Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  “Destiny Sherman was a hooker?” Buzz blurted in surprise.

  Even as Charlie had an instant visual image of the wholesome teacher-type she’d seen in the morgue, it hit her that hooker equaled sex worker: one of those who, according to Victim Facilitation Study criteria, was at relatively high risk of falling victim to a serial killer. Her heart started to beat faster.

  “Yep,” Renfro yelled back.

  “Great,” said Lena. “That’s going to widen the pool of suspects.” It wasn’t a shout but the wind carried it perfectly audibly to the backseat. “If we can even identify most of them, that is.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Buzz said, “They keep records of their customers at The Pigeon Farm. That should help.”

  Everybody except the driver looked at him. Lena leaned into the space between the middle of the front seats to frown back at him. Tony shot a quizzical glance his way. Michael turned his head to look down at him with a speculative grin.

  “How do you know that?” Lena asked the question the rest of them were thinking. The big round sunglasses she was wearing made it hard to be certain, but Charlie was pretty sure her expression was accusatory.

  Buzz’s cheeks had reddened under the scrutiny. “Before I joined Special Circumstances, I was a regular old FBI agent, remember? We took part in a racketeering investigation. A few Las Vegas–area brothels were asked to cooperate. They did. The Pigeon Farm was one of them. Turns out, they keep records.”

  “If that’s the case, we can find out who her customers were,” Tony said. “That would give us one more place to look.”

  Charlie quietly told him about Destiny Sherman’s high-risk ratio according to the Victim Facilitation Study criteria. Given the rushing of the wind she didn’t think Lena would overhear—no point in increasing her anxiety levels when there was nothing she could do with the information—but Lena did overhear and glanced back just as Tony said, “Yeah, I don’t think there’s much doubt any longer that we’re hunting a serial killer. I got the background check on Giselle Kaminsky this morning and went over it. She had a stable job, an apartment, a cat that she left at a kennel. A number of ex-boyfriends, including Romeo over there on your left, but none that have any record of threatening her. There’s nothing in her life that would suggest she took off voluntarily, or that someone she knew wanted to do her harm.”

  That was actually bad news because it meant the odds that Giselle was dead went way up. Despite the hot blaze of the sun, Charlie felt suddenly cold.

  “I can understand why a serial killer might target Destiny Sherman,” Lena burst out, and Charlie knew that the same thought must have occurred to her. It was hard to tell with the sunglasses obscuring Lena’s eyes, but Charlie got the impression that Lena was looking at her like she could provide an answer. “But why Giselle?”

  Charlie tried. “There’s a connection somewhere. Giselle had to have crossed paths with this guy, and so did Destiny Sherman and all the others.”

  “But where?” Lena’s hand, which was resting on the console between the seats, clenched tight in frustration.

  Charlie shook her head. “All the women almost had to have encountered him in the same place, or in the same manner. As soon as we find where they intersected, we’ll have our suspect. When we get done here, we need to sit down and figure out every single place your sister went while she was in Las Vegas.”

  “I’ve been over everything we did.” Lena’s jaw was tight. “There was nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing.”

  “Then we look at the ordinary,” Charlie said.

  “There’s a common denominator somewhere.” Tony’s voice was grim. “There always is.”

  “We have to cross-reference her movements with the other women’s movements as much as possible.” Charlie tried not to think about how little they actually knew about the other women’s movements before they had disappeared: the trails on most of them were way cold. There were going to be huge gaps in the web they needed to weave, but Lena didn’t need to hear that. Charlie said, “We’ll get it done.”

  “We’ll find this guy,” Buzz told Lena. “We always do.”

  Left unspoken, the question nevertheless hung in the air: but would they find him in time?

  “Hang on, this is where we have some fun,” Renfro yelled. Before Charlie quite grasped what was happening they left the highway with a sudden swerve of the wheel and started bouncing over the cracked, uneven surface of the Mojave Desert. The ground was khaki brown, concrete hard, and so rough that she had to keep her jaw clenched to stop her teeth from rattling. Rocks and undersized, scruffy bushes were scattered across the endless small undulations that stretched with few interruptions to the horizon. A number of Joshua trees and spikey cacti dotted the landscape, and the occasional small bluff rose up out of the dirt to interrupt it, but it was mostly flat. Renfro just managed to avoid hitting the larger fissures and car-sized boulders that lay in wait for the unwary, but with each one it seemed it was a close call. Even with her seatbelt on, Charlie was flung around like a stuffed toy.

  “Okay?” Tony asked when she slammed into him for what must have been the dozenth time.

  “Yes.” Charlie unclenched her teeth long enough to reply even as the Jeep hit a rut and went airborne again and she bounced off him and Buzz. With an inarticulate sound of concern Tony wrapped a hard arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. Charlie grabbed onto him, wrapping her own arms around his waist. The firm muscles beneath her hands and even the subtle scent of his body seemed way more familiar than they should have, and for that she knew she had Michael’s little stunt to thank. She shot her bête noir a dark look, which since his back was turned he didn’t see, but as they continued to get rattled around like die in a box she settled into Tony’s embrace gratefully. Even so, by the time the Jeep jerked to a halt her tailbone ached from repeatedly being slammed down onto the seat and her head felt like it was about to fall off her shoulders.

  “Here we are,” Renfro announced with unimpaired cheerfulness, hopping out of the vehicle and gesturing toward the spot at the bottom of an arroyo that had been roped off with yellow crime scene tape. A number of vehicles with off-road capabilities like the Jeep were parked nearby, all of them bearing tags from one official law enforcement agency or another. Down in the arroyo, which began just beyond their front wheels, about half a dozen officers, a couple of uniforms and the rest in plain clothes, walked the length of a drainage channel carved into its bottom toward a big, dark, concrete-lined hole at the base of a twenty-foot-high bluff. Up on their level just inside the crime scene tape a police videographer recorded the scene.

  “That’s the drainage ditch?” Buzz stared down at the narrow trail of what looked like dried mud at the bottom of the arroyo, as, still rattled from the ride, they all stayed put for a moment. “I had a whole different picture in mind. More concrete, less dirt.”

  “You must be a city boy,” Renfro replied, turning back to wait for them.

  Charlie gave Tony a quick smile of thanks as his arm dropped away from her and they, Lena, and Buzz climbed out of the Jeep. Already on the ground, Michael looked from Tony to her with the slightest of frowns as the four of them joined Renfro, but said nothing as they all began to walk toward the crime scene tape.

  Renfro continued, “This area is used for recreational off-roading. You know, ATVs and dirt bikes and that kind of thing. It’s prone to sudden, heavy rainfalls. They put in a drainage system to direct the water when that happens so no one is caught in a flash flood.”

  “How far are we from the nearest road?” Tony asked.

  “About four miles,” Renfro replied. “And that would be the one we came in on.”

  “So Destiny Sherman almost certainly didn’t walk here,” Buzz said, looking around at what was basically a whole lot of nothing as far as the eye could see.

  “Not likely,” Renfro agreed. “Almost had to have come in on some kind of four-wheel-drive vehicle. Or a dirt bike. Something
like that.”

  “Or a horse,” Lena said.

  Without the breeze created by the Jeep’s movement to stir the air, it was broiling hot. Charlie could actually feel heat radiating up from the ground. Her skin felt like it was coated with dust, and trying to brush some of the grit off with her fingers just made it worse. Out of the corner of her eye she watched a small brown lizard skitter up the side of a knee-high pile of rocks. Thinking of the snakes that might be hidden among all those rock formations, she vowed to be extremely careful where she stepped and put her hands.

  “Thing is, no vehicle was found.” Renfro cast a quick look at Lena, who appeared untroubled by the thought of snakes if, indeed, it had even occurred to her that they might be present. As always, she was wearing her high heels, but she was striding along with as much confidence as if she’d been walking on a sidewalk. Luckily the ground was hard enough so that her heels weren’t sinking in. “And no horse, either. Which our guys are taking to mean that she was brought here by somebody.”

  “From the preliminary examination that was done of the site after she was picked up, she wasn’t attacked here,” Lena said.

  “So she was attacked elsewhere and brought here. You think the unsub left her for dead?” Buzz asked.

  Tony shrugged. “Seems likely.”

  Renfro made a face. “If so, it was his bad luck that she wasn’t. She made it to that drainpipe, where our guys think she holed up deep inside for a couple of days, probably going in and out of consciousness, until that big rain we had Monday night washed her out.”

  They’d reached the crime scene tape barrier by then, and stopped, looking toward where the officers were picking their way along the sides of the arroyo, taking obvious care to stay off the bottom. Charlie understood: any evidence that had been in the storm drain with Destiny Sherman would probably have been washed down into the silt on the bottom of the creek bed. They didn’t want to risk disturbing it any more than it already had been. Now that the case was officially classified as a homicide, they would be sifting through that silt for clues.

  “Hey, Gregg, I brought company,” Renfro cupped a hand around his mouth to yell, and one of the plainclothes officers looked up at them and waved in answer.

  “Let’s go.” Tony ducked under the crime scene tape.

  Renfro, Buzz, and Lena followed. Charlie would have followed, too, except Michael stopped her.

  “Hold up a minute,” he said. “I need to ask you something.”

  Looking at him, she was reminded that he didn’t sweat. He didn’t get covered in dust, either. He looked tanned and healthy and Marlboro-man handsome and more alive than she felt, standing there with the blazing sun beating down on him. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him flicker in a while, which at least eased one worry that had been taking up real estate in her mind.

  Because she was still ticked at him, and also majorly conflicted, her reply was terse. “What? I don’t have time to chat right now.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Much as I enjoyed watching you getting all cuddly with Dudley, this ain’t personal. Look toward the south.”

  He nodded toward an expanse of rocky, uneven terrain that stretched away toward a high mesa in the distance.

  “So?” Following his gaze, Charlie was just thinking that the land in front of her looked as bleak and inhospitable as the surface of the moon, when she remembered Tam’s words and registered the import of that thought with a tingle of sudden interest.

  Michael said, “You see anything around those rocks over there?”

  Charlie frowned some more in the direction he indicated. Then she pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head, squinted against the sunlight, and tried again. Nothing but rocks, desert, and sky. “No.”

  He sighed. “I was afraid of that. Babe, we got us a ghost.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Charlie stared futilely toward the knee-high pile of rocks Michael had brought to her attention for a moment longer: still nothing. “What kind of ghost?”

  He grimaced. “A woman. She’s sitting on the rocks.”

  “Oh, my God.” Mindful of her own limitations, Charlie didn’t doubt him. Being a spirit himself, Michael could see any spirit who happened to be in his vicinity.

  “Yeah.” His voice was flat. “You better give Dudley a shout.”

  She looked at him with a frown. “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I think I recognize her. I think she’s one of those missing women we’re hunting for.”

  “Really?” Charlie sucked in air, stared harder at what to her was an empty tract of land, then started walking purposefully toward the rock formation he’d pointed out. If what Michael was looking at was indeed one of the missing women, the case might be about to break wide open. The ghost could even be the link that led them to Giselle Kaminsky.

  Her heart started to beat faster.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Michael sounded exasperated.

  “Come on,” she said over her shoulder to him. “I want you to talk to her.”

  “Wait, damn it.” He caught up, frowning at her as she kept walking. “I told you, you need to yell for Dudley. In case it’s escaped your notice, every other living soul around here is down in that gulley. Going over there alone’s a bad idea. I’m ectoplasm, remember? Something bad starts going down, I don’t know how much use I’ll be.”

  “I can’t tell Tony that there’s a ghost I can’t even see sitting on a pile of rocks.” Her voice was impatient. “At the very least, I need to know more first. She might be some random spirit with nothing to do with the case at all.” It occurred to Charlie that whatever Michael might or might not be, he never failed to do his best to make sure that she stayed safe. Acknowledging that made most—not all, but most—of her anger at him fade. She would have been more concerned about her safety if it hadn’t been a blazingly bright day, with surroundings open enough to make it unlikely that a serial killer was concealing himself somewhere in the vicinity. She directed a quick look at Michael and a semi-mocking smile at him. “It’s sweet of you to worry, though.”

  “Sweet?” He sounded revolted. “Fuck that. I’m trying to keep you alive here.”

  “The faster I get some confirmation of who this spirit is and what she’s doing here, the faster I’ll yell for Tony,” she told him as she closed with determination on the rock formation where the ghost was apparently sitting. “Describe her.”

  The look Michael gave her was dark with aggravation, but he said, “She’s a woman. With curly brown hair, an average face, a good bod with a nice rack. She’s looking at me right now. She’s figuring out that I can see her. Oh, here it comes, she’s standing up she’s so happy to see me. I’d be real excited, too, except she’s covered with fucking blood because she’s been slashed to death.”

  “Poor woman.” Charlie shuddered.

  “Yeah,” Michael said. “She’s coming this way.”

  “What’s she wearing?” Charlie wanted to know. Not that she was interested in the ghost’s fashion choices: her attire might give them some clue as to where she’d been when she’d encountered her killer.

  “A dress.”

  “Day or evening?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to know? It’s black. Kinda tight. And short.”

  “Evening,” Charlie decided, as, in a different, gentler tone that Charlie knew wasn’t directed at her, he said, “Nevada. Near Las Vegas.”

  Charlie realized that he was answering a question posed by the spirit, whom she guessed had reached him. In fact, from the look of him he was holding her at arm’s length, his hands curved around her upper arms. She nearly smiled: the last time he’d hugged a ghost he’d gotten all wet. She guessed where blood was concerned he didn’t want to take the chance.

  “Ask her name and—” Charlie’s voice trailed off. Beyond the rock formation, the hard, uneven ground began to shift, as though it was less than solid. She frowned, and stared. “The last thing she remembers,” she finished a
lmost as an afterthought.

  “She says her name’s Alicia Dale,” Michael reported after repeating the questions, although other than registering that was, indeed, the name of one of the missing women, Charlie wasn’t really paying attention anymore. “The last thing she remembers is falling asleep in her hotel room. She doesn’t remember anything that happened after that. And she doesn’t have any idea where she is.”

  In several places—one, two, three, the spots popped up in rapid succession like mushrooms after a rain—the landscape began to emit a faint glow. Charlie squinted at them.

  “She fell asleep in her hotel room in a short black evening dress?” Charlie frowned abstractedly as she tried to make sense of it. Then possible enlightenment occurred. “Oh, had she been drinking?”

  In Las Vegas, coming home and passing out after a night out without bothering to undress was certainly not unheard of.

  Michael said something to the spirit, then told Charlie, “She doesn’t remember. She says she’s been here for a long time.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened as the glowing spots took on color, an individual color for each spot, pastel blue here, soft yellow there, a deep rosy pink near a crevice.

  “Michael.” Charlie barely managed to get his name out. She nodded toward the glowing spots of earth as he glanced at her inquiringly. “Look.”

  He did, and said, “Holy shit. They’re coming out of the ground.”

  Charlie felt cold all over.

  “What’s coming out of the ground?” She watched, transfixed, as the glowing colors crept upward like lazy tendrils of fog reaching toward the sky.

  “Women. More women. They’re sitting up right through the dirt, like they’re coming out of their graves. Three of ’em.”

  Charlie glanced at him to discover a misty lavender sphere about the size of a basketball hovering at chest level in front of him. Surprised, she realized almost instantly that it could only be the spirit he was talking to. Her eyes shifted back to the field, and it was then that she truly understood what she was seeing: the pockets of glowing colored mist rising from the ground were the dead that were outside the parameters of her gift. Only now she was seeing them, both as a kind of mist and, in the case of the one in front of Michael, as a sphere. Perhaps, she thought, their colors were the colors of the auras the spirits had possessed in life. She had never seen such a thing before, and she guessed that she was able to see it now only because the change in the frequency of her vibration was enabling her to tap into more of the supernatural world.