Last Breath

by Michael Prescott

  On patrol, she had handled many domestic disputes. In a high percentage of cases, the root of the marital problem was simple—the husband regarded his wife not as a person but as property.

  She had never imagined that Adam could see her that way. But he had. Then she had gone and challenged his assumptions by building a life for herself—and walking out on him. He could not forgive her for being an autonomous human being. To him, she was only his toy.

  Had there been red flags she should have seen? Hints of the volcanic craziness below his bland exterior?

  She remembered the time they played doubles tennis with another graduate student and his wife on the UCLA courts. She missed a backhand, sending it wide, costing them the first set, and Adam screamed at her, actually screamed. She could still see the wildness in his eyes, the twisted shape of his open mouth. Could still hear his echoing shout—“God damn it, keep your eye on the fucking ball!”—and the embarrassed silence from their friends on the other side of the net.

  A moment later he apologized, joking that he’d always been overly competitive, but the episode had lingered in her thoughts, a small piece of a puzzle she had not tried too hard to solve. Maybe she had not wanted to solve it, had not wanted to face the dark side of their marriage.

  The dark side ...

  A memory returned to her of the morning when she emerged from the bathroom and found Adam hunched over her purse. She crept close enough to see that he had taken out her off-duty gun and was handling it with a slow, loving caress, almost fondling the stubby, oiled barrel. Then he realized she was watching him. “Fuck, don’t sneak up on me like that!” Anger again, as if she had done something wrong. When she asked why he’d been holding her gun, he said something about an interest in firearms. But he had never exhibited any such interest before, and even then she knew his answer was less than the truth.

  Had he been wondering how it would feel to shoot her with her own gun? To take control—ultimate control—of this woman who was slipping from his grasp? To turn the emblem of her own independence against her?

  The idea had not occurred to her at the time. Or maybe it had, but only in flashes of awareness that faded, like lightning strokes, before they could be fully perceived. At times when he made love to her, she would open her eyes and glimpse his face in the split second before orgasm, and what she would see was not love but resentment and rage. Then with his shudder of release, his features would slacken, and whatever expression she had read in his face would be gone.

  Small things. Moments. Fragments. Nothing she could put together or make sense of. Only the uneasy intimation that there was another person behind the man she knew, a person who was cruel and cold and controlling.

  Most of the time that side of Adam was entirely hidden. Though often distant, he was charming, considerate, kind. Or so he seemed. It had been an act, and she had bought it. She had underestimated his skill at deception. He wore his mask effortlessly. He was a world-class prevaricator and manipulator. If lying were an Olympic event, he would get the gold.

  Their marriage had been only lies and sick games. And she hadn’t known, hadn’t allowed herself to know. Bad enough to be blind. Worse to blind yourself, to keep your eyes shut because you’re afraid of what you might see.

  Anger at herself spurred a new surge of adrenaline. She punctured the last stubborn segment of the tape and pulled her wrists apart.

  Free. Almost.

  Putting down the needle, she undid the clasp that secured the throttle and spit out the rubber ball. A wave of nausea shuddered through her, but she suppressed the impulse to retch. She could not afford any weakness, not now.

  She peeled off the tape blindfolding her. The adhesive plucked hairs from her eyebrows in a series of quick, painful pops, but she didn’t care.

  She could see again. Blinking, she raised her head and took a look around.

  She was in a large room colonnaded with posts that supported a flat, featureless ceiling. The floor was utterly flat also, a spread of poured concrete, and where walls should have been, there were long open spaces that let in moonlight and starlight, but no artificial illumination.

  For a baffled moment she was too disoriented to grasp what she was seeing. Then she realized it was a parking garage.

  The pylons were evenly spaced between open areas large enough to accommodate several vehicles parked diagonally. Squinting, she could even make out stripes painted on the concrete to mark off the spaces. But no lights overhead, only meshworks of electrical wiring that led nowhere.

  A half-finished structure. Abandoned, deserted—a concrete tomb.

  Tomb. Wrong word to choose.

  She was a long way from being dead tonight.

  ***

  Adam took the Garey Avenue exit ramp from the San Bernardino Freeway and headed north through Pomona and Claremont. North of Claremont lay unincorporated county land, desolate and dark. He followed Live Oak Canyon Road to a newly paved turnoff that wound through hilly land. Above him rose the tree-studded crests of the Angeles National Forest, good hiking country offering scenic vistas. But he wasn’t going that far.

  Half a mile down the side road he switched his headlights off. The moon was bright enough to guide him the remaining few hundred yards to his destination.

  He opened the padlocked gate, then drove through and secured the lock behind him. He wanted no visitors.

  Keeping his headlights off, he drove down the main boulevard of the complex. Blocky buildings in no particular style eased past on both sides. Toward the rear of the property lay the parking garage, three stories high. It was a grim concrete structure, ugly and severely functional, and Adam had chosen it as the place where his ex-wife would die.

  The garage was largely finished, except for the fluorescent lighting fixtures that had never been installed in the ceilings. The concrete entry ramp was blocked by a heap of lumber, but that was all right. He wouldn’t have driven inside anyway. To navigate the curving entryway and avoid the rows of pylons, he would need his headlights, and he was reluctant to turn them on and reveal any sign of activity in the complex.

  As he had before, he parked alongside the garage, killing the BMW’s engine. Last time he’d arrived here, he’d faced the exhausting chore of lugging C.J. inside. This time there was nothing for him to carry—except his handgun, retrieved from the glove compartment where he had stowed it before entering the police station. There was a metal detector in the doorway of the station house, and it wouldn’t have been smart to be caught with a gun in his windbreaker.

  He checked his side pocket for his cell phone and glanced at it to be sure it was on. If Detective Walsh or any other cop called his home number, the call would again be forwarded to the cell phone. He would have to answer and, if necessary, make tracks back to LA.

  A quick kill, then. Not exactly what he’d hoped for, but life required certain compromises.

  As did death, he added with a smile.

  He left his car in a rush, not even bothering to slam the door, and sidestepped the lumber, hurrying up the entry ramp into the garage.

  ***

  The tape binding C.J.’s ankles came off easily. In less than a minute she unwound the wrapping and freed her legs.

  Now for the rope lashing her to the post. It coiled around her belly like a belt, fastened with a large, complicated knot at her midsection. She fumbled at it but found without surprise that it was a good, strong knot, difficult to unravel.

  Adam must have enjoyed tying the knot tight. She could picture his gloved hands working on the rope, drawing it taut, while he thought about the deterioration of their love life, the gradual process by which she had become the dominant partner, the breadwinner, the street cop, while he remained a student, a perpetual adolescent. She could see his red face, his narrowed eyes, the twist and jerk of his wrists with each angry thought.

  This is for wearing a uniform.

  This is for carrying a gun.

  This is for being more of a man than I was
.

  She tugged at the knot. It didn’t loosen.

  Could she wriggle free of the rope? Not likely. The rope was tight, constricting her abdomen, offering little room to maneuver.

  She inhaled deeply and tried to squirm free, but although she prided herself on narrow hips, they weren’t quite narrow enough.

  Wouldn’t work. She had to cut the rope. What she needed was a knife or ...

  Glass.

  On the floor near her was a glass vial, one of the items dislodged from the crate she’d overturned. Blindfolded, she’d had no idea it was there. Now she snatched it up easily. It contained some sort of dark liquid, which splashed over her hand when she broke the vial on the floor.

  Ink. That was what it was. Dark red ink, she thought, although in the dim light it was hard to distinguish color.

  She wiped her hand on her cargo shorts, indifferent to the stain, then selected the longest shard from the litter of glass.

  The edge was sharp. She sawed the rope, cutting through the entwined fibers one by one. Not long now. When Adam returned, she would be gone.

  She could visualize the exact expression on his face—she had seen it when she caught him under the sheets with Ashley. It was a look of utter defeat—not guilt, but simple astonishment at having lost the game.

  Now he would lose a second time.

  Finally the rope came apart, sagging to the floor.

  “Did it,” she breathed, and then she lifted her head and there was Adam, limned in the ambient light, standing at the far end of the garage.

  He was watching her, leaning against one of the pylons, hands in the pockets of his chinos.

  And smiling.

  She knew it, though his face was lost in shadow.

  She could feel the cold energy of his smile.

  “You’re so resourceful, C.J.,” he said, his voice echoing off the concrete floor and ceiling. “It’s admirable, really. You’ve always been a survivor—until tonight.”

  37

  Walsh reached Hacienda Heights at 9:45 and parked across the street from a thirty-foot motor home customized as a mobile command post for the Sheriff’s Department. Law enforcement agencies outside crowded metropolitan areas often used even larger vehicles, but thirty feet was the maximum length suitable for maneuvering in the narrow streets of LA’s older districts.

  It was not an undercover vehicle. The LASD logo was stamped on the side panels. The staging area was far enough from the suspect’s residence to make subterfuge unnecessary.

  He crossed Hacienda Boulevard and rapped on the vehicle’s back door, which swung open to admit him. The rear compartment of the motor home had been converted into a communications room. The civilian who welcomed him aboard after checking his badge was a radio operator who probably worked out of the Sheriff’s dispatch center in East LA. Walsh glanced around and saw multiple Zetron radio consoles as well as high-frequency and military-band radio gear. The equipment hummed, powered by an onboard generator.

  A second radio operator was talking into a microphone, asking for an ETA.

  “Six minutes,” a voice crackled over the speakers.

  “Roger that.”

  “Someone else invited to this party?” Walsh asked the two technicians.

  The one who’d let him in nodded. “SWAT.”

  Walsh felt a stab of hope. A SWAT raid wouldn’t be ordered unless the suspect was believed to be at home.

  Had he taken C.J. Osborn to his residence? Was that where he killed his victims? It seemed impossible. How could he get the women inside without being seen? For that matter, how could he get the bodies out?

  Then again, when dealing with nutcases of this type, anything was conceivable. Look at Jeffrey Dahmer, who committed multiple murders in his apartment, even dismembered the bodies with power tools, and never raised the suspicions of his neighbors. Hell, the Milwaukee police paid him a visit and didn’t notice anything awry.

  The Hourglass Killer could be home right now—with C.J.

  And four hours hadn’t passed yet.

  There might still be a chance to save her.

  Walsh hurried into the middle compartment of the motor home, which was used as a command area. Whiteboards were tacked to the walls, some bearing arcane marker scribbles from a previous operation. More radio equipment crowded the shelves, along with a fax/photocopy machine, several phones, and two notebook computers that shared an inkjet printer. There was also a closed-circuit TV that could receive live video from the Ikegami color camera on the roof. The camera, operated by remote control, could scan in a full circle, but it wasn’t running now.

  A small galley and a lavatory were among the amenities; a closed door hid a cache of weapons. Most of the room was taken up by the conference center—a shaky metal table flanked by several equally shaky metal chairs. Despite the chairs, everyone was standing. Walsh saw Donna Cellini, the two deputies from C.J. Osborn’s house, and Captain Hector Garcia, who ran the Sheriff’s station in nearby City of Industry.

  “Hec,” Walsh said with a handshake as the door rumbled shut behind him.

  “Morrie. Good to see you. Too bad about the circumstances.”

  “Maybe we can improve the circumstances. What’ve we got?”

  Cellini answered. “I called the computer repairman, Bowden. He was home. Sotheby and I went over and talked to him. It was obvious he was holding back, so finally we told him a woman’s life was at stake. Then he opened up. Said he didn’t do the service call at Martha Eversol’s apartment. He was supposed to, but it was his kid’s birthday, and he wanted to take him to Disneyland, so he let another guy cover for him.”

  “What other guy?”

  “Mr. Gavin Treat, of Hacienda Heights. He lives two blocks from here, in a third-floor apartment. Treat used to work for Bowden’s company. Then he went freelance. He’s an independent contractor, gets called out when the full-time employees are booked up. Hires out his services to any company that needs him on any given day. That particular day, he took over Bowden’s assignments and let Bowden sign the paperwork.”

  “And Bowden never said anything—”

  “Because he could lose his job. He’s not supposed to hand off his day’s work to somebody else.”

  “He should’ve called in sick.”

  “He had a bad case of the flu last summer. His sick days were maxed out.”

  “Anything to link Treat to Nikki Carter or C.J. Osborn?”

  “Carter, yes. We checked Treat’s DL.” Driver’s license. “He changed his address six months ago. Previously he resided at the Westside Palms.”

  “Shit.” That was Nikki Carter’s apartment building.

  “He was two floors down from her. They might’ve met in the laundry room or the elevator—whatever. It’s a security building, but when he moved out, he probably held on to a duplicate key to the main entrance, Then he could pick the lock on her apartment, install the Webcam while she was out.”

  Walsh grunted. “How about Osborn?”

  “That, we can’t figure. Since there’s no record of her PC being serviced, Treat must have singled her out some other way.”

  “The ex-husband suggested it might be a revenge thing—somebody C.J. arrested. Does Treat have a record?”

  “No, he’s clean. Not even a parking ticket.”

  “There goes that theory.”

  “Well, hell, we don’t need to know everything. We’ve nailed the guy, Morrie. Be happy.”

  “I’ll be happy when he’s in custody and Osborn’s safe and sound. I take it we’re operating on the assumption Treat is home.”

  “His vehicle is parked in the apartment building’s underground garage.”

  “What kind of vehicle?”

  “White 1999 Ford Econoline E-150, commercial model.”

  Deputy Tanner spoke up. “Like the one C.J. saw following her this afternoon.”

  Walsh nodded. “Additional confirmation—as if any was needed. So we don’t know he’s home?”

  Cellin
i said no. “He might have taken a second vehicle, although his DMV records list only one. We can’t probe his apartment with infrared sensors or long-distance microphones—too much ambient heat and noise from other units in the building. We could call him and see if he answers—”

  “But we don’t want to spook him,” Deputy Chang said.

  “Even if we pretend it’s a sales call,” Tanner added, “he might get suspicious. Then we’ve got a barricade situation.”

  “With a possible hostage,” Chang said.

  Captain Garcia nodded. “So we’re going in hard. Deputies Tanner and Chang are members of a SWAT element. Tanner’s the team leader. Chang’s the scout. We’ve called out the rest of the team.”

  “Lucky break, having you here,” Walsh said.

  “Lucky for us,” Tanner said coolly. “Unlucky for Treat—if he’s home.”

  One of the radio operators leaned into the doorway. “Raid van’s here.” He meant the SWAT van loaded with the gear necessary to carry out an armed assault—flak vests, assault weapons, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, night-vision goggles, Nomex fire-resistant hoods, the works.

  Tanner and Chang moved toward the rear of the command post. “Time to suit up,” Tanner said.

  Walsh almost told them to be careful, but he knew it would just sound stupid. SWAT team members were trained to be careful.

  He hoped Tanner’s team lived up to SWAT’s reputation—because he had a feeling that where the Hourglass Killer was concerned, they could not afford mistakes.

  38

  “When ...” C.J. heard the hoarseness in her voice and had to start over. “When did you get back?”

  “Just now.” Adam stood there, watching her. “Glad to see me?”

  She got to her feet, kicking away the rope. In her right hand she still held the glass shard, her only weapon.

  “You shouldn’t have taken off the blindfold,” Adam said. “It’s easier to die when you can’t see what’s coming. That’s why they blindfold the victim of a firing squad. Act of mercy.”