Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  There was a metal rod extending from the handle, with another metal piece attached perpendicular to the end. She had no idea what it was for. But she could see it slowly turning red as it heated up.

  “Now, here is the part that will interest you. It is said that whoever bears the mark of the wolfsangel is invested with the life force, the very power of the wolf. Would you not relish such power? With the strength and savagery of the wolf, you could break your bonds and tear out my throat. You would like that, would you not?”

  There had been a time when she would have liked it very much, but she no longer cared. Saving herself, killing him—it was of no consequence. She only wanted to go away, and make everything else go away, too—this room and this man and her own body, all of it.

  “Well, then,” he said, “let us see how it works.”

  He carried the instrument to her. She could see it clearly now. The flat metal piece, red-hot, looked like the letter Z with a crossbar through the center.

  The wolfsangel, he had said. This must be what he meant.

  It is an honor to be marked with the wolfsangel.

  Marked ...

  She understood. The tool was a branding iron, and it would sear her flesh.

  She hadn’t thought there was any fight left in her. She’d been wrong. Abruptly she was twisting on the bed, shaking her hands against the manacles, averting her face as her legs kicked wildly, and the sounds that came from behind the gag were stifled screams.

  He seized her left hand and flattened it, palm down, against the headboard.

  And then there was pain.

  It began as a shock of sudden numbness on the back of her hand, like the kiss of an ice pack, and she had time to think this wasn’t so bad, not too bad at all. But the numbness lasted less than a second, and it was followed by a savage bite of pain, like fangs closing over her hand, peeling away skin and tendons, seeking bone.

  She shrieked through the gag, producing only a hoarse, strangled cry.

  “All done now,” he was saying.

  Past a cloud of tears she saw that he had withdrawn the branding iron. But the pain in her hand was undiminished. It roared through her body, ringing in her ears.

  “Now you see why I could not undo your gag,” he said calmly. “Although this room is soundproofed, I could not allow such a scream. It would be too painful for my delicate ears.”

  He took her hand and studied it almost lovingly, then wrenched her arm toward her and forced her to look.

  “Observe how lovely you are.”

  The back of her hand was one huge purple welt in the shape of a backward, crosshatched Z. The ugly design crawled over her knuckles and blue veins like some misshapen spider.

  “You are now forever mine,” he said with satisfaction. “Like all my others.”

  He returned to the cabinet and opened a second door to reveal rows of shelving, and on the shelves there were jars of greenish fluid, and in the jars ... in the jars ...

  She turned away, crying.

  In the jars were hands, scarred with the same mark. Severed hands, branded, preserved for display.

  When she looked up again, the branding iron had been put away, the cabinet was closed, and he was once more standing over her.

  “So do you feel it. Raven? The magical power of your talisman? The power of the wolf? Sadly, I think not. But there is another tradition associated with the wolfsangel that I earlier neglected to recount. It is said that anyone bearing this sign is marked for death at the claws of the wolf. Or the werewolf, as the case may be. This is your fate, Raven. But not yet. Not quite yet.”

  Oh, God, she wanted him to kill her. She wanted to die, wanted it so badly, more than anything she’d ever hoped for. But the terrible thing was that he knew what she wanted, and he would not give it to her. He was too cruel for that, and too patient.

  He left, closing the door, and she heard the turn of the key in the lock.

  30

  At three p.m., Tess and Hauser arrived at the house in the Los Feliz district where Brody had rented a guest cottage. Hauser parked the Bureau LTD around back, where it wouldn’t be spotted from the street.

  “Who are the homeowners?” Tess asked.

  “Mr. and Mrs. William Hunter. He’s a big wheel in real estate.”

  “Do they know ... ?”

  “They know. But we’ve asked them to stay quiet about it for now. Don’t want the neighbors talking, especially since one of them is Faust.”

  “And the body? Is it still in the cottage?”

  “Long gone. It was taken out before sunrise in an unmarked van. The evidence techs have been all over the guesthouse. They’re gone, too.”

  “The neighbors didn’t notice any of this activity?”

  “The crime scene guys arrived in an undercover van with a carpet cleaning company’s logo on the side. They were shampooing the rugs, as far as anybody knows. Let’s see what kind of job they did.”

  “Wait a minute. Are the homeowners around?”

  “The wife is, I think. Husband works. They’ve already been interviewed.”

  “But not about Abby.”

  Hauser knocked on the back door. A woman in her fifties, smartly dressed, answered at once. She must have seen the car drive up to the cottage.

  She let them in and escorted them to a parlor, where she sat facing them. Her face, lit by a shaft of sun through a bay window, was narrow, her skin too tight against her skull; she’d had more than one face-lift. Tess thought there was something to be said for growing old gracefully, but maybe not in California.

  “This is a lovely house,” Tess said, simply to establish a rapport. “Have you lived here long?”

  “Twenty years now.”

  “Have you rented out the guest cottage all that time?”

  “Only for the last five years or so. It’s not for the money, really.” She seemed a little defensive. “It’s that the cottage was just going to waste.”

  “I guess you don’t exactly need the extra space.”

  “That’s for sure. There are so many rooms in this house, a person can get lost in here. You practically need a map to find your way around.”

  Tess shifted into her professional mode. “Mrs. Hunter, we have an interest in talking to a woman who may have been acquainted with Mr. Brody. I wondered if you’ve seen her with him.”

  “I don’t keep track of my tenants’ social lives.”

  “Even so, we’d like you to look at this photo and just tell me if you’ve ever seen this woman.”

  Before leaving the field office, Hauser had pulled a photo from Abby’s file. He handed it to Mrs. Hunter, who stared at it for nearly a minute.

  “Oh ... yes,” she said finally.

  “You have?”

  “I’d forgotten all about it. But I did see her early yesterday morning. She was leaving the cottage. Driving away in her car.”

  “Do you remember what kind of car it was?”

  “Not really. I don’t know much about these things. It was old, beat-up. Looked pretty awful. That’s what got my attention—the car. I was looking out the window—it was about six o’clock in the morning, and I’d just gotten up and was fixing myself a cup of coffee. I looked out, and I saw the car and this woman in it.”

  “Are you sure it was the same woman? She must have been some distance away.”

  “Oh, it was definitely her. She saw me looking at her. She waved to me.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes, a rather impertinent little wave. I remember thinking she must have spent the night. Did she have something to do with Mr. Brody’s death?”

  “She’s just somebody we want to talk to.”

  “You people always say that. You always say it’s someone you want to talk to when really they’re the suspect. Is she a suspect?”

  Tess took back the photo. “Thank you, Mrs. Hunter. Thank you for your time.”

  “So we know she spent the night,” Hauser said as he walked with Tess to the guest cott
age. “Is sleeping with the enemy part of her job description?”

  “I don’t think so. But ... there aren’t any hard-and-fast rules.”

  Hauser unlocked the door to the guesthouse and led Tess inside. The cottage was much nicer than she’d expected, Lavish, even.

  “The rent on this place couldn’t have been cheap,” she said.

  “Nothing in this neighborhood is cheap.”

  “Mrs. Hunter seemed a little too insistent about not needing the money.”

  “I’m betting they can use the extra dough, no matter what she says. A lot of folks in this town are house-poor. They’ve got all their cash tied up in their house, and none of it to spend.” Hauser smiled. “One thing I’ve learned in this job. When they say it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.”

  Tess explored the cottage. All the lights were on. Brightly colored fingerprint powder had been left on most smooth surfaces. There was no indication of a struggle in the living room or kitchen.

  The bedroom was a different story. Blood had splashed the wall near the doorway in an arterial spray. More blood had soaked into the carpet in the same spot. Brody must have been hit while standing. He had slumped to the floor and expired in a spreading red pool.

  The bedside lamp had been knocked over, the plug pulled out of a wall socket. The bedsheets had been disarranged.

  “Evidence techs dug a nine-millimeter round out of the headboard,” Hauser said, pointing to a white circle drawn around a deep pockmark where the bullet had hit. “Haven’t done a ballistics match yet, but from the angle of fire they’re betting it’s from Brody’s gun. He carried a Beretta Mini Cougar.”

  Tess glanced at him and caught a pained expression on his face. It puzzled her for a moment, and she wondered if he was falling ill. Then she remembered that Brody had been his friend, and Hauser had found him here in this room only a few hours earlier.

  “What about the round that killed him?” she asked quietly.

  “It didn’t exit. Lodged in his neck, blew out his larynx, then probably tumbled into the base of his skull.” Tumbling was a term for the multiple ricochets of a bullet inside the human body as it bounced off bone. “That’s guesswork on my part. Autopsy hasn’t been done yet.”

  Circling the bedroom, Tess saw how it probably had gone down. Abby had been on or near the bed with her hands in restraints. Her wrists must have been cuffed in front of her, affording her some mobility. She had distracted Brody by unplugging the lamp, and he had fired, missing her. She’d killed him with a shot fired through the purse.

  It would have happened in a second or less. There might be room for Abby to plead self-defense. Once Brody fired on her, she would have felt no compunction about shooting back.

  Of course, if she hadn’t resisted arrest in the first place ... if she had gone along quietly ... then Brody would be alive and there would be no homicide charges in the offing. And a plea of self-defense wouldn’t work very well in circumstances involving an escape from FBI custody.

  As Tess finished her circuit of the room, she saw a small table, dusty around the edges but with a rectangular dust-free space in the middle.

  “What used to be here?” she asked.

  “TV set.”

  “Why is it gone?”

  “Because it wasn’t a real TV. Brody had hollowed it out and put some electronic gear inside.”

  “What kind of gear?”

  He hesitated. “Elsur equipment.” Electronic surveillance, he meant. “For intercepting cellular transmissions.”

  “Did he have a warrant?”

  “No.”

  She looked at Hauser, silently pressing for elaboration. After a moment, he obliged.

  “I told you he was under deep cover. I gave him free rein. Didn’t try to micromanage. Apparently he decided he could shadow Faust more efficiently by picking up his cell phone chatter. That way he could anticipate Faust’s movements, show up wherever Faust was going without the risk of tailing him. It made sense.”

  “It was illegal.”

  “Like I said, I didn’t know about it.”

  “Is the surveillance team monitoring Faust’s phone calls now?”

  “No. We still don’t have a warrant.”

  “That didn’t stop Brody.”

  “I’m not Brody.”’s tone was sharp.

  “But you’re stuck cleaning up his mess.” Tess frowned, glancing at the blood on the wall. “Sorry. That didn’t come out the way I intended. What I mean is, you can’t get a warrant to eavesdrop on Faust for the same reason you can’t get a warrant to search his house. Because in either case you’d have to tell a judge about Brody’s murder. And the judge might talk to someone at LAPD. And when LAPD finds out you’ve been running a murder investigation without their input, all hell will break loose. Right?”

  “We’re handling it,” he said irritably.

  “This is a disaster, Ron, and you know it. You allowed Brody to cut corners, and now you’re trapped into cutting corners yourself.”

  He glared at her. “I don’t need a lecture from you on that subject.”

  “No, I guess you don’t. But Brody sure as hell did. For someone who’s such a stickler for the rules, you let him write his own ticket on this case.”

  “It’s the way he worked. I guess maybe ... maybe I should have supervised him more closely. But I thought he’d ...” He let his words trail off.

  “Thought he’d what?” No answer. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “He had a ... reputation,” Hauser said slowly. “In Iraq.”

  “Not a good rep, I’m guessing?”

  Hauser sighed. “Not after a certain point, no. See, the thing is—”

  He would have said more, but the chirp of his cell phone intervened. Hauser took the call, communicating mainly in grunts. When he was finished, he snapped the phone shut and looked at Tess with something like triumph in his gaze.

  “Just got word from the surveillance team. They followed Faust to a cafe he frequents. He met a woman there. Guess who.”

  Tess turned away. “I don’t have to guess.”

  “No, you don’t. It was Sinclair.”

  “If they were in the cafe, Abby may have spotted them. She’s pretty good at countersurveillance.”

  “They weren’t inside. They knew they would stand out in the crowd, so they watched from a parked car across the street. Had a view through a window. They saw Sinclair enter the cafe and sit with Faust. She left first. They didn’t follow her because they didn’t have a heads-up on her at the time.”

  “We have to bring her in,” Tess said quietly.

  “Damn straight we do. Michaelson’s already given the orders. And the evidence guys are working her car and her condo. It was blood on the steering wheel, all right. You want to bet it’s not Brody’s?”

  “No.” Tess sighed. “We’d better get over to her condo. Maybe she’s headed there herself. Maybe she’ll come home.”

  “Or maybe she’s racing for the border,” Hauser said. “But wherever she is, we’ll get her. This time Sinclair is going down.”

  31

  Pioneer Cemetery lay under an incongruously blue California sky. Traffic zipped past on the 210 Freeway, immediately northeast of the graveyard. The sprawling complex of the Olive View UCLA Medical Center lay just across the freeway, looking shiny and new.

  There was nothing either shiny or new about Pioneer Cemetery. A sign identified it as the second-oldest burial place in the San Fernando Valley, dating to the 1800s and abandoned in 1960. Maintenance was problematic. Headstones had been toppled and smashed. Weeds had sprung up copiously amid tufts of dead grass. Gopher holes dotted the grounds.

  Abby knew the technical term for an ecosystem like this: prairie meadow. To her, it seemed like a nice way of saying vacant lot.

  She watched from a distance as the photo shoot unfolded. To enhance the graveyard’s desolation, the art director had strewn withered flowers around the marble obelisk where El
ise was posing. She modeled a chic black ensemble that would have seemed more appropriate for a cocktail party. On the other hand, her rail-thin figure did not appear out of place in an abode of skeletons.

  The photographer snapped pictures at an incredible rate while maintaining a running commentary like infield chatter. “That’s it, that’s beautiful, just a little more attitude, darling, tilt your chin up just a tad, little more, perfect, no, don’t smile, you’re angry, I want to see rage, scare me, darling, glare at me, burn right through me with those beautiful angry eyes ...”

  Abby couldn’t detect much anger or any other emotion in the girl’s vacuous gaze. Maybe the photography studio could add some expression to her face after the fact. Photoshop it or something.

  She had to admit, though, that Elise did have a certain distinctive look. With her angular limbs and sharp-planed face and windblown hair—tossed in elegant disarray by an off-camera electric fan—she captured the plaintive allure of a lost soul. Possibly that was exactly what she was.

  A small crowd of bystanders observed the shoot. Abby, standing among them, knew it was only a matter of time until Elise noticed her. When the girl turned her head in Abby’s direction in response to the photographer’s command, their eyes briefly locked.

  “Come on, darling, give me more, we were in the zone but we’re losing it now, come back to me, be in the moment, focus, focus ...”

  No use. Elise was distracted. Seeing Abby had broken her concentration.

  The photographer could not have known the reason, but he did perceive the results. He stopped clicking the shutter and suggested a ten-minute break.

  Abby waited for Elise to approach her. It took a while for the photographer, the art director, and a bevy of assistants and makeup and hair people and assorted gofers to leave the area, retreating to a staging ground in the parking lot where three trailers were arrayed in a tight formation. Then Elise was alone, except for a set dresser busily rearranging the dead foliage.

  She walked up to Abby, who had remained behind as the rest of the onlookers, losing interest, drifted away.