Last Breath

25

Walsh had remained at Parker Center after the meeting ended, reviewing the facts about the latest victim with Donna Cellini. Of all the task-force members, Cellini was the one he liked best. Some old cops like himself complained about the rising number of women in the department, but Walsh thought the gals were usually sharper than the men, and they had some extra quality-intuition or something-that sometimes afforded them insights the men overlooked. Besides, Martha Eversol and Nikki Carter had been young Caucasian females, so who better than another young Caucasian female to understand them?

Cellini was talking about Martha’s refrigerator and what its contents implied about her lifestyle when the phone on Walsh’s desk started to ring.

A sick feeling twisted his gut, and he thought. This is it.

He crossed the room and picked up the phone, praying not to hear news of a third abduction. His mouth was dry. “Walsh,” he rasped into the mouthpiece.

“Detective Morris Walsh, Robbery-Homicide?” asked a man’s voice-a middle-aged man like him.

“Speaking.”

“Detective, this is FBI Special Agent Noah Rawls in Baltimore. I’m informed that you head up the task force for a serial murderer known as the Hourglass Killer?”

Walsh blinked. “That’s right.”

“My partner and I work the computer crimes squad. We’ve come across something that’s relevant to your case.”

It occurred to Walsh that it was must be ten o’clock in Baltimore. Whatever the two feds were up to, they were working overtime. “I’m listening,” he said.

“We received an anonymous e-mail message tipping us off to a Web site. I’d like to direct you to the following URL-”

“The following what?” Walsh knew nothing about computers.

“To the Web site address. Can you do that?”

There was a hint of condescension in Rawls’s voice that irritated Walsh. “I can manage,” he said, gesturing to Cellini. “Just give me a minute.”

Muffling the phone, he told Cellini to get online and go to a Web address he would dictate to her. Cellini, unlike him, knew all about high-tech gear. She had the Web browser up and running in a few seconds.

“Okay,” Walsh said, “give me the address.”

Rawls recited the www prefix and a short string of dirty words referring to the most interesting part of the female anatomy. Walsh repeated the words. For once he wished Cellini were a man. He felt like some dirty old coot talking to a woman this way.

Cellini entered the address. Rawls talked Walsh through the procedure necessary to log on to the site, and Cellini executed the user name and password entries.

“It’s a porn site,” Walsh muttered when the homepage came up.

“Yes, sir,” Rawls said, “but it’s more than that. Click on the link that reads Do you like to watch? ”

Walsh tapped a stubby finger at the link, and Cellini clicked it. The page that appeared was empty except for the dim, static image of a bedroom.

“What are we looking at?” Walsh asked.

“Live video feed of a woman’s bedroom. The lights are off, but the Webcam’s lens is sensitive enough to produce a readable image even in darkness.”

“Whose bedroom is it?”

“We don’t know. But we have still images of the woman-and of two other women whose bedrooms were similarly wired over the past three months.”

“Two others?”

“Yes, sir. The first two victims of the Hourglass Killer.”

Walsh caught his breath. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I read the memos and bulletins as they came in, so I was aware of the case. But to be certain, I went online and matched the photos to images of the victims from the FBI database. They’re Nikki Carter and Martha Eversol.”

“Christ. You said the tip-off message was anonymous?”

“Yes. Scrubbed, so we can’t trace it. Probably a visitor to the site got suspicious and decided to let us know.”

“Why you in particular?”

“The Web site’s server is in Baltimore. But the camera must be in