But she wasn’t going to let Harry know that. It was the only secret she had, the only thing that could possibly give her power.
He shoved her onto the floor, wrenching her shoulder, and brought the fingers of his other hand to her throat. Tightening them hard, he dragged her away from the couch.
The backs of her bare thighs burned against the carpet as she struggled for breath, reaching up now to claw his hand off her throat, twisting to get a purchase on the fingers. He laughed at her, standing just outside her range of vision, laughed at her writhing. Totally unmoved, totally unmovable. Impervious to pain.
“Are you done yet? I could strangle you with two fingers before you could get me to let go, so you might as well stop.”
She ignored him and kept trying, pleading, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it turns me on. And the more you fight, the more I like it.”
Her body went limp.
“That’s better.” A roll of packing tape hit the floor next to her. “Tape your ankles together,” he said.
“No.”
“Do it or I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t care.”
He bent down close to her. “Do it or I kill Kelly.”
Her heart started to pound. She turned to try to see him. “She’s still alive? Let me see her.”
“You have ten seconds to tape your ankles together or I kill her.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. All you know is that her life is in your hands. You have eight seconds.”
Fingers trembling, thinking please let Kelly be alive, Eve taped her ankles together. Please, she thought, please let me save one person.
“Tape your hands in front of you.”
“How?”
“Use your mouth. That’s the beauty of packing tape rather than duct tape, so much easier to rip. You have fifteen seconds.”
She did it.
“Now beg for your life.”
“I don’t care about my life.”
“Make it sound like you care. Make it good. Or I’ll kill you slowly. And Kelly slower.” He jerked her up by the neck so she was on her knees and stood behind her, his legs planted on either side of her. The hand that wasn’t around her neck was in his pocket. Probably touching himself, she thought, then had to stop thinking it, the idea making her ill.
She said, “Please. Please, Harry, don’t kill me.”
“That was hardly convincing. You’ll have to do much better than that.”
Eve ransacked her mind, trying to guess the magic formula. What would a narcissistic psychopath want to hear. His own words. She said, “This is my fault. I am responsible for all these killings. All these families died because of me. Whatever happened to you growing up, it was not your fault. Please make it stop now.” She paused, unable to keep from saying it. “Please don’t kill me.”
Above her she heard something click. “That’s pretty good. It’ll work.” Then a hand reached around and slapped a piece of packing tape over her mouth.
“Kelly,” she shouted through the tape. “Show me Kelly.”
He said, “Okay,” and when he started dragging her toward the back of the house by her neck of the sweatshirt she didn’t feel the rug burns, she was just so relieved that Kelly was actually alive. Maybe one of them could survive. Maybe one of them could catch him.
He stopped abruptly, banging her body into the door frame. “Actually, I don’t think so.”
Eve realized he’d never intended to show her. He had just pretended. Manipulated her, to get her hopes up, so he could humiliate her. So she could humiliate herself.
She wanted to be brave but she couldn’t. Hating herself, she started to cry, the tears pouring down her cheeks, over the packing tape. She pictured Kelly the way she had last seen her, the way she had sketched her, smiling shyly, and wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She closed her eyes and when she opened them his face was inches from hers, his tongue snaking out to lick a tear.
“Salty. They all taste salty,” he told her. Then he bashed her head, hard, against the wall. He did it again and again. Reaching her bound hands for the door frame she grasped it as tightly as she could, as though holding on to it would help her hold on to consciousness. Her body got heavy, her head clouded as he kept bouncing it against the wall. Bang! Bang! Heavier and more clouded, until finally she couldn’t fight anymore. She felt her fingers slip off and her body hit the floor. Bang! And everything went dark.
At some point she woke up and thought she was in a car, driving around, not sure if it was real or a hallucination. She felt indentations under her, maybe a spare tire, and smelled oil. Her head ached and something was oozing down the side of her neck and there were tears on her face. Those, she knew, were real.
And they were not for her. They were for Kelly. For all the families she had watched and envied. For all the families she had unwittingly brought to their death. And for the policewoman whose attention Harry now sought.
Eve had never felt so hateful in her life, or wanted to live so desperately. She had imagined death as a deliverance, a release, and now it was a curse. There was so much that she had not done, had not enjoyed, hadn’t learned. So many people she had not helped. In the back of the car she waged a war against death, praying for forgiveness, for the chance to try again. She willed herself to live with every ounce of strength she had. Even as she struggled for life, she felt it slipping away. No, she tried to shout. Not yet. Please!
And then the blackness took over.
CHAPTER 42
The call came through to Jonah’s desk at nine thirty Friday morning, as he was finishing his second cup of green tea.
He could barely hear the officer on the other end, like the man was whispering. “I think we got her,” he said.
“What?”
“Her. I think we have her here. Eve Sebastian.”
Jonah heard that. He got out a pad of paper. “What are you talking about?”
“Woman was brought in for soliciting. Beat up bad. Wouldn’t talk. But we went through her purse and her ID says Eve Sebastian. That’s the name of the woman you’re looking at for the Home Wrecker, right?”
“Hold her,” Jonah said. “We’re on our way.”
Ash beat his own best record to Central Booking by three minutes. He and Jonah bolted up the stairs, were pointed to an interrogation room, and stared through the one-way glass for a moment before Ash went in.
The woman in the room didn’t look like a serial killer. She didn’t look like any of Eve’s press photos either, but it would have been hard to tell, with her black eye and puffed lip. She was small and bony, with long greasy hair matted to one side of her face. She was clutching a short trench coat around her body, and wore red patent leather stiletto heels that were caked with dirt. She looked up at Ash with a dazed, sort of sad expression when he came through the door.
“Finally,” she said. She had a low throaty voice, like she’d been smoking cigarettes for about a century. “I want to go to sleep.”
“Maybe in a little while. Your name is Eve Sebastian?”
“That’s what the ID says, isn’t it? I’m so tired. Can we do this later?”
Ash said, “What happened to your face?”
“Fell down some stairs.”
“Where?”
“Where there were some.” She looked at him now. “Why do you have that toothpick in your mouth? You afraid of being kissed?” Then she started to giggle.
There was something wrong with her. Could have been drugs, but Ash wondered if instead she was in shock. “How did you get here?”
“In one of those light-bright cars you officers are so proud of. Whoo-whoo lights on the top. Fancy. You know why porcupines have quills? Protection. They’re so soft on the outside, got to keep people away.” Ash opened his mouth and she put up her hand, frowning. “I’m not done talking.”
“Let’s talk about where you live.”
“Wh
en I was little, I had a pet porcupine. His name was Scamp. With that toothpick, you remind me of him.”
Ash saw that she was wearing a gold chain with a charm on it that said #1 DAUGHTER. “Where did you get your necklace?”
She fingered it absently. “From my daddy.”
“Where is he? Where did you grow up?”
“Here ’n’ there.” Her head lolled to the side and she half slipped off the chair. She reached down to steady herself, then crossed one stiletto heel over the other. “Sorry about that, Scamp. Where were we?”
“I need you to tell me where you got the ID you are carrying. The one you had the officers book you under.”
“It’s mine.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
She sighed, one eye coming open. “I found it.”
“Where?”
“I’m not telling. Not even you, Scamp.”
Ash leaned forward. His voice was low but there was something menacing in it. “Where did you find it?”
Both eyes opened now. “Dumpster. Back behind that motel, the one with the cactus on the sign looks like a big dick. Oops, shouldn’t say ‘dick’ in front of the detective, should I?” She started to giggle again.
Ash frowned. “The Yucca Motel. When?”
“Before I got here, obviously.”
“Try answering accurately this time. If you don’t, I can see to it that you see prison. And I bet you don’t want that. An attractive woman like you. So, how long before? Yesterday?”
“That’s low, Scamp. Not yesterday. More like this morning. Early. Right when the sun was coming up. I saw a car pull up and dump this bag of stuff. I happened to be unoccupied at the moment so I went for a look-see. You’re not going to take the ID from me, are you? I had to fight for it.”
“What color car?”
“Funny looking. Dark.”
“Black?”
“No.” She squinted at the force of memory. “Green. Car was green. Hey, where you going?”
Ash was at the door of the interrogation room. “I’ll get someone to take you to a private cell.”
“You’re a good guy. For a dick. Bye, Scamp. Come see me you need any kissing lessons.”
Jonah was trying hard not to laugh as Ash came out. “My advice, if you like your job, is never to say anything about that,” Ash told him as they sprinted to the parking lot.
“You bet. Gone from my mind.” Jonah was still smiling, though. “Tell me one thing. How did you know she wasn’t the one?”
“You remember how she fell off her chair? Crossed her legs? Well, she wasn’t wearing anything under that trench coat.”
“So? You get an eyeful.”
“You could say. Of something. That wasn’t a woman.”
Now Jonah did laugh. “Shit, that’s good.”
“Would have been better if it was the Home Wrecker. Call Criminalistics and have them pick up that Dumpster and bring it in.”
“All right, Scamp.”
CHAPTER 43
Black Dog Demolition was in a converted airplane hangar in North Las Vegas. The advertisement boasted that with their advanced equipment they could crush anything flatter than anyone else in Nevada, and Harry intended to put them to the test. He worked hard not to kick the old black Labrador drooling next to his leg as he listened to Dwight, the owner, bullshit over the price.
“Car like that, it’s going to take a lot to crush it.”
“I’ll pay.”
“I’m just saying, you could make a lot of money selling it for parts.”
“Look, I told you. I want to make sure the car is demolished.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, Dwight. Bad memories. It was my ex’s car. If I see it driving around, any part of it, I’ll know. It’s got to be pulverized. Now let’s do it.”
“Right now? I got a dozen cars ahead of yours.”
Harry took a step forward, accidentally knocking into the dog, making it grunt and lumber away. Good. Dwight’s eyes went from the animal to the crisp hundred dollar bill Harry was holding out. Harry said, “Right now. I want to watch. To make sure.”
He wished he had been able to leave Eve conscious for this so she could feel the car closing in on her. She had such a dislike of compressed spaces and it didn’t get much more compressed than this. He gave a little wave and said, “Good-bye, Eve.”
Dwight paused putting in his earplugs. “What?”
“Nothing. Just crush the car.”
Dwight smashed out the windows with a mallet like a man who loves his work, then stepped to the controls of the hydraulic press. As the steel plate came down on the roof, the car made a low moaning sound. He rotated the car and crushed it again, turned and crushed again.
Harry watched, rapt, as the machines mashed the car smaller and smaller. Finally Dwight hit the stop button and it went quiet. In front of him was a compact rectangle.
“Beautiful,” Harry said.
Dwight joined him then. “Almost like they’re alive when they groan like that, isn’t it.”
“Almost.”
“She was a tough one. Saabs are solid. Ought to weigh about two thousand pounds,” Dwight said, sounding like a doctor delivering a baby.
“Give or take ninety-eight.”
“Yeah,” Dwight looked at him. “Sure.” He peered forward, then said, “Hey, there’s something dripping out of your car.”
“Must just be coolant or oil.”
“No way. I always drain those out. No, that’s got to be something you left in the car.”
“Fine.”
“It’s just that—if it’s hard to clean up, I’ll have to charge you extra.”
“Very well. Why don’t we go check.”
Dwight walked around the car then stopped and pointed to a trail of red drips. “I found the source of the leak.”
“Yes?”
“Seems to be coming from the back of the car. Hope you didn’t leave anything in the trunk.” He chuckled to himself like he’d made a good joke.
Harry chuckled with him. “Nothing I want to see again.”
“Well, I’ll go get the bill ready.”
“I’ll be right here.”
As Dwight loped off, Harry’s phone rang. He glanced at the caller ID, smiled, and answered it. “Hello, Windy. What a nice surprise.”
“Hi there. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. Are you busy?”
He looked at the mangled hunk of metal in front of him and smiled wider. “Actually, I’m just saying good-bye to an old crush. Let me call you back.”
Harry hung up the phone and adjusted his pants to cover his erection. He could not believe how well everything was coming together.
CHAPTER 44
Ash went to work chasing after sightings of their green car and getting a schedule of the Dumpster’s days to be emptied, while Windy and Larry moved it into the criminalistics garage and started on its contents.
The garage had two bays that cars could be pulled into, but it was also one of the main storage areas for the department, the walls lined with cabinets of chemicals and equipment for fuming fingerprints. It was divided down the middle by a long metal work table. The Dumpster was in the center of the larger bay.
“The woman said she found the ID this morning, right on top. That means we only have to look at the stuff on top, right?” Larry said.
“In a perfect world. Have you ever made chocolate chip cookies from scratch?” Windy realized it was a stupid question after she’d asked it, right up there with the way sports analogies were lost on her. Given Larry’s age and the fact he was single, she should have tried something about Tomb Raider.
But to her surprise Larry nodded. “All the time. I have a great recipe if you want it. Total improvement on the standard Toll House. Why?”
Larry baked? There were a dozen questions she wanted to ask about that but decided to save them. “You know how you fold the chocolate chips into the dough? Stirring from the bottom onto the top? That’s
how most Dumpster divers do their work too. Even if our guy only skimmed the surface, chances are other people have messed around in here since then.”
“Churning it up.” Larry snapped his gloves efficiently. “Well, let’s get to work.”
He spread plastic sheeting on the ground while Windy wheeled a ladder over to the side of the Dumpster. It was half full and she wanted to be careful as she reached in not to disturb any prints that they might pick up later from the outside.
She removed the items and handed them to Larry, who laid them out on the plastic sheet. They decided to keep them in the order of their removal rather than grouping by type, in case they hadn’t been mixed up. After an hour they had everything out. They stood back to survey their haul.
Windy felt like an archeologist, plumbing the depths of a lost society. A society, apparently, with a penchant for junk food. There were six pizza boxes, a dozen candy bar wrappers, an empty Ding Dongs box, three hamburger wrappers from different chains, a piece of a sugar doughnut, fifty-two empty blister packs of Sudafed, ten empty nail polish remover bottles, a T-shirt with blood on it, eighteen pieces of paper of various sizes, some with writing on them, some without, the current issue of Sophisticated Bride magazine, an unkempt blond wig, and nine used condoms. On the very bottom they hit pay dirt: two California license plates saying BAD GRL.
Larry got excited when he saw that. “At least we know we’re in the right place.”
Windy nodded. “There must be evidence of a dozen crimes here. It’s too bad we can’t use this to close up the meth lab that is operating in the motel.”
“Meth lab?” Larry asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Those fifty-two Sudafed packages and the ten nail polish remover bottles,” Windy explained. “Someone’s been converting the pseudoephedrine from the pills into methamphetamine. That many pills could make about two ounces. With a street value of at least fifteen hundred dollars.”
“And I thought your former gig was as a small town sheriff,” Larry said, clearly impressed.
“Small towns aren’t what they once were.” Windy’s eyes went back to their selection. “But at least it means we can eliminate some of this stuff. Why don’t you run the bloody T-shirt over to the lab and have them type it, while I start on Sophisticated Bride.”
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