Odd how nothing was real these days unless it was a picture on a screen, how life itself had become only a succession of pictures on a succession of screens, and relationships had become transmissions of electronic data, people reaching across a void. Sad, in a way.
The shape inside the bag seemed unaccountably small. Treat had not realized that Martha Eversol was so petite. It seemed wrong of him to pick on someone who was not his size. He wasn’t playing fair.
The camera followed the body until it disappeared inside the coroner’s van. When the van drove away, the newscast cut to a standup of a babbling reporter at the scene, and Treat lost interest. He clicked the TV off. He was in darkness again, alone in the silence and privacy of his bedroom.
He stood still, conscious of nothing but the expansion of his belly with each slow intake of air.
He was in a contemplative mood, as was often the case shortly before a kill. There was something about the taking of a life that made him philosophical. He supposed it was the awareness of being so near the great and final mystery of death.
In darkness he went down the hall to his bedroom, where his notebook computer rested in its docking station on the bureau. When he raised the lid, the machine flickered out of suspend mode, and the screen-another of the many screens in his life-lit up.
His fingers, long and supple like a pianist’s, prowled over the keyboard and the touchpad, initiating an Internet connection, then navigating to a bookmarked Web page.
And there she was-his next chosen one, or her electronic simulacrum. Undressing in her bedroom. Entering the lavatory. Disappearing behind the translucent shower curtain.
Treat inhaled, exhaled. Watched.
He was glad she was taking a shower.
He liked his ladies to be clean.
14
It took Rawls more than an hour to track down the network’s system administrator at home. When he finally had the man on the line, the sysadmin admitted having given the Web site only a cursory inspection. Yes, part of his job was to survey the block of IP addresses assigned by his network and ensure that no unacceptable content was being displayed, but he concerned himself mainly with content stored on the network’s servers. The Web site in question was stored on a private server; its owner used the network simply to connect his computer with the rest of the Web.
“So what’s his name?” Brand asked after Rawls had concluded the conversation.
“Mr. Steven Gader,” Rawls said. “At least that’s the name on the billing account.”
“He’s local?”
“Sure is. Got his address and his phone number. But I don’t plan on making a phone call.” Rawls smiled. “A face-to-face meeting is what I have in mind.”
“Let’s hope he’s home.” Brand shrugged on his overcoat. “Still seems like a lot of trouble to go to for a video stream of an empty room-”
“Hold on.” Rawls leaned closer to his monitor. “It’s not empty anymore.”
He had returned to the site for a last look before heading out, just in time to see a female figure enter the frame. Her image was small but reasonably sharp, her movements rendered fairly smooth by the video stream’s fast refresh rate.
Brand circled behind him and looked over his shoulder. He whistled. “Miss January is a looker. No wonder she got the most votes.”
The woman was slender and fit, her smooth brown hair falling across her shoulders. She wore a blue jumpsuit and carried a handbag, which she tossed on the nightstand. With her back to the camera she began to undress.
Rawls reached for the button that turned off his monitor. “Maybe I should-”
Brand stopped him. “Don’t you dare. This is evidence of a possible felony we’re looking at. Major privacy violation, and we are on the case.”
Rawls sighed. He didn’t want to participate in some Internet peep show, but if he put a stop to it, he would catch hell from Brand. And he needed Brand with him on this.
The woman unhooked her bra and dropped it on the bed. She sat down and kicked off her shoes, then stood and began wriggling out of the bottom half of the jumpsuit.
“Here comes the good part,” Brand whispered.
“You’re a pervert,” Rawls observed dryly.
“Can I help it if I know how to have fun on the job?”
She discarded the slacks and then her underpants. She stood naked, stretching her legs. Lean, limber legs, the legs of a dancer, an athlete.
Brand let out another low whistle and tried out his streetwise patois. “Man, she do look fine.”
Rawls cast a cold stare over his shoulder. “Notice that? She just turned on the bedside lamp. That means it’s getting dark out.” He checked his watch: 8:15. “It’s been dark here since shortly after five P.M. I’m betting there’s a three hour time difference.”
“Pacific time zone. She’s three thousand miles away.” Brand smirked. “Think she’s a California girl?”
“I couldn’t say,” Rawls answered tonelessly.
The woman stretched her arms over her head, her back still turned to the camera. Rawls could see the faint shadows of her trapezius muscles and latissimi dorsi. She was fit, strong.
“How old you think she is?” Brand asked a little too eagerly.
“Above the age of consent, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m serious.”
“Mid-twenties, I’d guess.”
“Mid-twenties. That’s a good age.” Brand himself was pushing forty, and Rawls had hit the half-century mark, a fact advertised by the whorls of gray in his hair. “You figure she’s flexing for us? For her audience, I mean?”
“No. If she knew the camera was there, don’t you think she’d turn around to give us a better show?”
“Maybe she will. This could be part of the tease.”
“I don’t think this woman has the slightest idea she’s being watched.”
“We may find out. If she turns around and flashes a big come-hither smile, then we know she’s aware of the Webcam and it’s consensual, and we can both go home.”
Rawls shook his head. “She’s not going to smile at us. And we’re not going home.”
A moment later the woman, without turning, walked into the bathroom, where she could be seen turning on the shower.
“Guess you’re right,” Brand conceded.
She stepped inside the shower stall, pulling the curtain shut, and then she was only a smeared silhouette against the translucent plastic.
Rawls stood up. “Well, let’s pay Mr. Gader a visit.”
“You sure you don’t want to, uh, monitor the site a little longer? I mean, at least until she comes out of the shower?”
“Come on, Ned.” Rawls punctuated the request by switching off his computer.
“You never let me have any fun,” Brand groused.
Rawls ignored him. He pulled on his winter coat and headed out of the office, on his way to see the man whose Web site was a locked door that opened with Bluebeard’s key.
15
C.J. stood in the shower, her head thrown back, eyes shut, letting the cone of rushing water wash away the gritty feel of the streets. Letting it wash away, as well, the memory of the white van, of the sense of being hunted-and of the boogeyman, her old nemesis.
Stupid to be thinking of him. Irrational.
Whoever that man had been, he was long gone in the California night. A wandering psychopath, a drifter. Probably he had moved on to another part of the country years ago. By now, he was in prison or he was dead.
She shut off the shower and dried her hair with a towel, left the bathroom and wrapped herself in a robe. She wandered through the bungalow.
People who knew her only from work would have been surprised by her home. It reflected a different side of her, one she kept hidden from casual acquaintances-and most of her fellow cops fell into that category. She was a collector of items that could be described either as art objects or as knickknacks. In truth, C.J. didn’t much care how they were described. She knew what she liked.