Dream Eyes (26 page)

“How did he explain her knowledge of the workings of a paranormal camera?” Judson asked.

Nicole shrugged. “Something to do with her ability to tune her wind chimes. He said she had the magic touch because she was a genuine witch. He laughed when he told me that. At the time, I thought he was teasing me. I knew he believed in the paranormal, but he had always made it clear that he didn’t believe in magic and witchcraft. I assumed he meant that Louise had some psychic talent that allowed her to adjust the focus of the camera.”

“The camera disappeared after Zander died,” Gwen said. “Evelyn and I looked for it.”

“So did I,” Nicole said. “In fact I went back to the falls to search for it. When I couldn’t find it there, I went to the house that Zander had rented to look for it. I even asked Louise if she knew what had happened to it.”

“What did she say?” Judson asked.

“Nothing helpful. Something about the demon taking it. She said it wouldn’t have done me any good because I didn’t have the kind of power it took to make the camera work. She was having one of her bad days that day. You know how it was with her. She was always walking a fine line between semi-crazy and real crazy. On that day she was definitely on the wrong side of the line.”

“Why did you want the camera?” Gwen asked.

“I just wanted a keepsake,” Nicole said. “Something that had been important to Zander. He had made it clear that the camera was his most valuable possession. When I couldn’t find it, I assumed you had stolen it or else it had gone into the river.”

“Evelyn and I convinced ourselves that it had gone over the falls with Zander,” Gwen said. “But now that Evelyn and Louise are both dead by paranormal means, it’s looking like someone else found the camera that day, someone who has the talent to use it.”

Nicole looked at her. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“It’s possible that there were two crystal-based weapons all along,” Judson said. “We don’t have all the answers yet. You said that you went to Louise’s house to ask her a question.”

“Yes.”

“What was it you wanted to ask her?” Judson asked.

“I remembered what Zander had said about Louise having the ability to adjust the camera focus. He called her a witch, but he told me that very few people had her kind of talent. It occurred to me that if Gwen was using the camera, she would need to get it refocused periodically and that maybe she knew that Louise could do that kind of magic.”

“That was very good thinking,” Gwen said. “The same thing had occurred to me. Now that Louise is dead, Judson and I are going on the theory that whoever has the camera was using Louise to tune it but then decided that she had become a liability and killed her before we could talk to her.”

“Yes, I think that is exactly what happened,” Nicole said. “When I found her body, I was terrified. Those damn chimes. I think I’ll hear them in my nightmares for the rest of my life.”

“The chimes were sounding when you got there?” Judson asked.

“Yes,” Nicole said. She unfolded her arms and massaged her temples. “It was like a ghost was causing them to make that terrible music. It seemed to be getting louder and louder. I wanted to run. But then I heard your car in the driveway. I thought maybe the two of you were working together. You had murdered Evelyn and Louise and now you were going to kill me, too. The chimes made it impossible to think clearly.” Nicole paused to take a deep breath. “But last night I realized I had been wrong about you, Gwen, and probably everything else, as well.”

“What convinced you that I wasn’t the killer?” Gwen asked.

Nicole moved one hand in a small gesture. “You and Mr. Coppersmith saved me from the fire.”

“That’s it?” Gwen frowned. “You decided we were the good guys just because we didn’t leave you behind when the house went up in flames?”

“The kind of monster Zander described to me would have left me in that house.” Nicole shook her head. “How could I have been so wrong about Zander?”

“The ability to charm those around him was part of his talent,” Gwen said. “You know that he was psychic. Well, think of him as a kind of hypnotist. He could make people believe just about anything. Evelyn and I were fooled for a while, too. So was everyone else in town.”

“I wonder if he fooled Louise,” Nicole said quietly. “That poor crazy old witch. Do you suppose she ever realized that she was aiding and abetting a serial killer?”

Thirty-four

W
e need some deep background on Zander Taylor,” Judson said. “And we need it fast. How much did you and Evelyn find out about him when you realized that he might be the killer?”

“Not much,” Gwen said. “All we had to go on were the forms that he filled out for Evelyn’s files when he joined the study. He claimed that his mother gave him up for adoption shortly after he was born. Evidently something terrible happened to his adoptive parents. Zander told us they were murdered in the course of a home invasion. Afterward he ended up in the foster care system. But who knows? With Zander, you could never be sure when you were getting the truth.”

Judson thought about that while he pried off the lid of his coffee cup. Gwen’s cup of tea sat untouched in the console between the two front seats. They had picked up the coffee and tea at Wilby’s lone fast-food restaurant after leaving Nicole’s shop. At Gwen’s suggestion, he had driven out along a narrow road that dead-ended on a tree-studded bluff overlooking the falls.

From where they were parked, they could see the old lodge that Evelyn had converted into a lab on the opposite side of the river. The windowless structure sat shrouded in gloom and shadow, another sad monument to the futility of pursuing paranormal research, Judson thought.

Gwen contemplated the dark lodge through the windshield. “Every dime Evelyn ever got went into that lab. I asked her once why she had wasted so much of her life trying to prove the paranormal was normal.”

“Did she give you an answer?”

“She said she had been saddled with the ability to perceive just far enough beyond the normal to know that the paranormal existed. She said that a little knowledge was always a dangerous thing because it made you want more. She yearned for answers.”

“So does my brother, Sam. He says he can’t abandon the research when the reality of the paranormal confronts him every time he looks into a mirror. And now he’s talking about doing the research for the sake of his future children.”

“I’ve met Sam, and it’s obvious that he’s fascinated with crystals and para-physics,” Gwen said. “But that’s not what compels you, is it?”

“No. Don’t get me wrong. I’m always interested in what comes out of the lab—everyone in the Coppersmith family is curious about the research—but I’m not obsessed with the latest crystal theories or the results of some new experiment.” He shrugged, drank some of the coffee and lowered the cup. “Not unless I can figure out how to use it.”

Gwen smiled her knowing smile. “In the course of one of your investigations.”

“Sam is my partner in Coppersmith Consulting because he likes the scientific and technical end of the security business—the forensics. But me, I like the hunt.”

“Yes, I know.” She picked up her tea and removed the lid. “I also get the feeling that you like to work alone.”

“I can work with Sam,” he said, feeling oddly defensive.

“Sure,” she said. “Because he’s family. You can trust him.”

He breathed deep and exhaled slowly. “I trust you, Gwen.”

She looked startled. Then she positively glowed.

“Why, thank you,” she said. “I’m honored. As it happens, I trust you, too.”

“Good. That’s good.” He shifted slightly, searching for a path into the difficult conversation he wanted to have. “There’s something else I want to say. I respect what you do with your talent.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? I’m thrilled. I have to tell you there’s just not a lot of respect out there for those of us in the psychic counseling profession.”

“Okay, maybe I need to qualify my statement. I respect you. Not sure about the other psychic counselors. Lot of phonies out there.”

“Sadly, that is all too true.” She took a cautious sip of the tea. “Which is why I’m thinking of changing careers.”

“What?”

“I like this detecting business.”

“I can tell,” he growled.

“All modesty aside, I feel I have a certain flair for it.”

“You do,” he agreed. “But where, exactly, are you going with this?”

“I’ve been solving historical murder cases in a fictional sense for the past two years for
Dead of Night
. In the process, I’ve learned a lot about researching cold cases from Evelyn. I’ve learned a lot from you, too. In fact, I’ve picked up several very helpful pointers in the course of our partnership.”

“Gwen, if this is going where I think it’s going—”

“And then there’s my dream therapy work.” Gwen’s enthusiasm was growing stronger by the second. Her eyes sparkled. “When you think about it, that has a lot in common with what you do—searching for clues, understanding motives. It’s like I’ve been serving an apprenticeship all these years. Now I’m ready to come out of the shadows.”

He was getting a bad feeling, a real deer-in-the-headlights kind of feeling.

“What are you planning to do when this case is over?” he asked.

“I’m going to open a psychic detective agency,” Gwen announced.

She was damn near incandescent now, he thought.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He set his cup down in the holder. “Gwen, listen to me, this business isn’t what you think it is.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t plan to compete with Coppersmith Consulting,” she said quickly. “I’m not interested in industrial espionage or secret agent work.”

“Okay, that’s a good thing because—”

“I’m thinking more along the lines of small, quiet murder cases and missing persons work.”

“There are no quiet cases of murder, and when people go missing it’s usually for a reason—often a dangerous reason.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

“That’s supposed to reassure me? Gwen, you read auras for a living. You fix bad dreams, remember?”

“I just explained that background will be very helpful in my investigations.” Excitement and energy heated her eyes. “This feels right, Judson. It’s like I’ve been floundering around all my life trying to find myself and figure out what I ought to be doing.”

“You sound like my sister, Emma.”

“I’ve found my passion, Judson, just as you have. I’m sure your sister will find hers, too, eventually.”

For a nightmarish instant, he was back in the flooded caves, sucking up the last of the air in the tank. It took him a couple of seconds to breathe again.

He wanted her to feel passion for him, he realized, not for the investigation business. But she had a point. He did have a passion for the work that he did. How could he argue that she shouldn’t feel something similar? Because it could be dangerous. That was the reason. The thought of Gwen going off on her own to investigate
small, quiet murder cases
scared the living daylights out of him. But he also had to admit that he understood.

They sat quietly for a time, the rain drizzling steadily on the windshield. The surging energy of the falls was a palpable force that penetrated the SUV. Something deep inside Judson responded to the wild currents. The steady, unrelenting roar was muffled by the closed windows, but it was always there in the background. He wondered absently how many eons the water had been cascading over the cliff. You didn’t have to be psychic to know that there was such a thing as the paranormal. You only had to look at the forces of nature to realize that energy existed across a vast—perhaps an endless—spectrum that extended far beyond what people, with their limited senses and puny machines, could measure.

“Sometimes the hunt doesn’t end well,” he said after a while. “Sometimes I get the answer too late to do anyone any good. Sometimes people won’t accept the answers I come up with. Sometimes I don’t find any answers.”

“Sometimes I can’t fix a dreamscape,” Gwen said. “Sometimes my clients won’t accept the answers I come up with. Sometimes I can’t find the answers, either. But at least as a private investigator I’ll be able to find some of them.”

“The major drawback to investigation work is that you have to deal with the clients,” he said.

“They can’t be any more frustrating or difficult than my dream therapy clients.”

“Maybe not, but they can be more dangerous. My last client tried to kill me.”

“Good grief.” She swallowed hard. “Well, I promise I’ll be careful.”

“You keep saying that.”

“No offense, but given your career path, you aren’t in a position to lecture anyone else about the importance of not taking chances. Neither of us can ignore our talent, Judson.”

“This conversation isn’t going well, is it?” he said. “Maybe we should get back to the investigation that we’re trying to work on here.”

“Okay.”

He settled into the corner and rested one arm along the back of the seat. “It occurs to me that Zander Taylor may have given you more hard facts than you realize.”

Gwen’s brows elevated slightly. “What makes you say that?”

“A skilled liar is usually smart enough to mix in as much of the truth as possible. It makes for a more convincing story.”

“One thing I do know about Zander is that he was an excellent liar,” Gwen said.

“In which case, it’s possible that at least some of the information he gave Evelyn when he applied to the study was true,” Judson said.

“Even if you’re right, how do we sort the wheat from the chaff?”

Judson closed his eyes and summoned up a little energy, putting himself into the zone—into the head of the dead psychopath.

“Got a hunch that when we go looking, we’ll find out that Taylor really was adopted and that his adoptive parents were murdered—maybe by Taylor himself, given what I know of his para-psych profile—but that’s not our problem now.”

“Sometimes I wonder how many people he did kill, but I suppose we’ll never know,” Gwen said somberly. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”