Touching Evil (17 page)

"Quentin was right."

He got his briefcase from the backseat and secured the sketch carefully inside before starting the car. It was several miles before he spoke again, and then it was to ask a slow question.

"So what more do I need from you?"

She didn't hesitate. "Answers."

"About Christina?"

"About all of it. You want to know why she killed herself, but more than that. You want to find the man who destroyed her life. And . . ."

He frowned. "And?"

Maggie stared out through the windshield. Was Beau right about this man? He was usually right. And if he was right—she had to be very, very careful.

"Maggie?"

"And . . . you want him to pay for what he did. You may not fully believe there's anything paranormal about my work, but you do believe I can help you find this rapist."

After a moment, he said slowly, "Why do I think that isn't what you were originally going to say?"

She was silent.

"Okay, then tell me this. How is it you're so sure Samantha Mitchell was abducted by the serial rapist? Abducted I'll buy, but how can you know it was him?"

Maggie hesitated, then said deliberately "Because it felt like him."

"You . . . don't mean felt emotionally, do you?"

"No. It physically felt like him. When he grabbed her from behind, the feel of his arms around her, his
chest against her back, the way he ... rubbed himself against her as she struggled, were all just the same as with the other attacks."

"You felt that because they did?"

"Yes."

"When you interviewed them? When they relived those memories?"

She nodded.

"Did you go to the places the other women had been abducted from?"

"Only one of them. Laura Hughes was abducted from her high-security apartment building, so I was able to do a walk-through there. But the others were grabbed either in very public places or places where there had been far too many people around later. It would have . . . muddied the impressions."

"Impressions?"

Dryly, she said, "What do you expect me to call them—psychic vibes?"

"You flatly denied being psychic just the other day."

"Yeah, well, that's always the safe thing to do—at least until I get to know whoever's asking."

He shot her a quick look. "Is that why you're finally being honest with me?"

"Well, I thought it might avoid a game of twenty questions. Obviously, I was wrong."

That surprised a laugh out of him. "Okay, point taken. It's just that I really do want to understand, Maggie."

"And believe?"

He barely hesitated. "And believe. It's just so far outside my experience that I know virtually nothing about it."

"You don't like not knowing, do you?"

"No, I don't. So I ask questions."

Maggie waited until he turned the car into the police lot where she'd left her own to say, "I really don't mind questions, John. But my brain isn't working too clearly at the moment, and I'd rather postpone them, if it's all the same to you."

He pulled into the slot beside her car. "Will you come to the hotel later? I still think we should sit down and go over everything with Quentin and his partner, come up with some kind of game plan from here on out."

"Partner?"

John swore under his breath, wondering if Maggie's apparent psychic abilities included being able to make him say things he had no intention of saying. "Yes, his partner."

"He's a cop, isn't he?" Maggie had one hand on the door handle but was waiting, brows slightly raised. "Quentin's a cop."

"He's here unofficially, Maggie."

"Uh-huh. What kind of cop?"

"Federal," John answered reluctantly. "FBI."

"Oh, lovely. And if Drummond finds out?"

"Then everything hits the fan. But I'm hoping he won't find out—at least until we have something to help his people put this bastard behind bars for the rest of his miserable life."

Maggie shook her head. "You do like to live dangerously."

"Maybe. Will you come to the hotel later?"

She didn't think there was a maybe about it but was too tired to worry much about it at the moment. "Look, I'll see how I feel in a couple of hours and let you know, okay? I still have your cell number."

He nodded but turned the car off and got out when she did, saying, "I want to talk to Andy for a few minutes."

Maggie unlocked her car door and said calmly, "Do you want me to write down the stuff I told you at the Mitchell house so Andy can try to verify it for you?"

John stood on the walkway a few feet away, staring at her. "Shit. Was I that obvious?"

"Let's just say I'm beginning to understand the way you think."

He smiled slightly. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

"I'll let you know."

He half laughed. "Fair enough. No, you don't have to write anything down. As it happens, I have a very good memory."

"Now, that doesn't surprise me at all. See you later, John." She got into her car and closed the door. She started the engine, watching him walk toward the station, and muttered under her breath, "FBI. Great. Just great."

Andy hung up the phone and frowned across his desk at John. "Okay, I checked. And, as you heard, an understandably bewildered Thomas Mitchell confirmed. He and his wife
did
have an argument in their den about a parrot last week, his wife
did
cut herself on a hand mirror in the breakfast room the week before that, and he and his father-in-law
did
have a rather loud 'discussion' about business in his study just the other day. Now I've left the poor bastard wondering if somebody's got him bugged. I'm wondering too."

John tried to head him off. "I've got to know more about the parrot. Why'd they fight about that?"

"Samantha Mitchell wanted one as a pet,' Andy answered impatiently. "John—"

"Who won the fight?"

"She did. The bird's on order. John, how the hell did you know about this stuff?"

He hesitated, but only briefly. There really wasn't another explanation and, besides, John had a hunch that if any one of these cops could accept Maggie totally no matter how bizarre her talents seemed to be, it would be Andy.

"I know," he answered finally, "because Maggie told me. While she was walking through the Mitchell house."

Andy didn't even blink. "So she is psychic, huh? Well, I always thought so."

"I'm still not a hundred percent convinced," John said, "but I have to admit she's been pretty damned impressive. I was just a step behind her when she walked into the Mitchells' game room, and I'll swear whatever she was experiencing nearly knocked her to her knees. She says the attacker
felt
a certain way, his arms, his body behind her. And she claims to have felt those same physical traits when the victims she interviewed relived their attacks."

"Jesus," Andy murmured. "If she felt that. . . then she must have felt the rest. All that pain and fear. I knew she was strong, but I had no idea just how strong."

John studied him. "You don't doubt that, do you? That she really feels what she says she does."

"No, I don't doubt it." Andy drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. "About two years ago, we had what
looked like a simple case of a runaway teenager. Normally, I wouldn't even have been involved, but the parents were political players in the city, and the chief wanted his best people looking for their fifteen-year-old daughter.

"So we interviewed dozens of her friends, trying to establish when and how she might have run away. Maggie sat in on the interviews because the chief asked her to, but she never asked a question, just listened. When we were done, none of us had a clue where that girl might be, but everything—and I mean
everything
—pointed to her having simply packed up some things and left home. Even the shrink agreed."

"So what happened?"

"We'd spent the better part of two days interviewing the friends, and afterward Maggie asked if she could walk around the girl's house and the yard. Well, we'd been all through the house, forensics had been over it, and I didn't hold out much hope Maggie could find something all of us had missed. I think they call that hubris, don't they?"

John smiled slightly. "She found something?"

"You could say that. I knew by then, of course, that she preferred to walk a scene alone, so I was keeping my distance. I was standing out near the garage and hadn't realized she'd come back outside until I saw her near the patio. She was walking very slowly, apparently not looking at anything in particular. When she got to the edge of the yard, she just stood there for the longest time. I didn't realize at first that she was crying, but it eventually dawned on me.

"I figured she was just upset about the missing girl, and I didn't want to embarrass her by calling attention to it, so I went to the car and waited. She came back a
few minutes later, and except for a little red around her eyes, she looked the same as always. I asked if she'd found anything and she said no. Then, about halfway back to the station, she started talking about the interviews. She said something about one of the older boys bothered her. Nothing she could put her finger on, mind you, just a hunch. Wondered if I'd mind calling him back in for another talk, if maybe she could ask him a question or two.

"I wasn't looking forward to telling the chief we had squat for leads, so I said sure, why not. The boy wasn't a suspect, and since he was eighteen we didn't have to interview him in the presence of his parents, but we did tell him he could have a lawyer if he wanted one. He didn't. I asked him a few questions, then Maggie started talking to him. Just talking to him, quiet and gentle. About his school and his parents. About the girl."

When Andy fell silent, John said, "She got him to confess."

Andy nodded. "Took nearly an hour, and by the time he finally told the truth he was bawling his eyes out. The girl was supposed to meet him in the woods for what had become a regular session. Only that night she'd had a fight with her parents and decided to run away. To him. So she'd packed a bag, left a note for her parents, and there she was, expecting him to take care of her.

"He hadn't bargained on having a fifteen-year-old hung around his neck for life, and he panicked. They argued, and at some point he shoved her. When she fell, she hit her head on a rock. She didn't get back up. He had a shovel in his car. The gardeners had been doing landscaping around the yard and the ground was soft, covered with a dense layer of pine mulch. It was
all too horribly easy, he said, to bury her and her little suitcase right there."

Andy sighed. "Right there—not ten feet away from where I watched Maggie stand and cry. She knew. She knew exactly what had happened to that girl. There wasn't a sign to be seen, a clue to be found. But she knew."

"You never told her what you'd seen?"

"No. Figured if she wanted me to know, she'd tell me. It seemed to me it was the sort of thing that would be difficult to live with, so I guessed she was used to coming up with . . . other explanations for the things she knew." Andy looked at the other man steadily. "It was fine by me. I'd learned to trust her by then, and to be perfectly honest I don't give a damn if she reads tea leaves or peers into a crystal ball. In five years and hundreds of tough cases, I've never known her to be wrong."

"Never?"

"Never. Oh, there've been times when she was no closer to an answer than we were, but whenever Maggie got one of her
hunches
I knew damned well the case was about to break."

John shook his head slightly. "I don't know what I believe, except that whatever Maggie experiences is obviously very real to her. So why does she do it? Why does she put herself through this kind of trauma, this kind of suffering?"

"You asked me that last week, more or less. I don't know the answer, John, but I'm willing to bet that if you ever find out what it is, you'll have the key to understanding Maggie Barnes."

CHAPTER
 
NINE

Despite what she'd told John, Maggie hadn't
intended to go back out on Monday evening, not after the day she'd had. But a couple of hours' rest, a hot bath, and hot soup all combined to make her feel much more like herself. And restless.

She was used to being alone, more or less. Her father had died before she was born, and Beau's father had departed the scene not long after his birth; Alaina Barnes Rafferty had not been an easy woman to be married to. Or to be the offspring of, come to that.

Neither Maggie nor Beau bore her any malice; she had loved them both, something they had never doubted. But her artistic gifts had caused her more pain than pleasure, demanding much of her time and energy and leaving little for her children. Which was probably why they were so close as adults: growing up they had only had each other.

Still, with differing careers, she and Beau sometimes went weeks without seeing each other, and since virtually all of Maggie's friends were cops who worked difficult hours, she found herself alone often enough to be accustomed to it. Usually, anyway. But not tonight.