Dangerous Games

by Prescott, Michael

  “Everybody needs to make a living.”

  “You piece of shit,” Crandall said, his voice tremulous and too high.

  “You’re awfully judgmental for a big, bad federal agent. Then again, you aren’t so big and bad, are you? You’re, what, about twelve years old?”

  Crandall said nothing.

  “Now, Tess, on the other hand,” Kolb went on, “isn’t shocked by anything I say. Or by anything I’ve done. She’s got experience in the field. In the bedroom, too. Not that she draws any distinction there. What was the name of that special agent you were humping, the one Mobius iced—”

  “God damn it, stop talking to her like that!” Crandall wanted to sound tough, but his thin, shaky voice conveyed only panic.

  Kolb laughed. “Chivalry lives on, even at the FBI. Hey, Tess, I think somebody’s sweet on you.”

  Tess ignored him.

  “You should tell her how you feel, boy. Don’t hold your feelings inside. You know how the song goes. ‘If somebody loves you…’”

  “Shut up,” Mason barked. Suddenly he was the one who sounded nervous.

  Kolb broke into song. “‘It’s no good unless they love you…’”

  “Isn’t there any way to keep him quiet?” Larkin asked.

  “‘All the way…!’”

  Tess turned to face him. “Stop it, Kolb. Now.”

  He stopped; a wide grin on his face. When she was sure he was going to restrain himself, she started walking again.

  Behind her, Kolb began humming the same tune, just loud enough to be audible. Tess decided not to make an issue of it. The man was like a child. He just wanted attention.

  She glanced behind her at Larkin and Crandall. “You guys okay back there?” She was interested only in Crandall but didn’t want to single him out.

  “We’d be doing better,” Crandall said, “if we could stop the nocturnal serenades.”

  Tess saw the pallor of his skin. She didn’t think he was fine. To distract him, she tried a little levity as they continued walking. “You shouldn’t object, Rick. He’s singing your song.”

  Crandall forced a laugh. “It’s Ed’s song, really. He’s the one who turned me on to Sinatra.”

  “That true, Mason?” Tess asked. “You’re a Rat Packer?”

  Mason seemed uncomfortable. “I guess so. Rick and I started talking one day after I started working as a liaison. Got on the subject of music. I tried to wean him off his taste in country-pop.”

  “It worked,” Tess said, remembering her car ride yesterday. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a devotee of the golden oldies.”

  “I used to play a little keyboard in college. Was part of a jazz combo. We did a lot of retro stuff, mainly Sinatra.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re surprised?”

  “It’s just…well, I can’t quite picture you as a jazzman.”

  “Why? I’m too uptight?”

  “You’re too boring,” Kolb said. “That’s what she means.”

  Tess frowned. “Pay no attention to him. That isn’t what I meant.”

  Mason looked away. “I guess we all have our hidden talents.”

  Behind her, Kolb asked, “What’s your hidden talent, Tess? Has it got anything to do with blow jobs?”

  “I think it has more to do with locking up people like you,” Tess said evenly.

  “I’m not locked up now.”

  “Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  They reached another crossing point. Even Tess could see the orange arrow this time. “To the left—correct?”

  Kolb grunted assent. “Very good, Special Agent. You learn fast.” She heard the smile in his voice as he added, “But maybe not fast enough.”

  Tess almost asked him what that was supposed to mean, but stopped herself.

  It didn’t matter. It was just another one of his games.

  45

  Abby ran a red light and heard the blare of somebody’s horn.

  “Hey, I’m fighting crime here,” she muttered. “Gimme a break.”

  It was one hell of a crime, too. She could see how it had come together. After his release from prison, Kolb had met Mason—probably at Below Ground, a place whose diverse clientele included ex-convicts and city employees. They’d started talking, and eventually it had occurred to them that their particular assets would make them a good team. Kolb had the street smarts, the toughness, the willingness to kill. Mason had some money, some knowledge of computers, and most important, expertise in navigating the drainage system.

  No doubt they both wanted money, the kind of big tax-free score only a daring crime spree could produce. But people’s motives always ran deeper than cash. In Kolb’s case, he hated the city that had put him in jail, costing him his livelihood and his future. He wanted to make Los Angeles pay.

  Mason’s motive was unknown, but Abby guessed it had something to do with his patronage of Below Ground in the first place. He was a bureaucrat looking for a walk on the wild side. Probably he knew he would be chosen as the DWP’s liaison to the Bureau. Perhaps he’d even volunteered for the job.

  As an insider privy to the investigation, he could keep Kolb apprised of new developments. He would know which entrances to the tunnel system were being watched by law enforcement. Having the keys to the entry points, he could open them up for Kolb before each abduction and resecure them afterward. That way no evidence of a break-in would be found, and no one would know which access points Kolb had used.

  With all he’d brought to the table, Mason probably thought of himself as the leader of the team. Abby knew better. Kolb would never accept a secondary position. Whatever Mason had expected, Kolb had ended up calling the shots.

  Maybe it was Kolb’s idea to use Madeleine in the backup plan. Or maybe Mason had improvised that detail. Either way, Madeleine was a plausible choice. She lived in Bel Air, not far from the intersection of Olympic and Sepulveda chosen as the spot where the victim would be held.

  Taking Madeleine into the tunnels posed minimal risk. Law enforcement stakeouts of the tunnel access points would have been withdrawn once Kolb was arrested.

  Of course, there was no certainty Mason had actually put Madeleine underground. He might have killed her already. But Abby doubted it. Mason probably didn’t think of himself as a killer. She didn’t believe he could execute Madeleine in cold blood. She didn’t think he was planning to take out the rescue party, either. He would get the gun to Kolb and let Kolb do the job.

  She tried to figure out how Mason had handled the abduction. He’d already been in the field office when she and Tess arrived. He’d seen Kolb in custody. He must have ducked out immediately afterward, grabbed Madeleine, then used an untraceable cell phone to call the FBI and play the tape of her voice.

  At the next corner she swung onto a side street, her tires kicking up a huge fountain of spray. If the map was right, there ought to be a tunnel entrance around here. She flicked on her high beams but saw only a narrow street that dead-ended at a cyclone fence. The fence bore a sign that warned NO TRESPASSING.

  She took the fence at forty miles an hour, plowing it down and hoping the torn metal didn’t puncture her tires. Then she was fishtailing through a muddy vacant lot and down a slippery incline to a ravine flowing with rainwater. Unlike the LA River, this channel wasn’t lined with concrete. It was basically a ditch, but apparently it served the same flood-control purpose as its more citified cousin. On the far side of the wash, large double doors, secured by a padlock and embedded in a steel frame, were built into the ravine wall.

  For a moment she thought about smashing through the doors the way she’d mowed down the fence, but these doors looked more formidable than chicken wire. She pumped the brakes, and the Honda slewed crazily in the mud and spun to a stop. She left the car, drawing her revolver from her purse. With one shot she shattered the padlock’s hasp. She pulled it down and started to push the doors open, but it wasn’t necessary because the sudden inrush of water did the job for her.


  When she looked down, she saw that water was above her ankles. It occurred to her that entering the tunnels under these conditions might be the last thing she would ever do. If her car stalled out, she would be trapped just like Madeleine and the other two victims.

  But even as she considered this possibility, she was already sliding into the driver’s seat and gunning the engine.

  The Civic’s tires blew out piles of mud before gaining enough traction to lurch forward. She straightened it out and aimed it at the open doorway.

  After that, she had no more control of the car. The water took her in its flow and shot her through the doors like a raft launched into the rapids. There was a dizzy moment when the Civic teetered on the brink of a descent into darkness, then leaned forward, headlights throwing their glare on what seemed like a vertical hill of rushing water, and plunged down.

  Objectively, Abby knew the descent wasn’t vertical. She was rolling down an access ramp that would take her into the drainage artery that paralleled Olympic Boulevard. The tunnels weren’t that deep—maybe thirty feet underground—and the descent couldn’t possibly last for more than a few seconds. It only felt like a lifetime.

  With a thunderous splash, the car hit bottom, leveling out and flying instantly into a long, high-ceilinged corridor wide enough for vehicular traffic. She just had time to orient herself and swing the steering wheel to the left, and then she was driving west below Olympic. Because the passageway was so broad, the water was shallower here, and because the floor sloped down in the center, her tires were able to find good purchase on the sides of the track. Her high beams provided visibility for about a hundred feet—enough to see that the tunnel proceeded straight and unblocked.

  No more obstacles. She hit the gas and tested the Civic’s rebuilt engine.

  The tunnel raced past, the rounded concrete walls a blur of speed. Water streamed down from manholes evenly spaced overhead. Every ten yards a curtain of rainwater smacked into the roof and windshield. Her wipers flicked, sweeping the glass clean in time for the next dousing.

  More water rushed into the corridor from portholes in the walls—side passageways and service tunnels. The noise was thunderous and incessant, a vast monotonous rumble like an earthquake that wouldn’t stop.

  She wondered how long she could keep going before the rising water disabled her engine and turned the Civic into a raft. Well, not a raft, exactly. A raft would float. The car would sink to the bottom. She could force her way out and be swept away by the current, or she could be trapped inside the car as it filled with water.

  “That’s not a happy thought,” she told herself sternly. “Think happy thoughts.”

  She fished her cell phone out of her handbag and pressed redial. Tess’s voice mail continued to answer. The call still wasn’t getting through.

  Or maybe Tess wasn’t answering because she was already dead.

  “Happy thoughts,” she reminded herself.

  On the bright side, she was making incredible time. The speedometer needle was pinned at seventy. If she encountered no difficulties along the way, she should reach the intersection of Olympic and Sepulveda in about five minutes. The city had better hope commuters didn’t find out about this.

  She reached a crossing point between the Olympic artery and a north-south drainage line. Where the two lines met, stormwater eddied and foamed in a surging backwash. The confusion of currents threatened to send the car into a spin. She hung on to the wheel with both fists and fought to keep the tires straight.

  Maybe commuters wouldn’t like this shortcut, after all.

  The GIS reader lay on the passenger seat, its screen glowing in the dark, but she couldn’t check the map and maintain control of the car at the same time. She would have to hope she remembered the layout of the tunnels near Olympic and Sepulveda accurately. She didn’t exactly have a photographic memory, but a crisis seemed to sharpen her mind considerably. And if barreling through a flooded storm sewer at seventy miles an hour on a rescue mission didn’t constitute a crisis, she didn’t know what did.

  Another tunnel juncture approached. This time she made out the name of the intersecting pipeline stenciled on the concrete wall: FAIRFAX AVE. The Civic careened through the churning whitewater, the tires slipping to the left, the driver’s-side door scraping the wall before she steered back to the center of the corridor.

  Good thing she was planning to get rid of this car. She had a feeling it wasn’t going to be very presentable by the end of this excursion.

  She kept redialing. Still nothing. She pressed the button again—

  And heard a click as the call was answered. “McCallum.”

  The connection was shaky, full of static and echo. Abby had to shout into the phone. “It’s Mason, Tess. Mason is Kolb’s partner!”

  “What?” Crackle and hiss, Tess’s voice fading. “Hello?”

  “It’s Mason!” Abby screamed.

  The line went dead. The connection had been lost.

  There was no way to know if the message had gotten through.

  46

  It’s Mason.

  Tess had caught those words before the call cut out. For a second she couldn’t process the information.

  Then there was a mental click like a shifting of tumblers in a lock, and she got it.

  Kolb and Mason. Partners.

  Her mind seemed to accelerate to a furious velocity. She was making a dozen different connections at once. Mason, her only friend at the field office—of course he wanted to be her friend, so he could get close to her. Mason coming late to the supervisors’ meeting—he’d searched her workstation in her absence and found her notes on Madeleine. Mason, knowing he would be part of the search team, handing out heavy DWP jackets that would hamper the agents from reaching for their firearms—while concealing a gun of his own.

  It wasn’t a series of thoughts but a single pattern coming together as a whole. She’d once seen a film of a shattering flowerpot played in reverse, the scattered pieces magically reassembling. This was like that.

  In the time it took her to put the cell phone in her pocket she understood everything.

  At her side Mason turned to her. “Who called?”

  She shouldn’t look at him. Shouldn’t look at him.

  Too late.

  In the shared glow of their flashlights he saw her face, read her eyes. And he knew.

  He lashed out with his flashlight, swatting her across the cheek.

  She stumbled, grabbing for her gun as she fell sprawling in the water.

  She rolled onto her side. Mason was drawing his gun from beneath the vinyl jacket. Her fingers closed over the SIG Sauer in her coat pocket.

  She didn’t bother to pull it free. She fired through the pocket, three quick shots, recoil slamming her elbow against the concrete floor.

  Mason fell backward, his flashlight dropping with a splash.

  Tess shouted something, but with her ears ringing from the echoes of her own gunfire, even she couldn’t hear what she said.

  Crandall and Larkin were drawing their weapons. Not fast enough. Confusion and the heavy, unfamiliar jackets slowed them down.

  Kolb had no jacket. And no confusion.

  As Mason toppled backward, Kolb grabbed him, propping the body against his own, then snatched the gun out of Mason’s hand.

  Tess wanted to fire again, but Mason’s body blocked the shot.

  Kolb pivoted. Muzzle flashes, new blasts of pistol reports.

  Behind him, Larkin and Crandall went down.

  Tess knew he would shoot her next. With Mason’s body as a shield, he could fire at her with minimal risk of being cut down.

  She was still holding the flashlight in her left hand. She switched it off.

  Mason’s flash had been swept away by the current. Larkin’s and Crandall’s were dark—either smashed or lost. Kolb had no flashlight. With hers off, there was only darkness. Kolb could see nothing.

  She risked scrambling to a new position a yard or t
wo farther down the tunnel. Kolb couldn’t hear her—his ears would be ringing like hers.

  The two of them were deprived of sight and hearing. She waited. Kolb hadn’t run. He would never get out of the tunnels without light. He needed a flash—hers. And he wanted her dead. He’d told her the scrapbook was all about her. His obsession with Mobius, his hatred of women—it all crystallized around her.

  He wouldn’t leave, not when he was so close to killing her. He would wait for his chance.

  And she would give it to him.

  With her left hand she extended the flashlight away from her body, holding it toward the middle of the tunnel.

  Her right hand steadied the gun.

  She clicked the flashlight on.

  Instantly, two booming reports, a new cascade of echoes.

  Kolb, firing at the light. His gun at the center of purple muzzle flashes expanding into dark.

  She fired dead-center into the purple. She wasn’t sure how many rounds she expended. Though she’d been taught to keep count, somehow she forgot.

  After six, eight, ten shots, she stopped firing. She crouched in the streaming water. Her flash was still on. Kolb would have fired at her if he could.

  She swept the beam over the tunnel and saw no one standing there.

  Bodies in the current, forming a tangled logjam. Mason and Kolb together.

  He could be playing possum. She approached him with caution. The yellow cone of light from her flash picked out his eyes. They were open and unblinking under the water. That was when she knew he was dead.

  The current around her boots was pink with blood from the two bodies, and perhaps from Larkin and Crandall.

  She beamed the flash deeper down the tunnel and saw the two agents together, huddled against the wall, Larkin pale and shivering and half-conscious, Crandall looking shell-shocked but intact.

  “Tess!” Crandall shouted over the din in her ears. “You okay?”

  She bypassed the bodies and made her way toward the two agents. “I’m all right,” she said. “You?”