Michael Prescott - Last Breath

A shiver ran through her. She felt the need to get out of the bedroom, if only for a minute or two.

She walked down the hall, past the spot where Adam had ambushed her and she’d dropped the knife-gone now, bagged and tagged by the evidence techs. Then into the living room, past the den where her computer was set up. The computer looked different to her now. It seemed vaguely menacing, and when she saw her reflection pass across the blank monitor, she felt her stomach twist.

Maybe from now on she would not haunt the online auction sites. Maybe she would just start going to garage sales-or find another hobby altogether. She had always liked using the computer, had liked the thought of connecting with the world through her telephone line, but now she knew that the same thread of wire could allow the world to connect with her.

Into the kitchen now. Looking out the window at the dark backyard. The Metro D Platoon was out there-the SWAT team-concealed in the bushes, watching her as she watched the night.

Watchers everywhere.

Was Treat one of them? Had he seen her in the bedroom? Would he come?

He had to. Both of them had waited too long to play the deciding round of this contest.

They had to end it now.

On elbows and knees Gavin Treat wriggled through yards of dust and nets of spiderwebs. There were many fine arachnid specimens down here, enough to get him started on a new collection, but at the moment they held no interest for him.

Caitlin was all that mattered. Caitlin, home at last.

He had seen her on the laptop’s screen, of course, Caitlin in her LAPD jacket-a borrowed jacket from the look of it, lent to her by some chivalrous member of the constabulary.

And of course, he had heard her too.

The construction of the bungalow was reasonably good, but the floorboards still creaked with every footstep.

Lying in the dark crawl space under the house, he had heard her enter, had traced her progress through the living room and down the hall, had known of her presence even before she entered the bedroom and became an image on a screen.

The crawl space had been his hiding place for the past two hours, ever since he quit his aimless driving and decided to hole up out of sight. He had come here, to Caitlin’s house, partly in hopes of taking her by surprise when she returned, and partly on the principle so admirably set forth in that old short story by Poe-“The Purloined Letter,” wasn’t it? Hide in plain sight. Wherever the police might be looking for him, they would not think to check Caitlin’s home.

It was easy enough to pick the lock on the back door and slip inside, locking the door behind him. He had planned to stay above ground, naturally, but the living room and kitchen were no good-too many windows to be seen through. And the bedroom, too, was out. Although the drapes were closed, the Webcam was still running, and he could not afford to let his image go out on the Web. There was no reason to think the police knew of the Web site, but others did-Steven Gader and his like-minded subscribers to the site. He did not wish to be seen by them or by anyone.

By process of elimination, the laundry room remained as the best place of concealment. It was windowless and not under surveillance. He entered it, and then he saw the trapdoor in the floor.

He knew at once that it led to a crawl space. The irony of it pleased him immensely. She had hidden from him in a crawl space years ago. Now he would turn the tables.

He had waited, prone under the low subfloor, amid the rusty plumbing pipes and the scuttling bugs, with only the glow of his laptop’s screen to light the darkness. The computer, wired into the AC, could run indefinitely. He was unaware of any hunger or impatience or discomfort. For him, there was only the soft glow of the screen, the creak of the house settling, the distant, steady beat of his heart.

He passed the time by preparing for the kill.

He intended to take her in her bedroom. He did not want an audience.

His preparations were nearly completed when she entered the house.

Now he bellied his way to the trapdoor and pushed it open slowly, wary of any sound that might give him way. Then he hoisted himself into the unlighted laundry room. Standing, he listened at the closed door to the hall. Footsteps passed by, diminishing.

She had gone back into the bedroom.

That was fine. That was perfect.

Treat opened the door and stepped into the hall.

“Something funny about the feed,” Brand was saying.

Rawls squinted at the image of the empty bedroom. “What about it?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t it look different to you?”

“Same room. Same lighting. Same camera angle.”

“Yeah, but there’s something…” Brand waved his hand, searching for the word. “Flicker. That’s what.”

“Streaming video always flickers.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m saying-oh, hell, maybe I’m just tired.”

“I’ll bet you are.” Rawls swiveled his chair closer to the computer. “But that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.” He started tapping the keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“We know the user name and password for the remote sysadmin. We can get into the site’s file manager, see if anybody’s been monkeying with the video.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Brand said. “Forget about it. I’m beat, that’s all. Seeing things.”

Rawls kept typing. He didn’t answer.

The most difficult thing was not to look at the camera.

C.J. knew where it was. Detectives Walsh and Cellini had told her that it was most likely installed inside the curtain rod over her bedroom window. The rod was a hollow cylinder, large enough to hide a miniature camera, and it was painted dark brown, so dark that a tiny hole drilled in the surface would not be visible except on close inspection.

Treat must have entered her house when she was at work, planted the camera, and run the electrical wire through the rod and into the wall, tapping into the main circuitry.

She wished she could study the wall for signs of spackling and repainting, but she didn’t dare. Anyway, she knew she would see nothing. Treat was a planner, not unlike Adam. He would leave nothing to chance. Most likely he had found the can of interior house paint she kept in the garage and used it when painting over his handiwork. The color would match exactly.

He was smart. Had to be, if he’d eluded capture for more than two decades, an extraordinarily long run for any criminal, and unheard of for a serial killer. Then again, only the ones who got caught were known. How many other men like Gavin Treat were out there, moving from town to town, state to state, changing their MO and their selection of victims-killing children sometimes, then adults-using different methods, different strategies-leaving no clues? Was Treat an isolated freak, or was he only a single soldier in an unseen army, one among hundreds, thousands?

She paced the bedroom, then stopped. He might be watching her right now. She should not appear agitated. She had to act normal.

What would she normally do in her bedroom at ten minutes to two in the morning? Go to sleep, obviously. But she couldn’t undress in front of that camera, not when she knew it was there.

Maybe she would just lie on the bed, fully clothed. Pretend to read or something. But to look natural, she had to take off the borrowed LAPD jacket. And that posed another problem-the Beretta in her waistband. Couldn’t let the camera see that.

Casually she sidled up against the bureau, orienting herself so that her right hip, where the gun was hidden, would not be visible from the Webcam’s vantage point. She slipped off the jacket and placed it in the top drawer of the bureau.