Touching Evil (2 page)

She turned her head suddenly, and John actually started in surprise at the abruptness of the movement—and the fact that he had the unsettling feeling she was looking directly into his eyes, even through the two-way mirror. She had very light brown eyes, the only unusual feature in a face that was pleasant but unremarkable.

And those pale eyes were looking right at him, he was sure of it. He felt it.

Behind him, Andy murmured, "Told you."

Hardly conscious of speaking aloud, John said, "She sees me. How can she—"

"X-ray vision. How the hell do I know?" Andy sounded as disgruntled as he felt. He hated it when Maggie was mad at him—and she was definitely going to be mad at him.

Maggie turned back to face the other two women and spoke gently. "I'm sorry, but there's something I have to do. I'll be right back."

Lindsay gave her an accusing look, then leaned closer to her sister as though in support. Ellen didn't say a word, but she had the appearance of someone poised on the brink, frozen, as if unable to move forward or back.

John turned his back to the mirror as Maggie left the interview room. "She must have heard us," he said.

"No," Andy said. "She didn't hear us. This room is soundproofed, I told you that. She just knew, that's all."

The door of the observation room opened and Maggie Barnes stepped inside. John was surprised at how tall she was—at least five-ten, if he was any judge. But he hadn't been mistaken in thinking her slight; she wasn't unnaturally thin, just one of those very slender, almost ethereal women. He wondered if she dressed in the bulky layers out of some need to have more weight or substance.

When he looked at her face, John decided he'd been wrong in thinking it unremarkable. Graced with very regular features, not quite pretty but pleasant, it was saved from plainness by those slanted, catlike golden eyes and something stamped into her expression, innate to it, that was more than compassion and less than pity, a kind of empathy for the feelings of others that he knew was far more rare and valuable than high cheekbones or a perfect nose.

She looked at him briefly, a head-to-toe glance that missed nothing along the way and left him with the disconcerted realization that he had been very accurately weighed and analyzed.

Andy did his best to melt into the woodwork before she looked at him but obviously felt pinned to it instead when those catlike eyes fixed on him. He held his hands out, palms up, and offered an apologetic shrug.

"Andy?" Her voice was very gentle.

"Sorry, Maggie." He shifted uncomfortably, ruefully
aware that he probably looked for all the world like a scolded schoolboy.

John stepped toward them. "It's my fault, Miss Barnes. I asked Andy to bend the rules. My name is—"

"I know who you are, Mr. Garrett." Her gaze was direct, her voice matter-of-fact. "But some rules apply to you too, whether you like it or not."

"It wasn't a question of rules not applying to me. I have special permission to observe the investigation." He only just managed not to sound defensive, which surprised him.

"And that includes watching and listening like a voyeur while a shattered woman forces herself to remember a nightmare you can't even begin to imagine? Is that the observing you were given permission to do?"

John stiffened, but her accusation struck a nerve and left him at least momentarily silent. Maggie didn't wait for a response but went on coolly. "How would you feel, Mr. Garrett, if two strange men had watched and listened in silence and secret while someone you cared about relived the entire horrific experience of being brutally raped and maimed by an animal?"

That struck more than a nerve. He drew a breath and let it out slowly. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Andy said, "Sounded like you were reaching her there for a minute. The interruption won't help things, will it?"

"No. No, it won't help things. I'll try again, but she may not be willing to talk to me anymore today."

John felt the reproach, even though she wasn't looking at him. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I didn't intend to interfere. That's the last thing I want to do."

"Fine. Then you won't mind leaving." She stepped back, holding the door open in a clear invitation—if not a command—for them to leave.

Andy wasted no time in obeying, but John paused in the doorway and met her gaze steadily. "I would like to talk to you, Miss Barnes. Today, if possible."

"If you want to wait around, suit yourself." Her tone was indifferent, but the steady golden eyes never left his. "I may be a while."

"I'll wait," John said.

Hollis was awake but didn't move or make a sound to indicate that. For the first few moments it was always like this, tension and terror until her scrambling mind left nightmare and caught up with reality.

Which was also a nightmare.

The bandages over her eyes—over where her eyes had once been—were becoming a familiar weight. She didn't yet know how she felt about the fact that beneath those bandages were now someone else's eyes. An accident victim who had lost her life but left a signed donor card behind.

The surgeon, proud of his groundbreaking work, had been surprised and rather aggrieved when Hollis's only question had been one he obviously considered unimportant.

"What color are they? Miss Templeton, I don't think you understand the complexity—"

"I understand, Doctor. I understand that you believe medical science has advanced to the point that I'll be able to see with this poor woman's eyes. And I understand that it'll be days at least, possibly weeks, before we find out if you're right. In the meantime, I'm asking what color my . . . new . . . eyes are."

Blue, he'd said.

Her old ones had been brown.

Would she be able to see? She didn't know, and she suspected that her doctor, for all his confidence in his abilities, was unsure of the surgery's outcome as well. The optic nerve was a tricky thing, he didn't have to tell her that. And then there were all the other nerves, the blood vessels, the muscles. Far too many tiny connections to be certain of anything. They didn't think her body would reject the new eyes, and antirejection drugs would probably make certain of that, but nobody seemed nearly as sure what her brain might do.

Vision was as much the mind's interpretation of images as it was anything else, after all. With the intricate connection between organ and mind severed and then painstakingly rebuilt, who really knew what her brain's response might be?

Hell, maybe it was no wonder she hadn't even been able to decide how she felt about it.

Most of the other physical injuries had been surprisingly minor, given everything she'd been through. The broken ribs were healing, though she still breathed carefully, and doctors had repaired the puncture in her lung. A few stitches here and there. Scrapes and bruises.

Oh—and she'd never be able to have children, but what the hell. No kid needed to be saddled with a probably blind, certainly emotionally wrecked mother anyway, right? Right.

I know you 're awake, Hollis.

She didn't move, didn't turn her head. That voice again, quietly insistent, as it had been virtually every day of the past three weeks. She'd asked a nurse once who it was that came to visit her and sit by her bed
hour after hour, but the nurse had said she didn't know, hadn't seen anyone except the police officers who came regularly to ask gentle questions Hollis didn't answer.

Hollis had so far refused to question the voice, just as she refused to speak to the cops or say any more than absolutely necessary to the doctors and nurses. She wasn't ready to think about what had happened to her, far less talk about it.

You'll be able to leave soon,
the voice said.
What will you do then?

"Stepping in front of a bus might be a good idea," Hollis said calmly. She spoke aloud to remind herself that hers was really the only voice in the room. Of course it was. Because that other voice was just a figment of her imagination, obviously.

If you really wanted to die, you never would have crawled out of that building.

"And if I wanted rational platitudes from a figment of my imagination, I'd go back to sleep. Oh, wait—I am asleep. I'm dreaming. It's all just a bad dream."

You know better.

"Better that it happened? Or better that you aren't just a figment of my imagination?"

Instead of answering either question, the figment said,
If I handed you a lump of clay, what would you make, Hollis?

"What kind of question is that? One of those inkblot questions? Is my figment psychoanalyzing me?"

What would you make? You're an artist.

"I was an artist."

Before, you created art with your hands and your eyes and your mind. Whether or not the surgery is
successful, you still have your hands. You still have your mind.

The figment, Hollis realized, didn't believe she'd be able to see with these borrowed eyes either. "So I should just turn myself into a sculptor? It isn't quite as simple as that."

I didn't say it was simple. I didn't say it would be easy. But it would be a life, Hollis. A rich, creative life.

After a moment, Hollis said, "I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm brave enough to start over."

You'll have to find out, then, won't you?

Hollis smiled despite herself. So her figment could offer more than knee-jerk platitudes, after all. And the challenge was unexpectedly bracing. "I guess so. That or go looking for that bus to step in front of."

"Miss Templeton? Were you speaking to me?" The day-shift nurse was a bit hesitant as she approached the bed.

Hollis was learning to read footsteps, even the nearly soundless ones of the nurses. This nurse feared for Hollis's sanity; it wasn't the first time she'd caught the patient talking to herself.

"Miss Templeton?"

"No, Janet, I wasn't speaking to you. Just talking to myself again. Unless there's somebody sitting in that chair beside the bed, of course."

Warily, Janet said, "No, Miss Templeton, there's nobody in the chair."

"Ah. Well, then, I must have been talking to myself. But don't let it worry you. I did that even before the attack." She had learned to refer to it that way, as "the attack." It was the phrase the doctors used, the nurses, the cops.

"Can I—can I get you anything, Miss Templeton?" "No, Janet. No, thank you. I think I'll take a nap." "I'll make sure nobody bothers you, Miss Templeton." Hollis listened to the footsteps recede and pretended to be asleep. It wasn't difficult.

The hard part was keeping herself from asking aloud if the figment was still here. Because it couldn't be, of course.

Unless she really was crazy.

"We're no further along than we were when you were here six weeks ago." Luke Drummond, the lieutenant in charge of detectives in this division of the Seattle P.D., was accustomed to reporting to his superiors, but he disliked being obliged to divulge details of an ongoing investigation to a civilian, and his hostility showed. Especially since he couldn't report any progress.

"There've been two more victims since then." John Garrett kept his voice level. "And still no evidence, no clues to lead you any closer to identifying this bastard?"

"He's very good at what he does," Drummond said.

"And you aren't?"

Drummond's eyes narrowed, and he leaned back in his chair, deceptively relaxed. "I have a very skilled and experienced squad of detectives, Mr. Garrett. We also have some damned good forensics experts on the payroll, and state-of-the-art equipment. But none of that is much good when there's no evidence to study or witnesses to question and when the victims are, to say the least, traumatized and unable to give us much to go on."

"What about Maggie Barnes?"

"What about her?"

"She hasn't come up with anything useful?"

"Well, as everybody keeps reminding me, what she does is an art—and apparently it can't be rushed." He shrugged. "In all fairness to Maggie, she hasn't had much more to work with than the rest of us. The first two victims are—well, I don't have to tell you. But neither gave us anything much to go on right after the attacks. The third is just now well enough physically to sit down and talk to Maggie. And the fourth is not only still in the hospital but so far hasn't been willing to answer even the simplest question from any of us. All the shrinks tell us that if we push these women we'll lose any chance we might have of gaining any relevant information from either of them."

"Why haven't you called in the FBI?" John demanded.

"Because there's nothing they can do that we can't," Drummond replied tersely.

John wasn't so sure about that, but he knew he was on the edge of alienating Drummond completely and dared not push any harder. Pulling the right strings had gotten John access to the investigation, but if Drummond wanted to, he could make that access fairly useless.

Holding his voice level, he said, "So the consensus is that Maggie Barnes is your best bet to get something useful from the victims?"