Tess still couldn’t get past the idea. “You were in Wyatt’s apartment ...”
“Last place anyone would look, right?” Abby smiled again. There was something empty in that smile. “I can be a coldhearted bitch when I want to be. I needed a computer, and I got hold of one.”
“What did you need it for?”
“Research. But before we get into that, how about giving me an update on the investigation? Dish me some of that inside dirt.”
Tess nodded. “First of all, we found your Miata. It was abandoned at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Centinela Avenue, not far from here, actually. It will be returned to you as soon as the crime scene guys are through with it.”
Abby waved her hand as if the return of the car was immaterial.
“Faust left my gun in the car, for some reason. Apparently he didn’t think he needed it anymore. Which is kind of worrisome, inasmuch as it suggests an awfully high degree of confidence that he won’t be found.”
“Confidence that so far has proven to be justified,” Abby said.
“True. We have no idea where he’s gone, but we’re showing his photo at all the major local airports, train and bus stations, rental car agencies, and so forth. He can’t get out of town. We’re also working the room where he kept his victims. It was a secret room in his house, soundproofed and hidden behind a false wall. He had a cabinet in there filled with mementos—a dozen human hands, each one branded with his insignia. Always the left hand.”
Abby’s glance flicked to Tess’s bandages, then traveled away. “If they haven’t deteriorated too badly, you can get fingerprints off them.”
“He preserved them in formalin, which is basically a solution of formaldehyde in water. Yes, we can pull prints. In fact, we’ve identified one victim already. Roberta Kessler, a girl who went missing three years ago.” She sighed. “The police knew he was good for that one. They just didn’t know where to look. If they’d found the room ...”
“Faust is smart, Tess. He knows how to play the game.”
“Yes.” She shook off her regrets. “We found something else in the cabinet. A scrapbook. He liked to keep clippings about missing girls. We expect to be able to match the girls in the news stories to the hands in the jars.”
“What else was in the scrapbook?” Abby asked, her eyes narrowing.
Tess frowned. “What makes you think there was anything else?”
“The way you placed your right hand over your left when you mentioned it.”
Tess looked down and saw that she had unconsciously covered her wounded hand. “You’re good,” she said with a smile. “Better than most Bureau interrogators. There was something else. There were clippings about me. He was ... interested in me.”
“I know all about that kind of interest. In my line of work, we call it obsession.”
“That’s what we call it, too. I have to admit, I don’t like knowing he’s still out there. Faust isn’t your ordinary psycho. He’s ...”
“Not just evil,” Abby said, finishing for her. “He’s Evil with a capital E.”
This was so close to Tess’s way of thinking about Faust that she straightened in her seat. “I guess you could say that.”
“I just did. Let’s face it, we both have a major beef against this guy. He tried to shoot me and run me over. Not to mention he was kind of rude to me on the phone. Also, I’m not expecting to be paid for my work on his case, which is the kind of thing that really chills my grapefruit.”
“They’ll find him,” Tess said, not quite convinced.
A waitress arrived with two plates piled high with hamburgers and macaroni salad. Two glasses of ice water accompanied the meal.
“Hope water’s okay,” Abby said. “They don’t serve anything stronger, and soda rots your teeth.”
“Water is fine.”
Tess couldn’t have cared less what she had to drink, just so long as she could satisfy the hunger that was now clawing at her insides. She took several greedy bites of the burger before continuing the conversation. “So what was it you wanted to talk about?”
Abby leaned forward in her seat. Her eyes had that feral glint again. “I’ve been thinking about skulls.”
“Skulls?”
“Yeah.”
“You really do need some rest, Abby.”
Abby showed her a fierce stare. “No, I don’t. I need to talk about skulls.”
“I’m listening.”
“Faust is part owner of the Unblinking I. Did you know that?”
“I assumed as much, from his access to the place. The Bureau is running a check on the gallery’s financial records.”
“Faust kept his ownership a secret, supposedly because his reputation would be bad for business. But I’m thinking there’s another explanation.”
“Go on.”
“Piers Hoagland. who hails from Faust’s native country, has a deal with that gallery. Hoagland specializes in holograms. His artwork was on display last night. You saw it. He specializes in dead things. Rotting carcasses, bones. Skulls.”
“Yes ...”
“Faust’s victims were all decapitated. Their skulls have never been found, right? You’ve got their hands in formalin, but not their heads. Right?”
“That’s true.”
“Okay. Now where did Hoagland get the skulls he uses in his art? Has anyone ever asked?”
“I don’t know,” Tess said quietly.
“Suppose he got them from Faust. A cozy little arrangement on their part. Hoagland gets the materials he needs for his work. Faust has the fun of displaying his victims in plain sight. He liked to say that murder was art. This was his chance to be the artist he always wanted to be.”
Tess thought about it. “When he had me in the gallery, he told me that death is art. And he said he’d had to publicly downplay that philosophy in order to protect himself. I didn’t know what he meant.”
“To protect himself from being linked to Hoagland. I think that’s the real reason he kept his participation in the gallery a secret. It wasn’t about his reputation. It was that he couldn’t afford to have anybody looking at Hoagland’s skulls too closely.”
Tess finished off her burger and wiped her mouth with a napkin. She was astonished at how quickly she’d consumed the meal. “Thanks, Abby. This is helpful. If it pans out, we can get hold of the holograms and identify the victims from dental records.”
“What is this, CSI? I’m not interested in ID’ing the victims. I’m interested in getting Faust.”
“Tell me how.”
“If Hoagland was getting human skulls from a man like Faust, he had to know what was up. He’s not just a dupe; he’s an accomplice. An accessory. And if he was willing to look the other way on the skulls, how else might he have assisted Faust?”
“In his escape? That’s what you’re thinking?”
Abby nodded. “Hoagland has family money, lots of it. He owns a private jet. A Gulfstream. Transcontinental range.”
“Does he?” This was interesting.
“You bet. Faust told me on the phone that he’d done twelve girls in all. They can’t all have been local or he would have been caught by now. So I’m assuming he traveled.”
“Yes.”
“And he left no trail. No airline reservations, for instance.”
“How did you know that?”
“Because if he’d left a trail of plane tickets that matched up with his victims’ disappearances, you feebs would have arrested him months ago.”
“Okay. You’re right.” Tess frowned. “Don’t call us feebs.”
“So he wasn’t flying commercial. He could’ve driven, but a man with a busy schedule like his can’t afford to be out of touch for extended periods. And he’s well known enough that he could have been spotted anywhere along the way. Too risky. So I’m guessing he traveled a different way. He used Hoagland’s plane.”
“All right ...”
“If he used it on other occasions, who’s to say he did
n’t use it to get out of town last night? You said my car was ditched at Santa Monica Boulevard and Centinela. Someone else must have picked him up there. From that location it’s a straight shot down Centinela to Santa Monica Municipal Airport. Which just happens to be where Hoagland’s Gulfstream is stored.”
Tess felt a tremor of excitement. “We can check the airport and find out if the plane left early this morning.”
“Or you can take a leap of faith and assume I’m right.”
“Suppose I do. I’ll still have to obtain the flight plan to learn where Faust went.”
“No, you won’t. I already know.”
“Do you?”
“Well, okay. I don’t actually know. I mean, in the literal sense of being certain beyond any doubt. But I have a pretty strong hunch.”
“And what does your hunch tell you?”
“Where does a person go when his whole world is falling apart? I’ll tell you where. He goes home.”
“Home,” Tess echoed.
“Piers Hoagland lives in Manhattan. But he also keeps a small country villa in Paderborn, Germany. If Faust left before dawn, he’s probably refueling at some private East Coast airfield right around now. Then it’s another eight hours or so to the land of beer and bratwurst. He’ll be there tonight.”
Tess sat very still. Her hand was throbbing worse than before. “It’s possible,” she said finally.
“It’s more than possible. Hoagland’s villa is the perfect place for the world’s most wanted fugitive to hide out. Isolated, remote, and it has no obvious link to Peter Faust. Unless someone made the connection between him and Hoagland, nobody would look for him there.”
“I’ll give the lead to Interpol. If you’re right, they’ll intercept him when he lands.”
Abby pursed her lips. “That’s one way to handle it.”
“Is there another?”
She drummed her fingers on the table, a slow, staccato rhythm. “Faust has already been a subject of the German legal system once. They put him in a mental hospital for a couple of years. When he came out, he was a celebrity.”
“It’ll be different this time. These murders were committed on U.S. soil. The U.S. has an extradition treaty with Germany. They’ll hand him over to us.”
“We can hope so.”
“Are you saying they won’t cooperate? In a case this high-profile?”
“The high profile is the problem. Our Mr. Faust has a lot of fans in Germany. And a lot of powerful friends. And you know we’ll have to seek the death penalty.”
“Yes,” Tess said slowly.
“In a capital case, there can be extradition problems. The Europeans don’t like giving us one of their citizens when there’s a chance he’s going to fry. They could keep him there indefinitely while the wheels of justice spin in the mud.”
All of this was true, and discouraging. But Tess couldn’t see the point of bringing it up. “Well, what choice do we have?” she asked.
“That’s the question, Tess.” Abby’s gaze, hot and steady, drilled into her. “What choice do we have?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I think you know.”
And, of course, she did know. She supposed she had known from the moment Abby mentioned the villa in Germany.
“Question is,” Abby went on, “are you willing to play it my way for once? And I mean my way, all the way.”
Tess looked at her hand, scarred with the mark of the wolf, the Werewolf. She thought about Josh, who would be a possible target until Faust was stopped. She thought about Hitler with his lashless blue eyes. Hitler—and devils. Devils in human form.
“I’m in,” she said quietly.
Abby reached into her purse and produced a leather credentials case. She slid it across the table. Tess opened it and saw a passport with her own photo staring back at her, and the name Melissa Ruth Conroy.
When she looked up, Abby was smiling.
51
It took Abby seventeen hours to fly from Los Angeles to London, then from London to Bonn. She spent the flights trying not to think about Wyatt.
Later there would be time for memories. Now she was in the present. She was focused on the job at hand. And she was glad to be traveling, glad to be in motion, with an objective, a purpose. Glad, because she could see too clearly the shape of the days to come—the days and, worse, the nights. The loneliness and the helpless self-accusation and the useless anger. The ever-present grief. It was as if her future was drawn only in shades of gray. As if she’d died along with Vic, only they’d forgotten to bury her.
She met Tess at the baggage claim area for a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. They had agreed to take separate flights in order to minimize the chance of being seen together and remembered.
“We need a car,” Tess said without preamble.
Abby flashed a set of keys. “Already got one.”
The car she’d rented was an Opel Corsa hatchback. It proved surprisingly peppy on the autobahn, hitting 180 kilometers per hour without strain.
She and Tess said little during the drive. There was nothing to say.
Paderborn lay in the northeast corner of the province of Westphalia, on the threshold of a primeval forest dominated by Schloss Wewelsburg, a sixteenth-century castle perched on a limestone cliff. The hotel Abby had selected was in nearby Buren, overlooking a lake. At the front desk she asked if an express delivery package had arrived for her. It had. She accepted it with a smile, wondering what the desk clerk would think if he knew its contents.
They deposited their luggage in their adjoining rooms, along with the unopened package, then returned to the Opel and scouted Hoagland’s villa. It occupied a remote spot in the forested hills, crouching at the foot of a slope that ascended to a tree-lined ridge. They did a quick drive-by, not daring to linger on the road.
The front door was shut, the windows closed. There was no vehicle parked outside, although there might have been one in the small detached garage.
“Think he’s in there?” Tess asked when they’d passed the villa.
“No way to tell. But it’s nice and isolated. Easy enough to do some B and E once it gets dark.”
“Unless there’s an alarm.”
“Alarms can be defeated. Any security can be bypassed. There’s always a workaround.”
Tess shook her head. “You would know.”
“Yes. I would. Hungry?”
“Not especially.”
“Neither am I. Let’s try out the hotel restaurant anyway. It’s not a good idea to let our blood sugar get low.”
* * *
Westphalia was pork country, as they discovered when they perused the menu. Abby wasn’t ordinarily real big on pork, but when in Rome and all that. She ordered roast pork served on kebabs with diced potatoes and vegetables in a pleasing sauce. Tess ordered the same. Their waiter recommended a white wine, but they demurred, needing to keep their heads clear. They drank ice water instead. The waiter seemed miffed.
After dinner they returned to their rooms and changed into dark clothes. Abby opened the package and took out two 9mm semiautomatics with spare magazines. The guns had been obtained from a black-market supplier and could not be traced. It would have been risky to put them in the checked baggage. Sometimes those bags were X-rayed.
She let Tess select a weapon. Not surprisingly, she picked the SIG Sauer, similar to her Bureau-issue model. It was always a good idea to stick with a familiar weapon. Abby took the other gun, a Ruger. She had no preference. She could handle any firearm.
In silence they loaded the pistols. Then there was nothing to do but wait for nightfall.
“So this is how it feels to be you,” Tess said.
“Come again?”
“Working a mission under an assumed name, using an untraceable gun. No legalities. No rules.”
Abby smiled. “Pretty cool, huh?”
Tess didn’t answer.
Her silence troubled Abby. “Hey. We’re not having second thou
ghts, are we?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m in for the duration.”
“That’s good. ’Cause there’s no turning back now.”
* * *
Tess wondered how many years it had been since she’d prayed the rosary. She did it tonight, guiltily, sneaking out the beads when she was alone in her room. She prayed for forgiveness for what she was about to do. She prayed that she was not endangering her immortal soul.
But even if she was, she would do it anyway.
When darkness fell, they donned coats against the night’s chill, then left the inn and drove into the forest. Two miles from the villa, Abby killed the headlights and steered by moonlight. After another mile she pulled into a turnout and parked the car.
“On foot from here,” she said.
Tess didn’t argue. Abby was running this show. She got out of the car and started toward the road.
“Not that way,” Abby whispered. “Through the woods.”
“You expect him to be watching the road?”
“No. But it’s always what you don’t expect that trips you up.”
They navigated the forest, sometimes finding deer trails, other times simply pushing through the dense underbrush. Tall trees rose up around them, the branches interlaced to form a high, rustling canopy. A ground cover of mist began to curl around their ankles.
In the mist and moonlight, strange rock formations slid into view, an eruption of limestone shapes. Tess thought of Stonehenge. Of druids and spells. Witchcraft.
There was evil here. The thought came to her suddenly. A malignancy, a foulness in the creeping fog, the malformed rocks, the encroaching trees.
Abby seemed to read her thoughts—or more likely, her body language. “Not a great spot for a picnic,” she said mildly.
“No. It really isn’t. It feels like”—words failed her—“something bad,” Tess finished lamely.
“Memories, maybe. If a place can hold memories. And I think some places can.”
“Memories of what?”
“You didn’t read up on the local history, did you? There was a labor camp in these woods during World War Two. Most of the prisoners were worked to death.”
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