Michael Prescott - Next Victim

"Stay there," he said, while Pancho sank to his knees, holding his nuts.

Dodge unlocked the car and started the engine. He thought about just taking off, dragging Pancho behind him for a block or two, but that would be cruel. Worse, it would lead to inquiries and repercussions, two things Dodge disliked.

He left the car idling and walked around to the rear again, then grabbed Pancho by the hair and shoved his face against the muzzle of the exhaust pipe.

"Suck on it. Suck hard."

Pancho’s eyes, rolling, were too big for his face. There was a stain on his pants where he’d pissed himself.

He closed his mouth over the pipe and kissed it for a good half minute, obviously struggling not to breathe. The swirl of fumes got to him anyway. He started to choke, tried to pull his face away. Dodge tapped the nape of his neck with the gun.

"More."

Pancho again clamped his teeth on the pipe.

"That’s it, amigo. Work it good. This is excellent practice for you. You’ll be real popular in county lockup, which is where you’ll be going one of these days."

Pancho began to make retching noises. His face was sweaty and pale.

Dodge reached over with his free hand and pinched Pancho’s nostrils shut, simultaneously leaning on him from behind, forcing the pipe deeper into his throat.

"Breathe deep, piece of shit."

Pancho struggled, tugging at the handcuff, shaking his shoulders. Dodge held on. He had wrestled bigger punks than this one.

He didn’t let go until he was sure the wetback had taken a nice big hit of carbon monoxide, enough to make him good and sick. Then he stepped away and allowed Pancho to jerk clear of the pipe. The kid fell over on his side, wheezing and shuddering, and Dodge unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them.

"Still want the car?" Dodge asked.

Pancho just lay there as a dribble of vomit pooled on the asphalt beside his open mouth.

Dodge smiled. "I didn’t think so."

He slid behind the wheel and drove off, leaving the kid on the street like so much trash.

"You and him," Larkin said, "face-to-face?"

"It’s the only way," Tess answered evenly.

"Might work." DiFranco sounded intrigued. "Could get a reaction out of him, at any rate."

Tess nodded. "If it doesn’t, nothing will."

"I don’t know." Larkin was shaking his head. "He’s probably expecting to see you."

"Is he? Why? As far as we know, he’s not even aware that I’m in LA. If I walk in unannounced, he may betray something. In his eyes, or"-she nodded at the computer-"in his voice."

DiFranco and Hart exchanged a glance. On the TV monitors, the interrogation continued, Michaelson and Gaines pressing, Hayde unfazed.

"We’ve gotta clear it with Michaelson," DiFranco said finally.

Tess shrugged. "Buzz him."

Larkin looked peeved, but he sent a signal to Michaelson’s pager. Michaelson touched the vest pocket of his jacket, feeling the pager’s vibration. He excused himself, leaving Tyler and Gaines with the suspect.

A moment later he entered the surveillance room. He was a thin man with a hawklike proboscis that had earned him the nickname of the Nose. His slightly nasal voice may have contributed to the appellation. Tess had seen one of her squadmates create hand shadows on the wall of his cubicle to produce a passable likeness of Michaelson’s profile. "Watch yourselves, everybody," the agent had warned in a stage whisper. "Never let down your guard. Remember…the Nose knows."

Tess found herself staring at that nose as she told Michaelson what she wanted to do. He listened impatiently, then looked past her and asked, "Nothing on the stress analysis?" He was always looking past her, or through her, or around her. She was an obstacle in his life, nothing more.

"No significant deviations from sine wave baseline," the agent at the computer said.

"Hell." The Nose stared at Hayde’s multiple images on the TV screens. Tess waited. She knew it was Michaelson’s call. "All right," he said finally. "Let me go back in there and resume the interrogation. Give it five minutes. Then send in McCallum."

Referring to Tess in the third person even when she was three feet away was another of Michaelson’s winning personality traits. She didn’t bother to thank him. He wouldn’t have heard her, anyway.

He left the observation room. Tess stared after him, thinking that she had won a small victory. She ought to feel pleased. Instead what she felt was a sudden tremor, subtle at first, working its way through her body.

She needed a moment to pinpoint its meaning. Then she knew: It was fear.

Five minutes, and she would be in the same room with the man who might be Mobius.

In the same room.

Michaelson was seated at the steel table again. Tess turned to Larkin. Holding her voice steady, she said, "I’ll be back in a minute."

"Where the hell are you going?"

"Ladies’ room."

She walked out without further discussion. She knew the others would think it was a sign of weakness that she had to find some privacy, compose herself. She didn’t care.

All she really wanted was a few moments alone. At least that was what she told herself. But when she entered the rest room, a stronger urge overcame her. She opened the nearest stall and leaned over the commode and vomited up her dinner.

When she was through, she flushed the toilet, then flushed it again. The gurgling water soothed her somehow. She walked to the counter and ran her hands under a stream of hot water, splashing her face. Then she turned on the cold and rinsed out her mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw dark crescents of fatigue underscoring her gray eyes. Her face was pale, fringed in strawberry blond curls. A scattering of freckles stood out on her forehead and cheeks. People had told her that she looked young for her age, but tonight exhaustion made her look older than thirty-four.

She dried her face, took a breath, and checked her watch-12:25. It occurred to her it was no longer Good Friday. Good Friday, the day innocence had died.

For her, innocence had died on February 12, two years ago.

She resisted the pull of that thought. She tried to focus on better things, on her life before Mobius. In those years she had never missed a Good Friday service. The candles would be extinguished one by one until only the paschal candle was left. That last flame was carried out of the church, leaving the congregation in darkness.

Tenebrae, it was called. The Service of Shadows.

Those same words, she thought, could describe her life, her job. She and Andrus and their colleagues-all of them, Michaelson and Gaines, Collins and Diaz, even a supercilious little prick like Larkin-all had devoted their lives to the darkness. They lived for the night, when the predators prowled. They fought the shadows, and in time they became little more than shadows themselves.

And if they were shadows, what then was Paul Voorhees? Less than a shadow now…only a shadow’s memory, fading out.

The key in the lock…

She didn’t want to think about it. But she couldn’t help herself.

The key turning, the lock yielding without resistance…

The door had been left unlatched.

In that moment she knew something was wrong. Paul would never leave the front door unsecured.

There was a miniature flashlight on her key chain. She switched it on and aimed the penlight beam at the lock. In the dim red glow, she made out scratch marks on the metal-marks left by a tension bar and a pick. The lock had been opened without a key, by someone using burglar’s tools.

Someone.

Mobius?

She dismissed the idea. Of course it wasn’t Mobius. Mobius had no way of knowing where she lived. And nothing in his modus operandi suggested a facility with lock-picking tools.