“It’ll keep you humble,” Kendra told him.
“Yeah, right.”
John came in then and immediately asked, “Anybody heard from Maggie?”
“Not since you have,” Quentin told him. “She was going to interview Ellen Randall and then stop off at the hospital to see Hollis Templeton, right?”
“So she said.”
“Hasn’t had time to do both, I’d say. And where have you been?”
“Letting Drummond vent some of his spleen.”
Quentin grimaced. “Yeah, I thought when he was so painfully polite to us this morning that he was itching to explode.”
John shrugged. “I thought it’d be better for all of us if he got it out of his system.”
“We appreciate that,” Jennifer said dryly.
“I won’t say it was a pleasure—but you’re welcome.” Obviously restless, John looked at his watch, then sat down at the conference table. “Andy’s still trying to hurry the medical examiner, but it’ll probably be late this afternoon before we have the results of the postmortem on Samantha Mitchell.”
“I’m not surprised,” Quentin said absently, prowling back and forth in front of the bulletin boards. “According to the police scanner we were listening to yesterday, there were a couple of really bad fires in the city, with fatalities. The M.E.’s probably got more than he can handle.”
“Still,” John said.
“Still,” Quentin agreed. He prowled a while longer, but when Kendra gave him a very direct look, he finally sat down across from John. Half under his breath, he said, “For somebody with a uniquely flexible mind, she gets very irritated by the smallest things.”
“Even I was getting irritated,” John told him dryly.
Jennifer added, “Me too, but I wasn’t going to mention it.”
“Then why did you?” Quentin demanded.
“Everybody else did.”
Quentin sighed. “All right, all right. Can I help it if I’m restless? I hate this part of the job. Basically just sitting around going through papers and scratching our heads while we wait for the bastard to make another move.” He watched John look at his watch again and added, “And I’m not the only one who hates it.”
Ignoring that, John said, “Scott’s out talking to Tara Jameson’s coworkers, right?”
Quentin nodded. “Kendra’s been running background checks on every name we’ve got, but so far everyone in her life looks clean. The fiancé definitely is, with a strong alibi to boot. No family here in the city. Andy has a couple of detectives canvassing the building again, and I just spent the past two hours going over the security videotapes.”
“And found nothing, I gather?”
“Nada. I have a hunch the tapes don’t show anything because he monkeyed with the cameras, but I’m no expert.”
“Then we need to send them to someone who is.”
“That’s my thinking.”
Jennifer said, “The security company will raise hell, most likely. They swear their cameras have not been altered in any way, that it would have been impossible for any unauthorized person to do that. Of course, they also can’t explain how Tara Jameson vanished from her supposedly secure building. The egg on their faces isn’t pretty.”
“Has Andy made an official request for the cameras?” John asked.
She nodded. “He’s doing that as we speak. And we have technicians standing by to take the things apart as soon as we get our hands on them.”
“So we wait,” Quentin said with a sigh. “I hate waiting.” He stared at the bulletin board. “Kendra, any luck from the databases on that 1894 date?”
She shook her head without a glance at the humming laptop before her. “Not so far. Hardly surprising, considering we’re going back more than a hundred years. Most records that old haven’t been digitized yet.”
“If it comes to that,” Jennifer said, “we aren’t even sure the 1894 date is part of this. Even if it was on the note, it doesn’t have to mean anything. Maybe our mysterious tipster just wants to make us waste time looking.”
Quentin looked at her for a long moment, then said matter-of-factly, “You wrote the note, Jenn.”
She stared at him. “What? No, I didn’t.”
“Look in your notebook.” His voice remained steady, even gentle. “You’ll find a page torn out. The page you found in your car will match it.”
At first it seemed she wouldn’t do it, but finally she opened her small black notebook on the table and slowly flipped through the pages covered by her neat shorthand notes. They all saw her pause. And they all saw her rub her finger gently across the ragged remains of a torn-out page.
By the time Maggie left Ellen Randall’s house just after noon, she felt drained. She drove only as far as the nearest recreation area and stopped there, carefully parking her car in an open space where she could see anyone approach her, and warily leaving the engine running even as she double-checked to make certain all the doors were locked.
For several minutes, she sat there studying her surroundings, senses probing. Nothing. The place was virtually deserted on this dreary weekday. Still, Maggie couldn’t quite relax and kept glancing up from time to time even as she opened her sketchbook and looked at the still-incomplete sketch of the rapist/killer.
Ellen hadn’t been able to add anything to what Maggie already knew, and her continuing pain and anguish were still so intense it was difficult for Maggie to feel anything else right now, but she tried to concentrate.
Longish hair. Roughly oval face—maybe. Difficult to be sure, since he always seemed to wear a plastic mask of some kind. Eyes? Who knew what shape or color. Who knew if his nose was straight, or his mouth thin-lipped or full. Who knew if his ears were set high or low.
None of the women had seen him. Not so much as a glance. They had only felt what he did to them. Felt his body against theirs, felt his hands touching them.
His hands.
Hardly aware of what she was doing, Maggie turned to a fresh page and began slowly, tentatively drawing. Her eyes were half closed, remembered voices soft in her mind while remembered suffering made her ache.
. . . felt his hands holding my wrists . . .
. . . he pushed my chin up, as if he wanted to look at my throat, and then he touched it . . .
. . . he was holding my legs apart . . .
. . . strong, so strong. The grip of his fingers was so strong, his nails bit into my skin even through the gloves I know he was wearing, dug into my very bones . . .
. . . he cupped my cheek with this obscene gentleness, and then I felt his teeth . . .
. . . he was squeezing my breasts and I could hear him breathing, panting . . .
. . . his nails dug into me . . .
. . . he slapped me, and I felt—
—the ring he wore tore her flesh, laid it open along her jawline. She could feel the warm wetness of her own blood trickling down over her throat, feel him hanging over her like some monstrous creature out of her nightmares. Part of her was glad he’d wrapped the nightgown around her head in a blindfold, because she was terrified to see his face, to see the animal he’d become. But she was even more terrified of what he was going to do to her now that he had her helpless. She felt his hands roughly tying her wrist to the bedpost just as he’d tied the other one, and a low moan of protest and anguish throbbed in her bruised throat.
Bobby . . . don’t, please . . . Bobby, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—
Maggie came out of it with a start, hearing an odd little whimper that at first she didn’t even recognize as coming from her own throat. With shaking hands, she wiped at the tears on her face, looking around her to make certain there was no one near as well as to ground herself once more in the here and now.
A peaceful scene. A park mostly deserted on this Wednesday afternoon in November, a bit damp and chilly, but unthreatening. Quiet.
Safe? Probably not, but for the moment she was safe, surely. For the moment.
But it was neve
rtheless several long and unsettling minutes before the overwhelming terror and strange sense of guilt finally left her, before her breathing steadied and the hot pressure of tears eased.
Before she could nerve herself to look down at what she’d drawn.
Hands. A man’s hands reaching out for something or someone, raw-boned in their brutal strength. Awful in their sick, grasping hunger. Large, sinewy, ugly. With sparse black hairs sprinkled across the backs and even onto the fingers. Nails that were surprisingly long but ragged because he bit them.
Because he bit them . . .
The fleeting memory, wispy as smoke, drifted away, and Maggie was left staring down at the hands she’d drawn. So unique she knew she’d recognize them instantly if she saw them in the flesh. But otherwise there was nothing to identify them—except the rings.
On the right hand was a big gold ring, inset with some kind of stone.
On the left hand was a wedding band.
Maggie stared down at the sketch for a long time, her gaze locked on the hands that had tortured and maimed and murdered so many women.
“Bobby,” she whispered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
But how could I have written it without knowing I had?” Jennifer protested. “I swear to you, I don’t remember anything except finding the note in my car.”
“Of course you don’t remember,” Quentin said soothingly. “I’m not saying you did it consciously, Jenn.”
She scowled at him. “How else could I have done it?”
“It’s called automatic writing. It’s a way to free the unconscious mind, to tap into our own memories or abilities.”
“You’re saying I remembered those dates?”
“No, in your case I’m saying it was a latent ability you tapped into.” He traded glances with Kendra. “We’re not entirely sure where it comes from, but automatic writing sometimes shows up during stressful situations, especially in cases of extreme need. You tend to be intuitive, don’t you?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“That’s usually the case. Someone with good intuition can often tap into unsuspected, latent abilities.”
“Are you saying I’m psychic?”
“No, I’m saying that with the right trigger some time during the early years of your life, you might have been. There’s a theory that most humans have some sort of extrasensory ability if we only know how to tap into it. Maybe left over from more primitive times, when we needed an edge just to survive one day to the next.”
“I’ve heard that,” Jennifer admitted.
Quentin nodded. “In this case, you badly wanted an answer, or at least something to point you in the right direction, so your subconscious tried to help, opening itself up—sort of like an antenna. Thoughts are just energy, after all, the electrical impulses of the brain.”
She was still frowning. “My mind picked up somebody else’s thoughts?”
“Caught the gist of them, let’s say.” He frowned as he thought of those two dates. “The bare gist.”
“And those thoughts just happened to come from the rapist?”
“There are few coincidences in life, I’ve found. You’re looking for him, and have been for months. He’s . . . embedded in your consciousness. Science is only beginning to understand the way our brains work, but suppose the electrical energy of our individual minds has a signature as distinctive as a fingerprint. That’s entirely possible. And maybe there’s a part of our brains that can recognize those signatures, even if we can’t do it consciously.”
“So my subconscious sort of tracked his?”
“Maybe. It’s certainly a possibility. In any case, we’ve found that the source automatic writing taps into tends to be surprisingly both specific and accurate.”
She eyed him. “Has anybody ever told you that you are a very weird FBI agent?”
“Frequently.”
“I’m not surprised.”
John said, “But he is making sense. At least, I think he is. And none of us has been able to come up with any other explanation for how that note got into your car.”
Jennifer sighed. “Great, that’s just great. Now I not only talk to myself, but my subconscious mind is listening in on other minds.”
“Only under extreme stress,” Quentin reminded her gravely.
She got up. “I’m leaving now. I’m going out on the streets to talk—out loud—to some of the uniforms who patrol the area where Hollis Templeton was found.”
“Still looking for your transient?”
“I’m going to find him, dammit. With absolutely no help from my subconscious.”
Kendra asked, “Mind if I come along? I don’t know if I’ll be any help, since this is your territory rather than mine, but God knows I could use the fresh air and exercise. If I stare at this laptop much longer, I’ll either go to sleep or go nuts.”
Jennifer barely hesitated. “Sure. I’d welcome the company.”
“Don’t get into trouble,” Quentin told his partner.
“Without you along,” she responded politely, “how on earth would I?”
“Ouch,” John murmured.
“She’s mean when she loses sleep,” Quentin told him.
Kendra wiggled her fingers gently at her partner and followed a grinning Jennifer from the room.
Quentin sighed. “I don’t think Jennifer quite bought the automatic-writing explanation. Sometimes I forget how hard this sort of thing is for most people to accept.”
“But you do believe that’s where the note came from?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Then am I wrong in thinking the chances are the rapist was somewhere close by when Jennifer . . . tuned in on him?”
“You caught that, huh?” Quentin smiled. “Yeah, probably. Distance is usually a factor, so it’s likely he was nearby. That’s why Kendra’s tagging along with Jenn. We don’t figure this is the sort of guy who hangs around police stations because cops fascinate him; if he was here, it was because he was watching someone.”
“Jennifer?”
“Maybe. He might well consider grabbing a cop to be the ultimate challenge.”
“But it could have been any woman entering or leaving this building?”
“Of course. Or any woman in the general area, for that matter. There’s no way to know for sure.”
“Figures.” John looked at his watch again and said restlessly, “I know there hasn’t been a lot of time and virtually no new information, but are you two profilers getting a handle on the way this animal’s mind works?”
Quentin tapped a finger on the legal pad in front of him, where his neat printing filled most of the top page. “Maybe.”
“And?”
“And the bastard likes his work. A lot.”
“Yeah, I got that. Answer me this. Why have victims of his attacks survived when those in 1934 didn’t? I mean, if he’s copying the crimes.”
“Good question. I’d guess he expected them to die; he took care always to leave them in out-of-the-way locations where they were more than likely to remain undiscovered, certainly long enough to bleed to death or die of exposure, especially this time of year. The fact is, those women fought to stay alive, maybe harder than he expected. And after three straight victims survived, he made damned sure Samantha Mitchell wouldn’t, by cutting her throat.”
“If he expected them to die, why bother to blind them?”
“To keep them from seeing. Maybe his face, or maybe something else. He didn’t want them watching him, didn’t want them to see what he did to them. Maybe didn’t want them to know he enjoyed it.”
John’s mouth twisted. “Christ.”
“Yeah. Not a nice boy.”
“Massive understatement.” John was silent for a long time, his gaze moving over the photos and sketches on the bulletin boards. Then, slowly, he said, “Quentin, do you believe in fate?”
“Yep.”
“That was quick.”
Quentin chuckled. “John, when you do the sort o
f work I do, you get most of your own philosophies and beliefs figured out early on. You bet I believe in fate. I also believe in reincarnation—and the two are definitely connected. Is there a karmic pattern to our lives? You’d better believe it.”
“What about free will?”
“Oh, there’s that too. I never understood why people think they’re mutually exclusive. Ask me, our entire lives aren’t planned out for us—just some things. Specific events along the way, crossroads we’re meant to come to. Tests, maybe, to measure our progress. But we always have choices, and those choices can send us along an unplanned path.”
“And change our fates?”
“I believe so. Still, if you listen to Bishop and Miranda—and I certainly do, though don’t tell them I admitted that—there are some things that are meant to happen at a certain moment and in a certain way. No matter which path you choose, which decisions you make along your own particular journey, those pivotal moments appear to be set in stone. Maybe they represent the specific lessons we’re meant to learn.”
“Set in stone. Things we have to face. Things we have to learn. Responsibilities we have to fulfill. And mistakes we have to correct.” John continued to stare broodingly at the bulletin board.
Quentin watched his friend for a moment, then said quietly, “So that’s it. That’s why Maggie does what she does. Atonement?”
“She says . . . she’s responsible for the continued existence of this bastard. Because she didn’t stop him once before, as she was meant to.”
“I see. No copycat at all, just the same twisted, evil soul reborn to do his thing one more time.”
John looked at him. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered something along these lines.”
“A reincarnated killer?”
“That’s right.” Quentin’s smile was a bit wry. “Reincarnated, resurrected—or just plain dead and still kicking. An amazingly resilient thing, evil.”
“You’re saying Maggie really is responsible for this?”
“I’m saying the universe might be holding her accountable for it, or for some part of it. Maybe that’s why she was put in this particular place at this particular time and given the abilities she was born with.”