Dangerous Games (18 page)

If the caller’s location could be determined, LAPD SWAT units and FBI strike forces stationed throughout the metro area would be ready to move on him.

“And the money?” Michaelson asked.

For Angela Morris, the Rain Man had demanded one million dollars. For Paula Weissman, two million. The assumption was that he would again double the amount. Four million dollars in municipal revenues was available for electronic transfer.

The AD frowned. “There’s no question the city will pay?”

“Officially they’ve announced no position. Privately they’re committed to making the payoff. The mayor’s already taken enough heat for hesitating on the Weissman ransom. People are saying if he’d paid sooner, she might have been saved.”

Tess didn’t think so. She was fairly certain the Rain Man didn’t want his victims recovered alive. There was too great a risk that they could identify him.

“Suppose he goes higher than four million,” Michaelson said.

“It starts to get a little tricky.”

“Politically?”

“Yes—and also logistically. But I think they’ll find a way to cough it up, no matter how much it is. I mean, as long as it’s within reason.”

Tess didn’t think anything the Rain Man did was within reason. She said nothing.

“Assuming they pay,” Michaelson said, “and he calls with the victim’s location, what kind of response time are we looking at for the rescue effort?”

The supervisor handling the phone trace answered. “The same SWAT units and strike forces are ready to go underground anywhere in the city. The way they’ll be deployed, we estimate that one of those teams can get to any point on the map in under twelve minutes.”

“Twelve minutes is an eternity,” Michaelson said. “Last time, he didn’t call in Weissman’s location until the rain started falling. If he waits that long again…”

“Then we have to hope the response time is shorter. I said
under
twelve minutes. It could be a lot less.”

“It had better be. Damn it, this son of a bitch is calling all the shots.”

“Not for long,” Larkin said out of habitual sycophancy.

Everyone ignored him.

As Tess expected, Michaelson took credit for sifting through the call-ins and identifying the few that seemed promising. These he doled out to the various squads, pointedly giving none to Tess. She was a nonperson, the invisible woman.

Michaelson wanted agents, police officers, and sheriff’s deputies posted near as many storm-drain access points as possible. Coordinating this effort was the task of the C-1 squad supervisor, who had bad news.

“We’ve gone over this with DWP, and the simple fact is, there’s no way we can cover more than a fraction of the entry points.”

“Why the hell not?”

Before the super could answer, another voice cut in. “Let me field that one.” Tess looked to the doorway, where a new man had joined the briefing. “Sorry I’m late,” he added. “Traffic.”

His gaze swept the room and briefly met hers. He was trim, wide-shouldered, his dark hair close-cropped. Unexpectedly he extended a hand across the table. A large hand with a powerful grip, though he wasn’t much taller than she was.

“Ed Mason,” he said. “Assistant chief engineer in DWP’s Stormwater Management Division.”

Tess got it. He could afford to annoy Michaelson because he wasn’t a Bureau employee. She started to give her own name in reply, but Michaelson interrupted.

“So tell us—why can’t we deploy our personnel at the entry points?”

“Because,” Mason said as he took a seat, “the tunnel system is just too damn big. We’re talking about sixty-four main lines and hundreds of smaller service tunnels. Fifteen hundred miles of underground pipe extending from Canoga Park to San Pedro. You can’t post people at every ingress. It’s physically impossible.”

“There has to be some way to narrow it down,” the AD insisted.

The C-1 super didn’t think so. “His first two vies were taken in completely different parts of the city. It’s not as if he just works one neighborhood. He could go anywhere.”

“Then we seal off all the access points so he can’t get in. We lock him out of the system.”

There was a laugh, a deep, throaty sound.

Michaelson swiveled toward the source. “Something funny, Mr. Mason?”

Mason was still chuckling. “You want to seal off the entire drainage system of Los Angeles. That doesn’t strike you as impractical?”

“Not the entire system. Just the access points big enough for a man to use.”

“There are thousands of those.”

“Then we seal off only the biggest ones. The ones that can accommodate a vehicle, say.”

“It still won’t work. Street runoff would cause major flooding.”

“We’ll use nets. Steel nets. Water gets through, but
he
can’t.”

“Nets would get clogged with debris in a matter of minutes.”

Michaelson wouldn’t be put off. “I’ve seen nets in place along the river channel.”

“Sure you have. In the dry season, we use nets to filter out trash and debris. The last time we put up nets at the junction of the LA River and Ballona Creek, we caught a hundred thirty tons of waste. That was when the water wasn’t moving fast.”

Tess spoke for the first time. “Why would there be any water in the system during the dry season?”

“Because,” Mason said, “there’s always runoff from fire hydrants, construction projects, people watering their lawns or hosing down their cars. Or dumping chemicals—or taking a pee in a manhole. Even when there’s no wet weather flow, the pipelines have plenty to carry. And tonight, in a big storm like they’re predicting, we’ll see twenty thousand times the dry season flow. Tens of billions of gallons. That’s billion with a b.”

“Christ,” Michaelson said, appalled.

“Put up nets this time of year, and they’ll be torn to pieces. And if they hold, you’ll have logjams and citywide flooding. This system moves a lot of water, Chief.”

Michaelson clearly didn’t like being addressed as Chief, and Tess was pretty sure Mason knew it. “Personally,” the AD said, chafing, “I wish you’d never built your goddamned system. Didn’t it ever occur to anybody that installing the world’s largest labyrinth right under your feet was an invitation to every psychopath within a thousand miles?”

“It’s not the world’s largest,” Mason said, unfazed. “And it seems to have issued an invitation to only one psychopath. At least, he’s the only one who’s RSVP’d. Besides, if we didn’t have the tunnels, where would all the water go?”

“I was stationed in Tucson once. That’s a metro area of nearly one million, and they have no storm-drain system. They let the rain flow naturally into dry washes and percolate underground. You people could’ve done the same thing.”

“That idea is only a little less impractical than those nets you tried to sell us, Chief.” There was no doubt the nickname was a dig. Tess saw Mason’s mischievous smile. “LA is basically one giant floodplain. Without proper drainage, you’d have water up to your armpits from East LA to the Westside. That’s pretty near what happened back in the flood of 1938. Then the Army Corps of Engineers came in with three million barrels of concrete and paved the LA River. All it is, really, is an engineered flood-control channel.”

Or a glorified ditch
, Tess thought. She commented, “I’m surprised they even call it a river.”

“It was a river once. Damn fine river jumping with steel-head trout. There were grizzlies on the banks, forests of willows and cottonwoods. That was in the 1760s, when the Spanish came here and found the Gabrielino Indian settlements. By the middle of the next century it was all gone—fish, bears, trees, and most of the Indians, too. Improvements had been made, you see. That’s how the settlers thought of it, at any rate.”

“Fascinating.” Michaelson didn’t hide his exasperation. “I’m sure we’d all benefit from your historical insights if we didn’t have a murderer on the loose.”

“Sorry. I get kind of caught up in my subject…Chief.”

The meeting ended. Tess was gathering her papers when Michaelson called to her. “McCallum. One minute, please.”

Maybe Crandall had squealed, after all.

She waited until Mason and the supervisors had departed and she was alone with the AD.

“You gave me all the strong leads, right?” Michaelson asked. “You’re not holding anything back?”

“Of course not,” she lied.

“Not keeping anything to yourself—you know, for a little freelance work?”

Crandall
must
have said something. She met Michaelson’s gaze. “I don’t operate that way.”

“Yes, you do. You’re always going off the reservation. That’s how you played it during the Mobius case.”

“It’s a good thing I did,” she said, then regretted the words.

Michaelson appraised her. “And maybe it would be a good thing if you did it again?”

“I’m just doing my job.”

Michaelson dropped his gaze, losing interest. “Be sure that’s all you do.”

Tess relaxed. He’d been merely fishing. He didn’t know anything.

She left the office. Either Crandall hadn’t seen her notes, or he hadn’t passed on the information to the AD. She’d gotten lucky. She wondered how long her luck would hold.

In the hall she bumped into Mason. He regarded her with an amused look. “Sounds like somebody got sent to the principal’s office.”

She smiled, a little warily. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“Just surmising. The chief didn’t sound too happy with you.”

“He’s not happy being called Chief, either.”

“Into each life, a little rain must fall.” Mason’s grin faded. “I guess, under the circumstances, that’s a bad choice of words.”

“I’m afraid I never properly introduced myself.”

“Oh, I know who you are, Agent McCallum.”

“My antisocial behavior is already that notorious?”

“I wouldn’t call it antisocial. It’s more like you don’t play games. I’d call you a curmudgeon, but you’re too young for that particular appellation. An iconoclast, maybe. Or hell, just a rebel.”

“That’s me. Rebel without a cause.”

He chuckled, a rich, throaty sound. “I didn’t think anyone under the age of forty remembered that one. James Dean was my hero when I was growing up.”

She appraised him skeptically, estimating his age at early forties. “You’re not old enough to have been a James Dean fan.”

“Oh, he died before I was born, but I related to him anyhow. Must’ve been your typical teenage death wish. I even rode a motorcycle for a while. Nearly got myself killed on the damn thing more than once.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to finish your history lesson. I did find it interesting.”

“It was for your benefit. You seemed to have an interest in the subject. Which made you unique in that crowd.”

“Bureau employees aren’t necessarily known for their patience. How long have you been consulting on the case?”

“Since right after it started. Since Angela Morris.”

“It’s been hard on you, I bet.”

“Harder on the victims and their families and the case agents working their butts off to solve this thing. Me, I just sit in on some meetings and put my two cents in every now and then, and everybody ignores it, which is their privilege. They’re federal agents, and I’m a lowly municipal bureaucrat. I don’t expect them to listen to me.”

“I’ll listen,” Tess said.

It was his turn to appraise her. He nodded. “Yes, I believe you will. If you’d like, I can finish the history lesson now. Maybe over a cup of coffee.”

“You’d be fraternizing with the enemy.”

“You’re not my enemy. And I wouldn’t be fraternizing.”

She glanced at his left hand and noticed he didn’t wear a wedding ring. “Are you, um, asking me out?”

“I guess so. Out for coffee, anyway. As first dates go, it’s pretty low-stress.”

She was flattered, even though she was sure things would never go anywhere between them. He wasn’t her type, or something. He wasn’t…

He wasn’t Paul. Always she came back to that.

“Tess?” He simulated a polite rap on her noggin. “You still in there?”

“Sorry. Drifted away. Uh, I think I have to take a pass for now. Work, you know.”

“Work. Yeah, there’s always work to do.”

“I…I’m not making excuses….”

“Sure you are. But it’s okay. Let’s face it, the history of the LA River isn’t all that mesmerizing a topic.”

She’d hurt his feelings. “Ed, don’t take it like that.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” He squeezed her arm, an almost paternal gesture. “I took a shot. Didn’t pan out. But if you change your mind, let me know. I’ll be around.”

“All day?”

“Mostly. On days like this, they need me here.” He answered her unspoken question. “Days with rain in the forecast.”

She checked her watch as she walked away. Nearly ten thirty. If the Rain Man planned to strike at six P.M., there were only seven and a half hours to go.

As she was heading back to the squad room, her cell phone buzzed. “McCallum,” she said, taking the call.

“Agent McCallum—Detective Owen Goddard. You left a message on my voice mail.”

“Thanks for getting back to me, Detective. I need to talk to you about an old case.”

“I’m listening.”

She didn’t want to have this conversation in the field office. “It might be better if I could talk to you in person.”

“I expect to be at my desk for the rest of the morning.”

“Give me half an hour. I’ll see you then.”

She went to her workstation and opened the desk drawer to get out her notes. But something was wrong. The contents of the drawer had shifted slightly. Paper clips that had been resting in a plastic dish were scattered. Pens that had been lined up along one side of the drawer were in disarray.

Hastily she searched her notes and was relieved to find that the page of her notebook summarizing Madeleine Grant’s interview was still there. Crandall hadn’t taken it. But he could have seen it.

If he’d been looking. It was possible the contents had shifted when she shut the drawer earlier. She couldn’t be sure. And she couldn’t ask any of her squad mates if Crandall had been poking around her workstation. None of them would tell her a damn thing.

She didn’t like not knowing. If Crandall had returned for a second look, then he was clearly suspicious of her. Maybe her anger at finding him at her desk had sparked his curiosity. Or maybe she was overreacting.