Michael Prescott - Last Breath

This was such a non sequitur that Rawls could only echo, “Spiders?”

A grunt from Walsh. “He laid a trap for our SWAT team… or for anybody else who tried to corner him in his lair. Installed the cover of a fluorescent lighting panel on the ceiling of the hallway inside his apartment. But there’s no light fixture behind it. Instead, there’s spiders.”

“How many?” Rawls asked softly.

“A million of the goddamned things, for all I know. The asshole locks himself in his bedroom behind a steel door, then kills the hallway light-he rewired the switch so he could operate it from inside his room-then activates a hydraulic cable that runs through the ceiling. Simple principle-the Plexiglas cover of the lighting panel is spring-loaded, and the cable releases the spring. Cover slides back, spiders fall out.”

“A million of them.”

“Give or take.”

“Venomous spiders?”

“Oh, sure. Probably not normally aggressive, but when they’ve been dumped out of their cage like that…”

“They bite. How bad is it?”

“We’ve got four SWAT members in the hospital, plus another Sheriff’s deputy who got bitten when he reached the scene. Fumigators are spraying the apartment now. Probably have to evacuate the building

… It’s got central air, and some of the spiders may have gotten into the ducts.”

“Nightmare,” Rawls breathed. No wonder the detective sounded beaten.

“Hasn’t been my best day. Or anybody else’s either. Except for the suspect. He got away clean through a secret exit.”

“Take anything?”

“His computer, it looks like. A laptop, obviously. He must own one. There’s a, whatchamacallit, docking station in his bedroom.”

“If he has a mobile connection or he can get access to a phone jack, he can monitor the Web site.”

“And the video feed. I know. I kept it up and running. He knows we’re on to him, but he doesn’t necessarily know we’re aware of the site.”

“Does that help us?”

“Who knows?” Walsh sighed again. “Can’t hurt. Frankly, I’ll take any advantage I can get over this creep. Hold on a sec.”

Rawls heard Walsh talking to somebody in the background, relaying orders in an exhausted voice. He glanced at Brand. “It’s a mess in

“So I gathered. Hey, this guy always strikes on the last night of the month, right?”

“So?”

“Just strikes me as funny, that’s all. The coincidence, I mean.”

“Coincidence?”

“You getting the tip-off e-mail on the same day when this dude is getting set to knock off victim number three.”

Rawls stared at him, thinking. “Now that you mention it,” he said finally, “it is kind of funny.”

Then Walsh was back on the line. “Sorry about the interruption. Things are pretty hairy here. I’ve got to go.”

“Just one thing, Morrie. You never explained about the tattoos. When I asked, you started talking about spiders. What’s the connection?”

“Black widows. They have that same hourglass mark.”

“I see.”

“That’s what the tats were all about. Goddamned spiders-not time.” Walsh was beating himself up, taking the blame for having made the wrong deduction. Rawls heard the harsh self-accusation in his voice.

“It could be both,” Rawls said gently. “A symbol for both things.”

“Could be, but evidently it isn’t. Christ, did I ever fuck this up.”

“Morrie-”

Walsh kept talking, unwilling to be consoled. “He never had a four-hour timetable. Even the name we had for him was wrong. He’s not the Hourglass Killer. He has another name for himself. A better name.”

“What name?”

“It’s right here in his journal. Yeah, we found that, or at least the Sheriff’s crime-scene people did. He tells us who he really is on the very first line.”

Rawls waited.

“ ‘I am the Webmaster,’ ” Walsh recited. “Kind of says it all, doesn’t it?”

I am the Webmaster.

Treat repeated the words to himself, driving through a village of names.

His car was a secondhand Buick, which he kept in a parking space six blocks from his apartment specifically for emergencies like this. After his escape from the local gendarmes, he had roved through alleys and side streets until he reached the Buick. The key, as always, was hidden in a magnetic case under the chassis. The car was registered under an alias and could not be readily connected to him. Stowed in the trunk were a set of false IDs, wads of cash, a passport, a disguise kit, and an overnight bag containing a change of clothes and a toothbrush. He believed in being prepared.

At first he considered driving out of state, beginning a new life somewhere else. Or ditching the car at LAX and taking a flight to the Midwest-someplace safely banal, like Omaha. But there was a chance the police would be looking for him at the airports. Even the roads might be blocked, though he doubted it.

Besides, he wanted to hang around. There was Caitlin to think of. He still wanted his chance with her.

In the meantime, he had to go someplace. One possibility was the house in Silver Lake where he had committed his crimes. He could hole up in the basement, perhaps. But the defects in this plan were obvious. The authorities had already identified him and tracked him to his home. They might just as easily have discovered his killing ground. He had to steer clear of Silver Lake.

Good thinking, but it had left him with nowhere to go. Aimlessly he’d headed north from Hacienda Heights until he entered the sprawling community of West Covina. Then he had known where his instincts were carrying him, and he’d bowed to their wisdom, driving east on Amar Road and turning south into a sizable tract housing development. He had driven here on other nights. For him, it was a relaxing place to be, a place to decompress.

There was a fashion among housing developers of choosing a theme for street names. Often the streets were named in honor of the wildlife species they had displaced-Spotted Owl Circle, say. Other times a western motif was selected-Stagecoach Lane, Corral Avenue, Saddleback Court. He had seen communities that reached for a regal air with streets like King Henry Drive and Prince Edward Way. But the builders of this particular development had opted for a theme more congenial to Treat’s tastes. Nearly every one of the twisting, winding avenues and byways bore a woman’s name.

He motored slowly through the complex, past neat little houses, windows aglow with reading lights and television sets, and he scanned each signpost as it moved past the Buick’s windshield.

Kimberly Drive.

Then a series of courts-Joan Court, Kate Court, Kerry, Kathleen, June, Jessica, Justine.

Jacqueline Drive. Helen Lane. April Way. Sarah and Sonya and Stacey and Stephanie. Regina and Rebecca and Ruth and Ruby.

So many memories. And the promises of new memories to come.

There had been a Kimberly for him in Utah. She was a waitress in a roadside diner, and he killed her with a garrote at the end of her shift. Her hair was red, and her waitress uniform was red, and her blood was red as it trickled down her neck from the line incised across her throat by the taut piano wire.

And there had been a Kate, as well. Schoolteacher in Boulder, Colorado. He had been repairing telephone lines back then. He fixed the static on her line, then returned a few weeks later and fixed her. He had always disliked educators, and it had given him special pleasure to teach her this final lesson, a lesson in pain.

Oddly, he’d had no J’s. No Joan, June, Jessica, Justine, Jacqueline. He could have-should have-had a Caitlin Jean tonight. But he preferred not to think about that. No point dwelling on a rare failure, when he had enjoyed so many successes.