"I’m wrong?" Winston said, giving the visitor a chilly reception. "Would you care to explain just how you know?"
Agent McCallum was unfazed. She approached the table, allowing Dodge a good look at her. He liked what he saw. In the elevator she had been distracted, nervous. Now she was focused and intense, a cat waiting to pounce.
"Because I know how this young man died," McCallum said. "And who killed him." She looked his way and nodded in recognition. "Hello, Detective Dodge."
He tried out a warm smile. "Hey, Special Agent."
She turned to Winston. "Tess McCallum, FBI." Her ID folder came out, but Winston didn’t bother to look. "I’m part of a task force tracking a serial killer. I think he killed this man."
"Well, that’s an interesting theory." Winston was acting territorial. She didn’t appreciate this McCallum barging in and telling her she’d missed something.
"Look at his neck," McCallum said. "There should be a transverse knife wound above the Adam’s apple."
Normally a slashed neck would be difficult to overlook, but the cracked, creased, crisped flesh hid any other damage. Winston studied the neck for a long moment.
"I see it," she said. "Incision begins near the left carotid. Travels across the anterior cervix just above the cricoid cartilage in a semicircular track, and terminates immediately before the right carotid."
"Ear to ear," Dodge said. "But he missed the arteries."
McCallum shook her head. "He didn’t miss. He never cuts the carotids. He wants his victims to bleed to death slowly."
"So he’s a nasty boy."
She gave Dodge an unfriendly glance. "Very much so."
He returned her glare with equanimity, wondering if Agent McCallum liked her boys nasty.
Winston had taken out a scalpel with a ruled edge and was measuring the cut. "Approximate width of the wound channel…"
"Three millimeters," McCallum said. "Four where it’s deepest."
"That appears to be correct. How did you know?"
"He always uses the same knife."
"How many times has he done this?"
"Four times in Denver. This is his third in LA."
"So he moved to the coast," Dodge said.
Winston didn’t seem surprised. "They all wind up here eventually. All the freaks."
"It’s called diversity." Dodge was smiling. "It’s what makes this city great."
Both women ignored him. He was pretty sure they were pissed off. That was okay. He liked getting a rise out of women.
"So what’s this guy’s MO?" he asked McCallum. "He goes busting into chem labs, wasting students?"
"No. He kills women. This homicide doesn’t fit his usual pattern."
"Then how’d you happen to connect it to him?"
McCallum didn’t answer. Instead she said, "He probably didn’t plan on finding anyone in the lab. It was just luck, that’s all. Good luck for him…"
"And bad luck for John Doe," Dodge said.
McCallum wasn’t listening. She was working it out, thinking aloud. "He made the boy help him, then killed him because he couldn’t leave a witness. Set the fire to conceal the crime. He would have known that an autopsy would reveal the cause of death, but he wanted to buy time, keep us in the dark for a few extra hours. That means he’s planning to act soon. Tonight, maybe. Almost certainly tonight…"
"Act how?" Dodge asked, getting a little ticked off at Tess McCallum. When she still didn’t answer, he pushed harder. "No offense, Special Agent, but it’s time for the information to start flowing both ways."
She looked at him as if remembering that he existed. "You recover anything from the crime scene?"
"Like a piece of paper with a bloody fingerprint on it? Or the killer’s business card? Sorry."
"We need to take a look."
"I already looked. So did my partner. So did the LAFD’s arson unit."
"Nobody was looking for things that could be connected with Mobius."
Winston said, "Mobius?"
McCallum seemed irritated with herself, as if she’d said too much. "Never mind. It’s just…a nickname." She turned to Dodge. "We need to go back there, check it out."
Dodge shrugged. "Who am I to question the wisdom and authority of a representative of the federal government?"
"Mind if we take my car?"
"We’ll have to. Left mine at the campus. My partner drove me over here."
"Let’s go, then."
Dodge didn’t intend to be ordered around. He lingered, talking to Winston. "Think there’ll be any problem with the ID?"
"Not once I get the antemortem data. His family dentist is in Palo Alto. So far we haven’t gotten the records."
"But once we do?"
"Then it’s no problem. There’s a lot here to work with. Tooth wear, enamel hypoplasia, fillings in two incisors, porcelain crown on one of the molars. Lot of dental work for a twenty-two-year-old. Kid must’ve consumed a lot of Popsicles."
"So you can make a comparison?"
"Yes, Detective. I may not be an odontologist, but I can compare X rays easily enough."
Odontologist was a fancy word for dentist. Dodge had looked it up once. There were forensic odontologists who specialized in identifying remains from dental work, but they were used only as consultants, called in when the regular MEs were out of their depth.
"Okay," he said. "When you get the records, give me a ring pronto, okay? I need to know if this is Scott Maple. His folks are probably a little curious too."
"As soon as they arrive, I’ll be on it," Winston said, but she was still looking at Agent McCallum, maybe hoping for more of an explanation.
If so, she was disappointed. McCallum walked out the door. Dodge followed, taking his time about it, just to get her steamed.
It worked. "Will you put a move on, please?" McCallum snapped.
"Sounds like this Mobius character has been active for a while. Another few minutes won’t make much of a difference."
"It could make all the difference. He’s on a tight schedule, I think. He’s planning something, and he intends for it to go down soon."
"And what’s this big thing he’s got planned?"
She didn’t answer, but Dodge found himself walking faster anyway. He was thinking of the activity around City Hall, the extra squad cars on the streets. He had a feeling that whoever this Mobius was, he was the reason for all the excitement. Which meant this was something big. Something Myron Levine would fucking kill to have as an exclusive.
Maybe this weekend wasn’t turning out so bad, after all.
He waited until they were on the Santa Monica Freeway, McCallum at the wheel of her bureau sedan, Dodge in the passenger seat. Then he asked, "Care to fill me in?"
She frowned and looked at him. He knew she was measuring him as a potential partner, trying to judge if he was someone she could count on. He also knew that she would have to trust him, because time was tight and she had no choice.
"Can you keep a secret?" she asked.