Dangerous Games

by Prescott, Michael

  “Mr. Kolb”—the AD’s voice, crisp and loud, came over the speakers—“I’m the assistant director in charge, Richard Michaelson. I have some questions for you.”

  “I don’t have any answers.”

  “You’re in serious trouble, Mr. Kolb.”

  “Am I?”

  Michaelson gestured toward the evidence on display. “You can see some of the things found on your person and in your vehicle. The notepad matches the one used in the abductions of Angela Morris and Paula Weissman. We found an index card with a bank account number on it. Our people are tracking down that account right now.”

  “Good for them.”

  “There’s a tape recorder, which I assume was used to record your victims’ statements. And of course there are the handcuffs you intended to put on your victim, and the duct tape to seal her mouth, and the cell phone you would have used to call the mayor’s office. In addition, you were carrying a firearm, with the serial number filed off. Possession of a gun is illegal for an ex-convict, and a gun without a serial number—well, that’s illegal for anyone.”

  “Maybe I believe in the right to bear arms.”

  “Our evidence technicians are continuing to go over your vehicle, and of course they’ve been dispatched to your residence as well. They’ve already found a number of items directly connecting you with the kidnappings and murders in the storm-drain system. Obviously there’s more to come. Now, you were a police officer, and you know you’re not going to walk away from this. We have you. Your only chance for any leniency is to cooperate fully and unreservedly. The game is up, Mr. Kolb.”

  Kolb just sat and stared at Michaelson for a long, disconcerting moment. “So,” he said finally, “you running this play on your own?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I have a little experience with the interrogation process. Normally it’s played two-on-one, good-cop, bad-cop. So are you the good cop or the bad one?”

  “I’m just trying to talk straight with you, man-to-man.”

  Kolb snorted. “Yeah.” He leaned forward and took a closer look at his adversary. “You’re not the good cop or the bad one. You’re not a cop at all, are you?”

  “I’m a federal agent.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re not a street hump. You ride a desk, push paper.”

  “I do a lot of things, none of which are relevant to this conversation.”

  Kolb looked away. “McCallum—she’s a cop.”

  “Agent McCallum is an agent of the FBI, just like me.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Not just like you.” He turned toward the ceiling, searching for the hidden cameras. “You watching this, Tess? You going to let this empty suit steal your righteous bust?”

  His gaze fell on a corner of the ceiling that concealed one of the camera lenses. Tess stared into the monitor and saw Kolb staring back.

  “Mr. Kolb,” Michaelson was saying, “this case is in my hands now. It’s me you want to talk to.”

  “It is, huh? What was your name again?”

  “Richard Michaelson.”

  “Okay, Mike. Here’s the thing. I don’t want to talk to you. And I’m not going to talk to you. I’m not ever going to talk to you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because you’re a dickwad.”

  Michaelson stiffened. “That kind of talk is not helpful, Mr. Kolb.”

  “Fuck you, Mike. How about that? Is that helpful?”

  The AD rose from the table with ostentatious dignity. “I hope you enjoy sitting around in custody. With this attitude, you may be here a long time.”

  He was halfway to the door when Kolb said, “Send McCallum in.”

  Michaelson turned. “What was that?”

  “I’ll talk to McCallum.”

  “I don’t believe Agent McCallum is in the building.”

  “Cut the bullshit. She’s here. I can smell her. She’s in the next room, watching me on a TV monitor, and wishing she was asking the questions because she knows she can handle me a lot better than you can. Isn’t that right, Tess? Hey, Tess, tell your boss he’s an asshole. Tell him it’s time to let one of the grown-ups have a turn.”

  He was looking into the same camera lens. It was as if he were seeing her through the glass screen of the monitor.

  “You’re only making things worse for yourself,” Michaelson said.

  “Give me McCallum. I’ll have a conversation with her. I may not tell her what she wants to hear—but I’ll talk.”

  Michaelson returned to the observation room, looking flustered and uncomfortably aware that his status was at stake. Tess didn’t say anything. She knew that if she made any comment or suggestion, it would boomerang on her. Whatever was decided had to be Michaelson’s idea. He had to save face.

  Finally he said, “Tess, he seems to feel he has some kind of connection with you, Christ knows why. Maybe you’d better take a crack at him.”

  He spoke loudly so everyone could hear, as if it were something he’d just thought of, a brainstorm, an executive decision.

  “Yes, sir,” Tess said quietly, willing to give him the pretense of dignity he needed.

  She was about to step out the door when his voice stopped her. “Agent McCallum. You’re not wearing your ID badge.”

  She’d forgotten to clip it to her lapel. “I had a few other things on my mind.”

  “The rules matter. Put it on.”

  As power plays went, this was rather sad. Still, she couldn’t suppress her irritation as she dug the laminated badge out of her pocket and clipped it in place.

  He was right, though. The rules did matter. It was a lesson she wouldn’t let herself forget.

  34

  Tess walked into the interrogation room and saw Kolb smile. He felt he’d won this round. Tess was determined to give him no more victories.

  She sat at the table. “I don’t know why you’re being uncooperative,” she said without preliminaries. “You can only hurt yourself at this point. We have more than enough evidence to put you away.”

  “Do it, then.” His eyes glittered with uncanny assurance. “Lock me back in a cage. You’ll feel safer that way.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you’re scared of me.”

  “Am I?”

  “Damn straight. You’re terrified—because you know what I am.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A man.”

  “Are you saying I’m afraid of men?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you are. Maybe that’s why you’re a frigid bitch. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying I’m a man. Not just a male. A man. And in your world, that’s the one thing that isn’t allowed.”

  “I’m not following you, Mr. Kolb.”

  “Sure you are. It’s like I’m looking right inside your head, reading all your secrets, isn’t it?”

  “Not really.”

  “You won’t admit it, but you know it’s true. What scares you is that I’m better than you. I’m stronger, smarter, tougher. I’m in control.”

  “You’re wearing handcuffs. Does that sound like you’re in control?”

  “This is how you want me. Manacled, caged. That way I’m no threat. You can’t allow me to be on the loose. Your whole fragile social order is based on denying that men like me exist. When you find one of us, you throw us in a dungeon, keep us out of sight, so this fantasy you’ve constructed can continue uninterrupted.”

  Tess was surprised by Kolb. He saw himself as a big man, a figure inspiring terror and awe, when in fact he was only an inflated ego, a puffed-up narcissist. He was big only in his own eyes. “I’m not the one dealing in fantasy,” she said mildly.

  Her dismissive tone seemed to rattle him. He raised his voice, squared his shoulders. “You can’t face the reality of what you are and what I am. You don’t dare to even look at me—you’ll be blinded by the light.”

  She fixed him with a steady
gaze. “I’m looking at you right now.”

  “You can’t allow yourself to see. You can’t allow yourself to know you’re in the presence of what you fear most.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The life force. The will to power.”

  This answer must have sounded audacious to him. She saw his chest swell.

  “You enforce laws meant to tie up men like me, but all you’re doing is destroying yourself. A society without leaders has no future. A nation of eunuchs can’t survive. You emasculate the strong, then wonder why nobody has the balls to get the job done.”

  “That’s a nice speech. I particularly liked the part about castration. Colorful metaphor.”

  “You know it’s true—every word.”

  He really did think his warmed-over master-race rant was some kind of philosophical breakthrough. In a way she almost pitied him. He was an arrogant child thumping his breast.

  “Let’s say I agree with you,” she said. “Let’s say the world is divided between the weak and the strong. What exactly qualifies you as one of the strong? From everything I’ve seen, you’re a weak man, Mr. Kolb.”

  The sudden heave of his abdomen with an intake of breath told her she’d hit him in a vulnerable spot. “You wouldn’t say that,” he whispered, “if I didn’t have these cuffs on.”

  “Why? Because you’d beat me up? Is that what makes you so strong?”

  “It’s not physical strength that matters. It’s strength of will.”

  “I don’t see that kind of strength in you. I see a man who can’t control his own anger. I see a bully and a psychopath.”

  His Adam’s apple was jerking in his throat. The glitter of malicious enjoyment was gone from his eyes.

  “And you know what I see when I look at you?” he said. “An Affirmative Action hire. A token gash. Arm candy for the Bureau. A pussy with legs.” He growled the words, a feral animal. “I see two pairs of lips that are always open—your mouth and your cunt. How many times did you lie back and spread ’em for every promotion? You’re a hooker with a badge. In a world that made sense, you’d be walking the Boulevard, selling suction jobs for twenty-five bucks a blow.”

  She was bored with this. “Mr. Kolb—”

  “You’re a sheep. I’m the lion. You have to pretend I don’t exist. How else could you sleep at night—you and all the other sheep?”

  “Was Angela Morris one of the sheep? Or Paula Weissman?”

  He almost said yes, which would be as good as a confession, but some residual shrewdness stopped him. “Trying to bait me—that’s a waste of time. You’re no match for me.” He sat back, breathing fast.

  She decided to try a different approach. “I was a match for Mobius, wasn’t I?”

  He flicked off this question with a wave of his hand. “Mobius was nothing. Mobius was a failure.”

  “Then why’d you put together a scrapbook about him? You wanted to be the next Mobius, didn’t you?”

  “Why would I? He got caught. He fucked up.”

  “That’s no way to talk about your hero.”

  “He wasn’t my hero.”

  “You’re the one who’ll be getting the newspaper coverage now. Maybe somebody will make a scrapbook about you. Or maybe not—since after all, you failed, too.”

  He was silent for a moment, stewing, his eyes burning into her. “Okay, Tess. You want to know about that scrapbook? Here’s a little secret. The scrapbook was never about Mobius. It was about you.”

  “Was it?”

  “I got a little bit obsessed with you. Don’t take it the wrong way. It wasn’t any kind of sexual thing. It was the way the media built you up into a superstar.”

  “Why would that bother you?”

  “Why?” He chuckled at her stupidity. “Maybe because I was an ordinary cop, a blue-collar guy busting my hump on the streets every goddamn day and getting no thanks, no commendations, no keys to the city or any of that crap. All I get is civilian complaints, black marks on my record. I’m out there doing the job, and nobody gives a shit. And there you are—you clear one case, you bag one bad guy—and you’re soaking up the spotlight. It got under my skin.”

  She remembered the deputy DA complaining about that girl soldier, the POW who’d gotten book and movie deals. “Would it have bothered you so much,” she asked, “if it had been a man getting the same attention?”

  She thought he might be angry, but he seemed to appreciate the point. He liked talking about these things, she realized. He fancied himself a deep thinker, and he was eager to show off his insights.

  “Fair question,” he said amiably. “Answer is, no, it wouldn’t have bothered me so much.”

  “You seem to have a problem with women.”

  “It’s women who have the problem. Women are bitches, all of you.” He pronounced this verdict without ire, as a statement of fact. “You want to know why?”

  “I gather you have a theory about it.”

  He actually smiled. “How’d you know?”

  “You seem to have a theory about everything.”

  “I know how the world works, that’s all. Women are bitches because you resent your own weakness. You overcompensate by becoming manipulative, controlling, emasculating. You’re impotent, so you want men to be impotent like you. You want an impotent world. That’s the only kind of world where you can compete.”

  “Interesting perspective.”

  “Go ahead, deny it. I know the truth.”

  “The truth couldn’t possibly be that you feel threatened by women?”

  Another expansion of his chest. “I don’t feel threatened by anybody.”

  “So you didn’t feel threatened by Madeleine Grant when you pulled her over for speeding and she didn’t allow herself to be intimidated?”

  “She was a bitch playing mind games. Just like you. I’m used to it.”

  “I think she got under your skin—the same way I did.”

  Kolb had settled back into eerie complacency. “Then what happened to her was her fault. If she’d handled things right, she never would’ve gotten any e-mails. The whole thing escalated because of her.”

  “Because she stood up to you?”

  “Because,” he said softly, “she didn’t bow down.”

  “Is that what she was supposed to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does it mean, exactly—to bow down?”

  “It means she was supposed to acknowledge me. Acknowledge who I am, what I am. She was supposed to show fear.”

  “And I am, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “The whole city? The whole world?”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled. “Well, I have news for you, Mr. Kolb. No one is bowing down to you now.”

  Tess rose to leave. Kolb’s voice stopped her. “What’s the deal with that other bitch?”

  She hesitated, not wanting to deal with the issue, but knowing it had to be faced. Slowly she took her seat again. “What do you mean?”

  “Abby Hollister, or whatever her real name is. What is she, a PI? Did Grant hire her?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You were working with her.”

  “I think your paranoia is getting the better of you. Abby Hollister is just an ordinary woman, like the first two you kidnapped.”

  “Ordinary? I don’t think so. That bitch tussles like a streetfighter.”

  “Lots of women in LA have taken courses in self-defense.”

  “This was more than a few tae kwon do moves you learn at the health spa after yoga class. She knows how to take care of herself. She’s a pro.”

  “Maybe you just can’t deal with the fact that an ordinary woman could stand up to you.”

  “You’re covering for her. It’s not coincidence she showed up in my life just before I got arrested, both times. Her apartment—”

  The interview was heading in a dangerous direction. Tess cut him off. “I’m not interested in hearing more of
your theories.” She put a derisive emphasis on the last word. “You need to concentrate on your own future. Trying to divert our attention with made-up stories will only make things worse for you.”

  Kolb wasn’t listening. “Tell your boss to look into Abby, find out what she was up to. Check her residence, her document trail. I’m betting he finds she’s a ghost. The two of you were working me—together. What kind of game are you running with her, anyway? She your girlfriend? Maybe the two of you take turns being on top. Is that the deal?”

  In Kolb’s world, any efficacious woman was either frigid or a lesbian. He really was an arrested adolescent, perpetually sneering at the girls who ignored him.

  “You don’t get to ask the questions,” Tess said. “In fact, you don’t get to do anything. It may come as a shock to you, since you’re so interested in power, but you have no power now. And you never will again.”

  Kolb stared at her, his face hard and unrevealing. “Don’t be so sure.”

  At the far end of the table, the cell phone rang.

  The noise startled Tess. She turned to the items of evidence displayed for Kolb’s consideration, among them the confiscated phone, its touch pad glowing. It rang again.

  “You might want to answer that,” Kolb said.

  She looked at him and saw something in his eyes that, for the first time, frightened her. Amusement, and an utter lack of surprise.

  Slowly she got up and approached the phone as it rang again. On the fourth ring, she answered. “Hello?”

  There was an odd moment of silence, then a female voice, slightly muffled—but instantly familiar. “This is Madeleine Grant.”

  A chill rode Tess’s shoulders, and the room around her twisted out of proper perspective, the floor and walls curiously skewed.

  Madeleine continued talking, her voice strangely hollow. A tape recording, Tess realized—like the others. “I’ve been…taken captive by an associate of William Kolb. I’m being held—oh, God…”

  Paper rustled. Madeleine had been forced to read this message.

  “I’m being held in the storm drains. My location will be revealed only in exchange for the release of William Kolb. If Kolb is not released by the time the rain falls, it…it will be too late. It’s his freedom for my life. Kolb’s freedom for my life…”