Michael Prescott - Next Victim

The watch commander had nothing. He seemed relieved when she left. She supposed she was acting a little feverish. She was on the hunt, and it felt good. She felt…hell, she felt alive, and that had been a rare feeling for her in the past two years.

Her next stop was the LAPD’s West Los Angeles divisional station on Butler Avenue. Another watch commander, another office. Same question. This time she got results.

Since midnight there had been three incidents within LA city limits that met her criteria. One was the theft of chemicals-but no equipment-from a San Pedro warehouse. The second was a break-in at a North Hollywood laboratory, which sounded promising until Tess learned that it was a photographic lab and the burglar, a teenager, had been caught in the act, thanks to a silent alarm.

That left the most serious incident, a fire in a basement chem lab on a university campus. Tess wasn’t sure what to make of the fire. If Mobius had entered the lab to use or steal some equipment, why torch the place? Then she was told that an unidentified corpse, possibly a student, had been found in the debris. And things started to make sense.

From the Butler Avenue station she went into Westwood, visiting Fire Station 37. Most of the crew who had worked the blaze had gone off duty-platoon change was at seven A.M.-but she found one fireman working a double shift, filling in for a buddy with weekend plans. He hadn’t discovered the body himself, but he’d seen it. No, he hadn’t seen any sign of foul play, but the remains had been in bad condition. Arson? The fire department had sent a team from the arson unit to check it out, but he and his crew had left before the squad arrived. They had seen only the two LAPD detectives working the scene.

Tess knew the detectives’ names from the report-Alan Bradley and James Dodge. The names seemed familiar, but she wasn’t sure why.

She drove to the crime scene but found it guarded by campus security guards who would not let her go inside even after they looked at her badge. This was a local crime. The feds had no jurisdiction here.

Quartz lights were positioned near the outside windows, and Prosser pumps sucked out standing water through thick hoses. The guards told her that some people from the city fire department’s arson unit were at work in the laboratory. Eventually one of the guards condescended to see if the chief investigator would talk with her.

He came up wearing heavy canvas fatigues, knee-high rubber boots, and thick gloves, with a crowbar clutched in one hand and a camera hanging by a strap around his neck. His face was sooty and streaked with sweat, and he looked more like a coal miner than an investigator of any kind.

The investigator said his team had been working the site for three hours and had at least another hour to go. They had determined the site of origin in the middle of the room and were checking nearby electrical appliances and connections for signs of an overload. Most fires originated with electrical faults. "But even if we find a problem with the wiring, it doesn’t prove much. A fire this hot will burn the insulation right off the wires and cause a short circuit."

"It was a hot, fast fire, then?"

"With the fuel load in that room? You better believe it."

"So you can’t say it was arson?"

"Can’t say much of anything yet. Normally what we look for is evidence of an accelerant at the origin point. And we have it-deep char, serious spalling of the concrete floor, burn-through of the counters in that area."

"So you know an accelerant was used," Tess said.

"Yeah, but the thing is, the whole lab was full of accelerants. Half the chemicals stored there were flammable-acetone, methylated spirits, solvents. And if it was arson, you’ve got to figure the arsonist used the stuff that was available. I took samples of the floor-"

"A concrete floor? You ripped it up?"

"No, it was spalled-that means chipped. So I could just sweep up the chips. And I put down some fuller’s earth, let it absorb whatever was on the surface, and collected the dirt for analysis. Did that in undamaged parts of the room, too, for control samples. It’s a science, you see. There’s a procedure-"

"Okay, okay. Sorry to interrupt."

"Anyway, even if the lab finds accelerants in the samples, which I expect they will, it won’t prove much."

"How can you prove it?"

"Not sure we can. It could have been arson, but it also could have been an experiment that went wrong and caused an explosion that spread as a fire. Or spontaneous combustion of chemical-soaked rags. Or a faulty electrical circuit…"

"What do you think it was? What does your gut tell you?"

"My gut tells me somebody set that fire. But my gut has been wrong before. Maybe the autopsy will tell us more."

"Where’s the body?"

"County morgue. Where else?"

So here she was, at 3:15 P.M., stepping through the doorway of the radiology room and realizing why the names Bradley and Dodge had seemed familiar.

The two cops in cheap suits. Dodge was the obnoxious one.

And naturally, he was the one who was here.

"I’m wrong?" Winston said, giving the visitor a chilly reception. "Would you care to explain just how you know?"

Agent McCallum was unfazed. She approached the table, allowing Dodge a good look at her. He liked what he saw. In the elevator she had been distracted, nervous. Now she was focused and intense, a cat waiting to pounce.

"Because I know how this young man died," McCallum said. "And who killed him." She looked his way and nodded in recognition. "Hello, Detective Dodge."

He tried out a warm smile. "Hey, Special Agent."

She turned to Winston. "Tess McCallum, FBI." Her ID folder came out, but Winston didn’t bother to look. "I’m part of a task force tracking a serial killer. I think he killed this man."

"Well, that’s an interesting theory." Winston was acting territorial. She didn’t appreciate this McCallum barging in and telling her she’d missed something.

"Look at his neck," McCallum said. "There should be a transverse knife wound above the Adam’s apple."

Normally a slashed neck would be difficult to overlook, but the cracked, creased, crisped flesh hid any other damage. Winston studied the neck for a long moment.

"I see it," she said. "Incision begins near the left carotid. Travels across the anterior cervix just above the cricoid cartilage in a semicircular track, and terminates immediately before the right carotid."

"Ear to ear," Dodge said. "But he missed the arteries."

McCallum shook her head. "He didn’t miss. He never cuts the carotids. He wants his victims to bleed to death slowly."

"So he’s a nasty boy."

She gave Dodge an unfriendly glance. "Very much so."

He returned her glare with equanimity, wondering if Agent McCallum liked her boys nasty.

Winston had taken out a scalpel with a ruled edge and was measuring the cut. "Approximate width of the wound channel…"

"Three millimeters," McCallum said. "Four where it’s deepest."

"That appears to be correct. How did you know?"

"He always uses the same knife."

"How many times has he done this?"

"Four times in Denver. This is his third in LA."

"So he moved to the coast," Dodge said.

Winston didn’t seem surprised. "They all wind up here eventually. All the freaks."

"It’s called diversity." Dodge was smiling. "It’s what makes this city great."

Both women ignored him. He was pretty sure they were pissed off. That was okay. He liked getting a rise out of women.

"So what’s this guy’s MO?" he asked McCallum. "He goes busting into chem labs, wasting students?"

"No. He kills women. This homicide doesn’t fit his usual pattern."

"Then how’d you happen to connect it to him?"