Free Last Breath by Michael Prescott Page B

and his mistress in the same night and disappeared. Still at large. That happened in 1993.”
    “He’s probably in South America by now,” Sotheby interjected. “He had a passport and overseas bank accounts.”
    “Anything else?” Walsh pressed.
    “Janitor who strangled three female students at a junior college in Nebraska, 1989 and 1990. Still on the loose. Strangler of children who roamed the Mojave Desert, 1985 and ’86—never apprehended. In 1982—”
    “Okay.” Walsh raised his hand. “We don’t have to go back that far. Bottom line is ...”
    “Nada,” Sotheby said again with stubborn pessimism.
    “Any clue how he got access to the strip mall so he could dump the body there?” Boyle asked Walsh.
    “We’re still working on that,” Walsh said, aware that everyone present knew this answer meant no.
    “Security guard check out okay?”
    “He looks clean. West LA is handling that angle. Checking out the building’s owners, the guard—anybody who had a key.”
    Merriwether asked if there was any hope on the hair-and-fiber front.
    “Nothing new,” Walsh said. “Martha Eversol was covered with some of the same gray rayon fibers we got off Nikki Carter, but they’re too generic to help nab this guy. They’ll help convict him when he’s caught, at least.”
    “If he’s caught,” Sotheby said.
    “When,” Walsh repeated.
    No one disputed him this time. But no one met his gaze either.
    Time to wrap up. Walsh leaned forward.
    “All right, everybody. We know what today’s date is. We know what it means.”
    There were a few unnecessary glances at the calendar on the wall, where Wednesday, January 31, was circled in red.
    Nikki Carter had been abducted on November 30th. Martha Eversol, on December 31. Always the last day of the month.
    “Tonight’s his night to howl,” Walsh said. “We don’t know where he’ll strike, but we know it’ll be within the next eight hours. There are extra squad cars on the streets, extra plainclothes officers working bars and nightclubs. Stark and Merriwether, I want you covering the club where Nikki Carter disappeared. Lopez and Boyle, you cruise the neighborhood where Martha Eversol was rear-ended.”
    “He won’t return to the scene,” Stark said. “He’s too smart,”
    “You’re probably right. But we’ll do it anyway. Maybe we’ll catch a break. Christ knows, we need one.”
    Nobody could argue with that.

12
     
     
    C.J. noticed the white van on Western Avenue as she headed north into the mid-Wilshire district. It was two car lengths behind her, visible in her rear-view mirror.
    There was nothing unusual about the van, except that she recalled seeing a similar vehicle pull away from the curb outside the Newton Station parking lot when she left.
    Probably a coincidence. No reason to think the van was following her or anything.
    As she guided her Dodge Neon onto Pico Boulevard, she watched her rearview mirror to see if the van duplicated the maneuver. It did not.
    “Getting paranoid, Killer,” she admonished herself. In private she sometimes used the nickname her fellow cops had bestowed on her, even though she disliked it.
    She cruised west on Pico, planning her evening. Quick shower, bite to eat, some reps on her exercise machine, then the twenty-minute drive to Foshay Junior High School at Exposition and Western, a bad neighborhood. She was always mildly amazed when she emerged from the school and found that her car had not been stolen. Of course, it was only a matter of time until the little Dodge became another Grand Theft Auto statistic.
    Oh, well. The risk was worth it. She really believed she was making a difference in the kids’ lives. Some of them anyway.
    Take Andrew Washington, a small, wiry teen with smoldering eyes and fidgety hands. He glared at her nonstop during her first few visits as she sat amid a circle of kids and talked about the dangers they faced every day—the drug dealers trying to get them hooked, the gangbangers