Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  She swept the floor in front of her with her manacled hands and found her purse. A thousand times she’d practiced opening the gun compartment in the dark, or blindfolded. She unsnapped the clasp and thrust her hands inside, her index finger curling around the .3M’s trigger as she raised the purse—

  Brightness.

  He’d found the wall switch.

  The ceiling light had come on.

  She knew where the switch was, and she twisted onto her side and squeezed the trigger, firing through the purse, blowing a hole in it, and she had time to see Brody swinging his gun in her direction and to know she’d missed.

  But she hadn’t missed.

  A red rose of blood bloomed in his throat where his Adam’s apple had been.

  The gun fell from his hand. He slumped against the wall and his knees folded slowly and he slid down to a sitting position, his head sagging sideways, eyes open.

  His mouth moved. He might have been trying to speak. Deafened by the gunshots, she couldn’t tell.

  Then his mouth wasn’t moving anymore, no part of him was moving, and although his eyes were still open, she knew he was dead.

  Whether her shot had been luck or skill she didn’t know. A little of both, maybe. She’d known where the wall switch was. He hadn’t known her position. That fact had given her a split-second advantage that had made the difference.

  She stood up slowly. Her mind was working calmly, logically. Had anyone in the neighborhood heard the shots? Doubtful. The main house was unoccupied, and the other homes weren’t close. All the windows of the guest cottage were shut. The neighbors probably had their windows closed, as well, and their air-conditioning on.

  She approached Brody. His gun lay near the slack fingers of his right hand. She kicked it away, out of his reach, even though she knew he was dead and would never reach for it again. She bent down and pressed her fingers to the carotid artery at the side of his neck, getting blood on her hands and not caring. There was, of course, no pulse. She just had to be sure.

  His staring eyes should have unnerved her. They were still that peculiar shade of blue. Cobalt blue, she thought. Before too long they would lose some of their color. The eyes of the dead became gray and lusterless. But that would take time. For the moment it was as if those eyes were alive and watching her. Somehow she didn’t care about that, either. She was past feeling anything. She had never been so much at peace.

  In a kitchen drawer she found a pair of heavy kitchen shears and cut off the plastic cuffs. She put the cuffs in her pocket and replaced the scissors in the drawer after wiping the handles.

  There was cleaning up to do. Operating without emotion, she quickly put the place in order. She wiped her prints off all surfaces she had touched. She reconnected the wires in the security box so there would be no indication of a premeditated break-in. She left the TV console open, the IMSI catcher in plain sight for the police to find. It would link Brody to Faust, and Faust would be questioned, but he had an alibi. He was at the book signing. And he wouldn’t mention hiring her. She was serenely certain of that. He was not the type to assist the authorities. That was one advantage of having a homicidal sociopath as a client.

  When she was finished cleaning house, she exited through the front door, not bothering to reset the alarm, since it didn’t matter anymore. She left the grounds, climbing over the perimeter wall, and walked to her Hyundai. As she slipped behind the wheel, she noticed that her fingers were tacky with drying blood. She should’ve washed up before leaving the cottage. Hadn’t thought of it. Well, she would do it at home.

  Home. Yes, everything would be fine once she got home.

  She keyed the ignition and drove away, heading toward Westwood. Two miles from the cottage, she pulled onto the shoulder, got out of the car, and threw up into a storm drain.

  It had hit her suddenly, the full impact of what had happened and what she’d done. She shook all over with fever chills. She knelt by the side of the idling car and hugged herself.

  She had killed before. Once before. It didn’t get any easier the second time.

  She thought of his blue eyes staring. The wet blood on his neck. His body pressed against hers amid the bedsheets. A dead body now.

  She was sick again. As she raised her head, she saw a couple walking their dog across the street. They steered well clear of her. Her ears weren’t ringing so much anymore, and she could hear one of them say the word drunk.

  Probably she did look like a drunk in the gutter. That was good. It meant they wouldn’t associate her with the crime, once it was reported. She was far enough from the murder scene that there would be no obvious connection, anyway.

  Crime ... murder ...

  Her crime. Her murder.

  But it wasn’t. It was self-defense. She’d had to save herself. Kill or be killed. Law of the jungle.

  So maybe she was only a jungle predator, as Faust had said. A wild animal, a killer in the night.

  All these years she’d used the analogy of a pilot fish to explain her job. A pilot fish swam with sharks but wasn’t a shark itself. But she’d been lying. Masking who she really was. She was only another shark prowling the deep. Sharks had to keep moving or they would die. She was like that. She was a killer, and she always had to be on the hunt.

  She got back into the car and drove on. At a red light in Beverly Hills she had a bad thought. She’d blown open the secret compartment of her purse when she fired. Was she sure the gun was still in there?

  She grabbed the purse, felt for the gun, didn’t find it. Could she have let it fall out, left it at the scene?

  No—there it was, not in its special compartment but shoved into the main cavity of the purse. Thrown in there unthinkingly at some point after the shooting.

  A horn bleated behind her. The stoplight was green. She motored through the intersection. Distantly she observed that she wasn’t headed for Westwood anymore. She was going south. She must have some destination in mind, but she had no idea what it was.

  The main thing was that she hadn’t lost the gun. She hadn’t screwed up that way. Hadn’t screwed up at all. She was alive. That was the proof.

  So why didn’t she feel like celebrating? Why did she feel so sick and so scared?

  Because it didn’t make sense, that was why. None of it. What Brody was doing with Faust, with her. She couldn’t understand what he’d been up to. The whole thing was wrong.

  Just wrong.

  22

  Wyatt clocked out of the Hollywood station house at two a.m. and drove home, wearing the same frown he’d worn throughout the night watch.

  He hated the way he and Abby had parted. She had been hurt and angry. And he never liked it when they parted angry, because if she got killed on the job, then things would remain forever unresolved between them.

  Long ago he had accepted her lifestyle, but—he had to admit—he couldn’t quite deal with it. He was jealous of the fact that her work came first. And pissed off that she wouldn’t commit, or at least open up more.

  Yet he loved her. That was still true. It would always be true.

  It just didn’t matter anymore.

  He’d been right to break it off with her. He had no doubts about that. Abby would never settle down, would never be satisfied with the day-to-day routine of a normal job and a normal life. For her there would never be marriage or kids. She just wasn’t the type, even though she would be great with kids; he was sure of it.

  Sometimes he felt it was unmanly of him to worry about these things. That was what his friends would have said, if any of them had known about Abby. They would have told him to stop thinking so damn much.

  But that wasn’t his way. He had been in this relationship for a lot of years, and for him it had only become more serious. But for Abby? The only thing she was serious about was her job. Deadly serious about that.

  As for the rest of it, she was just enjoying the ride. He knew he could no longer enjoy it with her. He’d had to end it.

  Still
, he wasn’t so sure about the timing. She was in the middle of a case. She didn’t need to be distracted, didn’t need any emotional complications. Maybe he should have waited till she was through with this particular job. Having made up his mind, he’d felt the need to tell her, and he’d justified it by saying she deserved to know.

  But maybe he’d only been making excuses. He was the one who wanted to get it over with, make a clean break. It was like popping a dislocated shoulder back into place, something he’d experienced after a nasty fall in his rookie year. He’d known it would be bad, so he’d gotten it over with. A few moments of pain, then relief.

  So why wasn’t he relieved?

  “Shit,” he muttered as he pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building and dumped his car in the carport. With Abby, nothing was ever easy. And nothing was ever over. Maybe it would always be that way.

  He climbed the stairs to his floor, noting a new patch of taggers’ graffiti on the second-story landing. The name Orlando was written in florid curving script. He knew Orlando. Lived in number 213. He wasn’t too surprised the kid was tagging, but he’d expected him to have the sense not to sign his real name.

  He headed down the hallway to his apartment. When he reached the door, he found it unlocked.

  Not good.

  He wore an off-duty gun in an ankle holster. He drew it now, then slowly opened the door.

  Abby was there, sitting in his armchair. She must have let herself in. He’d given her a key to his place years ago, but he’d never known her to use it.

  He shut the door behind him, not knowing why she was here or what he was supposed to say. Then he saw the dried blood on her hands, the emptiness in her eyes.

  “What happened?” he asked, moving toward her.

  She looked up at him, unblinking.

  “Just hold me,” she whispered. “Please.”

  23

  Tess was toweling herself dry after her morning shower, trying to shake off the residue of bad dreams.

  From the kitchen she heard a TV newscaster on one of the cable channels. It meant that Josh was currently making breakfast, a task that consisted of pouring two bowls of cereal. This was the limit of his culinary skills, but she couldn’t complain. It was her limit, too.

  But she wasn’t thinking about breakfast. She was thinking of her dreams. In them, she had been chased through a labyrinth of shadows by a blurred, misty figure with pale blue eyes. Then she was locked in a room with him, a captive, and though she wanted to fight back, she couldn’t move. And in his hand, a branding iron, searing her flesh and leaving—not a wolfsangel—but a swastika.

  She dressed in a gray suit with a bolo tie. By the time she stepped into the breakfast nook, she had—almost—put the dreams out of her mind.

  Josh was on his cell phone, thanking someone for the heads-up. He ended the call and turned to her.

  “That was Gary Palumbo in Detroit. We went through the academy together. He’s pretty well connected in D.C., and when he gets a hot news item, he likes to pass it around.”

  Tess carried a bowl of raisin bran to the table and sat down. “Was it good news or bad?”

  “Bad.” Josh sat opposite her and met her gaze. “It’s nobody you know ... but we lost one of our own last night.”

  The words sucked some of the strength out of her. For a moment she was at Paul Voorhees’ funeral again, her hand on the mahogany casket, her mind a bruise.

  “Where?” she managed to ask.

  “L.A. It was a UC agent.” Undercover, he meant. “He was working a deep-cover op, apparently. When he didn’t report in on schedule, his supervisor checked on him and found the body. Shot through the neck in his own bedroom.”

  Paul had died in a bedroom, the bedroom of a house in a Denver suburb.

  “I know this is hard for you,” Josh added, watching her.

  “It’s hard on all of us.” The words came automatically.

  He took her hand. “Tess ...”

  “Okay,” she conceded. “Maybe it’s especially hard on me. After ... you know.”

  “After Paul.” She felt the warm squeeze of his fingers. “You can say his name.”

  She looked intently at him. “Josh, you know I love you, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ve figured that out. And I think you know it’s mutual.” He gave her hand another squeeze. “What I also think is that you’re still in love with Paul Voorhees.”

  Her denial was reflexive. “No, really I’m not—”

  “Of course you are. And you always will be. It’s all right. I know that’s part of the deal.”

  She shut her eyes against a sudden sting of tears. “Seems like a pretty rotten deal from your standpoint.”

  “I don’t have any complaints.” He smiled. “From everything I’ve heard about him, he was a really great guy.”

  “You’re a great guy, too.”

  “It’s not a competition.”

  They sat in silence, hand in hand, for a few ticks of the clock.

  “Did Gary Palumbo pass on any other details?” Tess asked finally, needing to return to safer ground.

  “Just one, but it’s definitely interesting. The undercover op involved—get this—your old friend, Peter Faust.”

  Tess went cold. This was not safe ground, after all. This was the territory of her nightmares.

  “Faust?” she breathed.

  “I don’t know what they think they have on him. Maybe they’re still trying to nail him for that case from three years ago. The dead girl in L.A.”

  “Roberta Kessler,” she said quietly. The name was fresh in her mind from having watched the interview just last night. Maybe she’d been watching it at the very moment when the undercover man was being murdered. Shot in the neck ...

  Paul’s throat had been cut. In each case, a neck wound, a flow of blood from the carotid artery or the jugular vein ...

  Then she remembered why she’d obtained the video of the interview in the first place.

  Abby. Abby was working for Faust.

  She spoke carefully, her tone uninflected. “Do they think Faust killed our guy?”

  “Gary didn’t say, which means he doesn’t know.” Josh shrugged. “It would seem like a fair assumption, though.”

  “You’d think so.” Tess was staring past Josh, staring far away. “But maybe not.”

  “Why? You have another suspect in mind?”

  “I just might.”

  * * *

  Tess declined Josh’s offer to chauffeur her to the airport for her hastily scheduled ten a.m. flight to L.A. He’d already done his duty in that regard for her last trip. This time she could drive herself.

  She wanted time alone in her car, anyway. Time to think.

  She knew it was pointless to call Abby and ask what was going on. This was the kind of thing Abby would lie about. She’d proved as much in the past. Less than a year ago, in circumstances very much like these, when Abby had been a suspect in a homicide, she had lied. She’d lied even though she had, in fact, been innocent. She simply hadn’t trusted Tess with the truth.

  Besides, Tess couldn’t tip her off, because there was a chance Abby didn’t know. Gary Palumbo had said the murdered agent was under deep cover. Quite possibly Abby didn’t even realize she had killed a federal law-enforcement officer.

  If she had killed him. Of course, it could have been Faust. But Abby was involved somehow, even if she’d only led Faust to the victim.

  Unless all her theorizing was wrong, and Abby had played no part in any of this.

  It was possible. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Once before she’d thought Abby was guilty of murder. She’d been wrong then. She could be wrong now.

  She would like to believe she was wrong. She really would.

  It would be helpful if she had some plan of action, some idea of what the hell she was going to do when she got to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, nothing had yet come to mind. She could go directly to the L.A. field office with her suspicions, o
r she could investigate on her own, or she could try some other approach that hadn’t occurred to her yet. She might do just about anything. At the moment she had no game plan.

  But one thing, at least, was certain. It had been a dead certainty from the moment Abby’s connection to the case had entered her mind.

  If Abby had anything to do with the death of a federal agent—anything at all—then she would pay.

  24

  In the morning, it should have felt like a dream.

  That was how it always was in stories. A person would do something violent and awful, and then the next day it would seem unreal, a fantasy.

  Not this time. Brody was dead. There was nothing dreamlike about that.

  Abby thought about it as she lay in Wyatt’s bed, watching the pink glow of dawn brighten the ceiling. It was one of those typical apartment ceilings that had been sprayed with acoustic foam, producing a pebbly texture. There were a couple of holes in the white, bumpy expanse, presumably drilled by a previous occupant. To hang plants, maybe, or a ceiling fan. Or maybe a mirror over the bed.

  She didn’t know why the ceiling and its holes interested her. Then she understood that she was willing to think about anything other than what she’d done last night.

  Cowardly of her—trying to evade the facts. Okay, so she had killed a man. It wasn’t the first time. And she’d done it to save her own life. It was a kill-or-be-killed situation. She had nothing to feel guilty about.

  Brody had been a dangerous man. A stalker, a killer, an all-around bad guy. The world was better off without him.

  She wondered what his wife would say about that. Or the children who would grow up without a father.

  Beside her, Wyatt lay asleep. He didn’t wake when she rose from the bed and collected her purse.