Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) (18 page)

35

The daylight broke through the blinds like an unwanted guest. Rosen lay in bed and tried to go back to sleep by pulling the covers over his head. But that didn’t do anything. Once sleep had left him
for the morning, it didn’t come back.

Accepting defeat, he swung his legs
off the side of the bed and rose, rubbing his face as he walked to the bathroom. After taking a quick shower, he headed downstairs and picked up the paper from the porch and scanned the neighborhood before going back inside. As far as he knew, he was the last one on the block who still subscribed to an actual newspaper instead of getting his news online.

Rosen
put the paper down on his kitchen table and made some coffee and buttered toast. He sat and unrolled the paper. On the second page, about halfway down, was a picture of Sarah King.

His heart dropped, and
he got up and grabbed his keys before heading out the door.

Though Sarah was a contract employee with the FBI, she wasn’t hourly.
She had little reason to be in the office right now but was sitting in the café debating whether to go up. She wasn’t even sure what her job was exactly. Would she actually be Kyle’s assistant and doing things like making copies and sending email, or would they just take her to crime scenes and hope something popped into her head?

Sarah rose and bought a bottle of orange juice and went back to her table, the same one she had sat
at with Giovanni. The sun wasn’t out today, the sky overcast with dark gray clouds. The weather had always intimately affected her mood. She found she could always endure more when she at least had sunshine. Before she was done with her juice, Giovanni called her.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey. Where are you?”

“In the café downstairs. Why?”

“Better come up to Kyle’s office. There’s been a… development.”

“What?”

“Come up and we’ll talk.”

Sarah hung up, threw her juice in the recycling bin, and headed upstairs. The elevator was packed with several people she guessed were agents. They were discussing some undercover operation in the vaguest terms and would occasionally glance back to her.

“He’s lying,” one of them whispered. “We gotta keep him in while he’s still useful.”

The other one shook his head. “If he’s telling the truth,
we gotta pull him out. It’s too dangerous.”

“If you’re wrong,
we’ll lose an entire year’s work.”

The elevator opened on the fifth floor
, and Sarah said, “Excuse me,” as she brushed past the two men. Once outside in the hallway, she turned and said, “He’s telling the truth. Vincent is dead.”

The two men glanced
at each other. “How the hell do you know?”

“Because he’s standing behind you with a bullet
hole in his forehead.”

The elevator doors shut just as one of the men was about to ask something else. Sarah crossed the hallway and into the main area
with a dim throbbing in her head that faded away quickly.

A few agents were goofing
around at a desk, watching some clip on YouTube. She glanced casually at the screen. Standing over them was the female agent who had been rude to her the other night. Sarah smiled at her, but the woman turned away.

Kyle’s office was empty
, and Sarah debated sitting down. She decided it’d be best to wait, so she leaned against the wall and tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling.

Discomfort
began at her head and shot down to her feet. She crumpled over, nearly screaming, but the throbbing lasted only a moment and left her with a single image: two children sitting on a bench with masks over their faces.

The masks were colorful
, but she couldn’t make out much else. The image was blurry, almost swirling. They were in a room somewhere, and their backs were to the wall.

“Hey,” Giovanni said.

Sarah straightened up and ignored the pain. “Hi. So what’s going on?”

“You better have Kyle explain.”

Rosen and Kyle came in and sat down, leaving a chair for her. She sat, feeling suddenly like she was back in school and the teacher was about to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.

“Sarah,” Kyle began, “we’ve got some bad news.” He pushed a newspaper
toward her. On the page, in a large black-and-white photo, was her face. “It’s in a lot of papers, and they did a piece on the morning news.”

In black
, bold lettering at the top of the article it said, FBI OUT OF LUCK ON THE BLOOD DAHLIA, BRINGS IN PSYCHIC FOR HELP.

“How’d they even know?” Giovanni asked.

Rosen said, “It originated on Skid Row Gossip in a piece by Kenneth Lott. It was picked up from there.”

Sarah stared at the photo of herself. It was the DMV photo she’d
had taken only a few years ago. She wondered if she still looked that young.

“What does this mean?” she said.

Kyle glanced at Rosen. “It means, Sarah, that the Blood Dahlia, whoever he is, may now know who you are. I’m not saying he’ll even care, but he’s clearly shown that he is following the investigation. That body on our boss’s doorstep was a taunt. What we’re worried about is that he might find you… interesting. And try to make contact.”

“Make contact? You mean he might try to kill me, don’t you?”

“We don’t know that,” Kyle said quickly.

Giovanni interjected, “Bullshit. This guy
’s got balls and is fucking insane. Whoever sold us out needs to be arrested.”

“Agent Adami,” Kyle said calmly, “we’re all on the same team. Understood?”

Giovanni swallowed before answering, and it was as though he swallowed all the anger that had shown in his previous comment. “Yes, sir. I know. I’m just pissed.”

“As am I. I was told you guys ran into
Lott at a crime scene. That means he has someone here who pointed him in the right direction and told him when you’d be out there. We’ll start an internal investigation, and I’m sure we’ll find the person. But for now, nobody knows anything about this investigation outside of this room. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,”
Giovanni said. Rosen just nodded.

Kyle
leaned back in his seat and pushed a key on his keyboard before saying, “In the meantime, Sarah, I think it best if we place you in a safe house with a protective detail. Just until we catch him.” He looked at her. “I think it’s the safest option.”

She nodded. “Okay. If you think it’ll help.”

“Sir,” Giovanni said, “I’d like to volunteer as the protective detail.”

“You can check in as much as you like, but you two need to work this case. I want this son of a bitch’s head on a silver platter.”

Rosen stood up. “We’ll do everything we can.”

Sarah got a distinct impression from him just then. After he’d said
, “We’ll do everything we can,” he thought,
but it’s not going to be enough
.

36

Wolfgram thought the lecture went well. As the students filed out, he wondered how many of them actually saw the beauty in what they’d discussed.

Linear algebra was one of his favorite topics
, and the Perron–Frobenius theorem was one of the most intriguing themes in the field. Though it had deep repercussions in probability theory and economics, the theorem was most widely used in the ranking of football teams in the NFL.
What a waste
, he thought.

As the last of the students
were leaving the classroom, Wolfgram kept his eye on one—a young woman, blond with red highlights. She wore spandex workout pants and a tank top, though the temperatures had dipped in the last couple of days.

“Shannon, would you come here, please?”

She came over. Her breasts were plump and held tightly against her body by a sports bra. He could see the elastic band on her shoulder.

“I really enjoyed today’s lecture,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m glad. It’s surprising you’re not a mathematics major. You should really consider it.”

“I thought about it, but I think in the end chemistry looks better on med
school applications. I could be wrong, I don’t know. But I’m almost done with chem, so I may as well finish.”

He no
dded, gathering the few notes from the lectern. “Maybe we should discuss it further. Why don’t you set an appointment to come see me during office hours?”

“Okay
.”

Wolfgram put the papers away and lifted his satchel. He
kept pace with the girl as they left the classroom. “I think you’ll find medical school more competitive than it’s ever been. You should have a solid backup. Do you enjoy chemistry?”

“No, not really.”

“But you do enjoy mathematics. I see how you pay attention. Most students are just preparing for the exams, you enjoy the subject matter.”

They walked
down the hall to the front entrance, and Wolfgram turned to her. Even without makeup, her beauty shone through and made his heart beat faster.

“Yeah, I guess we can talk about it. I can stop by tomorrow.”

“Sure. I’m pretty booked early, but if you wanted to come around seven in the evening, I should be available.”

“I’ll check my schedule. Thanks, Professor Davies.”

Wolfgram watched her walk out of the building. It was brazen, bordering on careless, to want one so close to him. He normally only chose from the Saturday class because there was no attendance there, no one keeping track of who came and who didn’t.

Th
is class had only twenty people. There would be questions. All her professors might be interviewed. But that hadn’t happened so far with the other class, to Wolfgram’s great surprise and delight. It was then, when he realized no one was coming, that he knew he had overestimated law enforcement. They truly were fumbling around in the dark. He had a sneaking suspicion that arrests were far more luck than skill.

Wolfgram sighed as Shannon turned a corner. He hiked back through the building to his office on the seco
nd floor. Though most professors’ offices were cluttered and messy, his was meticulously neat. Every pen, pad of paper, and book in its place. He couldn’t stand being in the offices of his colleagues for the simple reason that he had an overwhelming urge to clean the untidiness. Chaos had never appealed to him.

He sat at his desk and flipped on his computer. First, he checked his email, then he went to his favorites list and the website for
Skid Row Gossip.

Though the website was primarily trash, he had grown fond of one writer in particular
: “K. Lott.” The writer followed the happenings of the underbelly of the state and had kept a close eye on the Blood Dahlia murders when it seemed that the other news agencies had moved on. Even without mention of the murders, his stories were fascinating. Last week, he’d done a piece on a police officer who had shot his two toddler children, then his wife, and then himself.

The headline excited Wolfgram so much he read it several times, the last
half ringing in his head over and over: BRINGS IN PSYCHIC FOR HELP.

He read the article
through twice, then he leaned back in his chair and stared at the photo. The young woman was beautiful, a streak of pure white running down the side of her hair. She was far more striking and exotic than even Shannon, who Wolfgram had had his eye on for over a month now.

Psychics had always fascinated him. He had read the report generated by the Defense
Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency at the conclusion of what they termed the “Stargate Project.”

Stargate
had been the federal government’s attempt to verify psychic phenomena. Millions of dollars had been spent between 1970 and 1995. They had brought in psychics from all over the world in the hopes that the research could yield results in the intelligence field. What they found was shocking but, of course, unappreciated by bureaucracy.

Wolfgram had gone over the matrices himself. There was a statistically significant effect
of psychic phenomena in the laboratory, particularly with remote viewing, the ability to see and communicate events and places hundreds of miles away. But the results would have to be digested and analyzed for years, and the applications then developed over time. Bureaucracy didn’t have the stomach for developing talent over time. It had no patience. And funding for Stargate was cut and all the research buried until GRAMA requests brought it to light in early 2010.

A psychic, and a beautiful one at that, after him…
How deliciously captivating
.

37

The house was in the middle of a neighborhood that could’ve been in
Leave It to Beaver
. Sarah watched it with detached curiosity. She’d never been in a neighborhood like this. The community was known as Sugarhouse and was filled with mom-and-pop stores rather than the big chains. Two of the restaurants advertised discounted family nights.

As the car stopped in front of a plain
-looking home with a fence and yard, Sarah watched Giovanni. The skies had cleared somewhat, and the sun was out again. He was wearing sunglasses, but she could tell he was uncomfortable, because he kept playing with them.

“This is it. Home sweet home.”

“I love it.”

“Most of our safe
houses aren’t this nice. Kyle must really like you.”

She
looked at the house, the cute square windows, and the little chairs on the porch. “Do you really think I’m in danger?”

“I doubt it
, but we have to be careful. If anything happened to you, we… I couldn’t live with it.”

Giovanni was blushing, thinking he
had revealed too much. To make him feel better, she gently placed her hand on his, and they sat quietly a moment, letting the breeze blow through the open windows. The neighborhood smelled pleasant, though she could still detect the faint odor of exhaust and smog coming from the city just a few miles away.

“We better get inside and set up,” he said.

The interior of the home was decorated sparsely but well. The furniture appeared to be from IKEA and without any wear and tear. There were even photos on the walls of random families. Probably, she guessed, to fool anyone who happened to look through the windows.

She threw her gym
bag full of clothing and toiletries on the hardwood floor as Giovanni went through the house to find the alarm panel. He turned it off and then checked all the closets and rooms. The house was only two floors, a main level and a basement, and he was in the basement for a while. When he trudged up the stairs, he shut the basement door behind him and said, “All good. There’ll be one agent here at all times with you.”

Sarah flopped down onto the couc
h. “You sure this is necessary?”

He
came toward her, placing one hand in his pocket, which exposed his sidearm in the holster. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s not enough.”

She leaned back on the couch. “Can you get me something
then?”

“Sure. What?”

“A drawing pad and some pencils. Colored ones.”

As night descended, Sarah sat at the dining table
with the pad of paper in front of her. She hadn’t seen Giovanni since he had dropped the supplies off, but another agent was with her—the rude woman.

They hadn’t spoken since
the woman had arrived, but she was clearly annoyed at having to be there. She stomped around the house and planted herself somewhere and didn’t move or talk for a long time. Then she stomped somewhere else and folded her arms as if she were an older sister forced to babysit.

“You really don’t need to be here with me,” Sarah said.

“I’ve been ordered to protect the princess, so that’s what I have to do.”

Sarah drew
for a while in silence. “Have I done something to offend you?”

“Yes, you offend me. Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get into the FBI? How long it took? How much bullshit I had to take from these
Neanderthal adrenaline junkies to finally earn their respect? And you just come in and are a consultant on our most famous case in decades? What, are you sleeping with Kyle?”

Sarah
hadn’t expected that much venom that quickly. She sat in silence for a moment and thought about what to say.

“Do you know why I’m here?” Sarah said softly. “Because I’m a freak. They’re using me. As soon as I’m not useful to them
, they’ll throw me aside. But I’m so desperate that I’m willing to do it, just for the chance that I might be able to change my life. I’m sorry that threatens you for some reason, but I have as much right to be here as you do.”

The woman turned away, staring out the windows in the front room. Sarah could’ve reacted with
vitriol; she could’ve been as angry and bitter as the woman was. But instead, she wanted to try something else. She reached out to her, opening her awareness just enough that a whisper of the woman’s mind came to her. Like a brush on the shoulder.

Sarah saw the woman
as a young child. She was bullied, mercilessly picked on by the other kids—and home was even worse.

Flashes came to Sarah
—a mother who was in and out of mental institutions, an alcoholic father, poverty so deep that Sarah saw the young girl without a coat in the winter. She had risen from atrocious circumstances to earn her place in a bureaucracy that favored men.

Sarah suddenly felt a deep pang of sympathy for her.

“I’m sure it wasn’t easy,” Sarah said. “Getting where you are.”

She shook her head and glanced back. The woman’s face
was softening. “You have no idea.”

“I have some idea. I grew up Amish. Women are
second-class citizens. We’re married off quite young and usually don’t have any say in who we marry. Then we’re just used for breeding.”

“So maybe you have some idea,” she said.

Sarah smiled, and the woman, though not quite there yet, at least didn’t frown.

Returning to her drawing, Sarah didn’t even realize
when the woman came up behind her and began watching her. Sarah didn’t stop until the drawing was done.

“What is that?” the woman said.

“I don’t know. I saw it.”

“Saw it where?”

Sarah didn’t know how much the woman had been told about her position as Kyle’s “assistant,” and she wasn’t about to go around blabbing it. All she said was, “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

“You don’t have to be coy. I know exactly who you are and why you’re with the Bureau.”

“Oh.”

“So what is this?”

Sarah looked the drawing over. Two young boys sitting straight, their backs to a wall, masks over their faces. “I keep seeing it. Two kids with masks over their faces in a room. I can’t see anything else in the room. I heard screaming the last time I saw this, but I don’t know where it came from.”

“Those masks are creepy.”

Sarah ran her finger over them. “I don’t know what they mean.” She looked up at the woman. “You probably think I’m crazy, right?”

The woman sat down. Sarah could see her badge clipped to her skirt. Her name was Melanie Foster.

“No,” Melanie said, “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Most people do.
Maybe I am. Maybe this is just what crazy people do, and sometimes they’re right.”

“I don’t think Kyle would’ve hired you if he thought that. He’s a bare
-bones kinda guy. Life is rational thought and nothing else. Big fan of Ayn Rand. I really don’t think he would bring you in if you didn’t show him something special.” She paused. “What did you show him?”

“You sure you want to know?” Sarah said, running the tip of an eraser over the edge of
the bench the two children were sitting on.

“No, I guess not. But… d
o you see things with me?”

“Nobody from your past is here if that’s what you mean.”

She swallowed before speaking. “My father…”

The hostility suddenly made sense. “Is that why you’ve been
so rude to me? You’re scared I’m gonna tell you something about your father?”

Melanie looked away
at the far wall in the room that held the photo of a family who were probably just actors. “If that bastard is on the other side, I hope he’s burning in hell.”

Sarah kept her mind tightly shut. With some effort, she kept the thoughts out. But it exhausted her. Like contracting
your stomach for a long period of time. She didn’t want to know why Melanie had said that, or what her father had done to her. Melanie clearly didn’t want her to know, either.

“I better head back to the front room,” Melanie said. “Someone will be here to relieve me around midnight. If you hear the alarm and voices, it’s just us.”

She nodded. “Thanks.”

Melanie rose and went back to the living room. She sat on the couch and stared out the window. With a single thought, Sarah could know exactly what she was thinking
, what demons lurked behind her eyes that made her the way she was and made her so frightened of Sarah. But she didn’t open herself. She’d had enough monstrous thoughts for the day. Instead, she pushed the drawing away from her and headed to her room, hoping that she’d be able to get some sleep tonight without any nightmares.