Michael Prescott - Next Victim

Saint Paul. The nickname fit him, and yet it was a cop-out, really. He was just a decent man, clearheaded, with a sense of right and wrong-a "value system," in the current jargon. It seemed obvious to him that if people just followed the rules and treated each other with kindness, everyone would be better off. Why didn’t more people see this? What the hell were they thinking?

She knew he’d been sad sometimes, worn down by the grief in the eyes of witnesses and victims, but what she preferred to remember were their hikes in the Rockies, the crisp air, the great silence, Paul’s face ruddy behind a plume of frosty breath, her gloved hand in his.

At 2:25 she pulled into the motel parking lot. Before leaving the car, she removed her Sig Sauer 9mm from her purse. The purse had been specially modified to hold the pistol and two spare magazines, a solution she had chosen when every other method of carrying a concealed weapon-shoulder rig, belt holster, trench coat pocket-had proven undesirably cumbersome.

When she got out of the car, she was holding the gun close to her side, her finger applying light pressure to the trigger. There was no reason to think Mobius knew where she was staying. Most likely he thought she was still in Denver. But she was taking no chances.

The motel was a two-story L-shaped building. Her room was number 14, on the ground floor. She had noticed that there was a break in the sequence of room numbers, with unlucky number 13 omitted. No one wanted to stay in room 13, apparently. Yet of course someone was staying there. She was staying there. They could put a 14 on her door, but the room would still be the thirteenth in line.

She didn’t care. She wasn’t superstitious. Even so, she wished she had been given a different room.

Still holding the gun against her right hip, she walked to the door and unlocked it. Her free hand found the wall switch and flipped it, turning on twin bedside lamps. She stood in the doorway, checking out the parts of the room she could see, then studying the image in the mirror to get a look at the rest. There was no movement, no sign of intrusion, nothing out of place.

Finally she entered. She ducked into the bathroom, emerged, checked the doorway again, then circled the living space. Nobody was there. She shut the door, locked it, threw the bolt, and even fastened the useless security chain, which could be broken by one quick kick.

She hadn’t checked her message machine in two days. She sat on the bed and dialed her home number. An electronic voice told her that she had seven messages.

One was her friend Donna asking where she was on Thursday night. "We were supposed to have dinner, remember?" Tess hadn’t remembered. Although she carried an electronic organizer that listed all her appointments, she hadn’t looked at it once since her arrival in LA. It was as if her personal life had been put on hold until this case was cleared. Or maybe it was truer to say that her life had been on hold in Denver, and now, finally, she was free to take action.

There were a few more messages from friends calling to find out where she was, then a call from a guy in her apartment building-a successful attorney, she believed-who’d been showing an interest in her. He wanted to go out for coffee. She wondered what she would have said to that offer if she’d been home. Was it time to go out again? Time to take that kind of risk?

The last message was from the manager of her building, saying there was a UPS package waiting for her in the office. Tess knew what it was-a vintage edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses that she’d ordered from an online dealer in rare books. She had loved those poems once, and on impulse one night, alone and restless, she had tracked down the volume on the Internet and ordered it, perhaps hoping to rediscover the meaning they had once held for her. To rediscover her own innocence, she supposed.

But of course it was too late for that. Probably she had known it even at the time.

She erased the messages, making a mental note to return Donna’s call tomorrow.

A small stack of mail had been left on the bureau by the maid. Tess had started receiving mail forwarded from her Denver address earlier this week. So far she’d been informed of an art gallery opening she’d missed, a magazine subscription that was expiring, and the amounts she owed on two credit cards. Today’s mail was more of the same. Water bill, thank-you note from her niece for a recent birthday present, statement from her broker…

And a postcard.

She lifted the card slowly, holding it by the corner. Even before turning it over to read the message, she knew who had sent it.

The picture on the front of the card was of a bikini-clad nymph striking a cheesecake pose in the surf. The caption read, Come on in, the water’s fine!

On the back was her address in Denver, a Los Angeles postmark and a yellow forwarding label, and a few words neatly printed in block letters.

YOU’LL NEVER CATCH ME THAT WAY, TESS. DO YOU THINK I’M SO STUPIDLY PREDICTABLE?

Like his other cards, this one was signed MOBIUS.

Gently she put down the postcard, not wanting to risk further contamination. It was a useless gesture, of course. There was no chance of finding his prints on it. He would have worn gloves, and besides, the item had been handled by too many other people.

When had the card been sent? The postmark was March 22. Three days to get from LA to Denver. Four days to reach her here. It wouldn’t have been forwarded at all if it hadn’t borne a first-class stamp.

Had Mobius known her mail was being forwarded? Was that why he used the stamp? Possibly. She thought of the wording of his message: "You’ll never catch me that way, Tess." You, not they. As if he knew she was personally involved, again on his trail.

And he knew something else as well. Her Denver address.

"He knows where I live," she heard herself whisper.

She had thought she was safe. She’d believed there was no way he could find her-and now he was casually announcing that he could have paid her a visit whenever he pleased.

She sat on the sofa opposite the bureau and thought of the first postcard he’d sent, a picture of a jackrabbit with antlers, with the caption, The Jackelope, one of Colorado’s Most Unusual Critters.

A tacky, jokey card-like all the ones that followed. There had been a chimp on skis (Goin’ Ape for Colorado!), a prospector on a tired mule (Tarnation, Is My Ass Sore!), a rock climber dangling from a cliff face (Hanging Out in the Rockies), and a trio of busty ladies in an Indian casino (Loosest Sluts in Town!).

Five cards in all, sent to her at the Denver field office, never her home. The investigation had been handled by the Denver PD back then, with the FBI field office merely consulting on the case, but he had never shown any interest in contacting the police. He seemed to feel he deserved the attention of the FBI. Anything less than the federal government wasn’t worthy of him.

His other cards had been postmarked from various ZIP codes around the Denver metropolitan area. Mobius never mailed a card from the same location twice. He left no prints except impressions of smooth gloves. He provided no handwriting samples, just carefully printed capital letters. The pen he used was a generic ballpoint. The messages were brief and cryptic. He was playing games with her.

The jackelope postcard had arrived shortly after the second murder in Denver. He’d established his bona fides with a few details of the killings that had never been publicized. Then he’d written, I HOPE I HAVEN’T BEEN KEEPING YOU TOO BUSY, and printed the name MOBIUS. That was the first time the killer had identified himself.

In subsequent postcards he’d taunted her further, his messages increasingly personal.