Michael Prescott - Last Breath

“We have a Web site that displays streaming video of a young woman in her home.”

“So?”

“It looks like a serious privacy-rights violation.”

“Not if, say, she’s my girlfriend. In that case, well, she gets a kick out of letting me see her naked. The site’s password-protected because we want visitors on an invitation-only basis. It’s kinky, sure, but she’s over the age of consent, and we get a kick out of it, so leave me alone.”

“How about Miss December and Miss November? They your girlfriends too?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you produce any of these women to back up your claims?”

Gader squirmed in his chair. “Let’s say I can. But I won’t. Not without a court order or whatever it takes.”

“Then we’ll get a court order-or whatever it takes.”

“No, you won’t. No way. A judge won’t listen to you with what you’ve got now. What you need is my cooperation, and I’m not offering it. So get lost.”

“What makes you think we would be deterred by your lack of cooperation, Mr. Gader?”

“Because this whole thing is too small-time and too much hassle.” Gader seemed to gain confidence from his own words. “You’ve got too many other things to run down, higher priorities. You don’t have time to screw around with this piece-of-shit case. Even if you want to, your higher-ups won’t let you. They don’t give a damn about some private Web site that might or might not be doing something skuzzy. They won’t give you the go-ahead to waste the Bureau’s resources.”

He seemed cooler now. He had convinced himself.

Rawls glanced at Brand, who wore a tight, fixed expression on his face. Rawls knew that look. It meant He’s got us, Noah.

“So that’s how it is, Mr. Gader?” Rawls asked evenly.

“Yeah, that’s how it is.”

“Well, you’re right.” Rawls surprised both Brand and Gader by saying this. “Our superiors won’t let us pursue this case on the clock. They want us handling other, higher priority cases, just as you said.”

“Great. I’m right. I win. You lose. Get lost.”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Mr. Gader, we don’t require any go-ahead from our supervisor if we choose to work this case on our own time. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re not on the clock, are we, Agent Brand?”

“Wish we were,” Brand said cheerfully.

“We’re here, even though we’re not getting paid. And we’ll pursue this matter, whether or not our colleagues want us to do so. Isn’t that right, Agent Brand?”

“Damn straight.” Brand might or might not have believed this, but he was playing along.

“We’ll pursue it as long as it takes. We’re not going to drop this investigation. Not now, not tomorrow, not a week from now, not ever.”

“We’ve signed on for the duration,” Brand volunteered, getting into the flow. “We’ll miss a lot of meals if we have to. But we’re gonna get to the bottom of this mess.”

Gader looked from one to the other. “You’re shittin’ me,” he said.

Rawls steepled his hands in his lap. “Mr. Gader, let me tell you a story. I have a daughter at Georgetown right now.”

“I don’t have to hear this-”

“Just listen,” Rawls said patiently. “Last year, when my daughter was a freshman, she found out that somebody had installed a camcorder in the dormitory bathroom. The camera was shooting eight-millimeter videotape of the women as they showered. This seems to have been going on for some time-weeks, months. And it would still be going on if my daughter hadn’t dropped her shampoo bottle and seen the camera inside a watertight bag under the drain grate. See, it was pointed up, Mr. Gader. You know the kind of footage it was taking.

“She called me, quite hysterical. I went up there on my day off, and I interviewed the men in the dorm-it’s a coed dormitory hall. I talked to them one at a time. Nobody confessed, but one young gentleman seemed nervous. I staked out his room. After midnight he threw something away. I dug it out of the trash. A bagful of videotapes. He’d gotten rattled, and he was disposing of the evidence. That fine young man isn’t a student at Georgetown anymore. Do you see the point of this story?”

Gader was trying hard not to look flustered. “I think so.”

“I’m a persistent man,” Rawls said. “Especially when it comes to privacy violations of this particular kind. When I look at that woman undressing and taking a shower on your Web site for the benefit of masturbating voyeurs, it strikes home to me in a rather personal way. It makes me think of my daughter. Now do you honestly believe I’m going to let this case go?”

“Maybe not.”

“Definitely not. So don’t play games. Don’t use delaying tactics. Don’t be clever. Just tell us what we need to know.”

Gader seemed very small inside his bathrobe. His chin was down, his eyes half-closed, his hands gripping the armrests, fingertips squeezed white with pressure. Down the street a dog started to bark. It was the only sound for a while.

“I’ll cooperate,” Gader said finally. “No problem.”

Rawls smiled. “That’s what we like to hear. Is the computer here in the house?”

“Yeah.” Gader rose, tightening the belt of his robe. “It’s upstairs.”

He led them to the second floor. Climbing the staircase, Brand hung back a few steps with Rawls.

“Great story,” Brand whispered.

“Thanks.”

“Funny thing, though. I’ve met your family. And you haven’t got a daughter.”

Rawls smiled. “Well, let’s keep that between ourselves.”

C.J. was putting her dinner dishes in the sink when something drew her gaze to the kitchen window. She looked past her pale reflection in the glass, studying the darkness of her backyard.

Amid the shadows of the jacaranda trees, she saw a light.

For a moment she just stood there, transfixed by an emotion too deeply rooted to be immediately identified. Then she understood that what she felt was fear-not an adult’s fear, but the stark, uncomplicated terror of a child.

It was him. The boogeyman.

She remembered how she had glimpsed his flashlight in the darkness outside her parents’ house, and now he was back.

The light wavered, drifting like a will-o’-the-wisp, then winked out, and she returned to herself.

This was no monster from her childhood. It was a prowler, hardly unheard of in this neighborhood or in any part of this city. And she wasn’t some terrorized schoolgirl, she was a cop. She could take care of herself. She could A noise.

Very soft, almost inaudible. Halfway between a creak and a squeal.

It might have been nothing, just the old house settling.

Or a door, opening. The back door.

Her gun. She needed her off-duty Smith. She looked around the kitchen before remembering that the gun was in her handbag, and her handbag, damn it, was in her bedroom at the rear of the bungalow.

The prudent course of action was to leave the house, drive to Wilshire Station, come back with a patrol unit.

But she wasn’t going to do that. Wasn’t going to be chased out of her home by a glimpse of light and a barely audible creak.

No gun? Then make do with another weapon.

She opened the cutlery drawer and pulled out a carving knife. Part of her recalled the knife she’d grabbed from another kitchen before descending into the crawl space. But she refused to think about that.

She studied the knife. It was long and wickedly sharp and felt heavy in her hand. She liked its weight, the gleam of its blade. But she would have liked her. 38 Smith better.

Knife in hand, she advanced toward the rear of the house.

No lights burned in this part of the bungalow. She had turned off the light on her nightstand before leaving the bedroom. Now she wished she hadn’t.