Michael Prescott: Next Victim

"Oh, for Christ’s sake," Michaelson said.

She was beginning to regret allowing him into the conversation. But Andrus, at least, looked thoughtful. "It’s not impossible," he said slowly.

Thank you, Gerry, she thought.

"He could be playing us," Tess said, wondering if her theory made any sense and if she even believed it herself. "He could have set up Hayde in order to throw us off."

"That would presuppose his knowing that Hayde was pulled in last night," Andrus said.

"Maybe he does know."

"How?"

"Say he was watching the building."

"Doubtful. He was getting ready to strike at the MiraMist."

"He struck later. Didn’t arrive at the hotel until after we were through with Hayde."

Andrus frowned. "Still seems unlikely. How would he even know who Hayde was?"

"There’s another possibility." Tess hated to say it, but both men were looking at her, and she had no choice. "He may be operating from the inside."

" Fuck this," Michaelson blurted. "You’re fucking crazy, McCallum. Gerry, she’s out of her goddamn mind."

"Just shut up and listen to me."

"Do you have any evidence the dead body is Hayde?"

"Not yet-"

"Then why the hell are you wasting our time?"

She looked at Andrus, and his shoulders lifted. "Have to say I’m with Dick on this one." Calling him Dick was a little jab at Michaelson. Everyone knew he hated that name. "The body could be anyone. A professor, a burglar…"

"Come on, Gerry."

"I’ll tell you what. When we get hold of Hayde’s medical and dental files, we’ll have the morgue make a comparison. But for the moment, let’s not jump off any cliffs, shall we?"

She frowned but nodded. Maybe she had allowed herself to get overexcited.

Or maybe there was another avenue of investigation she could pursue.

"Okay," she said. "Just keep it in mind. Mobius is smart. He’s always one step ahead."

"One step ahead of you, anyway," the Nose observed.

God, she’d love to punch that guy. Instead she elbowed her way through the crowd, into a hallway. She thought about entering one of the glass-walled offices that ringed half the main room, but she preferred more privacy. She continued to the end of the hall, past a kitchen and lavatory, and found a rear office with an open door.

The office was small and tidy, most of its space taken up by a metal desk, one of the ubiquitous swivel chairs, and a file cabinet. A fluorescent panel glared down from the low ceiling. On the desk was a computer, and at a glance she identified a high-speed modem.

When she had initiated the bot search, she’d arranged to have any hits moved to her online storage service as they came in. She could access those results from any computer on the Net.

She sat at the computer and brought it out of suspend mode. The Windows desktop appeared on the screen.

No password required. She was good to go.

Activating the Web browser, she navigated to the storage service and logged on. The bot had dumped a list of URLs-Web page addresses-into the main folder.

Somewhere in that list, there might be an explanation of Mobius’s taste in music, and with it, a link to William Hayde-or to someone else.

Who else, though? That was the unanswered question. It would almost have to be someone on the task force, someone who knew that Hayde had been picked up as a suspect.

She clicked on the first URL in the list and found a review of the song "Wipe Out," which had attracted the search bot’s attention because the reviewer enthused about the song’s "killer guitar riffs."

The next Web page was somebody’s online diary, which mentioned "Wipe Out" as a favorite song in one entry and a "cool movie about serial killers" a month later.

Maybe she hadn’t sufficiently narrowed the search parameters. She might be stuck with a bunch of garbage here.

As she opened the next file, her mind returned to the possibility of a mole on the task force. If there was a mole, he might not be the original Mobius. He could be copycatting the Denver crimes. Being an investigator, he would know all the details of the killings, even the signature elements that hadn’t been publicized.

Maybe. But she didn’t buy it. It felt wrong. She’d stood inside the room where Amanda Pierce had been murdered. She’d been in Dodge’s bedroom. She could sense Mobius in those killing zones. She could smell him there.

Unless she was going crazy. She’d been battling posttraumatic stress disorder for two years. Maybe it was a battle she had finally lost.

The third Web page was a dead end, as were the fourth, fifth, and sixth. The bot had dredged up the detritus of the Web-fan fiction, chat room transcripts, message board threads. She was beginning to think she was wasting her time.

Suppose there was a mole on the task force, and he was the real Mobius, the original. In that case she’d been working side by side with him. Not just here but in Denver also…

But nobody on the task force had been stationed in Denver. Most of them had been in LA for at least the past three years. A few had come from other offices. Michaelson, for instance She paused in the act of opening another URL.

Michaelson.

He was relatively new to LA. She was sure of it. But how did she know? She’d never talked to him about his past or about anything else of a personal nature. Still, she could almost remember…

Before this, I was stationed in Salt Lake City. Pretty hot there in the summer, and colder than hell all winter long.

The interrogation. He’d been talking to Hayde.

That was where she’d heard it.

Salt Lake City wasn’t Denver. But it was within an eight-hour drive via I-80 and I-25. Hop on a plane, and he could have made it in no time.

No. That was crazy.

She was allowing her dislike of Michaelson to influence her judgment.

On the other hand, she disliked him only because he’d been hostile to her from the start.

Ignoring her. Never meeting her eyes.

Because he was afraid of what she might see? She’d looked into Hayde’s eyes and seen nothing.

What would she see in Michaelson’s eyes?

She tried to push these thoughts away. She had no evidence to go on. She had to deal in facts, not speculation.

The next half dozen Web pages yielded nothing. She kept opening them, but she no longer expected success.

Michaelson…

She couldn’t keep her mind off that subject. Michaelson had been the one who found Hayde’s cuff link in the Metro tunnel. And he’d found it as the searchers were retracing their steps. Had he planted it as they started their search, then conveniently discovered it on their return?

The cuff link had convinced everyone that Mobius had escaped into the tunnels. Suppose he hadn’t. Suppose he’d slipped into a supply closet or another hiding place inside the station, then emerged when police officers and FBI agents arrived. No one would have questioned how he’d gotten in. No one would have guessed that he’d been there the whole time.

She was on the fifteenth URL now. A garage band called Killer Elite, whose repertoire included "Wipe Out." Another blind alley. But it might not matter anymore.

Not if Michaelson was her man.

The stupid things he’d said to her at the crime scene-the hostile, sexist remarks-were they evidence of a deep-seated hatred of women? Mobius’s hatred?

As she’d said earlier, there would have been time for Hayde to get to the MiraMist and pick up Amanda Pierce after leaving the Federal Building. But the same was true of Michaelson. He could have driven into Santa Monica and met Pierce at the bar.

She was on the third-to-last Web page now. Still nothing of interest.

So add it all up. Michaelson had been in Salt Lake City in the appropriate time frame. He displayed hostility toward her and toward women in general. He avoided eye contact. He could have been present at the Universal City station from the time when the train arrived. He was the one who’d found the cuff link.