Her Last Whisper

by Karen Robards

  The three of them crossed the tarmac and got on the plane. Already on board was Buzz—Special Agent Buzz Crane, thirty-two years old, a slightly built five-ten with curly brown hair and a thin, sharp-featured face dominated by a pair of black-rimmed glasses, the classic nerd to Tony’s hottie. Buzz and Charlie were good friends, he and Kaminsky had a supposedly secret romance going on that was complicated by the fact that he had once been engaged to Kaminsky’s missing sister, and he and Tony were friends beyond their boss/subordinate relationship.

  Buzz greeted Tony with a handshake and Charlie with a quick hug. They took their seats and strapped in, and the plane raced down the runway and lifted into the air.

  “Lena’s not answering her phone,” Buzz told Tony as the plane leveled off. They were flying west, so as they reached cruising altitude Charlie could see the last orange and purple streaks of the fading sunset as the sky finished up turning a deep indigo. Tiny pinpricks of stars started popping up everywhere like mushrooms after a rain. Below them, the airport lights quickly faded away. With the nearest big city still hundreds of miles in the distance, the ground looked blacker than the sky.

  As she spotted the frosty crescent moon rising up behind them, Charlie had a momentary vision of the hunter dive-bombing the small plane, and shuddered.

  “What do you mean, she’s not answering her phone? I’ve been talking to her all day,” Tony replied as, deliberately turning her back on the night, Charlie swiveled to face them. The beige leather chairs in this luxurious aircraft could be configured so that four seats in the middle of the plane faced one another, with a small table that could be raised or lowered to the desired height between them. Opposite them, across the narrow aisle against the other side of the plane, was a matching couch. Charlie, Tony, and Buzz were in the chairs. With no need for a seatbelt, Michael sprawled on his back on the couch. His head rested on the rolled arm, his eyes were closed, his arms were folded over his chest, and his booted feet were crossed at the ankles.

  She might have thought he was sleeping if she hadn’t known that he no longer slept. The discoloration, Charlie was dismayed to see, had spread as far down as his wrist. A glance at his other arm was reassuring, but only slightly. No hint of charcoal gray marred the tanned muscles, but she feared—knew—that it was only a matter of time. Charlie couldn’t help but wonder what was going on beneath his shirt. Was the gray spreading where she couldn’t see?

  Answer: of course it was.

  Anxiety gnawed at her. She had never felt so helpless in her life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Then it’s me. She’s not talking to me. I thought that might be it.” Buzz slumped dispiritedly in his seat. His suit coat was off, and the sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled up to his elbows. He ran a hand through his Brillo pad curls.

  “Getting involved with sisters never ends well,” Tony told him. “Live and learn.” He glanced at Charlie. “Are you feeling recovered enough to do some work?”

  “Certainly,” Charlie replied with a cool she was far from feeling, while Buzz glanced down at her bandaged hand and then looked a question at her. She told him, “A research subject bit me earlier. I’m fine.”

  Buzz nodded (if she needed anything to confirm how upset he was, his lack of interest in the particulars of her injury would be it) and said to Tony, “Like I meant to get involved with sisters. I’ve known them both since high school. I just didn’t figure out which one I really wanted until I was about to marry the other one.”

  “Bad timing,” Tony observed.

  Buzz groaned. “Tell me about it. Lena hasn’t spoken to me since she decided to go to Vegas. I asked her if she wanted me to come with, and she said no. She was going to meet up with Giselle, celebrate Giselle’s birthday—it was Saturday—with her, just the two of them. No problem, I said. Truth is, I’d rather go swimming in a piranha tank than be in the same room with the two of them together right now. So I went to that ComicCon convention I’d been wanting to go to instead. But I called her a couple of times, and she didn’t answer. Now Giselle’s gone missing, and it’s a damned emergency and they need me and Lena still isn’t answering. I don’t believe it.” His gaze locked on Charlie. “You’re a woman: that means she’s like super-mad at me, right?”

  “Give the man a cigar,” Michael muttered. A quick glance at him showed Charlie that his eyes were open now: he was frowning up at the ceiling.

  “I don’t have a sister,” Charlie told Buzz apologetically, “so I can only speak from a professional standpoint. The bond between sisters is one of the strongest there is. I’d say that Kaminsky—Lena—is demonstrating her loyalty to her sister by breaking off contact with you.”

  “You know her sister—Giselle,” Tony said to Buzz. “Do you think it’s possible that she just left on her own?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that.” Buzz drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. “I don’t think so. She’s softer than Lena—in personality, I mean”—he shot quick defensive looks at Tony and Charlie—“and more—way more—of a party girl. Guys like her, she likes them. When she said she’d go out with me I thought I’d won the lottery. What I’ve been wondering is, did she maybe meet some guy and take off with him? Because she’s kind of the type that might do that: impulsive and—well, impulsive. But since she was in Vegas with Lena, I don’t think she would. Not without giving Lena a heads-up.”

  “If Lena is convinced her sister is a crime victim, then she probably is.” Charlie gave the two of them trenchant looks. “Her instincts have always seemed to me to be right on the money.”

  “If Lena’s right—” Buzz’s voice cracked. “I’m having a hard time letting myself think about that.”

  “I’d say you’re too close to the victim to be on the case, but Kaminsky’s even closer,” Tony said. “Even if we could get another team out here, it would take some time, which Giselle Kaminsky may not have. And if it turns out we are looking for a serial killer, we’re the best there is at it.”

  “You couldn’t get me off this case if you fired me,” Buzz said fiercely. “Lena, either. We’ll investigate on our own if we have to.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Tony said. “Okay, let’s get cracking. Kaminsky sent me some files. Let’s see if we can get as much of the preliminary stuff out of the way as possible before we get on the ground.”

  For just about the first time in her life when it came to anything involving her work, Charlie had trouble concentrating as she read over the information e-mailed by Kaminsky—oh, hell, Lena; the Special Agent wasn’t a fan of being called by her first name, but the whole Kaminsky bit was stupid considering that they’d worked two cases together now and, in the last one, nearly died together; and anyway, calling her Lena made it easier to differentiate her from her missing sister. Charlie made up her mind there and then that she was just going to do it, and Kaminsky—Lena—could stuff it if she didn’t like it. She caught herself sneaking glances at Michael, worrying about the hunter, imagining worst-case scenarios in which Tam had a car crash or something on the way to meet them, and only managed to get herself back on track by grimly reminding herself that Giselle Kaminsky’s life could be on the line here. That brought to the surface the underlying issue she hadn’t wanted to face: the thought that she now might very well be involved in another active serial killer case filled her with absolute icy dread.

  Borderline PTSD, she diagnosed herself impatiently. Her recent near drowning plus her exposure as a teenager to the serial killer who had killed her friend Holly and her way too close second encounter with the Boardwalk Killer had done a number on her: she was actively experiencing symptoms of avoidance, difficulty concentrating, and fear.

  If a patient had come to her with those symptoms, she would have prescribed a regimen of cognitive–behavioral therapy and possibly medication until the symptoms abated.

  For herself, under current conditions, she had a simpler and far more brutal recommendation: Get over it. Suck it up. Do what yo
u’re trained to do.

  So, grimly, that’s what she did.

  There wasn’t a lot of available information: the Las Vegas Police Department file, consisting of precisely two pages and officially describing Giselle Kaminsky as a missing person, which, because of the victim’s age, would have made it a low-priority investigation had her sister not been an FBI agent. Adults taking off, which was the default assumption in most such cases, was not a crime. There were also files on seventeen other young women who had also gone missing in Las Vegas. At least half of those were one or two pages as well.

  Tony summed up the information. “They’re all attractive brunettes under thirty-five. They all went to Vegas and disappeared. There are no signs of foul play, and no bodies have been found.”

  “That’s not much to go on.” Charlie looked up from studying Giselle Kaminsky’s picture. It was a shot taken beside a swimming pool: Giselle was wearing a gauzy black cover-up that reached halfway down her slim thighs and a carefree smile. Her resemblance to Lena was strong, but she looked happier and more approachable—possibly because she was laughing and holding in her hand a cocktail with a little pink parasol in it. From the background, Charlie thought that the shot had been snapped in Las Vegas, probably on this trip, and wondered if Lena had taken it. Like Lena, Giselle had black hair, an olive complexion, and eyes that were dark enough brown to look almost black. Both were exotically pretty, and both were curvy. At thirty-one and five-feet-four inches, Giselle was two years older and two inches taller than her sister. Unlike Lena, who had a businesslike chin-length cut, Giselle’s hair hung in a sleek, straight fall to just past her shoulders.

  “Ten of them are listed as missing persons. Seven of them were never even reported missing.” Tony looked at Buzz. “From what Kaminsky has let fall in the past, I gather that her relationship with her sister can be a little rocky. You know Giselle Kaminsky. Is it possible that she just took off somewhere without telling Kaminsky?”

  “She and Lena fight a lot,” Buzz admitted. He was chewing a thumbnail as he stared at his laptop’s screen. He’d been engaged to Giselle before breaking it off just two weeks before their wedding this past spring. Since then, he and Lena had sparred around before hooking up romantically—at least, Charlie was 99.99 percent sure they had hooked up romantically—during the team’s last case. “But Giselle wouldn’t just leave without letting somebody know. She’s fairly responsible. And she’d know Lena would go nuts.”

  “Tell us everything you know about Giselle Kaminsky,” Tony said, and Buzz did. The short version was that, after having been raised in California as Scientologists, Giselle and Lena had arrived in Maryland at ages fourteen and sixteen when their mother, Libby, had left her husband, state, and religion behind to start a new life and had taken the girls with her. Public schools had led to degrees from the University of Maryland. Where Lena had become a cop, Giselle, an aspiring artist, had taken a job in an art gallery. She’d been manager of the Lotus Gallery, which sold high-end pieces of original art, at the time of her disappearance.

  “I’m having a background check run on Giselle.” Tony held up a hand to silence the protest Buzz had obviously been about to make. “Just in case her disappearance is about something other than a serial killer. It should be available by the time we land.”

  While they worked on the case, Charlie carefully monitored Michael. He was restless, up and down, walking the aisles, looking out the windows, even disappearing into the cockpit a couple of times. He leaned over her laptop occasionally to check out what she was doing, and once, when the pictures of the missing women were lined up side by side on her screen, even added a helpful comment: “Hot chicks. The other white meat.”

  At the look Charlie gave him he added hastily, “I was joking. Jesus.”

  A moment later he said, “The ones you can see enough of to tell, they all got something else in common, babe.”

  He then made a completely male gesture that left her in no doubt of his meaning: the missing women whose pictures were more than just head shots were all noticeably full-chested, which was how she put it when she repeated Michael’s observation to Tony and Buzz, and then by consensus added that fact to the things the alleged victims had in common.

  “Which makes me think that these killings, if they are indeed killings and are the work of a serial killer, are sexually motivated,” Tony said, looking at Charlie. “What do you think?”

  “Lust killers tend to have very specific criteria in mind when choosing a victim.” Charlie looked back at the pictures on the screen thoughtfully. “These women appear to be similar in coloring, age, and certain physical attributes. But his primary motivation may not be sexual, which it is if he is a lust killer. He could be a thrill killer, which describes someone who simply enjoys the experience of killing: it gives him a high. Or he could be a power-seeker killer, who is motivated by the pleasure it gives him to have total power over his victims. There are other types of serial killers, too, but those three seem the most likely from what we know of this case so far.”

  “What’s the difference?” Buzz asked impatiently.

  “Motivation,” Charlie replied. “Which affects how he selects his victims. A lust killer, for example, might fixate on women with full chests. A thrill killer picks his victims by opportunity and is much less likely to fixate on a particular trait: with him it’s more random, more about having the opportunity to grab someone. He’ll have favored hunting grounds, and I would expect to discover that his victims were taken from a specific handful of locations. A power-seeker killer might target women who’ve offended him for punishment.”

  “So how does this help us find him?” Buzz drummed his fingers on the table in frustration. His tension was obvious, and if Charlie had been a more demonstrative person she would have reached out and patted his knee. As it was, she simply did her best to answer his question.

  “It helps us find him because it helps us identify places he might look for his next victim,” she said. “If he’s a lust killer, we look for him around locations where he can easily assess women’s bodies, like a swimming pool, for example. If he’s a thrill killer, he’ll tend to go back to sites where he’s had success before, so if we can determine where the victims were taken and stake those places out, sooner or later he’ll come back to them and we’ll have a far better chance of catching him. If he’s a power-seeker killer, then we look at any arguments the victims had in the weeks before they went missing. All these labels that we put on these predators are simply tools that help us narrow down the search. The theory is, if we successfully apply enough labels, if we narrow down the search enough, we’ll catch him.”

  “If you eliminate the impossible …” Michael muttered. He was leaning over her shoulder again, and Charlie shot him a sharp-eyed look. She recognized the quote as being from Sherlock Holmes, and finished it in her own mind: whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. She didn’t know why it always surprised her to be reminded of how well read he was: as he’d told her, there hadn’t been a lot to do in prison.

  “Which is what we’re going to do,” Tony said to Buzz. “Catch him. Unless we get there and find out it’s all a big misunderstanding, of course.”

  Buzz took a deep breath and said, “I hope to God it is.”

  “According to victim facilitation study criteria, Giselle would be at low risk for coming into contact with a serial killer,” Charlie offered. Tony and Buzz stared at her. She frowned at them. “The theory posits that certain types of people are more likely to come into contact with serial killers and, thus, are more at risk from them. Hitchhikers, transients, and sex workers, for example, are statistically at high risk.”

  “Good to know,” Tony said, while Michael leaned over to murmur in Charlie’s ear, “Did I ever tell you how much hearing you talk shrink turns me on?”

  Four hours later, after they’d gone over everything they knew for what felt like the dozenth time and had come to the conclusion that they were
no closer to any answers than they had been when the plane took off, they took a break to eat. Because they were in flight, Charlie hadn’t been able to communicate with Tam since she’d texted her that they would be staying at the Conquistador. She could only trust that everything was on track at Tam’s end for a rendezvous in the hotel lobby shortly after the plane was scheduled to touch down. Given the half hour or so that she calculated it would take them to deplane and reach the hotel, that still gave them a two-hour-plus window—plenty of time, she told herself stoutly, which didn’t stop her at all from worrying. Over the course of the flight, Michael’s other arm had inexorably turned that terrible burnt gray, and Charlie had little doubt that the discoloration had spread even farther.

  After they’d eaten—she was so anxious that she wasn’t able to swallow more than a mouthful of food—and reviewed the files one more time to see if there was anything they’d missed—there wasn’t—she dragged Michael off to the lavatory with her. Like any airplane restroom, this one was tiny and designed for function rather than luxury. When she’d made use of it on her own earlier she’d had just about enough room to freshen up. As large as Michael was, with him in it, too, she found herself practically perched on the narrow stainless steel ledge beside the sink so as not to have a body part protruding into him as he lifted up his shirt at her command.

  It was all she could do not to make a dismayed sound as she observed that the charred black area around the wound looked larger and angrier, and the gray discoloration now covered his chest from the base of his throat to his washboard abs. It undoubtedly had spread elsewhere, too, although her view was blocked by the waistband of his jeans.

  “I always wanted to be a member of the mile-high club,” he said with a suggestive quirk of his lips while she anxiously examined his torso, having declined his offer to shuck his jeans if she felt the need to check out the rest of him. “How about we try it?”