“Now I’m going to pick up the phone,” Adam said, “and you’ll talk to this asshole. I’ll hear every word the two of you say. Got it?”
“Got it,” she whispered.
Tanner was saying that he and his partner would be right over, and then his voice was cut off as Adam lifted the telephone handset from its cradle. An instant later C.J. felt it at the side of her face, the handset tilted so Adam could listen in.
“C.J.?” Tanner was saying. “Did you pick up? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Rick.” She was surprised at how normal she sounded. “I’m, uh, I’m glad you called.”
“Did you hear any of what I just said?”
“Not really. I was in the, um, the other room. Sorry.”
“It’s about that e-mail message-”
“E-mail?”
“The message you got. The Four-H Club.”
“Oh. Right. The e-mail.”
“Are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m fine. Look, I feel kind of, you know, silly about that whole thing. I mean, I don’t know why some stupid message would, um, would get me all worked up-”
“I don’t know why it would get Detective Hyannis worked up either, but it did.” Tanner’s voice crackled over the receiver, taut with tension. “He turned a lighter shade of pale when I told him about it. Insisted I call you ASAP. Then I’m supposed to call a Detective Walsh, who works Robbery-Homicide in Metro. Name mean anything to you?”
“Uh, not really. I mean, well, he’s a D-three. Handles all the hottest cases.” C.J. felt the handgun’s muzzle press harder against her skin. She forced a laugh and hoped it didn’t sound hysterical. “Sounds like Detective Hyannis picked up on my paranoia. Maybe it’s contagious.”
“I don’t think so. Hyannis isn’t the type to overreact. If he says there’s a problem, I’m inclined to believe him. You planning on going out tonight?”
Adam whispered in her ear, “Say yes.”
“Well, yes, actually, I am.”
“Might be better if you stayed put. My partner and I will come over.”
“I’m way out of your jurisdiction.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just give me your address.”
Adam’s voice again, so low and close it might have come from inside her own head: “Tell him you have to go to the junior high.”
She had forgotten all about that. “You know, I really can’t hang around. I’ve got this, you know, community-service program to go to. I help run it every Wednesday night. I need to be there.” She was babbling.
“This is more important,” Tanner said impatiently.
“What is? An e-mail message? You haven’t told me anything.”
“That’s because I don’t know anything. But Hyannis gave off some bad vibes. I think you’d better stay in your home and arm yourself.”
“No,” Adam breathed.
“Sorry, Rick. I can’t do it. Those kids are counting on me. Look, I’ll be fine, okay?”
“We’re coming over. We’ll be there in ten minutes-”
“I’ll be gone by then.”
“Damn it, C.J., this isn’t some game. You could be in real trouble.”
Tell me about it, she thought. “I’ll be fine. Rick. Don’t worry about me. Go out, fight crime. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“C.J.-”
“Tomorrow. Sorry. Gotta run.”
She heard Adam hang up the phone.
“You did good, C.J.,” he said. “You’re a pro.”
“He may come anyway.”
“Yeah, I know. He sounds like a stubborn bastard.”
“He’s worried about me. I guess he’s right to be.” She remembered Tanner’s mention of Morris Walsh, no lightweight in the department. “Why would Detective Walsh be involved in this?”
“How should I know?”
“He’s a big wheel at Metro. Doesn’t get mixed up in anything less serious than…”
“Than what?” Adam’s voice was subtly mocking.
“Multiple homicide,” she whispered.
“Well, what do you know?”
“What exactly are you going to do with me?”
“Get you out of here, for starters. And then-well, let’s just say I’ve got quite an evening planned.”
“Adam, this doesn’t make sense…”
“It makes perfect sense.”
“Not to me.”
“You never did understand me, C.J. If you had, you wouldn’t have messed up my fucking life the way you did. You would have known you couldn’t get away with it.”
She wanted to reply in astonished indignation, I messed up your life?
He was the one who’d been unfaithful. He was the one who’d ruined their marriage. And she would have told him so, except the chloroformed rag was in her face again, another dose to put her under once more.
She struggled to break away. Adam held her.
“Can’t hold your breath forever, C.J.”
He was right. She felt her lungs crying out for oxygen, and finally she yielded, inhaling the dizzying fumes, and then it all fell away-her body and Adam’s hands and the fear and everything-all gone, and she was gone too.
25
Walsh had remained at Parker Center after the meeting ended, reviewing the facts about the latest victim with Donna Cellini. Of all the task-force members, Cellini was the one he liked best. Some old cops like himself complained about the rising number of women in the department, but Walsh thought the gals were usually sharper than the men, and they had some extra quality-intuition or something-that sometimes afforded them insights the men overlooked. Besides, Martha Eversol and Nikki Carter had been young Caucasian females, so who better than another young Caucasian female to understand them?
Cellini was talking about Martha’s refrigerator and what its contents implied about her lifestyle when the phone on Walsh’s desk started to ring.
A sick feeling twisted his gut, and he thought. This is it.
He crossed the room and picked up the phone, praying not to hear news of a third abduction. His mouth was dry. “Walsh,” he rasped into the mouthpiece.
“Detective Morris Walsh, Robbery-Homicide?” asked a man’s voice-a middle-aged man like him.
“Speaking.”
“Detective, this is FBI Special Agent Noah Rawls in Baltimore. I’m informed that you head up the task force for a serial murderer known as the Hourglass Killer?”
Walsh blinked. “That’s right.”
“My partner and I work the computer crimes squad. We’ve come across something that’s relevant to your case.”
It occurred to Walsh that it was must be ten o’clock in Baltimore. Whatever the two feds were up to, they were working overtime. “I’m listening,” he said.
“We received an anonymous e-mail message tipping us off to a Web site. I’d like to direct you to the following URL-”
“The following what?” Walsh knew nothing about computers.
“To the Web site address. Can you do that?”
There was a hint of condescension in Rawls’s voice that irritated Walsh. “I can manage,” he said, gesturing to Cellini. “Just give me a minute.”
Muffling the phone, he told Cellini to get online and go to a Web address he would dictate to her. Cellini, unlike him, knew all about high-tech gear. She had the Web browser up and running in a few seconds.
“Okay,” Walsh said, “give me the address.”
Rawls recited the www prefix and a short string of dirty words referring to the most interesting part of the female anatomy. Walsh repeated the words. For once he wished Cellini were a man. He felt like some dirty old coot talking to a woman this way.
Cellini entered the address. Rawls talked Walsh through the procedure necessary to log on to the site, and Cellini executed the user name and password entries.
“It’s a porn site,” Walsh muttered when the homepage came up.
“Yes, sir,” Rawls said, “but it’s more than that. Click on the link that reads Do you like to watch? ”
Walsh tapped a stubby finger at the link, and Cellini clicked it. The page that appeared was empty except for the dim, static image of a bedroom.