Deadly Harvest (21 page)

Eric Rolfe turned and stared at Jeremy. “And yet, no matter what you do—even with contact lenses—there's still something about the eyes. I can always recognize anyone in makeup, because of the eyes.” He hesitated for a second. “And that's what's bugging the shit out of me now. It was his eyes. That Damien guy. He stared at me…and I felt like I knew him and didn't like what I knew. There was something in the way he looked at me.”

“What about his voice?” Jeremy asked.

Eric seemed startled by the question.

“I don't know.”

“Well, what did he sound like?”

Rolfe thought about it. “He didn't have a heavy accent, but…he sounded a bit English, maybe. He definitely didn't have a Boston accent. He was kind of formal, proper. I don't know. I'm a visual guy. Sorry.”

“But voices are telling, too. If you heard him again, would you know him?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Well, do me a favor. Keep thinking about it,” Jeremy told him.

“Sure. Does that mean I'm off the hook?” Rolfe asked. He spoke with dry amusement; clearly he already knew the answer.

“Not yet,” Jeremy assured him.

They kept walking then, and Jeremy headed out. He was almost to the car when Rolfe called to him and he turned back.

“If I could see him, maybe. I'm telling you, even with the contact lenses…there was something about his eyes. Something I
knew.
And I really do think—I'm actually afraid—
he
knew
me.
”

I
t was daylight, and still relatively early. The darkness wouldn't come for another hour, at least.

Besides, Rowenna thought, she wasn't alone. She was with Joe.

And the corpse was gone. The corn, just days away from harvest, rose high into the sky, even after being trampled by so many people, Mother Nature protecting her own. The earth might not be eternal, but she would go on for millions of years, even if man didn't. Life sprang from her, organisms tinier than the eye could see and as huge as elephants and whales—and as egotistical as man.

But all her creations returned to her, became part of her, in the end.

And she accepted them all back, just as she had accepted the blood that had dripped from Dinah Green.

Rowenna felt the strength of the ground itself, and the whispering, growing corn.

Maybe even the corn could sense that its time was coming.

She tried to shake the feeling of dread and finality that had seized her there in the vast field. She tried to tell herself that the rich scent of nature was sweet, and that the breeze was like a caress.

It didn't matter. Nothing could change her mind.

She didn't want to be there.

Joe was standing a short distance away from her. “Well?” he said softly.

She shook her head. “I'm not sure what you think I can do. The crime-scene unit has already been through here. What do you expect me to find that they didn't?”

“What do you
feel?
” he asked her.

“Joe, I've told you, all I do is put myself in the victim's place and try to think logically.”

“Okay, think logically.”

“Do you think she was killed here?”

He nodded.

“Where was she found? Exactly?” Rowenna asked.

He pointed next to her. She felt like an idiot. Nature was taking back her own, but there was a numbered marker right by where she was standing, and if she'd looked down, she would have seen the stake thrust deeply into the ground.

He walked over to her and handed her a color photocopy of Dinah Green's driver's license.

The woman had been pretty. Hair: dark brown, almost black. Eyes: brown. Height: five-three. She'd managed a shy smile for the photographer at the driver's license bureau. She looked like a woman who had a lot of living to do, and was eager to get out and do it.

The breeze began to blow harder, or so it seemed. Rowenna looked up as it whipped her hair. The sun looked strange, with an opaque haze haloing it. And it was dropping. All too soon, darkness would come.

Rowenna closed her eyes and lost herself in that place where the intuitions came.

She thought she could hear someone pleading. A feminine voice, fraught with terror and, amazingly, hope…The human heart lived on hope, even against all odds.

Rowenna winced as, somewhere far away, as if in the memory of another time in this very place, she heard a scream.

And then laughter. A man's cruel laughter.

There was a struggle, and then the woman's voice again.

“I'll be good, I swear.”

And a man talking. A deep voice, with a note of implacability in it.

“It's too late.”

And then a struggle. Moaning.

Another scream. This one of choking agony.

And then…

Then she understood everything—what he did, where he did it, even, to a degree,
why.
And she was terrified.

Suddenly Rowenna found herself fighting for breath, her hands clutching her throat as if to fend off an attacker. She fell to her knees in the cornfield, knowing his hands were around the woman's throat, feeling them around
her
throat, his strength…brutal and impossible to combat.

She heard a snap as a tiny bone at the back of the throat broke….

“Ro!”

Joe was at her side, shaking her, dragging her back to her feet.

She blinked rapidly.

That eerie haze no longer obscured the sun, whose rays shone down gently on her.

“Ro, are you all right?”

Joe was anxious, she thought, but at the same time, he didn't appear to be the least bit sorry for what he had just put her through.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” she said. And she was. The sun was warm. The breeze was gentle. Life was normal.

“What did you see?”

“I don't
see
things,” she whispered, and she didn't know if she was protesting to him, or to herself. Because this time what she'd felt had gone way beyond imagining the victim's final moments and had taken her straight into the twisted mind of a killer.

“What did you feel?” Joe pursued.

“Okay, looking at it logically, this is my theory. He kidnaps his victim. He has someplace where he takes her, a place where he can keep her a prisoner without being afraid of being caught or seen. I doubt this place is in the city, unless he had a soundproof room built. And I have a feeling of darkness. As if he uses darkness itself as one of his tactics for terrorizing his victim. He keeps her alive, he makes her his plaything, except…”

“Except?” Joe's hands were on her shoulders, and he was staring at her intently.

She looked up at him. His hold was so strong that she almost protested, because in another second he would probably cause bruises. He was a strong guy and still spent a lot of time in the gym, and she was feeling the results. But he was so intent, and he seemed so desperate, that she held her tongue.

“Except that she has to play his way. She has to be afraid, but…she has to understand that he's all-powerful. She has to worship him. And if she goes against him, if she tries to escape, then she has to pay the price.”

His fingers tightened again, twitched.

“Ro, can you see him? Think, Rowenna. Concentrate. Can you see his face?”

There
was
an image in her mind. Something…

“Ro?”

She shook her head. “No, I can't see his face. You know what I
am
seeing? One of those ugly devil masks Adam and Eve are selling.” She winced as his hold tightened painfully. “Joe, let go. You're hurting me.”

The sudden blaring of a horn startled them both. Joe released her, a look of apology on his face, and stepped back. They heard a car door slam, and seconds later Jeremy came striding through the corn, heedless of the stalks, crashing through them as he raced toward them.

His face was tight with anxiety as he came to a dead stop five feet away and stared at her. She saw that his hands were knotted into fists as his sides.

“Jeremy,” she said. “Hi.”

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he demanded.

“She's with me,” Joe said.

“You're supposed to be at the museum,” Jeremy told her accusingly, completely ignoring the older man. “I couldn't believe it when Dan said you'd come out here.”

“I said she's with me,” Joe repeated.

“It's not safe for you to be running around out here in the cornfields,” Jeremy challenged, staring her straight in the eyes.

“You said you'd be at the museum,” he went on. “That you'd be there, in town, waiting for me.”

“Jeremy, I'm with Joe,” she said placatingly, wondering where all this anger was coming from.

He turned from her to Joe, as if noticing him for the first time, his eyes thunderous. “Why would you bring her out here?” he demanded.

“Hey, simmer down. This is my home, my stomping ground.
I'm
the law here, and Ro's here to help me. I've known her practically all her life—you two have just become friends. Or
whatever,
” he added with a glower. “So don't go all ballistic on me, son. If anyone doesn't belong here, it's you.”

Jeremy didn't back down. He stood his ground, arms crossed over his chest. “Night is almost here. You may be a big strong cop, maybe a crack shot, but once it's dark out here…Joe, the killer is a clever man, maybe even an illusionist. Cop or not, it isn't safe for Rowenna to be out here.”

“It's daylight,” Joe pointed out.

“It's three-thirty, and night comes fast.”

“Excuse me, both of you,” Rowenna snapped, striding past Joe to confront Jeremy. “I was going back to the museum. I would have met you there, just as planned. Joe and I have been doing this kind of thing for a long time. And, by the way, he
is
a crack shot.”

“Crack shot—or crack
pot?
” Jeremy said heatedly, looking past her to Joe. “You can't use her this way—it's dangerous. You'll get the killer thinking she really
can
see things, and then he'll target her, make her his next victim.”

“But I can help!” Rowenna insisted. She looked at the two of them, staring at one another, nostrils practically flaring. She had a sudden image of the two of them stomping the ground and rushing each other like a couple of angry bulls.

“Both of you, stop. Jeremy, the killer isn't going to think anything, because he doesn't even know I exist—Joe and I came out here alone. I know you're just worried about me, and I'm grateful. I'm also legally sane, over twenty-one and more than capable of taking care of myself.” She marched past him, trembling—but whether with anger or fear, she honestly didn't know—and headed for the road.

She could hear the two men pushing their way through the whispering stalks in her wake.

Jeremy spoke first. “Wait! I'll take you back to town.”

“Hey, she came out here with me,” Joe said firmly.

She spun around. “Screw you both! You're acting like a couple of five-year-olds. I'm hitchhiking.”

Even as she said it, she knew perfectly well that she had no intention of hitchhiking.

She had far too strong an instinct for self-preservation.

“No, no, wait. Ride back with Joe, and I'll follow,” Jeremy said, catching up to her.

“No. It's okay. Go with Flynn and
I'll
follow,” Joe said.

“Look, it doesn't matter,” Jeremy said. “Maybe I was overreacting, but come on, Joe. You'd overreact, too, if you knew that Rowenna and I were at the scene of such butchery…. Especially after this morning.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Joe muttered. “Hey, was that an apology?”

“I'm apologizing for being a jerk. I still don't think she should be out here,” Jeremy said.

Joe ignored that, turned to Rowenna and asked, “You two are going back to the museum, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

But when she looked to Jeremy for confirmation, he looked hesitant.

“Sorry,
I'm
going back to the museum,” Rowenna said to Joe.

“I'll meet you there before five,” Jeremy told her. “Joe, you'll see to it that she gets there safely, right?”

“You bet,” Joe promised him.

Jeremy walked over to her and paused, meeting her eyes briefly before taking her hand and kissing her cheek. Then he nodded to Joe and headed for his car.

Rowenna watched him go, puzzled, suddenly feeling as if the entire focus of the last few minutes had been argument for the sake of argument, like some kind of bizarre male bonding ritual, and she'd just been the excuse.

Joe joined her on the shoulder of the road, then walked with her over to his car.

“That was weird,” she said as she settled herself in the passenger seat.

“Not really,” he told her, glancing in his rearview mirror as he pulled out on the road.

“Yes, it was,” she assured him. “First he was going crazy worrying about me, and then it was like he forgot all about me.”

He just grinned and glanced at her. “He was in a panic when you weren't where you said you'd be. Now he knows you're safe, and he had something else on his agenda.”

“Am I hearing this right? You're standing up for him?” she said, eyes widening in surprise.

He shrugged. “The kid's okay,” he said.

She laughed. “He isn't a kid.”

“Hell, if you're
me,
” Joe said, “he's a kid. And so are you. Leave it at that, huh?”

She fell silent and stared out the side window, watching the rows and rows of corn sweep by them. After a while she glanced over at him. “I take it you think you know where he's going?”

Joe's lips twitched. “Logically?” he asked her.

“Logically.”

“He's stopping by the MacElroy place. He'll want to meet Ginny and Doc MacElroy himself.”