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“You should try to get back to sleep,” she said.
“There’s nothing we can do right now. I’ll see what I can do as
soon as it gets light.”

I nodded. I knew in the morning Kate would be
searching for her body. And I knew that she would find it or hear
about it soon. It was just a matter of time.

“Anything else about the killer? Facial hair or
something?” she asked.

I couldn’t tell her that I was too scared to get any
closer, too scared to look. I couldn’t tell her that his coldness
struck a fear in me that I’ve never felt before.

“No, he had his back to me,” I said.

“You’re sure, Abby? That she was killed?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “The old man too. The visions
had the same feeling, the same energy. His energy.”

There was no doubt in my mind. There was a killer
loose in Bend.

CHAPTER 13

It was crowded downtown on account of the lunch hour
and the big trial at the courthouse. Volunteers for Winter SnowFest
were stringing up banners. I walked along the plowed sidewalks as a
mean wind blew up off the river, bringing the air temperature down
into the teens.

I turned down Delaware Avenue and found police cars
lining the block. There was an ambulance parked in a driveway of a
small house on the corner. Kate’s car was parked a little ways
down.

They had found her. I was in American history when
Kate sent a text saying that a woman had been discovered dead in a
house downtown. My pass was waiting at the office.

Kate was standing outside next to a group of people
in various uniforms. She glanced up and saw me and signaled me to
back off. Then she sent me another text telling me to meet her at
Thump, the coffeehouse we always went to. She would be there
shortly.

I lingered for a few minutes longer and watched as
she spoke to the ambulance driver. I knew there was really no need
for an ambulance to be there or the EMTs. It was a pick-up-a-body
call only. The woman had been dead for hours. I saw that Kate was
working her magic and sure enough, after a few moments, the guy
opened the back of the vehicle and let her step inside.

Kate was in there for what seemed like forever. When
she emerged, her face was pale and her hair was being blown into
her face. I could tell she was shaken. It was never easy seeing
death, I knew that now, too.

I started walking into the bitter wind. It was
freezing. I pulled my coat tighter as I tried to think about why
all this was happening. Bend was a small city and it hardly ever
had any murders. The last one had been over a year ago when a
husband shot his wife eight times one night, claiming he thought
she was an intruder. The jury saw it differently.

And now, within a month, two people had been killed.
And for some reason, I was hooked into what was happening, had seen
them both die.

My phone rang.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Kate said.

I went inside Thump and got in line for the
cappuccinos. It was packed, but a couple left and I slipped into
the corner table and waited. Kate walked over, heels pounding the
floor.

“Was it her?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Exactly how you described,” she said. “Long, dark
hair, Asian woman. Found dead in the bathtub.”

Kate had that older-than-her-years look again.

“What in the hell is going on, Abby?” she said as
she grabbed her cup. “Somehow you’re following some killer around
in your dreams. How is that possible?”

Soft music floated through the noisy crowd.

“It was awful, just awful to see her,” she said.
“The poor woman had this terrible expression frozen on her face.
I’ll never forget it.”

She closed her eyes and sat for a moment before
taking out her notepad from her large, black purse.

“Okay. Here we go.” She took a deep breath.
“According to Mike, the paramedic, it was an accident.”

“What?”

“She was in the bathtub, and their theory is that
she somehow passed out and drowned. Maybe she had a medical
condition and fainted.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, it’s just their initial theory. Someone even
suggested that it might be a suicide. I guess she recently broke up
with her boyfriend of three years and she was distraught. But the
coroner will do an autopsy and they’ll have a thorough
investigation.”

I sat in silence. I couldn’t believe it.

“It wasn’t an accident, Kate. It was murder!” I
said, a little too loudly.

“I know,” she said in a hushed voice. “They’re going
to talk to the ex-boyfriend too, Abby. And when they do the
autopsy, my hope is that they’ll find that same drug in the body,
like the first one. Then that will help make the case for murder as
well as linking the two victims.”

I sighed.

“They are also canvassing the area, talking to
neighbors. Something might come up there. Maybe somebody saw
someone prowling around or leaving afterwards,” she said. “They are
just starting the investigation.”

I sat back in my chair and took a sip from my
cup.

“Do you think he is just picking them randomly?” she
asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I had no idea why he was killing. I wasn’t able to
pick up on his motive. I just knew that he was being very
methodical and that he wasn’t done, that there would be more.

“He won’t stop,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I figured. But he might leave
town. Bodies can’t keep piling up, whether accidents or suicides,
without the authorities becoming suspicious. He might move on to
another place.”

I nodded.

“I’ll do as many stories as I can on it. We will
find this guy, flush him out. I still can’t believe it,” Kate
said.

She took a long hit of coffee and looked around.

“Sure is busy down here today,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“The thing that I don’t get is why you’re involved,”
she said. “You just don’t need this now. You need to get better and
have some time for relaxed, fun things in your life. This shouldn’t
be happening to you.”

“Don’t worry so much about my life,” I said. “I have
plenty of fun hanging out with Jesse. It’s not all gloom and
doom.”

She sighed and took another long sip of her
drink.

“You know what I mean. These dreams, or whatever
they are, must be related to your accident. And it seems the more
we try to move past it, the more it tries to suck you back.
Seriously, Abby, I don’t want you to get too caught up in any of
this.”

I reached over and grabbed her hand.

“I would do anything for that accident to have not
happened. Really, I would. But I’m alive, and that’s good too. I
can’t just look the other way when someone is killing people.”

I cleared my throat and tried to calm down.

“Okay, Abby, we’ll work on this together. But not as
your primary focus. Your primary focus is getting better.”

I didn’t understand why everybody was always telling
me that. I was walking now, even running when I had to. Sure,
school wasn’t going that great, but I was passing. Besides, I only
had a semester left there. I thought I was doing okay, but
sometimes when they made those comments about healing and getting
better, it made me feel like I was crazy or something.

“I don’t know if this helps,” I said. “It’s probably
just obvious. But the killer doesn’t care about his victims at all.
It’s a strong feeling. He doesn’t have any sort of regret or
sadness when he kills them. He does it in a very matter-of-fact
kind of way.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. He’s a sociopath. No
emotions, no sense of right or wrong.”

“That’s why I know he won’t stop. But I don’t know
why he’s doing it, what he gets out of it.”

“Because he’s a nut, that’s why,” Kate said,
slamming down her cup, her emotions rushing up, sharp and edgy.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” I took a sip of my drink
and closed my eyes.

“Anything else?” she asked.

A strong, dark feeling shot through my body.

“Throwaways,” I said. “That’s how he sees them.
They’re useful throwaways. For something, I don’t know what. He is
saying this to himself. He believes it, too.”

“That’s important, Abby. That’s a good clue.” She
wrote it down in her notebook. “Can you actually hear his
voice?”

I concentrated again, surprised I was able to do
this with people around. I could hear a whisper, a quiet voice
coming from the same place where I drowned in those dreams.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. “But it’s very soft,
like a thought.”

Her phone buzzed.

“Okay, Abby, gotta get going. I’ve got to write this
up and get it in. I really want to find this guy.”

Kate stood up and pulled on her Calvin Klein trench.
She swirled the last of the coffee around in the paper cup and took
one more gulp before throwing it in the trashcan.

“It was awful, Abby. I’m glad you didn’t see her. I
mean, see her again, dead in the ambulance.”

She gave me a hug.

“You know, there’s a lot of this kind of psychic
stuff that nobody knows about,” she said, lowering her voice. “What
I mean is, that your condition, it’s not so crazy. This stuff
happens, it’s not so uncommon. And you’re not alone. I’m right here
with you and we’ll figure it all out.”

I nodded and it made me feel warm and safe when she
said that. To not be alone. That meant everything, even if it
wasn’t really true.

“Are you going back to school?”

“Nah,” I said. Some of Jesse’s senioritis must have
rubbed off because there was no way I was returning. Once you left
that school parking lot, it was nearly impossible to go back. But I
didn’t feel like going home either.

“Maybe I’ll go down to the library and study there
for a while.”

“Okay, see you later,” she said.

The library wasn’t too far, down a few blocks or so.
I made my way in the cold, noticing that the giant banners for
SnowFest were now hanging high over the streets. Candy cane
decorations and poinsettias were tied onto the lampposts and
shoppers huddled together as they walked store to store. Snow was
piled up at the edges of the streets.

The library’s automatic doors flew open and warm air
rushed out.

I loved the library. The smell, the quiet, the calm.
When I was a kid, Mom and I came here all the time and stayed for
hours in the children’s section, pulling books off the shelves and
reading them in the big, fuzzy beanbag chairs.

I headed upstairs and found an empty computer. I
started surfing around the web for a while. I checked the soccer
scores of my favorite international teams, new clothes from PacSun
Online, and the prices of airline tickets to Maui. Then I started
looking at psychic web sites, which brought up a whole slew of
sleazy pages, most of which were blocked by the library Internet
system. But then I came across an article about a woman who had
visions of earthquakes that always came true. A university was
studying her.

I was about half way done with the article when
someone tapped me on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around to
find a plump, gray-haired librarian standing behind me.

“Oops, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she
whispered in a soft voice. “I just wanted to let you know your time
is up.”

“What?” I screamed.

“On the computer, dear,” she said, adjusting her
glasses. “We have people waiting. One hour is the max allowed at
one sitting, but I saw how busy you were so I let you go over by 10
minutes.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said catching my breath.

I clicked off my visited sites while she waved a
young woman over. The librarian put her hand back on my shoulder,
but I was expecting it this time.

“Abby, if you’re staying in the library a while, I
can let you know when a computer opens up again,” she said.

I glanced up at her. She knew who I was. My stomach
tightened and I braced.

“It’s nice to see you getting around so well, dear,”
she said. “Glad you’re doing better.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as she walked back to
her desk and started helping a mom with a toddler in her arms.

CHAPTER 14

Kate was excited as she talked.

“They found an unidentifiable drug in her blood,
too,” she said. “So now they are officially keeping both cases open
until the toxicology reports are in. But those reports always take
a while.”

We were sitting in her car in a parking lot, waiting
for Matt.

“Well, that’s good, right?” I said.

“Yeah,” Kate said. “But I can tell nobody is too
excited. Unofficially, it was an accident and if the drug report
doesn’t show something else, that’s what it will remain.”

“What about all the water on the floor?” I asked. I
remembered the struggle. The floor had to have been soaked.

“He must have cleaned it up,” she said. “It looked
like she was just taking a bath and fainted.”

Kate had already written one story about Lana Chang,
who worked as a receptionist at a physical therapy office on the
east side of town. She was 32, had a steady boyfriend until
recently, and worked as a bartender on the weekends at Velvet, a
bar that was popular with the locals.

“Did I mention that Erin kind of knew her?” Kate
said.

“No,” I said. “She sure must have been shocked. Did
you tell Erin that you thought she was murdered?”

“We talked about it, but I just kept to the facts,”
she said. “She thinks it’s strange though. And she said that there
was no way it was a suicide. Not in a million years.”

“But you didn’t tell her about my visions, right?” I
said. I was sure Kate wouldn’t have done that, but if she got angry
enough she might have let it slip out.

“Of course not,” she said. “Nobody knows. Well,
except for Matt.”

That didn’t bother me. He would be cool about
it.