Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  She and Larkin reached a corner of the suite, where the media office and the office of the assistant director were arranged catercorner in evident acknowledgment of the importance of public relations in the AD’s job profile.

  Andrus’s voice—thin, reedy, with carefully cultivated enunciation—was audible through his open door.

  "What do you mean, deteriorated?"

  A beat of silence as an answer was given. Andrus was on the phone.

  "Hard target? You mean she’s on to you, for Christ’s sake?…Damn it, Tennant, you can’t afford to screw this up."

  Tennant. The name was familiar to Tess, but she couldn’t place it.

  "All right, all right. Let me know as soon as you’ve got them in custody."

  The conversation was over. Tess wondered what it had been about. But she dismissed the question. It didn’t matter.

  Whoever Tennant was and whatever he was involved in, it had nothing to do with her.

  3

  Amanda Pierce had hoped to lose her pursuers nearly six hours ago, when she had driven through Sacramento.

  She’d left Interstate 5 at the outskirts of the city limits, then had taken the surface streets through the center of town. The time had been four P.M., the start of rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and traffic had been heavy.

  At first, watching her rearview mirror, she had seen no one obviously tailing her. She’d allowed herself to believe that she was safe. She’d been misinformed. Her contact was paranoid, probably, like most of the people in his line of work. The ones who were still alive, anyway.

  Pierce was still congratulating herself on her good fortune when she glimpsed a white van behind her. There were two occupants, and both appeared to be Caucasian males, a not uncommon profile for employees of the FBI. The van was sticking close, as was necessary for clandestine pursuit in dense urban traffic.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  It could be just an ordinary van, but she knew better. She’d seen it on I-5, a hundred miles north of Sacramento. The same two men inside.

  So her contact wasn’t crazy, after all. The fucking feds really were on to her.

  Briefly she considered aborting the mission. But of course it was too late. If they knew enough to shadow her, they knew enough to put her in a federal prison. And she could expect no leniency from any judge or jury—not when they learned what she was carrying in the suitcase on her Sunbird’s backseat.

  They would put her away forever. Maximum security. Lesbian guards, dangerous showers, broom-handle rapes—shit, her life would be a goddamn made-for-cable movie.

  The chilly feeling at the back of her neck was dread. She honestly hadn’t expected to be caught. She’d thought she was playing the game so adroitly, staying three steps ahead of any possible threat.

  Now the threat was right behind her, in the form of a white van with two pale white men inside.

  The van was the command vehicle, the one in direct visual contact with the target—the target, in this case, being Pierce herself. There would be other vehicles, most likely a total of four or five, all weaving a loose, flexible net around her, a formation known in mobile surveillance work as a "floating box." She had to identify them if she was to know what she was up against.

  She guided the Sunbird through the grid of city streets. The second vehicle was easy to pinpoint. It was a station wagon puttering along ahead of her, the driver using his brakes too often. Standard surveillance technique—distract the target with intentionally poor driving. Anyway, she was fairly certain she had seen the station wagon on the interstate also.

  She looked back, careful to use only the rearview mirror—the first rule in this game was never to look over one’s shoulder—and saw that the van was gone. An amateur would have taken comfort in that fact. Pierce knew it was only a standard signature shift, the characteristic leapfrogging pursuit of an A-B surveillance protocol.

  The vehicle now in visual contact with her was a taxicab. It had changed places with the van to make the detection of either automobile less likely.

  Three of them so far. There might be one or two more. Outriders on her left and right.

  To find out, she executed a quick left turn at the next intersection, not using her turn signal. The taxi continued straight through, but a coupe in the left lane peeled off and followed her.

  Now the coupe was in the command position, and the other vehicles were pacing her on parallel streets. If she could ditch the coupe, she might break out of the box altogether.

  She eased into the right lane, behind a slow-moving bus, forcing the coupe to motor past her to avoid being conspicuous. When it was safely ahead, she checked her rearview mirror. Still no sign of the van, the taxi, or the station wagon.

  Taking advantage of a momentary break in the traffic, she flipped a U-turn, cutting off a motorcyclist in the opposite lane, who threatened her with a gloved fist.

  She ignored her rearview mirror now. The driver of the coupe would not be so foolish as to attempt a high-profile maneuver like a U-turn directly behind her. Instead she watched the oncoming traffic in the other lane.

  There. A panel truck was making a left turn onto a side street. As she passed the street, the truck pulled out behind her.

  This was the fifth vehicle, now in the command position.

  She might yet have a chance to break out. Ahead of her, a stoplight was cycling from green to yellow. She gunned the Sunbird’s motor and flashed through the intersection just as the light turned red. The panel truck was stuck idling at the light. Redboarded.

  Gotcha, Pierce thought with savage satisfaction.

  Wait.

  Ahead of her, parked at the curb—the white van. It pulled out in front of her.

  And here came the taxi, cruising at her rear.

  There was no way out of the box. The feds were all around her, hemming her in. And after her recent exhibition of evasive driving tactics, they now knew she was on to them. It would be harder than ever to break free.

  She could not break out of the box. Not here.

  Her best shot was to get back on the freeway and continue south. LA was a bigger city. It offered more possibilities for countersurveillance action. And she would have hours to sort out her options, reacquaint herself with her intel training, and determine her next move.

  They hadn’t beaten her yet. They had her in a corner, but she could fight her way out of a corner if she had to.

  And if they tried to take her down, she wouldn’t go alone.

  That had been six hours and four hundred miles earlier. Now, rigid at the wheel, fatigued after the daylong drive and the 360 miles covered on Thursday, operating on no sleep and almost no food, Amanda Pierce drove into Los Angeles.

  She took the 405 freeway when it branched off from I-5. It carried her through the San Fernando Valley, over the mountains toward West LA.

  In the darkness she could no longer see the vehicles in pursuit, but she knew they were behind her and ahead of her and probably pacing her in other lanes. She’d made no effort to lose them after leaving Sacramento. By now, her friends from the FBI might have been lulled into thinking that her evasive actions had been merely a precautionary measure. They might believe that she actually had no idea she was being followed.

  She hoped so. Their complacency might give her an edge. An edge she desperately needed, since soon she would have her last chance to break free.

  The dashboard clock read 10:15. She was expected to be at the hotel by eleven. It would be tight. Would her contact wait for her if she was delayed?

  "He’d better, God damn it," Pierce muttered, her voice raw from the tension stiffening her vocal cords.

  She had risked everything for this meeting. And now that she was exposed, her cover blown, she needed it more than ever.

  The freeway crested the low range of the Santa Monica Mountains and descended. The basin of Los Angeles slid into view, a huge bowl of light cupped by the black fingers of hills and desert and sea.

  Pierce tho
ught she’d come a long way from Hermiston, Oregon.

  And whatever happened tonight, however things worked out, she wasn’t going back.

  4

  The assistant director’s office was tidy and almost sterile, not unlike its occupant. His desk was uncluttered, the walls all but bare. There were none of the usual accoutrements of power—plaques and certificates, photos of the agent shaking hands with the president or receiving a commendation. In the bureau this sort of display was known cynically as an I-love-me wall. Nearly every office had one. But not this office.

  "Evening, Tess," Andrus said as she and Larkin entered. "I suppose you heard some of that phone call."

  "The tail end," Tess admitted, before Larkin could deny it.

  "Typical bureau infighting. This guy flies in from outside the division and wants to do everything his own way. I have to ride him hard just to get him to check in with me. It’s just one of many hassles you’ll have to deal with when they make you an SAC one day."

  He said this without focusing his gaze on either of them in particular, but Tess felt sure the comment had been intended for her. Then again, maybe Larkin felt the same way, and maybe Andrus had meant to keep them guessing. He enjoyed little power plays of that sort.

  "Anyway," Andrus added, "I’m glad you’re here, Tess. I just hope this isn’t a false alarm."

  She felt her optimism fizzle just a little. "You think it is?"

  "It’s thin."

  "There must be something to it, if Agent Larkin called you in."

  "Actually I never left. Working late. If I’d been gone, I doubt Peter would have buzzed me."

  "Not on something this preliminary," Larkin said. Tess looked at him, and he pasted a smile on his face. "I’m sorry, Agent McCallum. Didn’t I make myself clear?"

  He’d been playing her, she realized. It had amused him to build up her hopes.

  "Have a seat," Andrus said, oblivious to the interplay.

  Tess felt too restless to sit, but in the long run it was always quicker to do things Andrus’s way. That was a lesson she had learned in Denver, when for three years Gerald Andrus had been the special agent in charge, supervising her on a daily basis, before moving on to bigger things.

  She sat across from the AD, hunching forward, while he leaned back behind his desk. Larkin settled into a chair in a corner.

  "So," Andrus said, "you want the long or short version?"

  "Just the basics."

  He nodded. For a moment he said nothing, and she knew he was organizing the relevant facts in order to present them with maximum efficiency. Everything about Andrus suggested a spare, abstemious discipline, from his gaunt physique and erect posture to the steel-framed glasses riding on his pinched nose. He was unmarried, a workaholic in his early forties, a man sketched in shades of gray—ash-gray eyes, silver-gray hair, and a pale, unlined face.

  "They picked him up at the safe house at nine-thirty," Andrus said finally. "He was carrying a roll of duct tape. Tried to use it on Tyler."

  "Same brand of tape as before?"

  "No."

  "How about the knife?"

  "Either he didn’t have one, or he ditched it. I have two people scouring the safe house now."

  This sounded less and less promising. Wrong brand of tape, no knife…

  "Does he fit the profile?" she asked, looking for a reason to be hopeful.

  Andrus waved off the question. "Profile. You know how much confidence I have in that psychobabble crap. I’ll trust my gut instinct every time."

  Tess did her best not to smile. If there was one thing Assistant Director Andrus lacked, it was gut instinct.

  He had never been much of a street agent. His skills were managerial, bureaucratic. He was a paper pusher, a desk jockey. He knew how to cut overhead, allocate resources, do more with less. These talents had made him popular with his superiors on Ninth Street—bureau-speak for FBI headquarters—but had done nothing to endear him to agents in the field.

  Then there was the family connection. Andrus’s father had been a top man under Hoover, part of the inner circle of those days. It was generally assumed that if his daddy hadn’t been a bureau man, Andrus would be pushing papers for a blue-chip corporation, not working for Uncle Sam. Tess found it admirable, in a blanched, joyless sort of way, that Andrus had devoted himself to law enforcement when he might have been happier and wealthier pursuing other goals. Other agents merely resented him for the fast career track that came with being a privileged son.

  "Well," she said evenly, "sometimes Behavioral Sciences gets it right. Does he fit the profile or not?"

  "He fits," Andrus conceded. "Of course, we hardly need a profiler to tell us the more obvious things—residence in Denver at the time of the last murders, above-average intelligence, knowledge of mathematical concepts."

  "This man is from Denver?"

  "Colorado Springs," Larkin said, wanting to join the conversation. "And he’s a civil engineer."

  Tess looked at them both. "An engineer."

  Andrus nodded. "Worked on the Metro Red Line, the subway system, or so he says. But before you get excited, let me reiterate what I said earlier—it’s thin."

  "Because of the tape and the knife?"

  "Yes. And the assault on Tyler. It was clumsy, tentative. Not what we would expect from Mobius."

  Mobius.

  Even now, Tess hated to hear that name spoken aloud. The three syllables seemed to hang in the office’s recirculated air like a death rattle.

  "Nothing about this case," she said softly, "is what we would expect. Not in a rational world."

  Andrus shook his head with paternal benevolence. "Who ever said it was a rational world, Tess?"

  Larkin allowed himself a little laugh.

  Tess didn’t answer. Andrus was right. Yet there had been a time, not so long ago, when she had thought the world made sense. Part of her still wanted to believe it.

  Another part of her, the dominant part, could not forget the evening of February 12.

  The key in the lock…the door opening…and in the kitchen, the water running in the sink…

  Briskly, Andrus reviewed the details of the bust. The suspect was William Hayde, forty-two, never married. His age, his Colorado background, his solitary lifestyle, his job as a civil engineer—it all fit.

  "And even so," Andrus finished, rising, "I still say Hayde is a red herring. I’ll bet you lunch at Giuseppe’s on that."

  Tess smiled. "Giuseppe’s?"

  "Great restaurant. You’ve got to try it."

  "I haven’t had much of an appetite lately."

  Andrus didn’t respond. He straightened his jacket—in the years Tess had known him, she had never once seen him with his jacket off—and shrugged on a dark trench coat, just like in the movies. Tess asked where he was going.

  "Home…where all decent self-respecting people should be on a Friday night. I have a Yorkshire terrier who needs to be fed—assuming he hasn’t broken open the kitchen cabinet by now and foraged for his own dinner—and there’s a stack of three-oh-twos I’m overdue about reading."

  "Sounds like fun."

  "I lead a full life, Tess. Call me if this clown turns out to be the real thing. Believe me, I’ll be happy to pick up the tab at that restaurant." He turned to Larkin. "Step into the hall, Peter. I want a moment in private with Agent McCallum."

  Larkin, peeved, did as he was told. Andrus shut the office door. "So, Tess…how are they treating you?"

  She shrugged. "The way any interloper would be treated. With suspicion, aversion, and disdain."

  "I can talk to them."

  "Please don’t. That only…"

  "Makes it worse?"

  "It’s office politics. They know I worked under you in Denver. They see me as some kind of threat. At least, some of them do. The more paranoid ones."

  "And the rest? How do they see you?"

  "As a washout."

  "You’re not, you know."

  "I’m not sure what I am." />
  "If it weren’t for Mobius—and what happened that night—"

  The key in the lock. Water in the sink. Her footsteps on the stairs as she climbed to the second floor…

  "I’d be in a different place right now," she said, finishing his statement for him. "Don’t I know it. But thinking ‘what if’ doesn’t get you anywhere."

  Andrus hesitated, evidently dissatisfied with this answer. "What I really want to know is…how are you holding up?"

  "Just fine."

  "You’re handling this okay?"

  "Don’t I seem to be?"

  "I didn’t mean professionally. I meant…on an emotional level."

  Up the stairs to the upper floor, the gun in her hand, no sound anywhere in the house…

  "I’m great," she said. "Really. Never better."

  "We both know that’s not true."

  She saw his disappointment. He wanted her to trust him enough to level with him.

  "Okay," she admitted, "I’ve been better. I’ve also been worse. Working other cases, waiting for this one to open up again—that was harder."

  "At least now you’re back in it."

  "Right. And I’m hanging in there."

  "Aren’t we all." He hesitated. "Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you in."

  "You had to. And I have to be here. I have to be involved."

  "Then I hope it brings you some closure."

  Closure. God, how she hated that word, with all its smug psychoanalytic neatness. As if there could ever be closure. As if grief were a room in a house, and she could just shut the door and seal it away.

  On the upper floor, moving down the hall toward the bedroom, the door ajar, her heart beating loud against her ears…

  "Thanks," she answered. "I hope so too."

  There was a short silence as both of them tried to think of something more to say.

  "If you need to talk…" Andrus managed.