Last Breath

36

The tape was starting to split. C.J. could feel her wrists begin to separate as a gap opened in the lower half of the binding.

She would get herself out of this jam. And she would put Adam in a nice maximum-security state prison-New Folsom up in Sacramento, say, or maybe Pelican Bay. No, better, how about Corcoran, home to Sirhan Sirhan and Charlie Manson? A swell place for her ex-husband to hang out.

What the hell, the bastard deserved it-and not just for kidnapping her.

He had thought he owned her. There was no way she would let him get away with that.

Had he ever really loved her? Maybe what he’d loved was only the image she first presented-the naive young woman on her own in the city. Was it a coincidence that he had drifted away soon after she entered the LAPD Academy? Or that his substitute for her had been a skittish young graduate student, easily cowed?

On patrol, she had handled many domestic disputes. In a high percentage of cases, the root of the marital problem was simple-the husband regarded his wife not as a person but as property.

She had never imagined that Adam could see her that way. But he had. Then she had gone and challenged his assumptions by building a life for herself-and walking out on him. He could not forgive her for being an autonomous human being. To him, she was only his toy.

Had there been red flags she should have seen? Hints of the volcanic craziness below his bland exterior?

She remembered the time they played doubles tennis with another graduate student and his wife on the UCLA courts. She missed a backhand, sending it wide, costing them the first set, and Adam screamed at her, actually screamed. She could still see the wildness in his eyes, the twisted shape of his open mouth. Could still hear his echoing shout-“God damn it, keep your eye on the fucking ball!”-and the embarrassed silence from their friends on the other side of the net.

A moment later he apologized, joking that he’d always been overly competitive, but the episode had lingered in her thoughts, a small piece of a puzzle she had not tried too hard to solve. Maybe she had not wanted to solve it, had not wanted to face the dark side of their marriage.

The dark side…

A memory returned to her of the morning when she emerged from the bathroom and found Adam hunched over her purse. She crept close enough to see that he had taken out her off-duty gun and was handling it with a slow, loving caress, almost fondling the stubby, oiled barrel. Then he realized she was watching him. “Fuck, don’t sneak up on me like that!” Anger again, as if she had done something wrong. When she asked why he’d been holding her gun, he said something about an interest in firearms. But he had never exhibited any such interest before, and even then she knew his answer was less than the truth.

Had he been wondering how it would feel to shoot her with her own gun? To take control-ultimate control-of this woman who was slipping from his grasp? To turn the emblem of her own independence against her?

The idea had not occurred to her at the time. Or maybe it had, but only in flashes of awareness that faded, like lightning strokes, before they could be fully perceived. At times when he made love to her, she would open her eyes and glimpse his face in the split second before orgasm, and what she would see was not love but resentment and rage. Then with his shudder of release, his features would slacken, and whatever expression she had read in his face would be gone.

Small things. Moments. Fragments. Nothing she could put together or make sense of. Only the uneasy intimation that there was another person behind the man she knew, a person who was cruel and cold and controlling.

Most of the time that side of Adam was entirely hidden. Though often distant, he was charming, considerate, kind. Or so he seemed. It had been an act, and she had bought it. She had underestimated his skill at deception. He wore his mask effortlessly. He was a world-class prevaricator and manipulator. If lying were an Olympic event, he would get the gold.

Their marriage had been only lies and sick games. And she hadn’t known, hadn’t allowed herself to know. Bad enough to be blind. Worse to blind yourself, to keep your eyes shut because you’re afraid of what you might see.

Anger at herself spurred a new surge of adrenaline. She punctured the last stubborn segment of the tape and pulled her wrists apart.

Free. Almost.

Putting down the needle, she undid the clasp that secured the throttle and spit out the rubber ball. A wave of nausea shuddered through her, but she suppressed the impulse to retch. She could not afford any weakness, not now.

She peeled off the tape blindfolding her. The adhesive plucked hairs from her eyebrows in a series of quick, painful pops, but she didn’t care.

She could see again. Blinking, she raised her head and took a look around.

She was in a large room colonnaded with posts that supported a flat, featureless ceiling. The floor was utterly flat also, a spread of poured concrete, and where walls should have been, there were long open spaces that let in moonlight and starlight, but no artificial illumination.

For a baffled moment she was too disoriented to grasp what she was seeing. Then she realized it was a parking garage.

The pylons were evenly spaced between open areas large enough to accommodate several vehicles parked diagonally. Squinting, she could even make out stripes painted on the concrete to mark off the spaces. But no lights overhead, only meshworks of electrical wiring that led nowhere.

A half-finished structure. Abandoned, deserted-a concrete tomb.

Tomb. Wrong word to choose.

She was a long way from being dead tonight.

Adam took the Garey Avenue exit ramp from the San Bernardino Freeway and headed north through Pomona and Claremont. North of Claremont lay unincorporated county land, desolate and dark. He followed Live Oak Canyon Road to a newly paved turnoff that wound through hilly land. Above him rose the tree-studded crests of the Angeles National Forest, good hiking country offering scenic vistas. But he wasn’t going that far.

Half a mile down the side road he switched his headlights off. The moon was bright enough to guide him the remaining few hundred yards to his destination.

He opened the padlocked gate, then drove through and secured the lock behind him. He wanted no visitors.

Keeping his headlights off, he drove down the main boulevard of the complex. Blocky buildings in no particular style eased past on both sides. Toward the rear of the property lay the parking garage, three stories high. It was a grim concrete structure, ugly and severely functional, and Adam had chosen it as the place where his ex-wife would die.

The garage was largely finished, except for the fluorescent lighting fixtures that had never been installed in the ceilings. The concrete entry ramp was blocked by a heap of lumber, but that was all right. He wouldn’t have driven inside anyway. To navigate the curving entryway and avoid the rows of pylons, he would need his headlights, and he was reluctant to turn them on and reveal any sign of activity in the complex.

As he had before, he parked alongside the garage, killing the BMW’s engine. Last time he’d arrived here, he’d faced the exhausting chore of lugging C.J. inside. This time there was nothing for him to carry-except his handgun, retrieved from the glove compartment where he had stowed it before entering the police station. There was a metal detector in the doorway of the station house, and it wouldn’t have been smart to be caught with a gun in his windbreaker.

He checked his side pocket for his cell phone and glanced at it to be sure it was on. If Detective Walsh or any other cop called his home number, the call would again be forwarded to the cell phone. He would have to answer and, if necessary, make tracks back to LA.

A quick kill, then. Not exactly what he’d hoped for, but life required certain compromises.

As did death, he added with a smile.

He left his car in a rush, not even bothering to slam the door, and sidestepped the lumber, hurrying up the entry ramp into the garage.

The tape binding C.J.’s ankles came off easily. In less than a minute she unwound the wrapping and freed her legs.

Now for the rope lashing her to the post. It coiled around her belly like a belt, fastened with a large, complicated knot at her midsection. She fumbled at it but found without surprise that it was a good, strong knot, difficult to unravel.

Adam must have enjoyed tying the knot tight. She could picture his gloved hands working on the rope, drawing it taut, while he thought about the deterioration of their love life, the gradual process by which she had become the dominant partner, the breadwinner, the street cop, while he remained a student, a perpetual adolescent. She could see his red face, his narrowed eyes, the twist and jerk of his wrists with each angry thought.

This is for wearing a uniform.

This is for carrying a gun.

This is for being more of a man than I was.

She tugged at the knot. It didn’t loosen.

Could she wriggle free of the rope? Not likely. The rope was tight, constricting her abdomen, offering little room to maneuver.

She inhaled deeply and tried to squirm free, but although she prided herself on narrow hips, they weren’t quite narrow enough.

Wouldn’t work. She had to cut the rope. What she needed was a knife or…

Glass.

On the floor near her was a glass vial, one of the items dislodged from the crate she’d overturned. Blindfolded, she’d had no idea it was there. Now she snatched it up easily. It contained some sort of dark liquid, which splashed over her hand when she broke the vial on the floor.

Ink. That was what it was. Dark red ink, she thought, although in the dim light it was hard to distinguish color.

She wiped her hand on her cargo shorts, indifferent to the stain, then selected the longest shard from the litter of glass.

The edge was sharp. She sawed the rope, cutting through the entwined fibers one by one. Not long now. When Adam returned, she would be gone.

She could visualize the exact expression on his face-she had seen it when she caught him under the sheets with Ashley. It was a look of utter defeat-not guilt, but simple astonishment at having lost the game.

Now he would lose a second time.

Finally the rope came apart, sagging to the floor.

“Did it,” she breathed, and then she lifted her head and there was Adam, limned in the ambient light, standing at the far end of the garage.

He was watching her, leaning against one of the pylons, hands in the pockets of his chinos.

And smiling.

She knew it, though his face was lost in shadow.

She could feel the cold energy of his smile.

“You’re so resourceful, C.J.,” he said, his voice echoing off the concrete floor and ceiling. “It’s admirable, really. You’ve always been a survivor-until tonight.”