Next Victim (29 page)

For a few minutes she was almost sure her symptoms were continuing to worsen, in which case she had been wrong, deluded, and there was no hope. God, it appeared, had rejected the terms of her offer.

Then her chest shuddered, heaved, and she pulled a stream of air down her throat.

She could breathe. Really breathe.

Evidently God had been open to a deal, after all.

Slowly she curled into a fetal pose and lay there, clutching her knees, wondering what to do next.

She couldn’t say. She knew only one thing with certainty. She had promised God that she would stop Mobius. And she intended to keep her end of the bargain.

34

Dodge came around slowly, conscious at first of the ache in his head, then of the awkward position of his arms, suspended above his shoulders. He thought of the suspect he’d once seen handcuffed to the bars of a holding cell, and for a confused minute he thought he’d been found out by his fellow officers. They’d gotten him for the leaks to the media, and this was his punishment—to be fucking crucified.

Then he remembered the footstep behind him in the carport, and he knew it was worse than that.

His eyes opened. He was in the bedroom of his house, lying in the bed with his arms tied—no, taped—to the bronze headboard. His mouth…there was something on his mouth—more tape, gluing his lips together.

Mobius.

This was his MO. McCallum had told him about it.

But Mobius killed women….

Not always. There was McCallum’s partner in Denver. And the kid in the chem lab.

Shit
. He blinked, looking around.

The room was dark, the curtains shut, the glow of an outside spotlight trickling through. Dodge thought it must be around eight-thirty, maybe as late as nine. There was a chance that a call would come in for him. He and Bradley were still catching calls, and when he didn’t answer, Bradley or the watch commander would get worried and send a unit to check out his house. The patrol cops would see signs of a struggle in the carport, would come in with their guns drawn and blow this crazy asshole Mobius away.

Sure. It would happen just like that.

Dodge had heard enough bullshit from suspects and witnesses, not to mention from other cops, to know when he was slinging the bull himself. There wasn’t going to be any last-minute rescue. In the carport he’d had one shot at walking away from this situation with all his parts, and it had gone wrong and now he was fucked and it was over. Just that simple.

Movement in the dimness. The man who must be Mobius, pacing. He wore a dark windbreaker and latex gloves. His face was barely visible, a shadow among shadows.

"Sorry I hit you so hard," the man said.

Dodge didn’t remember getting hit. The footstep he remembered. The sudden sense of danger. After that—nothing. Concussion, he figured. Amnesia. Common in head injuries. The least of his fucking problems.

"I knew you’d be armed," Mobius went on in a quiet, conversational tone. "So I had to subdue you immediately. It was the same with Paul Voorhees. Only
he
never woke up. He was lucky. Luckier than you." Mobius took a step closer. "Are you afraid? Afraid of dying?"

Dodge wouldn’t have answered even if he could. The answer was fucking obvious. Yeah, he was scared. He was propped up in bed, his pants wet, a sick feeling at the back of his throat, his heart working double time, his body quivering all over—and this cocksucker had the balls to ask if he was scared.

"You shouldn’t be. Dying is nothing. I died when I was eight years old. I’m dead now. So are you. We’re all dead, all of us, though we try to pretend we don’t know."

Dodge worked his mouth under the tape, as if he could gnaw through it and then sink his chops into Mobius himself. This was great, just fucking great. Not only was he going to get offed by this piece of shit, but he would have to listen to a goddamn philosophy lecture first.

But Mobius seemed to have said his piece. He moved around the bed, and in the chancy ambient light Dodge saw the glint of a knife.

He cuts their throats. That’s how he does it
.

Fear flashed through him like a punch of nausea, and he released it the only way he could, by shaking his arms wildly, tugging at the duct tape, and when it didn’t break, he thrashed his legs, kicking like a petulant kid, and distantly he felt his bowels loosen and he knew he had crapped himself.

God
damn
it, he didn’t want to die.

He exhausted his strength and lay quivering on the tangled sheets. Mobius just watched him from the shadows. The guy didn’t look very big. Tall, maybe, but not pumped up the way ex-cons usually were. One on one, Dodge could take him, no problem.

Come on, shithead, untape me and we’ll see which one of us is the alpha dog
.

He tried to force out the challenge past the tape on his mouth, but all that emerged was a grunt, low and plaintive and humiliating.

It sounded like a plea. He hated that sound. He’d made many men plead, men he’d stomped and pounded, men whose fingers he’d broken and whose ribs he’d bruised, and although he enjoyed it when they begged for mercy, he was always secretly embarrassed for them, dismayed by their show of weakness.

Now he was the one being weak. He shouldn’t let things play out that way. He should be tough, go down in defiance, not give an inch.

Should, but couldn’t. He was forty-four. He wasn’t ready for this. It was too soon. He had plans. He had the money he was making on the side, his retirement money, and what he meant to use it for—the islands, every day spent beachcombing, every night a visit to a different island bar to bag a different island girl. Sun and sand and sex—decades of it—fuck, he was only
forty-four
.

"Are you ready, Detective? I don’t like to start until the subject is ready."

Bite me, you faggot asshole
.

"Usually I see a kind of resignation. It makes things easier."

Dodge wouldn’t make it easy. He was not through living. He would not let this scumbag take his future away.

"Of course, some people simply lack the proper temperament."

Eat shit
. Dodge wished he could scream it at him.

He’d never really believed he would die. Never believed in a point of termination. Not for him. Other people died. He was forever. Other people left the world, but he…he
was
the world.

Dodge shook his arms once more against the duct tape. The headboard rattled, banging on the wall. The mattress creaked.

"There, there," Mobius said. "There, there."

Everything blurred. Dodge thought Mobius had done something to his eyes. Then he realized he was crying.

They would find him—someone would find him—and he would be dead in his own shit and piss, with dried tears on his face, and people would make remarks and get a laugh, and then he would go under Winston’s knife—his second trip to the morgue this weekend….

A gloved hand on his face. Pushing up his chin. He fought to twist free of the hand. Couldn’t.

In the other hand—the knife.

Let me out of this, let me out….

Like it was a bad dream and he could wake up. Like it was a TV show and he could change the channel.

"There, there," Mobius said, and the knife flicked—a hot wire of pain in his neck, then something warm and wet, which was blood.

35

When Tess could move again, she got to her feet and staggered to the door and flung it open, leaning against the door frame to inhale the warm, dry breeze.

She didn’t know how long she stood there, letting the uncontaminated air refresh her body and dilute the toxins in her blood.

The sluggishness left her muscles, and the flulike symptoms that had been her first warning signs finally abated. She was still exhausted and shaky, sore where her arms and legs had seized up in convulsions, and her heart was running too fast and too hard, but she knew she was past the worst of it. She would be okay.

Looking down, she was surprised to see that her purse was in her hand. She must have picked it up without conscious thought. The cell phone was gone, of course, as was the antidote kit, but she still had her gun, her FBI credentials, and her car keys. She wondered if she ought to drive herself to a hospital for observation, or use the phone in the manager’s office to call the police, or—

Thinking of a phone call reminded her of using redial on her cell phone, trying to reach Dodge…and getting no answer.

It was his cell phone number, the one he handed out to informers. He would have answered it—if he could.

"He’s in trouble."

Her own voice startled her, coming raspy and thick.

She’d been working with Dodge. If Mobius had been following her or watching the arson site, he might have seen them together. Having targeted one of them, he might also have set his sights on the other.

Dodge had told her his address. It wasn’t far. She could be at his place in ten minutes.

She shook off the lingering effects of the gas, then closed and locked the door of room 14 so nobody would venture inside. Her bureau car was parked only a couple of yards away. She felt steadier on her feet as she walked to it, and when she started the engine and pulled out of the lot, the sense of purpose revived her further.

Speeding down Ventura Boulevard, she lowered all the car windows and shut off the air conditioner and the vents. She thought it would be a long time before she used the AC again.

The night air felt good, rushing in on her face, and by the time she headed up Coldwater Canyon Avenue into the Hollywood Hills, she was feeling almost strong again.

That was good. The night had just begun—it was only 9:25—and she would need to be strong for whatever was to come.

Tess parked down the street from Dodge’s house, on a turnout where her car was half hidden by eucalyptus trees. She’d driven the last quarter of a mile with her headlights off, in case anyone was watching from the windows.

The Sig Sauer felt reassuringly solid in her hand as she left the car and prowled past hedges of oleander to the driveway. At the end of the drive was a carport, with Dodge’s car inside.

No other vehicles were in sight. If Mobius had come, he’d either left already or parked elsewhere.

Dodge’s house was old, small, single-story. It stood on a small, untidy lot against a stand of trees. From the front stoop, the lights of the LA basin would be visible. That was the view Dodge had bragged about.

No lights were on. The curtains were shut, and the place looked empty, but it couldn’t be, not if the car was here.

For a moment she wished she hadn’t fried her phone back at the motel. She would have liked to call for backup, especially since the queasiness and blurred vision brought on by the nerve agent hadn’t entirely dissipated. Maybe she should’ve stopped at a pay phone along the way.

Too late now. She was on her own.

Both the front and rear doors were probably locked. Most likely she would have to force a window. But she decided to try the front door first.

Quickly down the slate path, the stones uneven from the seismic shifting of the earth in the decades since the bungalow was built. Up the two front steps to the door, then crouching low, huddling for cover in case she’d been spotted. A wave of dizziness quivered through her, another aftereffect of the gas.

Silently she grasped the doorknob, and it turned—

Turning freely under her hand…

The door opening…

Briefly she was disoriented in space and time, and she was entering the house she and Paul had shared, hearing the hiss of running water in the kitchen.

She almost called Paul’s name, as if he might be here.

Then reality snapped back, and this was LA, and it was Dodge she was looking for, and Paul was two years dead.

Probably it was a mistake to go in alone. Probably she was walking into an ambush or another gas chamber like room 14.

She entered anyway, moving fast through the doorway, then stepping to one side and hunching down as her vision adjusted to the space around her.

Living room. Very small. Reflective surface of a TV set, and the faint greenish glow of a VCR’s clock underneath. A low shape that was a sofa, and the sharper rectangles of end tables.

The room was empty. She was almost sure of it. If anyone was here—anyone alive—she would find him elsewhere.

She listened to the house. A creak from somewhere in the rear. Wood settling? Scrape of a tree limb against the roof? Or a footstep on a floorboard?

Another creak.

Footsteps. Back of the house.

She crossed the living room, treading silently, and peered through an open doorway into a dining area. Beyond it lay the kitchen and a hallway. The kitchen was barely larger than a closet, and she could see its complete interior from where she stood. No one there. And no water running either—

Water running in the sink…

Hissing through the pipes…

Pile of dinner dishes…

She fought off the memories and the new attack of vertigo that came with them. Her stomach twisted. A greasy, sick feeling rose in her throat, and she thought she might vomit. With effort she forced down the sickness.

Then she headed into the hallway.

The bedroom would be down there.

Mobius’s execution site.

Halfway down the hall, a bathroom provided the only illumination in this part of the house—the fifteen-watt glow of a nightlight. She detoured into the bathroom, whisked open the shower curtain.

No one was hiding there. But from down the hall came another creak—different in quality from the first two—then a soft click.

She thought of the sound a pistol’s slide might make as it was racked back.

Mobius had never used a gun, but she drew no comfort from that fact.

If he was out there and armed, she would have to face him. To stay in the bathroom was suicide. He could draw a bead on her from the darkness of the hall, and she would have nowhere to hide or run.