Michael Prescott - Next Victim

Michaelson picked up on that. "Or Denver, maybe."

"Denver?"

"It’s pretty close to Colorado Springs."

"You spend a lot of time in Denver when you were in Colorado?" Gaines asked.

"Yeah, I went to Denver now and again. On weekends or whatever. I like going to a city, getting some action."

"Action like tonight?" Gaines pressed.

"You the sex police or something? What’s your problem? Not getting enough at home? You two guys, you ought to shack up together. You make a cute couple."

Neither man reacted. One of the cardinal rules of interrogating a suspect was to avoid a personality conflict.

"I guess you thought you and Agent Tyler would make a nice couple," Gaines said.

"Not exactly. I thought we’d make some nice coupling, if you see the distinction."

"When she picked you up," Michaelson said, "did you think she was a whore?"

"A hooker? The thought crossed my mind. But she never mentioned money."

"I didn’t mean a hooker. I meant, did you think she was a tramp, a slut?"

"What?"

"That’s what I would think," Gaines said, "if some woman came up to me out of nowhere and started hitting on me. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be flattered…but I’d have to figure she’s pretty loose, if you know what I mean."

"Lots of loose women in LA," Michaelson said. "Town’s full of them. They’ll fuck anybody that’s got a dick. They use their bodies like a welcome mat."

Gaines nodded. "You act like a welcome mat, you’ve got to expect someone’s going to walk all over you. It’s just human nature."

This kind of talk was a tactical move. Blame the victim. Imply that she’d had it coming. Sometimes a suspect would open up if he thought his interrogators were on his moral wavelength.

"You two for real?" Hayde looked genuinely amused. "Slut, loose woman-did I go through a time warp when I came in here? Is this 1954 or something? Or are you guys charter members of the Joe Friday fan club?"

Tess glanced at the computer. Voice stress remained low.

Michaelson leaned forward, abandoning informality, and hardened his voice. "Let me be straight with you, Mr. Hayde."

He had switched to addressing the suspect by his last name. It was a signal to Gaines to try the direct approach.

"What we’re looking at is not just this one case," Michaelson said. "It’s a pattern. Your actions tonight are part of that pattern. Your actions eleven days ago fit the same pattern."

"Eleven days ago? What are you talking about?"

On the computer screen, the sine waves had broken up, indicating increased stress but not necessarily deception.

"Monday night, March twentieth. Angie Callahan. Ring a bell?"

"No."

The sine waves were smoothing out. The technology said he wasn’t lying.

Tess studied Hayde’s face on the nearest monitor. She saw no darting eye movements, no defensive body language. Hayde was not looking toward his upper right, as he might if he were unconsciously accessing the creative centers of the right cerebral hemisphere.

"Sure it does. You picked her up-or maybe she picked you up. It doesn’t matter. You went back to her condo. Your memory clearing up, Mr. Hayde?"

"I’ve never heard of anybody named Angie Callahan."

"You knew her. And you killed her."

"Say again?"

"You taped her wrists to the headboard of her bed, and you slit her throat, didn’t you?"

"You think I’m a murderer?"

"We know you are. We’ve nailed you. It’s over. We’ve got all the evidence we need."

To punctuate his partner’s statement, Gaines held up the bulging folder.

Tess thought they were laying it on a little thick. But they had to get a reaction, had to rattle the unflappable Bill Hayde, who just sat there shaking his head in amazed derision.

"You think I’m a friggin’ serial killer, for Christ’s sake?"

"Who said anything about a serial killer, Mr. Hayde?"

"You just said it’s a pattern. And you’re asking me about Denver. I’m not as dumb as I look, gentlemen. I can put two and two together and usually get four. You’re after the Pickup Artist, right?" He sounded more intrigued than alarmed.

"What if we are?"

"He killed, what, three people in Denver a couple years ago?"

"Four," Gaines said, and Tess mouthed the same word, thinking of the fourth victim.

"Yeah, that’s right, four. Last one was a feeb like you guys, as I recall." Hayde was smiling, and Tess had never hated anyone as much as she hated him in that moment, for that smile. "And now you’re trying to pin all that on me? Just because I tried to pork Agent Starling here?"

"Agent Tyler," Michaelson corrected, seeming confused, as if he didn’t get the reference.

Hayde ignored him and leaned back as far as the straight-backed chair would allow. "Man, you folks must be desperate. I mean, if a little S-and-M action is enough to get me pulled in, you’ve got to be scraping bottom."

Tess checked the computer. Smooth sine waves. The agent manning the console caught her glance. "Stress is low," he said.

"Fucking sociopaths can beat those machines," DiFranco muttered.

"They can beat a polygraph." This was Larkin. "Not a CVSA."

"They can beat anything," DiFranco persisted. "Voice stress is bullshit, anyway. Even if it wasn’t, these guys are so crazy, they don’t even know when they’re lying."

"Does he strike you as crazy?" Tess asked quietly.

They all looked at her. No one spoke for a moment. Then Hart said, "Sometimes they can pass for normal. It doesn’t prove anything."

"Maybe not," she conceded. "But I know what would." She took a breath. "Let me see him. Face-to-face."

Jim Dodge slid into the corner booth at Lucy J’s and ordered a seltzer water.

"Drinking the hard stuff?" Myron Levine said with a cocked eyebrow. When Levine did that, he looked a lot like the guy who played Dr. McCoy on the old Star Trek show.

"I’m on duty," Dodge said.

"On a Friday night? What’s cooking?"

"I’m catching calls all weekend. Tonight there was a gangbang on Robertson." Nearly all violent crime in the West LA district took place along a short strip of Robertson Boulevard. "Two assholes got into it at a video store. One of them was stabbed. I’m supposed to be on my way over right now."

"Is the kid dead?"

"Critical."

"White?"

"Black."

"Huh." Levine shrugged, losing interest as Dodge had known he would. A wounded black banger wasn’t news-not TV news, at any rate. And Levine was a crime reporter for KPTI-TV. Except he didn’t call it crime reporting. To hear Levine tell it, he was the Channel Eight Justice Watch correspondent.

The job title was bullshit. TV news was bullshit. Truth be told, most of the actual facts reported in the news were bullshit, too. Fucking reporters either got the facts wrong or just plain made them up.

Dodge wasn’t judgmental about any of that. He didn’t blame Myron Levine and his associates for peddling a load of crap to an ignorant public. Hell, it was a living.

He knew Levine wanted to get right to the point, which was why he decided to make him wait a minute or two. "You were in Denver for a while, right?"

"Couple years at Channel Three. Why?"

"Ever hear of an FBI agent name of Tess McCallum?"

Levine nodded. "Black Tiger."

"Black Tiger? What the fuck is that? Some kind of secret code?"

"A case she worked."

"In Denver?"

"In Miami, as I recall. But it was news everywhere for a while. I even tried to set up an interview with McCallum when she transferred to Denver, but she wouldn’t talk to me."

Dodge wasn’t surprised. "She’s not too talkative. I noticed that myself."

Levine was getting antsy. "So what does Tess McCallum have to do with the price of beer in China?"