Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  The punk looked up and saw the gun. He was some Mexican kid. Well, maybe Guatemalan or El Salvadoran, but to Dodge they were all Mexicans, and they were all named Pancho.

  "That car’s the property of the motherfucking LAPD," Dodge informed him. "Didn’t you see the goddamned DARE sticker, for Christ’s sake?"

  Pancho stared up at him from his crouch and said something in Spanish. Dodge knew a little Spanish, but he didn’t feel like getting into a conversation with some amateur car thief. Didn’t feel like booking him either. For one thing, it was a bullshit collar. Pancho would get only a reprimand or, at most, some time in a juvey camp. The paperwork and the court appearance would be more trouble than the bust was worth. Besides, Dodge didn’t want to advertise his presence in Hollywood. He didn’t want people asking what he’d been doing here when he should have been working with his partner at the crime scene.

  Goddamn wetback needed to be taught a lesson, though.

  Dodge gestured with his gun. "Get up."

  Pancho stood, his slight body trembling even while his pockmarked face remained impassive.

  "The thing is, Pancho," Dodge said, "I’m a little overprotective when it comes to my vehicle."

  He punctuated this point by delivering a kick to Pancho’s crotch. The kid doubled over, and instantly Dodge was behind him, snapping a handcuff over his left wrist, then quickly patting him down. He was clean.

  "Crawl," Dodge said, jerking him by the cuff.

  Pancho tried to resist. Dodge jerked him harder.

  "Come on, you’re an animal, you should be good at crawling."

  On his knees and elbows the punk crawled around to the rear of the car, where Dodge secured the other cuff to the underside of the chassis.

  "Stay there," he said, while Pancho sank to his knees, holding his nuts.

  Dodge unlocked the car and started the engine. He thought about just taking off, dragging Pancho behind him for a block or two, but that would be cruel. Worse, it would lead to inquiries and repercussions, two things Dodge disliked.

  He left the car idling and walked around to the rear again, then grabbed Pancho by the hair and shoved his face against the muzzle of the exhaust pipe.

  "Suck on it. Suck hard."

  Pancho’s eyes, rolling, were too big for his face. There was a stain on his pants where he’d pissed himself.

  He closed his mouth over the pipe and kissed it for a good half minute, obviously struggling not to breathe. The swirl of fumes got to him anyway. He started to choke, tried to pull his face away. Dodge tapped the nape of his neck with the gun.

  "More."

  Pancho again clamped his teeth on the pipe.

  "That’s it, amigo. Work it good. This is excellent practice for you. You’ll be real popular in county lockup, which is where you’ll be going one of these days."

  Pancho began to make retching noises. His face was sweaty and pale.

  Dodge reached over with his free hand and pinched Pancho’s nostrils shut, simultaneously leaning on him from behind, forcing the pipe deeper into his throat.

  "Breathe deep, piece of shit."

  Pancho struggled, tugging at the handcuff, shaking his shoulders. Dodge held on. He had wrestled bigger punks than this one.

  He didn’t let go until he was sure the wetback had taken a nice big hit of carbon monoxide, enough to make him good and sick. Then he stepped away and allowed Pancho to jerk clear of the pipe. The kid fell over on his side, wheezing and shuddering, and Dodge unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them.

  "Still want the car?" Dodge asked.

  Pancho just lay there as a dribble of vomit pooled on the asphalt beside his open mouth.

  Dodge smiled. "I didn’t think so."

  He slid behind the wheel and drove off, leaving the kid on the street like so much trash.

  10

  "You and him," Larkin said, "face-to-face?"

  "It’s the only way," Tess answered evenly.

  "Might work." DiFranco sounded intrigued. "Could get a reaction out of him, at any rate."

  Tess nodded. "If it doesn’t, nothing will."

  "I don’t know." Larkin was shaking his head. "He’s probably expecting to see you."

  "Is he? Why? As far as we know, he’s not even aware that I’m in LA. If I walk in unannounced, he may betray something. In his eyes, or"—she nodded at the computer—"in his voice."

  DiFranco and Hart exchanged a glance. On the TV monitors, the interrogation continued, Michaelson and Gaines pressing, Hayde unfazed.

  "We’ve gotta clear it with Michaelson," DiFranco said finally.

  Tess shrugged. "Buzz him."

  Larkin looked peeved, but he sent a signal to Michaelson’s pager. Michaelson touched the vest pocket of his jacket, feeling the pager’s vibration. He excused himself, leaving Tyler and Gaines with the suspect.

  A moment later he entered the surveillance room. He was a thin man with a hawklike proboscis that had earned him the nickname of the Nose. His slightly nasal voice may have contributed to the appellation. Tess had seen one of her squadmates create hand shadows on the wall of his cubicle to produce a passable likeness of Michaelson’s profile. "Watch yourselves, everybody," the agent had warned in a stage whisper. "Never let down your guard. Remember…the Nose knows."

  Tess found herself staring at that nose as she told Michaelson what she wanted to do. He listened impatiently, then looked past her and asked, "Nothing on the stress analysis?" He was always looking past her, or through her, or around her. She was an obstacle in his life, nothing more.

  "No significant deviations from sine wave baseline," the agent at the computer said.

  "Hell." The Nose stared at Hayde’s multiple images on the TV screens. Tess waited. She knew it was Michaelson’s call. "All right," he said finally. "Let me go back in there and resume the interrogation. Give it five minutes. Then send in McCallum."

  Referring to Tess in the third person even when she was three feet away was another of Michaelson’s winning personality traits. She didn’t bother to thank him. He wouldn’t have heard her, anyway.

  He left the observation room. Tess stared after him, thinking that she had won a small victory. She ought to feel pleased. Instead what she felt was a sudden tremor, subtle at first, working its way through her body.

  She needed a moment to pinpoint its meaning. Then she knew: It was fear.

  Five minutes, and she would be in the same room with the man who might be Mobius.

  In the same room.

  Michaelson was seated at the steel table again. Tess turned to Larkin. Holding her voice steady, she said, "I’ll be back in a minute."

  "Where the hell are you going?"

  "Ladies’ room."

  She walked out without further discussion. She knew the others would think it was a sign of weakness that she had to find some privacy, compose herself. She didn’t care.

  All she really wanted was a few moments alone. At least that was what she told herself. But when she entered the rest room, a stronger urge overcame her. She opened the nearest stall and leaned over the commode and vomited up her dinner.

  When she was through, she flushed the toilet, then flushed it again. The gurgling water soothed her somehow. She walked to the counter and ran her hands under a stream of hot water, splashing her face. Then she turned on the cold and rinsed out her mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw dark crescents of fatigue underscoring her gray eyes. Her face was pale, fringed in strawberry blond curls. A scattering of freckles stood out on her forehead and cheeks. People had told her that she looked young for her age, but tonight exhaustion made her look older than thirty-four.

  She dried her face, took a breath, and checked her watch—12:25. It occurred to her it was no longer Good Friday. Good Friday, the day innocence had died.

  For her, innocence had died on February 12, two years ago.

  She resisted the pull of that thought. She tried to focus on better things, on her life before Mobius. In those years she
had never missed a Good Friday service. The candles would be extinguished one by one until only the paschal candle was left. That last flame was carried out of the church, leaving the congregation in darkness.

  Tenebrae, it was called. The Service of Shadows.

  Those same words, she thought, could describe her life, her job. She and Andrus and their colleagues—all of them, Michaelson and Gaines, Collins and Diaz, even a supercilious little prick like Larkin—all had devoted their lives to the darkness. They lived for the night, when the predators prowled. They fought the shadows, and in time they became little more than shadows themselves.

  And if they were shadows, what then was Paul Voorhees? Less than a shadow now…only a shadow’s memory, fading out.

  The key in the lock…

  She didn’t want to think about it. But she couldn’t help herself.

  The key turning, the lock yielding without resistance…

  The door had been left unlatched.

  In that moment she knew something was wrong. Paul would never leave the front door unsecured.

  There was a miniature flashlight on her key chain. She switched it on and aimed the penlight beam at the lock. In the dim red glow, she made out scratch marks on the metal—marks left by a tension bar and a pick. The lock had been opened without a key, by someone using burglar’s tools.

  Someone.

  Mobius?

  She dismissed the idea. Of course it wasn’t Mobius. Mobius had no way of knowing where she lived. And nothing in his modus operandi suggested a facility with lock-picking tools.

  But he was full of surprises. And the psych experts had warned her that he might try to make physical contact.

  She reached inside the special compartment of her handbag and withdrew her Sig Sauer 9mm, then slowly opened the door and looked inside.

  She and Paul lived in a modest split-level in Englewood, a suburb of Denver. The house was a rental. It was her place, but Paul—unknown to their colleagues—spent most of his nights here and had his own key.

  The front door opened on a small living room, minimally furnished, with a cramped kitchen adjoining it. Track lighting threw a wash of yellow light on the bare white walls. Tess had been meaning to buy some paintings for those walls, but she’d never seemed to get around to it.

  Now she wished she’d had the foresight to buy a mirror. Leaning in the doorway, she could see only half the room. A mirror would have shown her the other half.

  She listened. No sound. That troubled her. When Paul was around, there was always some electronic background noise. He was addicted to talk radio and cable news.

  She knew he was here. His car, a Hoover-blue bureau Crown Victoria like hers, was parked in the carport.

  She almost called out his name. Although it would be stupid to announce her presence if an intruder was here, she couldn’t stand the ambiguity of the situation, couldn’t stand not knowing if she ought to be terrified or merely annoyed at him for frightening her like this. And she wanted to hear his voice.

  But she stayed silent. She was a professional, and in moments of danger she reverted almost instinctively to her training.

  Since she couldn’t scope out the entire living room, she made a quick entrance, ducking through the doorway and instantly pivoting toward the unseen side of the room as she dropped into a half crouch to make a smaller target.

  That part of the room was empty also.

  She crossed the living room fast, the 9mm held close to her body, not extended in two straight arms as it often was in movies and TV dramas. The greatest risk in drawing a firearm was that it could be taken away and used against you by your assailant. Holding the gun close made it easier to maintain control.

  There was no one in the kitchen, either. But from the tap dribbled a thin stream of water. There were dishes in the sink, the remains of a microwaved dinner floating in a film of detergent bubbles.

  Paul had eaten alone. Not an unusual circumstance when Tess was held up at the office, as she frequently was on the Mobius case. He had been washing the dishes. He always cleaned up after himself—one of the small considerate acts that meant so much to her—and in the middle of the chore, he had simply stopped. Stopped and left the room, with the water running.

  She reached out to turn off the faucet, then decided not to. Someone else in the house might notice if the hiss of water in the pipes suddenly stopped.

  Of course that other person might have heard her pull up in her sedan. Might have heard the slam of her car door. Might be waiting for her right now.

  No ordinary burglar would wait for the homeowner to find him. But if it was Mobius…

  If it was Mobius, she knew where he would be.

  The bedroom. That was always his killing ground.

  She stepped out of the kitchen and took a long look at the stairs.

  Stairs were dangerous. She would be exposed, without cover or concealment.

  The smart thing to do was call for help, get some backup in here, but she knew she wouldn’t do the smart thing.

  She took the steps fast but quietly, grateful for her soft-soled shoes that made no noise and the firm treads that did not squeak. Then she was on the second floor, in the hallway near the laundry nook, smelling the aroma of fabric softener as she tried to look in both directions at once.

  To her left was the guest bedroom, made up as a den. Lamplight glimmered from inside, but it signified nothing. The lights in there were on a timer. Next to the den was the bathroom, dark. To her right, the master bedroom. Light spilled through a crack in the door, left a few inches ajar.

  She moved toward the bedroom, taking long, sliding steps, the way they’d taught her in Hogan’s Alley.

  She reached the door and stood back, peering through the narrow opening. She saw the dresser and the mirror over it, reflecting only the bare white wall across the room.

  Not quite bare. She saw smudges on the wall. Red smudges.

  Blood.

  She forgot caution, forgot her training and everything else in a spurt of fear that sent her rushing headlong into the bedroom where Paul lay in bed, fully clothed, his wrists taped to the nightstands flanking the bed, his throat opened by a knife and coated in blood.

  Mobius.

  His MO.

  He’d learned her address, picked the lock—

  She spun in a full circle, looking for Mobius, wanting him to be there, willing to let him shoot her if she could get a shot at him first.

  He wasn’t there. She checked the closet. Nothing.

  She turned to Paul again, feeling the wound in his neck to see if the blood still flowed. A flow of blood meant a pulse, and a pulse meant life.

  There was no pulse.

  He was dead. She had seen death at other times in her life, and she knew the feel and smell of it.

  "Why did you do this?" she whispered in a stranger’s voice, a voice hoarse and raw as if from prolonged weeping. "Why did you take him? He wasn’t the one you wanted. I am. I am."

  Slowly she raised her head, understanding that this was true.

  He had come for her. He had seen the bureau car in the carport and the lights inside the house. He might even have heard the sound of dishes being washed as he opened the front door. So he’d entered the kitchen, ready to seize her from behind—only to find a man there. A man he’d never seen.

  Paul might have heard him, sensed him, or perhaps he’d never heard anything at all. Either way, he had been overpowered, knocked unconscious. He must have been, or there would have been signs of a struggle in the kitchen. And he had remained unconscious until the end. Tess was sure he had because his mouth had not been taped. There had been no need to gag him when he was out cold.

  Probably he hadn’t suffered much. Probably it had been quick, a blow to the head, a moment of surprise, then oblivion. Probably it hadn’t been too bad, not too bad.

  "Not too bad," she whispered, and then she realized how insane it was to think that anything about this was not too bad.

&nbs
p; She touched the wound again, still hoping vaguely to find the warmth of life, but the blood on his neck was dry and tacky, as were the few blood spots spattered on the wall.

  The killing had been done some time ago. An hour at least. And Mobius was gone.

  But he couldn’t be.

  "You can’t be gone!" she shouted at the stillness of the house. "Come out and face me, come on, come on!"

  She left the bedroom at a run and bolted into the bathroom, pulling aside the shower curtain, half ripping it from its hooks. He wasn’t there. She stumbled down the hall and entered the den, pushing the TV off its stand to look behind it, scattering the pillows on the sofa. Finally she fell on her knees with her hair tangled over her face and her thin arms shaking. She had lost the gun, dropped it someplace, and even if he had been here, she couldn’t have shot him.

  "You son of a bitch," she moaned, her face in her hands. "Piece of shit, motherfucker…"

  But she couldn’t hurt him with words. Couldn’t hurt him at all.

  She knelt for a long time, aware of nothing but pain, pain that was her world now, pain that was everything.

  11

  Her face in the mirror.

  It startled her as she came back to herself. She was in the rest room of the LA field office, two years and six weeks had passed since that night, and she was about to introduce herself to a man who might have robbed her of everything that mattered.

  People could tell her that they knew what she’d lost, but they didn’t know that Paul Voorhees had been much more than her partner.

  In dreams Tess sometimes found herself with him again, hiking an alpine trail in the Rockies. They would pause in their ascent, looking down at the path they had taken, and all the world below would be screened in white mist.

  Then she would think that she and Paul had risen above the clouds, to the top of the sky.

  It’s not like they told us in church, she would say. No harps. No wings.

  And Paul would laugh, and she would turn to look at him, but she couldn’t see his face—it was hidden in the sudden overpowering brightness of the sun.