department. Remarkably, Andrus had taken off his jacket-the first time she had ever seen it removed. To relax his habitual formality to that extent, he must be really peeved-or really scared.
'Not your jurisdiction,' one of the LAFD guys was saying, and Andrus snapped back, 'We’re federal. Everything’s our jurisdiction.'
A turf war. She was reminded that the AD was, in the end, a bureaucrat, not a street agent. He fought desk battles. She found herself wishing Tennant were here.
'Gerry,' she said, getting close enough to speak into his ear.
Andrus turned away from the fire department people, evidently fed up with the discussion. 'What?' he barked, transferring his frustration to her.
'I have some news.'
'So talk.'
Before she could begin, the Nose was beside her. 'Mind if I join you, or are you still operating on a need-to- know basis?'
Tess shrugged. Michaelson was a jerk, but he was now part of the team.
'Got a phone call from the morgue,' she said, addressing both men, her voice raised over the commotion around her. 'The body in the fire isn’t who we thought it was. In fact, it may not be a student at all. It may be someone older.'
'So it’s a night watchman,' Michaelson said. 'A janitor, whatever. Who cares?'
'What if it’s Hayde?'
'Hayde is Mobius. You told us so. Remember?'
'I told you what car Mobius was driving. When the plate number came back as Hayde’s, we assumed he was the guy. But what if Mobius wants us to assume that?'
'Oh, for Christ’s sake,' Michaelson said.
She was beginning to regret allowing him into the conversation. But Andrus, at least, looked thoughtful. 'It’s not impossible,' he said slowly.
Thank you, Gerry, she thought.
'He could be playing us,' Tess said, wondering if her theory made any sense and if she even believed it herself. 'He could have set up Hayde in order to throw us off.'
'That would presuppose his knowing that Hayde was pulled in last night,' Andrus said.
'Maybe he does know.'
'How?'
'Say he was watching the building.'
'Doubtful. He was getting ready to strike at the MiraMist.'
'He struck later. Didn’t arrive at the hotel until after we were through with Hayde.'
Andrus frowned. 'Still seems unlikely. How would he even know who Hayde was?'
'There’s another possibility.' Tess hated to say it, but both men were looking at her, and she had no choice. 'He may be operating from the inside.'
' Fuck this,' Michaelson blurted. 'You’re fucking crazy, McCallum. Gerry, she’s out of her goddamn mind.'
'Just shut up and listen to me.'
'Do you have any evidence the dead body is Hayde?'
'Not yet-'
'Then why the hell are you wasting our time?'
She looked at Andrus, and his shoulders lifted. 'Have to say I’m with Dick on this one.' Calling him Dick was a little jab at Michaelson. Everyone knew he hated that name. 'The body could be anyone. A professor, a burglar…'
'Come on, Gerry.'
'I’ll tell you what. When we get hold of Hayde’s medical and dental files, we’ll have the morgue make a comparison. But for the moment, let’s not jump off any cliffs, shall we?'
She frowned but nodded. Maybe she had allowed herself to get overexcited.
Or maybe there was another avenue of investigation she could pursue.
'Okay,' she said. 'Just keep it in mind. Mobius is smart. He’s always one step ahead.'
'One step ahead of you, anyway,' the Nose observed.
God, she’d love to punch that guy. Instead she elbowed her way through the crowd, into a hallway. She thought about entering one of the glass-walled offices that ringed half the main room, but she preferred more privacy. She continued to the end of the hall, past a kitchen and lavatory, and found a rear office with an open door.
The office was small and tidy, most of its space taken up by a metal desk, one of the ubiquitous swivel chairs, and a file cabinet. A fluorescent panel glared down from the low ceiling. On the desk was a computer, and at a glance she identified a high-speed modem.
When she had initiated the bot search, she’d arranged to have any hits moved to her online storage service as they came in. She could access those results from any computer on the Net.
She sat at the computer and brought it out of suspend mode. The Windows desktop appeared on the screen.
No password required. She was good to go.
Activating the Web browser, she navigated to the storage service and logged on. The bot had dumped a list of URLs-Web page addresses-into the main folder.
Somewhere in that list, there might be an explanation of Mobius’s taste in music, and with it, a link to William Hayde-or to someone else.
Who else, though? That was the unanswered question. It would almost have to be someone on the task force, someone who knew that Hayde had been picked up as a suspect.
She clicked on the first URL in the list and found a review of the song 'Wipe Out,' which had attracted the search bot’s attention because the reviewer enthused about the song’s 'killer guitar riffs.'
The next Web page was somebody’s online diary, which mentioned 'Wipe Out' as a favorite song in one entry and a 'cool movie about serial killers' a month later.
Maybe she hadn’t sufficiently narrowed the search parameters. She might be stuck with a bunch of garbage here.
As she opened the next file, her mind returned to the possibility of a mole on the task force. If there was a mole, he might not be the original Mobius. He could be copycatting the Denver crimes. Being an investigator, he would know all the details of the killings, even the signature elements that hadn’t been publicized.
Maybe. But she didn’t buy it. It felt wrong. She’d stood inside the room where Amanda Pierce had been murdered. She’d been in Dodge’s bedroom. She could sense Mobius in those killing zones. She could smell him there.
Unless she was going crazy. She’d been battling posttraumatic stress disorder for two years. Maybe it was a battle she had finally lost.
The third Web page was a dead end, as were the fourth, fifth, and sixth. The bot had dredged up the detritus of the Web-fan fiction, chat room transcripts, message board threads. She was beginning to think she was wasting her time.
Suppose there was a mole on the task force, and he was the real Mobius, the original. In that case she’d been working side by side with him. Not just here but in Denver also…
But nobody on the task force had been stationed in Denver. Most of them had been in LA for at least the past three years. A few had come from other offices. Michaelson, for instance She paused in the act of opening another URL.
Michaelson.
He was relatively new to LA. She was sure of it. But how did she know? She’d never talked to him about his past or about anything else of a personal nature. Still, she could almost remember…
Before this, I was stationed in Salt Lake City. Pretty hot there in the summer, and colder than hell all winter long.
The interrogation. He’d been talking to Hayde.
That was where she’d heard it.
