Next Victim (11 page)

To her left was the guest bedroom, made up as a den. Lamplight glimmered from inside, but it signified nothing. The lights in there were on a timer. Next to the den was the bathroom, dark. To her right, the master bedroom. Light spilled through a crack in the door, left a few inches ajar.

She moved toward the bedroom, taking long, sliding steps, the way they’d taught her in Hogan’s Alley.

She reached the door and stood back, peering through the narrow opening. She saw the dresser and the mirror over it, reflecting only the bare white wall across the room.

Not quite bare. She saw smudges on the wall. Red smudges.

Blood.

She forgot caution, forgot her training and everything else in a spurt of fear that sent her rushing headlong into the bedroom where Paul lay in bed, fully clothed, his wrists taped to the nightstands flanking the bed, his throat opened by a knife and coated in blood.

Mobius.

His MO.

He’d learned her address, picked the lock—

She spun in a full circle, looking for Mobius, wanting him to be there, willing to let him shoot her if she could get a shot at him first.

He wasn’t there. She checked the closet. Nothing.

She turned to Paul again, feeling the wound in his neck to see if the blood still flowed. A flow of blood meant a pulse, and a pulse meant life.

There was no pulse.

He was dead. She had seen death at other times in her life, and she knew the feel and smell of it.

"Why did you do this?" she whispered in a stranger’s voice, a voice hoarse and raw as if from prolonged weeping. "Why did you take him? He wasn’t the one you wanted. I am. I am."

Slowly she raised her head, understanding that this was true.

He had come for her. He had seen the bureau car in the carport and the lights inside the house. He might even have heard the sound of dishes being washed as he opened the front door. So he’d entered the kitchen, ready to seize her from behind—only to find a man there. A man he’d never seen.

Paul might have heard him, sensed him, or perhaps he’d never heard anything at all. Either way, he had been overpowered, knocked unconscious. He must have been, or there would have been signs of a struggle in the kitchen. And he had remained unconscious until the end. Tess was sure he had because his mouth had not been taped. There had been no need to gag him when he was out cold.

Probably he hadn’t suffered much. Probably it had been quick, a blow to the head, a moment of surprise, then oblivion. Probably it hadn’t been too bad, not too bad.

"Not too bad," she whispered, and then she realized how insane it was to think that anything about this was not too bad.

She touched the wound again, still hoping vaguely to find the warmth of life, but the blood on his neck was dry and tacky, as were the few blood spots spattered on the wall.

The killing had been done some time ago. An hour at least. And Mobius was gone.

But he couldn’t be.

"You can’t be gone!" she shouted at the stillness of the house. "Come out and face me, come on,
come on!
"

She left the bedroom at a run and bolted into the bathroom, pulling aside the shower curtain, half ripping it from its hooks. He wasn’t there. She stumbled down the hall and entered the den, pushing the TV off its stand to look behind it, scattering the pillows on the sofa. Finally she fell on her knees with her hair tangled over her face and her thin arms shaking. She had lost the gun, dropped it someplace, and even if he had been here, she couldn’t have shot him.

"You son of a bitch," she moaned, her face in her hands. "Piece of shit, motherfucker…"

But she couldn’t hurt him with words. Couldn’t hurt him at all.

She knelt for a long time, aware of nothing but pain, pain that was her world now, pain that was everything.

11

Her face in the mirror.

It startled her as she came back to herself. She was in the rest room of the LA field office, two years and six weeks had passed since that night, and she was about to introduce herself to a man who might have robbed her of everything that mattered.

People could tell her that they knew what she’d lost, but they didn’t know that Paul Voorhees had been much more than her partner.

In dreams Tess sometimes found herself with him again, hiking an alpine trail in the Rockies. They would pause in their ascent, looking down at the path they had taken, and all the world below would be screened in white mist.

Then she would think that she and Paul had risen above the clouds, to the top of the sky.

It’s not like they told us in church
, she would say.
No harps. No wings
.

And Paul would laugh, and she would turn to look at him, but she couldn’t see his face—it was hidden in the sudden overpowering brightness of the sun.

She always awoke then. And she could never get back to sleep.

At times Tess believed that the trail was real, and she and Paul would climb it someday. At other times she believed in nothing but darkness and the damp earth enclosing an urn of ashes.

Bereavement leave and therapy had not healed the hurt. Nothing could heal it.

She checked her watch. Five minutes had gone by. Time to go.

Leaving the bathroom, she walked down the hall to the door with the DO NOT DISTURB sign. The door was unlocked, a violation of normal procedure, but necessary if she was to enter unannounced.

So this was it. Open the door, enter, and meet William Hayde.

It seemed like such a simple thing, yet for a moment she wasn’t sure she could do it. She remembered a parachute jump years ago, the final seconds of standing in the airplane’s open hatchway, waiting to leap into space.

Then, at least, she’d had a parachute.

She opened the door, entered the room.

Everything slowed down. The world grew big around her, its small details looming large in her perception. The glare on the steel tabletop, the creak of the straight-backed chairs, the handcuffs securing Hayde’s right hand to the table, his head lifting, his eyes—brown eyes, ordinary eyes—locking on hers.

She met that gaze and held it, and held her breath also.

And saw…nothing.

A flicker of curiosity, perhaps. No surprise, no hostility, no recognition.

He did not know her. He had never seen her before.

"Agent Starling’s older sister," Hayde said. "Pull up a chair, join the party."

"I’m Tess McCallum," she said.

"Bill Hayde."

Her name had drawn no reaction. He looked bemused at her arrival, her rigid stance and staring eyes.

She tried one more time, though she knew the effort was wasted. "You sent me postcards in Denver."

"I don’t think so. I’m not much of a correspondent."

"Novelty postcards."

He shook his head. "Must’ve been some other perp."

She said nothing. She turned and left the room, shutting the door.

Larkin was in the hall. "Nothing on voice-stress," he said.

"Right."

"He didn’t seem to know you."

"He doesn’t know me."

"So you think…?"

"He’s just a jerk who likes to tie women up. That’s all he is. He’s not Mobius. He’s not anybody."

A moment later Michaelson joined them. He looked at Larkin, ignoring Tess altogether. "I’m kicking him loose," he said.

Larkin nodded.

"There’s nothing for us to hold him on. The circumstances of his sexual play with Agent Tyler are too ambiguous to permit prosecution. Mr. Hayde himself seems to have understood as much from the start."

"He’s a cool customer," Larkin said.

"I’m not ruling him out yet. Not totally. I want you and DiFranco to look into his background, see if his story checks out. If it doesn’t, we can set up surveillance or bring him in for more questions."

"Will do."

"If we talk to him again, we need some facts to trip him up. Another staring contest"—he still didn’t look at Tess—"isn’t going to get it done."

Michaelson disappeared inside. Tess leaned against a wall, worn out.

When the door opened and William Hayde emerged, she straightened up. The FBI had an image to maintain, and so did she.

"Pleasure doing business with you guys," Hayde was saying. He turned to Tess. "You seemed pretty anxious to see me—and even more anxious to get away."

"I thought you were someone else," she said, her voice flat.

He surprised her with a sympathetic look. "The Pickup Artist?"

She said nothing.

"You’ve been after him awhile," Hayde said.

"What makes you say so?"

"The way you stared at me when you walked into the room. Like you’d been waiting for that moment a long time."

"You’re very perceptive, Mr. Hayde."

He shrugged off the comment. "You’ll get him eventually."

"I’m sure we will."

"In the meantime…hang in there, okay?"

She actually smiled. "Considering what we put you through tonight, you seem awfully solicitous toward me."

"I have a weakness for pretty women."

Her smile vanished. "Oh."

He stepped closer, lowering his voice. "I don’t suppose—"

"I’m not into tie-up games, Mr. Hayde."

"Your loss, baby."

He walked away, whistling. Michaelson and Gaines escorted him out. Tess stared after him, wishing he’d been the one.

She felt someone watching her. Turning, she saw Larkin in the doorway of the observation room.

"Anything from the other undercover ops?"

"Nothing so far."

She glanced at her wristwatch. It was one A.M. "We’ve missed him."

"He could be getting a late start. Or maybe he’s not out there tonight."

Tess didn’t answer. But she knew Larkin was wrong.

Mobius was out there.

He was always out there.

12

The agent’s name was Dante, he was a young hotshot from the Portland office, and he was excited.

"Got it," Dante told Tennant as he slammed down the phone. "Driver for America’s Best Cab remembers picking up Pierce at LAX. He delivered her to the Century Plaza Hotel."

"When did she get there?" Tennant snapped.

"Twelve-fifteen."

The clock on the wall read 1:05. She’d had fifty minutes to meet her contact. Too much time.

"Let’s move," Tennant said, hoping for the best.

The two unmarked bureau cars were parked in a passenger loading zone outside the terminal. Tennant and J&B took the first car, accompanied by Dante and another Portland man named Wilkins. The others followed in the second sedan.

Jarvis drove, Tennant riding shotgun.

"I’m betting she’s still there," Dante said from the backseat. "Probably checked in for the night, stupid bitch."

"If she’s so stupid," Bickerstaff pointed out, "how come she gave us the slip?"

Tennant cut off this conversation before it could become even more of a waste of time than it already was. "We go into the lobby and fan out, then proceed to the coffee shop, the pool area, and any other public spaces. Remember, she may still be waiting to meet someone, in which case, wherever she is, she’ll be watching the door. We know she’s already made some of us, so when she sees us coming, there’s a good chance she’ll run for it."

"Any dark-haired lady breaks into a sprint, we’ll tackle her," Dante said, trying to be funny.

"I don’t care if it’s a dark-haired lady or a blonde or a little kid with a lollipop. Anybody does anything suspicious, we hold them for questioning. If we’re lucky, we’ll get her
and
her contact."

"And the suitcase," Jarvis said under his breath, his voice low enough that only Tennant could hear.

Tennant nodded. Amanda Pierce wasn’t important. Even her contact would be a lower-echelon operative. The suitcase was what really mattered.

"Let’s say she starts shooting," Bickerstaff said as the car sped north on Sepulveda Boulevard.

"She used a knife on Kidder." This was Wilkins. He reminded Tennant of what used to be called a preppie, complete with an Ivy League law degree. "There’s no reason to think she’s packing a firearm."

"No reason to think she isn’t, either," Tennant said. "Maybe she just didn’t want to fire off a gun in the rest room and alert the rest of us. Anyway, if her contact is with her, he’ll be armed for sure."

"This turns into a shooting match, it’ll get ugly." Dante, stating the obvious.

Tennant didn’t hesitate. "If she or her partner draws a weapon, return fire—and go for a kill shot."

"Then we lose the chance to interrogate." Wilkins the boy lawyer.

"There are worse things to lose." Tennant hesitated, then added, "Don’t wait to see a gun. If she even opens her suitcase, light her up."

Jarvis glanced at him and nodded. They both knew what was in the suitcase, even if Wilkins and Dante did not.

Her contact still hadn’t arrived, and Amanda Pierce was getting scared.

True, she’d been waiting only about an hour. But she shouldn’t have had to wait at all. She was the one who’d been delayed. Her contact should have been the one waiting for her.

Unless he’d left already. In which case, she was seriously fucked.

She looked around at the hotel lobby, the high chandeliers, the arched windows framing tropical plants. Nice place to hang out, but not for her, not now.

She pressed one leg against the suitcase that rested by her own stool, holding it protectively. She had to stay upbeat. The feds hadn’t been lying in ambush for her at the hotel, so evidently they didn’t know where the rendezvous was scheduled to take place. Even if her contact never showed, she might still have a chance to arrange another meeting—if she could elude capture long enough.

In the meantime there was another problem, ridiculously trivial, yet one that threatened everything.

She had no money.

Nearly all of her cash had been used on taxi fare and as payment for the overpriced ginger ale she had ordered at the bar. She could not check in, because doing so would require using her credit card. The card was part of an identity kit she had put together over the past two months, under the name of Lucy Mallone. She had used the card to check into the motel last night—but with her cover blown, she couldn’t rely on the card any longer. If she used it again, her whereabouts would be instantly traced.