Her Last Whisper (39 page)

Then she tapped the play arrow in the middle of the screen and stepped back.

A naked woman hung by her wrists in front of a scarlet backdrop. Her toes just touched the floor. There were ugly red welts on her thighs that looked like they’d been made by a belt or whip. Blood trickled in thin red lines from maybe half a dozen small cuts around her breasts. The woman was young, shapely, pretty—and hysterical. Her shattering sobs made Charlie’s throat tighten. Doing her best to divorce herself from the emotion of it, Charlie worked to take in details: the scarlet seemed to be silk or satin cloth, some kind of draping. The floor was gray and looked like poured concrete. Silver handcuffs glinted around the woman’s wrists; the chain was passed through a black metal grid set into the ceiling.

A black metal grid. A full-breasted brunette.

With a thrill of horror, Charlie realized what she had to be looking at a second before the woman began to speak.

“I don’t want to die.”
The woman’s soft, Spanish-accented voice was terrified and pleading.

“You have failed to give satisfaction.” The man was off camera. His voice was harsh, full of menace. Unaccented. Relatively young?

“Oh, please. I’ll do anything! Anything you want.” There was a pause, not even long enough for Charlie to sneak in a breath, as the woman struggled wildly within the limitations of her restraints. Her wide eyes focused fearfully on the off-camera man. Then she begged, “Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”

A large hand in a black gauntlet streaked into view. Charlie barely registered that it was wielding a wicked-looking knife before
the blade plunged into the woman’s stomach and slashed through the vulnerable flesh, slicing her open so that blood spilled like a waterfall.

The woman barely had time to shriek before the knife flashed again, higher this time. It cut her throat in a single swipe. Her eyes went huge, more blood gushed, and then came that hideous sound that had carved its own special niche in Charlie’s memory: the death gurgle.

Amidst the gush of blood, the woman’s head flopped hideously forward in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if she had been alive.

They had just watched a woman die.

Cold sweat broke over Charlie in a wave. The voice was the same one that she’d heard the last time she’d been in the morgue. The one that was attached to Destiny Sherman.

Her knees suddenly felt rubbery, and she took the few steps needed to reach the nearest chair and sank down in it.

“Babe?” Michael crouched beside her, frowning at her with concern. She met his eyes, mouthed,
“Hers was the voice in the morgue,”
then as his eyes flared with comprehension and he said, “Oh, shit,” she took a deep breath, and got a grip. This time the voice wasn’t in her head, so it didn’t make her sick. What made her sick was the knowledge that she’d just watched a woman die live, on camera.

“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.”

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 she 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.