She had never undressed—there had been nothing physical between them last night—and so she only had to slip on her shoes before letting herself out.
In the Hyundai she switched on the radio and listened to the news while she drove home. There was nothing about a death in the Los Feliz district. But, of course, it was too early for the body to have been discovered. And with so many homicides in L.A., this one might not even make the news.
As she parked in the garage under the Wilshire Royal, she noticed the dried blood still on her fingertips. She saw some on the steering wheel, too. Funny that she hadn’t cleaned up before leaving the guest cottage. And all the time she’d sat waiting for Wyatt in his apartment, she had never thought to wash the blood off her hands.
She rode the elevator to the tenth floor. Entered her condo. Thought about fixing something to eat, but she had no appetite. She was tired, very tired, but she knew she couldn’t go back to sleep.
She did wash her hands, at least. She scrubbed them until the dried blood under her nails had been worked free. When she was done, she took a long shower. Then she washed her hands again. Lady Macbeth and all that.
For a long time she stood on her balcony watching the morning rush hour. People going to work, as they did every day. Tonight they would come home to spouses or lovers. Life would go on. But not for Mark Brody.
She flashed on a memory of a woman in a doorway: I’m his wife.
The memory shifted. Brody with her in the dark. The caress of his fingers. The brush of his lips.
She could almost feel his body heat.
But his body was cold now. Lips bloodless, fingers stiff with rigor mortis.
A shudder traveled through her. She closed her eyes.
No one could blame her for what she’d done. No one.
So why did she blame herself?
* * *
Sometime around midday, Abby got angry.
The shock and guilt had worn off a little, and she was feeling pissed. She didn’t like it when things went wrong on the job. She didn’t like it when she nearly got killed.
And she especially didn’t like it when the stalker she was hunting knew her name.
Her name—and her MO. Brody had known enough to take a benzodiazepine antagonist on their night together. He’d expected her to use Rohypnol. Only someone with very good connections could have come by that kind of information.
And then there was Faust. How did he fit in? She didn’t know, couldn’t put it together. Too many pieces were missing.
Well, Faust himself knew more than he told her. Now it was time for him to open up, whether he wanted to or not.
She almost called his cell number, then thought better of it. Someone might still be monitoring. Though Brody was dead, he could have had an accomplice. Last night she should have disabled the IMSI catcher, but she hadn’t thought of it. This was uncharacteristically careless of her, but she supposed she couldn’t blame herself. Post-traumatic shock had a way of impairing a person’s thought processes.
She called Faust’s landline. When he answered, she said immediately, “We need to talk.”
“Why, Miss Sinclair, how pleasant to hear your voice.”
“Yeah. Ditto. We need to talk.”
“Now is as good a time as any.”
“In person.”
“I am available. Elise, I regret to say, is not. She is working today.”
“That’s fine. It’s you I need to talk to.”
“There have been developments, I take it?”
“There’s been a major development. Which reminds me—is there any action in your neighborhood?”
“Action? I am afraid you have lost me.”
“Police cars, ambulances, media, anything like that? In the general vicinity?”
“I am aware of nothing. But what you say is most intriguing.”
“How about we meet at the coffeehouse in a half hour?”
“Cafe Eden is more than a coffeehouse, Miss Sinclair. It is an oasis in the parched desert of southern Californian anomie, a refuge for the enlightened few—”
“I don’t need a sales pitch. Will you be there or not?”
“You could not possibly stop me.”
She ended the call and left her condo, but only after transferring the contents of her handbag to a new, undamaged purse. The gun, of course, was among them. The murder weapon. Really, she should have tossed it already. But she had a funny feeling she might be needing it again.
25
By the time the MD-80 touched down at LAX at twelve noon, Pacific time, Tess had decided on a course of action.
She knew that after the Medea case, Michaelson, the ADIC of the L.A. field office, would jump at any chance to get Abby behind bars. Once Tess shared her suspicions with him, Abby would be the target of an all-out manhunt.
Probably she shouldn’t care about any of that. As Abby herself had reminded her, they weren’t friends anymore. She’d said as much at the conclusion of Medea, and she’d reiterated the point on the phone just the other night. And she was working for Faust, a known killer.
On the other hand, Abby had saved her life once. That was the kind of thing that ought to buy her some benefit of the doubt. So Tess would pay her a visit. She owed Abby that much.
Yes, it was probably a mistake to tip her off and perhaps give her a chance to run. Yes, Abby was a proven liar in this type of situation, and whatever she said was unlikely to allay Tess’s doubts and fears. Yes, yes, yes, that was all true. But she would do it anyway. She had to give Abby a chance. It was more than she’d done last time, and she would not make the same mistake again.
She rented a Toyota Camry and took the Santa Monica Freeway north, exiting at Wilshire Boulevard. There was a strange sense of freedom in driving a rented car in a city where she had established, as yet, no official presence. She almost felt like a civilian. But the SIG Sauer 9mm in the reinforced pocket of her trench coat was there to remind her of who she really was.
Traffic was bad, of course. It was always bad in L.A. She had almost forgotten how much she disliked this city, with its grungy corridors of strip malls and garden apartments, its sickly palm trees leaning against graffiti-sprayed walls, its atmosphere of laid-back menace. Illness festered here.
No wonder Faust had bought a home in L.A. This was his kind of place, soulless and narcissistic, a surface coating of charm concealing the emptiness within.
She shook her head. She didn’t want to think about Faust, It had been a mistake to relive her interview with him. Watching the video had brought back old fears—and old obsessions.
Tess had never shared her deepest thoughts on Peter Faust with anyone. She had no friends outside the Bureau, and no one in the Bureau—not even Josh—would have understood. She wasn’t sure that she herself understood.
It was the damn History Channel that was to blame. One night, alone and bored, she’d been flipping through the channels when she stopped on a documentary about Adolf Hitler. A detail of the narration had caught her attention. Hitler, said the voice-over, was known for his hypnotic gaze and ice blue lashless eyes.
She had seen eyes like those before.
She watched the program. Later she bought a biography of Hitler. She found herself constructing a profile of Adolf Hitler as if he were one of the BAU’s neatly labeled psychopaths.
He had been born in Austria but had always considered himself a true German. He was incarcerated at age thirty-five and subsequently released, arrest and confinement having only magnified his celebrity status.
He frequented coffeehouses. He was charismatic. He acquired a following among the young and rootless. He published his memoirs and was the subject of contemporary documentary films. He’d tried to establish himself as an artist, and had failed.
He was drawn to much younger women, often of a waifish appearance. He led some of them to destruction. Several of his girlfriends committed suicide, or tried to.
He was fascinated by wolves. He’d once gone
by the alias Herr Wolf. In the last days of the war, he created a brigade of “werewolves,” guerrilla fighters who were expected to carry on the fight during the Allied occupation.
In all these respects there were parallels with Faust. Of course, the similarities could be coincidental. Sociopaths typically exhibited a limited repertoire of behaviors. That was the whole concept behind criminal profiling. She could rationalize the issue that way.
But part of her wondered if there was a deeper explanation. Late at night, when sleep eluded her, she would remember the Santeria exorcism in Miami. She would think of evil—not a horned satyr, but a black, miasmic cloud. A force, a kind of bodiless will—one that could inhabit a boy and drive him insane.
And could inhabit other human hosts, as well.
There had been something demonic about Hitler. His good fortune was uncanny. He survived thirty-six major battles in World War I. At Ypres his entire section was wiped out, while he was not even grazed. On two occasions he took leave of a group of comrades only seconds before an artillery shell exploded among them. Once in power, he faced repeated assassination attempts without injury. His imperviousness to the dangers around him had given him an aura of supernatural invincibility. It was as if he were protected by some malevolent guardian angel. Perhaps he had been.
And if evil could possess a human host named Adolf Hitler, could it not do so again? If there could be one Hitler, why not another?
Why not Peter Faust?
* * *
At the Wilshire Royal she parked in the curving driveway near the fountain, which had been turned off for repairs. She introduced herself to the two guards at the lobby desk, flashing her creds to get their attention, and asked if Abby Sinclair was in.
“Miss Sinclair just left,” one of them said.
“How long ago?”
Shrug. “Fifteen, twenty minutes.” That would have been about twelve thirty.
“Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“She didn’t say. It’s not like she checks in with us.”
The other guard asked, “Is she in some kind of trouble?”
Tess thought that was a good question. She didn’t answer. “You guys are being straight with me, aren’t you? I mean, if Miss Sinclair were here, you would tell me, right?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t know. You might think you’re doing her some kind of favor. But you ought to know it’s a federal crime to lie to an agent of the FBI.”
“Nobody’s lying.”
“She still drive that red Miata?”
The guards nodded.
“Maybe I’ll just take a look in the parking garage and see if it’s there.”
“It won’t be. That’s the car she took.”
Tess started to walk away, then stopped. That’s the car she took. Peculiar phrasing. What other car would she take? Then she remembered that Abby used a backup vehicle when she was on assignment.
She turned back to the desk. “Miss Sinclair keeps another car here, doesn’t she?”
The two men shifted in their seats.
“Does she or doesn’t she?” Tess pressed.
“She has a Hyundai Excel.”
“Where’s it parked?”
“Don’t you need a search warrant or something?”
“I don’t need a search warrant to see if the car is there or not. Tell me where it’s parked.”
Reluctantly one of the guards flipped through a book and found the number of the assigned space. “Sixty-nine.”
In the garage she found the beat-up old Hyundai. The doors were locked. She took out a Mini Maglite flash and aimed the beam inside.
On the steering wheel, there was a rust-colored patch. Tess had seen enough dried blood to recognize it.
Though it had dried, it had to be recent. Blood wasn’t the sort of thing a person would leave in her car for long.
She wished she could take a sample, but she didn’t have the necessary equipment. For now she would have to leave the vehicle and hope Abby didn’t return and wipe off the evidence before it could be collected.
So what did the blood prove, exactly? It didn’t make Abby a murderer. There might be valid reasons for her to have blood in her car. She could have been injured—her job was certainly risky enough. Maybe the injury had no connection to the Peter Faust case whatsoever.
Or maybe the blood belonged to the dead FBI agent. Even so, there was conceivably a way to explain it. If Abby had been following him or watching his house, she might have come upon his body and checked for signs of life.
Tess frowned. She was reaching, obviously. Doing her best to deny the clear implications of what she’d found. She just didn’t want it to be Abby. She didn’t want to go down that road.
What she needed was more evidence. And she knew where to look for it.
She returned to the lobby and faced the two guards at the desk.
“I’ve found blood in her car. That means we have exigent circumstances. I don’t need a warrant to enter the premises.”
“You’re saying there could be someone in danger in Miss Sinclair’s unit?” one of the pair asked skeptically,
“It’s possible,” she lied. “That blood had to come from somewhere. Was Miss Sinclair injured or wounded when you saw her?”
Reluctantly they shook their heads.
“Then I have a reasonable basis for assuming another party has been injured. I need to see the interior of her apartment. If you won’t cooperate, I can have additional agents here within minutes. They’ll be all over the building. Your other tenants won’t like that. So what do you say? Do we do this quietly or do we make a lot of noise?”
The men looked at each other. The older of the two reached a decision. “Vince, take her up.”
Vince obeyed. He escorted Tess to the tenth floor and unlocked Abby’s condo. Tess stepped in, surveying the place. The last time she had stood in Abby’s living room, she had come to apologize, only to be told that if she ever reentered Abby’s life, it would be as her enemy. It was a prediction that showed every sign of coming true.
She was no crime scene technician, but she knew the basics of inspecting a suspect’s residence. First she found a package of Ziploc plastic bags in the kitchen and a black felt marker in a drawer. She took these with her as she explored the rest of the condo.
Her first stop was the bathroom. She noticed a scouring pad near the sink, the kind of thing used for scrubbing pots and pans. It seemed an odd item to have in a lavatory. Carefully she examined it, holding it close to the light, until she saw dark maroon flecks amid the bristles. Blood? Scoured off Abby’s fingernails?
She bagged the item, marking the bag’s label with the felt pen.
The shower was still wet and had been used sometime today, but there was no obvious sign of blood on the tiles. What might be found in the plumbing beneath the drain was a different story, but she lacked the tools and the expertise to look.
The small laundry room was adjacent to the bathroom. She found a wet load of clothes in the washer. Dark blouse, dark skirt. The kind of items Abby might use for snooping around at night. The blouse was spotted with faint stains of some kind, which the first run through the wash cycle had failed to eradicate. Bloodstains?
The blouse went into a large plastic bag.
In the bedroom she checked the closet, paying particular attention to Abby’s shoes. Footwear often picked up telltale items from a crime scene, but in this case she saw nothing on the soles of the shoes that seemed incriminating. A microscopic analysis might yield a different conclusion, of course.
“Are you gonna be much longer?” Vince asked irritably from the living room.
Tess didn’t answer. She was preoccupied with the bottom drawer of Abby’s dresser. There, beneath some undergarments, was a black plastic trash bag, neatly folded, and inside the bag was a purse. It contained a special compartment that probably had held a gun. There was a hole in the side of the compartment, and the fabric of the i
nterior was speckled with black soot around the edges of the hole.
As if the gun had been fired from inside the purse, blowing a hole in the fabric.
It went into a labeled bag.
In the trash bag with the gun was a long strip of plastic. It took Tess a moment to identify it as a pair of disposable handcuffs, which had been cut apart. They were the single-loop variety, white, brand name EZ Cuffs. The cuffs were sold in bulk, mainly to law-enforcement personnel.
A bad thought formed in her mind. She tried not to dwell on it as she bagged the cuffs.
On a table in the corner, she found a library book—
Faust’s memoir. It helped establish a link between Abby and Faust. It was bagged, as well.
Then she set down the various bags on the bed and put together a story.
Abby had been hired to work for Faust. The job had somehow brought her into contact with the FBI man, who had caught her doing something illegal—some B and E, maybe, or planting surveillance gear. The agent had placed her under arrest; this explained the handcuffs. Abby had gotten hold of her gun inside her purse and shot the man, getting blood on her hands and clothes and transferring some of it to her car. She was now trying to cover up the crime by cleaning herself up and washing her clothes. She had hidden the cuffs and the purse in a trash bag and planned to dispose of them in a dump bin somewhere, probably after dark, when she was less likely to be seen.
The cover-up implied consciousness of guilt. Moreover, if this scenario was correct, then Abby knew the man she killed was a law officer. She had known it, in fact, as soon as he arrested her, if not before—which meant she knew it when she killed him. To save herself from jail, she had murdered a federal agent in cold blood.
Or maybe not. Maybe there was some other explanation. But whatever the truth, there could be no doubt that Abby was mixed up in something illicit and ugly. Last time there had been only suspicious circumstances. In this case there was physical evidence. And physical evidence did not lie.
“Oh, Abby,” Tess whispered. “Damn it, Abby, you’re in deep this time.”
She no longer had any doubt about her next move. She had to go to the field office and tell what she knew. And she had to do it fast—because when Abby returned home, she would find out that her apartment had been searched, and she might take off.
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