Free Next Victim by Michael Prescott Page A

ago fit the same pattern."
    "Eleven days ago? What are you talking about?"
    On the computer screen, the sine waves had broken up, indicating increased stress but not necessarily deception.
    "Monday night, March twentieth. Angie Callahan. Ring a bell?"
    "No."
    The sine waves were smoothing out. The technology said he wasn’t lying.
    Tess studied Hayde’s face on the nearest monitor. She saw no darting eye movements, no defensive body language. Hayde was not looking toward his upper right, as he might if he were unconsciously accessing the creative centers of the right cerebral hemisphere.
    "Sure it does. You picked her up—or maybe she picked you up. It doesn’t matter. You went back to her condo. Your memory clearing up, Mr. Hayde?"
    "I’ve never heard of anybody named Angie Callahan."
    "You knew her. And you killed her."
    "Say again?"
    "You taped her wrists to the headboard of her bed, and you slit her throat, didn’t you?"
    "You think I’m a murderer?"
    "We know you are. We’ve nailed you. It’s over. We’ve got all the evidence we need."
    To punctuate his partner’s statement, Gaines held up the bulging folder.
    Tess thought they were laying it on a little thick. But they had to get a reaction, had to rattle the unflappable Bill Hayde, who just sat there shaking his head in amazed derision.
    "You think I’m a friggin’ serial killer, for Christ’s sake?"
    "Who said anything about a serial killer, Mr. Hayde?"
    "You just said it’s a pattern. And you’re asking me about Denver. I’m not as dumb as I look, gentlemen. I can put two and two together and usually get four. You’re after the Pickup Artist, right?" He sounded more intrigued than alarmed.
    "What if we are?"
    "He killed, what, three people in Denver a couple years ago?"
    "Four," Gaines said, and Tess mouthed the same word, thinking of the fourth victim.
    "Yeah, that’s right, four. Last one was a feeb like you guys, as I recall." Hayde was smiling, and Tess had never hated anyone as much as she hated him in that moment, for that smile. "And now you’re trying to pin all that on me? Just because I tried to pork Agent Starling here?"
    "Agent Tyler," Michaelson corrected, seeming confused, as if he didn’t get the reference.
    Hayde ignored him and leaned back as far as the straight-backed chair would allow. "Man, you folks must be desperate. I mean, if a little S-and-M action is enough to get me pulled in, you’ve got to be scraping bottom."
    Tess checked the computer. Smooth sine waves. The agent manning the console caught her glance. "Stress is low," he said.
    "Fucking sociopaths can beat those machines," DiFranco muttered.
    "They can beat a polygraph." This was Larkin. "Not a CVSA."
    "They can beat anything," DiFranco persisted. "Voice stress is bullshit, anyway. Even if it wasn’t, these guys are so crazy, they don’t even know when they’re lying."
    "Does he strike you as crazy?" Tess asked quietly.
    They all looked at her. No one spoke for a moment. Then Hart said, "Sometimes they can pass for normal. It doesn’t prove anything."
    "Maybe not," she conceded. "But I know what would." She took a breath. "Let me see him. Face-to-face."
     

 
    9
     
     
    Jim Dodge slid into the corner booth at Lucy J’s and ordered a seltzer water.
    "Drinking the hard stuff?" Myron Levine said with a cocked eyebrow. When Levine did that, he looked a lot like the guy who played Dr. McCoy on the old Star Trek show.
    "I’m on duty," Dodge said.
    "On a Friday night? What’s cooking?"
    "I’m catching calls all weekend. Tonight there was a gangbang on Robertson." Nearly all violent crime in the West LA district took place along a short strip of Robertson Boulevard. "Two assholes got into it at a video store. One of them was stabbed. I’m supposed to be on my way over right now."
    "Is the kid dead?"
    "Critical."
    "White?"
    "Black."
    "Huh." Levine shrugged, losing interest as Dodge had known he would. A wounded black banger wasn’t news—not TV news, at any