Ablutions would have to wait. She had work to do. Her first priority was to determine how the stalker was reading his quarry’s text messages.
Intercepting cellular phone calls wasn’t easy. In the old days when mobile phones used analog technology, a Radio Shack police scanner could pull in the signal. It was no more difficult than listening in on walkie-talkie transmissions.
Today’s digital cell phone signals were encrypted with cipher streams to prevent electronic eavesdropping. Even a thirty-thousand-dollar digital scanner would be unable to decode encrypted data. If it did intercept the signal, all it would get was an electronic squeal, like the irritating noise made when a modem or a fax machine connected.
But there was one way to tap a mobile phone—an IMSI catcher. The acronym stood for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, the unique fifteen-digit number stored in the SIM card of every cell phone.
The basic principle behind an IMSI catcher was simple enough. Cell phones were constantly seeking alternative signals in order to obtain the clearest reception. If the phone detected a cell tower with a stronger signal than the one it was currently using, it would instantly switch over.
An IMSI catcher simulated a cell tower. It sent out a strong signal that fooled the cell phone, tricking it into routing the transmission through the IMSI catcher itself. In this way it could pick up all cellular calls in its vicinity.
Even better, the IMSI catcher sent a command to the phone that turned off encryption. The intercepted message could be heard or read in real time.
After the IMSI catcher had snatched the call, it would route the signal to its intended destination—sort of an electronic catch-and-release policy. Neither the cell phone user nor the phone company would be aware of the deception.
The key, as in real estate, was location, location, location. The IMSI catcher had to be stationed in relatively close proximity to the targeted cell phone. That way its signal would be recognized as the strongest in the vicinity.
Elise had typically been away from home when she text-messaged Faust. But Faust had consistently been at his house when he received the messages. Abby was betting the stalker lived in Faust’s neighborhood.
Of course, there was a chance that the IMSI catcher was installed near Faust’s house, while the stalker himself lived elsewhere, receiving the signal remotely. Abby doubted it, though. The equipment would have to be installed indoors, hardwired into the main current. If the stalker had gone to all the trouble to find a home for his gear, he was likely to be living there himself.
A transponder of that type typically had a range of three hundred yards. That meant the eavesdropper was situated within a nine-hundred-foot radius of Faust’s home. Closer was better, naturally.
If he were a longtime neighbor, Faust probably would have seen him at some point. Angelenos, like most urbanites, weren’t the chummiest people when it came to making friends with the folks next door, but it was nearly impossible not to notice your neighbor at all. Abby figured the stalker was a recent arrival.
Before she left the cafe, Faust had given her his address. He lived in one of the few fashionable neighborhoods of Hollywood, the Los Feliz district in the foothills just south of Griffith Park. She knew the territory. Mostly houses, few apartments. Any rentals that might be available would be either single-family homes or guest cottages. The limited supply of rentals made her next step obvious. She stopped at the library.
A month’s worth of the Sunday L.A. Times had collected in the periodicals room. She started with the edition from three weeks ago, scanning the classifieds for real estate rentals. At that time, not long before the first stalking incident, there were five listings of interest in Faust’s neighborhood.
By the next weekend, only four properties were listed. The fifth had disappeared. Someone had rented it. The time frame fit the start of Faust’s surveillance.
No address was given, but there was a phone number, of course. With any luck it would be the number of the homeowner and not a management company. Abby used one of the library’s computer terminals to access an online reverse directory she subscribed to. The service gave her an address on Glendower Avenue, only a few doors from Faust’s place.
Now she just needed to confirm that the property had actually been rented and not taken off the market for some other reason. She called the number and inquired about the guest cottage, only to be told that it had been rented more than two weeks ago.
She rechecked the classified ad. The property was described as a guest cottage with its own kitchen. Fully furnished, featuring a wide-screen TV. Two thousand dollars a month.
The price would not have been a deterrent. Anyone with the funds to acquire an IMSI catcher could afford to live in the high-rent district. Electronic surveillance technology of that quality did not come cheap, and it wasn’t sold on the open market. If Faust’s stalker had gotten hold of it, he had money and connections.
Most stalkers were neither rich nor well connected. They were underachievers, drawn into their obsession as a way of compensating for failures and disappointments in the rest of their lives. This was particularly true of stalkers who fixated on celebrities. They seemed to hope that some of the glamour would rub off on them—that they could become one of the beautiful people, if only by proxy.
A well-heeled stalker, renting a luxury guesthouse and using elaborate eavesdropping gear, was something new. She liked it. Stuff like this made her job interesting. She was grateful to God for supplying her with a wide variety of crazies. It kept her from getting into a rut.
Then again, this guy might not be crazy at all.
She could think of reasons for stalking Peter Faust and Elise Vangarten that had nothing to do with an irrational fantasy life. Faust had killed a woman and had never been properly punished. Some people, like the victim’s relatives, might resent him for that. It was conceivable that they had hired an assassin to take him out. Or maybe Elise’s family, if she had any, wasn’t too thrilled at her choice of life partner. They might have contracted with someone to put him away. Or suppose somebody had decided to kidnap Elise for ransom. Faust was wealthy, and as he himself had observed, he did not enjoy good relations with the local police. That made him an excellent target for an extortion plot.
Lots of possibilities, but few facts. What she needed was a refresher course in Faust’s life story. If someone from his past was after him, it would help to know exactly what he had done to deserve it. She remembered the broad outline but not the details.
Ordinarily she would use the Internet to track down that info. Since she was already at the library, she decided to try it the old-fashioned way. It took her only a few minutes to locate the true-crime shelf. Naturally there were books on Faust, including one he’d written himself. In addition to his other accomplishments, he was an author—an internationally best-selling author, according to the cover of the paperback.
She didn’t start with his memoirs, though. First she flipped through a hefty volume providing an overview of notorious criminals from A to Z. Under F, she got the gist of Faust’s biography.
He was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1962, an only child, the son of upper-middle-class parents. His father was an economics professor, his mother a high-ranking bureaucrat in social services. He had an uneventful childhood and adolescence, marked only by pronounced unsociability and a single arrest, at age thirteen, for animal abuse. He had been caught using a hot fireplace poker on a neighbor’s cat.
During his young adulthood he worked a variety of jobs, never holding any of them for more than a few months. He seemed to have artistic aspirations but was not known to have sold any artwork. He attracted a small band of followers who considered him a neglected genius. He had several affairs, all short-lived. One of his girlfriends went on to commit suicide; another was confined to a psychiatric hospital.
At age thirty-five, still drifting from one employment opportunity to another, he found himself in Hamburg, known as the Venice of Germany for its i
ntricate system of canals and its bohemian cafes. It was there that he met, kidnapped, and killed Emily Wallace, an American civilian working at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, who was visiting Hamburg on leave, sightseeing with a friend.
Faust held Emily captive for three days in his apartment before killing her. He said later that he enjoyed postponing the actual “execution,” as he called it. “I wanted to be sure the victim suffered well,” he said.
Although he made efforts to dispose of the body and cover his tracks, he was quickly arrested by the local police after Emily’s traveling companion reported her disappearance. Someone had spotted him in the vicinity of the salvage yard where the body, sans head and hands, had been dumped. His description was circulated. He was identified. What the police found in his apartment erased any possible doubt as to his guilt.
Faust never denied the crime. His parents obtained expensive legal counsel who insisted that their client was “psychologically abnormal” and suffering from “diminished responsibility.” Astonishingly, the prosecution agreed, merely requesting a slightly longer period of institutionalization. The trial lasted four days and ended with a sentence of six years in a “secure psychiatric facility.” Within three years he was released. There were rumors that his parents, politically well connected, had put pressure on the government to spring their son from confinement.
The murder had taken place a decade ago. Faust had been a free man for the past seven years, and had capitalized on his notoriety with the publication of his memoir even before his release. Once free, he had been interviewed on many TV shows, had done book readings and book signings in dozens of cities, and had been the subject of two documentary films. A big-budget feature film based on his life story had been in development for some time, though the project had stalled for lack of financing.
Emily Wallace’s family had attempted to sue for damages, only to find that Faust’s growing pile of money was salted away in Swiss bank accounts, untouchable.
Faust now divided his time between Europe and America. He had homes in Berlin and Los Angeles. He went skiing in Saint Moritz and Aspen. He was disturbingly popular in Europe, with a smaller but no less loyal following in the U.S. Prominent death-metal bands had written songs in his honor. The Goths, a major cultural force in Germany, had adopted him as their unofficial standard-bearer. Faust himself was cool to the Goths, saying of the movement, “It is a mélange of vulgar Nietzscheism and Dungeons & Dragons, dressed up in jackboots—a game for frightened children.” These comments only endeared him further to his fans.
She turned to Faust’s memoir. In chapter one, she found a firsthand description of the crime that had made him famous.
I would like to say that the murder itself was a fever dream, that I lived it in a haze of dazzled frenzy, that I knew not what I did. Then perhaps you would forgive me, and I could rejoin your most civilized company and dine in your elegant restaurants without drawing stares. I must, however, be honest. It is my one vice, honesty. I cannot bear deception. Or in saying this, am I only guilty of yet another deceit?
No matter. This is the truth. Killing Emily Wallace was my great accomplishment, and I have no wish to report it inaccurately.
I knew precisely what I did. I was in complete control of myself throughout. Indeed, I have never been so utterly sure of myself.
I killed her with a leather noose. The world knows this. It was the subject of much discussion in the press, and even gifted me with an alliterative sobriquet, the Hangman of Hamburg. In the end, this name fell out of favor, as it should have—for I did not hang Emily. I eased the noose around her neck while she lay half-conscious, shackled to the radiator. I then began to draw it tight, slowly, my fingers electric with the texture of the leather, its suppleness and softness. Leather is tanned flesh—and how it rubbed against the downy skin of her neck, how it caressed her, gently at first, while she moaned, her eyelids fluttering, her body quivering.
The bluenoses among you will never understand. They have allowed their natural bloodlust to ebb. They have smothered instinct under a blanket of homilies. They are eunuchs. Like all castrati, they will not be satisfied until the rest of humanity shares their affliction. Impotent themselves, they make their flaccidity a virtue, and paint virility as a vice.
Some of you are different. It is for you that I write. For you—and to you.
Can you feel it, the leather in your hands? The strap was thirty millimeters wide and one meter long. I pulled it tight enough to choke off breath. She came fully awake then. She tried to raise her hands, but they were fastened to the radiator. I let her struggle for air. Then I loosened the loop. She could breathe again. I heard the delicious gasp of her intake of air, a wet and hungry sound. When she had recovered her strength, I tightened the noose again.
There is a game some people play in which they bring themselves almost to asphyxiation in order to heighten the pleasurable intensity of orgasm. I have not played this game. But I had designed my own variation on it, as you see. In bringing Emily to the edge of death again and again, I was heightening my pleasure.
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not speaking of mere physical enjoyment. Some oaf, in the aftermath of my arrest, editorialized that I had taken a life for only a few seconds of gratification. In truth, sexual gratification was not my motive. These moldy Freudian fairy stories should be laid to rest. There is more to a man than genitalia. Was I erect when I drew the noose taut? Doubtless, I was, but I scarcely noticed. Erections are not so precious to me, or so rare. My attention was focused on higher things. In those final minutes, as I played out the endgame, I experienced what I can only call transcendence. I was lifted up, possibly to the third heaven of which Saint Paul writes. I was transported, liberated. Sex is a mere flicker of sensation in comparison to what I felt and knew. I was more than a man, or perhaps I should say that I was the only true man, the sole man on earth who was at one with his deepest needs and highest passions. Killing Emily Wallace was a religious experience in the truest sense.
I cannot say how long our liaison lasted. Time had stopped, or, more precisely, it ran on but I had stepped out of its stream, had ceased to be conducted by its flow.
Some have speculated that I did not mean to kill Emily, that I misjudged, made the noose too tight for too long, broke my toy by playing with it too lustily. This is incorrect. As I have already written, I was in control throughout the exercise.
I drew the noose tight for the last time, grasping her chin and raising her head to face me. She saw my smile—it must have been radiant—and she knew that there would be no coming back. She did not resist or pull away, but I saw a tear, pearlescent and perfect, expand in the corner of her left eye.
I knew the exact instant when she died. It was when the teardrop shimmered and broke free of the eye that cupped it, tracking down her cheek. The tear moved, but she did not.
Abby put down the book slowly. This was the man she was working for.
Well, at least she hadn’t shaken his hand.
4
Peter Faust sat limply in his chair at Cafe Eden, his every muscle relaxed. It was a trick he had mastered long ago, the art of complete ease.
“That went well,” he said with satisfaction.
Elise shifted restlessly. She was always moving about, incapable of relaxation. Like most Americans, she had never been schooled in leisure.
“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip. “There’s something about her I don’t like. She scares me.”
“Everything scares you.”
Elise shot him a darting look, half-timid, half-sly. “You don’t.”
“And yet I am the one thing you ought to fear.”
“Do you think she’s scared of you?”
Faust considered the question. “Yes,” he decided. “But she enjoys the sensation. She thrives on fear. It is mother’s milk to her.”
“She looked at me like I was ... I don’t know.”
“Like you were what?”
&n
bsp; “A stupid kid. Like I was ten years old. She feels sorry for me. That’s why she took the job. Out of pity.”
“And if this is true, what of it?”
“I just don’t think she should have looked at me that way.”
“It is of no importance how she feels. If you can use her feelings to your advantage, do so.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t give a shit what other people think.”
He patted her hand sedately. “I am not convinced that other people do think.”
Not for the first time, Faust asked himself if he loved Elise Vangarten. He could not say. Love, to him, was only a word, like God or virtue, a sound ritually repeated and apparently invested with meaning by his fellow humans, but denoting nothing to him. Still, he had grown attached to her.
Three years ago they met at a cocktail party hosted by a rising young movie director known for his outré tastes. Faust had provided some uncredited but handsomely remunerated technical assistance on the director’s last film, a study in serial murder. For the most part, Faust got along famously with Hollywood people—they were so refreshingly amoral—and so he accepted an invitation to the soiree.
Elise, then nineteen and new to L.A., came on the arm of an independent producer who was endeavoring to conceal his homosexuality. Faust met her at the buffet table. She did not know who he was. Even when he introduced himself, she failed to recognize his name. He found her ignorance beguiling. And he was intrigued by her gauntness, the bony outlines of her undernourished figure, the hollows of her cheeks. She might have been a concentration camp survivor.
At the buffet table she snacked on celery, a food that consumed more calories in digestion than it supplied. A person who dined exclusively on celery would starve to death. Faust was fascinated by her iron self-denial. Wasting away and confronted with heaping platters of cold meats and frosted pastries, she nevertheless chose the celery. It was as if she had no will to live.
Final Sins Page 3