Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  "What the hell happened? I saw you jump out of a parked minivan and take off after this guy."

  "He was already running. That’s why I chased him."

  "Come again?"

  "He was about to go into Aspen." Aspen was a club on Melrose Avenue, near the entrance to the alley. "Then he caught sight of you and turned away. As soon as you weren’t looking, he broke into a run."

  "Scared of cops, is he? Now why would that be?"

  Payton snapped on his flashlight to get a look at the suspect, and Tess was instantly disappointed.

  He was a white male. That much was good. But he wasn’t any older than twenty-five.

  He was not the man she’d hoped for.

  "I don’t know him," Payton said. "He put up any resistance?"

  "Tried to cut me." She bobbed her head at the knife on the asphalt. The flashlight beam swung over to it, revealing it as a cheap switchblade.

  "That wasn’t so smart, asshole. Up against the trash bin. Come on, move it."

  Payton handcuffed the suspect, then made him spread his legs as he patted him down. In the pocket of the young man’s pants he found a bag of white powder.

  "Coke," the patrolman said. "He was probably going into the bar to make a sale. Saw a uniform and freaked."

  Tess had put her gun back into the special compartment in her purse now that Payton was in command of the situation. "Well, it’s your bust. Local crime."

  "Unless you want to make it assault on a federal officer," Payton said, obviously hoping for a bigger collar.

  "I’ll let it ride. The knife probably just slipped a little in my direction. Isn’t that right, sir?"

  The suspect, who hadn’t said one word so far, looked at her and muttered, "Suck me off, bitch."

  Payton told him that was no way to address a lady. Tess just laughed.

  "LA’s one hell of a town, isn’t it?" Payton said wearily.

  "I wouldn’t know. I’m just visiting."

  "Lucky you."

  "You didn’t really think it was him, did you?"

  Tess looked at Special Agent Collins as she climbed back into the van. "You never know," she answered. "He was the right height, right build, and he ran from a cop. Thanks for backing me up, by the way."

  Collins shrugged. Diaz, wearing headphones as he listened to the sounds in the bar, was more conciliatory. "We had to keep an eye on Barber." Julie Barber was the agent stationed inside Aspen, whose job was to fend off come-ons from patrons who didn’t match the profile, while encouraging anyone who looked like a possible suspect.

  "Anything happen inside?" Tess asked.

  "Not a thing," Collins said. "Like last night, and the night before that, and the night—"

  "Point taken." Tess refused to be ruffled. "We’re not the only ones pulling this detail. Maybe one of the other squads will get lucky."

  "Maybe pigs will fly. Face it, this son of a bitch is too smart to return to this neighborhood. He’ll show up someplace else next time. Santa Barbara, San Diego. Anywhere but here."

  Tess was inclined to agree. Trouble was, they couldn’t watch every bar on the southern California coast. They had to make a stand somewhere.

  She was about to point this out when her purse began to chirp. Her cell phone was ringing.

  She answered it. "McCallum."

  "You’d better get over to the field office," said a voice she recognized as belonging to Peter Larkin.

  She disliked Larkin. And she didn’t intend to let him order her around. "I’m working surveillance, remember?"

  "I remember. Let Collins and Diaz handle it. You got your own vehicle there?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Stop wasting time, Agent McCallum. Just haul ass over here."

  "What’s going on, Peter?" she asked in a more cautious voice.

  "Nothing much. It’s just that we may have got him, that’s all. I really hope you can find time to join us."

  He clicked off, and she was left staring at the silent phone in her hand.

  2

  We may have got him.

  The words chased Tess McCallum like ghosts as she guided the bureau sedan west on Wilshire Boulevard, past the shops and palm trees of Beverly Hills. The sunset had faded out hours ago, and somewhere above the smog, the stars were shining.

  She powered through an intersection as the stoplight cycled from yellow to red, ignoring a horn that blared at her. She would not be stopped by traffic lights.

  She had to see him. Had to look at his face.

  Could they really have caught him—finally, after two years? There was no way to be sure. But she wouldn’t have been pulled away from the undercover detail on Melrose if all they had was another "possible," like that one last week, the salesman who had turned out to be only a run-of-the-mill adulterer.

  The streets were busy, as always, and she had to swing from lane to lane, passing slower cars. The bureau car—or "bucar" in the ridiculous terminology of the FBI—was a blue Crown Victoria, only two years old, with good acceleration and smooth handling. It invited her to take risks. She only hoped a cop didn’t pull her over. The FBI badge in her wallet would probably save her from a ticket, but a traffic stop would slow her down.

  She reached the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica. Not far from Westwood now. The dashboard clock read 9:58.

  She wondered if Andrus had been called. If he had been, then they must be really sure. It was March 29—Friday on Easter weekend—and although she didn’t think of Andrus as particularly religious, she knew they wouldn’t disturb an assistant director on Good Friday without cause.

  On impulse she removed her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed the field office’s switchboard, then asked for Larkin. "This is McCallum again," she said when Larkin came on. "I’m five, ten minutes out. What’s going on?"

  "Nothing that can’t wait till you get here." As always, Larkin treated her with supercilious disrespect. It wasn’t possible to hear a man smirk over the phone, but Tess could swear she heard it anyway.

  "Just give me the rundown," she said.

  He sighed, perturbed at this misuse of his time. "The guy’s name, address, DL, and SSN all check out. No priors. They haven’t read him his rights yet." It was legal to obtain preliminary information on a suspect without a Miranda warning. "Right now we’ve got him cooling his heels."

  This was standard procedure. Some suspects lost their nerve after as little as ten minutes alone in the bare institutional setting of the interrogation room. Then the Stockholm syndrome would kick in, and they would cooperate with their interrogators, sometimes even confess. The downside was that often these confessions were false.

  "Are Gaines and Michaelson there?" she asked. Gaines was a profiler working the case. Michaelson was the squad supervisor, experienced at interrogation.

  "Gaines just arrived. We’re expecting Michaelson any second."

  "Who made the bust?"

  "Tyler, Hart, and DiFranco. They’re in the surveillance room. Michaelson and Gaines may want Tyler in on the questioning at some point."

  "And me? Do they want me in?"

  "I don’t think that’s such a good idea."

  She hadn’t asked for his opinion. "We’ll talk about it. How about Andrus?"

  "He’s here."

  So they had called him. "I guess he looks good for it, this guy?" she said, holding her voice steady.

  "It’s still preliminary."

  Obviously Larkin would tell her only the bare minimum. She ought to be angry, but all she felt was nervous tension. "Try to hold off the interview till I get there."

  "Michaelson’s the case agent. He’s the one in charge."

  Tess knew that. "Just take your time briefing him, okay?" She clicked off without waiting for an answer and dumped the phone back into her handbag.

  She hated talking to Larkin. Hated talking to any of them, really, except Andrus. The others treated her with a mixture of pity and scorn. Pity for what had happened in Denver. Scorn because th
ey liked to think they would have handled it better. They were men, after all. They didn’t let things get to them. But she was a woman—and women, well, they got emotional about these things.

  Of course, they didn’t know the whole story. Only Andrus knew, and she had prevailed on him not to share it with the others. It was irrelevant to the case. It was her private life. She had given enough of her life to the bureau—more than enough. There were some things she meant to keep to herself.

  She was in Westwood now, coursing down the wide corridor between rows of high-rise apartment buildings. Ahead, on her right, was Westwood Village, a cluster of movie theaters and T-shirt shops crowded with UCLA students.

  Her destination lay to her left, at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Veteran—the twenty-story Federal Building that housed the Los Angeles field office of the FBI.

  On most homicide investigations, local law enforcement authorities had jurisdiction and took the lead, and the bureau was brought in, if at all, only to provide consultation and analysis. But not this one. This was a federal case, and had been ever since the night of February 12, two years ago.

  February 12.

  The key in the lock. The key, turning. The key…

  But she couldn’t think about that now.

  She pulled into the large, open parking lot adjacent to the building. Ordinarily it would be almost empty at night, but on weekends the lot was used by visitors to the Village. Even so, she found an available slot after less than a minute of searching.

  She killed the Crown Victoria’s engine and hurried inside, where she stabbed the elevator button and waited, shifting her weight restlessly.

  The key in her hand, key in the lock, turning, no resistance…

  Reliving the event was a symptom of posttraumatic stress. Her therapist had explained it to her. A traumatic event triggered stress hormones; the more hormones were pumped out, the more intensely the memory would be burned into the amygdala, a bundle of neurons in the brain. Whenever the experience was relived, new stress hormones were produced, further reinforcing the memory.

  To break the cycle, it was necessary to brush aside the memories. Think about something else.

  Something else. But there was nothing else. There was only the key in the lock, forever turning….

  Turning, and the door opening as she stepped into the house…

  The elevator arrived, chiming faintly. The sound startled her into the present.

  When the doors slid apart, she saw two men in suits.

  Cops, not feds. She knew instantly. They had to be cops because she saw the faint outlines of their firearms under their jackets. But they weren’t FBI, because their suits weren’t stylish enough. Elitist but true.

  She got in, pressing the button for the seventeenth floor.

  "Going up?" one man asked. "So are we."

  "We are?" the other cop asked with a lifted eyebrow.

  "We are now," the first man said.

  She looked at him. He was about forty, trim and self-possessed, but with a vaguely disreputable air. It was nothing she could pinpoint, just a suggestion of cunning that she disliked and distrusted.

  "Didn’t you just come down?" she asked.

  "From eighteen." The elevator began to rise. "We were meeting with Tom Danner. Know him?"

  "No." Distantly she remembered that Danner was a profiling consultant, like Gaines. Profilers often acted as liaisons with the local police. "If you’ve just seen him, why are you heading back up?"

  He smiled. "No special reason. It’s just a nice night for a ride."

  Just what she needed. Don Juan in a cheap suit.

  She looked at the numbers above the doors, not wanting to continue the conversation.

  "I’m Jim Dodge," the cop said. "West LA Homicide. This is my partner, Al Bradley." Bradley was a big, broad-shouldered man with sleepy eyes.

  "Nice to meet you," Tess said, turning away.

  Dodge wasn’t deterred. "And you are…?"

  "In a hurry."

  "Hey, this is LA. Everybody’s in a hurry. But you’ve got to slow down sometime. Stop and smell the flowers."

  "I haven’t had a lot of flowers in my life lately." The words came out fast, and instantly she regretted them. He would take the statement as a flirtation.

  "You must have a name," he pressed. "It comes standard issue with the birth certificate."

  "Tess McCallum." It was easier to tell him than to argue.

  "You’re new to this field office."

  "Temporary assignment."

  "Not too temporary, I hope."

  Dodge was looking her over without a hint of self-consciousness. She found herself wondering if she looked all right in her gray suit and white blouse and Western-style string tie. The thought irritated her.

  "Where you from?" he asked.

  She wished the elevator would move faster. "Denver."

  "Nice town. Enjoying LA?"

  "I’m not here for enjoyment. I’m working."

  "You can’t work all the time."

  "Look, Detective—"

  "Jim."

  "I’m involved with a case right now."

  "So am I. Whole bunch of cases. How many open cases we got, Al?"

  "More than I can count, Jimbo." Al Bradley spoke in an exhausted baritone.

  "More than he can count," Dodge said, "and that’s using his fingers and toes. We catch one bad guy, another pops up to replace him. The job never ends. To stay sane, you’ve got to loosen up a little. Not everything is life-and-death."

  "That’s a funny attitude for a homicide detective to take."

  "I’m just saying you can’t let a case take over your life."

  "I already have."

  "Oh, I get it. This time it’s personal."

  He wanted to be funny, but the joke hurt her like a slap.

  "Extremely personal," she said.

  The doors opened, and she stepped out. Behind her, Dodge said, "Hey." He was holding a business card. "In case you get lonely."

  "No, thanks."

  "Take it. It’s good for a free dinner."

  Because she didn’t have time to debate the issue, she took the card and stuffed it in the side pocket of her jacket without even giving it a look.

  "That’s my cell number. You can reach me anytime." He smiled. "It’s my snitch card. You know, the one I give out—"

  "To informants. I’m glad to join such elevated company."

  She walked away, not looking back, and heard Al Bradley ask his partner, "What the hell was that all about?"

  The elevator doors slid shut before she heard Detective Dodge’s answer.

  She had been rude to him, but—oh, hell, it didn’t matter.

  Larkin buzzed her into suite 1700 and greeted her in the reception room. "You must’ve exceeded a few posted speed limits," he said.

  "All in a good cause. Which room is he in?"

  "Whoa, not so fast. Andrus wants to brief you first."

  "Can’t you handle that?"

  "You know, Agent McCallum, most people wouldn’t turn up their nose at a meeting with the AD."

  "I guess my instinct for personal advancement isn’t as refined as it could be."

  "I’d say that’s obvious." Larkin opened the door to the interior corridor with a card key and led Tess out of the reception area.

  Tess waited almost a full minute before allowing him to know that he’d gotten to her. "What made you say that?" she asked as they strode down a carpeted corridor past rows of squad room doors.

  Larkin didn’t bother to glance back at her. "Say what?"

  "Don’t play around. It’s boring."

  "You mean my comment about your career advancement? All I meant was that you’re still stuck in the Denver office, when by now you probably could’ve been—should’ve been—an SAC or at least an ASAC somewhere."

  "By now. After Black Tiger, you mean."

  "You got everybody’s attention with that bust, but you didn’t know how to use it. So now yo
u’re taking orders from guys like Michaelson—and taking a lot of shit from people like me."

  She couldn’t argue. By his own petty logic Larkin was right. She had been on the fast track, and if her career had stalled, it was no one’s fault but her own.

  "Speaking of Michaelson, did I beat him here?" she asked.

  "Got here a few minutes ago."

  "Damn."

  "Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You haven’t missed much."

  "How would you know?"

  "The interrogation is just under way. They’re probably still working up the nerve to Mirandize the guy."

  This was likely to be true. The recitation of the Miranda warnings was a tricky business that had to be approached with care. Handle it wrong, and the suspect would insist on seeing his lawyer, ending the interview before it began. The trick was to lead up casually to the warnings, then deliver them in a perfunctory tone that minimized the importance of the ritual. If the suspect thought the reading was a formality, he would usually waive his rights.

  "I still wish you’d waited," she said irritably.

  "Point taken and duly noted."

  "Who is he? What’s his name?"

  "The AD will tell you everything you need to know."

  "Right." You officious little prick. "How long has Andrus been here?"

  He looked at her, a thin, ambiguous smile riding on his lips. "Little while now."

  She didn’t see what was so funny. She continued the walk in silence.

  With its carpeted floors, fluorescent lighting fixtures, and utilitarian furnishings, suite 1700 could have passed for the headquarters of any bland corporate enterprise, and in fact much of the work done here was decidedly white-collar—investigations of check-fraud rings, telemarketing scams, Ponzi schemes, and assorted nonviolent activities. That was the more genteel part of the operation. Then there was the stuff that made the news—bank robberies, star stalkings, drug busts, an occasional high-profile abduction, and terrorism, the bureau’s new focus, the crime of the new millennium.

  The LA field division was one of the bureau’s largest, employing six hundred agents and covering a vast metropolitan sprawl. For these reasons, and because LA was a nexus of media coverage, the office was run by an assistant director, rather than a special agent in charge. Andrus had been on the job for two years, and no doubt would be promoted before long to a stint at bureau headquarters in DC. Unlike Tess, the AD’s instinct for career advancement had never been in need of any honing.