Touching Evil (24 page)

Maggie did understand. Despite his desire to keep "things" grounded, what she sensed in him was doubt and uncertainty . . . and the dawning, reluctant seeds of belief. She had caught a bit of that earlier, which was why she'd decided to talk to him, at least about some of it. Maybe show him the painting . . .

Slowly, she said, "But that's the point, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"You say you want this investigation to be ... grounded. Grounded in the ordinary, the expected. Only that isn't where it is. That isn't where it is at all."

CHAPTER
 
TWELVE

Maggie-"

"Think about it. An ordinary investigation? The best lead we have to date as to how this animal is choosing his victims is found in police files nearly seventy years old. Is that the ordinary, the expected?"

"No," he admitted. "

"You yourself brought in an avowed psychic—two, actually—because you knew they could help. And even before that, you wanted my help. Not the help of a police sketch artist. The help of someone with a ... knack. A paranormal knack." Again, her smile was wry. "Hell, John, you've known from the beginning there was nothing in the least ordinary or expected about any of this."

He thought about that while she stepped away to pour the coffee and had to admit, somewhat ruefully, that she was right. He himself had always had
an
instinctive knack for choosing the right people for the right task; it was one of the reasons he'd gone so far and achieved so much in business. Why wouldn't it apply to this situation as much as any other?

"Okay, point taken," he said as she pushed his coffee cup across the island to him.

"But are you willing to go beyond the point? To accept the extraordinary and look for the unexpected?"

"I don't know," he admitted honestly. "I'm ready to try, if that means anything."

Maggie had already made up her mind to do this, but she still had to be careful, very careful. She sipped her coffee, watching as he added milk to his, then said, "I guess it'll have to be enough, won't it?"

"I hope so."

She nodded, then drew a breath. "I have a brother. Half brother, really; we had the same mother. But he's a seer, like Quentin, and he's helped me to make sense of some things in my life. Certain . . . instincts. Dreams. The things I feel, and the images burned into my soul."

"What kind of images?"

She hesitated, then shook her head. "That's—I'll get to that later. Anyway, my brother and I both inherited Mother's artistic tendencies, to differing degrees. Beau got the genius; I got. . . just enough for what I needed to be able to do."

"Which is?"

"Draw the face of evil."

John looked at her searchingly. "Andy says you could be any kind of artist you wanted to be, that you have talent to spare. Judging from the sketch of Christina, I agree."

"I probably could have been pretty good if I'd
worked at it." She shrugged, dismissing something obviously unimportant to her. "But what I needed to do required less skill than . . . intuition."

"You mean your empathic ability?"

"Yes."

John frowned, remembering the terror, pain, and shock he had seen her endure. "You had to suffer to draw the face of evil?"

She hesitated, then said, "I don't think I could draw it otherwise. I don't think anyone could. For some things, knowledge isn't enough. Imagination isn't enough. You have to feel to understand."

"Only evil?"

"Particularly evil."

"Then . . . you've drawn the face of evil?"

Maggie laughed without humor. "Again and again. But there are degrees of evil, just like anything else. The lesser face of evil is ... the man who kills a bank guard in cold blood to get the money. The man who rapes his own wife every single night because he thinks he has the right to. The woman who poisons her child because she craves the sympathy and attention it brings to her. The minister who molests the boys who come trustingly to him. The nurse who murders her patients because she thinks the resources being used to care for them could better be used somewhere else."

"Christ," John muttered. "Lesser evil? Maggie, are all those examples of past investigations?" Yes.

"Investigations you were involved in?"

"Yes."

He couldn't even imagine what she must have gone through, and even as that realization crossed his mind,
he suddenly understood what she meant about experiencing evil. Even with the skills of an artist, he couldn't have drawn it. Not even a knowledgeable and imaginative mind could wrap itself around some things enough to understand them, simply because they were beyond all knowledge and comprehension, beyond even the imagination's ability to transcend understanding.

Some things literally did have to be felt to be understood.

He gazed across the width of the island at her calm face with its haunting eyes and finally understood why compassion and perception were literally stamped into her regular, not quite beautiful features. Because she suffered. Because she understood the worst men and women could do to themselves and each other and their children in a way that he would never, could never, comprehend.

It was a long moment before he could speak, but finally he said, "If all that is ... lesser evil, then what in God's name is greater evil?"

"Evil that doesn't die."

John shook his head. "I don't understand. Everything dies, eventually."

Maggie hesitated for a minute, obviously struggling, though whether for words or the decision to go into this with him he couldn't have said. "If the universe is ... balance . . . then evil is the negative force, always opposed by a positive force, always kept in check, at least to some extent. But what if a particular positive force in a particular place and a particular moment doesn't do what it's supposed to do, what it's intended, designed to do. There's a ... glitch somewhere, a hesitation, a mistake. And that evil isn't balanced, isn't negated by anything positive. Nothing stops it from growing, and growing more powerful, more sure of itself."

"Until?"

"Until not even the death of the flesh can destroy it."

"The body dies—but the negative force within it survives? Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes. It survives. Finds itself another vessel so that it's reborn in the flesh. And destroys again. It becomes an eternal evil. So the universe fights to restore the balance, because balance is its natural state. The positive force meant to negate that evil is reborn as well, sent once again to do what it was meant to do the first time around."

"You're talking about reincarnation."

She shrugged very slightly, her eyes never leaving his. "I'm talking about balance. A negative force has to be opposed by a positive force in order to maintain— or restore—that balance. We see it in science all the time. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

John nodded. "I remember that much. And it makes sense. But we were talking about evil."

"Yes. We were."

"Eternal evil. That's the greater evil you have to draw? An evil that won't die?" John really hoped disbelief didn't echo in his voice, but he was very much afraid it did. This was just a bit more than he had bargained for.

Hell, who was he kidding? It was a
lot
more than he had bargained for.

Maggie looked at him for a long moment, then set her cup down on the island. "I can't show you the face
of that evil, because I can't see it yet. But I can show you . . . what it sees. What it does."

This, he realized, was what Maggie had brought him here to see. "Okay."

She came around the island and gestured for him to follow as she led the way to her studio. It was a very large room, obviously though skillfully added to the original house, and it looked the way most artists' studios looked, with a big worktable holding supplies, and shelves on one wall containing various props and bolts of material. There were bins holding canvases of various sizes, a number of completed paintings leaning against the walls but angled so that they weren't clearly visible to him—and one on an easel in the center of the room.

She didn't warn him. And the shock he felt when he looked at that painting was cold, overwhelming, visceral.

"Jesus Christ," he heard himself say hoarsely.

"I wish I could destroy it." Leaning back against the worktable, arms folded tightly as if she were cold, Maggie stared at the painting with a fixed intensity that was almost painful. "I want to destroy it. But the ironic thing is, it's the best work I've ever done. I seem to be too much an artist to destroy my best work. No matter how horrible it is."

He tore his gaze from the painting to look at her for a moment, then moved closer to the easel and forced himself to study it as calmly as possible.

Maggie was right, it was horrible. But she was also right in saying the work was technically superb, with an extraordinary, savage power he'd never seen equaled. It was almost impossible to believe such force had come from Maggie, had emerged from that
slender body, from a spirit so sensitive it could literally feel the pain of others.

Trying to get past that, he concentrated on studying the dead woman, barely able to ignore his nausea at what had been done to her.

Maggie said, "This is how I knew she was dead, John. You wondered about that, didn't you? This is how I knew. Because I painted this. Last night, I painted this."

He looked at her quickly. "Who is this, Maggie?"

"Samantha Mitchell. And I've never seen her, so how could I have painted her if this wasn't real?"

John studied the painting again, this time more carefully, then turned and went to Maggie. "It isn't her."

"What?"

"I saw the photograph of Samantha Mitchell, remember? In the case file. Maggie, she looks completely different from this woman. She has short reddish hair and freckles, an upturned nose."

Maggie stared at him. "Not— Then who is she?"

"I don't know. But I think we'd better find out."

It was already dark by the time Jennifer got to the Fellowship Rescue Mission, and since the night promised to be a wet and chilly one, half the available beds had already been claimed by people in need. She only glanced into the two large dormitory-style rooms downstairs, one for men and one for women, where cots were lined in neat rows literally wall-to-wall; with the poor description of the man she was looking for, she doubted her ability to recognize him by sight and so went in search of somebody in charge.

She found Nancy Frasier, the surprisingly young and extremely placid director of the mission, just coming out of an upstairs room with an armful of blankets.

After peering shortsightedly at Jennifer's badge, the director listened to what she had to say and frowned. "David Robson? It's not a name I know, but then most of them don't offer names, especially if they're just passing through. You say he was arrested the other day?"

"Yeah, for causing a disturbance, but nothing serious. He was out within twenty-four hours." She offered the brief description that was all she had.

"And you're trying to find him—"

"Because he may have witnessed a crime or seen something that could help us solve one."

"I'd like to help, Detective, but I couldn't say if he'd even been here before, not by the name or description. You're welcome to ask other staff members, or even some of our regulars—though I will request that you not disturb those already resting for the night."

"I understand."

Frasier nodded, then added, "Oh—and I should tell you that we tend to have at least a few new people here most days of the week, so if you don't find him tonight you might try again in a day or two."

"I'll do that," Jennifer said, hoping she wouldn't have to.

But by the time she had talked to nearly a dozen men who had no clue who David Robson was, and another three who weren't sure of their own names, she was more or less resigned to not finding him tonight.

She left her card with Nancy Frasier, saying, "It's a long shot, but if you should hear his name, I'd appreciate a call."

The director accepted the card and frowned, asking abruptly, "Is it about that rapist? I know they found one of the women only a few blocks from here."

Jennifer nodded. "Yeah. This David Robson may have seen something. Probably not, but we're pursuing every lead."

With a nod back toward the women's dormitory, Frasier said, "Our female population has more than doubled in the last few weeks. Lot of scared women out there. And even the men are nervous, I'd say. Look, I'll ask around, okay? Some of them may talk to me when they wouldn't say squat to you. If I find out anything, anything at all about this man, I'll call you."

"Thank you." Jennifer made her way back out to her car, depressed as always by the homeless, rootless, or just plain mindless people, most of whom certainly deserved more out of life than a narrow cot in a room full of strangers.

She unlocked her car, gazing absently toward the mission as she watched a couple of bearded men dressed in ancient army jackets standing outside, smoking. She grimaced when one of the men stooped to pick up a discarded cigarette from the sidewalk and then put the filter end between his lips without hesitation.