Last Breath (35 page)

Into the kitchen now. Looking out the window at the dark backyard. The Metro D Platoon was out there—the SWAT team—concealed in the bushes, watching her as she watched the night.

Watchers everywhere.

Was Treat one of them? Had he seen her in the bedroom? Would he come?

He had to. Both of them had waited too long to play the deciding round of this contest.

They had to end it now.

***

On elbows and knees Gavin Treat wriggled through yards of dust and nets of spiderwebs. There were many fine arachnid specimens down here, enough to get him started on a new collection, but at the moment they held no interest for him.

Caitlin was all that mattered. Caitlin, home at last.

He had seen her on the laptop’s screen, of course, Caitlin in her LAPD jacket—a borrowed jacket from the look of it, lent to her by some chivalrous member of the constabulary.

And of course, he had heard her too.

The construction of the bungalow was reasonably good, but the floorboards still creaked with every footstep.

Lying in the dark crawl space under the house, he had heard her enter, had traced her progress through the living room and down the hall, had known of her presence even before she entered the bedroom and became an image on a screen.

The crawl space had been his hiding place for the past two hours, ever since he quit his aimless driving and decided to hole up out of sight. He had come here, to Caitlin’s house, partly in hopes of taking her by surprise when she returned, and partly on the principle so admirably set forth in that old short story by Poe—“The Purloined Letter,” wasn’t it? Hide in plain sight. Wherever the police might be looking for him, they would not think to check Caitlin’s home.

It was easy enough to pick the lock on the back door and slip inside, locking the door behind him. He had planned to stay above ground, naturally, but the living room and kitchen were no good—too many windows to be seen through. And the bedroom, too, was out. Although the drapes were closed, the Webcam was still running, and he could not afford to let his image go out on the Web. There was no reason to think the police knew of the Web site, but others did—Steven Gader and his like-minded subscribers to the site. He did not wish to be seen by them or by anyone.

By process of elimination, the laundry room remained as the best place of concealment. It was windowless and not under surveillance. He entered it, and then he saw the trapdoor in the floor.

He knew at once that it led to a crawl space. The irony of it pleased him immensely. She had hidden from him in a crawl space years ago. Now he would turn the tables.

He had waited, prone under the low subfloor, amid the rusty plumbing pipes and the scuttling bugs, with only the glow of his laptop’s screen to light the darkness. The computer, wired into the AC, could run indefinitely. He was unaware of any hunger or impatience or discomfort. For him, there was only the soft glow of the screen, the creak of the house settling, the distant, steady beat of his heart.

He passed the time by preparing for the kill.

He intended to take her in her bedroom. He did not want an audience.

His preparations were nearly completed when she entered the house.

Now he bellied his way to the trapdoor and pushed it open slowly, wary of any sound that might give him way. Then he hoisted himself into the unlighted laundry room. Standing, he listened at the closed door to the hall. Footsteps passed by, diminishing.

She had gone back into the bedroom.

That was fine. That was perfect.

Treat opened the door and stepped into the hall.

“Something funny about the feed,” Brand was saying.

Rawls squinted at the image of the empty bedroom. “What about it?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t it look different to you?”

“Same room. Same lighting. Same camera angle.”

“Yeah, but there’s something ...” Brand waved his hand, searching for the word. “Flicker. That’s what.”

“Streaming video always flickers.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m saying—oh, hell, maybe I’m just tired.”

“I’ll bet you are.” Rawls swiveled his chair closer to the computer. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” He started tapping the keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“We know the user name and password for the remote sysadmin. We can get into the site’s file manager, see if anybody’s been monkeying with the video.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Brand said. “Forget about it. I’m beat, that’s all. Seeing things.”

Rawls kept typing. He didn’t answer.

***

The most difficult thing was not to look at the camera.

C.J. knew where it was. Detectives Walsh and Cellini had told her that it was most likely installed inside the curtain rod over her bedroom window. The rod was a hollow cylinder, large enough to hide a miniature camera, and it was painted dark brown, so dark that a tiny hole drilled in the surface would not be visible except on close inspection.

Treat must have entered her house when she was at work, planted the camera, and run the electrical wire through the rod and into the wall, tapping into the main circuitry.

She wished she could study the wall for signs of spackling and repainting, but she didn’t dare. Anyway, she knew she would see nothing. Treat was a planner, not unlike Adam. He would leave nothing to chance. Most likely he had found the can of interior house paint she kept in the garage and used it when painting over his handiwork. The color would match exactly.

He was smart. Had to be, if he’d eluded capture for more than two decades, an extraordinarily long run for any criminal, and unheard of for a serial killer. Then again, only the ones who got caught were known. How many other men like Gavin Treat were out there, moving from town to town, state to state, changing their MO and their selection of victims—killing children sometimes, then adults—using different methods, different strategies—leaving no clues? Was Treat an isolated freak, or was he only a single soldier in an unseen army, one among hundreds, thousands?

She paced the bedroom, then stopped. He might be watching her right now. She should not appear agitated. She had to act normal.

What would she normally do in her bedroom at ten minutes to two in the morning? Go to sleep, obviously. But she couldn’t undress in front of that camera, not when she knew it was there.

Maybe she would just lie on the bed, fully clothed. Pretend to read or something. But to look natural, she had to take off the borrowed LAPD jacket. And that posed another problem—the Beretta in her waistband. Couldn’t let the camera see that.

Casually she sidled up against the bureau, orienting herself so that her right hip, where the gun was hidden, would not be visible from the Webcam’s vantage point. She slipped off the jacket and placed it in the top drawer of the bureau.

Now just take out the gun and slip it in the drawer also. No one would see.

She reached behind her right hip for the Beretta.

Another hand reached it first.

Plucked it free.

Him.

In her house, in her bedroom, directly behind her.

She tried to turn, but his arm—his taut, skeletal arm, all skin and bones—hooked her by the throat and yanked her backward against his chest.

“Got you, Caitlin Jean Osborn,” he whispered in that voice she remembered from her nightmares, the voice that called to her when she lay in the crawl space so many years ago.

She wanted to speak, to say anything, but the pressure of his elbow on her throat was too strong.

“You shouldn’t have come home.” Gavin Treat’s lips brushed her ear. “There’s such a thing as pressing your luck.”

“Where the hell is she?”

The voice on the radio belonged to Deputy Pardon, team leader of the Sheriff’s SWAT squad.

Another voice—the D Platoon leader—answered him. “We were hoping you could tell us. Team Leader Two. We’ve lost visual. No sign of her in windows four or five.”

“Nothing in window one,” a voice said.

“Negative on windows two and three.”

“All clear on window six.”

“How about the camera?” the Metro SWAT leader asked.

“Negative.” This was Tanner speaking, as he sat beside Walsh and Cellini in an undercover car a block down the street from C.J.’s bungalow. “She left the room five minutes ago, hasn’t returned.”

The computer resting on Tanner’s lap showed an empty bedroom, lit by the nightstand lamp.

“She’s disappeared,” somebody said in the radio cross talk.

“All right, cut the chatter,” Deputy Pardon ordered. “Stay alert. She’ll resurface.”

“She’d better,” Cellini said in an undertone only Tanner could hear.

“Are there are any other rooms besides the bedroom where the curtains are closed?” Walsh asked.

Tanner shook his head. “The bedroom’s the only one.”

“Why don’t we have infrared lenses trained on the house?”

“We do. On the front of the house anyway. But she’s not showing up. No body heat.”

“Then she’s in the rear. There’s nothing back there but the rear hall, the laundry room, and the bedroom.”

“Well, she’s not in the bedroom.” Tanner tapped the computer screen for emphasis.

“Maybe she’s doing her laundry,” Cellini said, trying for humor. Nobody laughed.

“This is wrong.” Walsh’s face was set in deep lines of worry. “Maybe they should go in.”

Tanner considered it. He wanted to agree, but he knew C.J. would be furious if they blew their cover in a misguided attempt to protect her. “Another minute or two,” he said. “If we go in now, the game’s up. We’ll scare him off for sure.”

Walsh frowned but nodded. “Minute or two. That’s all.”

***

Treat had the impression Caitlin wanted to speak. He had to admit to a certain curiosity over her final words. He eased the pressure on her throat incrementally.

“They’ll see you,” Caitlin whispered. “They’re looking at you right now.”

Treat almost smiled.

So it was a trap. They had known about the Webcam, the Web site, all of it. They had simply pretended to suspect nothing. Really, the authorities were more clever than he gave them credit for.

Still, all their cleverness would avail them nothing.

“I’m afraid, dear, I could hardly allow live video of a homicide to go out unedited over the Internet. Suppose impressionable young children were watching. I wouldn’t want to warp their innocent minds.”

“What ...” She was trying to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.

“No one can see us,” he said more plainly. “We have the rarest luxury of all in this crowded, interconnected modern world. We have total privacy, Caitlin, just you and I.”

He felt the tensing of her neck muscles and knew she was about to scream, but already his hand was on her mouth, forcing it shut, muffling her cry as he forced her away from the bureau.

“Bedtime, Caitlin,” he breathed. “Rest in peace.”

***

“Look at this.”

Rawls had accessed the Web site’s file manager and was studying the list of uploaded files. He pointed to the date next to one of the entries. Today’s date.

“It was just updated,” Brand said. The hour and minute were listed alongside the date. “Less than five minutes ago.”

“Check out the filename. ‘WebcamOne.avi.’ ”

“What the hell? That’s not live video.”

“Not anymore. He recorded three hundred K of the feed”—there were software programs that could capture a video stream as an .avi file—“and uploaded it to the file manager. He’s got it linked to the Web page, so we think we’re seeing a real-time shot when actually—”

“It’s a goddamn loop,” Brand finished. “That’s why it looked wrong. Flickering—”

“Whenever the loop restarts.” Rawls nodded. “Call Walsh. I’ll try to get the live feed back.”

Rawls figured the signal was still being sent. He simply had to relink it to the site.

He opened an editing program built into the file manager and brought up the Web page, which appeared as a clutter of HMTL code. The link to the live video had been replaced by a link to the WebcamOne file.

“You remember the original link?” Brand asked as he flipped open Rawls’s cell phone and punched redial There was ringing on the other end of the line.

“I made note of it. Mind like a steel trap.” Rawls deleted the new link, typed in the old one, and saved the changes, then pulled up the Web page and hit the Refresh button.

A live image of the bedroom appeared. Not empty anymore.

“Oh, Christ,” Brand said, nearly dropping the phone.

C.J. Osborn was sprawled on her bed, a man on top of her, a tall man with sinewy arms, a man who was strangling her to death.

***

Walsh’s cell phone was chirping at him. He groped for it in his pocket, still watching the laptop computer, and then the video image shivered and miraculously changed.

Cellini gasped.

Tanner was already on his feet, yelling into the microphone. “Code ninety-nine, she’s down,
she’s down
!”

On the screen, C.J. writhing as strong hands gripped her throat—the hands that had strangled Nikki Carter and Martha Eversol.

The phone was still ringing. Walsh grabbed it. “Yes?”

“This is Brand, FBI. You see it?”

Walsh took a breath. “We see it. SWAT’s going in.”

***

C.J. hadn’t expected to die like this, spread-eagled on her back amid the tangled sheets, fingers on her throat, air cut off, vision dimming, until only his eyes remained clear and sharp in the descending darkness—eyes that cut through her, laser eyes, eyes that spoke of hatred and desperation and the singing joy of revenge.

Noise.

The boom of gunshots from the front and rear of the house.

Doors being blown open.

Rescue.

Treat heard it too. Released her throat and pivoted at the hips, still straddling her, and then the gun was in his hand, the Beretta he’d taken from her.

He fired three times at the bedroom doorway to hold off the assault.

And C.J. twisted on her side and reached out to her nightstand.