Authors: Michael Prescott
Tags: #Kidnapping, #True Crime, #General, #Murder, #Suspense, #Fiction, #Serial Murderers
Across the room, the only other item of furniture. A mattress and headboard, and chained to the headboard—a girl. Naked, gagged, a leather strap twisted around her neck.
But alive.
She was kicking at the mattress, struggling against the manacles, her eyes wild.
Garcia fumbled with the gag, trying to remove it, while Kent applied a handcuff key to her shackles.
Then she was free. Instantly she clambered off the mattress, and her hands were tugging at the strap, working at the knot until it unraveled, then tearing the strap loose and casting it into a far corner, as if it were a snake that had nearly bitten her. That done, she crouched down, hugging herself and shivering, her teeth actually clacking as if with cold.
“We need a blanket,” someone yelled. “She may be going into shock.”
Tess thought the girl might be less panicky in the presence of a woman. She approached her. “It’s all right now, Jennifer. It’s all right.”
She was sure the girl was Jennifer
Gaitlin
, though she was scrawnier than her photo, and her hair was an unwashed, matted pile.
The girl responded to her name. She looked up.
“
Gonna
kill me.” Her voice was a raw croak. “Said ... couldn’t wait any longer.”
“It’s all right,” Tess said again.
“He left me. Left me for a long time. With that ... that
thing
’round my neck ...” Her fingers crawled over the purplish blotches bruising her throat, and Tess saw the seared insignia on the back of her left hand. “But he came back. Couldn’t wait any longer, he said.” She stared into space. “Had on pajamas ... but he couldn’t sleep ...” She blinked rapidly. “Is it night? Is it the middle of the night?”
“Yes, it is.” Tess patted Jennifer’s shoulder, but the girl jerked away. Someone arrived with a blanket and draped it over her.
“Where is he now?”
Michaelson
asked, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Jennifer, where did he go?”
“Don’t know. Buzzing noise. Over there.”
Tess saw a speaker in the wall, like an intercom panel, but without a transmitter button. Faust had rigged up a system so he could know when he had company.
“That was when we arrived,”
Michaelson
said. “He must have known something was up if he had company at three a.m.” He looked at the others. “It’s obvious he’s running. Check with Hanson out front, make sure he’s okay.”
One of the agents left to comply.
Tess met Jennifer’s gaze. “What did he do when he heard the buzzer?”
“Opened the door. Listened. Voices. I couldn’t hear much. But I knew ... I knew there was someone else ...”
“Someone else in the house?” Tess prompted.
“In the world. Someone else in the world ... Tried to make noise so they could hear, but ...” Her hands dropped in a gesture of defeat.
“And then he left?”
“First he went to the cabinet. Took something.” A strong shudder racked her body. “Knife.”
“A knife. But no gun? Did you see a gun?”
“
Nuh
-uh.” She was watching the memory with horrified eyes. “Thought he was
gonna
cut me. Finish things. But it was like ... like he forgot about me. He left and closed the door. He’ll come back, though.”
“No,” Tess soothed.
The agent who’d checked with Hanson reported that everything was quiet in the front yard. “I told him to keep an eye on the gate. With the high perimeter fence around this complex, the gate is Faust’s only way out.”
“Then he’s somewhere in the house or on the grounds,”
Michaelson
said. “We need to pair up, fan out, conduct a search.”
“We can use a K-Nine unit,” a patrolman suggested, meaning a trained search dog. Tess wondered if he was just looking for a pretext not to search for Faust on his own.
“We may have to,”
Michaelson
said. “But first we check the area ourselves. We do it now, before he finds an exit.” He glanced at Jennifer, then at Garcia. “Have we called an RA?”
Garcia nodded. “They’re on their way.”
“We’ll search the house and grounds. Not you, Tess. I want you back at the field office, coordinating activities from there.”
She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She drew
Michaelson
aside. “Coordinating activities? This isn’t even my turf.”
“You’ll have the authority you need to get the job done.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense—”
“It will make sense to do what I say. I’m running this show.”
She thought about arguing her case, then realized it was pointless. She knew his real intentions.
Michaelson
wanted her off the scene and out of the way, safely hidden in the field office, so that when Faust was caught and the media showed up, she wouldn’t be around to capture the limelight. Really, she couldn’t blame him. Her previous exploits in L.A. had made her a magnet for the local TV news cameras. The last thing the Nose wanted was someone stealing his glory.
“All right,” she said. “But I need a vehicle.”
Michaelson
handed her a set of car keys. “Take mine.”
Tess was about to leave when Garcia stopped her. “Let me radio Hanson and tell him you’re coming out. We don’t want to take him by surprise.”
It was a good idea. With Faust on the loose, everybody was jumpy. Tess wasn’t too keen on being taken out by friendly fire.
She waited until Garcia had given Hanson a heads-up. As she was leaving the rear hallway, she saw Elise staring at her with red-rimmed eyes.
“Don’t let them hurt Peter,” Elise said. “Okay?”
Tess stiffened. “You saw what he did to that girl.”
“Yes ... I saw ...”
“And you
still
care what happens to him?”
“He’s not a bad person.”
Tess resisted the urge to grab her by her thin shoulders and shake her. “How can you say that? How can you
possibly
say it?”
“He has a problem, that’s all. He just needs somebody who ... who understands him. He needs help.”
“Miss
Vangarten
, with all due respect, you’re the one who needs help.”
Tess walked away, not looking back. She didn’t want to hate Elise, but somehow she couldn’t help it.
As she descended the front steps, she saw the distant figure of Agent Hanson, a shadow among the eucalyptus trees edging the far end of the driveway. She waved to him, and he lifted an arm in reply.
Michaelson’s
sedan was first in the line of cars. She unlocked the door on the driver’s side, still thinking of Elise and of women like her, women who wrote love letters to serial killers in prison, women who stayed married to men who beat them, women who offered themselves up as objects of abuse, even as objects of sacrifice. They all said the same thing—that they could change the guy, fix him, reform him by bestowing the loving kindness he needed. Some kind of rescue fantasy mixed up with a masochistic fascination with the dark side of human nature. They liked the bad boys, the villains. They all wanted to play Little Red Riding Hood to some brooding Big Bad Wolf.
The thought of the wolf lurking in the forest for Little Red made her think, unaccountably, of Hanson among the trees. She glanced in his direction again, but he was gone.
Must have changed his position. Where he’d been standing hadn’t afforded him a very good view of the driveway or the gate. The trees screened most of the area from his sight. Of course, they had concealed him, as well. She had hardly seen him. If she hadn’t known he was stationed here, she might have thought he was Faust. She might—
It struck her like a slap—the simple, obvious truth.
She grabbed for the SIG Sauer in her side pocket.
And a hand seized her wrist, steel at her throat, a breathy voice in her ear.
“Tess McCallum. How thoughtful of you to arrange my ride.”
* * *
To Raven it remained a dream. She had been in the little hidden room so long that she could barely believe in a world outside. Even when the ambulance came and the paramedics were lifting her onto the stretcher, she still expected to blink and find herself shackled to the headboard with the strap squeezing her neck.
The man named
Michaelson
had stayed with her, awaiting the ambulance. As the attendants started to leave, he asked which hospital they were headed to.
“Cedars-Sinai,” one of the pair said.
“I want one of my men to ride with her. She’s not to be left unprotected until her assailant is caught.”
“The guy’s still at large?”
“We believe he’s somewhere on the grounds.”
“Better shut the front gate, then,” the other paramedic said.
“Wait a minute. The gate is open?”
“How’d you think we got in?”
“I stationed a man out front. I assumed he opened up for you.”
“We didn’t see anybody.”
“Shit.”
Michaelson
was fumbling with the controls on his radio when another man in a suit entered the room. “Sir, we have a situation.”
“I know. We need to make contact with Hanson.”
“He just called in. Said he was coldcocked from behind. One of the Bureau cars is missing. Your car, he thinks, though he still sounds a little woozy.”
“Where’s McCallum?”
“He hasn’t seen her. He got KO’d right after he was told to expect her.”
“Send everybody to the front yard. I want an immediate grid search. You two stay here,” he added, speaking to the paramedics. “I don’t want you out there until we’re sure the area is clear.”
“Who the hell
is
this guy, anyway?” the first paramedic asked.
“He’s Peter Faust,”
Michaelson
said, leaving.
Raven had never heard the name. It meant nothing to her. She was almost disappointed that her captor’s name was so ordinary. She would never have thought of him as Peter. Peter was a saint’s name. Wasn’t it?
She lay on the stretcher thinking of nothing. Outside there were shouts and footsteps and the distant crackle of radio static. After a long time, a cop in uniform came into the room to tell the paramedics it was safe to leave. They asked if the missing woman, McCallum, had been found.
“We didn’t find anything. He’s got her. He took her alive, probably. Though she may not be alive for long.”
They carried the stretcher through the house. It was much larger and nicer than Raven had guessed. A mansion. She found it outrageously unfair that this man Peter Faust should live in a house like this.
As they brought her outdoors, she felt the breeze on her skin for the first time in days. She saw a few stars overhead, glittering feebly through the heavy urban air. She saw trees.
That was when she knew it wasn’t a dream. Even in a dream she could not have imagined seeing stars and trees again.
Michaelson
was consulting with the others, saying loudly, “How should I know? Hostage. Plaything. He met her once before. She assisted on the Roberta Kessler case. He may feel he has a score to settle. Who the hell—”
He saw her and stopped talking. He left the group and walked alongside the stretcher as it was borne to the waiting ambulance.
“You’ll be okay, Jennifer,” he promised. “And you’ll be protected the entire time.”
“The woman he took,” she said in the hoarse whisper that sounded nothing like her voice. “Was she the one who talked to me?” “Yes.”
“She’s ... she’s nice.”
“Agent McCallum is the reason we’re here,” he said quietly. “The reason we rescued you.”
“So ... who’s going to rescue
her
?”
Michaelson
had no answer.
Abby didn’t know how long she stayed with Wyatt, holding his hand in silence. She only knew that at a certain point she couldn’t be with him anymore. Couldn’t be in the hospital. Couldn’t deal with it, any of it.
Somehow she remembered the number of the parking space where the feds had left her car. She slipped behind the wheel, thinking that the last time she’d driven the Miata, Wyatt had been alive.
Was that how it was going to be from now on? Was every daily activity, no matter how routine, going to spark some painful memory? And how was she going to handle that? How would she keep herself from going insane?
Maybe she was insane already. Maybe she’d snapped when Wyatt was shot, or when she learned he was gone. It was possible. Only a crazy person would be having the thoughts that had been running through her head.
Thoughts of killing Tess.
She keyed the ignition and drove out of the garage, going nowhere, just needing to put distance between herself and the place where Wyatt had died.
She wouldn’t really do it, of course. Go after Tess. Hunt her down and take her out. She didn’t honestly want Tess dead.
Did she?
That was the thing. She wasn’t sure. She could imagine herself doing it. She could see herself putting the gun to Tess’s head, could feel the squeeze of her finger on the trigger, could hear the gunshot and the soft splash of brains.
One bullet. That was all it would take. A life for a life.
Tess had ignored her phone call. Tess had worked on Wyatt and coerced and manipulated him into arranging the rendezvous. Tess was responsible for the dead body under the sheet.
A few pounds of pressure—that’s all it would take to pull the trigger.
Abby glanced at her face in the rearview mirror. Her eyes did not look crazy. Except that they didn’t blink. Didn’t blink at all.
She didn’t know if she had lost her mind or not. She might be having a psychotic break.
Or maybe she had never been so sane. Had never seen things so clearly.
Ever since Tess had come into her life, things had gone wrong. She’d been arrested twice and could have gone away on a murder rap each time. Her anonymity had been compromised; the FBI had known all about her since the Medea case.
Now she’d lost Wyatt. She’d lost everything. Why shouldn’t Tess lose, too? Why should she always be the hero, the savior cheered by the public, while Abby vanished into shadows? Tess coasted from triumph to triumph and left Abby with the broken pieces of a ruined life.
She ought to pay. She
had
to pay.
At the very least, she had to know that Wyatt was dead. Had to hear it, right now.
As she switched from the 210 Freeway to the 118, she removed her cell phone from her purse. She punched in the number of Tess’s cell from memory. The phone rang three times. She began to worry she would be transferred to voice mail. That wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to speak to Tess. She wanted—
On the fourth ring, the call was answered.
“Yes?” a voice said. A man’s voice, edged with a German accent.
She couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t understand.
“Faust?”
“Miss Sinclair. This is rather a surprise, though a welcome one, I hasten to add.”
“What the hell are you doing with Tess’s phone?”
She heard him chuckle. “You might more intelligently inquire what I am doing with Tess herself. Her phone is about to be destroyed, to ensure that its signal cannot be traced. The destruction of Agent McCallum will follow shortly thereafter.”
Abby felt everything drop away—hatred, grief, confusion, all of it—and there was only a sudden stillness inside her. “What’s going on, Faust?”
“It appears I am on the run. But I do have company. Regrettably, your friend cannot come to the phone. She is, may you pardon the expression, rather tied up at the moment.”
“She’s not my friend.”
“I would have guessed otherwise. You believed she had recommended your services to me. And now you are calling her cell phone.”
“It wasn’t a friendly call.”
“No matter. Whatever the particulars of your relationship, you will not have to concern yourself with it any longer. You will never see her alive again.”
Which was what she’d wanted. Tess, dead. And it was better this way, with Faust as the killer. He would take his time with her, make her suffer. As Emily Wallace had suffered.
She thought of Emily, her mutilated body displayed in the photo section of Faust’s memoirs.
Tess could end up like that. Cut apart.
It’s what she deserves, a voice in her head whispered, cruelly jubilant.
But that was wrong. Tess didn’t deserve this. No one did.
And she couldn’t let it happen. Couldn’t let Tess die. It wasn’t an option. Had never been an option.
“Are you there?” Faust asked.
She realized she had been silent for a long moment. “What’ve you got against Tess, anyway?”
“She has exposed me. My secret career has been found out.”
“What career?”
“Killing women. Do you remember my telling you that death is art? I would be a poor artist indeed were I satisfied with only one masterwork.”
So there had been others. Other Emily
Wallaces
. “How many have you done?”
“Twelve in all. Tonight would have made thirteen. Still, Agent McCallum will substitute nicely. I only regret you cannot join us. I would like to arrange, how do you say, payback for your maltreatment of Elise.”
“I didn’t hurt her.”
“You scared her. And she is a delicate thing.”
“Okay, then. You’re gunning for revenge? Just give me an address. I’ll go
mano
a
mano
with you.”
“It would be most enjoyable,” he said in a wistful tone. “Sad to say, it is not to be. You would lead the authorities straight to me.”
“No, I wouldn’t, Faust. Right now I’d like a shot at you all by myself.”
“Would you?”
“Damn straight. I’m in a nasty mood. A mood for ... tasting blood.”
He caught the reference. She almost heard him smile. “You know my book. How flattering. I might almost believe you. But, of course, you are a master deceiver, and I cannot take the chance. You have betrayed my trust once already.”
“The police and the feds will be hunting you. They’ll track you down without any help from me.”
“I do not think so. I need lie low for only a short time. Procedures have been set in motion to ensure my safe delivery from the arms of the law.”
“What procedures?”
“You cannot possibly expect an answer to this question. Now I really must go. Tess grows restless, as do I.”
She needed to keep him on the line. “It’s no use, Faust. There’s no place you can hide in this city.”
“Then find me, Abby Sinclair. Find me if you can.”
Click. The call was over. She redialed, frustrated, but there was no answer. Probably he’d destroyed the phone, as he’d promised.
From background noise and the varying quality of the transmission, she was sure he’d been on the move. Driving someplace—a hideaway where no one would seek him out, at least for the next few hours.
Cafe Eden? It would be closed for the night. He could sneak inside, hole up there.
Too obvious, maybe. He was a regular. But he might be counting on the police and feds not to know that. And maybe they didn’t. Brody knew, but he’d been working solo, and he was dead. Hauser might know, but no one would be talking to him. And Elise ... Elise would protect Faust. She would say nothing.
He could be inside the cafe. It was possible. An idea, anyway. A chance.
At least now she wasn’t driving aimlessly anymore. And at this time of night, Hollywood would be only minutes away.