Her Last Whisper (31 page)

“You don’t have to do this. You can walk away, right now, and go home.” Prompted by whatever he was apparently able to read in her eyes, Michael told her that as she watched Jessica French’s remains being lifted from her grave site. The thing was, he was right, even though she shook her head at him:
not happening
. That was another truth. There was nothing binding her to this kind of work. She wasn’t a sworn law enforcement officer. She wasn’t anything.

Except an expert who maybe can help stop this guy before he hurts anybody else
.

The photos of the faces of Alicia, Kimberly, Mary, Jessica, and the other victims of this particular monster were emblazoned in her mind. There were so many more: Holly, her teenage best friend; Raylene Witt; Laura Peters; Bayley Evans. And others. Countless others.

That was why she wasn’t going home.
They
were why she was going to stay and help in the fight. With every bit of expertise she possessed.

Looking away as Alicia’s remains, now in a blue body bag, were lifted onto a gurney, she bent her mind to the task of finding a killer.

“Serial killer investigations with a single disposal site for the bodies involve a triangle of locations. What we have now are two points of that triangle. That’s why finding this dumping ground is such a good thing for us. It really tells us a lot.” Minutes later, she crouched in the shade of a canopy thrown up by one of the agencies and, with a stick, stabbed a point in the dirt. Then she looked up at Tony, Lena, and Buzz, who were standing over her in a circle, looking down. “The first location is the PFE, or point of first encounter with the victim. The second one is the BD, or body dump.” Charlie stabbed another point in the dirt. “The KS, or kill site, is the third point in the triangle. So far, that point’s unknown, but studies have
shown that it will be closer to the PFE than the BD and in the same general direction. The killer—the fact that there’s a single body dump tells us he’s a local—will live somewhere in the center of the triangle.”

“What theory is that?” Tony sounded impressed.

“It’s a mathematical model called CGT—Criminal Geographical Targeting.” She stood up and pulled her phone from her purse. “I can plot it on my phone, if you’ll give me a minute. I just have to get the coordinates of where we are now—the BD—and where we’re positing the PFE took place, which for our purposes I’m going to say is the Las Vegas Strip.”

“Don’t tell me there’s an app for that.” Michael had returned from another attempt to coax information from the spirits.

“There is”—which was when she remembered that no one else knew he was there, and hastily tacked on for the benefit of the others—“an app for that, believe it or not. It’s called Map Expert.”

“Seriously?” Michael raised his eyebrows at her.

This time Charlie ignored him.

“I’ve never heard of it.” Lena took a deep breath. Beneath the fine layer of dust that coated her (and everybody’s) skin, she was as pale as paper. “But if it helps find Giselle, I’ll buy stock in the company.”

“Look.” Charlie held her phone out to them. With the coordinates punched in, two areas were shaded in red. “The kill site should be along one of these two lines.” She pointed to the far sides of the shaded areas. “Depending on where the kill site is, the killer will live within the shaded areas.”

“Can you e-mail that to each of us?” Tony asked, and Charlie nodded and started to do so. “When we get into some kind of an office, we’ll blow it up and print it out.”

“Done,” she said when she’d finished, and looked up. “There’s one more thing,” she added, remembering the information that Kimberly Watters had passed on via Michael. “The kill site will be relatively isolated. Far enough away from neighbors that screams won’t be heard. It won’t be in a subdivision.”

Tony looked at her, and Charlie thought she saw the knowledge
that she must have obtained that information by otherworldly means in his eyes. She smiled at him.

Before anybody could say anything else, Renfro strode into their shelter.

He said, “I thought I’d give you folks a heads-up. A butt-load of TV trucks just rolled in.”

“What do you want to bet that the body recovery efforts are playing out live on the local channels right now?” His tone rueful, Tony was behind the wheel of Renfro’s borrowed Jeep as they whizzed along a blacktopped highway through a whole lot of flat, scruffy land. Charlie was beside him, her sunglasses in place, her hair now twisted into a fairly windproof bun, praying that the sunscreen in the moisturizer that she used on a daily basis was up to the task of keeping her skin from cooking to a crisp in the broiling sun. Lena and Buzz were in the back, with Michael between them. There was plenty of room for him, as they were keeping as far away from each other as they could. The group sped down Blue Diamond Road toward the Pigeon Farm, following a pair of LVMPD homicide detectives and a quartet of uniforms in a big black SUV. The detectives considered Destiny Sherman the killer’s latest victim because of where she’d been found and were going straight from the body dump site to search her quarters at the Pigeon Farm. Opting to go along, Tony was planning to pull rank once they got there, hoping to get a crack at whatever evidence might be in Destiny Sherman’s room before teams of locals tramped through and contaminated everything.

“If the unsub sees it on TV, and if Giselle by some miracle is still
alive, will that make him go ahead and kill her immediately, do you think?” The tension in Lena’s voice was palpable as she met Charlie’s gaze through the rearview mirror. Lena had been reluctant to leave the body dump because, as she had finally admitted to Charlie, she feared Giselle’s body might be found there. Charlie was almost certain Giselle wasn’t there. None of the graves were fresh enough, Charlie told her, but the overriding reason Charlie felt she wasn’t there was because if Giselle had been, given the time frame and the circumstances under which she would have died, Charlie would have been able to see her.

Now, in the Jeep, Charlie met Lena’s eyes. “If he’s not killing his victims immediately”—which he wasn’t, Charlie knew from torture victim Kimberly Watters—“then there’s a reason. Probably because he uses them to act out some kind of a ritual. Until he completes his ritual, he’ll keep Giselle alive if he can.”

“How do you know he’s not killing them immediately?”

Trust Lena to instantly hone in on that.

“You ever think I might appreciate getting a little credit here?” Michael drawled. “This ghost whisperer’s apprentice thing you’ve got me doing kind of sucks. I’m feeling like the hired help.”

Charlie ignored him. “The use of a separate kill site and body dump argues in favor of it,” she said to Lena. “This is a methodical killer. He has everything planned out. I’d be a lot more worried if we were finding that he’d left the bodies all over the place.”

Lena took a deep breath. The sense that the clock was ticking down was motivating all of them, and she was clearly feeling the stress most of all. Her eyes were dark and haunted, the skin around her mouth was pinched, and a few minutes ago Charlie had caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror chewing her perfectly manicured nails.

Buzz said, “You realize that Ms. Green gave us the number fifteen, and off of I-15 is where Destiny Sherman
and
the other victims’ bodies were found, right? Also, she said to look out for a moon landscape, and that’s sure what the terrain back there looked like to me.”

Charlie nodded, pleased that someone else had made the connection. “I told you, Tam’s good.”

“Hot, too,” Michael added. “Maybe a mite unfriendly.”

“I always thought psychics were a load of crap,” Lena said. “But I have to say, your friend was amazing.”

Lena’s eyes met hers once again in the mirror. The message Charlie read in them was one of silent thanks for her contribution.

“So suppose we go over what she told us.” Buzz glanced at Lena, then directed a pointed look at the back of Tony’s head. “How about we start with that blond woman throwing a shoe at somebody while yelling, ‘Get out, get out’? Anybody recognize anything like that?”

Buzz’s question was aimed at Tony, and his teasing tone made it clear that he was making an attempt to lighten the atmosphere—for Lena’s sake, Charlie knew.

If so, it succeeded. The smallest of smiles touched Lena’s lips.

“You know what you can do to yourself, Crane.” Tony’s response was good-humored. Charlie looked a question at him. Catching the look, he sighed. “My ex-wife has a temper. Toward the end of our marriage, these two came by my house—which I no longer own, because Rachel got it in the divorce—to pick me up because my car was in the shop. It was night, Rachel and I were supposed to have dinner, she didn’t want me to leave—she felt I always put my job before our marriage—and when I had to go anyway because something had come up in the case we were working on she totally lost it, threw her shoe at me, and screamed, ‘Get out, get out.’ ” He sighed again. “Which these guys are obviously never going to let me live down.” He flicked a glance at Buzz through the rearview mirror. “Of course,
I
don’t play Assassin’s Creed every chance I get. Now,
that
would be embarrassing.”

“I told you, I’m trying to beat the game,” Buzz defended himself.

Tony continued, “And as for the illicit love affair Ms. Green mentioned—well, that isn’t me, either.”

At that pointed remark, Charlie
felt
guilty. A reflexive glance in the rearview mirror at the cause of her guilty feeling—that would be Michael, whom she forgot she couldn’t actually see that way because his reflection didn’t show up in mirrors—revealed Lena and Buzz exchanging uncomfortable glances.

In other words, in that car, for that moment, there was a whole lot of guilt going around.

“Dudley’s talking about Pebbles and Bam-Bam back here, not you and me.” Michael’s voice was dry. He could see her through the mirror even if she couldn’t see him. “Jesus, babe, don’t ever play poker.”

Oh, right. Of course. Tam wouldn’t have mentioned Charlie’s personal business in front of anyone else. Tam was a friend, first and foremost.

She was trying to settle her expression into a not-guilty look as they reached the small community of Pahrump.

Minutes later, they’d passed a giant Gold Town sign, a McDonald’s, a couple of strip malls, and were pulling up to the Pigeon Farm. The long, low clapboard buildings were painted gray, and there was a gazebo at the edge of the parking lot. A sign out front bore an image of a pair of sexy female legs kicking out of a broken eggshell. Life-sized figures of a cowboy and cowgirl with cut-out openings for customers to put their faces in invited visitors to take a picture. All in all, the ambience was a cross between a mid-range hotel and a Cracker Barrel.

The woman who answered the door was pleasantly plump, gray-haired, and grandmotherly in a pair of pink polyester slacks and a flowered blouse. If she introduced herself Charlie missed it: she was too busy looking around as they stepped inside. The interior was all white walls and leather couches and framed prints—not exactly tasteful, not high end, but except for its large size and an excessive number of couches it could have been a living room in any ordinary suburban house. Hanging in the heavily air-conditioned air was the faintest scent of—potpourri? perfume? If business was being conducted on the premises, there were no apparent signs of it. No gathering of half-dressed females. No nervous johns.

It was not what Charlie had been expecting.

Michael’s eyes twinkled at her. “First visit to a whorehouse, eh?”

Charlie shot him a withering look.
Obviously not for you
.

The twinkle morphed into a grin. “Think I’m dumb enough to admit to that?”

With a sniff, Charlie directed her attention elsewhere.

“Looks like we missed the lunchtime rush,” Buzz said in a low voice. He was watching Lena, who was prowling around restlessly. “Mid-afternoon’s always slow. Things should start picking up again around five.”

Charlie frowned at him. She was just thinking that Buzz of all men didn’t seem like the type to possess that much insight into the workings of a brothel when she remembered what he’d said about investigating them as part of a case. Her brow cleared.

Michael chuckled. “If I’d said that, you’d be giving me a dirty look. Him you give the benefit of the doubt. You’re supposed to be a woman of science, Doc: where’s the fairness in that?”

Her eyes raked him. The obvious answer, that tall, hard-muscled, surfer-god gorgeous Michael exuded sexuality in a way that was unimaginable from smaller, wiry, nerdy-cute Buzz wasn’t something that she was going to tell him even if she’d been able to talk to him.

So she gave him a snarky quirk of her lips instead.

By that time Tony had identified himself and explained what they wanted, which was then backed up by one of the detectives proffering a search warrant. Moments later they were escorted along a corridor lined with doors. Most were closed, but some were open, and in some of the open ones attractive young women in skimpy outfits ogled the men as they passed.

“You didn’t call us out for a lineup, Mrs. J,” one of the girls complained. She was giving Tony in particular a sultry look. “Did you tell them about our discount for cops?”

“They’re here about Destiny,” Mrs. J replied, which made it clear that everyone knew Destiny was dead. She clapped her hands. “In your rooms, all of you.”

The girls all said some variation of “Oh,” disappeared inside their rooms, and closed the doors with near simultaneous snaps.

Okay, then.

“We’re going to need to talk to them,” Tony said.

“They get scared, it’s going to be bad for business,” Mrs. J replied. “Destiny had the weekend off when she was killed. They don’t know anything.”

“We’re still going to need to talk to them.”

Mrs. J’s mouth did the sour-lemon thing.

Destiny’s room was in an annex accessed by a covered walkway. Six rooms off a central living area, each with its own bath. According to Mrs. J, Destiny had lived there full-time, as did most of the girls. At first glance, her quarters looked pretty much like any bedroom anywhere. A queen-sized four-poster with a pretty pink bedspread—and fur-lined handcuffs attached to the posts. A dresser with a clear glass vase filled with riding crops. A wicker magazine basket overflowing with sex toys. Charlie averted her gaze, only to accidentally get a closer look at the pictures hanging on the walls. They were pretty graphic, and she glanced away.