'Well, he’s not in here.' That was the unknown man, who had the stiff, flustered looked of a bureaucrat in over his head. 'The hiding places…'
'…sure?'
'…all searched…reviewing the tapes at the ROC office now.'
'Maybe McCallum was wrong.' Michaelson, of course. 'Maybe he was never on this train.'
'He was on it,' Tess said. They all turned to her as she stepped up to the group. 'Tennant and I just found the package he left.'
'Package?' the bureaucrat said. The laminated card hanging around his neck read DOBBMAN, MTA.
'A bomb. A nerve-agent bomb. Don’t worry; Tennant defused it.' She gave them a rundown of events.
'Well, in any case, he’s not here,' Dobbman of the MTA said. 'He didn’t exit the station, and he’s not still inside.'
Andrus asked him if there was any way to get off the train between stops.
'Impossible. The doors can be opened only by the operator. They’re never opened while the train is in motion.'
'So what the hell happened to him?' Michaelson asked. 'Did he just disappear like a goddamn ghost?'
'He’s not a ghost,' Tess said. 'But maybe there’s another way for him to dematerialize. Let’s say, in all the confusion of evacuating the riders, Mobius separates from the crowd and slips off the platform-into the dark.'
The three men looked at her, then shifted their gazes toward the train, the track, and the tunnels beyond.
'You think he’s in there?' Andrus said, as if testing the idea by speaking it aloud.
'That’s crap,' Michaelson blurted. 'He wouldn’t go someplace where he’s cornered.'
'Who says he’s cornered?' Tess looked at the MTA rep. 'There must be ways to get in and out of those tunnels.'
Dobbman nodded. 'Of course there’s access. Maintenance exits, air vents, storm drains. But he wouldn’t know how to find them.'
'Yes, he would. He’s a civil engineer, and he worked on the Red Line. He’s seen the blueprints.'
There was a long moment before anyone spoke.
'All right,' Andrus said finally, 'let’s take a look.'
The tunnel was wide and dark, with rounded walls lined in concrete and plastic to prevent any seepage from methane gas pockets in the rock. Faint echoes of dripping noises echoed in the distance.
There were two tunnels bored through the mountains, one for northbound train traffic, the other for return trips. Each tunnel, Dobbman of the MTA had reported, was roughly twenty-three feet in diameter and more than twelve thousand feet long. Trains were powered by an electrified third rail, producing 750 volts, that lay adjacent to the tracks. He had warned them to stay clear of it.
Tess intended to heed that advice. She kept her distance from the tracks as she advanced into the darkness, leaving the lights of the platform behind. Andrus and Michaelson flanked her, with four LAPD officers arrayed in pairs to the front and rear. They were headed north. Another search team had gone in the opposite direction.
She should have felt safe, surrounded by armed professionals and carrying a gun herself, but all she could think of was Mobius popping up out of the shadows to splash her with liquid death.
She had survived the nerve-agent attack in her motel room, then the shoot-out in the hills. Already tonight, Mobius had failed twice to kill her.
Third time’s the charm?
'What’s she doing here anyway?'
The question, as startling as a slap, came from Michaelson.
'It’s come to my attention,' Andrus said, 'that there’s a more likely suspect in the news leak.'
'You can say his name,' Tess put in. 'It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead. Mobius-I mean, Hayde-killed him.' To Michaelson she said, 'It was Detective Dodge, the cop I was working with.'
Michaelson wouldn’t let it go. He looked at Andrus. 'You’re sure he was the leaker?'
'We know he’d passed other things to the same reporter. Internal Affairs was after him.'
'That doesn’t prove he was peddling the info this time. It still could’ve been McCallum.'
Still talking about her in the third person. She was really getting tired of that.
'Dodge had an ongoing relationship with Myron Levine,' Tess said as calmly as possible. 'And Dodge knew everything I knew.'
'How convenient for you.'
'What are you saying? That I’m trying to pin the blame on a dead man?'
'Who knows what you might try when your career’s on the line?'
'God, you’re such a prick.'
He ignored her, as usual. 'As far as I’m concerned, McCallum remains an unreliable member of this investigative team.'
She wouldn’t let this pass. 'Sometimes I think I’m the only member of the team who’s doing any actual investigating. In case you’ve forgotten, I got you Hayde’s license plate and directed you to the Metro. I practically handed you Mobius on a platter-'
'You did?' The Nose glared past her, refusing to meet her eyes. 'Then where is he, McCallum? If you’ve handed him to us, why don’t we have him?'
Andrus held up a stern hand. ' Enough. Agent McCallum is back on the case. Period. And for the record, Tess,' he added, 'I apologize for jumping to conclusions. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.'
The Nose made a low sound signifying disapproval and turned away.
When Tess looked back, the Metro train had receded into the distance. Its headlights cast only a dim glow. The lights of the station platform were entirely gone, hidden behind the curving wall of concrete and rock.
'How far are we planning to go, anyway?' Michaelson asked.
Tess thought the Nose was in an awful hurry to give up the chase. Probably didn’t like being in the dark. She hoped he wet his pants.
'Until we find some indication he’s been here,' Andrus said. 'Shoe prints or something.'
'Not a sign of him so far,' Tess said. She’d been expecting the tunnel to be strewn with litter from tunnel workers-gum wrappers, cigarette butts, soda cans-but it was surprisingly clean. Other than some scattered papers blown off the platform by the draft of passing trains, the circle of her flashlight beam had picked up nothing but the train tracks, the dangerous third rail, and the small metallic heads of the automatic sprinklers installed between the tracks.
They walked on. Now the train was lost to sight, and only their flashlights provided illumination. It was like exploring a cave, but a curiously artificial cave of unchanging dimensions, a cave that stretched forever into the darkness.
Still no indication that anyone had passed this way. Maybe no one had. She could have been wrong.
Andrus got on the radio to the other search team. They had found nothing. The tunnel’s dirt floor south of the parked train seemed undisturbed.
'We’re wasting our time,' Michaelson groused.
Andrus looked at Tess. 'How about it? Keep going or turn back?'
'Since when is it my call?'
'Since you’re the one who came up with this idea.'
'Fair enough.' She let the pale oval of her flashlight beam drift over the walls. 'If he’s in here, he could be a mile away by now. Or he might have exited via a maintenance access tunnel. I guess we should head back.'
It felt like the right choice. But she wished she could be sure.
Tess and the others were retracing their steps, nearing the platform, when Michaelson said, 'Hold on.'
He beamed his flashlight into the gully between the rails. Among the sprinkler heads, its beam picked out something small and shiny, something that could not have lain there long without being caked in grit.
He and Tess and Andrus gathered around the find, while the patrol cops watched the shadows, wary of a surprise attack.
Three flashlight beams centered on the object. It was a cuff link-silver border, black pearl inset.
Hayde’s cuff link. The one that had winked at Tess so insistently during his interrogation.
'Recognize it?' Michaelson said.
