Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  "You’re available. I know."

  "Please keep it in mind."

  She wouldn’t, though. Andrus was not a man she would feel comfortable confiding in. He was too coldly analytical, too fussy and well organized. Besides, he knew too much already. She could preserve her privacy only if she kept her feelings to herself. Because her feelings were the only private part of her she had left.

  But she couldn’t tell him any of this, so all she said was "I will. ’Night, Gerry."

  "’Night, Tess."

  She joined Larkin in the hall. They headed deeper into the maze of squad rooms and offices.

  "Despite what the AD thinks," Tess said, "Mr. Hayde sounds promising to me."

  Larkin grunted. "Mr. Hayde. You know, that name’s almost like ‘Mr. Hyde.’ Only with an A."

  "So?"

  "Think it’s an omen, maybe?"

  She looked at him and saw that goddamned smirk. More games.

  "Have we got a warrant for his house?" she asked.

  "No probable cause. They checked his car, though. Without a warrant."

  "I guess that’s why Andrus didn’t mention it."

  "Probably. Anyway, they gave it a quick once-over—no forensics, just a visual. Didn’t find anything."

  "Anything else the AD neglected to tell me?"

  "Only that Hayde’s a cold fish. Didn’t even break a sweat when we left him alone in the interrogation room for twenty minutes."

  "If he’s our guy, he’d have to be cold."

  "Yeah. If."

  He must be, she thought. He had to be.

  They turned a corner and came upon two closed doors. The one on the left had a sign on it reading, DO NOT DISTURB—INTERVIEW IN PROGRESS.

  Behind that door was Mr. William Hayde, who might or might not be the only man Tess hated on this earth.

  Larkin reached for the other door, then turned to her. "I know this case has cost you, Tess."

  She wanted to say that he had no idea how much it had cost her, but she held back, because he had addressed her without irony for the first time.

  "I met him once, you know. Paul Voorhees."

  Her voice caught. "Did you?"

  "In New Orleans. I was working a multiple rapist, and Paul came in to consult. Helped us a lot. We snagged the guy. Eddie Mullen—they called him the Devil, because he wore a Mardi Gras devil mask. Paul must’ve told you."

  "I don’t think he did." She wondered how many other cases he had left undiscussed.

  "Well, anyway, Paul was a good guy. And I know it’s tough—losing any colleague, let alone your partner."

  Let alone someone who was more than a partner, she thought, but Larkin didn’t know about that part of it, and didn’t have to know.

  "You’ve been through a lot." Larkin looked away. "I hope tonight ends it. For everybody’s sake…but most of all for yours."

  "Thank you," she said with a quick, faltering smile that her mouth couldn’t quite hold.

  "Okay, then." Larkin clapped his hands, signaling an end to whatever sort of moment they had shared. "Let’s settle in for some Q and A."

  He pulled open the door and gestured for her to enter the observation room, where agents Tyler, Hart, and DiFranco stood before a bank of TV monitors watching the suspect from several angles.

  From this distance Tess couldn’t see his face on the multiple screens. She wondered what he would look like. She wondered if he would match the face that visited her in nightmares.

  Larkin was waiting for her to enter. She brushed past him, trembling just a little as she stepped inside the room.

  5

  At 10:45, Amanda Pierce drove into the short-term parking lot of Los Angeles International Airport. She ditched her Sunbird at the curb, grabbing her small suitcase out of the backseat, and disappeared into the concourse.

  She had chosen the airport because it was large and brightly lit and would be crowded on the first night of a holiday weekend. Also, she didn’t know if the feds realized that LA was her final destination. There was a chance she could convince them she was taking a flight to another city.

  LAX offered an additional asset, one that might prove critical—the ready availability of taxicabs. Not many places in this city were so accommodating.

  But the taxis would be of use to her only if she could shake free of the people who had trailed her for a thousand miles, all the way from northeastern Oregon to southern California. The first step was to force them out of their cars so she could get a look at them and see how many there were.

  The terminal was enormous, and despite the late hour, plenty of shops and eateries were still open. The place was like a garish shopping mall, crowded with stores and bars and luridly decorated restaurants. Palm trees were planted along the concourse under skylights and before wide windows. The floor shone beneath the bright overhead lights.

  Toting her suitcase, Pierce entered a store selling magazines and souvenirs, then feigned interest in a selection of Dodgers T-shirts while watching the store entrance from the corner of her eye.

  A man entered, glancing at her in a way that was not quite casual. He seemed to mutter something to himself, but she knew he was actually speaking into a throat microphone, reporting his reacquisition of the target.

  She called him Alpha, using standard law enforcement code. Alpha lingered near the entrance. But there was another way of leaving the store, a second exit at the far end. Pierce wandered in that direction. Alpha did not follow. Some other agent must be covering that exit.

  She got close enough to see a second man studying a rack of magazines a few steps inside the entryway. Call him Bravo.

  Pierce left the store, knowing that Bravo would not be so conspicuous as to follow immediately. Another person would pick up her trail.

  When she paused by the shop window just outside the exit, pretending to study a display of leather luggage, she caught the reflection of the third man, Charlie. He had started walking and stopped when she did.

  Clumsy, Charlie. Poor technique. Time for you to take a refresher course at Quantico.

  She entered a coffee shop and ordered a burger and Coke, her first food other than a couple of granola bars she’d consumed in the car. She sat at a small table with a view of the concourse and ate her meal, barely tasting it, knowing only that she needed nourishment to stay alert.

  When she left, she took care to wad up her paper napkin and leave it on her chair.

  In the concourse she paused to fiddle with her suitcase, a maneuver that afforded her the chance to see yet another man—Delta—approach her table and retrieve the napkin. There was nothing written on it or hidden in it, but her pursuers couldn’t know that. Observing what might have been a dead drop, they had to check it out.

  A similar ruse revealed the fifth agent, Echo, who peeled off to follow an innocent traveler after Pierce bumped into him near the escalators. This could have been a brush pass, the surreptitious transfer of an item in a seemingly accidental moment of contact.

  Pierce was pleased with herself. Not only had she forced Echo to reveal himself, but she’d sent him on a diversion, improving the odds.

  Perhaps she could lose another one. She picked out a man at random and asked him the way to the taxi stand. This was information she did not need, having checked the airport’s layout in her road atlas while driving. The man snapped off an answer and bustled away.

  Another bystander took off after him. The sixth agent. Foxtrot.

  Pierce kept walking. She saw a woman break into stride just ahead of her, obviously having been posted there in an advance position.

  Number seven.

  She hadn’t expected to have to count that high. How many of them were there, for Christ’s sake?

  A custodian was cleaning out a trash can. She caught the hint of a wire threaded from his ear to his collar. Stand-alone body rig. He was number eight.

  There couldn’t be more. But watching her from an alcove near a candy machine, a man wearing a priest’s collar.
Nine.

  Was that all of them? She took out her compact. In the mirror she glimpsed a male figure watching her from an upper level of the concourse. He was an older man with the close-cropped gray hair of a military officer, and she had a feeling he was the one in charge, looking down from a high vantage point on his operatives, who had spread throughout the terminal while Pierce was eating her burger.

  He made ten. And she had no reason to think she’d spotted them all.

  She scanned the area and noted security cameras installed in the ceilings. By now, someone would be watching her on the monitors.

  She had underestimated the bureau. They’d pulled out all the stops for her. Multiple redundant modes of surveillance. She was caught in a box inside another box inside yet another….

  Even so, she wasn’t out of options. Not by a long shot.

  She entered a ladies’ room, where two women were chatting at a row of sinks before a large mirror. One of them had flamboyant red hair that looked artificial. The other was dark-haired like Pierce herself.

  Pierce nodded. They would do.

  Taking a stall, she shut the door without latching it, then placed her suitcase on the toilet tank and stood on the lid. No one looking at the space under the door could tell that the stall was occupied.

  She reached down to her belt buckle and opened the secret compartment that held the knife.

  It was a switchblade, small enough to be folded inside the oversize buckle. The blade was two and a half inches long, a tiny tool, but she knew how to use it.

  She opened the knife, then held it in her right hand and waited.

  The two women left. The rest room was empty now. Pierce knew the feds would get curious after a while. They would send someone to check on her.

  Footsteps.

  Through the narrow opening in the stall door, she saw a woman enter the rest room—the same female agent she’d seen earlier. Number seven. Blond, young, her eyes wide and alert as she studied the room. A slight bulge in her belly—concealed weapon? No, something else. Something better.

  Pierce waited until the woman had moved directly outside the stall, then pushed the door open and grabbed her from behind, pressing the knife against her neck.

  "Shhh," she whispered, her voice nearly inaudible. The woman would be wearing a throat microphone sensitive enough to pick up almost any sound.

  Slowly she lowered her free hand and ran her palm over the smooth, slightly rounded contour of the woman’s belly.

  Pregnant, as she’d thought. That was helpful.

  She lowered the knife to the bitch’s abdomen. "Do what I say"—her words barely spoken aloud by lips pressed against the woman’s ear—"or your baby dies."

  She felt, rather than heard, the female agent’s sharp intake of breath, and she knew she had found the point of maximum emotional vulnerability she needed.

  Softly: "Tell them you’ve lost the target. The bathroom is empty." The woman hesitated. Pierce teased the round belly with the knife’s edge. "Tell them."

  "This is Kidder," the woman said in a low, husky voice directed at her throat microphone. "Have not acquired target. Rest room empty, target gone, repeat, target gone."

  Pierce plucked the earpiece from Agent Kidder’s left ear and heard a gruff male voice initiating a lost-command drill. There was a flurry of responses from other agents, but Pierce wasn’t listening anymore. She was applying sudden strong pressure to Kidder’s carotid arteries, shutting off the blood flow to the brain.

  The woman slumped. Pierce lowered her onto the toilet and quickly removed her own jacket, then peeled off the agent’s brown blazer and shrugged it on. She slipped out of her skirt and donned Kidder’s slacks. She fitted the earpiece in her own ear and secured the microphone to her jacket collar and the small transmitter to her blouse.

  The other agents had not yet thought to check on Kidder. They were preoccupied with finding the target. From the confused transmissions coming in over her earpiece, it was clear that they assumed she had left the rest room almost immediately after entering, disguised as one of the two women who had been gabbing at the washstand—one woman dark-haired like Pierce, the other possibly wearing a wig. Either of them could have been the target in disguise.

  The women had not been followed, and the full resources of the surveillance operation were now focused on reacquiring them. No one was watching the rest room.

  Pierce spoke into her lapel. "This is Kidder." Her voice, a throaty whisper, was indistinguishable from any other female voice. "Am in command of the target."

  The gruff voice snapped, "Location?"

  "Central exit doors. Lower level at arrival area B. Target has left the building, is proceeding toward taxis at curbside."

  "All squads, central exit ground level. Move."

  While her pursuers converged on the taxi area on the ground floor, Pierce left the rest room, deposited the communication rig in the nearest trash can, and rode the escalator upstairs to the departure level. She took the first exit. Outside in the warm night, she saw a cab drop off a passenger and immediately hailed it, climbing into the backseat.

  As the taxi pulled away, she permitted herself a rearward glance and saw no one following.

  "Where to?" the driver asked.

  She gave the name of a hotel—the new meeting place arranged last night—then sat in the backseat of the cab with the suitcase on her lap, fingering the soft leather, caressing the bag like a baby.

  It was all she had left in the world now. She had given up her job, her home, her identity. She could never go back. Could never undo what she’d done. And she didn’t want to.

  She would meet the man at the hotel, give him what he wanted, and earn what she was due.

  Then she would be on her way to another country, a new life, and anything that happened afterward would not be her concern.

  She just had to keep saying that to herself. She was selling information, that was all. If the purchaser wanted to…do something with that information—well, she couldn’t be responsible for other people’s actions.

  She had herself to look out for. Now more than ever. Now, when she was committed and there was no return.

  6

  The observation room was dimly lit. Like the room next door, it was soundproofed with acoustic tile, but the voices from the interrogation room were clearly audible over digital speakers attached to the TV monitors.

  Tess stopped just inside the doorway, listening.

  "So you’ve been in LA how long?"

  "Two years."

  "You like it here?"

  "It’s all right."

  "Me, too. Before this, I was stationed in Salt Lake City. Pretty hot there in the summer, and colder than hell all winter long."

  "I’ll bet."

  "That’s one thing about LA. Can’t beat the climate."

  "I prefer a four-season climate, myself."

  "Do you? Guess you miss Colorado then."

  "Sometimes."

  "What brought you to LA?"

  "Work."

  "Well, you have to go where the work takes you. Same with Ed and me."

  The voice asking questions belonged to Michaelson. The Ed he’d referred to was Ed Gaines, one of the profiling coordinators assigned to the LA office. A profiling coordinator consulted with police and drew up psychological profiles of suspects. Gaines was one of the more experienced profilers, not only trained at Quantico but an occasional lecturer there.

  Agents Hart, DiFranco, and Tyler stood around watching the monitors. A young man whose name Tess didn’t know sat in a swivel chair, using a keyboard and mouse to input data into a desktop computer. She looked closer and saw sine wave patterns hurrying along the computer screen, their ups and downs reflected in the lenses of his eyeglasses.

  He was running a CVSA—computerized voice-stress analysis. The lines on the screen were an enhanced record of the microtremors of the vocal cords’ striated muscles. Vibration at the rate of eight to ten cycles per second was normal; a hi
gher frequency indicated stress, which was often correlated with efforts at deceit.

  The sine wave pattern presently on display seemed to be within nonstressed parameters. The computer operator would be looking for a sharp break in the sequence, especially the so-called "square-block" pattern of modulation cycles.

  Officially the bureau eschewed voice-stress analysis, deeming it unreliable. The results could not be used in court, which was probably just as well, since the technology was new and quite possibly flawed. Many agents regarded it as an outright scam, akin to tarot cards and palmistry—or polygraphs, for that matter.

  But Michaelson believed in CVSA. He always used it behind the scenes, despite its inconvenience and expense. This was just one of the many little quirks that no doubt made him lovable to his mother, if to no one else.

  "So you’re a civil engineer," Michaelson was saying. "I guess it was construction work that brought you here."

  "The Metro project. The Red Line."

  "I’ve ridden the subway a few times. You guys did a great job."

  A grunt of acknowledgment.

  "You moved here two years ago, right?"

  "I already told you so."

  "Thing is, the Red Line was nearly done by then, wasn’t it? So you couldn’t have worked on it very long."

  "Four months."

  "Hardly seems worth uprooting yourself for a four-month stint."

  From the drift of the conversation, Tess knew that Hayde had already been Mirandized. Michaelson was getting down to business, trying to undermine Hayde’s explanation for why he moved out of Colorado.

  "I didn’t think it would be only four months," Hayde said. "They were still talking about extending MOS Three."

  "MO-what?"

  "MOS. Minimum Operable Segment. The Red Line is divided into three self-contained sections. MOS Three was finished last. Originally, it was supposed to extend farther east and west. The contractor fed me a line of bull, told me they had a shot at getting the additional funding to proceed with the extension."

  Tess moved toward the bank of TV sets. Linda Tyler looked up and acknowledged her with a smile. Tyler had been civil, even friendly, from the start. Maybe it was the camaraderie of being two females in an organization still dominated by men. Women made up only fifteen percent of the bureau’s 11,500 agents, and many of the female agents had been relegated to the least glamorous squads, offering the lowest profiles and the smallest chance of advancement.