Her Last Whisper: A Novel

by Karen Robards

  “It’s Carmela Lynch.” In the moment or so that Charlie had spent collecting herself, Lena had clicked onto a page with all the victims’ photos. Lena tapped a picture with her finger. “She went missing six weeks ago, and the video was posted about a week later. She was the last one to disappear”—Lena’s voice faltered a little—“before Giselle.”

  “So was that acting? Was it fake?” Buzz was staring at the screen.

  “It was real.” Charlie was still so upset by what she’d seen that she just came out with it. “What you just saw—it was real. That woman was killed on camera.”

  “How do you know?” Lena asked as everyone turned to look at Charlie.

  “I know.” Charlie looked at Tony. “I know, okay?”

  Tony stared at her briefly and then nodded. “Good enough.” He looked at Lena and Buzz. “It was real,” he said.

  “We just watched a snuff film.” There was an odd note to Buzz’s voice, and as Charlie looked at him she was in time to watch the appalled realization come into his eyes. He opened his mouth, shot a quick look at Lena, and closed it again.

  Lena got it a moment later. “Oh, my God, Giselle.” The stark horror on her face made Charlie’s heart ache for her. Lena whirled back to the computer. “That’s what he’s doing with the victims: the bastard’s making snuff films.” She clicked a button. “That was the featured film. There are sixteen more tabs on the member site.” She was typing furiously as she spoke. “Damn it! Member doesn’t work on the rest of them. Each one requires a separate password. But altogether, there are seventeen films.” She stared hard at the screen, then looked around at the rest of them. “Does that mean he hasn’t killed Giselle yet?”

  Her expression was such a pathetic mix of hope and terror that nobody could quite bring themselves to say what Charlie knew that, like her, they had to be thinking: either that, or he just hasn’t had time to post the film.

  “We’re going to assume Giselle’s alive,” Tony said. “Until we have evidence to the contrary.”

  And that, Charlie thought, was another reason she liked Tony so much: he was calm and unflappable, a natural leader.

  “There’s a little pop-up on here that says a new video will be posted tomorrow at ten p.m.” Lena’s voice was so thin with fear that it didn’t even sound like hers. She took an audible breath. “Oh, God, that has to mean they’ve killed somebody else. It has to be—Giselle.”

  “They may not have killed her yet.” Buzz looked grimmer than Charlie had ever seen him. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that.”

  Lena made a small, strangled sound.

  “Everybody go get dressed. We’re back to work.” Tony’s order was brisk. He was already heading toward the door as he spoke. “Fifteen minutes. Let’s move, people.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Michael said thoughtfully, “If Carmela Lynch was killed six weeks ago, then how did her voice get attached to Destiny Sherman?”

  Eyes widening, Charlie looked at him. They were still within the fifteen-minute window that Tony had given everyone to get dressed, and Michael was leaning a shoulder against the bathroom wall watching her as she finished applying a quick dash of pink lipstick. His eyes were almost back to normal. Since he wasn’t flickering and nothing else unusual was happening with him that she had noticed, she was holding on to hope that maybe this time he’d gotten away from Spookville unscathed. Having just taken what felt like the world’s fastest shower, she’d dressed in her trademark black pants and a pearl gray sleeveless blouse, secured her still slightly damp hair in a low ponytail, and started applying makeup when he’d called to her that he had a question for her. She’d told him to come in. Which he had, walking right through the door.

  “For that to happen, wouldn’t Destiny have had to have been there when Carmela died?” Michael continued.

  “Yes,” Charlie said, as the impossible logistics of that tried to work themselves out in her brain. The bathroom smelled of soap and was still faintly steamy, and she’d had to rub a spot clear so that she could see herself in the mirror. She put the cap back on her lipstick as she thought about it and returned it to her toiletries case. “Yes, she would.”

  “Destiny Sherman had small tits. Compared to the rest of them, I mean.”

  Trust Michael to notice something like that. Charlie gave him a reproving look. But when she thought about it she realized it was true, and then she frowned as more anomalies occurred to her.

  She enumerated them slowly: “She was a local. She disappeared on the same night Giselle did, the only time in this case that two women went missing on the same night. She had scratches from Giselle’s bracelet on her back, which links her to this killer. And she didn’t die immediately. If she’d been attacked like Carmela Lynch, there’s no way she would have survived long enough to reach the dump site, much less to get away and hide.”

  Oh. My. God.

  It hit her like a blinding flash of light. “Destiny Sherman wasn’t one of the victims.”

  “Ain’t looking that way,” Michael agreed, following her as she flew to share that revelation with the others.

  “So you’re saying Destiny was an accomplice.” Tony frowned at Charlie as he and Lena and Buzz digested what she’d just told them about her conclusion concerning Destiny Sherman. The bright lights of Vegas lit up the night like the mother and father of all Christmas displays, and cast an ever-changing, multi-colored glow over the inside of the car as they drove toward the FBI office. There’d been people in the hall and the elevator, and the lobby had been busy as it always was even in the wee hours of the morning, so she’d had to save her brilliant flash of insight until they were in the car.

  “She’s not the primary,” Charlie said. “I think she was part of a team. About fifteen percent of serial killers work with an accomplice or partner. I think she had a boyfriend or lover, and I think they had a falling out and he killed her, and I think that’s who we’re looking for.”

  “She helped him kidnap Giselle.” Lena’s tone didn’t make it a question. “Giselle must have attacked her with the bracelet.”

  “That’s a good working assumption,” Charlie agreed.

  “So how did Destiny wind up getting killed? What made her partner turn on her?” Buzz mused.

  Nobody had an answer to that.

  “The mother said Destiny didn’t have a boyfriend.” Tony drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Maybe the unsub is one of her clients.”

  “It would have to be a regular,” Charlie said. “Most of the time in these cases, it’s an abusive relationship with the male being the dominant partner. In order to achieve that kind of control, there would have to be an extended contact.”

  “She didn’t have that many regulars.” Lena leaned forward in her seat. There was no missing the tension in her voice. “I have the list.”

  “Or maybe the mother just didn’t know about the boyfriend,” Michael pointed out. Charlie repeated that just as they arrived at the FBI office.

  A surprising number of agents were working, considering that it was just after five a.m. Some of them, Charlie knew, had been assigned to help out with the investigation; others had their own thing going on. They exchanged early morning greetings (basically grunts) with the people they encountered and grabbed coffee from the break room. Then, while they were walking to their makeshift office, Charlie saw something that made her heart lurch.

  Michael flickered.

  He was a couple of steps behind her, and she never would have caught it if she hadn’t glanced over her shoulder in response to something Buzz, who was behind her, too, said. But she did see it, and the hot coffee she’d just taken a sip of turned cold and tasteless in her mouth and for a second she forgot to breathe.

  “I’m just going to stop by the restroom,” she told the others, and veered off. Michael, of course, followed. Ordinarily he would have waited in the hall, but when they got there she beckoned him inside. It was a single-person restroom with the usual amenities, and sh
e turned on him the second they were both through the door.

  He lifted his eyebrows at her. “What’s up, buttercup?”

  “You’re flickering.” Her voice was tight with anxiety.

  “I know.”

  “You know?” She stared at him, aghast.

  “It’s been happening since you were in the shower.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing you can do about it.”

  And he hadn’t wanted to worry her. She knew that as well as she knew her name.

  She was already digging through her purse. Her Miracle-Go kit, complete with horseshoe and salt, was in there, but that was useless against this threat. The only thing that might help was her phone. “I’m going to call Tam.”

  “What is that, your go-to answer for everything? Unless I’m mistaken, the voodoo priestess already said that there’s nothing else she can do.”

  “There’s always something she can do.” Having snagged her phone, Charlie pushed Tam’s contact button. “There has to be something she can do.”

  “I’m hoping that grounding spell she was talking about’s still good.”

  “It might be.” Charlie tried not to sound as worried as she felt while she listened to the phone ring on the other end. “But it might not be, too.”

  His mouth curved wryly. “That’s a helluva bedside manner you’ve got there, Doc.”

  She frowned at him as, on the other end, the phone continued to ring, trying to keep her burgeoning fear out of her eyes. He was so outrageously handsome that just looking at him could make her pulse flutter, but the hard knot that lodged in her chest at the thought of possibly never seeing him again had nothing to do with his looks.

  Admit it: you’re crazy in love with me. He’d said that to her only the day before.

  She didn’t want to admit it. In fact, she refused to admit it.

  That road could only lead to heartbreak.

  But she was terribly, horribly afraid it might be true.

  When Tam’s voice recording answered instead of Tam, she jerked her eyes away from Michael’s face—he was way too good at reading her expression—and said into the phone. “Tam, call me back right away, please. It’s urgent.”

  She ended the call. All she could do was pray that Tam got back to her in time, or that Michael wouldn’t actually flicker out of existence.

  “She’ll call me back,” Charlie said, which she knew Tam would as soon as she got the message. Then, because they had a serial killer to catch and there was no time, and because engaging in any kind of heartfelt confession would be counterproductive as well as just plain foolish at that point, she didn’t. Instead she moved around Michael and opened the door. But the fear still ate at her, and as she stepped out into the hallway she glanced over her shoulder at him and added a fierce, “Hang on.”

  “Quit looking so worried. I’ve been playing chicken with oblivion this long. I think I can win another round or two.”

  I hope so, Charlie thought, but she didn’t say it because there were other people around by then. Instead she pushed her concern for him to the back burner for the moment and got busy doing everything she could to find Giselle Kaminsky. But even as she pulled out all the stops and applied her years of accumulated expertise to the task of identifying a killer, she found herself twisting Michael’s too-big watch round and round on her arm as she waited for Tam’s return call.

  “None of the johns match the criteria.” Lena’s tone was despairing as she shoved back away from her computer. It was almost lunchtime and they’d been working nonstop. Lena had broken the log-in code to every one of the members-only videos on the Dynasty (“Die-nasty, get it?” was Michael’s contribution to that) Films site, and confirmed that they were all snuff films featuring the murder of one of the victims. Buzz had been trying to track down the owners/purveyors of Dynasty Films beyond their Internet identities, which were (of course) fictitious. Charlie had been on Skype reinterviewing the victims’ closest relatives before moving on to what she was currently doing. Tony had been on the phone with his contacts at headquarters, getting autopsies on the victims prioritized so that they could have at least some answers that day. Lena continued, “They don’t live within the grid, they don’t work in any of the hotels or on the Strip, they have no possible connection with any of the victims that I can find. And none of them is named Joe.”

  “Having a female accomplice tells us that he’s a narcissist. A thrill-seeker killer whose secondary motivation is financial gain. Being involved in filmmaking provides him with both an audience and money, which is what he wants,” Charlie said, as she paged through the files of all of Destiny Sherman’s other known associates. She looked at Lena. “It’s likely we’re looking for a failed or relatively unsuccessful performer, so add that to the list. And remember, Joe might not be his legal name. It might be a nickname, or just something she called him.”

  “Great.” Lena rolled in her wheeled chair back to her computer.

  “This is Las Vegas. They gamble here. There are all kinds of unexplained deposits in half these bank accounts,” Buzz growled in frustration. “I can sort them out, but it’s going to take some time.”

  Nobody said what they were thinking: that time was exactly what they didn’t have.

  “Did you go through Destiny Sherman’s credit card records to try to pinpoint where she went on the day she was killed?” Tony asked Lena.

  “If she spent any money the day she died it was cash,” Lena replied grimly. “Nothing showed up. I’m actually going back for a month to identify places and areas she frequented. I’m having the computer map it. It’ll ping me when it’s done.”

  Tony nodded. “See if you can find something that places her within the grid. Any of the hotel staff panning out?”

  “Too many of them are panning out is the problem.” Lena’s voice was tight. She patted a sheaf of paper beside her computer. “I broke it down to the top fifty suspects by using that checklist of Charlie’s, but the ones I have here all meet four of the criteria—not necessarily the same four, but four—so fifty is how many we’re stuck with. Buzz is checking them out now.”

  “And a thankless task it is,” Buzz muttered, before a rap at the door had them all looking up.

  “Somebody order pizza?” one of the local agents stood in the doorway beside a deliveryman in his distinctive red shirt carrying two big boxes. Charlie’s stomach gave a gurgle of anticipation as the smell of the hot pies reached her, and she realized that, except for coffee, none of them had eaten all day. With her concentration broken, she glanced at her phone. She’d called Tam twice more, and her friend still hadn’t called back.

  “So the voodoo priestess is sleeping in,” Michael said, correctly interpreting her look. He’d been flickering, not real fast, not real close together, but flickering, all day. She didn’t know what to do about it except wait to talk to Tam, but she was growing increasingly anxious. If he were to disappear—she couldn’t even finish the thought. “She was probably tired after the drive.”

  That might be true, but it didn’t make Charlie feel any better.

  “I did.” Tony paid, and by silent consensus they ate where they were. The television in the break room stayed on CNN, and as none of them wanted to listen to the regular Breaking News bulletins about the bodies still being recovered or any other aspect of what the station was calling, in big bold banner headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen, The Search for the Cinderella Killer, they kept out of the break room.

  After she finished eating, Charlie couldn’t stand it anymore. She went to the restroom and, giving up on Tam’s cell phone, called her office, which was in a carriage house behind her home and where she saw clients every afternoon. Maria Pelissero, Tam’s longtime assistant, answered.

  Tam wasn’t there.

  “Would you mind going into the house and telling her to please call me right away?” Charlie asked. She’d met Maria a number of times, and Maria kne
w that she was one of Tam’s closest friends.

  “No, you don’t understand. She’s not here, not in the office, and not at home. I’ve already been through the house. She missed both of yesterday’s appointments, and she’s got another one this afternoon. She never misses her appointments.” As Maria spoke, Charlie felt an icy hand clutch at her heart. Maria continued, faltering now. “I thought she must still be in Las Vegas with you. There’s something wrong, isn’t there? Should—should I call the police?”

  “The voodoo priestess is missing? Holy shit!” Michael said, while Charlie told Maria, “The police won’t accept a missing-person report on an adult for forty-eight hours. I’m working with an FBI team right now: I’ll have them look into it. In the meantime, if you hear from her, please call me.”

  Charlie disconnected, looked at Michael, and tried to keep her voice steady as goose bumps raced over her skin. “This guy’s got her. I know it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “I’m sorry about your friend.” Lena’s eyes were so shadowed with fatigue that it looked like she had dark smudges beneath them. They were all running on just an hour or two of sleep and were exhausted, though the extreme stress Lena was under meant she was showing it the most. “But we can’t stop to look for her. You know we can’t. If Giselle is still alive, she’s running out of time.”

  “Tam’s disappearance has to be connected with this case.” Charlie’s voice was tight. “It has to be. It’s too big a coincidence otherwise.”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence.” Michael and Tony said it at almost exactly the same time. Charlie was too wired to acknowledge either of them, or how ironic it was that both the men in her life were having parallel thoughts. Michael’s flickering seemed to be slowing down—she was giving cautious credit to Tam’s grounding spell for that—but her fear for Tam was growing by leaps and bounds.

  They had confirmed that Tam had completed an online checkout and her car had left the self-pay lot. The hotel had already e-mailed security footage of her car being driven out of the lot. The time stamp said it was 2:06 p.m. the previous day. Checkout was at eleven, so that left a gap of three hours.