Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  He took one look at her expression and said, way too flippantly for her current state of mind, “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “The DNA results on those women you were convicted of killing,” Charlie said as she punched the down button and prepared to wait. “I had them rechecked by a lab I know I can trust. I just got the report back. Want to know what it said?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Not particularly.” Michael straightened away from the wall, his eyes on her face. “Whatever it says don’t change a thing for me now.”

  “It says,” Charlie told him with precision, “that you’re guilty as hell. Your DNA was all over those women. All of them, not just Candace Hartnell.”

  Of his seven alleged victims, he’d admitted to sleeping with the last one, Candace Hartnell. The others he’d claimed to have never laid eyes on. Problem was, DNA doesn’t work like that.

  “Crappy lab,” Michael said without much apparent interest.

  Charlie waited. That was it: nothing else. Nada. Zip.

  “Nope.” Charlie shook her head. “Not a crappy lab. The best in the business. Want to try a different answer?”

  Michael’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want me to say? That I’m guilty? Fine. I’m guilty. Feel better?”

  Charlie felt her temper heating. If she’d been wrong about him—the thought made her sick. It made her question her intuition. It made her question her judgment. It made her question—everything.

  “You’re admitting that you killed those women?” She waited almost painfully for his response. He had nothing to lose if he did admit it. He was well beyond the reach of any kind of human justice now, and the Powers That Be in the Great Beyond for sure knew the truth, whatever it was. As Tam had pointed out, there was no hiding anything from the universe.

  He shrugged. “Can’t get away with a thing with them fancy-schmancy DNA tests.”

  The sheer unconcern of that made her downright mad.

  “You are so full of shit, you stink,” Charlie burst out, then could have bitten her tongue off as the elevator arrived and the door slid open with a ping on a car full of people, every one of whom looked out at her with interest. Their interest seemed to intensify when it turned out she was the only one to get in, the only one in sight in an otherwise seemingly empty hallway. Given that they’d apparently caught her in the act of swearing angrily at empty air as the door opened, their covert glances were perfectly understandable, if no less embarrassing.

  “Could be.” Michael, on the other hand, was not one whit deterred by the presence of the other people in the elevator because they could neither see nor hear him. She was stuck in the front of the car and hemmed in by people giving her sidelong looks as she stared stonily at the supposedly empty space in front of her. He lounged comfortably with his back against the door, looking at her. With a smirk. “I guess you’re going to have to make that call for yourself, babe. I’m not interested in lab results anymore. At this point, they don’t mean a thing.”

  Charlie could hardly contain herself until they reached the lobby and the elevator emptied. As she (they) made their way across the marble floor she felt comfortable enough that no one was paying attention to her to hiss at him, “They mean something to me.”

  “Let’s see, I seem to recall you telling the voodoo priestess that you were sure I wasn’t guilty. That you thought I was a good man. Them DNA results really enough to change your mind?”

  “Oh, my God, would you get over that?” Charlie glowered at him. “As I told you before, I said all that for Tam’s benefit.”

  “So you didn’t mean it.” He pressed a mocking hand to where his heart would have been if he’d had one, and gave her a not particularly nice smile. “You’re breaking my heart here, babe.”

  “Better than letting you break mine.” Muttered half under her breath, that came out before she could stop it.

  But he heard, and looked at her, then said in a tight voice that was totally at odds with his previous mocking drawl, “This is the last time I’m ever going to say this: I didn’t kill those women.” Unwilling to let herself be convinced by his word alone, which would make her all kinds of gullible fool in the eyes of anyone (like Tam) who learned just exactly what had persuaded her of his innocence, she remembered what in her view was the most damning (literally) piece of evidence against him and shot back, “Then how did you wind up in Spookville?”

  He shook his head at her. “Not for that.”

  “Then why?”

  He shrugged.

  “Damn it, Michael—”

  “Are you looking for us?” Buzz’s voice caused her to break off in mid-blast. Her head snapped around. There they were, Buzz and Lena and Tony, standing near the bell captain’s desk. She had nearly walked right past them. They were talking to three men in jackets and ties. Two of them had rectangular silver nameplates on their lapels, Charlie saw as she joined the group: hotel employees.

  “I was,” she admitted, and tried her best to thrust her concern about the test results plus her aggravation with Michael to the back of her mind. Giselle Kaminsky was the priority now. Michael was no longer in danger. He was also dead, and no threat to anyone (except maybe to her, and that would be to her sanity). Whatever he had or hadn’t done in life, she could safely postpone her ongoing discussion with him until later.

  “Careful, babe. Wouldn’t want your face to freeze like that,” Michael gibed, and to her annoyance Charlie realized that she was directing the fierce scowl he had prompted at the unknown men.

  “This is Dr. Charlotte Stone,” Tony said as she hastily rearranged her features into something that she hoped at least approximated pleasant. He introduced the two men with nameplates as Andrew Hagan, the Conquistador’s head of security, and George Bruin, the general manager. The other man was Detective Lance Renfro, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Missing Persons Detail.

  “We’re doing everything we can to cooperate with the investigation,” Bruin said after the introductions were complete. Average height and slim with short dark hair, he looked to be around forty. “Anything else you need, you only have to ask.”

  “As Agent Kaminsky requested, we put together a list of all the employees who were working Saturday from noon to midnight, plus a list of that night’s guests broken down by floor.” Hagan nodded at the manila envelope in Tony’s hand. “A hard copy of both lists is in there. I also e-mailed a copy to you.” He looked to be in his mid-to-late thirties. About five-ten and stocky, he had a short, light brown brush cut and a round, cherubic face. “I warn you, there’s about ten thousand names altogether. I wouldn’t want to be the one who had to check them all out.”

  That would be Lena, Charlie thought, and she would plow through it speedily and with maximum efficiency. At least, ordinarily it would be Lena. Although how much having this be about her sister would change the usual method of operations was still unclear. Lena was holding it together like a champ, but everything from the brittle note in her voice to her jittery inability to stand still spoke to the tremendous amount of stress she was under.

  “I also requested a list of the independent contractors who had staff working for the hotel Saturday night,” Lena said to Bruin. She was wearing a loose, short-sleeved green shirt, open like a jacket over her tee: the better to hide her shoulder holster, Charlie knew. In response to Tony’s look of inquiry, she explained, “They outsource things like the parking valets, the gardeners and groundskeepers, some of the catering staff, people like that.”

  “That’s included as well,” Bruin said. “You should be aware that we do a background check on everyone who works for us, and our contractors are required to do one, too.”

  “We’ll need access to those background checks,” Tony said, and Bruin nodded.

  “See to it, Hagan,” he said.

  Hagan said, “I’ll have my office e-mail you the files right away. Is there anything else?”

  “They’ve handed over all the relevant security footage?”
Tony asked Lena.

  “Yes,” she said, and looked at Bruin. “Later today we may need to interview more of your employees.”

  “We’ll see that they’re available. Just let us know.”

  “Thank you.”

  Detective Renfro said, “If you want to get a look at the place where Destiny Sherman was found while it’s still roped off and relatively intact, we should probably get a move on. Our guys won’t be out there much longer.”

  “Let’s go,” Tony said, and with nodded farewells for Bruin and Hagan they headed with Renfro for the door. Charlie’s eyes slid over the detective as he stayed half a pace in front of them. He was about six feet tall, attractive, and well built, with thick tobacco brown hair and a square, blunt-featured face.

  “Wait a minute.” Michael fell into step beside her. “I thought you were going to let the FBI agents do the fieldwork while you stayed back somewhere where the bad guy can’t get at you and took care of the shrinky analysis part.”

  That actually had been the plan. Was the plan. But things like crime scene details were an important part of the shrinky analysis part, as she would have told him if she could have spoken to him. Which she couldn’t. So she limited herself to a quick narrowing of her eyes in his direction and turned her attention to things that actually existed in the real world.

  Like Tony. And Lena. And Buzz. And the case.

  “And here I was thinking that the whole woman’s prerogative thing was a cliché,” Michael said with a tsk-tsk cluck of his tongue.

  It took Charlie a second, but then she got the reference: It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.

  And shot him a glare—eat dirt, you sexist pig—before blocking the now-grinning affliction with which she was cursed out of her mind.

  “Destiny Sherman?” Charlie inquired quietly of Tony, who loped along on her other side. The lobby was aswirl with activity: people arriving, people leaving, people heading in all directions. The noise level was high. The scent of lilies from several large floral arrangements being carried past wafted pleasantly beneath her nostrils. She thought she recognized a number of famous faces; she definitely saw a man walking a tiger on a leash.

  “The woman in the morgue,” Tony clarified. “The one with Giselle Kaminsky’s bracelet. Renfro called me about an hour ago to let me know they’d ID’d her.”

  “How long will the morgue keep her?” Charlie asked. Much as she dreaded the thought, she needed to go back. Destiny Sherman’s spirit had been there last night and was probably still there. Ordinarily, with the spirit on a loop re-enacting her last moments alive, Charlie wouldn’t have been able to talk to her. She still wouldn’t be able to, but there was a slim possibility that Michael could, one spirit to another.

  It took her a beat to realize that she was now starting to automatically count on Michael to help her and the investigation. Counting on anybody for anything was something that she had learned relatively early in life not to do, so it was unsettling that she now was relying on him to come through for her as unquestioningly as she expected there to be air for her to breathe.

  Her chest tightened and she shot a covert look at him. Oh, God, I’m in way too deep. Her nails curled into her palms.

  “I don’t know,” Renfro said, overhearing. He glanced around at her and Charlie saw that his eyes were hazel. “I heard the family was pretty eager to claim the body.”

  “You get that judge’s order holding the body, Kaminsky?” Tony asked over his shoulder. Lena and Buzz brought up the rear. From that, Charlie deduced that they had already known the body had been identified. Clearly the others had been working while she’d been breakfasting with Tam, or maybe even earlier than that.

  “Yes,” Lena replied. “Good to know your department actually investigates murders, Detective.”

  Renfro sighed. “We have over forty million visitors to Vegas every year, Agent Kaminsky. Most of them come and go just fine. But some of them—about two hundred or so a month—get reported missing. The majority of those turn up on their own. We don’t have the resources to run down every tourist who decides to take a side trip without telling anybody.”

  “My sister did not decide to take a side trip.” Lena’s voice was fierce.

  “Hold on, now. I never said she did. I just said that adults are allowed to pick up and take off without telling anybody if they want to. We can’t mount a full-out search for them all.”

  “Now that the woman wearing my sister’s bracelet has been classified as a homicide, shouldn’t there be a homicide detective working this case instead of you?” Lena asked in an acidic tone.

  “There’s a couple of homicide detectives working the Destiny Sherman case. I’m helping you because your sister is still considered a missing person,” Renfro replied.

  Before Lena could explode, as Charlie was pretty sure she was about to do judging from the strangled sound Lena made, they reached the big revolving doors at the entrance and emerged into a wall of baking heat leavened with the smell of vehicle exhaust.

  A school-bus-yellow Jeep Wrangler with an LVMPD tag propped against the windshield was parked at the curb directly in front of the doors, to the clear inconvenience of the vehicles that were trying to maneuver around it.

  “We’ll follow you in our car,” Tony said after taking one look at the boxy, open-roofed vehicle.

  “Suit yourself. We’ll be going off-road,” Renfro replied, scooping up the tag as he headed around to the driver’s side.

  Tony grimaced. “Bureau won’t like it if they have to pay for a rental car’s busted axle.” He cast a glance around at the rest of them and added in a resigned tone, “Pile in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  They did. Charlie barely got a chance to register how busy the wide driveway of the drop-off zone was before the Jeep took off. Renfro pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires, and the ride got progressively wilder from there. Having declined the front passenger seat in favor of Lena—there were bucket seats in the front and a hard, narrow bench seat in the back—Charlie was wedged in between Tony and Buzz in the rear. The top was off, and Michael sat on top of the roll bar, his booted feet braced against the backs of the front seats, his hands curled around the bar. He looked surprised when the Jeep peeled rubber without warning at the start, then threw a quick “Buckle your seatbelt” over his shoulder at her as they dodged an arriving limo with scant inches to spare. As Charlie complied, then pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and slipped them on, they whizzed past the hotel’s dancing fountains and whipped out onto Las Vegas Boulevard in the teeth of oncoming traffic. Charlie caught herself fearing that Michael might be thrown off. Then she realized that the wind of their movement that was lifting her hair from her neck and ruffling Tony’s and Buzz’s wasn’t disturbing Michael’s at all, and remembered what he was. Being thrown off his insanely reckless perch on top of a speeding car was one of the many things he didn’t have to worry about anymore.

  His enjoyment of the wild ride was evident, and she remembered him mentioning that he’d once owned a motorcycle; he’d also once been a Marine, although she hadn’t yet had the chance to access his military records so that she could go over them in detail (she meant to, because if there was any evidence of psychopathy it should have been showing up by then and there should be clues in the records). The smart money was on the fact that before he’d been sent to prison he’d been extremely physically active, and Charlie found herself reflecting on exactly how miserable the years he’d spent in confinement must have been for him. Then the thought of those lab results stabbed through her like a knife, and she glared at the back of his head with its motionless mane of tawny hair.

  In spite of everything, her gut still said he was innocent, but it was entirely possible that her damned gut was one hundred percent wrong.

  “What do you know about Destiny Sherman?” Addressing his question to Renfro, Tony practically had to shout to make himself heard as they hurtled through an intersection
and then turned onto a wider road identified by a sign as I-15. Charlie pushed Michael out of her thoughts and strained to hear the reply.

  “Destiny was a local girl,” Renfro shouted back. The Jeep rattled along, weaving in and out of light traffic, the ride bumpy and loud as the hot desert wind whistled through the backseat and the sun blazed down out of the cloudless blue sky. In the distance, the deeper blue of a mountain range stood against the sky like the blade of a serrated knife. Charlie found herself glad that she was wedged in so tightly between Tony and Buzz. With hard-bodied Tony on her right and wiry Buzz on her left, she wasn’t going anywhere. They served as human air bags as she was jostled from side to side. She found herself ducking her head against Tony’s shoulder more than once to dodge airborne grit. “Lived out in Pahrump. Twenty-eight years old. No criminal record.”

  “Boyfriend? Married?” The wind kept Tony’s bellow from sounding as loud as Charlie knew it was.

  “Not married. No word on a steady boyfriend. She worked out at the Farm.”

  It took Charlie about half a beat longer than it took Tony to make sense of that. He was already asking, “The Pigeon Farm?” when she made the connection: Renfro had to be referring to one of the better known of the legal brothels that flourished just outside of Las Vegas, prostitution being illegal in Clark County where Las Vegas was situated but not in most of the surrounding counties.