Last Witness

by Unknown

  Then Dominick thought of something else and his blood chilled. He heard Manny’s gruff voice, sitting in his living room a few weeks back.

  A snuff club. Like the sex pervs who deal in kiddie porn, these are guys who like to trade pictures and stories, too, but instead of swapping kiddie pics, they trade snuff. Pictures of people getting whacked. Not already dead, but getting dead, got it?

  Nothing had turned up on the snuff clubs because it was Masterson who had run that info.

  And Dominick now knew why no lead had come back.

  84

  ‘Chris, it’s Dom. Pick up.’

  Dominick tapped the steering wheel with the back of his hand. The Nextel chirped again, but there was still no answer.

  Come on, come on. He looked around the deserted FDLE parking lot, wondering what he should do with this information. The information that he struggled to make sense of. He couldn’t shake this sudden, overwhelming feeling of bad that had come over him. Just bad. As soon as the light bulb had switched on in his head, he now saw things that he hadn’t in the dark. Things that frightened him. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.

  Instinct told him to talk to Chris, to try and find a rational explanation for a strange series of what were probably coincidences. IMPACT often ran covert investigations with other departments. Maybe info sharing would have compromised a larger operation.

  If he was on another line, the chirp would come back as user busy. He was there, he just wasn’t picking up. Maybe he didn’t have it on sound. Maybe he had stepped into another room or left it in the car and couldn’t hear Dominick calling him. He locked Chris’s number on alert, so that the system would keep chirping him, freezing him out of making any other calls till he picked up Dominick’s alert. Then he chirped Jack Betz, the FDLE Tech Agent.

  ‘Dominick, back on the job ten minutes and already bothering people at home again,’ Jack said with a laugh. ‘Tell me you don’t need something tonight. I just rented T3.’

  ‘Maybe. I’m trying to reach Chris Masterson and he’s not picking up.’

  ‘Did you alert him?’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s still not picking up. I need to get in touch with him bad. Any way we can track him?’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not in your squad. It’s almost eleven. You’re a ball-buster. Is he in his car?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But he’s got his phone?’

  ‘Can we track that?’ asked Dominick.

  ‘Nextel can. It’s a new feature. What’s his number?’

  ‘305-219-6774.’

  ‘Hold up. Let me call them. I’ll call you back.’

  You just had to know where to look.

  Victor Chavez. Sonny Lindeman. Lou Ribero. Lourdes Rubio. The clues had been out there, only Dominick hadn’t wanted to see them. He hadn’t wanted them to make sense, so he had ignored them. Ignored the obvious relationship between the victims. Ignored what Bantling had told Manny about Chambers and death clubs and cop killers. Ignored even his own instincts going back to the Cupid investigation when he had long suspected a cop connection. All those Cupid crime scenes had been linked back to undercover police investigations, homicide scenes, drug busts. But it was easy after Chambers’ death to accept Bantling as Cupid. There had been no need to look any further. Even if it was for the truth.

  He closed his eyes. Because he didn’t want C.J. to be involved. Not then. Not now. He didn’t want to believe that she would manipulate a case. So he had ignored all the clues and he had conveniently closed out Black Jacket to gang violence and drug wars and Roberto Valle. Then he had grumbled about passing on the prosecution to the feds and he hadn’t looked any further. Again.

  Three minutes later the phone chirped in his hand. It was Jack.

  ‘Dominick, we got a lock on the phone. Chris must be working late. Don’t bust his balls too bad. He’s still down at the State Attorney’s Office.’

  85

  She reached for the handle but it was too late. His left hand had come from behind and wrapped around her headrest, holding her back against the seat. She let out a small scream, her fingers still scrambling in the air to find the door handle.

  ‘Hey, there,’ he whispered. ‘Something tells me you weren’t expecting me. At least not tonight.’ Chris Master-son’s boyish face emerged from the darkness behind her, pushing between the front two seats. ‘Sorry about the false pretenses. You’re a tough woman to nail down, C.J.,’ he said with a smile. ‘Never a pattern. I noticed that. Of course, you have good reason. I think you knew your past would come back to haunt you. And now, here I am.’

  She felt his hand, firm against her throat. It was not choking her, but it could. For some reason, she remained eerily calm. She took in a deep breath and sat back in the seat, her heart pounding, her brain racing.

  The Nextel chirped in the car. ‘Chris, it’s Dom. Pick up.’ Dominick’s voice filled the Jeep. Just to hear his voice and know that he was okay, was overwhelming, and she bit her lip to stop from crying.

  ‘Isn’t that ironic?’ Chris said, taken aback for a moment. ‘What timing.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. It was the only word she could think of.

  ‘You’re a smart woman, C.J. I won’t be the one to underestimate you this time.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I swear I don’t know!’

  He moved closer, his face in hers. She could feel his fingers on her, closing in on her throat. He could crush her now, if he wanted to. ‘What’s the body count up to now? Four? I threw in that prick Angelillo for free, so he’s not really on your tab. But they’re all gone, C.J. Everyone who was in on your little secret. All dead and gone and telling no tales. Soon Bill will be nothing but a memory, too. Now there’s just you. And me.’

  He spit his next words at her with a hiss. ‘I know what you’ve done. I know that you’re no innocent, so don’t fuck with me.’ Something shimmered in his right hand, catching her eye, and she looked down. It was a jagged knife he held in his latexed fingers, hooked at the end. Images flashed into her brain. Victor Chavez. Sonny Lindeman. Lou Ribero. All those crime scenes, all that blood.

  It was strange. Part of her almost welcomed the end of the fight, the end of the dreaded wondering. Like so many stalking victims that had come through her office, it was the fear of the unknown that had paralyzed her, transformed her these past few months. Now she wanted it over with. The others had gotten theirs, paid for her sins. Now, maybe, it was her turn to step forward and place her head on the block.

  ‘I know the questions must have been there all along, C.J. I know that you must have woken up in the night wondering why all the facts never really fit, even with Greg dead and buried six feet under. Why there were pieces still missing, but you couldn’t ask anyone for an opinion. Couldn’t go back to the guys and say “help me out on this,” because you had your own agenda. Did it keep you up? Make you look out your window, wondering when it would catch up with you? Or did that start only when the body count rose?’

  ‘No, no…’ Her brain stumbled over itself, trying to see the connection that had Chris’s face in it. She heard the tape end with a click before the deck spit back out its telling contents. ‘You… it was you who called in the tip.’

  The tip that had set it all in motion. She saw Chris in her office, after she’d sworn him in and taken his pre-file statement, telling her how he had searched Bantling’s house on LaGorce, about the porn tapes he had found, about all the evidence he had seized. She saw his initials on the sealed evidence bag of miscellaneous pieces of ladies’ jewelry that he had seized from Bantling’s bedroom. The bag that had held, what C.J. personally knew, were little precious keepsakes from Bantling’s many conquests. His trophies. It was Chris’s smiling, concerned face that had led her back to the empty conference room in the old FDLE building, where the evidence had been set out neatly before her like candy before a hungry five-year-old. It was Chris who had left her alone with that evidence in violation
of police procedures and FDLE policy. He knew she was no innocent, because he had set her up. And he knew that Chavez and Ribero had lied on the stand in Bantling’s trial, because he was the one who had called in the tip. From working the scene that night, he must have figured out Lindeman’s involvement.

  She started to choke under the strong pressure of his fingers.

  The Nextel chirped again. ‘Chris, you there? Come on, man, pick up.’

  ‘Now the light is on. Or maybe your ex didn’t tell you? Maybe he didn’t bring you up to speed before he walked out of your life?’ Chris said, watching her eyes. ‘The good doctor Greg had a friend, C.J. A very good friend. A very close friend. Do you hear me? Is it fitting now? In fact he had several, all of whom were really fascinated with his work. And now, I get to finish what we all started.’

  He looked around the empty parking lot and back at the Graham Building, which seemed, to C.J., to be miles away from where they sat. She had just been in there. Behind locked doors, in the light only minutes ago. One decision ago. She had tried enough cases in her life to know that that was what most victims thought, in the moment they realize they’re in trouble, the moment they sense a truly life-defining second fast approaching. She was a victim herself. When the headlights cross the median from oncoming traffic and bear down on their car: If I had just stayed at the party a little longer… When the crunch of footsteps sound behind them on the deserted footpath they took through the park: If I had just not taken the shortcut… When the distraught, crying ex shows up unannounced in the Home Depot parking lot waving a gun: If I had just lied and told him we could be together… Victims always spent their final minutes thinking back on how they could have and would have changed them. One decision sometimes made all the difference. What would she have changed?

  ‘Seems Dom has some pressing business tonight,’ he said when the Nextel chirped again. ‘He’s got me on alert. It might be interesting, listening to him yap on about a case while I have your throat in my hands. It’d make for great video, too. I could get a fortune for it. I figured out early on, C.J., that Dom has no idea what you’ve been up to. You never told anyone what you and those cops did. He’s a pretty smart guy, and I knew that if the little present that I sent you at the office didn’t ring any bells in his head, then there were none to be rung. Poor guy gets arrested trying to find out the truth for you and you knew what it was all along. I bet that’s what broke you two up. Secrets and lies.

  ‘Now,’ he said, looking around, ‘sometimes the security around here does actually work. And for what I have planned, we are going to need our privacy. After all, there’s a few people I know who are gonna love to see your face again.’

  86

  Oh God. It made no sense. No sense. A friend? Chambers had a friend. A really good friend…

  A lover?

  In fact he had several, all of whom were really fascinated with his work.

  Her brain scrambled back to a time she had struggled for the past three years to forget. Back when it had been her alone with a monster. A monster disguised as another familiar, friendly face. A monster that smiled at her with kind and understanding blue eyes and a soft, round face. A monster that knew all her thoughts, all her nightmares, all her fears, all her desires, all her innermost secrets. Because she had told them to him. Once a week for ten years, she had told them all to him on soft leather chairs behind the closed doors of his quaint Coral Gables office.

  Dr Gregory Chambers, MD still appeared in her nightmares, seated in his yellow and blue waiting room, complete with Mexican tiles and lush potted plants, the soft hum of classical elevator music playing overhead. With his antisocial, psychotic patient Billy Bantling at his side, they both reached out their latex-gloved hands to touch her in the middle of every night, laughing at her in concert while she struggled uselessly to get away.

  Bill Bantling had raped her body for four torturous hours. But for ten years, Gregory Chambers had raped her mind. And she hadn’t even known it. That was what had been so disturbing, so unbelievable, so treacherous. She hadn’t even known it was happening. In weekly sessions, he had nurtured and watered and encouraged her feelings as her therapist, cultivating her mind like a needy garden, manipulating her thoughts to play out in his sick fantasy, in his twisted game. She had walked out of his office feeling better about herself sometimes, feeling drained and emotionally exhausted, feeling cleansed, feeling that a part of her might finally be healing. In reality he had just taken what he wanted. And she had paid him for it with a check and a thank-you. For years she had struggled to understand why. Why was she chosen?

  Now she thought back. In the darkness of his death room three years ago, strapped to a cold metal gurney – the smell of old champagne caught in her matted hair, the scent of her own fear heavy on her skin – her brain struggled against the heavy drugs he had given her to understand words that made no sense. Troubling words that she could never forget.

  I must say, C.J., that you and Bill were a perfect case study. A great working thesis. The rape victim and her rapist. What would happen if the tables were turned? What if the persecuted became the prosecutor? What road would she take, and how far would she go for retribution?

  Now she understood. Answers she had purposely stopped looking for were right in front of her, dangling precariously before her the whole time.

  Chambers had engineered the murders of eleven women to test his theory, his thesis.

  All of whom were really fascinated with his work…

  Chris Masterson had helped him test that theory. He had set up what he knew would be a bad stop by calling in a legally insufficient tip. To see how far she would take it. How much would she bend the rules to make sure justice was done? He had seized the evidence that would tie her irrefutably in police reports back to Bantling, and then he had given her the opportunity to make it all go away when he had left her alone with it. To see how far she would take it. She would tell Greg what she was thinking in a weepy session, and then he would tell Chris. And the obstacles were put in place. Or removed. Just to see how far she would go for retribution…

  All along, the manipulation of her sanity had been more than just a twisted game to Greg Chambers. It had been his work.

  And he had a following.

  87

  ‘See? Sometimes they do work.’

  C.J. looked in the rearview mirror. The front door to the State Attorney’s Office had opened and the security guard had walked out to the front overhang of the building, stretching lazily and yawning. Then he sat down on a planter and lit a cigarette, taking in the night around him. The air was humid and the smoke hung about him like a dirty, wispy cloud. He craned his body and looked again at the parking lot where her jeep stood.

  Chris’s left hand gripped the back of her head. At her neck was the silver knife, the jagged teeth of its pointed hook smiling up at her.

  ‘Turn on the lights and back out of the spot carefully. We’re not going far, and then I’ll take over. If you drive anywhere or do anything but what I tell you, this goes in your neck and it will be painful. This is not the movies. You won’t live to find a policeman or a good Samaritan reaching out to help you. I won’t give you a second chance. And if you try and alert the security guard, I’ll add another body to your count when I’m through. Do you understand? Contrary to what you might have once thought, I’m not a nice person, C.J.’

  She nodded slowly. She felt the knife at her neck, the jagged, hooked tip scraping her skin. Her hands shook, knocking at her extra long jumble of keys that hung from the ignition. She thought of her purse, and her father’s gun, just a mere foot away, but she would never make it. She flipped on the lights and put the car in reverse, backing slowly out of the spot. The security guard sat back on the edge of the planter and looked back at the building.

  ‘Drive out of the lot and make a right on 14th. Obey all traffic signs. We’re just going to pass back under 836 and go around the block. Then you’ll make a right and I’ll take over
.’

  The electronic security arm swung up, letting her out of the lot, and she turned right onto what was, during the day, busy 14th Street, right in front of the parking garage for Cedars-Sinai Outpatient. She pulled up to the 12th Avenue intersection and waited at the light, her body shaking. Next to her she heard his breathing slow and she knew he was trying to read her thoughts. He pushed the knife softly against her throat and she felt the blood begin to seep out, running in small, slow trickles down the side of her neck.

  Make a left and she would be down the block from Jackson Memorial Hospital and the Ryder Trauma Center and some of the best surgeons in South Florida. Surgeons who plugged the holes left by vindictive gang-bangers out to score some revenge on a Saturday night, who sewed back up the Hatfields before they went back to their shooting match with the McCoys, who rearranged spleens and livers when a car kissed the guardrail on 195. Maybe, with a little luck, she could drive herself right into the ambulance bay, and they would be able to put Humpty back together once more. Dig the knife out of her neck and pour someone else’s life into her veins. Maybe they could find all the pieces and cracks and stick them where they should be with some sutures and staples and new parts.

  Stay straight down 14th for a mile and she could drive her own body right into the brick-faced offices of the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner. Save the van a trip tonight.

  Throw it in reverse, and she’d hit the steel barbwire fence that surrounded the Dade County Jail. Maybe that’s where she really belonged.

  Then there was the final option. Make a right and she would be driving into her own violent death at the hands of a trained killer. Once he was behind the wheel and in control, and driving her to some trailer in Florida City or some shack buried in the thick mangroves of the Everglades, she knew he would be able to use the worst weapon of all against her. Time. There was a golden rule in law enforcement, one that police officers told little kids at school Safety Day, right after they told them never to touch a gun. The same one that she herself had preached alongside detectives at community sex-offender notification meetings and heard repeated over and over again at women’s self-defense clinics: Never get in the car. Let him shoot you right there on the street, let him chase you down the block with a baseball bat, let him drag your ass kicking and screaming into the back seat, but whatever you do, don’t get in the car. Because once you’re in, you’re gone.