She wondered if Andrus had been called. If he had been, then they must be really sure. It was March 29- Friday on Easter weekend-and although she didn’t think of Andrus as particularly religious, she knew they wouldn’t disturb an assistant director on Good Friday without cause.
On impulse she removed her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed the field office’s switchboard, then asked for Larkin. 'This is McCallum again,' she said when Larkin came on. 'I’m five, ten minutes out. What’s going on?'
'Nothing that can’t wait till you get here.' As always, Larkin treated her with supercilious disrespect. It wasn’t possible to hear a man smirk over the phone, but Tess could swear she heard it anyway.
'Just give me the rundown,' she said.
He sighed, perturbed at this misuse of his time. 'The guy’s name, address, DL, and SSN all check out. No priors. They haven’t read him his rights yet.' It was legal to obtain preliminary information on a suspect without a Miranda warning. 'Right now we’ve got him cooling his heels.'
This was standard procedure. Some suspects lost their nerve after as little as ten minutes alone in the bare institutional setting of the interrogation room. Then the Stockholm syndrome would kick in, and they would cooperate with their interrogators, sometimes even confess. The downside was that often these confessions were false.
'Are Gaines and Michaelson there?' she asked. Gaines was a profiler working the case. Michaelson was the squad supervisor, experienced at interrogation.
'Gaines just arrived. We’re expecting Michaelson any second.'
'Who made the bust?'
'Tyler, Hart, and DiFranco. They’re in the surveillance room. Michaelson and Gaines may want Tyler in on the questioning at some point.'
'And me? Do they want me in?'
'I don’t think that’s such a good idea.'
She hadn’t asked for his opinion. 'We’ll talk about it. How about Andrus?'
'He’s here.'
So they had called him. 'I guess he looks good for it, this guy?' she said, holding her voice steady.
'It’s still preliminary.'
Obviously Larkin would tell her only the bare minimum. She ought to be angry, but all she felt was nervous tension. 'Try to hold off the interview till I get there.'
'Michaelson’s the case agent. He’s the one in charge.'
Tess knew that. 'Just take your time briefing him, okay?' She clicked off without waiting for an answer and dumped the phone back into her handbag.
She hated talking to Larkin. Hated talking to any of them, really, except Andrus. The others treated her with a mixture of pity and scorn. Pity for what had happened in Denver. Scorn because they liked to think they would have handled it better. They were men, after all. They didn’t let things get to them. But she was a woman-and women, well, they got emotional about these things.
Of course, they didn’t know the whole story. Only Andrus knew, and she had prevailed on him not to share it with the others. It was irrelevant to the case. It was her private life. She had given enough of her life to the bureau-more than enough. There were some things she meant to keep to herself.
She was in Westwood now, coursing down the wide corridor between rows of high-rise apartment buildings. Ahead, on her right, was Westwood Village, a cluster of movie theaters and T-shirt shops crowded with UCLA students.
Her destination lay to her left, at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Veteran-the twenty-story Federal Building that housed the Los Angeles field office of the FBI.
On most homicide investigations, local law enforcement authorities had jurisdiction and took the lead, and the bureau was brought in, if at all, only to provide consultation and analysis. But not this one. This was a federal case, and had been ever since the night of February 12, two years ago.
February 12.
The key in the lock. The key, turning. The key…
But she couldn’t think about that now.
She pulled into the large, open parking lot adjacent to the building. Ordinarily it would be almost empty at night, but on weekends the lot was used by visitors to the Village. Even so, she found an available slot after less than a minute of searching.
She killed the Crown Victoria’s engine and hurried inside, where she stabbed the elevator button and waited, shifting her weight restlessly.
The key in her hand, key in the lock, turning, no resistance…
Reliving the event was a symptom of posttraumatic stress. Her therapist had explained it to her. A traumatic event triggered stress hormones; the more hormones were pumped out, the more intensely the memory would be burned into the amygdala, a bundle of neurons in the brain. Whenever the experience was relived, new stress hormones were produced, further reinforcing the memory.
To break the cycle, it was necessary to brush aside the memories. Think about something else.
Something else. But there was nothing else. There was only the key in the lock, forever turning…
Turning, and the door opening as she stepped into the house…
The elevator arrived, chiming faintly. The sound startled her into the present.
When the doors slid apart, she saw two men in suits.
Cops, not feds. She knew instantly. They had to be cops because she saw the faint outlines of their firearms under their jackets. But they weren’t FBI, because their suits weren’t stylish enough. Elitist but true.
She got in, pressing the button for the seventeenth floor.
'Going up?' one man asked. 'So are we.'
'We are?' the other cop asked with a lifted eyebrow.
'We are now,' the first man said.
She looked at him. He was about forty, trim and self-possessed, but with a vaguely disreputable air. It was nothing she could pinpoint, just a suggestion of cunning that she disliked and distrusted.
'Didn’t you just come down?' she asked.
'From eighteen.' The elevator began to rise. 'We were meeting with Tom Danner. Know him?'
'No.' Distantly she remembered that Danner was a profiling consultant, like Gaines. Profilers often acted as liaisons with the local police. 'If you’ve just seen him, why are you heading back up?'
He smiled. 'No special reason. It’s just a nice night for a ride.'
Just what she needed. Don Juan in a cheap suit.
She looked at the numbers above the doors, not wanting to continue the conversation.
'I’m Jim Dodge,' the cop said. 'West LA Homicide. This is my partner, Al Bradley.' Bradley was a big, broad- shouldered man with sleepy eyes.
'Nice to meet you,' Tess said, turning away.
Dodge wasn’t deterred. 'And you are…?'
'In a hurry.'
'Hey, this is LA. Everybody’s in a hurry. But you’ve got to slow down sometime. Stop and smell the flowers.'
'I haven’t had a lot of flowers in my life lately.' The words came out fast, and instantly she regretted them. He would take the statement as a flirtation.
'You must have a name,' he pressed. 'It comes standard issue with the birth certificate.'
'Tess McCallum.' It was easier to tell him than to argue.
'You’re new to this field office.'
'Temporary assignment.'
'Not too temporary, I hope.'
Dodge was looking her over without a hint of self-consciousness. She found herself wondering if she looked all right in her gray suit and white blouse and Western-style string tie. The thought irritated her.
'Where you from?' he asked.
She wished the elevator would move faster. 'Denver.'
