Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  Up close Elise didn’t look quite like herself. She wore pancake makeup, heavy eye shadow, and pale lipstick. “Hey, Abby. He’s not here today.”

  Abby almost asked who, then realized Elise was referring to Brody. He had shown up at her other outdoor shoots. “No,” she said, “I guess not.”

  “That’s good, right? Maybe he’s given up, gone away.”

  He had gone away, all right. “It’s possible. But we can’t make any assumptions. In fact, I need your help.”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll do anything.”

  She was so guileless and helpless, Abby almost regretted what she was about to do. But the girl had hooked up with Peter Faust. She wasn’t entirely innocent.

  “I think the man who’s been tailing you has a partner,” Abby said, reciting the words she’d rehearsed on her way over. “I’m not a hundred percent certain of it, though. I snapped some digital pics of the guy, and I’ve got them on my laptop. I need you to look at them and tell me if you’ve seen him around.”

  “No problem.”

  “The computer’s in my car.”

  Abby led her toward a far corner of the parking lot, where the Miata sat well away from the trailers. She would have preferred to have the Hyundai, which was less distinctive and harder to trace back to her, but she hadn’t wanted to take the time to go back to Westwood and switch vehicles.

  “Did Peter tell you I’d be here?” Elise asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m surprised he even remembered. Half the time when I tell him where I’ll be shooting, I don’t think he even listens.”

  “Maybe he listens more than you realize.” They reached the car. Abby opened the passenger door. “Slide in,” she said casually.

  “I don’t know if I should. My clothes are kind of dirty. And this darn body makeup gets all over everything. Can’t you just show me the pictures from here?”

  “There aren’t any pictures.”

  “What? You said—”

  Even after Elise turned to face Abby, it still took her a moment to register the gun in Abby’s hand.

  “Hey,” she breathed, sounding more offended than afraid.

  “I want you to stay very calm, Elise. Don’t make any noise. Just slowly get in the car.”

  Her nose wrinkled. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I need to take you somewhere. Not very far. I’ll have you back here in no time.”

  “I can’t leave the shoot.” She said it as if the very possibility were unthinkable.

  “Yes, you can. You have to.”

  “Or else what?” She drew herself up, chin raised. “You’ll shoot me?”

  “That’s it exactly. I will shoot you.”

  Elise blinked, taking this in. “But ...” she said finally. “But you work for us!”

  “I’m freelance. I don’t work for anybody. Now get in the car.”

  Elise took another long look at the gun. Reluctantly she complied.

  “Stay in the passenger seat,” Abby ordered. “I’m going around to the driver’s side. If you yell or try to get away ...”

  “You’ll shoot me. I got it.” She was trying to sound defiant, but the quaver in her voice betrayed her.

  Abby slid behind the wheel, keyed the ignition, and pulled away. As the car headed for the exit, the photographer caught sight of Elise inside. He shouted something and waved his arms.

  “You’re getting me in a lot of trouble,” Elise said.

  Abby didn’t answer, just kept driving. As they headed south on Foothill Boulevard, Elise said quietly, “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not going to kill you. Unless I have to,” she added for effect.

  “Great.” Elise shivered and hugged herself. “We never should have hired you.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  “I told Peter not to. I said we should just get a regular bodyguard. Or one of the security guys at the gallery.”

  Abby turned west on Hubbard Avenue. “The gallery?”

  “The Unblinking I. You were there, right? They have security guards.”

  “Why would Peter hire one of them?”

  “He knows them. He hired them in the first place. For the gallery.”

  This was news. “You’re saying he helps run the place?”

  “Why not? He’s one of the owners.” She put a hand to her mouth like a little girl who’d just said a bad word. “Oh, I guess I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a secret. He doesn’t, you know, publicize his involvement. Some people might have a problem with it because of his background and all.”

  Glenoaks Boulevard was coming up. Abby eased into the left-turn lane. “The fact that he’s a cold-blooded killer, you mean?”

  Elise nodded, oblivious to sarcasm. “It’s an issue for some people. So he’s got to keep some of his business activities quiet.”

  “He keeps a lot of secrets, I guess.”

  “Probably.”

  “He even keeps secrets from you.”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “He has his reasons.”

  Abby shook her head. “Everybody has reasons, Elise. It doesn’t mean what they’re doing is right.”

  “You should talk. You’re holding a gun on me and kidnapping me.”

  Well, she had a point there. Anyway, there was no time to pursue the issue. The gas station was coming up.

  She had noted the Texaco station on the drive over. It had gone out of business, which meant it was conveniently empty, and its rear lot was nicely screened from view by the windowless walls of a large brick building next door.

  She pulled into the lot behind the station and emerged from the car, then escorted Elise to a pay phone in a kiosk. The phone worked; Abby had checked for a dial tone when she scoped out the place.

  “Call Peter,” Abby ordered. “Not his cell. His landline.”

  “I don’t have any change.”

  Abby popped some coins into the slot. “Dial.”

  Elise obeyed. Abby hoped Faust hadn’t changed his mind about going straight home.

  “Hello, Peter? Something’s happened. I think Sinclair’s gone crazy—”

  Abby grabbed the phone. “You hear that, Faust? I have your girlfriend. Right now I’m holding a gun on her. Tell him, Elise. Tell him I’m holding a gun.”

  She held out the phone, and Elise started babbling that it was true, she was, she really was.

  “When I met her,” Abby added, “she told me she didn’t have a death wish. It looks like she was telling the truth, because she’s plenty scared right now.”

  Faust’s breathing, low and fast, was audible in her ear. “What the hell do you mean to accomplish by this?”

  “I want to know who gave you my name. Your friend in law enforcement.”

  “Or you will what? Kill an innocent woman?”

  “Maybe not kill. I might just settle for taking out her kneecaps.”

  Elise moaned.

  “You’re a poor bluffer. Miss Sinclair.” Faust was breathing harder. “You will not harm her.”

  “You want to take that chance? Let’s ask Elise what she thinks.”

  She again extended the phone, and Elise, crying now, began to beg. “Tell her, Peter, tell her whatever she wants, please tell her, she’s crazy, she’s got a gun and she kidnapped me right out of a shoot with all these people watching, and we’re alone, and she’s crazy, crazy, crazy—”

  Abby took back the phone. “You get the drift. Now talk.”

  “Very well, God damn it. The man in question is—or was—a U.S. Marine.”

  “The Marines aren’t in law enforcement.”

  “Actually, he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time. Or perhaps some similar operation; I have forgotten the details. I met him in Germany.”

  “How?”

  “After I was arrested for Emily
Wallace’s murder, the American government was briefly concerned that there might be national security implications to the crime. Emily worked on a U.S. military base, you see. This rather earnest buzz-cut marine was sent to interrogate me in my cell. He quickly determined that I was not part of any terrorist cabal.”

  “You got my name from a marine you met in Germany more than ten years ago?”

  “He is a marine no longer. Once I had settled in Los Angeles, he rang me up. Wanted to keep tabs on me, it seems. He was friendly enough, and I had no objection to his occasional calls. I knew the game he was playing, and he knew I knew.”

  Abby was lost. “What game? I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, I did forget a rather crucial piece of exposition, did I not? Upon leaving the marines, he joined the FBI. He is stationed in Los Angeles and has no doubt been tasked by his superiors with maintaining contact with me. Given our previous encounter, he would be the logical man for the job.”

  “And he gave you my name?”

  “He did, I called him to ask if he could suggest a private operative who could assist in a stalking case, and he supplied your name and your cell phone number.”

  “I’ll have to thank him for the business. Which would be a lot easier if I knew who he was.”

  “Have I not mentioned that? His name is Hauser. Ronald Hauser of the Los Angeles field office of the FBI.”

  Abby shut her eyes. “Okay.”

  “You are now satisfied?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then kindly release the lady.”

  “She won’t be hurt. She never would have been hurt.”

  “It was all a bluff, then?”

  “Of course.”

  “I did suspect as much, although I wonder, Miss Sinclair, how far you might have carried your so-called bluff, had I proved more intractable.”

  The dial tone buzzed in her ear.

  Abby hung up. She stood for a long moment with her hand on the phone before remembering Elise.

  “Sorry about all this,” she said lamely. “But I had to know. I’ll drive you back to the shoot.”

  “Uh-uh, no way, I don’t think so.” Elise was shaking her head wildly like a panicked mare. “I’m not getting in the car with you again.”

  “Fair enough. Here’s some more change. You can call someone at the shoot and have them pick you up.”

  Elise clutched the coins in a tight fist. “I’ll call the goddamned police; that’s who I’ll call.”

  “Probably not a good idea. Peter won’t want the police brought in. Call him and see.”

  “You mean I’m just supposed to forget about you kidnapping me? How am I supposed to explain leaving the shoot?”

  “Tell them I’m your crazy roommate, and I drove you off and left you here as a gag. Embellish it any way you want. Maybe I was all coked up or something. Be creative.”

  “I hate you.” She pronounced the verdict with a child’s righteous scorn.

  “Sticks ’n’ stones,” Abby said, getting back into the car. She was tired of Elise. Tired of Peter Faust. Tired of the whole business.

  “Oh, yeah? Well ...” Elise searched for a comeback. “Well, we’re not paying you, that’s for damn sure! And you won’t be getting any recommendations from us, either.”

  “Right. I get it. I’ll never eat lunch in this town again.”

  Elise’s rage switched to bafflement. “Who said anything about lunch?”

  It didn’t seem like a question worth answering. Abby drove off. She watched Elise shrink in her rearview mirror, a small, angry figure, arms akimbo, hair flying in the breeze.

  Abby couldn’t feel good about what she’d done. But it had worked. She’d gotten the info she needed. She knew who’d set her up.

  Hauser.

  32

  Tess hated this. Hated participating in Abby’s takedown. Hated the thought that Abby would, very probably, end up in a federal prison for many years.

  She sat beside Hauser as he drove back to Westwood. She was grateful for his silence, and unhappy when he broke it.

  “You know, if Michaelson hadn’t worked out a deal with Sinclair last time, she’d be in the pen right now, and Brody would still be alive.”

  “Abby didn’t do anything wrong last time.”

  “Interfering with a federal investigation, withholding evidence, leaving a crime scene, using phony ID ...” Hauser ticked off the charges on his fingers.

  “She had good reasons.”

  “Right, take her side. I forgot how close you are to her.”

  “Ron, you’ve been riding me about Abby ever since you walked into the Nose’s office.”

  “Don’t call him that,” he said peevishly.

  “Do I have to remind you that I came to L.A. voluntarily to give you this lead?”

  “You came here because you knew Sinclair would be tied to the murder eventually, and then a check of her phone records would show she’d spoken to you a day earlier. You were in cover-your-ass mode, as usual.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Save it for your fans in the media. And for whoever’s dick you’re stroking on Ninth Street. He must be pretty high up to have shielded you from any blowback on Medea.”

  “I used to respect you, Ron. I’m having my doubts now.”

  “I used to respect you, too, McCallum. These days I have no doubts about you whatsoever.”

  Silence again. Tess stared out the window and went over the crime scene in her mind, reviewing the layout of the guest cottage, scanning her memories for something she’d overlooked. The images cycled past like the rooms in the search video that had played on her computer last night.

  So many rooms ...

  She blinked. “Do you have blueprints of Faust’s home?” she asked Hauser.

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “We need to look at them.”

  “What for?”

  “Just an idea I have.”

  “I’m not wasting time hunting down blueprints. Sinclair is the priority, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Fine.”

  She pulled out her cell phone and called Michaelson’s office, getting through to him after a brief showdown with his secretary. Hauser threw irritated glances her way. She ignored him.

  “Richard, I need to get hold of the blueprints to Peter Faust’s home. Hauser doesn’t have them, but they may be on file with the city.”

  “Hauser’s backing you up on this?” Michaelson asked.

  “Yes,” she lied.

  “All right, all right”—he sounded harried—“I’ll see what I can do.”

  She ended the call, hoping Michaelson would follow through.

  “Want to tell me what this is all about?” Hauser asked.

  Tess smiled. “No, Ron. Actually, I don’t.”

  * * *

  They arrived at the Wilshire Royal at four thirty. Hauser stashed the LTD in a remote corner of the parking garage so that if Abby came back, she wouldn’t see it and run.

  He took his time getting out of the car, and Tess wondered what was the matter with him. He caught her questioning gaze and frowned. “Knees,” he said. “Played too much football in my younger days. Now it’s catching up with me.”

  He was limping a little as they walked from the garage into the lobby. The guards behind the desk weren’t any more cooperative than last time, but they didn’t have to be. A team of Bureau criminalists, bearing a search warrant, had already recovered the blood from Abby’s Hyundai and now were working in her apartment. More agents were watching the entrance to the building from an office across the street.

  “What worries me is those damn rent-a-cops,” Hauser said to Tess as they rode the elevator to the tenth floor. “They’ll tip her off if they can.”

  “Maybe we should station an agent in the lobby, out of sight from outside.”

  “It’s a thought. Of course, if she’s smart, she’s not coming back.”

  And she was smart, Tess thought. Survival was Abby’
s specialty. She almost said as much, but Hauser had turned away to dry-swallow a couple of pills. Arthritis meds, maybe. His knees must be worse than she’d thought.

  The apartment was in disarray, as it had been when Tess had last seen Abby. Then, Tess had found her cleaning up the mess left by another evidence team. Now her collections of CDs and DVDs were once again scattered on the floor, her papers removed from the file cabinets, her kitchen cupboards standing open. A photographer clicked off exposures on a digital camera.

  Hauser requested a rundown on what had turned up so far. A computer technician had recovered a record of a Web search for information on Brody. Although Abby had erased her Internet cache, the files had been restored with a software application.

  Other criminalists had found traces of blood in the plumbing under both the shower and the washing machine. In a closet, they’d discovered extra ammunition, though Abby’s gun itself was missing. They would try to match the ammo to the round recovered from Brody once the autopsy was performed.

  “So,” Hauser said with satisfaction, “we’ve got her with Faust in the cafe and with Brody in the cottage. She was reading Faust’s book and researching Brody’s background. We’ve got blood in her car, on her clothes, and in her plumbing pipes. We’ve got a bullet hole in her purse and disposable handcuffs that were cut apart. I’d say we have a case, Agent McCallum. Wouldn’t you?”

  Tess shut her eyes. “It looks that way.”

  The phone rang.

  The two evidence techs in the living room glanced up. Tess and Hauser turned.

  It was Abby’s home phone, on an end table by her armchair.

  As they all stared stupidly at it, the phone rang again.

  “Has anyone called here before now?” Tess asked.

  One technician shook his head. “First time since we’ve arrived.”

  The phone rang for a third time. “Let her voice mail answer it,” Hauser said. “We can play back the message and—”

  Tess cut him off. “It’s her.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I just do.” She picked up the phone. “Hello.”

  “Hey, Tess.” Abby’s voice, of course. “How’s it hanging?”

  33