Next Victim (30 page)

Before exiting, she jerked the nightlight out of the wall outlet, darkening the hall. Then she pivoted through the doorway and jumped to the far side of the corridor. She braced herself against the wall and waited.

No shots were fired.

Still, she’d heard someone. She was certain she had.

Slowly she approached what must be the bedroom, the last door in the hall other than the door to the backyard. Mobius could be just inside the doorway, waiting for her to enter.

Her left hand still carried the nightlight. She pitched it into the darkness of the bedroom.

As it dropped with a clatter, she ducked into the room and took cover behind the open door.

Her diversionary tactic hadn’t drawn any fire. Either Mobius was cool under pressure, or he wasn’t here at all.

She sidled along the wall, staying low, and felt a light switch poke her between the shoulder blades. The switch might control an overhead light or a lamp on a bureau or bedside table.

She needed light. Darkness had given her an edge as long as her intrusion had been undetected. Now it worked against her, giving her enemy too many places to hide.

She flicked the switch, then swept the room with her gaze as a lamp on a table came on.

The bed and what was on it registered instantly, but she refused to take it in until she had looked into the closet and behind the bureau.

Then another glance into the hall.

Mobius wasn’t here.

But he had been.

She turned back to the bed where Dodge lay in his cheap suit, fully dressed, wearing even his shoes, his wrists duct-taped to the headboard, mouth sealed against a cry, throat opened in a gout of drying blood.

His eyes stared, empty.

She touched his neck, impelled by her training to check the carotid artery for a pulse, but of course there was no pulse. The blood had stopped flowing. It was already becoming tacky and dark.

But not very tacky. Not yet.

And Dodge’s skin was warm, his eyes moist with their last tears.

He had died only minutes ago.

The noises she’d heard. That third creak, that soft click.

It had been the creak of the back door opening. The click of the latch sliding into place as the door eased shut.

Mobius had escaped out the back while she was searching the bathroom.

He couldn’t have gone far.

She ran out the back door, the gun leading her, and scanned the shadowy trees. A spotlight mounted on the rear wall threw a pale glow over the grass.

Moving through the trees, she found herself at the edge of a steep hillside sloping down into a canyon. She looked down, and there he was, limned in starlight, a tall, masculine figure slip-sliding through the chaparral brush fifty yards away.

She didn’t know if her voice had come back until she heard herself shout, "Stop, FBI!"

Her cry echoed and reechoed across the canyon, scaring a bevy of birds into reckless flight. The man on the hillside didn’t even slow down.

She pointed her gun at him, but he was far away and there was too much darkness and ground cover and her arm was still shaky from the effects of the VX. She knew she would miss, so she conserved ammunition, slipping the gun into the waistband of her slacks as she scrambled down the slope.

She expected him to continue descending into the canyon, but he surprised her, veering to his right, where a second hillside intersected with the first. He crossed over to that slope and began climbing toward the ridge. His movements were assured, confident, and she realized he must be retracing the route he’d taken when he arrived. He had parked somewhere in the maze of cul-de-sacs off Mulholland, then crossed the hills and sneaked onto Dodge’s property from the rear.

She was yards behind him, hampered by the lingering weakness of her muscles and her unfamiliarity with the terrain. She couldn’t catch up to him, not in time.

But, damn it, he was practically in her sights. She could
see
him,
see
Mobius, or at least his faint silhouette, his progress marked on the far hillside by a shifting wake of brush.

She yanked the Sig Sauer free of her waistband and fired off a round, aiming high, leading the target.

Whip-crack of the bullet in the air, thud of impact on sandstone, but the figure didn’t stop moving, wasn’t hit.

From the rising plume of dust, she judged that the shot had been wide of its mark by a yard. She adjusted, fired again.

This time the figure stopped—she thought she’d nailed him—no, he’d only frozen momentarily when the shot landed close.

She’d come within a foot of him. Next time…

A scrub oak beside her swayed as a bullet made a soft
thwack
in its branches.

He was shooting back.

She threw herself behind the tree, using its slender trunk as cover. Another shot went off, kicking up dirt and gravel near where she’d lain a moment earlier.

The bastard was armed, and a good shot too—better than she was.

When she glanced out from behind the oak, she saw him disappearing into a copse of eucalyptus trees halfway to the ridge.

The trees provided perfect cover. She had no chance of hitting him now. Her best opportunity was to get back to her car, try to cut him off before he could drive away.

She ran uphill, bending almost double at the waist to form a smaller target in case he decided to pick her off from the safety of the trees. She wondered how it would feel to be shot in the back, or if he was a good enough marksman to place the round directly in her skull—no warning, no awareness, no time even to hear the gun’s report—just a shattering impact and lights out.

But she didn’t get shot, and now she was scrambling into Dodge’s backyard, clear of the hillside, safe.

She kept running, her heart working hard, breath coming in explosive gasps. If there was any VX left in her system, she must be sweating it out, purifying herself.

Fast around the side of the house to the front, then down the street to the turnout where she’d parked—brief, frantic fumbling in her purse for her car keys, and then she was at the wheel, cranking the engine, flooring the gas as she slammed the gear selector into reverse and backed into the street. She popped the lever forward, putting the car into drive, and sped east on Mulholland, in the direction Mobius had been going.

Side street ahead. Car pulling out. Blue coupe. Moving fast.

Him.

It had to be him.

He must have made it to his vehicle just when she’d reached hers.

She gunned the motor, the bureau car bouncing on the road, spraying dirt as she swerved into the shoulder on tight curves. She flicked on her high beams. The fleeing car bobbed in and out of the light. Camaro or Firebird, California plate.

Another rough curve, her tires wailing as she fought with the steering wheel to prevent a skid, and then the road straightened out and so did she, and she was closer to Mobius’s car.

The license plate.
Read it
.

Two-two-three…

He put on a burst of speed, racing out of the range of her high beams, challenging her to keep up. She floored the gas pedal. The sedan shook, bounding over ruts and potholes, each impact nearly banging her head on the ceiling. She realized she wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

Closing in again.

Two-two-three-XK…

He swerved left, and it took her a split second to understand that he was taking a hairpin curve in the road.

She spun the wheel, too late.

The road switched hard to the left, and then there was no road, only a tangle of brambly weeds that scraped the hood and windshield, clawing at her through the open windows as she stood with both feet on the brake pedal.

The car shuddered to a stop a hundred feet off the road, on a gentle downward slope that became a precipice not more than fifty yards farther ahead.

There was no hurry now. Mobius was gone in the night. She took her time easing the sedan into reverse, backing and filling until she found the tracks made by her own tires and was able to slowly climb the hill and regain the road. Layers of foliage brushed the car, clinging briefly and pulling free, leaving twigs and briers and leaves behind. Her hair was full of the stuff.

Once on the road, she made a U-turn. The sedan was making a variety of unsettling noises, several warning lights were glowing on the dash, and the left front tire seemed to be going flat. Even so, she made it back to Dodge’s house.

A brief stagger brought her to his front door, still open as she’d left it.

She entered, turned on the lights, found a phone. She had Andrus’s number on speed-dial on her fried cell phone, but she couldn’t remember it offhand, so she called the field office’s switchboard. Larkin answered.

"It’s McCallum," she said. "I just had a run-in with Mobius."

"You’re kidding me."

She ignored this. "And I got his plate number."

"Tess, if this is some kind of gag—"

"It’s no joke, Peter. I’m goddamn serious. I need you to run a trace on Mobius’s license plate.
Right now
."

She recited the plate number, which she’d memorized just before losing the coupe on the switchback curve.

"I’m putting it through," Larkin said. "Christ, what the hell happened?"

"He killed a cop. Tried to kill me. I didn’t get a look at him, but I know what he’s driving. Blue Camaro or Firebird, late model. Of course, the plate could’ve been taken off another vehicle—"

"It wasn’t."

"Results came back?"

"They sure did, and the plate goes with a late-model Firebird belonging to…God damn it."

"What?"

"Looks like we all screwed up."

"What does that mean?"

"We had him in our hands, and we let him walk. Let him walk right out."

She sank down slowly on her knees, still holding the telephone handset. "Who is it?" she whispered. But she already knew—even though it couldn’t be.

She’d looked into his eyes, right into his eyes, and there had been nothing.

Nothing at all.

He couldn’t have fooled her so completely. Couldn’t have.

But he had.

"It’s Hayde," Larkin was saying. "Our friend from the interrogation last night—Mr. William Hayde."

PART THREE

36

Mobius, underground.

He felt curiously at home here, in the subterranean deeps, one hundred feet below the city pavement. He liked the sense of entombment, of burial. He had died once, sinking into the bloody water, a shout of bubbles pouring from his mouth, and he had never really returned to life. It was appropriate that in his simulacrum of living he should find himself interred.

He waited, doing his best to attract no attention. Surveillance cameras were mounted around the station, and later the tapes were sure to be scrutinized, even digitally enhanced. The platform was brightly lit by banks of overhead lights, and he had to assume that the video would be of good quality.

To conceal his features, he was wearing a baseball cap and an oversize bomber jacket with the flaps turned up. On tape he would be a meaningless, unidentifiable smudge.

He glanced around at the other people gathered on the subway platform of the Hollywood/Highland station, waiting for the next northbound Metro Red Line train. Ridership was high on a Saturday night, and on the return trip—the run south into Hollywood from Universal City—there would be even more people, families returning from movies, couples finishing their dates.

There would be many people to kill on the southbound train.

"We’re putting out an alert," Larkin said. "Trouble is, he could be anywhere."

"Maybe not." Tess was thinking hard. "Michaelson told you to check Hayde’s background. Did you?"

"Sure. He told us the truth. Used to live in Colorado Springs. Moved here to—"

"Work on the Metro."

"Shit."

"It’s an ideal environment for a chemical attack. Sealed off from the outside, lots of people, public access…"

"I’ll tell LAPD to focus on the Metro stations. Call you back."

Larkin ended the call, and Tess stood there with the phone in her hand, still thinking.

She was right about this. She was certain of it. Not only was the Metro a logical target, but it was something Hayde was familiar with, something that had a personal association for him.

And for Mobius, she knew, it was always personal.

At 10:15 the train pulled into the station, six heavy-rail cars bearing the logo of a red M. Each car was seventy-five feet long and had a maximum capacity of 169 riders. One thousand passengers, more or less. It was crowded now, and on the return leg it would be full.

Mobius boarded with the others, choosing the central car, grabbing one of the few empty seats. He sat there with a paper bag on his lap, looking like any ordinary man.

The train started moving, and the dim walls of the Red Line tunnel blurred past. Other parts of the subway system had been drilled through loose sediment, but the segment from Hollywood to the San Fernando Valley penetrated solid rock.

In the seventeen-mile network of subway tunnels, the Hollywood/Highland station was the westernmost point on the south side of the Hollywood Hills. From that station, the Metro Red Line proceeded northwest through the mountains toward its next stop, Universal City, a trip of a little more than two miles that would be covered in about four minutes.

The train accelerated, hitting its top speed of seventy miles per hour. Mobius and his fellow passengers were deep under the mountains now. At certain points in the trip the train would be nine hundred feet below the surface.

Nine hundred feet was not quite deep enough for Hell, but for the riders on the southbound train, it would be close enough.

Casually he reached into the brown paper bag and removed the device.

It would attract no attention even if someone looked his way. He had wrapped it in aluminum foil to resemble a sandwich. He made a brief show of starting to open it, then allowed it to drop on the floor under his seat.