Next Victim (33 page)

Hayde’s cuff link. The one that had winked at Tess so insistently during his interrogation.

"Recognize it?" Michaelson said.

"Yes," Tess answered. "It’s his. He
did
come this way."

They looked toward the darkness at their backs.

"So unless he’s found a way out," Andrus said, "he’s in there somewhere."

"Like a fucking spider in his hole." The voice belonged to Tennant, emerging from the train a few yards away.

"Spiders have webs," Michaelson said, "not holes."

"I was referring to the trapdoor spider. One of the only deadly breeds in North America." He glanced at Tess and shared a smile with her.

"No secondary devices?" she asked.

"None. But the one he installed would’ve been enough to take out half the passengers—maybe more."

"And he’s still got plenty of VX left."

"But he won’t use it." Tennant stared down the tunnel. "My boys from DC just arrived. We’ll go in and get him."

"SWAT can do that," Andrus said.

"When they get here, they can help. We’re going first."

"You’ll need hazmat suits."

"Nah." Tennant patted his vest. "Just big noisy guns."

"Guns won’t help you if he gets close enough to douse you with that stuff."

"He won’t get that close." Tennant’s face was hard. "Count on it."

Tess believed him.

40

Tess was surprised how quickly things were wrapped up at the station.

It was agreed that Tennant and his men would work their way deeper into the tunnel in the direction Hayde had gone. SWAT teams from the FBI and LAPD would enter the tunnel at other access points, then seal off all known means of egress. The tunnel continued in an essentially straight line to the North Hollywood station—NoHo, to the locals—and that station, as well as the Universal City depot, was now under police lockdown. There were no stations after that. NoHo was the end of the line.

Somewhere under the earth, between Universal City and NoHo, Hayde would be found. Then the only question was how he would choose to handle this final crisis. He could surrender or fight. If he fought, he would use whatever he had left of the VX. In the confined space of the tunnel, with limited access to outside air, he would have an ideal environment in which to release the nerve agent.

Unless, of course, he was already out of the tunnels. He could have escaped via a maintenance passageway, stolen a car and gone…anywhere.

And if he was out there, roaming loose, he might not be found or stopped in time.

This was the thought that flicked at her, rough as a lizard’s tongue, as she took the entrance ramp of the Santa Monica Freeway, heading for the ATSAC command center, where the crisis managers were again gathering.

The cell phone in her handbag buzzed. She answered it out of habit: "McCallum."

"Who is this?" a female voice asked.

Tess remembered that the phone had belonged to Dodge. "Sorry," she said. "This is FBI Agent Tess McCallum. I’m an associate of Detective Dodge—"

"Of course. Agent McCallum. I met you in Radiology. This is Rachel Winston."

The pathologist. "Hello, Doctor."

"You screening Jim’s calls?"

"Something like that." She changed the subject. "Working late?"

"Emergency hours—because of the, uh, well, the emergency. You know, you could’ve shared more info with me."

"I was under orders to keep quiet."

"Well, it’s all over the media now. Anyway, I finally got that information Dodge was looking for. Maybe you can pass it on to him?"

"Will do," Tess said, hoping Winston didn’t pick up on the catch in her voice.

"The antemortem X rays from Scott Maple’s dentist came through. I’ve just had a chance to make a comparison, and I can say definitively that the body from the chem lab is not that of Mr. Maple."

"Wait a minute. Is
not
?"

"No question about it. You can have a forensic dentist double-check the results, if you want, but I guarantee my conclusion will hold up. There are no significant similarities between the teeth on Scott Maple’s films and the teeth I radiographed this afternoon."

"So it’s someone else," Tess said half to herself.

"Must be. Look, I’ve got to run, but—"

"Could it be someone older?"

"Excuse me?"

"In the X-ray room you said there was a lot of dental work for a twenty-two-year-old. Maybe that’s because the victim was older than twenty-two."

"Good point. My guess is, we’re dealing with someone in his late thirties at a minimum."

Tess thanked the doctor and clicked off.

Then she stared at the blur of the freeway, trying to make sense out of things.

Scott Maple hadn’t died in the fire.

So who had?

41

Into the bowels of the city once more.

The elevator dropped Tess five floors below City Hall. A card key, left for her on Andrus’s orders, let her into the air-lock corridor, and a new four-digit code gave her access to the main space of the ATSAC center.

Again she saw the semicircular arrays of computer workstations, the rows of swivel chairs occupied by city officials, the wall of video images. But now the screens showed nothing but intersections in the San Fernando Valley along the route of the Red Line. The central screen displayed the Universal City station, where additional LAPD units and rescue ambulances had gathered, along with unmarked vans that might contain chem-bio protective gear.

And there were at least two satellite live-remote vans. Word of the evacuation had reached the media. Tess checked her watch. Midnight. The local newscasts must be staying on late.

In time with this thought, one of the screens switched from a traffic shot to a local station’s video feed. The volume was muted, but Tess could see the words SPECIAL REPORT: SUBWAY EVACUATION. A field reporter was doing a live stand-up in Universal City.

The newscast cut to a photo of William Hayde. It looked like the ID photo given to the police. Someone in law enforcement had passed it to the media—maybe with an okay from the higher-ups, maybe not.

Tess stared at Hayde’s face. The cool insouciance of his half-hidden smile. The lift of one eyebrow.

A killer’s face?

No one else paid attention to the news show. Everyone was talking at once, and the volume of their combined voices kept rising as each speaker competed to be heard over the rest.

Tess picked out Sylvia Florez of Emergency Management arguing hotly with the mayor and someone from the Terrorism Working Group—or was it the Terrorism Early Warning Group? She saw Dr. Gant pounding the flat of his hand on a table as two LAPD representatives shook their heads angrily.

She pushed into the crowd and found Andrus exchanging words with a pair of officials from the city fire department. Remarkably, Andrus had taken off his jacket—the first time she had ever seen it removed. To relax his habitual formality to that extent, he must be really peeved—or really scared.

"Not your jurisdiction," one of the LAFD guys was saying, and Andrus snapped back, "We’re federal. Everything’s our jurisdiction."

A turf war. She was reminded that the AD was, in the end, a bureaucrat, not a street agent. He fought desk battles. She found herself wishing Tennant were here.

"Gerry," she said, getting close enough to speak into his ear.

Andrus turned away from the fire department people, evidently fed up with the discussion. "What?" he barked, transferring his frustration to her.

"I have some news."

"So talk."

Before she could begin, the Nose was beside her. "Mind if I join you, or are you still operating on a need-to-know basis?"

Tess shrugged. Michaelson was a jerk, but he was now part of the team.

"Got a phone call from the morgue," she said, addressing both men, her voice raised over the commotion around her. "The body in the fire isn’t who we thought it was. In fact, it may not be a student at all. It may be someone older."

"So it’s a night watchman," Michaelson said. "A janitor, whatever. Who cares?"

"What if it’s Hayde?"

"Hayde is Mobius. You told us so. Remember?"

"I told you what car Mobius was driving. When the plate number came back as Hayde’s, we assumed he was the guy. But what if Mobius wants us to assume that?"

"Oh, for Christ’s sake," Michaelson said.

She was beginning to regret allowing him into the conversation. But Andrus, at least, looked thoughtful. "It’s not impossible," he said slowly.

Thank you, Gerry
, she thought.

"He could be playing us," Tess said, wondering if her theory made any sense and if she even believed it herself. "He could have set up Hayde in order to throw us off."

"That would presuppose his knowing that Hayde was pulled in last night," Andrus said.

"Maybe he
does
know."

"How?"

"Say he was watching the building."

"Doubtful. He was getting ready to strike at the MiraMist."

"He struck later. Didn’t arrive at the hotel until after we were through with Hayde."

Andrus frowned. "Still seems unlikely. How would he even know who Hayde was?"

"There’s another possibility." Tess hated to say it, but both men were looking at her, and she had no choice. "He may be operating from the inside."

"
Fuck
this," Michaelson blurted. "You’re fucking crazy, McCallum. Gerry, she’s out of her goddamn mind."

"Just shut up and listen to me."

"Do you have any evidence the dead body is Hayde?"

"Not yet—"

"Then why the hell are you wasting our time?"

She looked at Andrus, and his shoulders lifted. "Have to say I’m with Dick on this one." Calling him Dick was a little jab at Michaelson. Everyone knew he hated that name. "The body could be anyone. A professor, a burglar…"

"Come on, Gerry."

"I’ll tell you what. When we get hold of Hayde’s medical and dental files, we’ll have the morgue make a comparison. But for the moment, let’s not jump off any cliffs, shall we?"

She frowned but nodded. Maybe she had allowed herself to get overexcited.

Or maybe there was another avenue of investigation she could pursue.

"Okay," she said. "Just keep it in mind. Mobius is smart. He’s always one step ahead."

"One step ahead of you, anyway," the Nose observed.

God, she’d love to punch that guy. Instead she elbowed her way through the crowd, into a hallway. She thought about entering one of the glass-walled offices that ringed half the main room, but she preferred more privacy. She continued to the end of the hall, past a kitchen and lavatory, and found a rear office with an open door.

The office was small and tidy, most of its space taken up by a metal desk, one of the ubiquitous swivel chairs, and a file cabinet. A fluorescent panel glared down from the low ceiling. On the desk was a computer, and at a glance she identified a high-speed modem.

When she had initiated the bot search, she’d arranged to have any hits moved to her online storage service as they came in. She could access those results from any computer on the Net.

She sat at the computer and brought it out of suspend mode. The Windows desktop appeared on the screen.

No password required. She was good to go.

Activating the Web browser, she navigated to the storage service and logged on. The bot had dumped a list of URLs—Web page addresses—into the main folder.

Somewhere in that list, there might be an explanation of Mobius’s taste in music, and with it, a link to William Hayde—or to someone else.

Who else, though? That was the unanswered question. It would almost have to be someone on the task force, someone who knew that Hayde had been picked up as a suspect.

She clicked on the first URL in the list and found a review of the song "Wipe Out," which had attracted the search bot’s attention because the reviewer enthused about the song’s "killer guitar riffs."

The next Web page was somebody’s online diary, which mentioned "Wipe Out" as a favorite song in one entry and a "cool movie about serial killers" a month later.

Maybe she hadn’t sufficiently narrowed the search parameters. She might be stuck with a bunch of garbage here.

As she opened the next file, her mind returned to the possibility of a mole on the task force. If there was a mole, he might not be the original Mobius. He could be copycatting the Denver crimes. Being an investigator, he would know all the details of the killings, even the signature elements that hadn’t been publicized.

Maybe. But she didn’t buy it. It felt wrong. She’d stood inside the room where Amanda Pierce had been murdered. She’d been in Dodge’s bedroom. She could sense Mobius in those killing zones. She could
smell
him there.

Unless she was going crazy. She’d been battling posttraumatic stress disorder for two years. Maybe it was a battle she had finally lost.

The third Web page was a dead end, as were the fourth, fifth, and sixth. The bot had dredged up the detritus of the Web—fan fiction, chat room transcripts, message board threads. She was beginning to think she was wasting her time.

Suppose there was a mole on the task force, and he was the real Mobius, the original. In that case she’d been working side by side with him. Not just here but in Denver also…

But nobody on the task force had been stationed in Denver. Most of them had been in LA for at least the past three years. A few had come from other offices. Michaelson, for instance—

She paused in the act of opening another URL.

Michaelson.

He was relatively new to LA. She was sure of it. But how did she know? She’d never talked to him about his past or about anything else of a personal nature. Still, she could almost remember…

Before this, I was stationed in Salt Lake City. Pretty hot there in the summer, and colder than hell all winter long
.

The interrogation. He’d been talking to Hayde.

That was where she’d heard it.

Salt Lake City wasn’t Denver. But it was within an eight-hour drive via I-80 and I-25. Hop on a plane, and he could have made it in no time.