Michael Prescott: Next Victim

The other agents had not yet thought to check on Kidder. They were preoccupied with finding the target. From the confused transmissions coming in over her earpiece, it was clear that they assumed she had left the rest room almost immediately after entering, disguised as one of the two women who had been gabbing at the washstand-one woman dark-haired like Pierce, the other possibly wearing a wig. Either of them could have been the target in disguise.

The women had not been followed, and the full resources of the surveillance operation were now focused on reacquiring them. No one was watching the rest room.

Pierce spoke into her lapel. "This is Kidder." Her voice, a throaty whisper, was indistinguishable from any other female voice. "Am in command of the target."

The gruff voice snapped, "Location?"

"Central exit doors. Lower level at arrival area B. Target has left the building, is proceeding toward taxis at curbside."

"All squads, central exit ground level. Move."

While her pursuers converged on the taxi area on the ground floor, Pierce left the rest room, deposited the communication rig in the nearest trash can, and rode the escalator upstairs to the departure level. She took the first exit. Outside in the warm night, she saw a cab drop off a passenger and immediately hailed it, climbing into the backseat.

As the taxi pulled away, she permitted herself a rearward glance and saw no one following.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

She gave the name of a hotel-the new meeting place arranged last night-then sat in the backseat of the cab with the suitcase on her lap, fingering the soft leather, caressing the bag like a baby.

It was all she had left in the world now. She had given up her job, her home, her identity. She could never go back. Could never undo what she’d done. And she didn’t want to.

She would meet the man at the hotel, give him what he wanted, and earn what she was due.

Then she would be on her way to another country, a new life, and anything that happened afterward would not be her concern.

She just had to keep saying that to herself. She was selling information, that was all. If the purchaser wanted to… do something with that information-well, she couldn’t be responsible for other people’s actions.

She had herself to look out for. Now more than ever. Now, when she was committed and there was no return.

The observation room was dimly lit. Like the room next door, it was soundproofed with acoustic tile, but the voices from the interrogation room were clearly audible over digital speakers attached to the TV monitors.

Tess stopped just inside the doorway, listening.

"So you’ve been in LA how long?"

"Two years."

"You like it here?"

"It’s all right."

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

"I’ll bet."

"That’s one thing about LA. Can’t beat the climate."

"I prefer a four-season climate, myself."

"Do you? Guess you miss Colorado then."

"Sometimes."

"What brought you to LA?"

"Work."

"Well, you have to go where the work takes you. Same with Ed and me."

The voice asking questions belonged to Michaelson. The Ed he’d referred to was Ed Gaines, one of the profiling coordinators assigned to the LA office. A profiling coordinator consulted with police and drew up psychological profiles of suspects. Gaines was one of the more experienced profilers, not only trained at Quantico but an occasional lecturer there.

Agents Hart, DiFranco, and Tyler stood around watching the monitors. A young man whose name Tess didn’t know sat in a swivel chair, using a keyboard and mouse to input data into a desktop computer. She looked closer and saw sine wave patterns hurrying along the computer screen, their ups and downs reflected in the lenses of his eyeglasses.

He was running a CVSA-computerized voice-stress analysis. The lines on the screen were an enhanced record of the microtremors of the vocal cords’ striated muscles. Vibration at the rate of eight to ten cycles per second was normal; a higher frequency indicated stress, which was often correlated with efforts at deceit.

The sine wave pattern presently on display seemed to be within nonstressed parameters. The computer operator would be looking for a sharp break in the sequence, especially the so-called "square-block" pattern of modulation cycles.

Officially the bureau eschewed voice-stress analysis, deeming it unreliable. The results could not be used in court, which was probably just as well, since the technology was new and quite possibly flawed. Many agents regarded it as an outright scam, akin to tarot cards and palmistry-or polygraphs, for that matter.

But Michaelson believed in CVSA. He always used it behind the scenes, despite its inconvenience and expense. This was just one of the many little quirks that no doubt made him lovable to his mother, if to no one else.

"So you’re a civil engineer," Michaelson was saying. "I guess it was construction work that brought you here."

"The Metro project. The Red Line."

"I’ve ridden the subway a few times. You guys did a great job."

A grunt of acknowledgment.

"You moved here two years ago, right?"

"I already told you so."

"Thing is, the Red Line was nearly done by then, wasn’t it? So you couldn’t have worked on it very long."

"Four months."

"Hardly seems worth uprooting yourself for a four-month stint."

From the drift of the conversation, Tess knew that Hayde had already been Mirandized. Michaelson was getting down to business, trying to undermine Hayde’s explanation for why he moved out of Colorado.

"I didn’t think it would be only four months," Hayde said. "They were still talking about extending MOS Three."

"MO-what?"

"MOS. Minimum Operable Segment. The Red Line is divided into three self-contained sections. MOS Three was finished last. Originally, it was supposed to extend farther east and west. The contractor fed me a line of bull, told me they had a shot at getting the additional funding to proceed with the extension."

Tess moved toward the bank of TV sets. Linda Tyler looked up and acknowledged her with a smile. Tyler had been civil, even friendly, from the start. Maybe it was the camaraderie of being two females in an organization still dominated by men. Women made up only fifteen percent of the bureau’s 11,500 agents, and many of the female agents had been relegated to the least glamorous squads, offering the lowest profiles and the smallest chance of advancement.

Hart and DiFranco barely noted her arrival. To them, she was the outsider, the intruder on their turf, and they didn’t seem as convinced as Larkin that her skills at office politics were no threat to their own careers.

The two men kept their gazes fixed on the monitors. An array of cameras with miniature lenses, concealed in the walls and ceiling of the interrogation room, provided comprehensive surveillance without being as obvious as the traditional two-way mirror. The entire interrogation was being digitally videotaped and audiotaped.

"You must’ve been pretty pissed," Michaelson said. "To come all this way for a new job and have it disappear after four months."

"I thought about going back to Colorado. But I was able to find work here."

"So I guess you’ve learned to like LA?"

"I told you, it’s okay."

"This time of year, you can’t beat it. Easter weekend and it’s eighty degrees."

"Nice weather."

"And that breeze off the ocean-man, we even get it here, and we’re four miles inland."

"It’s terrific. I thought you were with the FBI."

"I am, Bill. I showed you my ID. We both did."