Last Breath

by Rachel Lee

  “I guess you could say that, even though I’ve hardly seen you in five years.”

  “I know. I sort of ditched you right after … you proved I was innocent.”

  “Understandable. Unpleasant associations and all of that.” But his hand was so tight around the can of cola that it ached, and he began to fear he would crush it. Carefully, he put it down on a coaster.

  “Well, I feel bad about it, and I wanted you to know that.”

  “No big deal.” Although at times over the years, it had felt like a very big deal.

  “And I want you know that I’m glad you're on this case.”

  “Sure.” Now he felt awkward. It was the luck of the draw, and all that. Someone else could just as easily have been assigned to Steve's homicide. It wasn't as if he'd done anything to wind up here.

  “Well,” she said, “I just thought maybe it was time we mended some fences.”

  “Your conscience getting the better of you?” He regretted the question as soon as it popped out. It was spoken in self-defense, but it didn't do a damn thing to “mend fences.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she said, some of the edge coming back to her voice.

  “Good.” He managed that much, even if he couldn't quite summon an apology. After all, years ago there'd been a spark between them, a spark he'd never quite forgotten, but as soon as she got what she needed, namely getting cleared of the murder, she'd turned him off like a faucet.

  “I’m sorry, Matt. I treated you badly.”

  “Some might say that.”

  She simply looked at him, waiting for whatever else he wanted to say, and that made him feel like a shit.

  “Okay,” he said finally, “so we start fresh, here and now. What kind of fresh do you have in mind?”

  She gave a little shrug. “Friends, maybe.”

  “Sure, friends.” Once he had wanted far more than that. Now he wasn't sure he wanted even that much.

  “You ever marry?” she asked.

  He looked down at his naked hands. No rings. “Who'd want to marry a cop who doesn't keep regular hours? A cop who might as well be on another planet when he's involved in an investigation.”

  “You always were intense.”

  “So were you.”

  “Yeah.”

  He wondered if that was a faint blush in her cheeks, but he couldn't be sure because the lamplight was so yellow and dim. “Well, seeing as how we're both so intense, friendship is apt to be rocky.”

  “I guess so.” Again that faint smile. But at least some of the tension went out of the air, as if they'd reached some kind of agreement.

  “So,” she said, “how are we going to get this killer?”

  “Damned if I know.” He reached for his cola again, feeling relaxed enough that he didn't think he would crush the can. He wasn't exactly certain what had been settled between them, but it seemed something had. “The evidence we have is so muddied it's hopeless. The techs are pretty sure the fibers came from the floor mat in a car, but that probably includes ten thousand cars. You know how that goes. A check showed there were nearly twenty places in this town alone that had been oil-and-graveled in the past few months, most of them alleys. The grass is your typical parking-lot sod. It matches the sod at the church.”

  “So he might have been killed at the church.”

  “My guess is he was.”

  “Then why was he carried away and brought back?”

  “That's the question, isn't it? Maybe it was a deliberate attempt to muddy the scene.”

  She shook her head. “But think of the risks involved. If you kill somebody at the church, and your intention is to crucify the body at the church, why take it away and dump it in an alley?”

  “Well, we don't know it was dumped in an alley. The vie might have picked up the gravel from the trunk of the car.”

  “Yeah, right. How much gravel was there?”

  He sighed. “Too much,” he admitted.

  “So, okay, Matt. Face facts. Steve was murdered, moved, dumped, picked up, and crucified. Does that sound even remotely rational?”

  “Hell, I’ve been convinced from the outset that this isn't a rational crime.”

  Chloe looked down at the can she held, as if thinking. When she looked up, her face was completely without expression. “Have you considered, Matt, that we have multiple operators here?”

  “Well, obviously. One man couldn't have gotten the vie up on that cross.”

  “But what,” she said slowly, “if they weren't working together?”

  It took him a split second to absorb what she was saying but when it hit him, all he could say was, “Whoa!”

  She didn't speak, just let him think about it. He turned the idea around in his mind — he did, after all, have a lot of respect for her instincts, learned years ago when they'd worked together — but this was boggling his mind.

  And yet, as he considered it, pieces began to fall into place, and the whole thing didn't look as crazy as it had looked ever since they found the body. Separate actors with different purposes. That would explain a lot.

  “The only problem,” he said finally, “is why you'd have two different perps involved.”

  “I know. It's been driving me nuts, Matt.”

  “Well, now it's going to drive me nuts. Because, damn it, it fits.”

  He drained his cola in one long swallow and slapped the can down on the coaster. Then he rose to his feet. “Thanks a bunch, Chloe. I won't get a wink of sleep now.”

  “Sorry.”

  He headed for the door, and she followed him. Once there, he stopped to face her. “You get any wild ideas at all, let me know.”

  “I will.”

  Then he did the stupidest thing of all. He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips. And he knew as he drove away that he wasn't going to sleep at all, because of what she'd said, and because of what he'd felt when he kissed her.

  Just the slightest quiver of response from soft lips. No, he wasn't going to be able to forget that.

  The question was whether he wanted to walk into the Chloe Ryder buzz saw once again.

  Across town, in a run-down motel room, a man turned into a monster by grief, anger, and hate, stared at the telephone and considered calling the priest again. He hadn't been satisfied by the message he'd left on voice mail. He'd wanted to hear the priest's voice. He'd wanted to hear the man's response.

  But he didn't let himself make the call. He had too little time to waste it on indulging his hunger for the man's fear and distress. He had to figure out a way to get his quarry alone, and he had to do it soon. Time was running out.

  In another, equally seedy hotel room, the watcher sat before the television, drinking scotch, his eyes glued to a TV show he wasn't watching.

  The cannon was in town. The ball was rolling. His superiors were happy with him.

  But he wasn't happy himself. For some strange reason, he was having qualms. Not just about the priest, but about the whole plan.

  He kept trying to shake himself out of it. He'd devoted years to this plan, figuring it was the most patriotic thing he could do. The biggest and best thing he could do for his country.

  But now he was wondering about that. And he didn't like it one little bit.

  Chloe couldn't sleep. She'd tried to read herself into drowsiness, but the latest thriller she'd bought had proved too entertaining, so she'd picked up one of her bar journals and started reading about appellate practice, guaranteed to be soporific. Only her mind wouldn't focus on the articles. She thought about picking up the tattered Bible on her bedside table, then refrained. She doubted she would find comfort there, but comfort wasn't what she needed at the moment.

  What she needed was to stop thinking, but her mind seemed determined to wander down the byways of the past and remind her of every one of her shortcomings. Inviting Matt over had apparently been a stupid thing to do.

  Because she found herself remembering other times they'd shared a drink, usually after finishing a shif
t together. She remembered how Jules, her husband, had grown increasingly annoyed by that until she stopped seeing Matt at all, except when they had to work together. She remembered how Jules had continued to grow in jealousy and possessiveness until he was demanding she quit her job.

  Jules had been a cop, too. He should have understood the hours and the strain. Or maybe he'd been reacting to his own stresses. All she knew was, as time went by, he hit her more and more often.

  He'd always apologized, and she'd always made excuses for him, and anyway, when you were a devoted Catholic, divorce wasn't an option.

  But since his murder, she'd emerged from that strange netherworld he'd gradually driven her into, that place where she didn't seem able to defend herself or even find the gumption to leave. That place where he had somehow convinced her that she deserved every bit of the abuse he heaped on her.

  And she'd vowed never to let anyone hurt her again. She'd also vowed she'd never again do anything of which she had to be ashamed, and she was ashamed of her entire relationship with Jules. It stood in her mind like a flashing neon sign, reminding her always of her weakness and folly.

  No, the Bible wouldn't offer her any comfort. It would just remind her that she had locked herself up so tightly that she felt almost nothing, and any way she looked at it, that was a sin. It was a sin not to care about your neighbor. It was a sin to perform acts of charity only at a safe distance. It was a sin to avoid involvement.

  And maybe her greatest sin of all was despair. She talked the talk, but she didn't walk the walk. She had told Matt he needed some exposure to good people, like those in the church who had stood by her during that difficult time, but she didn't believe it in her heart of hearts. No, in her heart of hearts she no longer trusted any human being on the face of the earth.

  There, in the dark of the night, in the privacy of her own bed, she finally admitted she didn't like the person she'd become.

  Across town, the watcher was staring blearily at the TV in his seedy motel room, watching one of the three local channels it offered. In his hand was a glass of scotch, and beside him on the rickety table was a half-empty bottle of the same.

  His conscience was killing him. From the minute he'd had to take care of Steve King's body, he'd begun to have doubts about what he was doing. At first he'd been able to pretend they weren't there, but tonight they reared up in all their ugly glory.

  Innocent people were going to die. Somehow, taking care of King's body, the body of a young man who hadn't done a damn thing to deserve a bullet in the back of the head, had rattled him out of his comfortable detachment with the reality of what they were about to do. In his mind, tonight, King's body multiplied by the dozens. By the hundreds.

  And he wasn't at all sure that what he was doing was justified by love of his country and a desire for all people to live free of fear of terrorism.

  Tonight had been the night when he'd sent the coded go-ahead message to the point man, giving him the date and the tail number of the plane that the watcher had rented. And somewhere out there, a misled man was making his final preparations to kill.

  It didn't ease the watcher's conscience any that they were striking at a military target. It didn't ease his conscience that he was just a cog in a convoluted machine. He might as well have been the trigger man.

  Finally, sodden with scotch, he staggered over to his laptop and re-sent the coded e-mail, a fudged photograph, this time to the cannon. He knew what the cannon would do with it. The man, for the most part, was pathetically predictable.

  And the watcher would have deniability if it ever came out. Would be able to claim he'd only been pushing the cannon.

  Then, feeling his conscience ease a bit, he let the scotch take him down. He dozed fitfully on his bed, propped against pillows, the TV still running. He'd been having trouble sleeping for a long time, and finally the mixture of scotch and fatigue caught up with him.

  Beneath the sound of the TV — some World War II documentary — he didn't hear the sound of someone picking the lock. He wouldn't have heard it even if he had been awake, and the scotch had taken him to deeper realms of unconsciousness than mere sleep.

  A few seconds later, something disturbed him. He opened his eyes and started to sit up. And looked into the last human face he would ever see.

  Chapter 15

  “The maid discovered the body at around two-thirty this afternoon,” Mort Phelan told Matt.

  The two detectives stood at the doorway of the motel room, looking in. The criminologists were already busy, dusting, photographing, vacuuming, checking every surface and drawer. The victim lay on the bed, covered by a white sheet.

  A large section of the exterior passageway was cordoned off, and down at one end some guests were complaining loudly that they wanted to get to their rooms and their belongings. A manager was assuring them that he'd move them and their possessions to other rooms just as soon as the police allowed it, but not one minute before.

  This was a cheap motel in a bad part of town, the kind of place that catered to a combination of transients and skinflint tourists. The kind of place where it wasn't exactly astonishing to find a murder victim. Although to hear the manager tell it, he had never had any trouble.

  Matt Diel knew better. He remembered having to roust drug dealers and prostitutes from the place during his days in uniform. Things probably hadn't improved all that much.

  “The lock was picked,” Phelan went on. He was a stubby, heavy man with a comb-over that did little to conceal his baldness and a fondness for brown linen suits that always looked as if they'd been slept in. “The chain and dead bolt weren't set. The vic's throat was cut, probably while he was sleeping. No sign of struggle. No wallet, no ID, no watch.”

  “So it was a robbery.”

  “It looks that way.”

  Matt nodded, debating whether to follow the carefully taped path, laid out by the criminologists, over for a look at the corpse. Probably not. The blood spray all over the room and floor opposite the corpse said all that needed to be said about the fatal injury. From where he stood, he could see a half-empty bottle of premium scotch on the night table.

  He pointed it out to Phelan. “That's expensive stuff.”

  “Well, the anomalies don't end there, I’m afraid.”

  Matt looked at him. “No?”

  “No. The clothes are decent. Better quality.”

  “How much better?”

  “Well, he shopped at Penney's and men's stores. It's all casual stuff, but definitely middle class.”

  “Maybe he was down on his luck.”

  “Maybe. All of it's in good condition, not worn or stained. Even his underwear looks relatively new. The suitcase is a middle-quality wheeled carry-on, looks like it's done a lot of flying. The manager says this guy checked in about two weeks ago.”

  “From where?”

  “Baltimore.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Anyway, we've got his name, address, and credit card number.”

  “But no perp.”

  “Hell,” said Phelan, “we're never going to find the perp unless he was kind enough to leave a batch of prints that are already on file. Or unless somebody squeals.”

  “Somebody will squeal.”

  “I hope.” Phelan pointed across the parking lot. “That's his car.”

  “Keys?”

  “Yeah,” said Phelan, holding up a key ring. “Rental car. Budget.”

  “Well, he must have been on an interesting budget himself. Rental car, decent clothes, and staying in a fleabag motel.” Matt sighed and edged into the room, realizing he was going to have to make his own assessment. Mort was okay as a detective, but he tended to see only the obvious. And nothing about this case was obvious.

  Slashing a throat was a stupid way to kill someone. It was a bloodbath that usually left a trail of evidence from footprints to … aha! There on the wall beside the closet was a partial silhouette outlined in dry blood. The perp. The guy had left the crime scene co
vered in blood.

  And footprints on the blood on the carpet near the door. Ridged soles. It appeared the perp had wiped his feet repeatedly just inside the door, not wanting to leave a blood trail outside.

  So he hadn't been hurrying away in terror. Whoever had committed this robbery hadn't been in a panic, at least not after he'd killed the victim.

  Stepping carefully to one side, Matt peered into the bathroom. Bloody towels. Cripes, the guy had stopped to wash up. Okay, so the perp hadn't been insanely stoned. Didn't mean much. The guy could simply have felt safe once the vie was dead.

  “Did the maid come into the room?” he asked, looking at the footprints by the door.

  “No,” Phelan answered from outside. “She unlocked the door, pushed it open, then ran.”

  “Okay. Can we look at the car yet?” Since Phelan was lead on this case, he needed to be careful not to tread on his touchy toes.

  “I dunno. Max?” he called to one of the techs.

  A tall woman with short black hair straightened and looked around.

  “Car?” Phelan asked.

  “We haven't done that yet,” she answered. “Why? You need to look?”

  Phelan shrugged. “I doubt it's involved. Not from the way the scene looks.” He looked at Matt. “You got a reason for wanting to look?”

  “Just that I like to scan everything, and I’ve got an appointment to get to another case.”

  Max shrugged. “No problem. Use your gloves and be careful. You don't want to ruin prints. Lew, log it, will you? Phelan and Diel are going to open the car.”

  The car, like most rentals, was in fairly pristine condition. The vie, whoever he was, apparently didn't stash papers and notes in the car. The only giveaway that the car had ever been used was a bag from a fast-food restaurant, indicating the guy had eaten a burger, fries, and large drink recently. The glove box held only an owner's manual. Matt found the rental agreement tucked behind one of the visors.

  He opened it carefully, hating the way the latex gloves felt on hands. The victim was apparently named Lance Brucon, he'd paid by credit card, had skipped the deductible waiver and …

  Matt's head snapped up, and he looked across the top of the car at Phelan, who appeared to feel they were wasting their time.