Last Breath

29

Walsh called the other members of the task force on his cell phone while Cellini drove him from Parker Center to the Wilshire Division address. If they had been TV cops, they would have used a dashboard flasher to clear away the traffic, but in reality few unmarked cars carried one. Cellini made good time anyway, guiding the Caprice west on freeways and surface streets. Walsh, in the passenger seat, filled in Stark, Merriwether, Boyle, and Sotheby with the bare details.

“Sounds like the real thing,” Ed Lopez said, his voice crackly and faint on the cell phone’s cheap receiver.

“It is,” Walsh affirmed. “And the worst part is, this woman he’s got-she’s one of our own.”

Walsh finished the last call just as Cellini pulled into the driveway of C.J. Osborn’s bungalow. He was glad to be done with the calls. Ordinarily he would have used a landline to convey sensitive information, but tonight there wasn’t time. He had to hope these digital phones were as resistant to eavesdropping as the manufacturers claimed.

Tanner and his partner, whose nameplate read “CHANG,” were waiting at the back door. The two deputies led Walsh and Cellini inside the house, pointing out the knife that lay untouched on the hall floor.

“What’s this about you seeing us on the Internet?” Tanner asked while Cellini first photographed the knife, then sealed it in an evidence bag.

“There’s a camera in her bedroom,” Walsh explained. “It’s a, uh, whatchamacallit.”

“Webcam,” Cellini said without looking up.

“Right. Live TV feed from the bedroom to the Internet.”

Tanner frowned. “C.J. wouldn’t be into anything like that.”

“No, but the guy who kidnapped her is.”

“So you know who we’re dealing with?”

“Not by name-but I’ve seen his work,” Walsh said, thinking of Martha Eversol on the autopsy table.

“Well, whoever he is, he must have been following her. C.J. told me she was tailed earlier today by a white van.”

“Make, model?”

“She didn’t know.”

“Damn. She tell you anything else?”

“She got an e-mail that spooked her. Spooked Detective Hyannis too, when I told him about it.”

“What e-mail?”

“It said, ‘Welcome to the Four-H Club.’ “

Walsh looked at Cellini. “Oh, Jesus,” Cellini said.

“That’s pretty much the way Hyannis reacted.” Tanner was losing patience, which Walsh figured was understandable, especially if C.J. Osborn was his girlfriend or something. “What is all this shit about the Four-H Club anyway?”

“I’ll explain later,” Walsh said. “Show us the rest of the house.”

Tanner and Chang led the two detectives through the living room and into the kitchen. Walsh spent some time looking at the dinner dishes in the sink.

“We’ll have to call her husband,” Tanner said.

Cellini glanced at him. “She’s married?”

“Ex-husband. Adam somebody. He needs to know.”

“They still close?” Walsh asked.

“I don’t think so, but I saw him with her today.”

“He came by the station to see her,” Chang added.

“Huh.” Cellini pursed her lips. “Under other circumstances he’d be a prime suspect.”

“Maybe he is anyway,” Walsh said. “Maybe he’s our guy.”

“And the other women?”

“Diversions. He killed them just to throw us off the trail.”

“Weak,” Cellini said.

“Very,” Walsh conceded. “I need to interview him anyway. His phone number must be in Osborn’s file.”

“Excuse me,” Tanner cut in, “but what other women?”

Walsh patted the deputy’s arm, a fatherly gesture rare for him. “She’s the third one taken this way. The third one who was spied on over the Web.”

“The third?” Then Tanner understood. He took a step backward, as if to put distance between himself and Walsh’s reassuring touch. “The Hourglass Killer. You’re heading up the task force. And Hyannis-”

“Detective Hyannis is the LASD liaison. You see… Hell, Donna, you tell him.”

“The two previous victims were both found with index cards that said ‘Welcome to the Four-H Club,’” Cellini said. “We think the term stands for Four-Hour Club and that the victims… well, that they’re kept alive for exactly four hours.”

“How come this four-hour angle hasn’t made the papers?” Chang asked. “They’re covering the Hourglass Killer like crazy.”

“We kept a lid on it,” Walsh said. “It almost got into the LA Times. They were set to run with it, but we prevailed upon the Metro editor to kill the story. It never ran in print, but somehow it turned up as a rumor on the Internet. Probably some copy editor at the Times blabbed in a, uh, what are those things called?”

“Chat room,” Cellini suggested.

Walsh shook his head. “God, I hate this Internet stuff.”

“But maybe now it can help us,” Cellini said. “We may be able to trace the e-mail if it’s been saved on her computer.”

“Worth a shot,” Walsh agreed. “Unless it’s like the video feed-sent through a proxy. Can you do that with e-mail?”

“Sure. And probably that’s exactly how it was sent. Whatever else you can say about this guy, he’s not stupid.”

Tanner had been listening to all this with a blank expression. Now he said simply, “Four hours?”

Walsh nodded.

“When I talked to her on the phone, she sounded funny.”

“Speaking under duress?”

“Could have been.”

“What time was this?”

Tanner looked at Chang, who checked his watch. “Forty-five minutes ago.”

“So,” Tanner said, “if your theory is right…”

“She has three hours and fifteen minutes left,” Walsh said.

The room was silent after that.