Next Victim (3 page)

Her destination lay to her left, at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Veteran—the twenty-story Federal Building that housed the Los Angeles field office of the FBI.

On most homicide investigations, local law enforcement authorities had jurisdiction and took the lead, and the bureau was brought in, if at all, only to provide consultation and analysis. But not this one. This was a federal case, and had been ever since the night of February 12, two years ago.

February 12.

The key in the lock. The key, turning. The key…

But she couldn’t think about that now.

She pulled into the large, open parking lot adjacent to the building. Ordinarily it would be almost empty at night, but on weekends the lot was used by visitors to the Village. Even so, she found an available slot after less than a minute of searching.

She killed the Crown Victoria’s engine and hurried inside, where she stabbed the elevator button and waited, shifting her weight restlessly.

The key in her hand, key in the lock, turning, no resistance…

Reliving the event was a symptom of posttraumatic stress. Her therapist had explained it to her. A traumatic event triggered stress hormones; the more hormones were pumped out, the more intensely the memory would be burned into the amygdala, a bundle of neurons in the brain. Whenever the experience was relived, new stress hormones were produced, further reinforcing the memory.

To break the cycle, it was necessary to brush aside the memories. Think about something else.

Something else. But there was nothing else. There was only the key in the lock, forever turning….

Turning, and the door opening as she stepped into the house…

The elevator arrived, chiming faintly. The sound startled her into the present.

When the doors slid apart, she saw two men in suits.

Cops, not feds. She knew instantly. They had to be cops because she saw the faint outlines of their firearms under their jackets. But they weren’t FBI, because their suits weren’t stylish enough. Elitist but true.

She got in, pressing the button for the seventeenth floor.

"Going up?" one man asked. "So are we."

"We are?" the other cop asked with a lifted eyebrow.

"We are now," the first man said.

She looked at him. He was about forty, trim and self-possessed, but with a vaguely disreputable air. It was nothing she could pinpoint, just a suggestion of cunning that she disliked and distrusted.

"Didn’t you just come down?" she asked.

"From eighteen." The elevator began to rise. "We were meeting with Tom Danner. Know him?"

"No." Distantly she remembered that Danner was a profiling consultant, like Gaines. Profilers often acted as liaisons with the local police. "If you’ve just seen him, why are you heading back up?"

He smiled. "No special reason. It’s just a nice night for a ride."

Just what she needed. Don Juan in a cheap suit.

She looked at the numbers above the doors, not wanting to continue the conversation.

"I’m Jim Dodge," the cop said. "West LA Homicide. This is my partner, Al Bradley." Bradley was a big, broad-shouldered man with sleepy eyes.

"Nice to meet you," Tess said, turning away.

Dodge wasn’t deterred. "And you are…?"

"In a hurry."

"Hey, this is LA. Everybody’s in a hurry. But you’ve got to slow down sometime. Stop and smell the flowers."

"I haven’t had a lot of flowers in my life lately." The words came out fast, and instantly she regretted them. He would take the statement as a flirtation.

"You must have a name," he pressed. "It comes standard issue with the birth certificate."

"Tess McCallum." It was easier to tell him than to argue.

"You’re new to this field office."

"Temporary assignment."

"Not too temporary, I hope."

Dodge was looking her over without a hint of self-consciousness. She found herself wondering if she looked all right in her gray suit and white blouse and Western-style string tie. The thought irritated her.

"Where you from?" he asked.

She wished the elevator would move faster. "Denver."

"Nice town. Enjoying LA?"

"I’m not here for enjoyment. I’m working."

"You can’t work all the time."

"Look, Detective—"

"Jim."

"I’m involved with a case right now."

"So am I. Whole bunch of cases. How many open cases we got, Al?"

"More than I can count, Jimbo." Al Bradley spoke in an exhausted baritone.

"More than he can count," Dodge said, "and that’s using his fingers
and
toes. We catch one bad guy, another pops up to replace him. The job never ends. To stay sane, you’ve got to loosen up a little. Not everything is life-and-death."

"That’s a funny attitude for a homicide detective to take."

"I’m just saying you can’t let a case take over your life."

"I already have."

"Oh, I get it. This time it’s personal."

He wanted to be funny, but the joke hurt her like a slap.

"Extremely personal," she said.

The doors opened, and she stepped out. Behind her, Dodge said, "Hey." He was holding a business card. "In case you get lonely."

"No, thanks."

"Take it. It’s good for a free dinner."

Because she didn’t have time to debate the issue, she took the card and stuffed it in the side pocket of her jacket without even giving it a look.

"That’s my cell number. You can reach me anytime." He smiled. "It’s my snitch card. You know, the one I give out—"

"To informants. I’m glad to join such elevated company."

She walked away, not looking back, and heard Al Bradley ask his partner, "What the hell was that all about?"

The elevator doors slid shut before she heard Detective Dodge’s answer.

She had been rude to him, but—oh, hell, it didn’t matter.

Larkin buzzed her into suite 1700 and greeted her in the reception room. "You must’ve exceeded a few posted speed limits," he said.

"All in a good cause. Which room is he in?"

"Whoa, not so fast. Andrus wants to brief you first."

"Can’t you handle that?"

"You know, Agent McCallum, most people wouldn’t turn up their nose at a meeting with the AD."

"I guess my instinct for personal advancement isn’t as refined as it could be."

"I’d say that’s obvious." Larkin opened the door to the interior corridor with a card key and led Tess out of the reception area.

Tess waited almost a full minute before allowing him to know that he’d gotten to her. "What made you say that?" she asked as they strode down a carpeted corridor past rows of squad room doors.

Larkin didn’t bother to glance back at her. "Say what?"

"Don’t play around. It’s boring."

"You mean my comment about your career advancement? All I meant was that you’re still stuck in the Denver office, when by now you probably could’ve been—should’ve been—an SAC or at least an ASAC somewhere."

"By now. After Black Tiger, you mean."

"You got everybody’s attention with that bust, but you didn’t know how to use it. So now you’re taking orders from guys like Michaelson—and taking a lot of shit from people like me."

She couldn’t argue. By his own petty logic Larkin was right. She had been on the fast track, and if her career had stalled, it was no one’s fault but her own.

"Speaking of Michaelson, did I beat him here?" she asked.

"Got here a few minutes ago."

"Damn."

"Don’t get your knickers in a twist. You haven’t missed much."

"How would you know?"

"The interrogation is just under way. They’re probably still working up the nerve to Mirandize the guy."

This was likely to be true. The recitation of the Miranda warnings was a tricky business that had to be approached with care. Handle it wrong, and the suspect would insist on seeing his lawyer, ending the interview before it began. The trick was to lead up casually to the warnings, then deliver them in a perfunctory tone that minimized the importance of the ritual. If the suspect thought the reading was a formality, he would usually waive his rights.

"I still wish you’d waited," she said irritably.

"Point taken and duly noted."

"Who is he? What’s his name?"

"The AD will tell you everything you need to know."

"Right."
You officious little prick
. "How long has Andrus been here?"

He looked at her, a thin, ambiguous smile riding on his lips. "Little while now."

She didn’t see what was so funny. She continued the walk in silence.

With its carpeted floors, fluorescent lighting fixtures, and utilitarian furnishings, suite 1700 could have passed for the headquarters of any bland corporate enterprise, and in fact much of the work done here was decidedly white-collar—investigations of check-fraud rings, telemarketing scams, Ponzi schemes, and assorted nonviolent activities. That was the more genteel part of the operation. Then there was the stuff that made the news—bank robberies, star stalkings, drug busts, an occasional high-profile abduction, and terrorism, the bureau’s new focus, the crime of the new millennium.

The LA field division was one of the bureau’s largest, employing six hundred agents and covering a vast metropolitan sprawl. For these reasons, and because LA was a nexus of media coverage, the office was run by an assistant director, rather than a special agent in charge. Andrus had been on the job for two years, and no doubt would be promoted before long to a stint at bureau headquarters in DC. Unlike Tess, the AD’s instinct for career advancement had never been in need of any honing.

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.