Last Breath

by Michael Prescott

  “We’ll have to call her husband,” Tanner said.

  Cellini glanced at him. “She’s married?”

  “Ex-husband. Adam somebody. He needs to know.”

  “They still close?” Walsh asked.

  “I don’t think so, but I saw him with her today.”

  “He came by the station to see her,” Chang added.

  “Huh.” Cellini pursed her lips. “Under other circumstances he’d be a prime suspect.”

  “Maybe he is anyway,” Walsh said. “Maybe he’s our guy.”

  “And the other women?”

  “Diversions. He killed them just to throw us off the trail.”

  “Weak,” Cellini said.

  “Very,” Walsh conceded. “I need to interview him anyway. His phone number must be in Osborn’s file.”

  “Excuse me,” Tanner cut in, “but what other women?”

  Walsh patted the deputy’s arm, a fatherly gesture rare for him. “She’s the third one taken this way. The third one who was spied on over the Web.”

  “The third?” Then Tanner understood. He took a step backward, as if to put distance between himself and Walsh’s reassuring touch. “The Hourglass Killer. You’re heading up the task force. And Hyannis—”

  “Detective Hyannis is the LASD liaison. You see ... Hell, Donna, you tell him.”

  “The two previous victims were both found with index cards that said ‘Welcome to the Four-H Club,’” Cellini said. “We think the term stands for Four-Hour Club and that the victims ... well, that they’re kept alive for exactly four hours.”

  “How come this four-hour angle hasn’t made the papers?” Chang asked. “They’re covering the Hourglass Killer like crazy.”

  “We kept a lid on it,” Walsh said. “It almost got into the LA Times. They were set to run with it, but we prevailed upon the Metro editor to kill the story. It never ran in print, but somehow it turned up as a rumor on the Internet. Probably some copy editor at the Times blabbed in a, uh, what are those things called?”

  “Chat room,” Cellini suggested.

  Walsh shook his head. “God, I hate this Internet stuff.”

  “But maybe now it can help us,” Cellini said. “We may be able to trace the e-mail if it’s been saved on her computer.”

  “Worth a shot,” Walsh agreed. “Unless it’s like the video feed—sent through a proxy. Can you do that with e-mail?”

  “Sure. And probably that’s exactly how it was sent. Whatever else you can say about this guy, he’s not stupid.”

  Tanner had been listening to all this with a blank expression. Now he said simply, “Four hours?”

  Walsh nodded.

  “When I talked to her on the phone, she sounded funny.”

  “Speaking under duress?”

  “Could have been.”

  “What time was this?”

  Tanner looked at Chang, who checked his watch. “Forty-five minutes ago.”

  “So,” Tanner said, “if your theory is right ...”

  “She has three hours and fifteen minutes left,” Walsh said.

  The room was silent after that.

  30

  It was hard to talk with the throttle in place, but not impossible. She struggled to force out each word.

  “Please, Adam. You don’t ... want to ... do this.”

  “If that’s what you think,” he answered, “then you really don’t know me at all.”

  “Adam,” she moaned, the gag blurring the word.

  No response.

  She had to think of something to do. There must be a course of action she could follow, a miraculous way out. She was the good guy in the story, and the good guy didn’t die like this, trussed and humiliated and cut off from help.

  She had always believed that life, for all its apparent senselessness, had a purpose behind it. But where was the purpose in dying like this? Was everything just a sick joke, and would Adam get the last laugh?

  “Why?” she mumbled.

  He withdrew a little—she could feel the movement of the air displaced by his body—and she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? I’m not sure I can explain the why. It requires a logical justification that may be lacking in this case.”

  She waited, knowing he would say more if he chose to.

  “Why,” he said again, as if testing the word. “That’s what journalists are taught to ask. Who, what, why, where, when? But they leave out the most important one. How? That’s the real question. If you know how a thing happened, you don’t need to know the why. Prove exactly how a man killed his wife—just as an example—and his motivation can be filled in by the jury. They’ve all seen enough episodes of Murder, She Wrote. They’ll give you the why. You have to give them the how.”

  So tell me how, she thought. Tell me anything, Adam, talk to me.

  “Of course I’m just a corporate lawyer. Not an expert in this sordid criminal stuff. I may be getting it all wrong. Still it seems to me that if you knew how, then the why would present itself to you. Do you want to know the how of it, C.J.? Would that please you, satisfy your restless curiosity?”

  She made no response, not even a nod of her head. She knew he would tell her what he wanted her to hear. He enjoyed toying with her. And hearing himself talk had always been one of his chief pleasures.

  “Okay, picture this. You dump me, right? You walk out of my life. You say, ‘Fuck you,’ and you go. Now I’m sure you felt you were justified. I had, after all, been balling Ashley behind your back, but you know what? It wasn’t anything you didn’t deserve. You’re the one who broke our vows, not me. You swore to be there for me, to have and to hold, all that crap. And were you? Were you there for me, C.J.? Were you there for me at night? No, you were riding around in a cop car, cuffing bad guys. Were you there for me on the weekends? No, you had to work extra shifts. Were you ever there? To have and to hold—shit, I would’ve settled for a little quickie squeezed into your busy schedule. But you didn’t have time for that. You were into your own thing. You walked out on me a long time before Ashley came into the picture.”

  There were so many answers she could give, and none of them would help her. She was almost glad he had gagged her, glad the conversation had to be one-sided. An argument would be worse than pointless now.

  “So you catch me with Ashley, and you get all aggrieved, like I’m the one who’s done something wrong. Okay, you’re gone, and I’m alone. I move into that shit-hole apartment in Venice. You were there. You saw it. Living the high life, right? Ashley leaves me—I think you scared her off when you confronted her on campus. You even had to take that away from me. Nice, C.J. Hell hath no fury, and all that jazz. Well, you got what you wanted. I was alone. Every night. Stuck in that two-by-four apartment with no air conditioning and next-door neighbors who played Eminem at top volume all night long. It was like being in jail, except in jail I would’ve had more company.”

  She realized he expected her to feel sorry for him.

  “So I do what a lot of lonely guys do. I start spending too much time on my computer. I surf the Web. I look for women online. I try chat rooms, but it’s just a lot of garbage. Nobody knows how to have a conversation in those forums. Have you ever tried one? PrettyGirl says, ‘What’s the weather like where you are?’ And Man-at-Work says, ‘Overcast, might rain.’ And Lilypad says, ‘I like the rain.’ Blah blah blah. And the dirty ones are worse. Maybe some guys can get their rocks off, looking at a bunch of sexual fantasies typed on a computer screen, but it doesn’t do squat for me. So that’s out. I start looking for other kinds of relief online. Porno, the raunchier the better. I download some of these pictures, and let me tell you, C.J., I imagined your face on every body. If I’d had one of those picture-editing programs, maybe I would have actually put your face in there. Picture it. C.J. in chains, tickled by a cat-o’-nine-tails ...”

  She swallowed, hearing not only his words but the growly ugliness of his voice.

>   “Yeah, I got into the S-and-M stuff before long. There’s a lot of it on the Web. You can find anything if you look hard enough and if you’ve got time. I had plenty of time. You know there are sites where they take celebrities’ faces and paste them into bondage shots? A lot of supermodels are going under the knife, and not for a breast implant. They’ve even got fucking cartoon characters in bondage. You want to see Wonder Woman all tied up with nowhere to go? She’s on there somewhere. It’s a whole subculture, every fetish you can think of. And message boards, chat rooms, instant messaging to go along with all of it. It’s a substitute life for people who don’t have any real life. I guess you’d picture virgins in dorm rooms doing most of this stuff, and here I was, a divorced guy, thirty years old, going for a law degree, and I was one of them. Do you know how humiliating it was for me to be reduced to that level? I’d never been lonely and desperate in college, not even in high school, but now I was. You did that to me, C.J. I couldn’t get over you, couldn’t get past what had happened to my life when you kissed me off. So if you’re wondering whose fault it is that you’re here tonight, well, it’s your goddamned fault. Think about that. Your fault, C.J., not mine. Keep that in mind while I’m killing you.”

  Killing you.

  There. He had said it outright. He had expressed his final intention, and what was so frightening was that there had been no hesitation in his voice, only cold certainty.

  “They say you can’t pull off the perfect crime.” He was still talking somewhere in the darkness around her. “I’m proving them wrong. I’ve worked it all out. It’s a thing of beauty, really, though I’m not surprised if you fail to appreciate its aesthetic merits.”

  She had wanted him to explain things, but suddenly his voice was intolerable to her, and she just wished he would shut up.

  “The key to any successful deceit is misdirection. Magicians know that. Well, I’ve found a way to misdirect the police—and the best part is that I didn’t have to create some elaborate ruse. I merely had to take advantage of an existing situation.”

  He was so pleased with himself, and so confident. The confidence scared her most of all. Adam was an intelligent man, and if he felt sure of himself, he had a good reason.

  “I told you I was spending hours online every night. My life was school and the computer, nothing else. One night I was scrolling through an ‘alt.sex’ message board, trying to find out about sites I’d overlooked, and I read about a secret site, password-protected. At first it didn’t sound like anything special. It had the kind of name all these sites have—you know. Well, no, I guess you don’t. You use your computer to buy curiosities at auction sites, don’t you? Tame, C.J., very tame. The Web has a lot more to offer, if you know where to look.”

  She was glad she hadn’t known where to look. She wasn’t in the market for what the dark side of the Web seemed to be selling.

  “These sites have names like sexpussy.com or lick-me.com, anything that’s dirty and enticing. This one—I don’t even remember the damn name now. I bookmarked it so I didn’t have to keep typing the address. Anyway, I was just bored enough to ask for the password via e-mail. I received it and logged on, and that site led me to something I never expected to find, C.J. It led me to you.”

  There was silence in the room. She sat very still, trying to understand what he could possibly mean.

  “That’s right. You, my ex-wife, focus of my obsession. You were there. I could watch you. I could study you whenever you were home. It was like living with you again. I’d come home from UCLA and there you were, waiting for me. Sometimes getting dressed for a night watch, or going out with friends, or doing reps on your home gym. Never any sex, though. Guess you knew that anybody after me would be a disappointment. That was a joke, by the way. I’m not that vain.”

  No, she thought, you’re just out of your freakin’ mind.

  It seemed clear what had happened. After his hours of living vicariously through the Internet, he had lost contact with reality. He had imagined seeing her on the computer, the way schizophrenics imagined that the news anchor on their TV was talking directly to them. It was the only explanation.

  “I watched you, but not only you. There were other women who’d been featured on the site. I knew that, because there were references to previous contestants. That’s what you were, C.J.: a contestant. Well, I wanted to see those other women, but their images had been taken down. I figured I might find them on the server if I could hack into it. Never knew I was a hacker, did you? Well, it’s amazing what a little determination can do. I read some stuff online about how to enter a site through what they call a back door—never mind the details. It was easy enough. I got in, found the pics, saw the other women. And that’s when I realized I’d stumbled onto a bigger secret than a hidden Web site. And I knew what I had to do.”

  He had lost her completely. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  “So I worked it all out, down to the last detail. When it’s over, you’ll be dead, and even though I ought to be the first guy in the lineup, nobody will ever suspect me. There’ll be another suspect, a much more plausible one. He calls himself Bluebeard, by the way. That’s another thing I discovered after I got in through the back door and started snooping. Bluebeard’s his name—very appropriate—and his password’s Fatima, and right now he’s about to get nailed for a whole bunch of crimes he committed and for one, just one, that he never got around to. But who’ll believe his denials? Who’ll listen to him at all? See how beautiful it is, C.J.? Like a fine work of art?”

  She wouldn’t have answered even if she could. There was nothing beautiful about any of this. There was only the disjointed rambling of a crazed mind.

  “From this point on, it’s all about timing. In case you’re interested, you’re going to die at exactly ten forty-five P.M. No earlier, no later. It’s seven forty-five now, so you’ve got three hours to go. I hope you use the time well. Maybe you can think about all the things you could have done to make our marriage work. Maybe you can see for yourself why you’re ultimately to blame—”

  A shrill cry from across the room cut him off. It took her a moment to recognize it as the ring of a cell phone.

  “What the hell?” The interruption had rattled him. She could tell he hadn’t been expecting this call.

  There were two more rings before he answered.

  “Hello? ... Yes, this is Adam Nolan.”

  Once again he sounded calm, in control, but now she knew it was an act.

  “Yes, Officer, how can I help you? ... What? Did something happen to her? Was she in an accident?”

  God damn him. He was a better liar than she’d ever realized.

  “We were divorced a year ago,” he was saying in a well-modulated tone of dread. “Sure, we keep in touch. I saw her today at the station—she said she had some volunteer work to do tonight.... Is that it? Did something happen at the junior high?”

  So convincing. Every nuance, every choice of words, every stammer and hesitation. She almost believed him herself, just as she had believed he was faithful to her, just as she’d thought he was sincere about wanting to be friends, to go out on Friday for an evening of music and conversation.

  He had deceived her completely, and he would deceive the police too.

  “If you won’t give me the details over the phone, at least tell me if C J.’s okay....”

  She could not let him get away with this. She struggled to force a scream past the throttle in her mouth, but the loudest sound she could produce was a strangled moan.

  His footsteps eased farther away, putting distance between himself and any noise she made. He kept talking.

  “Of course I’ll come in. But I wish you could reassure me—all right, all right, I understand.”

  She couldn’t scream. Impotently she kicked her sneakers against the concrete floor. No use. The noise was probably inaudible over the phone, and even if it did get through, it would mean nothing to anyone who heard it.

  “Wi
lshire Community Police Station on Venice Boulevard, just west of San Vicente. Got it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Another click as the phone was flipped shut. The call was over.

  She could hear his quick breathing, a release of tension after his performance. Then a muttered curse. “God damn it.”

  Why was he upset? He must have anticipated that the police would call him. Then she remembered what he’d said at the house when he heard Tanner on the answering machine—“I don’t want him coming over. Not this soon.”

  And a few minutes ago—“It’s all about timing.”

  He’d said she would die at 10:45. “No earlier, no later.”

  It wasn’t the phone call itself that had rattled him. It was the fact that it had come too soon.

  As if in confirmation, she heard him whisper, “Fuck,” in that petulant tone he always used when he didn’t get his way.

  If his plan’s timing had been disrupted, did that mean he wouldn’t wait three hours for the kill? Would he end things now?

  Footsteps. He approached her. She waited, thinking of the gun that had nuzzled her chin. Was the gun in his hand? Was he about to pull the trigger?

  She wished the son of a bitch hadn’t taped over her eyes.

  Then with a chuckle, he said, “Not yet, C.J.”

  The words ought to have come as a relief, but hearing him address her in that fraudulently affectionate tone only shot another surge of fury through her. She twisted her wrists behind her back.

  “Your friends at the LAPD are moving faster than I thought,” he went on. “But it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all.”

  She caught the quaver in his voice and knew he was working hard to convince himself that things would still be okay. He hated surprises, hated to improvise. He was a control freak—always had been. A place for everything, everything in its place.

  “Anyway, I have to go away for a while and talk to a detective about you. Should be a very interesting conversation. But don’t worry. I’ll be back. I guarantee it. In the meantime, you just sit tight. Think good thoughts.”