The Collector (32 page)

S
even pulled the blanket over Gia’s shoulders. They were standing just outside the apartment building at 18951 Brook St.—which was where, using her BlackBerry, Agent Barnes had found an apartment available for rent in Little Saigon. When she’d called the manager, she’d discovered that it had been taken recently, the renter offering to pay over asking price for immediate occupancy.

Upon hearing gunfire, the police had knocked down the door. It was Seven who had killed Thomas Crane.

“You okay?” he asked Gia.

She watched as staff from the coroner’s office wheeled Thomas’s body out to the waiting van.

“Estelle told me my father died in a car accident,” she said. She kept her gaze on the coroner’s van. “Imagine. She knew I had psychic abilities. And still she choked out that lie.”

Seven braced himself, seeing that she wouldn’t be holding back anymore. She was like one of those soda pop bottles after they were shaken hard. The top was ready to blow.

“My mother had this vision,” she continued in a monotone. “She thought that Morgan, my father, was a danger to me. But, you see, she misunderstood. It wasn’t Morgan. And it wasn’t me.”

It all came together then. How, long ago, a younger, pregnant Estelle had a vision: of a father who was a danger to his daughter.

Estelle assumed the danger was to the child she carried…but she was wrong.

“Thomas and Stella,” Seven said.

“As I told you, it’s not an exact science.” Gia shook her head. “I always assumed she lied because he cheated on her. That she was just being stupid, keeping me from my father because he’d broken her heart. I should have known. I
knew
my mother. She wasn’t…like that.”

He took her hand in his. “How could you possibly have known if she didn’t confide in you about her fears?”

She smiled up at him, squeezing his palm. “I was seventeen years old when I discovered Morgan was my father. Morgan Tyrell. Can you imagine? Millionaire philanthropist—parapsychologist to the stars.” She shook her head at the memories. “I moved to Boston to live with Morgan. He paid for school, encouraged me to work at the institute right alongside him. I wouldn’t even take my mother’s calls.”

“Hey, you were young. You forgave her, right?”

“I missed her too much—I missed her terribly. And I wanted to understand. I started spending summers at her dig sites whenever I could. And I felt good about it…especially when Estelle and Morgan started up again.” She leaned back against Seven, smiling. “I felt as if I was playing Cupid, bringing my parents together. I had no idea.”

“And why would you?”

She smiled up at him. “That’s nice.” She took a breath, closing her eyes—opening them on the exhalation. “I was so naive. I had taken Morgan’s name by then, Gina Tyrell. I never told anyone at the site we were related. But we looked so much alike. And she was proud of me. Why wouldn’t she confide in Thomas?”

According to the dossier he’d read, Thomas Crane had been a graduate student at Harvard. He’d already accepted a teaching position at Boston University. When Gia showed up at the dig site, he must have known immediately she was Estelle’s daughter…and he’d seen an opportunity.

Of course, he’d moved in. But the pregnancy…

“No, I’m not that naive. I used birth control,” she said, answering the question Seven would never ask. “Some things are just meant to be.”

She would have been in her late twenties, that special time in a woman’s life when she would start thinking about beginning a family before thinking about the alternative…he knew that much from his divorce. And there she was, pregnant and in love.

“I was lonely. An all-work-and-no-play kind of girl.” She held the blanket tighter. She looked so tired. “Psychic abilities are murder on a love life.” She took a moment. “I don’t know. I mean, here was this evil, evil man. And yet, he gave me Stella.”

Seven had read the dossier; he knew she’d been the one to turn Crane in to the Greek authorities.

“How did you know he killed Estelle?” he asked.

“She left me a note. I found it two days after she’d died. That’s when I finally got the courage to go through her things. It was this small piece of paper—but you couldn’t miss it, because she’d drawn an image of the Eye in the corner. The note described the vision she’d had so many years ago—the night before she’d found out
she
was pregnant.”

“Jesus,” he said.

“Even before I discovered who my father was, Estelle came to believe that she was wrong about Morgan. That he wasn’t a danger to me—or anyone. In the note, she said if it wasn’t Morgan then I should be careful. She said—” she choked on the words “—she said that sometimes it was difficult for her to know where she ends and I begin. That maybe her vision wasn’t about Morgan at all, but the father of my child.” She shook her head. “She didn’t even know I was pregnant. That’s why she didn’t give me the note.”

Seven wanted to hold her tight; he wanted to run away.
Shit.

“After he killed my mother, Thomas asked me to marry him.” Gia looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with emotions. “I didn’t know he was her killer. I said yes.”

He pushed the hair from her face. He held her close, giving the comfort she needed.

“Ms. Moon?”

They both looked up. A uniformed officer stood next to them, ready to take her home.

She looked back at Seven, almost pleading for this not to be the end.

He sighed. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

She gave him a melancholy smile. “Of course. Tomorrow.”

T
omorrow.

Gia dropped onto the sofa in her front room, exhausted. What a lovely idea, that Seven could forgive her. That he could look into her eyes and never think,
She knew what would happen—she’d seen it all before. She set me up to kill Crane.

“Not going to happen,” she said to herself.

There must always be a sacrifice
. That’s what she’d said in her trance.

Well, there was no help for it now. She had made her choices—Thomas was dead. And after his horrible confession, she couldn’t say she was sorry.

He could never hurt them again.

“Ms. Moon?”

It was a woman’s voice, coming from the hall behind her. Every fiber in Gia’s being went into high alert.

She turned slowly toward the voice.

Meredith Gospel stepped out from the shadows. Gia recognized her from photographs in the papers. She’d been keeping track of the Gospel family, uncertain as to why her spirit guides had brought her here, until her vision of Mimi Tran’s murder.

Meredith stood in the hall leading into the bedrooms. Apparently, she’d been waiting for Gia to come home.

She was holding a gun.

“I came for a reading,” Meredith said.

She held the gun almost casually at her side as she glanced around the room as if searching for Tarot cards and a crystal ball.

She settled for the love seat opposite Gia, placing the gun across her lap. “It’s my first time so I’m not sure how to proceed.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gospel,” Gia began carefully. “I’m not that kind of psychic. I’m a painter. If you want, you can tell me what’s bothering you. I can see if my gift can be of any use.”

“Painter?” Meredith shook her head. Her hand tightened on the gun. “I think we’ll manage without that, then.”

“Can we go into the kitchen?” Gia asked, thinking that in closer quarters, she might have a better chance at disarming Meredith. “The energy there,” she said, improvising. “It would be better.”

“Oh, I think right here will be just fine. I kill psychics, did you know that? But of course you did. You see the future. How could you not know?”

Gia let the question hang in the air between them, knowing Meredith wasn’t looking for her to justify her gift.

“Women like you, Ms. Moon, are evil. You
stalk
the weak minds of those who actually believe in your gifts. You deserve to die.”

Gia felt her heart in her throat. She felt blindsided, having seen nothing of this in her visions.

She’d always believed the killer had taken the eyes of his victims because he believed he could use them somehow to tap into psychic powers. But there was also an element of hate. The desire to blind—to disable. She’d thought it was Thomas doing the killing,
his
hate coming through.

“You sound very upset, Mrs. Gospel. I would like to help.”

Meredith nodded. “My son, Owen. He is…he is very sick. It’s his eyes, you see. A neurological condition. We didn’t know his disorder was associated with any sort of…psychological issues. I believe it’s quite rare.”

Gia had seen photographs of Owen Gospel in the paper, as well. He was always wearing sunglasses, the kind with only a slight tint so that they could be worn indoors.

There’s something wrong with his eyes.

That’s what she’d told Seven when he’d pressured her for in-formation about the killer. To Gia, it was just more evidence pointing to Thomas. She knew Thomas was experiencing seizures accompanied by rapid eye movement.

“I thought I could help him. I was the Moon Fairy, you see,” Meredith said, choking a little on the words. “I would turn Owen into a rabbit and take him to the moon. Rescue him from his father before David could destroy Owen for his potion.”

“Potion? I don’t understand.” Maybe if she could keep her talking, make a connection….

“The Moon Fairy’s husband, the king, wishes to become immortal. He must boil all the children of the village, including his own daughter, in moon dew in order for the magician to concoct a potion to make the king live forever. But the Moon Fairy turns her daughter into a rabbit and they escape to the moon together.”

Thomas said he’d sold the Eye to David Gospel. Had Gospel believed the object could make him immortal?

“Owen told me that story,” Meredith continued. “He told me a lot of things. Strange things that, at first, didn’t make sense. He told me David was stealing his
life source
.” She said the phrase as if she wasn’t quite sure what it meant. “You see, Owen has had several eye surgeries for his condition. Rabbit’s eyes, he used to call them.
I have rabbit’s eyes, Mommy
. That’s what he’d say when he was little.”

“Rabbits don’t blink,” Gia said, thinking desperately how to turn the situation around.

“Owen recently confided that during his surgeries, he believed David would slip into the operating room and steal his life source. Owen talked a lot about life source. That it was in the eyes. I didn’t understand, of course. I had no idea his psychosis had become so…profound.”

“How could you know?”

“It’s a Vietnamese story, the Moon Fairy, a very beautiful fairy tale about a mother’s love.” She sighed. “I blame David, of course. That stupid collection of his. It was tainted with demons. You can’t ask for immortality without paying a price. There must always be a sacrifice, and David sacrificed our son.” She stared at Gia. “I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t be his Moon Fairy.”

Gia tried to imagine the forces Gospel had gathered for his collection. Objects of power often had dark entities attached. “Mrs. Gospel, the Eye doesn’t have the power to grant immortality.”

“I know.” She quickly brushed away the tears welling in her eyes. “There were other artifacts David was trying to secure. He had this clay tablet that mentioned objects that came raining to earth from the sky. He did boundless research on the matter. He’d come to believe these were meteorites imbued with special powers. When he heard about your mother and the Eye, he knew it was one of the objects mentioned in the clay tablet. If one existed…”

“So would the others,” she finished.

Meredith nodded. “Once he had the Eye, he became obsessed. Hiring women like yourself to get it to work.” She sat up stiffly. “He understood it was dangerous, so he let others to do his dirty work. Make the crystal come to life. But we are not meant to see the future. Only God can do that. I’m sorry to say it, Miss Moon, but women like you are an abomination.”

Gia could feel her breath coming faster. She forced herself not to look at the gun—tried to make her mind think ahead, imagine some kind of escape.

“When did you first know your son was ill?”

“He started with animals. Of course, I didn’t understand the full extent of his disease. That didn’t come until much later. We even did an exorcism.” She frowned. “I was certain then he had changed, after that. I dedicated myself to God, thanking him every day for giving me my little boy back. The exorcism was unpleasant. Owen began to hide his condition in order that he not be punished.”

“But something happened?”

“David sent him away. As always, David was just thinking about himself. If Owen’s proclivities became public, the scandal would be monstrous. He sent Owen abroad with Rocket. He was a
very
decent man, Rocket. That was his last name, of course, but we always called him that. He called me Mrs. David. It was rather quaint.”

On the love seat across from Gia, Meredith Gospel shook her head, looking suddenly horrified. “David told me Rocket and Owen were doing missionary work. Imagine. Missionary work.”

Gia felt her blood chill. She thought of her session with Morgan, his claim that Thomas hadn’t killed her mother. Which didn’t make sense. Thomas had
confessed
to her, giving her the chilling details about how he’d killed Estelle.

But now she realized Gospel and his family had to have been there. That David had brought them to Greece to get the Eye from Thomas.

“My son was not performing any sort of charitable work. He was…
honing
his skills like a predator. When he came home, Owen gave me a choice. He wanted to destroy David. He had this elaborate plan. Only, he knew he’d be watched. I had to help. And not only help, but choose the people who should die…or he would kill indiscriminately.”

Meredith Gospel gave a deep sigh. She tightened her grip on the gun.

“At first, I wasn’t…willing,” she continued. “But Owen persisted. He showed me how these women, the ones helping David, were pure evil. How they were trying to cheat innocent people.” She met Gia’s gaze with a vacant look. “Women like you should die.”

She put a plastic Baggie on the table. It contained a set of eyes.

Oh, God, Gia fought the urge to retch.

“I can see that you understand now,” Meredith said. “Yes, it was my son, Owen, who took your mother’s eyes. He explained to me that the first killer hadn’t finished the job. That he’d taken the cold eyes, the stone, leaving the real life source behind, the eyes of a sorceress. I’m sure you don’t want David’s eyes, but here they are.”

Horrified, Gia tried to remain calm. She couldn’t even look at the Baggie and its repulsive contents. She tried not to think about her mother or any of the unspeakable acts Meredith described. Gia needed to focus on how to get out of this alive.

“Meredith, I can’t read your mind…I can’t tell you the future. Please, Meredith, tell me how to help you.”

She had a vague, faraway look even as she raised the gun. “I hear Owen’s voice
inside
my head. He tells me to do these
horrible
things. When Rocket came and showed me the surveillance tape, that voice told me to kill him, too.”

“Your husband’s collection, Mrs. Gospel, it may very well have demons, or evil spirits. Demons are attracted to objects of power. They can attach themselves to these objects.”

Meredith stared at her. “
You
have power. Do they attach themselves to you?”

“I attract them, yes.”

“And me?” She stood, still holding the gun. “Are there dark spirits—demons—attached to me?”

“They cling to you,” Gia said in a soft voice. “They weigh you down like chains. They wear the faces of your husband and son and this man you call Rocket,” she said, pointing to Meredith’s right side, where she saw the dark shapes. “To your left are the spirits of the women you killed,” she said, seeing Mimi Tran, Velvet Tien, Xuan Du. “And there are others. The women your son killed. These spirits can be released. Let me help you.”

“What do you propose, Miss Moon? Do you want to perform an exorcism, perhaps, like was done to Owen?”

“I can speak with these spirits. I can ask them to move on, help them find peace.”

Meredith raised the gun. Gia braced herself.

Only, instead of shooting, Meredith started to cry.

“Rocket wasn’t evil like those women I killed. He was a decent man—a complete innocent. Do you know what he asked me right before I shot him? He asked me to take care of his nieces. That dear man loved those girls.”

“Give me the gun, Meredith. Give me the gun and it can all stop.”

But she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have killed Rocket. You’re right, Ms. Moon. Those evil things David brought into the house, they’ve affected us. There’s something wrong with all of us. With Owen. With David. And me.”

She raised the gun.

Gia screamed, “No, don’t!”

But it was too late. Meredith Gospel pulled the trigger, blowing away the side of her own head.