Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

“If you cooperate with us,” Michaelson added, “Wyatt will be seen as a hero. One of L.A.’s finest. Otherwise ...”

  “Otherwise he’ll be a bad cop who consorted with a shady lowlife,” Abby whispered. “Namely me.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She lowered her head, stared at the floor. Cheap short-nap carpet, worn and stained, smelling of disinfectant. She wondered how many shoes had trodden down that carpet, how many people had paced this room awaiting word of a loved one’s fate.

  There was so much pain in the world. Everybody lost someone. Everybody was, finally, alone.

  “Ms. Sinclair?” Michaelson pressed.

  She lifted her head. When she spoke, her voice was almost steady. “Just show me where to sign.”

  42

  Shortly before midnight, Faust decided he could wait no longer. The victim had marinated in the stew of fear and helplessness long enough.

  He opened the secret panel in the wall, unlocked the hidden door, and found her manacled to the bed, a sad, exhausted thing.

  “I believe, my dear, that the time has arrived for your suffering to end.”

  He opened the cabinet and took out the leather strap.

  “Well, no,” he amended, “this is not quite accurate. There is still a bit more suffering to come.”

  He stretched the strap in his hands. She did not even look at him. Her eyes were glazed, her face empty.

  “No great thing is ever easy. And to die at my hands is to attain a greatness you scarcely deserve. Your petty life now shades into myth and archetype. You, who are no more than a ragged and filthy scrap of flotsam from the streets, shall become something much more. You are to be part of me, absorbed by me, subjugated to my will forever.”

  He was sure she did not understand. How could she? And yet it was so simple. He had to bind them, had to put his mark, his personal stamp on them, in order to assert his absolute ownership of their bodies, their lives. It was an act of almost religious significance to him—although he was a man without religion—an act of ritual and passion, the moment when he staked his claim on the victim and made her his own, forever.

  He approached the bed. She did not turn her head in his direction, did not struggle or tremble. She scarcely breathed.

  “It is good you show no fear. Your lower instincts have been scoured away, leaving you pure. Not chaste, perhaps—this is surely too much to hope for in any modern American girl. But you have achieved a purity of the soul. All that remains is to cast aside the worn-out apparatus of your body. There will be pain, but it will prove fleeting. And then there will be peace. Do you wish for peace, darling Raven?”

  Still no reaction. She was the shell of a girl.

  “You wish for nothing, I see. That is best.”

  He leaned over the bed, and carefully he applied the strap, winding it around her neck and brushing her dark, matted hair out of the way. Abruptly she twitched, and her head jerked, shoulders jumping in sudden reflexive opposition. He had expected as much. The body resisted to the last, even when the mind had long ago made its peace with death. The spirit was willing, but the flesh ... ah, the flesh was weak.

  “There, there,” he soothed. “Only a little farther down this path, and you are free.”

  The strap was in place now, coiled around her neck like a long brown snake, twisted at the base of her skull to form a simple slipknot.

  He took hold of both ends of the strap, watching her face, hearing the chuff of her breath from behind the gag. Her eyes remained empty. It was not her will that fought him, not anymore.

  That was proper. She had lost the last spark of self-preservation. Like a fine wine, she had been aged to perfection, and now she was ready to be savored, and consumed down to the lees.

  He pulled the strap taut—

  In his pocket, his cell phone rang.

  He almost did not answer. But when he checked the screen, caller ID told him Elise was on the line.

  He released the strap and stepped away from the bed so Elise would not hear the girl’s futile struggle.

  “Yes?” he snapped.

  “Peter, it’s me.” He heard an edge of hysteria in her voice.

  “I am quite aware of your identity. The hour is late, and I am occupied.”

  “I want to come over.”

  He glanced at Raven. “Tonight is perhaps not the most convenient time.”

  “I don’t care if it’s convenient. I ... I can’t sleep. I’m all worked up.”

  “On account of your experience with Miss Sinclair?”

  “Of course on account of that. She kidnapped me, Peter.”

  “She would not have harmed you. You were merely a pawn in a game she was playing.”

  “Well, it didn’t feel like any fucking game. She had a gun to my head. I think she’s fucking crazy.”

  “Merely rambunctious.”

  “Rambunctious? Every time I close my eyes, I feel her behind me. I could’ve been killed.”

  “And you were doing a photo shoot in a cemetery. There is a certain irony, do you not think?”

  “No, I do not think. Damn it, Peter, I’m not sleeping alone tonight. I’ll go out of my mind if I do.”

  He could not argue with her when she was in such a state. Reluctantly he gave in.

  “Come over, then. I will see you shortly.”

  Irritated, he ended the call without further comment. He was not accustomed to having her, as the Americans said, call the shots. It placed him in a dilemma. He did not wish to rush Raven’s finale, yet he could hardly stand to put it off now that he had begun. The feel of the leather had set his hands itching.

  “That was my girlfriend,” he explained with a sigh. “She is a child sometimes. Scared to be alone. But you are not scared, are you, Raven? Not scared even of death. Of course not. There is my good girl.”

  He stroked her hair, and his hand moved down slowly to the strap around her neck. To tighten it—or remove it?

  A quandary. He could choose either course—but he must choose soon.

  43

  Tess watched while Abby signed Michaelson’s papers, carefully initialing each page and placing her signature on various lines marked with yellow Post-its. When the ritual was completed, she handed back the documents and said, “That’s that. Now go away.”

  “First let me return something to you.” Michaelson delved into his briefcase and retrieved Abby’s purse. Abby accepted it without comment. Clearly she wanted nothing more to do with either of them.

  Tess couldn’t blame her. Even so, she lingered for a moment, picking up the computer carrying case after Michaelson had left his seat.

  “I’m really not comfortable leaving you like this,” she said.

  Abby glared at her. “If I need a shoulder to cry on, it sure as hell won’t be yours.”

  “I’m certain Ms. Sinclair can take care of herself,” Michaelson observed, glancing at his wristwatch.

  Abby looked down at the floor. “Yeah, I’m good at that. I’m not so hot at taking care of the people around me, though.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Tess said.

  “I don’t. I blame you.”

  Tess swallowed. “I’ll pray for Vic.”

  “You do that,” Abby whispered. “When you’re done, try praying for yourself.”

  They left her there, clutching her purse and staring at nothing. When they were out of earshot Michaelson asked, “What did she mean by that? Was she threatening you?”

  “She’s distraught, Richard.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have given her back the damn gun.”

  Tess touched her throat, remembering the grip of Abby’s fingers. “She doesn’t need a gun. Besides, she’s not going to come after me.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because she already had her chance. She could have killed me in the waiting room if she’d wanted to.”

  “Are you saying you let her get you in a vulnerable position?”

  Tess smiled. “I d
idn’t exactly let her. You’ve always underestimated her because she’s not official. Not licensed. But that’s what makes her so dangerous. She’s never had an organization to rely on, so she’s had to fend for herself. She knows how to do it. Believe me, she’s more than a match for most of our people.”

  “She was more than a match for Brody.”

  “Yes. She was.”

  They rode the elevator in uncomfortable silence. At the ground floor Tess started to get off.

  “Aren’t you parked in the garage?” Michaelson asked.

  She shook her head. “Outside the ER.”

  “Oh. Well, you need to come to my car anyway. I’ve got those blueprints you wanted.”

  It took Tess a moment to remember. Blueprints. Faust’s home.

  “And for Christ’s sake,” he added, “don’t tell me you don’t need them anymore. My assistant gave me all kinds of hell for sending her downtown for them.”

  Tess stepped back onto the elevator. All of a sudden she was glad she had the laptop with her. “There’s something we need to look at. A video on my computer.”

  “This is hardly the time for entertainment.”

  “It’s not entertainment. It’s a possible lead. Something we ought to check out.”

  “We? As in the two of us?”

  “I need someone’s help, Richard, and it looks like you just got elected.”

  “Whatever it is, can’t you do it later?”

  Tess thought of Jennifer Gaitlin, aka Raven, missing for one week. “No,” she said, “we have to do it now.”

  * * *

  By the time they reached Michaelson’s sedan Tess had done her best to explain her theory in a few hurried sentences. She couldn’t gauge the Nose’s reaction.

  The car was unoccupied. She had expected to see a driver behind the wheel, the usual perk for an assistant director.

  “No chauffeur?” she inquired.

  “I drove myself here. My driver’s off the clock.”

  “All right. So I’ll fire up my computer, you get out the blueprints, and we’ll go to work.”

  Michaelson fished his remote out of his pants pocket and used it to turn off the vehicle’s alarm system. Even after the echoes of the two chirps had died away, he didn’t move.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  She sighed. He hadn’t bought it. Naturally, she’d known he might prove recalcitrant. It was unusual—okay, it was unheard of—to ask an assistant director to do hands-on work of this sort. Still, she had to push him a little. “What do you mean, you don’t think so?”

  “McCallum, I have better things to do than follow up some alleged lead based on nothing more than woman’s intuition.”

  “You didn’t really say woman’s intuition, did you?”

  “What else should I call it? You’re telling me there’s some part of Faust’s home that the LAPD didn’t search?”

  “I’m saying it’s possible. That’s why we need to compare the blueprints with the video.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “A room that isn’t there.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “A hidden room, Richard. A room that would show up on the blueprints but wouldn’t be apparent to a visitor.”

  “What makes you think there’s a hidden room? Have you ever been inside the house?”

  “No. But I was inside another house in the same neighborhood just today. The owner made an offhand comment. She said her house had so many rooms, she needed a map to find her way around.”

  Michaelson averted his face. In profile his proboscis loomed like the beak of some prehistoric bird. “And you read some cosmic significance into this?”

  “Faust’s home dates to the same era. It’s just as lavish, just as large. It has lots of rooms. And unless the LAPD got hold of the blueprints, they didn’t have a map. Which means one of the rooms could have been missed.”

  “I’m sure the search was very thorough.”

  “But you can’t find what you’re not looking for. If one of the rooms was hidden, they could walk right past it.”

  He made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “You have no actual, specific reason to think there is such a room, though, do you?”

  “It’s a hypothesis.”

  “It’s a hunch. The Bureau doesn’t play hunches.”

  She shrugged, conceding defeat. “Then I guess I’ll just take the blueprints and go.”

  “There’s an idea.” Michaelson opened the trunk and produced a hefty roll of papers.

  “I’ll have to check into a hotel. Maybe they can recommend one.”

  “I’m sure they can.” He began to hand over the blueprints, then paused. “Who are they?”

  “The police. As I recall, it was Northwest Division that handled the search. You don’t happen to know the address of the station house?”

  “The address?”

  “Never mind, I’ll get it from directory assistance.”

  “Why the hell are you going to the police?”

  “Well, someone has to follow up on my woman’s intuition.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Don’t test me, McCallum.”

  “I’m not testing anybody. I have blueprints and a video record of the search, and I intend to see if any part of that house was overlooked. If the Bureau won’t help me, I’ll find an agency that will.”

  She let her words hang between them for a long moment. She knew Michaelson was thinking that if anything came from her idea and it resulted in Faust’s arrest, he would look bad for having dropped the ball. Coming on top of Brody’s death and Wyatt’s shooting, this would be the third strike against him. In the Bureau, as in baseball, three strikes and he was out.

  “Perhaps,” he said finally, “it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at that video.”

  She opened the passenger door and got in. “We may need to push our seats back.”

  “You want to do it here? In my car?”

  “There’s no time to waste, Richard. Faust may be holding a runaway teenager as his prisoner right now.”

  “This procedure would be more convenient back at my office.”

  “But it’ll be faster here.”

  Grumbling, he slid into the driver’s side. At her request he unrolled the blueprints and adjusted the ceiling light so it would stay on with the car doors closed.

  She had left her PC in suspend mode. It took only a few seconds to come back to life. The DVD software was still running, and it was easy for her to find the LAPD video. She fast-forwarded from room to room, identifying each one in turn while Michaelson ticked off the corresponding rooms on the blueprints.

  “All right,” Tess said. “Now they’re leaving the utility room. Going down the hall, past some bookshelves. Still going … Now they’re entering the breakfast nook off the kitchen.”

  “Wait.” She heard the first note of interest in his voice. “You said they went directly from the utility room to the kitchen area?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about this room here?” He tapped the blueprint.

  She ran the cursor over the DVD program’s onscreen controls. “Let me backwind this thing.”

  “Backwind? I haven’t heard that term since I was working a Super Eight projector in high school.”

  She smiled. “AV Club?”

  “It’s not as nerdy as it sounds,” he said defensively. “We made our own version of Night of the Living Dead.”

  “Nothing nerdy about that. Okay, here they are leaving the utility closet. Heading down the hall ...”

  “There should be a doorway within five or six feet of the utility room.”

  She ran the video backward and froze it on a wide-angle view of the hall. “Nothing but bookshelves. Let me see the blueprints again.” She studied the small, smudged outline of the mystery room. “No windows. No other exits. Too big to be a closet.”

  “Could have been a butler’s pantry,” Michaelson suggested.

  “Or a maid�
�s room.”

  He stared at the blueprints for a long time. “There may, of course, be a perfectly legitimate reason for remodeling the hall ...”

  “And concealing the door?”

  He had no answer.

  She sensed a growing excitement in him. He never got to do this kind of thing anymore. His life, like hers, consisted mostly of reports, paperwork, conference calls, in-baskets and out-baskets. To actually participate in breaking a case—to be there at ground zero—was not something that happened very often, if at all.

  And Peter Faust was not just any case. Of course, that was the problem. Faust was a celebrity. He had money, lawyers, and connections in the media. If the lead proved to be a bust, he could make things very unpleasant for Michaelson. Tess herself wouldn’t take the hit. It wasn’t her case or her call.

  She thought Michaelson might choose the safer course. Table the idea until he could discuss it with his own people. Spend a day or two thinking it through. But by then Jennifer Gaitlin could be dead—if she wasn’t already.

  She pressed him just a little. “What’s behind those bookshelves, Richard?”

  Michaelson pursed his lips. “I suppose,” he said finally, “we had better find out.”

  44

  “Are you waiting for word on Mr. Wyatt?”

  Abby looked up slowly and saw a man in a clean set of scrubs standing over her. Somehow she knew he was a surgeon, even though he looked too young.

  And he’d used the word Mr., not Lieutenant. Even the surgical staff hadn’t been told Wyatt was a cop.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “What is your relationship to him, if I may ask?”

  She was ready for this question. “I’m his wife.” She kept her hands in her lap, hoping he wouldn’t notice the absence of a wedding ring. The doctors wouldn’t give out personal information to anyone who was not a family member.

  “I see.” He glanced around at the other occupied chairs in the waiting room. “I’d like to go somewhere more private, where we can talk.”

  This was when she knew the news was bad. “Just tell me,” she whispered.

  “It would really be preferable—”

  “Tell me.” She did not raise her voice, but her tone allowed no disagreement.