Dangerous Games

by Prescott, Michael

  He was silent for a moment. “I wonder if you could put that in writing,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “The business about the death penalty. You’ve got pull, don’t you? I’ll bet you could get the DA to commit to life imprisonment—no lethal injection.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Then I don’t know about cooperating.”

  “It takes time to work out a written agreement. Time we don’t have.”

  “Grease the wheels. You can get it done if you have to.”

  “I can’t promise anything. I’ll have to check with the assistant director in charge of this field office, see what’s possible.”

  “So why don’t you go do that?”

  “First I want to know what I’m bargaining for. What can you give us?”

  “Information.”

  “Your partner’s name?”

  “No can do. I don’t know his name.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, William.”

  “Calling me by my first name now, are you? That seems a little forward, doesn’t it…Tess?”

  “Quit playing games. It’s your life at stake, remember?”

  “And somebody else’s life, too. Who is she, anyway? Who got snatched this time?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “I couldn’t hear that end of the phone call. I knew somebody was taken. But who?”

  “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “If it really didn’t make any difference, you’d tell me. You’d give me that piece of information to establish trust and begin the bargaining process. See, I know about negotiating, interrogating. The fact that you’re not telling me who she is suggests that her name means something.”

  She gave in. “It’s Madeleine Grant.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t say. The bitch of Bel Air herself.”

  “If you want any leniency, you’re going to have to tell me your partner’s name. It’s the only thing you’ve got to offer. It’s your only bargaining chip.”

  “Wrong, Tess. Wrong on both counts. I don’t have to tell you his name. And that’s a good thing, because I don’t know his name. Never did. But I’ve got something better to trade.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I know where he took her.”

  “You’re saying you know where she is right now? Her location in the drainage system?”

  “You got it.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “We rehearsed the first four jobs. Did a dry run for every one. Chose our points of entry and the locations where the victims would be secured. Tonight was intended to be number three. Now that it’s gone to shit, my partner must have jumped ahead to number four.”

  “You can’t be sure. He might have taken Madeleine anywhere.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s like me in one respect—he doesn’t do a lot of improvising. He sticks to the plan. I’m betting he used the last location we scouted, and that’s where Madeleine is holed up.”

  “And if we can arrange the deal, you’ll show us on a map?”

  Kolb shook his head. “Can’t find it on a map. I know where to go in, but I don’t know every twist and turn along the way. Not unless I’m down there.”

  Down there. Tess needed a second to understand. “In the tunnel system?”

  “It’s the only way. We left marks on the walls. If I can find them, I’ll lead you straight to your damsel in distress.”

  “Just tell us what to look for, and we’ll find her.”

  “You’ll never spot these marks. They’re not obvious. You have to know where to look.”

  “You’re saying you can lead us through the tunnels to Madeleine?”

  “That’s the long and short of it.”

  She thought about it. “I doubt we can get the DA to commit to dropping the death penalty on such a shaky basis.”

  “Then make it conditional. If I find Madeleine for you, I get life. If I don’t find her, you can put the needle in my arm yourself.”

  “If we find Madeleine—and if she’s still alive.”

  “Hey, you take too long to process the paperwork, and she’ll drown. That’s not my fault.”

  “I’m saying it is. We get her alive or you get nothing, no special consideration.”

  “What the hell. It’s probably the best deal I’m going to get.”

  “I’m not even sure you’ll get that one. I have to talk it over with the people here.”

  “Talk fast. Madeleine’s waiting.”

  Tess left the room and met Michaelson in the hallway outside the observation room. The AD’s face was set.

  “We’re not dealing with him,” Michaelson said.

  “We don’t have any choice.”

  “No way. Besides, it’s all bullshit, anyway. He’s stringing you along. He doesn’t have a clue where she is.”

  “Then we have nothing to lose.”

  “Forget it, Tess. It’s not going to happen.”

  “Fine. We won’t negotiate. Now, who’s going to open the press conference?”

  “I didn’t think you were exactly a fan of media events.”

  “In this case, I intend to be there. I want to make a statement about how Kolb offered to lead us to the victim, but we wouldn’t agree to his terms. That should go over well with the public, don’t you think?”

  Michaelson studied her as if she were a particularly vile species of insect. “I’m getting more than a little tired of your veiled threats, Agent McCallum.”

  “I wasn’t aware that it was veiled.”

  “You’re bluffing. You’re not going to sink your career with that kind of stupid, treacherous move.”

  “Just like I wasn’t going to walk out on your press conference yesterday? The thing about you, Richard, is that you don’t know me at all. You don’t know what I’m capable of. And you don’t want to find out.”

  He backed down, as she knew he would. “If we do this,” he said slowly, “it’s your show. You want to accompany that psychopath underground, you do it at your own risk. Count me out.”

  She was amused that he thought she would want his company. “I’m sure I can find a couple of street agents to go with me,” she said, stressing the term street agents to indicate that it didn’t include him. “You can stay aboveground and do what you do best—cover your ass.”

  Michaelson swallowed whatever retort might have occurred to him. “I’ll call the DA and set things in motion, just in case we go ahead. But before I make a final decision, we’re going to have a more extended discussion with Kolb. I want to know exactly what we’re getting into.”

  He started to leave, then turned back. “What the hell happened to the Hollister woman, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s gone. She walked out of here.”

  “Without giving an interview?” she asked innocently.

  “She gave her goddamn interview to Crandall, but I didn’t give permission for her to leave.”

  “Well,” Tess said, “I guess you’ll have to track her down at home.”

  “I’ll do that.” Michaelson was staring right through her, broadcasting waves of hostility. “I haven’t forgotten what Kolb had to say about you and her.”

  “Kolb is a paranoid lunatic.”

  “For your sake, I hope that’s all he is. I intend to look into this, Tess. I intend to ask a lot of questions. It’s bad enough you were handling a lead behind my back. If I find out you were in bed with some private detective, compromising the integrity of our investigation…” He let the threat trail away unfinished.

  “I think we need to stay focused on Madeleine right now,” Tess said evenly.

  “Of course we do. I have a lot of questions for her, too.”

  He stalked off, leaving Tess alone in the hall.

  38

  Abby hadn’t lied to Kolb about one thing. She really had parked two blocks away. She hadn’t wanted him to see her car near
his building, or he might have had second thoughts about using her as his victim. Of course, she hadn’t known he was already on to her.

  He’d been to her apartment, he had said. The fake apartment, the one in the Hollister name. What had prompted him to go there? What had raised his suspicions? It had to be more than general paranoia. With everything he’d had on his plate tonight, he wouldn’t have spent time investigating her unless he’d already had a reason to distrust her.

  She must have slipped up somewhere. The thought bothered her, because if she’d made a mistake once, she could do it again. And next time she wouldn’t have Tess around to save her bacon.

  Retrieving her car, she drove out of the area, just in case any of the cops happened to cruise past and wonder what an FBI agent was doing in a beat-up Civic. She found a parking spot at an all-night pharmacy and rummaged in her glove compartment for a set of earphones and a PDA.

  The receiver recorded the infinity transmitter’s signal on a memory card. She inserted the card into the PDA and put on the earphones, then used the PDA’s media player to play back the recording. She wasn’t expecting to hear much. Since the bug was voice activated, there was a good chance it hadn’t picked up anything other than her own phone conversation with Kolb, their chat when she stopped by his place, and the arrival of the bag-and-tag brigade.

  The first few minutes of the recording were taken up with random noises that had triggered the voice-activation mechanism. Footsteps—Kolb seemed to be pacing. Muttered words, unintelligible. A banging sound—he might have thrown something.

  Then the ringing of the phone. On the second ring Kolb picked up. She expected to hear her own voice on the line. Instead there was a brief interval of silence—no hello from Kolb. Then a man’s voice, soft and muffled. “You there?”

  Kolb: “I’m here.”

  “I thought you might be at work, but I don’t know your hours—”

  “What do you want?”

  “We need to have a conversation.”

  “We’re having one.”

  “In person.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “No.”

  “There a problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me not to say too much on the phone? We need to meet. Below, half hour. Can you be there?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Click, and a dial tone. The call was over.

  There was a sharp bang as Kolb slammed down the phone. Obviously he hadn’t liked being ordered around. Still, he would comply. Abby could hear him making preparations to leave—the jingle of keys, the tread of shoes, the slam of the door.

  Silence again. The next recording was her call, setting up their date, followed by her arrival at the apartment. She didn’t care about that stuff. She found the start of the first phone call again.

  The man with the muffled voice had said there was a problem. Could he have alerted Kolb that Abby Hollister wasn’t who she claimed to be? Or was there some other hitch in their plans for the evening?

  “We need to meet,” the man was saying. “Below, half hour.”

  She played that part once more.

  “Below, half hour.”

  What the hell was that about? Below what?

  Somewhere in the drainage system, possibly. But she doubted Kolb or his partner would risk entry in daylight. Was there a location in LA that could be described as “below”? The subway system? Nobody referred to the LA Metro as “below.” She’d never heard any place called by that name.

  Or had she? There was something faintly familiar about the term.

  She would never recall it trying to force the memory. Leaning back in her seat, she relaxed her body and mind, taking herself through a simplified version of this evening’s meditation session. She let her thoughts roam free. They came and went like puffballs, and she watched them with interest but without commitment and with no sense of urgency.

  She remembered the Kris Barwood case, which had changed her life and, according to Wyatt, had made her grow hard and remote. Maybe he was right. She’d put up barriers to keep people out. But without barriers she would be too vulnerable. Although he was a cop, Wyatt was curiously trusting in some ways. Trust was something Abby couldn’t afford. She spent too much of her time in the company of dangerous and unpredictable men, men like Kolb, sharing their sad lives, shadowing them from their seedy apartments to nightspots, strip clubs, bars. She lived deep inside the dark belly of the city, where trust was not an option, where no one made eye contact or risked a smile. There was the LA most people saw, and then there was the secret underworld, lying below the city like the network of storm drains used by the Rain Man and his partner, a different landscape, below the palm trees, below the pavement, below ground….

  Her eyes opened. That was it. The name that had eluded her.

  A bar she’d visited on one of her cases, years ago. A dimly lit subterranean grotto smelling of sweat and alcohol. Below Ground.

  As far as she knew, it was still in business. As a meeting place for two men who didn’t care to be noticed, it was ideal.

  She backed out of her parking space and headed across town. Another few raindrops spattered her windshield. She whisked them away with the wipers. New drops fell.

  Not yet a downpour. But it was coming.

  Soon.

  39

  Michaelson and Tess joined Kolb in the interrogation room. Tess hated to see how pleased Kolb looked.

  “I suppose you’re wondering,” Kolb said with mock gravity, “why I’ve called you here tonight.”

  “Can it,” Michaelson snapped. “Agent McCallum tells me you’ve offered to lead a rescue party to the victim.”

  “She tells you, huh? Like you weren’t eavesdropping the whole time?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Did you ask one?”

  “Are you willing to lead us to the victim?”

  “In exchange for a commitment from the DA not to seek the death penalty. A written commitment.”

  “That’s already in the works.”

  “It needs to be signed, sealed, and delivered before I help you out.”

  “We require some preliminary information before we can close the deal.”

  “Like what?”

  “The entryway you plan to use. We need to set up a staging area.”

  Kolb considered this. “Good-faith gesture on my part, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Okay, what the hell. I trust you, you trust me—right? The location’s not far from here. There’s a ravine on the UCLA campus near the athletic field, with a tunnel entrance buried in the side of the creek. Not big enough for a vehicle. We’ll have to hike in. Gate is padlocked, but the lock can be picked, no problem. Nice out-of-the-way location. Nobody can see you there. Campus security doesn’t patrol the ravine. You can park a car in the brush at the bottom of the trench and leave it with minimal risk of being ticketed or towed.”

  “And the location of the victim?” Michaelson asked.

  Kolb grinned at them both. “Sorry, friends. I’m not that trusting. Anyway, I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. Like I told Tess, I need to see the marks we left on the walls.”

  “What if I don’t believe you?”

  “What if we just sit here and debate it while Madeleine drowns?”

  Michaelson drew a deep breath. “I’ll get you the written commitment you need. Then you’ll take a rescue team into the tunnels.”

  “And who does that team include?”

  “I haven’t made the assignments yet.”

  “I’ve got a suggestion.”

  “You don’t get to choose the personnel.”

  “I’ll be a lot more cooperative if I get what I want.”

  “And what is it you want?”

  Tess knew. She spoke before Kolb could reply. “He wants me as an escort.”

  Kolb winked at her. “
You understand me. I like that in a woman.”

  “If you think,” Michaelson began, “that I’m allowing Agent McCallum to accompany you alone—”

  “Not alone. I just want her with me. She wants to be there, too. She loves the spotlight. Always has to be center stage. Don’t you, Tess?”

  “I’m going,” Tess said. “Count on it.”

  “And,” Michaelson added, “she’ll be accompanied by at least two other agents. And Mason from DWP.” To Tess he said, “You need somebody with you who’s got experience in those tunnels.”

  “We don’t need any outside experts.” Kolb smiled. “I’ve acquired plenty of experience, believe me.”

  Michaelson ignored him. He got up, signaling for Tess to follow. “We’ll be back with our agreement in writing ASAP, Mr. Kolb.”

  “I’ll be here,” Kolb said placidly.

  In the hall, Michaelson summoned Crandall and Larkin from the observation room and told them to get started on the UCLA staging ground.

  “Sir,” Larkin said, “you mentioned backup in the tunnels. I’d like to volunteer.”

  Crandall coughed. “So, uh, so would I.”

  Michaelson nodded. “Fine. Establish a staging area at the ravine. I need to get on the DA’s back and expedite the paperwork.”

  He and Larkin headed down the hall. Tess pulled Crandall aside. “You really want to go into the tunnels?” she asked him, keeping her voice low.

  “‘Want to’ might be putting it a bit strongly.”

  “There are other agents who can do this, Crandall. Agents who don’t get nervous in enclosed spaces.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “We can’t afford to have you slow us down.”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  Tess wasn’t sure she believed him. She had a feeling Crandall was trying to prove something. He’d told her how he’d failed at every business opportunity, how he attributed his placement in the Bureau to nepotism. Maybe this was his chance to be his own man. If so, she couldn’t take that chance away from him.

  “All right, Rick,” she said gently.

  “Tess…” He hesitated. “I’m sorry I said you weren’t a team player.”