Last Breath

LA.”

“So I gathered. Hey, this guy always strikes on the last night of the month, right?”

“So?”

“Just strikes me as funny, that’s all. The coincidence, I mean.”

“Coincidence?”

“You getting the tip-off e-mail on the same day when this dude is getting set to knock off victim number three.”

Rawls stared at him, thinking. “Now that you mention it,” he said finally, “it is kind of funny.”

Then Walsh was back on the line. “Sorry about the interruption. Things are pretty hairy here. I’ve got to go.”

“Just one thing, Morrie. You never explained about the tattoos. When I asked, you started talking about spiders. What’s the connection?”

“Black widows. They have that same hourglass mark.”

“I see.”

“That’s what the tats were all about. Goddamned spiders-not time.” Walsh was beating himself up, taking the blame for having made the wrong deduction. Rawls heard the harsh self-accusation in his voice.

“It could be both,” Rawls said gently. “A symbol for both things.”

“Could be, but evidently it isn’t. Christ, did I ever fuck this up.”

“Morrie-”

Walsh kept talking, unwilling to be consoled. “He never had a four-hour timetable. Even the name we had for him was wrong. He’s not the Hourglass Killer. He has another name for himself. A better name.”

“What name?”

“It’s right here in his journal. Yeah, we found that, or at least the Sheriff’s crime-scene people did. He tells us who he really is on the very first line.”

Rawls waited.

“ ‘I am the Webmaster,’ ” Walsh recited. “Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?”