Authors: Michael Prescott
Tags: #Kidnapping, #True Crime, #General, #Murder, #Suspense, #Fiction, #Serial Murderers
“Defined—for what purpose?” Edward asked.
“Control. What else? Fear keeps them in line—the little people, the burghers and hausfraus, the common ones. Fear and guilt, shame and pity are the levers of social control. I let no one pull my levers.”
“You should have said as much to that bitch,” Dieter muttered, “rather than feeding her some bullshit about art.”
“She would not have understood. And even if she had, I would not care for her to know me so well. One’s soul need not be bared before strangers.”
The word
soul
startled them, though he had intended it only figuratively.
“I didn’t know you were religious,” Dieter said with a grin.
“Now you have insulted me,” Faust replied with mock indignation. “God, you know, is the root of fear and guilt and shame. The root cause of all weakness and vice.”
“And this is why you don’t worship God?” Dieter asked.
“That—and pride.” He tasted his coffee, taking pleasure in its bitterness. “If there were a God, I would require
him
to worship
me.
”
“He really would,” Elise seconded.
“I would, indeed,” Faust agreed. “And why not?
He
may be the creator of the universe, but
I
am the destroyer of worlds.”
“That’s Shiva,” Edward said, pedantic as always.
“It is I. I ended Emily Wallace’s world, did I not?”
He received uncomfortable assents. Putting a name to his victim had abruptly made her too concrete, too real—not a symbol, but a person.
The human mind, Faust reflected, was a peculiar thing. It could countenance endless varieties of cruelty as long as they remained safely abstract. But show it cruelty in action, inflicted on flesh and blood, and—in some cases—the mind rebelled. The same person who calmly accepted a thousand earthquake fatalities in China would recoil at the sight of a kitten in pain. The dead Chinese were statistics. The kitten was real.
Within another hour the little group had run out of conversation. When Faust suggested it was time to part company, Edward and Dieter quickly assented. They left first, sticking Faust with the tab, as usual. Faust didn’t mind. He rather enjoyed paying for them. It cemented his position of superiority and underlined their utter dependence.
He and Elise left together. He escorted her to her cherry red Infiniti coupe, which he had paid for. As she took out her keys, she said, “He never showed up.”
“Your stalker? I noticed this, as well. Perhaps Miss Sinclair is correct in her cell phone hypothesis.”
“It’s a good thing, too. If he’d seen her with us ...”
“Then her cover would have been blown, and we would have to find a new security consultant. Which would be a pity, as Miss Sinclair seems so ideally suited to the task.”
“You really think she can find him?”
Like a child, she was perpetually in need of reassurance. “Of course she can,” Faust said, “and she will. She may have no grasp of metaphysical truths, but she is reputed to be eminently competent in her narrow field of expertise. In this, she is like most Americans—practical in small things, ignorant of what matters most. She will get the job done.”
“I hope so. But once she finds him—”
“She will deal with him.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then I shall handle it. I shall arrange matters so your unwanted admirer never troubles you again.”
“She may not let you do what ... what needs to be done. She may, you know, get in the way.”
Faust smiled, assisting her into her car. “If it should come to that, my darling, I shall handle her, as well.”
Abby guided her Miata through the neighborhood of Los
Feliz
, around winding streets that climbed the foothills. Pricey part of town—not that any L.A. real estate was cheap these days. Her little Westwood condo, all one thousand square feet of it, punched a gaping hole in her checkbook every month.
At Faust’s address she paused, idling outside. His house was largely concealed behind high walls. Through the iron gate she had a glimpse of a sprawling stucco pile landscaped with palms and yuccas. Nice place—much too nice for the man who had tightened a leather noose around Emily Wallace’s neck. But then, nobody ever said life was fair.
The rented guest cottage was a few doors down and across the street, at the rear of a smaller but no less elegant estate. Abby saw the roofline of the cottage through a scrim of oleander. A black sport-utility vehicle was parked in a nearby carport. Her quarry’s transportation, probably. If so, he was home.
She could lure him out at any time, but she preferred to wait until after dark. As much as she hated to admit it, Faust might have had a point when he compared her to a jungle animal. Most of them hunted at night, amid the shadows.
Nighttime is my time, she thought, like the song says.
It was two thirty now. The sun wouldn’t set for another five hours. In the meantime, she needed to work off some of the nervous energy that always developed when she was on a case.
Not to put too fine a point on it, she needed to get laid. She wondered how Faust would work that detail into his jungle-predator metaphor.
* * *
Vic Wyatt lived in a one-bedroom Culver City apartment with thin walls and noisy neighbors. Abby knew he could have afforded better on a cop’s salary, especially after his promotion to lieutenant, but he was the kind of guy who barely noticed his surroundings. For him, the apartment was only a place to crash. His quality time was spent working on the rebuilt engine of his latest acquisition, a classic Mustang.
Well, most of his quality time, anyway. Abby liked to think that her visits would also rate inclusion in that category.
She ascended the stairwell—never ride the elevator when you can walk, that was her motto—and made her way down the corridor to his door. Two or three prolonged buzzes got his attention.
The door opened, and Wyatt was there, his sandy hair slightly tousled, the way it got when he’d been sleeping.
Abby grinned. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Just a nap.”
“It’s nearly three o’clock. Not feeling very industrious, are we?”
“One of the occupational hazards of working the night watch.”
“If you need your beauty rest, I can always come back later.”
“I’m wide-awake now.”
He ushered her in. She looked around, frowning. “You know, this place is starting to have kind of a funny smell.”
“Maybe I should get a maid.”
“You sure you don’t already have one?” She patted a heap of unsorted laundry on the sofa. “She might be under here somewhere.”
“I would’ve heard her screams for help. Something to drink?”
“No, thanks. I wet my whistle at a coffee bar earlier today.”
“I never thought of you as the Starbucks type.”
“This wasn’t Starbucks. Not a place where the elite go to meet and greet. More like a caffeinated watering hole for the young and the clueless.”
His arms encircled her waist, “Then what were
you
doing there?”
“Does that question imply that I’m not clueless, or not young? Wait, don’t answer that. I was meeting a client. A pretty unusual guy, actually.”
“You can tell me all about him—later.”
“Come to think of it, maybe you can tell
me
a little about him.”
His face changed almost imperceptibly. “Here we go,” he said in a quiet voice.
“What do you mean, ‘here we go’? Where are we going? Did I miss something?”
“No. I did.” His arms weren’t around her waist anymore. “I assumed you were here for some ... intimate companionship. When in fact you’re here to pick my brain.”
Abby made a face. “Don’t say ‘pick my brain’. It’s gross. Makes me think of a George Romero movie.”
“To pump me for information, then.”
“I
am
planning to pump you.” She teased him with a smile. “But not for information.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
“We don’t have to be. We can proceed wordlessly to your boudoir.”
“I don’t have a boudoir.” He turned away. “And I think it’s funny how this question of yours just happened to come up as soon as you arrived.”
She took a moment to process this. “Are you saying I’m using you?”
“No way. That would be like saying the sky is blue or two plus two equals four.”
“Math has never been my strong point, but I’m pretty sure that two plus two
does
equal four. And when it’s not too smoggy out, the sky
is
blue. So you do think I’m using you?”
“Come on, Abby.” He sounded tired. “We both know how you operate.”
“I seem to be in need of a refresher course. Enlighten me.”
“You use me. You use everybody. It’s just how you are. Nothing gets between you and your objectives.”
“Nothing gets between me and my
Calvins
. As far as my objectives are concerned, I’m not so sure.”
“You live for what you do. And every person in your life serves a purpose in helping you do your job. That’s how you got to know me in the first place. You never would have talked to me if I hadn’t been in a position to assist you.”
“That’s how it started, I admit. But things have progressed considerably beyond that point, Vic. I mean, we’ve been together for ... what is it, nine years?” She was surprised to realize that it had been that long. She wasn’t the type who kept track of such things. But it was true. Wyatt had been thirty-one years old when they’d met. He was turning forty this year.
“Nine years we’ve known each other,” he said. “Eight years we’ve been more than just friends.”
“Okay, eight years. That has to count for something.”
“You’d think so.” He rested on the arm of the sofa, brushing laundry out of his way. “So what is it this time? How may I be of service?”
“Never mind. Forget it.”
“Go ahead and ask. I’m easy. But you already knew that.”
She sat on the pile of clothes and took his hand. “It’s not why I came over. I just had some free time. Got something going tonight, but I’d rather be Audrey Hepburn, as usual.”
“Audrey Hepburn?”
“
Wait Until Dark
. Get it?”
“I’m embarrassed to admit that I do. So you’ve got a couple of hours to kill. Naturally, you came here.”
“You’re putting the most negative possible spin on this.”
“I’m a cop. Cynicism comes with the territory.”
She released his hand and stood. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“Maybe not.”
“Guess I’ll be going, then.”
He let her get as far as the door before he said, “Not without asking me what you need to know.”
“No, thanks. I wouldn’t want to
use
you.”
“Drop the attitude and ask.”
She almost refused, then decided she was being childish. “Peter Faust,” she said simply.
“What about him?”
“I need to know if he’s done anything to get the LAPD’s attention.”
“You mean, besides get away with murder?”
“That was ten years ago, in Germany. I’m talking about since then.”
Wyatt shrugged. “Faust doesn’t live in my division. He’s in Los
Feliz
. That’s part of Northeast.”
Abby knew this, but Wyatt had worked out of Hollywood for the past decade, and Hollywood was directly adjacent to Northeast.
“So you can’t answer my question?” she said a little peevishly.
“Oh, I can answer it. If anything was going on with Peter Faust, I’m sure I’d hear about it.”
“And nothing is?”
“Nothing recent. Of course, there was that whole mess three years ago.”
“What mess?”
“You haven’t heard? Then you haven’t done your homework. He was the focus of an investigation. It didn’t lead anywhere.”
She wasn’t too thrilled with the homework crack, but she let it pass. “I’m surprised I didn’t hear about it in the news.”
“You may have been out of town. You do that a lot.”
“Excuse me for having a life.”
“A young woman went missing and turned up dead, dumped in Griffith Park. Roberta Kessler, nineteen. Last seen in a bar on Sunset Strip, chatting up a man who could have been Faust. LAPD got a warrant, searched his house. Didn’t come up with anything.” He shook his head. “Whole thing was kind of an embarrassment, actually.”
“What’s so embarrassing about suspecting a murderer of another crime?”
“He’s a celebrity, in a way. We wanted to keep a lid on the investigation, but it leaked. You know how the damn department is. Can’t keep a secret, at least where the rich and famous are concerned. The tabloids were all over us. You sure you never heard about this?”
“I don’t read the tabloids. Well, except for the
Weekly World News
. I love that. Did you hear about the Venusians’ secret plan to clone JFK?”
“Fascinating.”
“Seriously, the Faust story never came across my radar screen. I was probably working a case at the time. You know how I am when I’m on the job. I get kind of a narrow focus.”
“You get downright obsessive. Even more so than usual.”
Another shot. She tried to ignore it, but she was starting to get seriously pissed off. “Griffith Park is fairly close to Faust’s home.”
“True, but that didn’t prove anything. A lot of bodies get dumped there.”
“Was the MO consistent with Faust’s history?”
“The body had been decapitated, and the hands had been severed at the wrists. It’s the same way Faust’s victim in Germany was found. That’s what got investigators thinking about Faust. But of course, it’s not the first time a body has turned up without a head or hands. That kind of postmortem mutilation is standard procedure if you’re trying to prevent the victim from being identified.”
“Yeah, I guess dental records and fingerprint comparisons were pretty much out of the question. How
did
you identify her? DNA?”
“Anatomical abnormality. She was born without a uterus. Coroner compared the body’s reproductive system with Roberta’s MRI. Obviously, it’s something Faust didn’t know about.”
“So you do think Faust did it?”
“Faust—or whoever. As I said, there was nothing to tie him to the crime.”
“There was the eyewitness at the bar.”
“Her testimony wasn’t too helpful. Sure, the man she saw could have been Faust. Could’ve been a thousand other guys, too.”
“Still, I’m surprised LAPD didn’t pursue it further.”
“Faust is a wealthy man. He has a certain amount of influence. I guess when you’re a star, you have clout, no matter what you’re famous for. His lawyers let it be known that if their client was subjected to any more harassment, there would be legal consequences.”
“And since then?”
“Since then, he’s never been a suspect.”
“How about a person of interest?”
“That’s a term we only use on TV when we’re trying to be cute.”
“So he’s clean, you think?”
“I would hardly say
clean
.”
“I mean as far as his recent activities are concerned.”
“I have no evidence to the contrary.”
“That’s really all I had to ask. Wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
She was sorry she’d brought it up. The information would have been readily available on the Internet, without all the Sturm und
Drang
. Whatever the hell Sturm and
Drang
were; she’d never been quite sure.
Wyatt was looking at her with a worried expression. “This client you met with—is he saying Faust is after him?”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Look, if you’ve met someone who thinks Faust is a threat—”
“I haven’t.”
“Then why would this subject even come up?”
She didn’t want to tell him, but she had to. And to be honest, part of her actually did want to, if only because she knew it would make him mad.
“The client I met wasn’t worried about Faust. The client I met with
was
Faust.”
He got up slowly and stood very still, like a man posing for a picture. “Say that again.”
“Peter Faust hired me. He and his girlfriend are being stalked.”
“And you took the job?”