Andy rose. “Then I say we check DMV records for a black Caddie. What model, do you think? Old covers a lot of territory.”
Quentin came back to the conference table, still frowning. “Joey’s dad was killed twenty-five years ago. As I recall, he drove a 1972 Caddie. To be on the safe side, I’d cover 1970 to at least ’76.”
“Right.” Andy grimaced slightly. “There can’t be too many thirty-year-old black Caddies still on the road, surely, at least not in Seattle.”
“Let’s hope not.”
On the point of turning away, Andy said, “You look worried again.”
“Yeah. Let’s just say that Joey has all the subtlety and caution of the proverbial bull in a china shop.”
“So if he finds that Caddie—”
“He’s apt to find a hell of a lot more than he can handle,” Quentin finished grimly.
“Then we’d better find it first.” Andy left the room.
Quentin was left alone with his thoughts, and none of them was pleasant. He had no idea where Joey had been calling from and knew he had little chance of finding him before Joey quite possibly found trouble. Bad trouble. As much as Quentin wanted to find and catch the rapist, he really hoped Joey’s lead at the very least failed to point Joey in the right direction.
All Quentin’s training and experience told him that Joey’s simple cunning and brute strength would be no match for the evil he was trying to find. Bad as he was, Joey wasn’t nearly bad enough to successfully fight something he could never understand. Unless he was very, very lucky, he would lose that fight. Problem was, Joey had never been lucky.
And there were too many deaths on Quentin’s conscience as it was.
“Shit,” he said again, softly this time. He sent a restless glance toward his phone, wishing Joey would call again but certain he wouldn’t, not because of any premonition but because he knew Joey was hell-bent to find the rapist and so do something to help Quentin and repay an old debt. A debt Quentin had not hesitated to use in the ensuing years to keep Joey in line and out of trouble.
He was really beginning to wish he hadn’t done that.
Trying not to worry about what he couldn’t change, Quentin drew another file toward him and tried once again to figure out what was bugging him. But before he could get too deep into that, Andy returned to the room.
“The M.E.’s report on Samantha Mitchell,” he told Quentin, not without satisfaction. “A few hours earlier than expected.”
“Anything we didn’t know?” Quentin asked, accepting the folder and opening it.
“Nah, not really. At least, not that I can see.”
Quentin began reading the report, and almost immediately stiffened. “Shit.”
Alarmed by the tone, Andy said, “What?”
“She died there? Samantha Mitchell died where her body was found?”
“Yeah. But we knew that.”
Quentin grabbed his cell phone and began punching in a number, saying grimly, “Not all of us knew it.”
John couldn’t have said why he felt uneasy. Maybe it was simply because he still had trouble even imagining what Maggie was doing, what it was like to literally feel the sensations and emotions experienced by another person days and even weeks before, simply by walking through a place where they had occurred. Maybe it was this dark, chilled, and definitely eerie building. Or maybe it was just his own increasing sensitivity to emotions. His.
And hers.
“Creepy place, even with only five senses,” he offered, more to maintain contact with Maggie than anything else.
He saw her turn her head toward him for a brief instant, but then she was gazing toward that dark doorway at the end of the hall, moving toward it.
John had the strongest impulse to stop her, to get his hands on her so that he could—could what?
His cell phone rang, and he jumped as the strident sound broke the silence. Maggie didn’t even seem to hear it, still walking toward the room, going through the doorway. He followed, though he was still behind her as he dug his phone out and opened it. And he heard even before he could get the phone to his ear.
“John? Get out of there.” Quentin’s voice was sharp, imperative.
“What? What’re you—”
“Listen to me. Get out of there. Get Maggie out. Now. She died there, John. Samantha Mitchell died there, in that room. And if Maggie gets too close—”
John heard a thud, saw Maggie’s flashlight hit the floor, and quickly pointed his own at her. He was still behind her and at first saw only the cloud of her hair, long and a little wild. But then she turned slowly, making an odd choking sound.
Her hands were at her throat, the face above them very pale, and her mouth was open as though she wanted to say something to him.
For an eternal instant, John was frozen, just staring at her. Then she took her hands from her throat, looking at them as though they belonged to someone else.
Her hands were covered with blood.
So was her throat.
Jennifer rejoined Kendra beside the car and shrugged wearily. “There are an awful lot of transients in this area, so I guess I can’t blame the uniforms for not noticing one in particular. Dammit.”
“We can check the shelters again.”
“I know. But they won’t start filling up until tonight.”
Kendra nodded. “And I noticed that a few likely people to question sort of melted away when we got here.”
“Yeah. The uniforms say everybody’s jumpy as hell around here. And, of course, some of the transients figure if we can’t find the actual rapist we’ll make do with one of them.” She sighed. “Really can’t blame them for the distrust, but it doesn’t make the job any easier.”
“No.” Slowly, Kendra added, “Didn’t your patrolman friend say Robson was picked up for creating a disturbance?”
“Yeah. According to the arrest report, he was accosting people coming out of that liquor store just down the block, babbling something about how the ghost of his old enemy was coming after him. And he kept looking toward the building over there where Hollis Templeton was found.” Jennifer shook her head, suddenly uncomfortable under the other woman’s steady, clear-eyed gaze. “At the very least, this is turning into a real wild-goose chase. I don’t know why I thought it could be a legitimate lead. Just a drunk rambling, probably.”
“There must have been something that drew your attention. Something that alerted your instincts.”
Jennifer fumbled for a toothpick and made herself say, “Maybe it was just desperation. Maybe I’m imagining leads where none exist.”
Kendra smiled faintly. “I doubt that. You’re too good a cop to imagine something like that. You trust the friend who gave you the tip, right? That was why you followed up on it initially.”
“Yeah.”
“But there was something else, wasn’t there? Maybe something you read in the arrest report?”
Jennifer almost denied it, but then as she recalled details of the report one by one, she realized what had caught her attention. And felt the rush of adrenaline she always felt when a puzzle piece fell into place. “Yeah, there was something. Most of his ramblings didn’t make sense—he’s more schizophrenic than bipolar, if you ask me—but Robson did say something that struck me.”
“What?”
“He said the ghost of his old enemy was carrying a sack over one shoulder—a sack with puppies in it. Robson was certain the ghost was going to drown the puppies, then come back for him.”
Kendra nodded slowly. “There was something alive in the sack, that’s what he saw. Something moving.”
“Yeah. That, plus the fact that this ghost of his was carrying anything at all, seemed to me just a bit too detailed to be completely delusional.”
Turning to study the building in the distance where Hollis had been found, Kendra said, “I’d guess at least a few transients use that half-demolished warehouse there on the corner for shelter when the weather’s bad. It was cold when Hollis was
found, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, very.”
“Am I wrong, or can the rear of that building be seen from at least one side of the warehouse?”
“Let’s go find out.”
Ten minutes later, the two women stood gingerly on a rusted old catwalk still connected to a single interior wall of what remained of the warehouse. There wasn’t much inside the building, but what was there was clear evidence that at least a few people had been using the place as shelter recently. There was some old furniture—a mildewed sofa and ragged chair— grouped in one corner with a threadbare tarp providing a third wall to help keep out at least the worst of the wind, and a fire had been kindled in an old trash barrel in the center of the area, obviously for warmth.
With the toe of one shoe, Jennifer nudged a pile of newspapers and old rags that had clearly been used as a bed up on the catwalk. “Scary place to sleep, I’d think.”
“But maybe safer than down there,” Kendra pointed out, gesturing toward the concrete floor below. “At least from the viewpoint of a paranoid schizophrenic. The way this thing creaks, it would certainly provide a warning if company came.”
“Yeah. And maybe he slept underneath the window for the same reason—because he was paranoid and wanted to keep an eye on things.” Jennifer looked at the window just above the makeshift bed; it was the only one that still had opaque frosted glass in most of its panes, but two of the panes were missing. And through the openings, she had a dandy view of the rear of the building where Hollis had been found. “And take a look—you were right.”
Kendra leaned in to glance out the window. “Far as I can tell, this is probably the only vantage point in the area where that entrance would be clearly visible. Isn’t that a streetlight just off the corner there?”
“Yeah. So even on a dark night, Robson—if it was him up here—could have seen someone go into the building and could have been able to tell he was carrying something wrapped in a tarp or in a sack, something that moved.”
“A ghost. Maybe masked, eerie in the light. Or maybe even someone he really did recognize from his own past.” Kendra looked at Jennifer with a faint smile. “If you ask me, this is no wild-goose chase we’re on. I say we keep looking for David Robson.”
Conscious of the familiar adrenaline rush, Jennifer nodded. “I agree.”
It was only a few minutes later, as they got into the car, that she added, “How did you know there was something in the report that could have been important, anyway? You never saw the report, did you?”
“No.”
“Well, then?”
Kendra smiled. “Call it a hunch.”
“Christ, John, I’m sorry,” Quentin said into the phone. “Since this bastard always just dumped the women and left, doing his torturing and maiming elsewhere, I assumed he’d done the same thing to Samantha Mitchell. That he’d cut her throat and abdomen before he carried her to that building and then just arranged her body for maximum shock effect. If I’d paid closer attention to the crime-scene photos, I would have seen it; that mattress was soaked with blood, especially around her head and shoulders. I should have realized that he must have killed her there, in that room.”
“It isn’t your fault, Quentin.” John sighed. “We were all a bit distracted trying to deal with the less . . . physical details of all this.”
“No excuse, not for me. How’s Maggie?”
“If you want the truth, she’s doing better than I am. The bleeding stopped as soon as I got her out of the building, and by the time I got her in the car and wiped some of the blood away, there was just an angry-looking red line where before it was . . . open.”
“Where is she now?”
“Sleeping. The moment the shock wore off, it seemed all she wanted to do was sleep. So I brought her back here to her place and put her to bed.”
“Then I’m sure she’ll be okay. She wasn’t in there long enough to connect completely with what happened to Samantha Mitchell.”
“And if she had been? Are you telling me it could have killed her?”
Quentin hesitated, then said, “It’s possible, at least in this instance. I don’t think she’s quite there yet, but if her sensitivity continues to increase, I believe she might eventually become an absolute empath.”
“Absolute?”
“Yeah. Her system, both physically and emotionally, would become so sensitive it would literally absorb the injuries or illnesses of someone else. If you cut your hand and she touched you, the cut would heal on you—and appear on her. A real, bleeding cut, pain and all, identical to the one you’d had.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. What I’m not sure about is whether she’s a healing empath or a sharing empath. If she’s healing, any injury she absorbed—at least, short of a mortal one—she would also be able to heal. So your cut would vanish, and the one on her would disappear as soon as she was able to heal it, probably within minutes.”
“That . . . can’t be possible,” John protested. “To heal someone else’s physical injuries with a touch?”
“Oh, that part of it’s definitely possible, believe me. I know of a healer so gifted she literally brought a man back from the dead after he was shot. With her, though, it’s a distinct ability, not empathic but simply healing; it takes a great deal of her own energy, her own life force, to heal, but she doesn’t absorb the actual wounds of whoever she’s trying to help.”
“But Maggie would. If she’s a healing empath.”
“That would be my guess.”
“And if she’s a sharing empath . . . she wouldn’t heal? She’d just absorb the injuries, the pain, and suffer with them?”
Quentin hesitated again. “I don’t know for sure, John. We’ve never encountered an absolute empath, just theorized about one. But considering the slash on Maggie’s throat ‘healed’ as quickly as it did, I’d say she’ll probably be a healing empath. The only real question is whether it’ll be an automatic ability, triggered simply by touch, or one she’ll have to concentrate to use. We’ll hope for the latter, so she’ll have some control.”
John drew a breath. “Now tell me how she absorbed a slashed throat from an empty room, will you?”
“Samantha Mitchell died in that room. Recently— and horribly. Suffering a hell of a lot of pain and anguish, to say nothing of terror. Those emotions, that energy, lingered there in the room. Maggie was able to connect to that, to actually begin to experience some of what that dying woman went through.” With a sigh, Quentin added, “Whether she evolves into an absolute empath or not, I think Maggie’s system is especially sensitive to these particular deaths because she’s connected to them, linked to them in a very . . . basic way.”
“Fate. Destiny.”
“Yeah. Whether these victims are all souls Maggie’s known before or it’s his slimy soul she’s connected to is impossible for me to say. Maybe she knows.”
Sitting in Maggie’s quiet living room, gazing at the painting above the fireplace, John said, “Maybe I’ll ask her. But I’m hoping she’ll sleep for hours yet. Look, I don’t think she should be alone, so I’m going to stay here. If anything happens, anything changes, or you guys come up with something we need to know, call me, okay?”
“I will. Considering the worsening weather, I’m expecting Kendra and Jennifer back anytime now, and Scott as well. If nothing else, we’ll at least have the DMV list of black Caddies to go over. Something’s about to break, I know that much. I have an itchy feeling on the back of my neck, and that usually means we’re close to the end of things.”
“One way or another?”
“Yeah. One way or another.”
After they’d said goodbye and hung up, John wandered over to the fireplace and gazed up at the painting. The signature on the lower corner was a scrawl, but he could read it. Rafferty. Beau Rafferty. Her brother’s work.
No wonder the style of the painting had been familiar to him; he owned two Raffertys himself. Young as he still was, the man was considered on
e of the most talented artists this country had produced in the last hundred years, almost single-handedly bringing impressionist-style painting to the forefront of twentieth- and twenty-first-century art.
One artist who painted masterpieces for the world to enjoy, and another who talked gently to traumatized victims of crime and then sketched uncannily accurate images of criminals so the police could bring them to justice.
Two talented artists who shared a mother and who both possessed other unique abilities. It really made him wonder about their mother. A powerful psychic as well as a gifted artist? Or were psychic abilities in any way hereditary?
Deciding that he was doing the inner equivalent of whistling in the dark because he was feeling unsettled, John glanced out at the increasingly gray, dreary afternoon and set about making himself comfortable. He turned on the gas logs in the fireplace, and when the cheery fire was crackling, also turned on the television, low, to a news program, more for company and background life than any desire for news.
He’d had enough news for a while.
He made coffee, having little trouble with Maggie’s old-fashioned percolator, then explored her freezer and found a large package of what looked like homemade soup. It seemed an ideal meal to prepare and allow to simmer until Maggie woke up, so he did that.
While the soup was heating, he checked all the doors and windows a second time, making certain everything was locked and secure. He wasn’t normally so security-conscious, but what had happened to Maggie had shaken him more than he wanted to admit even to himself, and he intended to be as careful as possible.
Maybe he couldn’t protect her from “psychic vibes” that could cause her pain and injury, but he could damned well make certain nothing more tangible could hurt her.
Such as a serial rapist who might have been watching the police station and so might have seen Maggie as easily as he could have seen Jennifer or Kendra. A rapist and murderer who could well decide to eliminate the threat of a sketch artist who, given enough time, might well be able to see him as his victims never had.
Restless, John went to Maggie’s bedroom door and eased it open. The room was quiet and still; the lamp on her nightstand was turned low and showed him that she was still sleeping, apparently peacefully.