Final Sins

by Michael Prescott

  “I didn’t know that,” Tess said softly.

  “It was Himmler’s idea. He needed them to renovate the local castle, the one on the hill. It was going to be his Camelot. A spiritual retreat for his knights of the SS. They would come there for training and indoctrination. And for, you know, pagan rites.”

  Tess shivered. The forest, enticing by day, was a different world in the darkness. A place of pain and death, old secrets, unspoken crimes.

  She knew people who had traveled to Sedona, Arizona, convinced that the spot was a nexus of mystic energies. She doubted it. But this place, in the bone white moonlight, might indeed be the meeting point of occult forces, not the benevolent kind imagined by Gaia worshipers, but something colder, grimmer, darker. Something that had drawn Himmler to this spot.

  And not only Himmler ...

  “Faust is here,” she said suddenly. “I know he is. It’s where he has to be.”

  Abby nodded. She knew it, too.

  52

  The only light in the study was a green-shaded banker’s lamp, casting its pale glow over the clippings on the desk. Faust leaned forward, into the small circle of light, and pasted another article into the scrapbook.

  This article had run in today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. He had found it on the Internet and printed it out, here in this study. Marvelous resource, the Internet. With it, he had been able to follow the news coverage of his escape from justice in satisfying detail.

  The scrapbook was an empty one he had found in the house and appropriated, just as he had appropriated a set of clothes from the closet to replace his pajamas and robe. The outfit was tolerably comfortable, a bit loose at the waist and narrow at the shoulders, but it would serve. It would have to serve. He could hardly go shopping. Since his arrival, he had not set foot outside the house, and he did not plan to do so for some time.

  Thus the scrapbook. He must keep himself occupied.

  He could not complain. By all rights he ought to be in a prison cell in California, and he would have been, had he not placed a pay-telephone call to Piers Hoagland, waking him with an urgent demand for help. It had taken Hoagland only two hours to make the necessary preparations for his plane’s unscheduled departure from Santa Monica. Hoagland himself had driven Faust to the airfield, after meeting him at the prearranged rendezvous point. Neither man could fly a plane, but Hoagland employed a pilot who was discreet and well paid, and who had flown Faust around the western states, asking no questions. All Hoagland had ever requested in return were the skulls, defleshed in boiling water and ready to be used in his art. The arrangement had been mutually satisfactory. Hoagland obtained his models, and Faust had the pleasure of putting his victims on public display.

  Hoagland had not accompanied Faust on the flight. It would have been suspicious if he had left town while his exhibit at the art gallery was still in progress. The pilot had flown Faust to a private airfield in Maryland, then to another landing strip outside Buren. Hoagland kept a car there. Faust had driven himself to the villa, following directions he had memorized.

  The large freezer was well stocked, and the shelves of the study were lined with diverting books. He would not perish either of starvation or of boredom. And he had his scrapbook, of course.

  The old one would be in the possession of the authorities now. He disliked the idea of some officious detective thumbing through those well-loved pages. Worse was the thought of his collection, his beauties—the graceful hands in their formalin baths—reduced to the status of evidence, labeled and stored away with the other detritus of crime.

  But he would start a new collection. It was difficult to begin again in middle age, but he was strong. He would do it.

  Already he had filled ten pages of his new scrapbook. There were articles on Raven, whose real name, he had learned, was Jennifer Gaitlin. There were photos of Elise, and photos of himself, and artists’ conceptions of how he might look under a variety of disguises. In actuality he had not altered his appearance at all. There would be a need for that later.

  For the time being he must lie low. That was all right. He liked this place. In the stillness of these woods at night, he could almost believe he was a boy camping in the Black Forest, when a wolf in the moonlight had shown him his destiny.

  But he would not hide forever. The public’s curiosity would inevitably prove short-lived. In days or weeks the news stories would fade away, and his photo would no longer shout for attention from every newspaper. Then he would reemerge. He would travel. He would reinvent himself.

  Not in the United States, nor in Germany. He was far too well-known in both locales. He thought he would head east, into the Slavic countries of the former USSR. A man could do well in that region—a man with the proper qualities of ruthlessness and daring.

  He would have a new identity, new papers. Money could buy him those things, and he knew people who could provide them. His money, protected from lawsuits in Swiss banks, was not altogether lost to him. Some accounts were undoubtedly compromised and frozen; even the Swiss must cooperate in an international manhunt. But there were others, less easily traced, that would remain intact.

  With money, documentation, and a minor change of appearance, he would be a new man. He might not succeed in remaining at large forever. Even if he were eventually caught, he would have claimed more victims and extended his already considerable resume.

  The most intriguing question still to be decided was that of revenge. There were people in the United States whom he would like to visit. Two women in particular who deserved his vengeance. He would very much like to see them again.

  And then he did.

  The door to his study swung wide, and they were in the doorway, holding guns, trained on him.

  He sat unmoving for a long moment before he raised his hands. He was cornered, unarmed. He had no illusions about fighting back.

  “Willkommen,” he said with a slow smile. “You have my congratulations. You have tracked the beast to his lair.”

  They did not answer. They stepped into the room, separating to cover him from different angles. He admired their efficiency, their stealth. He did not even bother to ask how they had gained entrance to the house, defeating Hoagland’s expensive security system. Sinclair would have handled that. She had a burglar’s skills.

  “May I ask what has become of Elise? The news reports are unclear. I am concerned that she may be charged as my accomplice, which would be most unjust.”

  “She won’t be charged.” It was Tess who spoke. “She says she didn’t know about the room, and I believe her.”

  “That is good. I had not wanted to think of her in prison. She never would have survived such an ordeal.” He lifted his eyebrows in the equivalent of a shrug. “I do not know why I care about her. But I find that I do.”

  “Love’s funny that way,” Abby said. She was not smiling. Neither of them was smiling. Their faces were grim, aloof.

  “I suppose it is. I honestly would not know.” Faust pushed back his chair and prepared to rise. “You will arrest me now?”

  Abby shook her head. “Not this time.”

  He looked at her, then at Tess. He saw how it was going to be.

  “I see,” he said softly.

  Until this moment he had visualized handcuffs, extradition, a trial, a cell. Now he knew that there would be none of that.

  He felt cold suddenly. It lasted only a second. Then he mastered himself. He would not quail in fear. He was the Werewolf. He was Peter Faust.

  There was one last decision to make. He could die sitting down or on his feet. He chose to stand. His knees did not buckle, nor did his hands tremble as he lowered them to his sides.

  “So you are a jungle cat,” he told Abby Sinclair. “And you”—his gaze traveled to Tess McCallum—“you are a killer of killers, just as I thought.”

  Abby nodded, and Tess said, “That’s right,” her voice low and hard and without apology.

  Faust smiled. “I knew I had not misjudge
d you.”

  He shut his eyes. He listened to the beat of his heart. He waited. But not for long.

  The two women fired together, the gunshots blending as one, echoing in the dark German night.

  Author’s Note

  Tess and Abby previously teamed up in Dangerous Games and Mortal Faults. Tess appeared separately in Next Victim, and Abby was introduced in The Shadow Hunter.

  Many thanks to all the people who made it possible for me to write Final Sins: my agent, Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management; her partner at the agency, Miriam Goderich; Tracy Bernstein, executive editor at New American Library; my friend Rene in Holland, who told me about the real-life case of a Japanese serial killer who became a celebrity; and fellow Arizona novelist Margaret Falk, who was always there with moral support. The idea of Tess’s obsession with Adolf Hitler’s demonic aspects was prompted by James Hillman’s fine book The Soul’s Code—specifically the chapter titled “The Bad Seed.”

  Readers are invited to visit me at michaelprescott.net, where you’ll find information on all nine of my books, as well as interviews, essays, and a link to my blog.