Salt Lake City wasn’t Denver. But it was within an eight-hour drive via I-80 and I-25. Hop on a plane, and he could have made it in no time.
No. That was crazy.
She was allowing her dislike of Michaelson to influence her judgment.
On the other hand, she disliked him only because he’d been hostile to her from the start.
Ignoring her. Never meeting her eyes.
Because he was afraid of what she might see? She’d looked into Hayde’s eyes and seen nothing.
What would she see in Michaelson’s eyes?
She tried to push these thoughts away. She had no evidence to go on. She had to deal in facts, not speculation.
The next half dozen Web pages yielded nothing. She kept opening them, but she no longer expected success.
Michaelson…
She couldn’t keep her mind off that subject. Michaelson had been the one who found Hayde’s cuff link in the Metro tunnel. And he’d found it as the searchers were retracing their steps. Had he planted it as they started their search, then conveniently discovered it on their return?
The cuff link had convinced everyone that Mobius had escaped into the tunnels. Suppose he hadn’t. Suppose he’d slipped into a supply closet or another hiding place inside the station, then emerged when police officers and FBI agents arrived. No one would have questioned how he’d gotten in. No one would have guessed that he’d been there the whole time.
She was on the fifteenth URL now. A garage band called Killer Elite, whose repertoire included 'Wipe Out.' Another blind alley. But it might not matter anymore.
Not if Michaelson was her man.
The stupid things he’d said to her at the crime scene-the hostile, sexist remarks-were they evidence of a deep-seated hatred of women? Mobius’s hatred?
As she’d said earlier, there would have been time for Hayde to get to the MiraMist and pick up Amanda Pierce after leaving the Federal Building. But the same was true of Michaelson. He could have driven into Santa Monica and met Pierce at the bar.
She was on the third-to-last Web page now. Still nothing of interest.
So add it all up. Michaelson had been in Salt Lake City in the appropriate time frame. He displayed hostility toward her and toward women in general. He avoided eye contact. He could have been present at the Universal City station from the time when the train arrived. He was the one who’d found the cuff link.
And just a few minutes ago, when she’d raised the possibility that Hayde was a red herring, Michaelson had practically gone apeshit.
Proof? No. But Wait.
She had opened the second-to-last URL. This one was different from the others. Not a diary or a record review. Evidently a public library in New Mexico had gone to the trouble of electronically scanning old newspapers into digital files and posting them on the Web.
What she had opened was the front page of the September 21, 1968, edition of the Albuquerque Tribune, datelined Alcomita, New Mexico.
The headline read: 'WIPE OUT' IN ALCOMITA HOJO’S.
She skimmed the article. A woman, Melinda Beckett, had abducted her eight-year-old son and driven him from Casper, Wyoming, to New Mexico. A standoff with sheriff’s deputies had ended with Melinda’s suicide-and with the attempted murder of her son.
Her eight-year-old son…in 1968…
The boy would be in his early forties now.
The right age for Mobius.
And for Michaelson.
She read further. Deputies said the woman had been playing the song 'Wipe Out' over and over on a portable phonograph. An eight-track tape containing the song had been found in her car.
'Wipe Out.' Violent death. Insanity. A traumatized boy.
It was coming together.
But was the boy Michaelson? Or was he Hayde?
The article gave no further information. Details about the child apparently had been withheld to protect his privacy.
She opened the last URL and found that it was part of the same Web site. A later edition of the Tribune, containing a follow-up to the 'Wipe Out' case.
The boy, near death, had been revived in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. After extensive surgery and therapy, he was said to be okay. His name still wasn’t given.
But there was a photo.
It showed the boy as he’d looked on the day of the standoff, when he was carried into the hospital on a stretcher. His face was turned toward the photographer, and the strong southwestern sun lit the planes of his cheeks and brought out the sharpness of his staring eyes.
His eyes…
In three decades, everything about that boy had changed-except his eyes.
They were eyes she had seen before.
Not William Hayde’s eyes.
And not Michaelson’s, either.
She turned, half rising from her chair, knowing only that she had to get help, she was in danger-they were all in danger-and then he was there, filling the doorway, the knife in his hand.
He looked at the computer screen, then at Tess, and he smiled.
'Wipe out,' Andrus said.
42
The knife came at her fast. She threw herself away from the desk and hit the floor, rolling. Her gun-she needed her gun In her purse.
On the desk.
Out of reach.
She thought about shouting for help, but Andrus had already kicked the door shut, and she knew her voice would never carry far enough to be heard in the main room over the bedlam of conversation.
Andrus was closing in.
She kicked out with both legs, connecting with the desk chair to send it rolling on its casters. The chair banged into Andrus’s knees. He pushed it aside, and by then she was on her feet. She grabbed for her purse, but he was too quick, almost intercepting her hand with his knife, and she had to retreat. She backed away as he advanced. The office was small, and the only exit was the door behind him, the door he had closed.
No way out.
'Gerry…' She could try to reason with him.
Didn’t work. The knife sprang at her again. She dodged sideways, evading the blow, but now she was trapped in a corner, with the file cabinet on one side and a blank wall on the other, Andrus drawing near.
He was tall. She had never realized how tall. In all the time they’d worked together in Denver…
Denver.
He’d been right there during the Mobius killings. And when he’d left town, the killings had stopped.
She should have seen it. Somehow she should have known.
The knife again. Circling toward her. She yanked out the top drawer of the file cabinet, blocking Andrus’s reach. He banged his wrist on the metal drawer and jerked his hand back, then jabbed at her underneath the drawer. He was quick; the strike just missed, the knife blurring past her midsection and driving into the wall. It was
