Hunting Fear (5 page)

“Except,” Metcalf said, “that she knew before it happened there would be a kidnapping. Something I still don’t have a satisfactory explanation for.”

“I’m psychic,” Samantha said, without a trace of defiance or defensiveness in her matter-of-fact tone. She had long ago learned to make that particular declaration calmly and without fanfare. She had also learned to make it without the bells and flourishes necessary in advertising a carnival “act.”

“Yeah, Zarina, all-knowing seer and mystic. I read the signs out there at the carnival and in town.”

“The carnival owner decides how to promote my booth, and his hero is P. T. Barnum. There’s not much I can do about the result.”

“Get a new picture. The purple turban makes you look ridiculous.”

“And made you instantly decide it was all bullshit. That I con people for a living.”

“That’s about the gist,” Metcalf agreed.

“Are you always right, Sheriff?”

“About cons, usually.”

Samantha shrugged. She came into the room and took a chair at the conference table across from Lucas but kept watching the sheriff. And kept her manner calm and relaxed, difficult as that was. “Usually isn’t always. But trying to convince somebody with a closed mind is worse than talking to a post. So let’s keep doing this the hard way. Want to go into one of your tiny little interview rooms and shine a light into my face, or shall we have the next interrogation here where we can all be comfortable?”

He grunted. “You look comfortable enough.”

“There’s more room in here. And I assumed you’d want your new federal friends to participate. I’m sure they have questions too.”

Since Jordan and his partner had been singularly silent, Metcalf wasn’t so sure. And he was tempted to order Samantha Burke into one of the interview rooms just to make it clear who had the upper hand here.

Except he was afraid it was her.

More angry because he knew it showed, he said, “I want to know how you knew about the kidnapping.”

“I told you how. I’m psychic.”

“So the tea leaves told you. Or is it a crystal ball?”

“Neither.” Her voice was measured and calm, as it had been all along. “Last Monday night I was running the sharpshooting booth—”

“Nobody wanted their palms read, huh?”

Samantha ignored that, continuing as though he had not interrupted. “—and when I picked up one of the guns I had a vision.”

“Was it in Technicolor?” Metcalf asked with wonderful politeness.

Lindsay, who had been watching the two federal agents unobtrusively, decided that both of them were uncomfortable, though she couldn’t tell if it was with the questions, the answers, or the antagonistic attitude of the sheriff. Or merely the subject, for that matter.

“They always are,” Samantha replied to the sheriff, her voice dry this time.

“And what did you
see
in this vision?”

“I saw a man, sitting in a chair, bound and gagged and blindfolded. In a room I couldn’t see too clearly. But I saw him. His hair was that rare orange-red, like a carrot, and he was wearing a dark blue business suit and a tie with little cars all over it. I think they were Porsches.”

Lindsay said, “Exactly what Callahan was wearing when he was abducted.”

Metcalf kept his eyes on Samantha. “You knew he’d been kidnapped.”

“It seemed fairly obvious. Either that, or he was into some very kinky bondage games. Since he was fully dressed and didn’t look at all happy, I thought kidnapping was probably the more likely explanation.”

“And there was no one near him?”

“No one I saw.”

Lucas finally spoke, asking quiet questions. “Did you hear anything? Smell anything?”

“No,” she replied without looking at him. She wondered if he’d expected a different reaction from her when they met again. If they met again. Had he expected her to be frozen? To lash out at him?

Metcalf said, “You knew Callahan, didn’t you? Maybe he got rooked at that carnival of yours and threatened to sue or something. Was that it?”

“I had never seen Mitchell Callahan—in the flesh, so to speak. As far as I know he never visited the carnival.”

“Really wasn’t his sort of thing,” Lindsay murmured.

But Metcalf wasn’t willing to let go. “He was trying to buy up the fairgrounds for development, everybody knew that. If he had, it would have put your carnival out of business.”

“Hardly. We can fit in a parking lot, Sheriff, and there are plenty of those in Golden.”

“They’d cost you a hell of a lot more.”

“And put us closer to the heavier traffic of town.” She shrugged, trying not to show the impatience she felt. “Probably a financial wash at the end of the day.”

Again, Lindsay spoke up, her tone neutral. “True enough, Sheriff. We’ve got at least two former shopping centers and one strip mall with acres of parking lot going to waste, and I’m sure any of the owners would have loved to make a few bucks hosting a carnival.”

Metcalf sent her a quick look that just missed being a glare, then returned his attention to Samantha. “Trouble follows you carnies, I know that much. Things turn up missing, property gets destroyed, people get cheated with your so-called games of
chance
. And how many times have
you
taken money from people only to tell them what you knew they wanted to hear?”

“A few,” she replied calmly, answering the last demand. But she couldn’t resist adding, “Some people don’t want to hear the truth, Sheriff. And others wouldn’t recognize it if it bit them on the ass.”

He drew a breath to launch a retort, but she was going on, her voice still calm, still measured.

“Your views about carnies are a few decades out of date, but never mind that. Whatever you may believe, we run a clean show, from the games to the very well-maintained rides, and our safety record is spotless.”

“I didn’t question that.”

“Not openly. That’s because you checked us out the day we got here and started setting up.”

“I was doing my job.”

“Fine. All of us carry police I.D. cards with our fingerprints, like the one I showed you when I first came to you. Feel free to check out the prints belonging to everyone else in the show, the way you checked out mine. It may surprise you to discover that not one of us has a record, even for something as minor as an unpaid parking ticket. And we have good relationships with the police in every town along our normal seasonal route. This is our first time in Golden, so I suppose you can be forgiven a few doubts as to our honesty, but—”

Lucas interrupted to ask, “If Golden isn’t part of your normal schedule, why are you here?”

Her eyes flicked toward him, but Samantha didn’t turn her head when she answered him.

“The next town on our usual schedule just hosted a circus a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve learned never to follow a big circus into a town. Golden was the best alternative in the general area, especially when we discovered we could rent the fairgrounds for the duration.”

“Aren’t we lucky,” Metcalf muttered.

“Your town seems to be enjoying the rides and games.”

He glared at her. “And I’m charged with protecting my town from people who would abuse their good nature. And take advantage of their gullibility.”

“Prove we’re doing that, and we’ll leave. Peacefully. Happily.”

“And send my best suspect on to another innocent town? I don’t think so.”

“You know goddamned well I didn’t kidnap or kill Mitchell Callahan.”

“You knew about it before it happened. In my book, that says you’re involved.”

Samantha drew a breath, for the first time showing visible restraint, and said, “Believe me, Sheriff, if I have to have them at all, I’d just as soon my visions were restricted to simple things like where somebody lost their grandmother’s ring or whether they’ll meet their perfect mate. But I didn’t get to choose. As much as I’d rather it were otherwise, sometimes I see crimes being committed. Before they’re committed. And my bothersome conscience and inability to ignore what I see drives me to report the visions. To hostile and suspicious people like you.”

“Don’t expect me to apologize,” Metcalf told her.

“Like you, I don’t believe in impossible things.”

Lindsay decided it was past time to intercede. “Okay, Ms. Burke—”

“Samantha. Or Sam.” She shrugged.

“Samantha, then. I’m Lindsay.” It wouldn’t hurt, she thought, to try to establish a less combative relationship; it was just a pity Wyatt couldn’t see that. “Tell us something we don’t know about Mitch Callahan’s kidnapping and murder. Something that might help us catch the person responsible.”

“I wish I could.”

The sheriff said, “But your
visions
don’t work that way. Damned convenient.”

“Not at all convenient,” she retorted.

“Then how am I supposed to believe—”

Lindsay got up and headed for the door. “Sheriff, can I talk to you outside for a minute, please? Excuse us, everyone.”

There really wasn’t much Metcalf could do but follow her, scowling, from the room.

Jaylene said, “Well, that was fun.”

Samantha turned her head and stared at Lucas. “Thank you
so
much for your support,” she said.

Lindsay didn’t exactly drag her boss into his office, but she got him there quickly and shut the door behind them. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she demanded.

“Hey, watch the tone,” he snapped right back. “We’re in the office, not at your place or mine, and I damned well outrank you.”

“Then fire my ass if you want to, but stop acting like an idiot,” she told him. “Wyatt, she’s not involved. You know that, and I know that. We wasted a hell of a lot of time yesterday trying to break her alibi, and we couldn’t do it.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“What? That she isn’t involved?” Lindsay counted off facts on her fingers. “She didn’t know Mitch Callahan. She’s been in Golden barely two weeks. She has absolutely no criminal record. There is no trace
anywhere
around Samantha Burke or that carnival of the ransom money. Absolutely no forensic evidence ties her to the place where Callahan was grabbed or to his body and where it was dumped. And lastly, in case you hadn’t noticed, she’s not exactly a bodybuilder, and Callahan was a martial-arts expert twice her size. We didn’t find a sign of a gun or other weapon in her possession, remember?”

“She did not see the future,” he said grimly.

“I don’t know what she saw. But I do know she didn’t kidnap or murder Mitch Callahan.”

“You can’t
know
that, Lindsay.”

“Yeah, Wyatt, I can know that. Fifteen years as a police officer tells me that. And nearly twenty years as a cop would be telling you the same goddamned thing if you’d just get past this rampant hatred of anybody you perceive as a con artist and look at the
facts
.”

The sheriff stared at her.

Lindsay calmed down, but her voice was still flat and certain when she went on. “It’d be easier and a lot less painful to blame something like this on an outsider, and she’s certainly that. She’s an easy target, Wyatt. But, just for the sake of argument, what if you’re wrong? What if she had nothing to do with it?”

“She’s a viable suspect.”

“No, she isn’t. Maybe she was Saturday or yesterday, but we know now she couldn’t have done it. She flat-out couldn’t have. Yet you still had her brought in to answer more questions. And how many reporters are lounging around keeping an eye on the comings and goings here at the station? How many saw her brought in?”

His jaw tightened even more. “A few.”

“Uh-huh. And just what do you think the anxious and worried people of Golden are going to do when they read in the papers that an avowed fortune-teller from a little carnival just passing through town is under suspicion for the kidnapping and murder of a local man?”

Metcalf was beginning to look unhappy, and not just because Lindsay was telling him how he should be doing his job. He was unhappy because she had to tell him. “Shit.”

Quiet now, Lindsay said, “She doesn’t deserve what might happen to her because of this. All she did was try to warn us. We didn’t believe her, and I doubt we could have stopped the kidnapping even if we had. But either way, she doesn’t deserve to have a target painted on her back.”

He struggled with himself for a moment, then said, “It’s not possible to see the future.”

“A hundred years ago, it wasn’t possible to land on the moon. Things change.”

“You’re comparing apples and oranges. Landing on the moon was science. Physics, engineering. Touching something and seeing into the future is . . .”

“Today’s new-age voodoo, yeah, maybe. And maybe tomorrow’s science.” Lindsay sighed. “Look, I’m not saying I believe she did what she says she did. I’m just saying that there’s a hell of a lot more going on in this world than we understand—today. More than science understands
today
. And in the meantime, all our police science and procedure says that lady didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping, and common decency as well as due process says we let her off the hook unless and until that changes.”