Dangerous Games

by Prescott, Michael

  He stepped inside a tollbooth-size hut and spent some time hunched over a computer monitor. When he emerged, the rain was falling harder.

  “William Johnson. That’s the name he gave. He pays in cash every month—which is unusual, obviously.”

  “He gives you a name like Johnson and pays in cash, and it doesn’t occur to you that something funny is going on?”

  “Hey, get off my case, Agent Scully. I just work here.”

  Abby frowned at him, but secretly she enjoyed the Agent Scully quip. She would have to remember to use that one on Tess. “Just show me his unit,” she said in her most authoritative tone.

  The storage manager jogged across the storage yard while she followed in her car at three miles an hour. He came to a corner unit and rapped on the metal roll-up door.

  “This is it. But I don’t have a key. That’s our official policy. The customer keeps both keys. The only way we can get this baby open is to call a locksmith.”

  “Not quite.” Abby produced the key she’d cut from the key blank, which she’d been prescient enough to carry in her purse. “I come prepared.”

  She was one of the few people who actually kept gloves in the glove compartment, and she pulled them on before leaving the car. It seemed like the sort of thing an FBI agent would do. As the storage manager watched, she tried the key in the padlock. The copy wasn’t perfect, and she had to jiggle it a little, but she got the lock to open. She raised the door and turned on the overhead light.

  Behind her, the storage manager thought of something. “Hey, you got a search warrant?”

  “I don’t need a search warrant. Exigent circumstances.” In police work there really was such a thing as exigent circumstances, but Abby was pretty sure the current situation would not qualify, mainly because she was not, in fact, a law-enforcement officer.

  “I thought you people always needed a search warrant,” the guy persisted.

  “I thought you just worked here. Now I’d like to thank you for your cooperation. Leave me alone.”

  The guy grumbled, considered putting up a fight, reconsidered in light of the fact that he didn’t give a shit, and walked away.

  Abby explored the locker. The first thing she noticed was the carpet on the floor—cheap, short-nap, burnt orange. Now she knew where the fibers in Angela Morris’s car had come from.

  There were shelves on the walls. On one of them rested a laptop computer, plugged into an outlet to keep its battery charged. Probably the hard drive contained useful information, but it would take time to defeat whatever security measures Kolb had installed—time she didn’t have, with the rain coming down. She needed some solid information, fast.

  She looked through a couple of outfits obviously intended as disguises. Nothing helpful there. Stored near the clothes were false beards and other Halloween getups. She almost ignored them, then noticed a Ziploc plastic bag at the bottom of the pile. She pulled it out and instantly recognized its contents. False paper. Documents purchased on the black market that would allow a person to change his identity. She’d bought a few packets of fake ID herself, though nowadays she preferred to prepare her aliases personally.

  She opened the bag and dumped its contents onto the floor, then knelt and rummaged through them. A pair of passport holders caught her eye. She flipped open the first one and saw a photo of an unsmiling William Kolb, identified as William Allen. It was smart of him not to use the William Johnson identity, which might have been tracked down before he could get out of the city. Smart also to keep using the first name William. It was always best to retain your own first name when assuming a new identity. A person had an instinctive response to hearing his name, which was hard to fake. That was why she was always Abby somebody—Abby Hollister, Abby Gallagher, whatever.

  But what really interested her was the second passport. She opened it and saw the man who was Kolb’s partner. He was identified as Edward Ringer. In his photo he, unlike Kolb, was smiling—a nervous, self-conscious smile.

  She’d seen that smile before. She’d seen it in the FBI field office earlier tonight, when this man had been the only person to congratulate Tess on Kolb’s capture.

  The DWP liaison.

  Mason. That was his name.

  43

  Tess and Mason stepped into the tunnel, followed by Kolb, then Crandall and Larkin. The Bureau sedan’s high beams cast the team’s elongated shadows down the pipeline. Tess caught a glimmer of movement near her feet and looked down to see small silvery shapes.

  “Drain minnows,” Mason said. “There’s lots of aquatic life in here. Watch out for the eels.”

  Tess wasn’t sure if he was joking. She preferred not to know.

  They proceeded down the passage, shining their flashlights into the dark. Gang graffiti and taggers’ marks crawled like fungus over the round concrete walls. “I’m surprised the taggers come in here,” Tess said.

  “They go all over. Not just taggers. Drainers, mostly.” Mason answered her questioning glance. “People who explore the drainage system. They have all kinds of names for themselves—drainers, creepers, infiltrators. They like to mark their territory.”

  “Dangerous hobby.”

  “Especially if you run into the mole people.”

  From his tone, she knew this was no joke. “Let me guess—tunnel squatters.”

  Mason shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta live somewhere.”

  She thought of the vagrant she and Crandall had run into. Movement distracted her. A scurrying crowd of small reddish spiders, skittering higher on the walls, away from the flashlights’ beams.

  The floor was slick with a coat of slime. Tess had to plant each foot carefully to avoid slipping. She braced herself against the wall with her free hand.

  Behind her, Kolb went down on one knee. “Fuck.”

  “Stop clowning around,” Crandall snapped, his voice cracking like a boy’s.

  Kolb climbed awkwardly to his feet. “You try negotiating this shit in handcuffs.”

  “Just move.”

  Two steps later, Kolb fell again.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Tess said. “He can’t keep his balance unless he can grab on to the walls.”

  “What can we do about that?” Larkin asked.

  Tess hesitated. “Uncuff him.”

  Nobody moved.

  “You think that’s a good idea?” Mason said slowly.

  “We’ll never make good time if we have to stop every thirty seconds to help him up. And if he sprains an ankle, we may not be able to continue at all.”

  “And if he makes a run for it?” Larkin asked.

  “He can’t. Not in this slop.” To Crandall she said, “Unhook him.”

  Crandall fished in his trousers for the key. “You’re the boss.”

  He freed Kolb’s hands and pocketed the cuffs.

  “He could have hidden a gun in here,” Larkin said. “Unhooking him might be what he’s counting on us to do.”

  Tess knew it. “That’s why you’re going to watch him so closely he can’t get a jump on you. Right?”

  Reluctantly Larkin nodded.

  Kolb massaged his wrists. “Good going, Tess,” he said. “I knew you weren’t a total bitch.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Let’s move. We haven’t got much time.”

  The water streaming into the tunnel from outside was rising higher and running faster even as she spoke.

  For the third consecutive time, Abby got Tess’s voice mail.

  “Damn.” She ended the call and stuck her cell phone back into her purse. Either Tess had turned off her phone or she was already underground, where the signal couldn’t reach her. If she was underground, Mason would be with her. He was the tunnel expert, after all.

  Their plan was obvious now. They hadn’t been stupid enough to think Kolb would be set free. All they’d wanted was to manipulate the feds into taking Kolb into the tunnels, with Mason at his side. Mason would wait until the rescue party was deep inside the d
rain system, then slip Kolb a gun and stand back as his partner opened fire.

  Massacre in the tunnels. By the time anyone found the bodies and figured out what had happened, Mason and Kolb would have collected their passports and vanished.

  She let out a moan of frustration. Calling Tess hadn’t worked. Calling the Bureau field office would do no good—nobody would believe her, at least not in time. If she could track down Tess and the others in the tunnels…But she had no idea where they’d gone in. The drainage system was huge, covering the whole of LA. They could be anywhere.

  “Damn,” she said again, for emphasis.

  Still, there were always options. She was standing in Kolb’s private sanctum, surrounded by his secrets. There must be something here she could use.

  The laptop probably contained some information, but she didn’t have time to hunt through directories and subdirectories in search of it. What else was here? A bunch of furniture left over from Kolb’s last apartment. A large scrapbook that looked familiar—she flipped through it and recognized it as the scrapbook on the Mobius case, which Kolb had been keeping before his arrest. She’d seen it in his apartment last year. No new pages had been added. No help there.

  She kept looking. Her gaze, circling the locker, settled on something that looked like a portable computer resting on a shelf. But it was too small, and besides, Kolb already had a computer.

  She took it off the shelf. It was a slim, lightweight pad, more like a tablet PC than a laptop, with a decent-size LED screen and no keypad. She found the power switch. The device booted up instantly, the screen glowing with a map of city streets. No, not streets—drainage pipelines.

  She knew what this was. A GIS database. GIS—geographic information system. Recorder’s maps of the drainage network, converted from paper charts to geo-coded images, were digitally stored on the tablet’s hard drive. A storm-drain inspector toted the lightweight device around and accessed the maps by entering commands on the touch screen. Mason would have had access to the DWP’s inventory of tablets. He’d procured one for Kolb.

  She wondered why Kolb hadn’t taken the GIS reader when he took the other items needed for tonight’s job. She supposed he’d already committed the details to memory—and if he got caught, he didn’t want the device found with him. It would have implicated Mason immediately.

  Currently displayed was a citywide overview of the entire drainage system. She pressed the screen and opened a dropdown menu, displaying a list of recently viewed files. The file names were odd—each was a number from one to four, except for the fifth, which was named Backup.

  She clicked on number one and found herself looking at the area where Angela Morris, the first victim, had been kidnapped. On his first outing Kolb apparently hadn’t driven Angela very far from the abduction site. Mason had modified the file, digitally drawing a red line from a tunnel system entryway, through a major artery, to a side passage marked with an X, where Angela presumably had been secured.

  Abby brought up file number two. As expected, X marked the site where the drowned body of Paula Weissman—victim number two—had been found, manacled to a handrail.

  File number three was a map of the neighborhood near the river—the neighborhood where Kolb had driven her tonight. The access point he’d been planning to use was nearby, again marked in red.

  That left file number four and Backup. Number four was a map of the Silver Lake district of North Hollywood. Mason and Kolb had planned a minimum of four abductions, and this was to have been the fourth.

  Mason could have taken Madeleine Grant to this spot. With the third abduction foiled, he might have skipped ahead to the arrangements for number four.

  There was still the file named Backup. Probably it was a copy of a map she’d already reviewed, but she looked anyway.

  What came up on the screen was a new location, in West LA.

  Now she got it. The Backup file was Mason and Kolb’s backup plan—their emergency plan if Kolb was apprehended.

  The red line on this map entered the tunnel system via an access point alongside the Santa Monica Freeway, then wound its way to a red X below the intersection of Olympic and Sepulveda. The X stood either for Madeleine’s location or for the site where gunfire would break out—or both.

  West LA was halfway across town. Abby could never get there in time to make a difference. Surface streets or freeways—it wouldn’t matter. Both would be clogged with traffic even at this hour. But there might be another option.

  From the maps, it was obvious the main arteries of the drainage system ran parallel to the city’s major thoroughfares. And the main lines must be large enough to accommodate a service vehicle, or DWP crews would never be able to make repairs. Where a DWP truck could go, her Civic could go also.

  It was one way to beat the traffic. All she needed was a way to get inside the system. She returned to the citywide overview, then zoomed in on Vermont and Olympic, the neighborhood of the storage yard. The nearest major artery ran underneath Olympic Boulevard. She looked for an access point large enough to accommodate her car and found one three blocks west.

  Tucking the GIS reader under her arm, she jumped back into her car. As she sped out of the storage yard, she had to switch on her windshield wipers. The rain was falling hard now. The tunnels must be starting to flood. She wasn’t sure her Honda would be able to navigate the passageways if the water was deep, but she would worry about that little problem when she came to it.

  Right now she just wanted to get inside.

  44

  “Okay,” Mason said, “we’re coming to a split.”

  Ahead, the tunnel divided into two pipelines.

  “Which way?” Tess asked Kolb.

  He studied the walls. Amid a tangle of graffiti and black mold he singled out a small orange arrow pointing to the left. “That one,” he said, indicating the left tunnel.

  Tess silently admitted she never would have seen the mark.

  They took the left passage. The distant glow of the Bureau car’s high beams had long since vanished. Only their flashlights lit the gloom. Above their heads, traffic passed over manhole covers, producing a series of echoing thumps, a ragged, metallic pulse. Water drizzled from drain holes in the lids, spritzing the tunnel in a chill mist. More water trickled out of side pipes, splashing down walls darkened with slime.

  “It’s not coming down too hard yet,” Tess said.

  Mason didn’t seem reassured. “It can change in a hurry. When the clouds open up, this place turns into whitewater rapids. The speed of the current increases with the volume of water.”

  “It’s only up to our ankles now.”

  “Even a shallow current can knock you down and sweep you away. You can drown in six inches of water—or get banged into a wall—”

  “You’re just brimming over with positive thinking, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve seen enough to know you don’t fool around inside this system in a wet weather flow.”

  “We’ll be high and dry before the rain gets heavy,” Tess said with more optimism than she felt. She saw a line of metal rungs embedded in the wall, ascending into a shaft. “Where do those go?”

  “To a manhole or a catch basin. They’re called step irons.”

  “It’s a way out, anyway.”

  “If the step irons hold. Sometimes they’re loose or rusted through. And you can’t always open the drain lid from below. The manhole covers are mostly too heavy to lift, even if they’re not locked down or rusted in place. The curb-side drain lids are lighter. You can usually push one of those away.”

  “How much do they weigh?”

  “Hundred pounds, maybe.”

  “I can’t lift a hundred pounds.”

  “Then you’d be up Shit Creek, Agent McCallum,” Kolb quipped from behind her.

  She didn’t acknowledge the remark.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Kolb added. “Drowning’s not a bad way to go. They say your whole life flashes before your eyes.”
/>   “Be quiet.”

  “What would be the highlights of your life, Tess? Your first kiss? First tongue up your asshole?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Crandall snapped.

  “Relax. I’m only having some fun with the lady.”

  “Just keep your goddamn mouth shut.”

  Tess was tired of Kolb’s voice, tired of the wet concrete smell, the darkness, the water sloshing around her boots. “Focus on the job at hand,” she told him. “Which direction?”

  They’d come to another split. Kolb pointed out the orange arrow. “To the right.”

  “We getting close?” Larkin asked.

  “Patience is a virtue,” Kolb said mildly.

  Crandall sneezed, the noise echoing in the dark like a small explosion. “How do we know this butthead isn’t jerking our chain?”

  “In case you forgot,” Kolb said, “my life is contingent on finding this bitch alive. I’d say I have a pretty strong motive to cooperate.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Crandall insisted.

  “You sure you’re not just looking for an excuse to turn back?”

  Tess had been thinking the same thing. Crandall’s claustrophobia might be getting out of control. Well, he would have to tough it out. There was no turning back now.

  As if to confirm that thought, Tess’s flashlight, probing the tunnel ahead, picked out a woman’s shoe, floating toward them in the current.

  “Mason, take a look at that.”

  He fished it out of the stream. “This Madeleine Grant’s?”

  Tess shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Mason let go of the shoe. It dropped back into the water and drifted past the rescuers into a side tunnel.

  Tess raised her voice. “Madeleine!”

  A flurry of echoes was the only reply.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Kolb said. “Even if she hears you, she won’t be able to answer. She’ll be gagged like the others. Can’t have her yelling up through a drain grate and attracting attention from someone on the surface.”

  “You guys had it all worked out, didn’t you?” Larkin said as they kept walking. “Got it down to a science.”