Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  Abby realized she had been led into a verbal trap. “There’s a difference between taking an innocent life—”

  “And do you decide who is innocent? Who lives and who dies?”

  She wasn’t used to being put on the defensive in a conversation. In this case there was no good answer. Say yes, and she had placed herself above the law. Say no, and she must bow to the law—and in the eyes of the law, Peter Faust was a free man.

  “I decide who I’m going to work for,” she said after a moment’s hesitation, “and who I’m not. Right now, you and your main squeeze are in the second category.”

  “Main squeeze?” Faust was unfamiliar with the expression.

  “Your honey, your Kewpie doll, your death groupie. ‘Squeaky’ Fromme over here.”

  It was the girl’s turn to look puzzled. Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the Manson clan, had been before her time.

  Faust understood the reference. For the first time, he looked displeased. She saw his Adam’s apple jerk, a common response to stress. The Adam’s apple, its muscles mediated by the vagus nerve, often served as an indicator of emotional changes.

  “You should not compare me with him,” Faust said.

  Manson, he must mean. “With Charlie? Why not? You two have loads in common. Admittedly, you’re better dressed, and you do a better job of hiding your craziness—”

  “There is nothing to hide. Mr. Manson is insane, just as you say. And his followers and admirers—there are some, even now—are sadly deluded. They have given over their lives to a madman. They are lost children.”

  “While your followers, on the other hand, are models of mental health.”

  “I have no followers.”

  “Your fans, then.”

  “Fans. I abhor the word.”

  “You’re a celebrity, whether you like it or not.”

  “Fame means nothing to me. I have no need of it, no desire for it. I am indifferent to such things. I have never sought a following. Those who admire me are drawn to my truth.”

  “I don’t think you and truth go together real well.”

  “There you are wrong. I do know truths, and I speak them. And others—a few enlightened souls—hear what I say.”

  “What do they hear?”

  “That modern life is a lie. Our deepest, most primal instincts are denied. We are cut off, alienated, from our animal selves. For we are animals, you see, and little more. The Romans knew it when they crowded into the Circus Maximus to see weaklings torn limb from limb for an afternoon’s amusement. They knew it when they pinned their vanquished foes to crosses that lined the Via Appia, each sacrificial victim squirming in exquisite pain like a bug on a pin. Think what a spectacle it must have made.”

  “Yeah,” Abby said. “Good times.”

  “Indeed they were. The old pagan ways were incontestably superior to the thin gruel of love-thy-neighbor. The ancients were ahead of their time. They were Darwinists two thousand years in advance of the Beagle’s voyage. They understood nature, red in tooth and claw. They admired power. They did not flinch from inflicting pain. They did not avert their eyes from cruelty. They reveled in it.”

  “Like you.”

  He nodded. “I am a throwback, if you will. Or perhaps a bridge to the new age to come.”

  “You’re looking more like Manson every minute.”

  “Only to one who cannot see. I am no madman. I am, perhaps, a visionary.” His eyes narrowed. “An artist,” he added in a lower voice.

  His change of tone and expression made her wary. She wondered if he was serious or just shining her on.

  “What is art,” he continued softly, “but reassembling reality on our own terms? All creativity consists of the manipulation of things in the world to create new combinations, new arrangements.”

  “Things, not people.”

  “People, things ...” He shrugged, and in his sublime indifference she knew she was facing a pure sociopath. “To take the elements around us and remodel them along the lines of our thought, our will. I took a living human being and made it a corpse.” Abby noted the word it. “In so doing, I re-created the world.”

  “You didn’t create anything. You destroyed—”

  “Destruction and creation are the two faces of Janus. There is not one without the other.”

  “Tell that to Emily Wallace.”

  His nostrils flared, a sign of arousal. “I did—before I killed her.”

  “Tell it to her family.”

  “I have. They didn’t listen.”

  “Neither will I.” She started to get up.

  His arousal had told her everything about him that she needed to know. He was a typical anger-excitation sadist. For all his superficial polish, he was really no better than any back-alley rapist.

  “A man has been stalking Elise,” Faust said, with a nod toward his companion. “I believe he means her harm.”

  Abby hesitated, then resumed her seat, knowing that Faust was playing her—and ordinarily she was not the type to be played.

  “Give me the details,” she said.

  Faust complied. He and his girlfriend, Elise Vangarten, had first spotted the man at Cafe Eden ten days ago. They had assumed he was a fan, a “lookie-loo,” as Elise put it. Abby thought the expression was appropriate. Lookie-loos were bystanders at crime scenes and accidents, drawn by morbid curiosity.

  When the man began appearing at other locations, Faust pegged him as a stalker. Two nights ago he shadowed Elise through a Century City parking garage. The experience left her rattled.

  “So call the cops,” Abby said.

  Faust frowned. “The police will not assist me. They seem to regard me with distaste.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “I am a legal resident of this country. I am entitled to certain rights. But the authorities see me only as the Werewolf. That was my nickname in the tabloid press, you know.” He sounded faintly proud of it.

  “I remember.” Abby’s nose wrinkled in disgust.

  “They cannot look past such labels and superficialities.”

  “It’s hard to look past the murder of an innocent woman. How old was she? Early twenties? About Elise’s age?”

  She hoped to draw a reaction from the girl, but there was none.

  Faust waved off the question with an airy flutter of his hand. “You in this country are so provincial. You cling to the simplistic morality of small-town burghers. Good versus evil, right and wrong. You are children who will not grow up.”

  “Thanks for the sociology lesson. I assume it was after the parking garage incident that you decided to try a private operative?”

  “Operative.” Faust pronounced the word slowly as if tasting it. “Yes.”

  “It’s not like I advertise in the Yellow Pages. How’d you find out about me?” This was a question she normally wouldn’t ask, but she couldn’t imagine which of her former clients would travel in Faust’s circle.

  “That is best left unstated.”

  “Is it? Why?”

  “I was sworn to secrecy.”

  “So?” She tried turning his own logic against him. “Right and wrong are only childish concepts. Violating an oath must be okay.”

  “I have my own code of conduct. It is not imposed on me by deities or traditions. It is my choice, my will.”

  Logic hadn’t worked. She tried begging. “Give me a hint, at least.”

  A smile played briefly at the corners of Faust’s mouth. “It was someone in the law-enforcement field,” he said finally.

  Law enforcement. That was weird. Abby couldn’t recall ever having had a client with a job in that line.

  Of course, Faust might be putting her on. He didn’t strike her as a guy who had a lot of connections with officers of the law.

  “That doesn’t help me too much,” she said.

  “It was not meant to.”

  She dropped the subject. “I assume your friend gave you some idea of how I conduct business.”

&
nbsp; “Indeed. You are a stalker of stalkers. You make them your prey.”

  She wasn’t sure she cared for the word prey. “Let’s just say I identify a stalker, infiltrate his fife—”

  “Determine his whereabouts,” Faust said.

  “And assess his threat potential. That’s really the most important part.”

  “Yes, certainly,” he added as if it were an afterthought.

  “Tell me about the guy. What he looks like, where else you’ve seen him. That kind of thing. It’s what the folks in the writing game call exposition—boring but necessary.”

  “He looks like anyone else. He’s just a man.”

  “That description is less helpful than you may think. Nobody is just a man. Everybody has something distinctive about him.”

  “Not this man.”

  “Try harder. Short, tall, fat, thin, young, old ...?”

  “Average height, average build, nondescript appearance.”

  “You’re trying to make this as hard as possible, aren’t you? How about hair color?”

  “Brown.”

  “More blond than brown,” Elise said.

  “I would say brownish,” Faust amended.

  “Great. Is he Caucasian?”

  Faust nodded. “Yes, this much I can say with certainty. He is Anglo.”

  “Well, that helps a little. But not much, because most stalkers are Anglos. As a pastime, stalking hasn’t caught on in the minority community in a big way. Sort of like serial killing. But then,” she added with a nod toward Faust, “I guess you would know about that.”

  “I am not a serial killer. I killed just once.”

  “Once that we know about. Ever miss it?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The thrill of the hunt, the taste of blood? Ever start jonesing for it?”

  “I could ask you the same question, could I not?”

  “You’re a smooth one, Peter. I’ll give you that. Eyes?”

  “What?”

  “Your stalker. Presumably he has eyes. What color are they?”

  “I have not the slightest idea. I have never been that close to him.”

  “Elise, little help here. If he’s after you, maybe you’ve gotten a better look.”

  The girl seemed reluctant to join in the conversation. No surprise. Anyone who was attracted to a man like Faust would have low self-esteem and probably poor social skills. Elise might be intelligent enough, even creative in her way, but she would be overloaded with chronic anxiety and fear.

  “I’ve only seen him from a distance,” Elise said, her voice very low, “usually in places that are pretty dark.”

  “Okay, well, that takes us to our next question. Where have you seen him, exactly, besides the parking garage and this cafe?”

  “All over.”

  “Narrow it down.”

  “He seems to know where I’ll be. It’s like he’s there waiting for me.”

  “He’s where waiting for you?”

  “All the places I go. Clothing stores, nightclubs, ad shoots ...”

  “Elise is a model,” Faust put in.

  It made sense. She had the anorexic look favored by the purveyors of designer jeans and overpriced perfume.

  “He’s been present when you’re working?” Abby asked. “In a photography studio?”

  “No, in public. Last week we did a shoot on the beach in Santa Monica and another one on Mulholland Drive. People will stand around and watch. Both times he was there in the crowd.”

  “He might be following you from home. Do you two live together?”

  Elise shook her head. “I have my own place. Need my space, you know. Sometimes I leave from Peter’s house, sometimes from my condo, sometimes from someplace else entirely. How can he always know where I am? Is he following me twenty-four hours a day?”

  “I doubt it.” It was almost impossible for one person to maintain around-the-clock surveillance.

  “Since this started, I’ve been checking my rearview all the time. I’ve never seen anyone behind me.”

  Abby felt a tingle of interest in the case. They had no idea where the man would turn up next. No description. No details. The challenge appealed to her, even if the clients did not.

  “Okay,” she said, “maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree here. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Yesterday,” Elise answered. “I went to the Farmer’s Market, and he was there.”

  “You were alone?”

  “At first I was. Peter joined me.”

  “How did Peter know where to find you?”

  “I text-messaged him to let him know where I was going. He messaged back and said he’d meet me there for lunch.”

  She looked at Faust. “Where were you when you got the message?”

  “At home.”

  “You got the message on your cell phone?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You do that a lot? Exchange text messages via cell?”

  “Quite often, yes. In Europe this technology has been popular for some years.” His eyes narrowed. “Have you stumbled across something, Miss Sinclair?”

  I wouldn’t call it stumbling, she thought irritably. “Maybe, These other occasions when the man has shown up ... did you text-message each other beforehand?”

  “Probably,” Elise said. “I like to let Peter know where I am.”

  Abby looked at Faust. “And were you always home when you received the messages?”

  “I suppose I was. I am a bit of a homebody, you see.”

  “When you called me to set up this appointment, did you use a landline or a cell?”

  “Landline?” He didn’t know the term.

  “Your regular home phone.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes, I used the landline, as you say.”

  “And when you got my name from your friend in law enforcement?”

  “Also the landline.” He seemed to enjoy saying the word, as if it were a new toy.

  “Glad to hear it. Don’t say anything about me over the cell phone, okay? And don’t call me on your cell, either of you, unless it’s an emergency. How about when you arranged to meet here today? Did you use your cell phones to work out the details?”

  “No. We spoke in person.”

  “That’s good. If you had, he might be here. Which I assume he isn’t.”

  Faust’s gaze traveled around the room, performing an efficient visual check. “He is not.”

  Elise leaned forward. “You really think this guy is intercepting our phone calls?”

  “He could be.” It wasn’t easy, though. Digital signals were difficult to intercept, and they were normally encrypted to ensure privacy. “May I see your phones, please?”

  They handed them over. As she expected, the phones were recent models, state-of-the-art. Both were E911-capable, meaning they were equipped with a GPS chip that allowed the cellular service provider to pinpoint the phone’s position within as little as five feet. Abby herself used an older phone without GPS. She could still be tracked via cell-tower triangulation, but not as precisely. She didn’t want anyone knowing exactly where she was.

  Cell phone voyeurism had declined markedly since the systems had gone digital. Nowadays it would take some highly expensive—and highly illegal—equipment to pick up the signal and decode it. If their stalker was using that method to keep tabs on them, he was no ordinary wacko.

  “You may be up against somebody who’s a little more dangerous than the average star struck celebrity hunter,” she said carefully.

  Faust smiled. “I am glad to hear you say this.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. It means you are intrigued. Your blood is up. You are on the scent.”

  “I’m not a hound dog, Mr. Faust.”

  “More like a jungle cat, I think. Sleek and stealthy, camouflaged by your environment, blending with the night.”

  “How poetic.”

  “It is accurate, is it not?”

  “It’s not the
wildlife analogy I would use. I’m more like a pilot fish. You know those little fish that swim in a shark’s wake?” The metaphor, she realized, was too complicated to convey to someone who spoke English as a second language. “Never mind.”

  Faust was watching her, his blue eyes glittering. “You will take the assignment, will you not, Miss Sinclair?”

  Abby hesitated. She despised Faust and didn’t care if he lived or died. But there was Elise. Probably just a naive kid mixed up in something ugly and stupid. She was dumb, sure. But Abby couldn’t hate her for that. Dumbness was a prerogative of youth.

  Besides, she did like a challenge.

  “Not for your sake,” she said at last. “For hers.”

  “I am most gratified.”

  “That is, assuming you can meet my price.”

  “I do not imagine that will be a problem.”

  “No. I wouldn’t think so. Does it bother you at all to be living the good life after you took Emily Wallace’s life away?”

  “I see no connection between the two issues.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  Faust shrugged. “Oranges and apples.”

  “Apples and oranges is the circumlocution you’re aiming for.”

  “Ah. I appreciate the correction.” His manner was almost courtly. “My English is not always idiomatic, as you see.”

  “You still speak better than a lot of Americans do.”

  “A compliment. You are warming to me, Miss Sinclair.”

  She resisted this, but there was some truth in it. He had a strange charisma, his Old World courtliness and patrician bearing, his preternatural calmness, his air of wealth and worldly sophistication. “I’m not a good judge of people,” she said curtly.

  “This cannot be true. You would not have survived so long in your profession if it were so.”

  “Maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

  “The panther stalking her prey does not rely on luck.”

  “I’m a pilot fish, remember?”

  “You are a wild thing on the hunt.”

  “Takes one to know one,” she said softly.

  “Indeed,” Faust said. “Indeed it does.”

  3

  Abby felt vaguely dirty after her meeting in the cafe. She had to remind herself that she’d never shaken Faust’s hand, never actually touched him at all. Even so, she couldn’t shake the sense that she needed a hot shower or, preferably, a nice long bath.