The Vision (3 page)

From the rear seat Max said urgently, “Mary, is it safe for Goldman?”

She sighed and shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I really can’t say. I’ve lost the thread. I don’t see anything else.”

Max rolled down his window. The damp air carried his voice well. “Hey, Goldman!”

The officer was halfway across the lawn. He stopped and looked back.

“Maybe you’d better stay here,” Max said.

“Harley wants me,” Goldman said.

“Remember what my wife told you.”

“It’s all right,” Goldman said. “Nothing’s going to happen. They caught him.”

“Are you sure of that?” Max asked.

But Goldman had already turned and was headed for the house again.

Alan said, “Mary?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Are you feeling well?”

“Well enough.”

“You don’t sound good.”

“Just tired.”

“He presses you much too hard,” Alan told her solicitously. He didn’t even glance back at Max. He spoke as if he and his sister were alone in the car. “He doesn’t realize how fragile you are.”

“I’m okay,” she said.

Alan wouldn’t quit. “He doesn’t know how to prompt you, how to help you refine the visions. He doesn’t have any finesse. He always presses too hard.”

You creepy little bastard, Max thought, staring hard at his brother-in-law.

For Mary’s sake, he said nothing. She was easily upset when the two men in her life argued. She preferred to pretend that they were charmed by each other. And while she never entirely took Alan’s side, she always blamed Max when the argument became particularly bitter.

To get his mind off Alan, he studied the house. A shaft of light thrust through the open door, silhouetted some of the dense lumps of shrubbery. “Maybe we should lock the car doors,” he said.

Mary turned sideways in her seat and stared at him. “Lock the doors?”

“For protection.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For protection from what?” Alan asked.

“The cops are all up at the house, and none of us has a weapon.”

“You think we’ll need one?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Are
you
getting psychic now?” Alan asked.

Max forced himself to smile. “Nothing psychic about it, I’m afraid. Just good sense.” He locked his and Mary’s doors, and when he saw that Alan wouldn’t cooperate, he latched both doors on the driver’s side.

“Feel safe now?” Alan asked.

Max watched the house.

 
 
Barnes, Henderson, and Oberlander crowded into the laundry room to examine the smears of blood that the killer had left behind.

Miss Harrington squeezed in beside the chief, determined not to miss any of the excitement. She appeared to be delighted to have been the madman’s choice.

Dan Goldman preferred to remain in the kitchen. As Barnes explained how these few pieces of physical evidence matched the clairvoyant’s visions, the mayor would begin to gloat. Harry Oberlander would be embarrassed, then outraged. The nasty bickering would quickly escalate into a loud and vicious exchange. Goldman had had enough of that.

Besides, the big kitchen deserved an appreciative inspection. It had been designed and furnished by someone who enjoyed cooking and who could afford the best.

Miss Harrington? Goldman wondered. She didn’t seem to be a woman who would welcome the opportunity to pass several hours in front of a stove. No doubt, the cook had been her ex-husband.

Quite a lot of money had been spent to create a professional kitchen with a country home atmosphere. The floor was of Mexican tile with brown grouting. There were oak cabinets with porcelain hardware, white ceramic counter tops, two standard ovens and a microwave oven, two large refrigerator-freezers, two double sinks, an island cooking surface, a built-in appliance center, and a dozen other machines, tools, and gadgets.

Goldman liked to cook, but he had to make do with a battered gas range and the cheapest pots, pans, and utensils on the market.

His envious appraisal of the kitchen was interrupted when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a door opening beside and somewhat behind him, no more than a yard away. It had been ajar when he’d entered the room, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. Now he turned and saw a man in a raincoat stepping out of a pantry that was lined with canned goods. The stranger’s left hand was bloody, the thumb tucked into a tight fist.

She was right, Goldman thought.
Christ!

In his raised right hand the killer held a butcher knife by its thick wooden handle.

Time ceased to have meaning for Goldman. Each second extended itself a hundredfold. Each moment expanded like a soap bubble, encapsulated him, separated him from the rest of the world where clocks maintained their proper pace.

In the distance Henderson and Oberlander were arguing again. It didn’t seem possible that they were only one room away. They sounded extremely odd, as if they had been recorded at seventy-eight revolutions per minute and were being played back at forty-five.

The stranger stepped forward. Light slithered along the well-honed edge of the blade.

As if moving against incredible resistance, Goldman reached for the revolver at his hip.

The knife ripped into his chest. High and to the left. Too deep to contemplate.

Curiously he felt no pain, but the front of his shirt was suddenly soaked with blood.

Mary Bergen, he thought. How could you know? What are you?

He unsnapped his holster.

Too slow. Too damned slow!

Although he didn’t realize that the blade had been wrenched loose from him, he watched with horror as the knife arched down again. The stranger jerked the weapon free, and Goldman collapsed against the wall, framed by a spray of his own blood.

There was still no pain, but his strength was draining out of him as if there was a tap in his ankle.

Can’t fall down, he told himself. Don’t dare fall down. Wouldn’t have a chance.

But the killer was finished. He turned and ran toward the dining room.

Clutching his wounds with his weakening left hand, Goldman staggered after the man. By the time he reached the archway and leaned against it to catch his breath, the killer was nearly to the living room. Goldman had the gun out of his holster, but he found it too heavy to lift. To get Harley’s attention, he fired into the floor. With that explosion, time resumed its normal flow and pain finally smashed through his chest, and suddenly he found it difficult to breathe and his knees buckled and he went down.

 
 
Alan interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence. “What was that?”

“A shot,” Max said.

Mary said, “Something’s happened to Goldman. I know it as sure as I’m sitting here.”

Someone rushed out of the house. His raincoat flapped and billowed like a cape.

“That’s
him,
” Mary said.

When he saw the squad cars, the man stopped. Confused, he looked left and right, didn’t seem to trust either route, and turned back toward the house.

Harley Barnes appeared at the open door. Even from where he sat, even through the dirty window and the shadows and the thin rain, Max could see the oversized revolver in the cop’s hand. Obscenely, fire licked from the muzzle.

The madman spun as if in an inept ballet, then fell, rolled along the walk. Surprisingly, he scrambled to his feet and headed for the street again. He hadn’t been hit. If he’d taken a bullet from the .357 Magnum, he would have stayed down.

Max was certain of that. He knew a great deal about firearms. He owned an extensive collection of guns.

Barnes fired again.

“Dammit!” Max said furiously. “Small town cops. Overarmed and undertrained. If that ass misses his man, he’ll kill one of us!”

The third shot took the killer in the back as he reached the sidewalk.

Max could tell two things about the bullet. Because it didn’t exit from the killer’s chest and pierce the car window, it had been insufficiently packed with powder. It was designed for use on crowded streets
_;
it had just enough punch to stop a guilty man without passing through him and harming others. Secondly, considering how it had lifted the man off his feet, the bullet was surely hollow-nosed.

After an instant of graceless flight, the killer slammed hard into the police cruiser. For a moment he clung to Mary’s door. He slid down until he was peering at her. “Mary Bergen...” His voice was hoarse. He clawed at the window. “Mary Bergen.” Blood spouted from his mouth and painted the glass.

Mary screamed.

The corpse dropped to the sidewalk.

THE AMBULANCE CARRYING Dan Goldman turned the corner as fast as it could without flipping on its side.

Max hoped the siren was fading more rapidly than the young patrolman’s life.

On the sidewalk the dead man lay on his back. He stared at the sky and waited patiently for the coroner.

“She’s upset about the killer knowing her name,” Alan said.

“He saw her picture in her newspaper column,” Max said. “Somehow he heard she was coming to town to find him.”

“But only the mayor and the city council knew. And the cops.”

“Somehow this guy heard. He knew she was in town and he recognized her. There’s nothing supernatural about it. Is that what she thinks?”

“I know there’s a simple explanation, and you know it. Deep down she knows it, too. But considering what she’s seen in her life, she can’t help wondering. Now, I’ve talked to Barnes. He can spare a man and a car for us. We should get Mary back to the hotel so she can lie down.”

“We will,” Max said, “when everything’s settled with the mayor.”

“That could be hours.”

“Half an hour at most,” Max said. “Now, if that’s all you wanted to talk to me about—”

“She’s dead tired.”

“Aren’t we all? She’ll be okay.”

“The loving husband.”

“Go to hell.”

They were standing behind the first squad car. Mary still sat inside with her eyes closed and her hands folded in her lap.

The rain had stopped. The air was moist and fragrant.

Glancing nervously at the people who had come out of their homes to gather around the pathetic scene, Alan said, “There’ll be reporters here any minute. I don’t think she should have to put up with a lot of reporters tonight.”

Max knew what his brother-in-law wanted. Tomorrow Alan began a two-week vacation. Before leaving he hoped to have a final conversation with his sister, just the two of them, one last uninterrupted hour in which to convince her that she had married a man who was terribly wrong for her.

His fists were the only tools Max had to prevent this domestic sedition. He was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Alan. He had shoulders and biceps designed for dock work, and the outsized hands of a basketball star. However, he knew that split lips and broken teeth and a cracked jaw would silence Alan Tanner only temporarily. Short of killing him, there was no way to put an end to his meddling.

Anyway, Max no longer tried to solve his problems with his fists. He had promised Mary and himself that his violent days were gone forever.

Other than strength and the will to use it, Alan had all the weapons in this intensely personal war. Not the least of them was his appearance. He had black hair and blue eyes, like Mary. He was handsome, while Max was so rough-hewn that he barely avoided ugliness. Alan’s powerfully sensuous features, highlighted by a look of boyish innocence, could affect even a sister.

Especially
a sister.

Alan’s voice was as sweet and persuasive as an actor’s. He was able to create moods and build drama with his voice. He employed it subtly to gain Mary’s sympathy and to cause her to look upon her new husband with mild, unconscious, but insidious displeasure.

Max knew his mind was better than average, but he also knew that Alan was his intellectual superior. It wasn’t the voice alone that won arguments. There was wit behind those mellifluous tones.

And charm?

Whenever Alan needed it, charm oozed from him.

I’d like to roll him up tight like an empty tube of toothpaste, Max thought. Squeeze all the charm out of him and see if there’s any truth behind it.

Most important of all, Alan and Mary had shared thirty years
_;
he was thirty-three and, as an older brother, was welded to her by blood, common experience, more than a little tragedy, and three decades of day-to-day life.

As the crowd grew around him, Max watched yet another police car approach. He said, “You’re right. She shouldn’t be here any longer than necessary.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll take her to the hotel right away.”

“You?” Alan asked, surprised. “You have to stay here.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Grudgingly, Alan said, “You’re better at this than I am.”

“Better at what?” Max asked.

“You know why you need to hear it? Because it’s all you’ve got going for you. It’s the only thing you can use to hold her.”

“Better at what?”

“So insecure.”

“Better at what!”

“You’re better at getting the money. Does that satisfy you?”

Mary made a good living as the author of a syndicated newspaper column about psychic phenomena. She had also earned a lot of money with three best-selling books about her career, and she could have survived quite well on her speaking fees alone if she’d wanted.

Although she traveled extensively, aiding authorities with investigations of violent homicides whenever they asked her to do so, she didn’t profit from any of that. She didn’t charge for her visions. Once she helped a famous actress locate a hundred-thousand-dollar diamond necklace that was lost, and she took no fee. She never required more than expenses—airline tickets, car rentals, meals, and lodging—from those whom she assisted
_;
and she refused even that much if she thought she’d been of little or no service.