Next Victim (36 page)

"Yes. I saw."

The flickering video wall threw varicolored stroboscopic light over half the room. One of the fluorescent panels overhead had been knocked out; another sizzled at half its normal brightness. The room felt like what it was—a cellar—dark and vaporous and claustrophobic.

Tess shuffled forward, sliding on her rubber boots, trying to avoid broken glass from computer monitors. A tear in her suit would allow the nerve agent to quickly seep inside and mingle with her air supply.

"By the way," he said, "I was still in the hotel room, sitting on the bed with the late Amanda Pierce, when you reached me on my cell phone to tell me about my latest postcard. I was playing with dead Amanda’s hair as I talked to you."

Her stomach clenched, but she knew he was only trying to get to her, and she wouldn’t let him. "What was the deal with those postcards, anyhow?"

"Just my nutty sense of humor, Tess. I’m a party animal at heart."

"You went to a lot of trouble to get my attention."

"Maybe you remind me of my mother."

"Do I?"

He laughed, the sound harsh and raucous over her headset. "No. Nothing’s that simple. I don’t have a mother complex. You know what I think of all that psychological mumbo jumbo."

"You always said you had no faith in profiling. You trusted your gut instinct."

"Exactly. And you thought I had no instincts. See how wrong you were? I know more about the dark side of human nature than you could ever imagine."

"You know more about insanity, that’s for sure."

She advanced farther into the room. The smoke was thicker here. She was moving through billows of grayish haze, lost inside a darkening cloud.

"Wrong again," he said. "I’m the sanest person you’ll ever meet. I’ve always known exactly what I wanted and how to get it."

"Is that why you joined the bureau? To get an insider’s perspective on law enforcement, learn what you were up against?"

"You have such a quick, bright mind, Tess. I admire that in a victim. Originally I’d planned a career in the sciences. That’s where the name Mobius came from, by the way. The Möbius strip, an endless loop, coiling back on itself—the perfect symbol of my life."

"You’re a poet, Gerry."

"Every killer is a poet, because every murder is a work of art. Another aphorism of mine. Anyway, I changed my plans and decided to follow in the footsteps of my adoptive father. You know, I’m sure, that dear old Dad was one of J. Edgar’s top G-men."

"Did you hate him?"

"Hoover? Never met the man."

"Your father, I mean. Did you hate your father?"

"I hate everyone," he answered without emotion.

"But him, especially? Because he was in law enforcement? And law enforcement killed your mother, nearly killed you?"

"Once again I stand in awe of your perspicacity."

She moved between the two rows of workstations, not far from the video wall. The exit wasn’t far away, but she knew she couldn’t reach it without encountering Mobius first.

"So you established yourself in the bureau, and then when you started killing in Denver, you could supervise the investigation. You had everything you wanted. And then you stopped. You were inactive for two years."

"Learned I was going to be transferred out of Denver. Needed to put my alter ego on ice. I couldn’t have Mobius following me around—it might look suspicious."

"Must’ve been hell for you, holding yourself back like that."

"I have remarkable self-discipline. Besides, I was biding my time, waiting to move on to bigger things. When the Amanda Pierce case crossed my desk, I knew I’d found it. I reactivated Mobius for the occasion."

Spears of light from the video wall stabbed at her through the fog. Bits of torn paper floated around her like confetti, glittering in a spectrum of colors.

"You could’ve used a new MO," she said.

"I wanted to be Mobius."

"Why?"

"For you, Tess. To bring you to LA. You were an item of unfinished business for me."

Another twist of her stomach. "You killed Angie Callahan just to bring me here?"

"As I’ve been telling you, it was all part of the script."

Angie Callahan, a woman she’d never known, had died for her. A sacrifice on an altar. Mobius’s gift in her name.

Paul had died in her place. Now Angie Callahan had died to summon her to LA. She wasn’t responsible for either death—or was she?

The fog was deeper now, or maybe it was the fog in her mind….

Her eyes blurred, and she nearly stumbled over a broken swivel chair in her path.

"How about Hayde?" she asked, struggling for composure. "Was he in your script, too?"

"Actually, no. I did a little improvising where he was concerned. He was so ideal for my purposes, I just couldn’t resist. When Larkin told me that Hayde had worked on the Metro system, I knew he was the perfect fall guy. I could release part of the VX in the subway, and Hayde would be the obvious suspect. He would divert any possible suspicion from me."

She almost moved on, then took a closer look at the upturned chair. It must have been where Andrus had draped his jacket, dead center in the blast. The bomb had blown it apart—casters scattered, seat cushion shredded. The backrest had been separated from the chair, leaving only a vertical bar attached to the seat.

The bar was held in place by a single loosened bolt. Wielded as a blunt instrument, it would make a serviceable weapon at medium range. She had already taken one precaution, but she needed every possible edge.

Closing her gloves around the metal bar, she pried at it. Her face mask began steaming up again.

"When did you kill Hayde?" she asked. "Before or after you picked up Pierce?"

"Before. I lingered outside the Federal Building, followed Hayde and Michaelson when the interrogation was concluded. Michaelson drove Hayde back to his car on Melrose, and then Hayde drove home. I killed him as he was unlocking the gate to his condominium building. It was late. There was no one around. I have to say I took no pleasure in the act. It was just business."

"I doubt Hayde thought of it that way."

"Tess, haven’t you learned not to trouble yourself about what other people think? At any rate, I put his body in my car, and later I transferred it to the chem lab."

"To substitute for Scott Maple. What did you do with him?"

"So many questions. It’s your inquisitive nature that makes you such a world-class investigator. Really, you surprised me at Dodge’s house. I didn’t think you would survive the trap I’d laid in your motel room—and I certainly didn’t expect you to anticipate my next move."

"Or see you driving Hayde’s car," she said. She had almost succeeded in wrenching the metal bar free. "Which you parked at the Metro station, so the police would find it there."

"And therefore link the attack to Hayde that much more quickly. I assumed no one would look for the car until after the subway had been gassed. You out-thought me, I’m afraid. As a result, the train was evacuated before the bomb could explode. I ought to be peeved at you for that. You didn’t let me have any fun tonight."

"You got off at the Universal City station, didn’t you?"

"Of course. There was no trouble. The cops who boarded the train were looking for Hayde, not me. Still, I didn’t dare exit the station. As the AD of the bureau’s LA office, I’m known to quite a few of our boys in blue. One of them might have recognized me. So I slipped into the shadows until you and the other law enforcement types arrived."

"You never hid in the tunnels."

"No, but I did plant one of Hayde’s cuff links when we were searching. Michaelson found it on the way back. Another diversion—I wanted Tennant and his men sidelined."

With a final twist of her shoulders, she separated the bar from its mounting. The effort exhausted her. She straightened up, unsteady in the clumsy suit.

"You know, Gerry, just because your life started out badly, you didn’t have to hurt other people."

"Thank you for that moral from today’s
After School Special
. But you’re mistaken. I had to do exactly what I did. Not that I’m complaining. How many people in this soft and aimless society of ours can honestly say they have a purpose in life?"

"Well, you failed in your purpose. Your big scheme is a bust. You’ve got nothing to show for it."

"On the contrary, I have one thing to show for it." She heard the volume of his breathing ratcheted up another notch as his voice rose in a snarl. "I have
you
."

She caught a flash of orange on the edge of her field of vision, and she turned—slowly, so slowly in the bulky suit—turned as Mobius lunged at her from his hiding place behind an upended workstation.

She swung the bar at him, hoping to split open his face mask, but the swing missed, and then he was on her, his inflated suit colliding with hers, the two of them staggering backward in drunken slow motion.

She raised the bar again. He ripped it out of her hands and jabbed it at her chest. The blow felt distant, transmitted to her body by vibrations as the suit shivered all over like the skin of a pudding.

He drew back for another blow. She pushed over a desk between them, blocking his advance.

"I did make one rather serious error," he said. "Paul Voorhees. I was going after you, of course. I knew you lived in that house. But you and Paul were so discreet about your office romance, I had no idea he was spending his nights there. When I saw a bureau car in the driveway, I assumed it was yours. As the kids say today—my bad."

"As the kids also say—fuck you."

The video wall was behind her, a waterfall of streaming images. There was no place for her to go. She couldn’t outrun him—couldn’t run at all in the suit.

"I’ll tell you a secret, Tess. You think Paul was unconscious the whole time. But he wasn’t. He came to, at the end. He watched me cut his throat."

He stepped over the obstacle of the desk, his movements cautious, like an astronaut in old footage of a moon mission.

"Paul tried to call your name. And do you know what I told him?"

He produced a simpering little laugh like the giggly falsetto in his theme song.

"I told him I’d already taken care of you."

His face was dimly visible behind the bubble helmet’s visor. Steam and sweat had coated the clear plastic and seemed to be coating the lenses of his steel-rimmed glasses, as well.

"I told him you were already dead."

But through the mist of his face mask, she could see him well enough to read his expression.

He was smiling.

"You should have seen the tears in his eyes, Tess. You should have seen Paul cry…."

She made a noise, probably a scream, or maybe the scream was only in her mind, and she flung herself at him, even while a detached, observing part of herself knew that this was precisely what he wanted her to do.

She landed a gloved fist on his helmet, creasing the visor, and then the metal bar caught her in the side of her head and knocked her down. She fell on her back, her upper body propped against the wall below the Niagara of soundless video. She couldn’t rise, not with the thick legs and arms of the suit inhibiting her movement, trapping her like an upturned tortoise trapped by its shell.

"Women really are emotional creatures," Mobius said. "Your buttons are so easily pushed."

She drew up her legs as far as possible, reached along her side with her right hand.

"I only wish"—he straddled her, leaning down, the shaft of steel huge in his hands—"I had my knife. That’s the way I wanted to end this."

Tess looked up at him as her right hand closed into a fist.

"You want your knife?"

She slid it free—the knife inside her boot, the knife she’d wrenched out of the office wall and concealed on her person for use at close range.

"Then
take
it," she said, and with one long vertical sweep she slit open the left side of his hazmat suit from hip to armpit.

The suit deflated instantly. A moment later his face mask was smeared with a new layer of droplets.

Not sweat, this time.

VX.

47

Mobius felt the suit collapse around him, saw the mist swirling before his visor—inside the helmet, sharing his air, entering his respiratory system and the pores of his skin and the corners of his eyes.

And he was dead.

He knew it.

A dead man.

But this was nothing new. He had died when he was eight years old, and although the first-aid squad and the doctors claimed to have brought him back to life, he knew better.

There had been no life for him since then. There had been only patient planning nursed by truculent hatred, a secret campaign against the living, a nocturnal war fought on many fronts, with murdered women as the markers of territory seized.

But not life. He’d always known that—and hadn’t cared.

But he did care now. Not about dying. About
losing
.

He squinted past the fog of his face mask and saw the knife in Tess’s gloved hand, his own knife, and he saw how to salvage victory, even at the end.

It was a knife sharpened on women’s throats.

Now let it cut one more.

He dropped the metal bar, twisted sideways, and grabbed her hand, clamping his gloved fingers on hers.

"You don’t win," he said.

He pushed her arm slowly backward, toward the seam joining her helmet to her suit.

One cut, one gouge or slice, and whether he opened her neck or not, she would be dead just the same. Dead from the same toxins that were speeding into his bloodstream with every pump of his heart.

She braced her left hand against his arm, fighting to hold him off. Valiant try, but he was stronger. Stronger than she imagined. Stronger than any of them had ever guessed. They had snickered at him, the company man, the supervisor, with his stiff, tidy formality and his spotless eyeglasses and crisp, measured words. He was a martinet and a toady, a politician, not a real agent at all. Capable enough when behind a desk, but helpless in the field.

That was how they’d seen him—while at night he was Mobius, the dark riddle their best brains couldn’t solve.