Michael Prescott - Deadly Pursuit

But he was determined to do it right. He’d made a small but potentially serious mistake in carrying out Meredith’s execution. The cops had been suspicious, and he’d spent some sleepless nights before her death was finally ruled an accident.

This time there would be no sloppy screw-ups. Thirteen months in a cell had been long enough; he would never go back.

He delayed his plans until he settled on the perfect strategy-the killing of strangers in random cities far from home-and the ideal method.

His discovery of the method was pure luck. During a routine medical checkup, the nurse left him alone in the examination room for a few minutes. Restless, he looked through the drawers and found a box of unused disposable syringes. One of them went in his coat pocket, never to be missed.

Being plastic, with only a thin steel needle at its core, it could be hidden in his suit jacket and carried through an airport metal detector without triggering the alarm. It was quick and sure, bloodless and silent, and above all, intensely satisfying. He loved watching the women’s convulsions, their rolling eyes and flapping limbs.

Ronni Tyler’s death throes had been particularly gratifying. He had kissed her when she was finally dead, murmuring in her ear: “I hope it was good for you, too.”

The 405 rocketed him to the eastbound 101, where traffic was heavier and progress slow. He had nearly finished the Springsteen CD by the time he reached the strip mall in the North Hollywood district of L.A. He pulled into his parking slot at 9:25.

Of the eight business establishments in the modest L-shaped complex, Consolidated Silver amp; Gold Investors, Inc., had the largest office but the smallest sign. It was not meant to attract customers off the street.

A clamor of voices calling out buy and sell orders assaulted him as he stepped into the boiler room. The impression of frantic activity, like everything else about the operation, was a scam, a cheat; there was no mob of traders here, merely a tape loop playing sounds of a busy commodities exchange over four speakers bolted to the walls. A corny ruse, but it kept his salesmen wired while they worked the phones, and it served well as background noise during the pitch.

Jack paused just inside the doorway and surveyed his kingdom. Gray short-nap carpet, painted plywood walls, extension cords stretched along the baseboards. Half a dozen cheap metal desks and swivel chairs flanked by wastebaskets filled with old newspapers and takeout food containers. The wide front windows had been covered with Venetian blinds, now partially open to let in stripes of sun that complemented the frosty glare of fluorescent panels.

Three of his four men-he only hired men; women couldn’t sell; it was an article of faith with him-were already on the phones, pressing hard for the first deal of the day. They greeted him with smiles and waves, and kept talking. The smiles were genuine; his men respected him and liked him. Behind his back, but sometimes within earshot, they called him The Master.

Jack poured himself a mug of coffee, then sat at his desk in a rear corner, away from the glare of the windows. He wondered, not for the first time, what his men would think of him if they knew how he spent his weekends.

Perhaps they would despise him for it. But he didn’t think so. There was an undercurrent of boiling violence beneath the average scam artist’s smooth exterior.

He would never know for certain, but he liked to believe that if his men did learn the truth about him, they would respect The Master that much more.

Jack Dance’s arrival at his place of business was observed and recorded by four FBI technicians in a green van parked across the street. Video and still cameras captured his brief walk to the office door. The same cameras, their telephoto lenses focused on the front windows, caught glimpses of him through gaps in the Venetian blinds. Only once he sat at his desk, away from the windows, was he lost to sight.

“He’s in there,” the camera operator said. “If he follows his routine, he won’t come out till noon.”

The communications technician radioed a transmission on a VHF band. The signal was unscrambled, necessitating a coded message.

“Weather Central, this is Tracking Post A. Storm front has moved in.”

Peter Lovejoy’s voice crackled over the technician’s earplug: “Continue monitoring the system’s progress. We’re placing additional resources at your disposal.”

Jack’s first call of the day was to a Mr. Pavel Zykmund of Downey. Mr. Zykmund’s name had come from a mailing list, one of several Jack had purchased from publishers of religious magazines and investment newsletters with conservative leanings. He’d found that people with an apocalyptic outlook and a distrust of paper money were more likely to put their faith in precious metals as a hedge against society’s collapse.

A gruff male voice edged with a strong Eastern European accent answered on the fourth ring. “Service.” Electric tools whirred in the background.

“Pavel?”

“This is me.”

“Hey, Pavel, how you doing? This is Dave Michaels over at Consolidated.”

“Consolidated?”

“Consolidated Silver and Gold Investors. Listen, man, I’m sorry it’s been so long since I talked with you, but I’ve gotten kind of backlogged here. You know how it is.”

Dance had never spoken with Zykmund before. Faking a previous relationship was the first key part of the pitch.

In the alley behind the strip mall, a red Camaro eased to a stop near a trash bin. Two men in dark business suits emerged. They were Dallas P.D. homicide detectives, and they had been members of the Trail Ridge task force ever since a twenty-two-year-old legal secretary named Dorothy Beerbaum had turned up dead on the Trinity River greenbelt with a puncture wound in her neck.

Both cops were carrying Smith. 38 Chief’s Specials, drawn, cocked, and locked. They approached the back door of CSGI and waited, hugging the wall to minimize the risk of being seen from a rear window.

Zykmund wasn’t buying it, not right off.

“Excuse me?” he said with evident impatience. “I’m afraid I do not recall you or your company, Mr…?”

“Michaels. Dave Michaels, of Consolidated Silver and Gold. Come on, Pavel, has it been that long? Let me check my records… Holy smoke, you won’t believe this. It’s been six months since I called. No wonder you don’t remember me.”

“Mr. Michaels, I am busy man.”

Precisely what Jack was counting on. A busy man could never keep track of all his phone calls and business contacts.

“Call me Dave,” Jack said. “Look, I know it was a while ago, but you remember what we talked about last time? I was trying to get you into silver at five dollars an ounce. You weren’t able to do business with me at that time, which is a shame, because today silver’s at six dollars and twenty-seven cents. If you’d gone with me when I asked you to, Pavel, you could have made yourself a twenty-five percent profit.”

“Twenty-five percent,” Pavel murmured, and Jack smiled.

Late last night, the street directly outside the strip mall had been lined with orange cones and signs warning Tow Away Zone. No vehicles had parked at the curb, leaving plenty of open space for the blue Honda Civic that pulled up now.

At the wheel was a detective from the San Antonio Police Department, who had worked the case involving Jack Dance’s first known victim, a biochemistry graduate student at UTSA killed in her apartment fourteen months earlier.

Seated next to him was the sheriff of San Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Dance’s second victim had been found in an arroyo near the Rio Puerco.

Overhead, an FBI surveillance chopper swung into view, executing loops over the arrest site.