Final Sins (3 page)

“I beg your pardon.”

“The thrill of the hunt, the taste of blood? Ever start
jonesing
for it?”

“I could ask you the same question, could I not?”

“You’re a smooth one, Peter. I’ll give you that. Eyes?”

“What?”

“Your stalker. Presumably he has eyes. What color are they?”

“I have not the slightest idea. I have never been that close to him.”

“Elise, little help here. If he’s after you, maybe you’ve gotten a better look.”

The girl seemed reluctant to join in the conversation. No surprise. Anyone who was attracted to a man like Faust would have low self-esteem and probably poor social skills. Elise might be intelligent enough, even creative in her way, but she would be overloaded with chronic anxiety and fear.

“I’ve only seen him from a distance,” Elise said, her voice very low, “usually in places that are pretty dark.”

“Okay, well, that takes us to our next question. Where
have
you seen him, exactly, besides the parking garage and this cafe?”

“All over.”

“Narrow it down.”

“He seems to know where I’ll be. It’s like he’s there waiting for me.”

“He’s
where
waiting for you?”

“All the places I go. Clothing stores, nightclubs, ad shoots ...”

“Elise is a model,” Faust put in.

It made sense. She had the anorexic look favored by the purveyors of designer jeans and overpriced perfume.

“He’s been present when you’re working?” Abby asked. “In a photography studio?”

“No, in public. Last week we did a shoot on the beach in Santa Monica and another one on Mulholland Drive. People will stand around and watch. Both times he was there in the crowd.”

“He might be following you from home. Do you two live together?”

Elise shook her head. “I have my own place. Need my space, you know. Sometimes I leave from Peter’s house, sometimes from my condo, sometimes from someplace else entirely. How can he always know where I am? Is he following me twenty-four hours a day?”

“I doubt it.” It was almost impossible for one person to maintain around-the-clock surveillance.

“Since this started, I’ve been checking my rearview all the time. I’ve never seen anyone behind me.”

Abby felt a tingle of interest in the case. They had no idea where the man would turn up next. No description. No details. The challenge appealed to her, even if the clients did not.

“Okay,” she said, “maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree here. When was the last time you saw him?”

“Yesterday,” Elise answered. “I went to the Farmer’s Market, and he was there.”

“You were alone?”

“At first I was. Peter joined me.”

“How did Peter know where to find you?”

“I text-messaged him to let him know where I was going. He messaged back and said he’d meet me there for lunch.”

She looked at Faust. “Where were you when you got the message?”

“At home.”

“You got the message on your cell phone?”

“That’s right.”

“You do that a lot? Exchange text messages via cell?”

“Quite often, yes. In Europe this technology has been popular for some years.” His eyes narrowed. “Have you stumbled across something, Miss Sinclair?”

I wouldn’t call it stumbling, she thought irritably. “Maybe, These other occasions when the man has shown up ... did you text-message each other beforehand?”

“Probably,” Elise said. “I like to let Peter know where I am.”

Abby looked at Faust. “And were you always home when you received the messages?”

“I suppose I was. I am a bit of a homebody, you see.”

“When you called me to set up this appointment, did you use a landline or a cell?”

“Landline?” He didn’t know the term.

“Your regular home phone.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, I used the landline, as you say.”

“And when you got my name from your friend in law enforcement?”

“Also the landline.” He seemed to enjoy saying the word, as if it were a new toy.

“Glad to hear it. Don’t say anything about me over the cell phone, okay? And don’t call me on your cell, either of you, unless it’s an emergency. How about when you arranged to meet here today? Did you use your cell phones to work out the details?”

“No. We spoke in person.”

“That’s good. If you had, he might be here. Which I assume he isn’t.”

Faust’s gaze traveled around the room, performing an efficient visual check. “He is not.”

Elise leaned forward. “You really think this guy is intercepting our phone calls?”

“He could be.” It wasn’t easy, though. Digital signals were difficult to intercept, and they were normally encrypted to ensure privacy. “May I see your phones, please?”

They handed them over. As she expected, the phones were recent models, state-of-the-art. Both were
E911
-capable, meaning they were equipped with a GPS chip that allowed the cellular service provider to pinpoint the phone’s position within as little as five feet. Abby herself used an older phone without GPS. She could still be tracked via cell-tower triangulation, but not as precisely. She didn’t want anyone knowing exactly where she was.

Cell phone voyeurism had declined markedly since the systems had gone digital. Nowadays it would take some highly expensive—and highly illegal—equipment to pick up the signal and decode it. If their stalker was using that method to keep tabs on them, he was no ordinary wacko.

“You may be up against somebody who’s a little more dangerous than the average star struck celebrity hunter,” she said carefully.

Faust smiled. “I am glad to hear you say this.”

“You are?”

“Yes. It means you are intrigued. Your blood is up. You are on the scent.”

“I’m not a hound dog, Mr. Faust.”

“More like a jungle cat, I think. Sleek and stealthy, camouflaged by your environment, blending with the night.”

“How poetic.”

“It is accurate, is it not?”

“It’s not the wildlife analogy I would use. I’m more like a pilot fish. You know those little fish that swim in a shark’s wake?” The metaphor, she realized, was too complicated to convey to someone who spoke English as a second language. “Never mind.”

Faust was watching her, his blue eyes glittering. “You will take the assignment, will you not, Miss Sinclair?”

Abby hesitated. She despised Faust and didn’t care if he lived or died. But there was Elise. Probably just a naive kid mixed up in something ugly and stupid. She was dumb, sure. But Abby couldn’t hate her for that. Dumbness was a prerogative of youth.

Besides, she did like a challenge.

“Not for your sake,” she said at last. “For hers.”

“I am most gratified.”

“That is, assuming you can meet my price.”

“I do not imagine that will be a problem.”

“No. I wouldn’t think so. Does it bother you at all to be living the good life after you took Emily Wallace’s life away?”

“I see no connection between the two issues.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Faust shrugged. “Oranges and apples.”

“Apples and oranges is the circumlocution you’re aiming for.”

“Ah. I appreciate the correction.” His manner was almost courtly. “My English is not always idiomatic, as you see.”

“You still speak better than a lot of Americans do.”

“A compliment. You are warming to me, Miss Sinclair.”

She resisted this, but there was some truth in it. He had a strange charisma, his Old World courtliness and patrician bearing, his preternatural calmness, his air of wealth and worldly sophistication. “I’m not a good judge of people,” she said curtly.

“This cannot be true. You would not have survived so long in your profession if it were so.”

“Maybe I’ve just been lucky.”

“The panther stalking her prey does not rely on luck.”

“I’m a pilot fish, remember?”

“You are a wild thing on the hunt.”

“Takes one to know one,” she said softly.

“Indeed,” Faust said. “Indeed it does.”

Abby felt vaguely dirty after her meeting in the cafe. She had to remind herself that she’d never shaken Faust’s hand, never actually touched him at all. Even so, she couldn’t shake the sense that she needed a hot shower or, preferably, a nice long bath.

Ablutions would have to wait. She had work to do. Her first priority was to determine how the stalker was reading his quarry’s text messages.

Intercepting cellular phone calls wasn’t easy. In the old days when mobile phones used analog technology, a Radio Shack police scanner could pull in the signal. It was no more difficult than listening in on walkie-talkie transmissions.

Today’s digital cell phone signals were encrypted with cipher streams to prevent electronic eavesdropping. Even a thirty-thousand-dollar digital scanner would be unable to decode encrypted data. If it did intercept the signal, all it would get was an electronic squeal, like the irritating noise made when a modem or a fax machine connected.

But there was one way to tap a mobile phone—an
IMSI
catcher. The acronym stood for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, the unique fifteen-digit number stored in the
SIM
card of every cell phone.

The basic principle behind an
IMSI
catcher was simple enough. Cell phones were constantly seeking alternative signals in order to obtain the clearest reception. If the phone detected a cell tower with a stronger signal than the one it was currently using, it would instantly switch over.

An
IMSI
catcher simulated a cell tower. It sent out a strong signal that fooled the cell phone, tricking it into routing the transmission through the
IMSI
catcher itself. In this way it could pick up all cellular calls in its vicinity.

Even better, the
IMSI
catcher sent a command to the phone that turned off encryption. The intercepted message could be heard or read in real time.

After the
IMSI
catcher had snatched the call, it would route the signal to its intended destination—sort of an electronic catch-and-release policy. Neither the cell phone user nor the phone company would be aware of the deception.

The key, as in real estate, was location, location, location. The
IMSI
catcher had to be stationed in relatively close proximity to the targeted cell phone. That way its signal would be recognized as the strongest in the vicinity.

Elise had typically been away from home when she text-messaged Faust. But Faust had consistently been at his house when he received the messages. Abby was betting the stalker lived in Faust’s neighborhood.

Of course, there was a chance that the
IMSI
catcher was installed near Faust’s house, while the stalker himself lived elsewhere, receiving the signal remotely. Abby doubted it, though. The equipment would have to be installed indoors, hardwired into the main current. If the stalker had gone to all the trouble to find a home for his gear, he was likely to be living there himself.

A transponder of that type typically had a range of three hundred yards. That meant the eavesdropper was situated within a nine-hundred-foot radius of Faust’s home. Closer was better, naturally.

If he were a longtime neighbor, Faust probably would have seen him at some point.
Angelenos
, like most urbanites, weren’t the chummiest people when it came to making friends with the folks next door, but it was nearly impossible not to notice your neighbor at all. Abby figured the stalker was a recent arrival.

Before she left the cafe, Faust had given her his address. He lived in one of the few fashionable neighborhoods of Hollywood, the Los
Feliz
district in the foothills just south of Griffith Park. She knew the territory. Mostly houses, few apartments. Any rentals that might be available would be either single-family homes or guest cottages. The limited supply of rentals made her next step obvious. She stopped at the library.

A month’s worth of the Sunday
L.A. Times
had collected in the periodicals room. She started with the edition from three weeks ago, scanning the classifieds for real estate rentals. At that time, not long before the first stalking incident, there were five listings of interest in Faust’s neighborhood.

By the next weekend, only four properties were listed. The fifth had disappeared. Someone had rented it. The time frame fit the start of Faust’s surveillance.

No address was given, but there was a phone number, of course. With any luck it would be the number of the homeowner and not a management company. Abby used one of the library’s computer terminals to access an online reverse directory she subscribed to. The service gave her an address on Glendower Avenue, only a few doors from Faust’s place.

Now she just needed to confirm that the property had actually been rented and not taken off the market for some other reason. She called the number and inquired about the guest cottage, only to be told that it had been rented more than two weeks ago.

She rechecked the classified ad. The property was described as a guest cottage with its own kitchen. Fully furnished, featuring a wide-screen TV. Two thousand dollars a month.

The price would not have been a deterrent. Anyone with the funds to acquire an
IMSI
catcher could afford to live in the high-rent district. Electronic surveillance technology of that quality did not come cheap, and it wasn’t sold on the open market. If Faust’s stalker had gotten hold of it, he had money and connections.

Most stalkers were neither rich nor well connected. They were underachievers, drawn into their obsession as a way of compensating for failures and disappointments in the rest of their lives. This was particularly true of stalkers who fixated on celebrities. They seemed to hope that some of the glamour would rub off on them—that they could become one of the beautiful people, if only by proxy.

A well-heeled stalker, renting a luxury guesthouse and using elaborate eavesdropping gear, was something new. She liked it. Stuff like this made her job interesting. She was grateful to God for supplying her with a wide variety of crazies. It kept her from getting into a rut.

Then again, this guy might not be crazy at all.

She could think of reasons for stalking Peter Faust and Elise
Vangarten
that had nothing to do with an irrational fantasy life. Faust had killed a woman and had never been properly punished. Some people, like the victim’s relatives, might resent him for that. It was conceivable that they had hired an assassin to take him out. Or maybe Elise’s family, if she had any, wasn’t too thrilled at her choice of life partner. They might have contracted with someone to put him away. Or suppose somebody had decided to kidnap Elise for ransom. Faust was wealthy, and as he himself had observed, he did not enjoy good relations with the local police. That made him an excellent target for an extortion plot.

Lots of possibilities, but few facts. What she needed was a refresher course in Faust’s life story. If someone from his past was after him, it would help to know exactly what he had done to deserve it. She remembered the broad outline but not the details.

Ordinarily she would use the Internet to track down that info. Since she was already at the library, she decided to try it the old-fashioned way. It took her only a few minutes to locate the true-crime shelf. Naturally there were books on Faust, including one he’d written himself. In addition to his other accomplishments, he was an author—an internationally best-selling author, according to the cover of the paperback.

She didn’t start with his memoirs, though. First she flipped through a hefty volume providing an overview of notorious criminals from A to Z. Under F, she got the gist of Faust’s biography.

He was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1962, an only child, the son of upper-middle-class parents. His father was an economics professor, his mother a high-ranking bureaucrat in social services. He had an uneventful childhood and adolescence, marked only by pronounced unsociability and a single arrest, at age thirteen, for animal abuse. He had been caught using a hot fireplace poker on a neighbor’s cat.

During his young adulthood he worked a variety of jobs, never holding any of them for more than a few months. He seemed to have artistic aspirations but was not known to have sold any artwork. He attracted a small band of followers who considered him a neglected genius. He had several affairs, all short-lived. One of his girlfriends went on to commit suicide; another was confined to a psychiatric hospital.

At age thirty-five, still drifting from one employment opportunity to another, he found himself in Hamburg, known as the Venice of Germany for its intricate system of canals and its bohemian cafes. It was there that he met, kidnapped, and killed Emily Wallace, an American civilian working at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, who was visiting Hamburg on leave, sightseeing with a friend.

Faust held Emily captive for three days in his apartment before killing her. He said later that he enjoyed postponing the actual “execution,” as he called it. “I wanted to be sure the victim suffered well,” he said.

Although he made efforts to dispose of the body and cover his tracks, he was quickly arrested by the local police after Emily’s traveling companion reported her disappearance. Someone had spotted him in the vicinity of the salvage yard where the body, sans head and hands, had been dumped. His description was circulated. He was identified. What the police found in his apartment erased any possible doubt as to his guilt.

Faust never denied the crime. His parents obtained expensive legal counsel who insisted that their client was “psychologically abnormal” and suffering from “diminished responsibility.” Astonishingly, the prosecution agreed, merely requesting a slightly longer period of institutionalization. The trial lasted four days and ended with a sentence of six years in a “secure psychiatric facility.” Within three years he was released. There were rumors that his parents, politically well connected, had put pressure on the government to spring their son from confinement.

The murder had taken place a decade ago. Faust had been a free man for the past seven years, and had capitalized on his notoriety with the publication of his memoir even before his release. Once free, he had been interviewed on many TV shows, had done book readings and book signings in dozens of cities, and had been the subject of two documentary films. A big-budget feature film based on his life story had been in development for some time, though the project had stalled for lack of financing.

Emily Wallace’s family had attempted to sue for damages, only to find that Faust’s growing pile of money was salted away in Swiss bank accounts, untouchable.

Faust now divided his time between Europe and America. He had homes in Berlin and Los Angeles. He went skiing in Saint Moritz and Aspen. He was disturbingly popular in Europe, with a smaller but no less loyal following in the U.S. Prominent death-metal bands had written songs in his honor. The Goths, a major cultural force in Germany, had adopted him as their unofficial standard-bearer. Faust himself was cool to the Goths, saying of the movement, “It is a mélange of vulgar Nietzscheism and Dungeons & Dragons, dressed up in jackboots—a game for frightened children.” These comments only endeared him further to his fans.

She turned to Faust’s memoir. In chapter one, she found a firsthand description of the crime that had made him famous.

I would like to say that the murder itself was a fever dream, that I lived it in a haze of dazzled frenzy, that I knew not what I did. Then perhaps you would forgive me, and I could rejoin your most civilized company and dine in your elegant restaurants without drawing stares. I must, however, be honest. It is my one vice, honesty. I cannot bear deception. Or in saying this, am I only guilty of yet another deceit?

No matter. This is the truth. Killing Emily Wallace was my great accomplishment, and I have no wish to report it inaccurately.

I knew precisely what I did. I was in complete control of myself throughout. Indeed, I have never been so utterly sure of myself.

I killed her with a leather noose. The world knows this. It was the subject of much discussion in the press, and even gifted me with an alliterative sobriquet, the Hangman of Hamburg. In the end, this name fell out of favor, as it should have—for I did not hang Emily. I eased the noose around her neck while she lay half-conscious, shackled to the radiator. I then began to draw it tight, slowly, my fingers electric with the texture of the leather, its suppleness and softness. Leather is tanned flesh—and how it rubbed against the downy skin of her neck, how it caressed her, gently at first, while she moaned, her eyelids fluttering, her body quivering.

The bluenoses among you will never understand. They have allowed their natural bloodlust to ebb. They have smothered instinct under a blanket of homilies. They are eunuchs. Like all castrati, they will not be satisfied until the rest of humanity shares their affliction. Impotent themselves, they make their flaccidity a virtue, and paint virility as a vice.

Some of you are different. It is for you that I write. For you—and to you.

Can you feel it, the leather in your hands? The strap was thirty millimeters wide and one meter long. I pulled it tight enough to choke off breath. She came fully awake then. She tried to raise her hands, but they were fastened to the radiator. I let her struggle for air. Then I loosened the loop. She could breathe again. I heard the delicious gasp of her intake of air, a wet and hungry sound. When she had recovered her strength, I tightened the noose again.