brute back in the house, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Almost," Bambi said.

"Let's not forget the dot that's not on this map," Neeka said. "I feel perfectly safe here, even without the dog in the house."

"You're right, honey," Bambi said. She put her arm around my shoulders. "If we do have a burglar to break in here, that will be one less criminal we'll have to worry about!"

"Damn right," I agreed. "But I'd rather not wait for them to come to us. This gives us too big an area. Robberies and auto theft are going to be very spread out, too. Let's look at magenta."

The map of sexual assault was much more interesting. The locations tended to cluster around smaller areas. Certain neighborhoods had some; certain parts of the city; some were very tightly grouped.

"Now that's interesting," I said. "Let's look at some of these small clumps. What's this one?" I pointed to the smallest group of dots I could see and Neeka clicked on it to zoom in.

"Ponce de Leon Park," Neeka said. "Six dots, all together. I had no idea!"

"I remember something on the news about a jogger being abducted in the park," Bambi said. "I never heard how that came out. I didn't know there had been six in the last couple of years!"