Touching Evil (29 page)

Maggie nodded. "I don't think we have any time to lose, do you?"

John reached for the phone.

WEDNESDAY,
  
NOVEMBER
  
7

By the time they were all assembled in the conference room, it was after midnight. Drummond had left for home some time before, saying he'd meet "those agents" the following day, and many of the detectives who had been working on the investigation were also absent, either off duty and home or else out doing
what they could to find the latest missing woman, Tara Jameson.

So it was what had become the core of the police investigative team—Andy, Scott, and Jennifer—who were introduced to Quentin and Kendra. And they wasted no time in getting to work.

Quentin prowled around studying the photos, sketches, and descriptions pinned to the bulletin board, while Kendra reported that their search of every available database for similar crimes going back more than six months had turned up nothing even remotely close anywhere in the country, indicating that he had indeed begun attacking women only six months ago.

"But there's this," Quentin said, tapping one of the bulletin boards. "Absolutely amazing. Who took the intuitive leap and dug these up?"

Andy nodded to Scott and Jennifer. "They did."

Scott explained their thinking about a rapist with a too-developed ritual.

When he was finished, Quentin was the first to speak, saying thoughtfully, "You colored outside the lines when you were a kid, didn't you?"

Scott stared at him for a moment, then caught the twinkle in the agent's eyes and grinned reluctantly. "Well, yeah."

"I'm not surprised. Very creative and intuitive thinking. And it is a perfectly rational explanation given the facts as we know them. Copycats are getting depressingly common these days. So maybe the guy did decide to borrow someone else's ritual and used a series of old, unsolved crimes to learn from."

John glanced at Maggie, but she was listening gravely and showed no inclination to interrupt. And he wasn't about to. Even if she was right in her incredible claim that they were dealing with an evil mind reborn, John didn't see how that knowledge could do anything except confuse the investigation. Assuming it was even believed.

No, they were after a flesh-and-blood killer now, whatever else he was, and that was the quarry they had to hunt down.

Andy said, "Jenn's trying to run down a witness who might have seen something in the area where Hollis Templeton was found, but he's a transient, so finding him won't be easy. The only other new point we have is Maggie's belief that this bastard knows the latest victim, Tara Jameson."

Jennifer frowned at her. "What makes you think that?"

Maggie glanced at Andy, hesitated, then shrugged. "Sometimes I feel things. A sixth sense, if you will. They call it an empathic sense."

"Which explains a lot," Andy said to the other two detectives after a moment. "That's how she gets those incredibly accurate sketches, how she . . . communicates ... so well with victims. Isn't it, Maggie? When you tell them you know how they feel, you mean it literally."

"Usually. It's stronger with some people than others. But most victims of violent crime are . . . they're traumatized, their emotions much more powerful than normal. I pick that up pretty easily."

"Do you know what we're feeling right now?" Jennifer demanded.

Maggie shrugged. "In a general sense, yes. That's all I get without physical contact, just a faint impression— not much more than I'd get anyway from watching your expressions or listening to your voices."

"Tell them the rest," Quentin murmured.

She looked at him, then at the others. "Violent emotion is just another kind of energy. And it... lingers in some places, almost as if it soaks into the walls and floors, at least for a while. Sometimes, if I walk through a place where something violent has happened, I ... connect with the victim or attacker. Feel a lot of what they felt at the time."

"Which is why you picked up on the arguments and stuff at the Mitchell house," Andy said and, when she nodded, quickly listed the impressions Maggie had gained from walking through that house, so that his detectives understood what they were talking about.

Maggie said, "In each case, one or both of the Mitchells were experiencing emotions more intensely than usual. The argument about the parrot was pretty fierce, as was the one Thomas Mitchell had with his father-in-law. And the broken mirror cut Samantha's hand, which caused her a lot of pain."

Jennifer said, "There've been a lot of violent emotions in this building; do you feel that?"

Grimacing slightly, Maggie said, "Until recently, all I felt was a kind of... skin-tingling sensation, like the way you feel when there's too much static electricity in the air. But it's getting more intense as time passes. At the hospital too."

"You didn't say anything," John said, not quite accusingly.

"What could I say?" She shrugged. "It's almost like background noise now, a low hum of energy just beneath the level of consciousness. Usually, anyway. Sometimes a particular impression gets through more strongly."

"For instance?" There was a challenging note to Jennifer's question.

Maggie glanced at Quentin, who said wryly, "Gotta jump through a hoop or two. It never fails."

"Yeah." Maggie saw a bit of color creep into Jennifer's cheeks, but she answered the other woman's question as if she didn't see the gauntlet thrown at her feet. "For instance . . . you had someone you suspect of burglary in here really early today—I mean Tuesday. The detective working the case—Harrison?—is convinced this guy has been breaking into some pretty high-class homes in the city. Problem is, you've searched his place, and you've staked out the known fences, and so far found nothing."

"Yeah," Andy said. "So?"

"So when he was in here today, your suspect was really worried you'd find out about the storage building he rents under his brother's name."

Scott said, "Jesus. I want to run tell Mike Harrison, but I'm afraid I'll miss something."

"Tell him later," Andy ordered. He eyed Maggie. "Any other little tidbits you want to pass on?"

"Well, that elderly woman you suspect of killing her husband didn't."

"No?"

"No. But she did dispose of his body. Buried him in the woods behind her house."

"Christ," Andy said. "Why, if she didn't kill him?"

"He wasn't insured, and she needs the Social Security checks to keep coming. So she tried to pretend he was still alive."

Into the silence, Quentin said, "Sometimes I really hate working for the government."

Scott drew a breath and said, "Well, I say we hire Maggie to sit by the front door all day."

She smiled at him. "So I can get bits of info you guys would have found out on your own anyway?"

"I'm not so sure about that," Andy said. "But even assuming you were willing, we'd have to figure out some way of making your .... impressions . . . sound like legitimate leads, and I have a hunch that wouldn't be easy."

"Take it from me," Quentin said, "it wouldn't be. And if what you were doing became public knowledge—"

"There'd be privacy issues," Maggie finished. "At the very least. With the possible exception of cops with difficult cases to crack, nobody would be at all happy to think there was someone reading them like a book every time they walked through the door and so invading their privacy without permission or legal justification."

She shrugged. "Anyway, that's how I know that the rapist knows Tara Jameson. There was a strong sense of familiarity when he grabbed her, much more than there would have been if his only knowledge of her came from watching her."

Andy looked at the others, then nodded. "That's good enough for me. I know it's late, but I say we start pulling together everything we know about Tara Jameson's life. Family, friends, neighbors, coworkers. We all know the drill. Wake people up if you have to. If there's any chance at all we might be able to find her before this bastard can play his twisted games, I say we pull out all the stops and go for it."

Nobody disagreed.

CHAPTER
  
FIFTEEN

It wasn't at all unusual for Beau to be working in his
studio after midnight, but it was rare for him to be working with his eyes closed.

It was also something he wasn't happy about and wouldn't have willingly been doing except by urgent request. The last time he'd tried it, the resulting painting had given him nightmares for weeks. And it was the only example of his work he had ever destroyed.

"It's not just spatters, is it?" he asked, less hopeful than resigned.

"No. Not just spatters."

"I wish it was."

"I know."

"You know too damned much."

"One thing I
don't
know is how you're able to use the artistic version of automatic writing and talk coherently at the same time."

"I don't know that either, and it freaks me out to think too much about it. Reminds me of that old horror movie about the pianist who got himself a new pair of hands. Someone else's."

"Now you're freaking me out."

"I'd like to think I could. But you've seen too much to be bothered by anything I can do."

"Don't be so sure of that."

Beau half turned his head, eyes still closed and paintbrush still moving skillfully, and frowned. "Am I going to want to look at this thing when I'm done?"

"No."

"Oh, Christ. Can I stop now?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

"No. Dammit. There's still something . . ." Beau gritted his teeth and kept painting. He hated this. It was infinitely preferable to have a vision, even if it made his head ache for an hour afterward. Preferable to have bits and pieces of knowledge or information just pop into his head, unbidden. Either of those he could deal with.

But this . . . this was major-league creepy. He'd wondered more than once if it was really his own mind, his own skills, guiding his hands when he painted this way. Considering the finished products, that was a scary thought. But even scarier was the possibility he wasn't in control in any sense, that someone else was "speaking" through his skills, using them to get a message out.

Out of hell, he sometimes thought.

"Am I the only one you know who can do this?" he demanded. "Is that why you come to me?"

"You're
  
the
  
best
  
I've
  
found.
 
Artistic
  
expertise
matched by psychic ability. But in this case, it wasn't either skill that brought me here, you know that."

"Then why ask me to do this?"

"I use every tool I can get my hands on, you also know that."

"And to hell with the cost to me, huh?"

"You can pay the bill."

"You're a bastard, Galen—do
you
know that?"

"As a matter of fact, I do."

Beau was silent for several minutes, then said, "Maggie's just beginning to find out what she can do."

"Yes. I saw the painting."

"So you've been breaking into her house too, huh?"

"You should both invest in a little security."

"Obviously." Beau painted for several more minutes before the brush finally wavered and his hand fell. He turned his back to the easel before opening his eyes and walking to the worktable where Galen leaned to clean the brush and his palette.

"It's almost over, Beau."

"If you're trying to make me feel better, that won't do it."

"Sorry. Best I can do."

"Yeah, right." Beau cleaned his hands on a rag, paying close attention to the task, then said, "I'm going to put the coffee on."

"Late for caffeine."

"Well, if you think I want to sleep tonight, you're crazy. Cover that thing when you're done looking at it, all right?" Without waiting for a response, and without so much as a glance at the painting, Beau left the studio.

Galen looked after him for a moment, then straightened and approached the easel almost warily. He stood
back some distance from it, powerful arms crossed over his chest as he studied a painting so complex and skillfully done it was almost impossible to believe the artist's eyes had been closed the entire time.

Almost impossible to believe.

Far from Beau's usual and rather famous impressionist work, this painting didn't shimmer with light but rather with darkness. Bold strokes of black, deep shades of maroon and slate gray and brown made up an indistinct yet oddly unnerving background lightened only by the amorphous flesh-toned faces and forms in the foreground.

Galen considered one face in particular, one of the few that was clearly recognizable. It wore a twisted expression of pain, wide eyes already going empty as life left them. His own rather hard mouth twisted.

"Shit," he said very softly.