Touching Evil (9 page)

"Want to? No. But I'm going in."

He smiled faintly. "Determination, or just plain stubbornness?"

"Is there a difference?" Maggie didn't wait for him to answer but walked steadily up the walkway to the building.

John walked beside her. "I've always thought so. Do you have a set pattern for going over crime scenes, or is every one different?"

"I suppose each is different. And this isn't really a crime scene, anyway. She was left here but not attacked here."

He paused with her just a few feet from the doorway and looked down at her. "But her attacker was here, if only long enough to leave her inside. Is that what you hope to pick up on ... intuitively?"

As tense as she was, Maggie had to smile. "You really are uncomfortable discussing intuition, aren't you?"

"The way you and Quentin appear to use it—yes."

"I'm not psychic."

"Sure about that?"

Before Maggie could answer, a tall blond man appeared suddenly in the doorway and offered a cheerful greeting.

"I hope somebody brought a flashlight. Because unless we're damned quick in here, we're going to end up in the dark."

"I thought they taught you to always be prepared," John said.

"That's the Boy Scouts. I wasn't a Boy Scout. Wasn't a marine either."

John didn't question the latter statement, just sighed and said he had several flashlights in his car.

"I knew you would. That's why I didn't bring any."

"Don't start with me. Maggie, this is Quentin Hayes, who claims to know things before they happen." There was no scorn in his voice, merely a sort of amused mockery, and he left her to make what she would of the introduction while he returned to his car for the flashlights.

"So you're a seer?" she asked.

"Not in the true sense of the word, meaning one who sees. I don't, actually. No visions." He shrugged. "I just know things. Sort of the way most people tune in to memory or bits of information they've learned. The difference is that when I tune in, it's often to the knowledge of something that hasn't happened yet."

"That must be unsettling."

"It took some getting used to." He eyed her thoughtfully. "I hear they call what you do nothing short of magical."

"That's not what I call it."

"Oh? What do you call it?"

"An ability I've practiced nearly half my life to perfect. I happen to be able to draw. I also happen to be able to listen to people describe what they've seen and then draw it. Nothing magical about that." It was virtually automatic by now, this reasonable explanation of her abilities.

"When you put it like that," Quentin said affably, "it does sound perfectly normal, doesn't it?"

"Only because it is."

John returned to them then, handing out flashlights. "Quentin, how long have you been here?"

"Half an hour, maybe a little longer. I went upstairs for a bit, following the path she took when she dragged herself out of here."

Maggie said, "It's still visible, isn't it? The blood." She gripped the flashlight tightly with one hand and held her sketch pad close with the other.

Quentin looked at her, and for just an instant she felt as if he'd reached over and touched her physically with a warm hand—even though he hadn't moved. But the moment passed, and he nodded, sober now.

"I'm afraid so, at least in places. Dried and brown now, but still there. Those of us with vivid imaginations—or something more—can even smell it. I'm sorry, Maggie."

She wasn't certain if he was expressing sympathy or apologizing for something, and she decided not to ask. Instead, she said, "I want to see where he left her."

"This way." Quentin turned, and they followed him into the building.

Maggie was so accustomed to guarding herself that it usually required a conscious effort to open the barriers inside and let all her senses probe her surroundings. She didn't like any of the sensations but by now at least knew what to expect when she reluctantly dropped her guard.

With all the broken windows in the place, there was light enough to see, if not very well. Stairs rose upward along the right side of the foyer. A hallway stretched past the stairs toward the rear of the building, with doorways lining it, most of them gaping open because of missing or severely damaged doors. Peeling paint covered the woodwork, and stained wallpaper dangled in ragged strips from the walls.

Fixtures such as doorknobs and lights had been removed and all else of any possible value long ago carted out of the building either legitimately or by vandals. Beneath their feet, creaking floorboards were barely covered by ancient linoleum, and the place smelled of dirt and mold and many years of cooking and living.

And blood.

Heavy, coppery, the stench rose up, threatening to choke her. All she saw on the floor was the faint brown trail Quentin had described, but what she smelled was something still warm and wet and sticky.

Maggie tried to unobtrusively breathe through her mouth. Could Quentin really smell that, or had he only known that she could?

"According to the reports," John said, switching on his flashlight and shining it around them, "the police found nothing here. At least nothing they considered evidence."

"Just like his other dumping places, right?" Quentin's voice was as matter-of-fact as John's had been. He turned on his own flashlight and led the way to the stairs, walking beside the intermittent brown trail of dried blood.

"So they told me. Drummond claims to have a very efficient forensics team, and they have a solid reputation. According to their reports, they went over this entire building and searched a block in every direction. Nothing."

Nothing, Maggie thought, but Hollis Templeton's blood. She concentrated on turning on her flashlight, on walking up the stairs behind Quentin and ahead of John, all of them avoiding the dried blood trail. She could feel the familiar inner quivering, the cold weight in the pit of her stomach, and her legs felt stiff, awkward as they moved. At first distantly, she became conscious of twinges of pain and dull aches that slowly intensified until they throbbed inside her.

The darkness came in flashes that lasted only a second or two, and Maggie climbed steadily without outwardly betraying the fleeting moments of blindness.

The smell grew stronger.

She had hoped that more than three weeks would have made it all feel more distant and unreal, that she could get through this without exposing her pain to these two men, but that seemed increasingly unlikely.

At the top of the stairs, Quentin pointed his flashlight toward the rear of the building, down a hallway. "She was left in a room at the back of the house. Odd, really. Why carry her upstairs at all? Why not just dump her downstairs?"

Softly, hardly aware of speaking, Maggie said, "He wanted her to have to drag herself all that way."

Almost as softly, Quentin asked, "Why did he want that?"

Maggie walked past him, only dimly aware of the question. She followed the blood trail down the hallway, her light pointed at the floor, until she found herself in a room. Like the rest of the place, it was peeling paint and ancient wallpaper and not much else. A broken window allowed light into the room, though it wasn't much light. She walked to the center of the room and pointed her flashlight to one of the rear corners, where the blood trail ended and a roughly rectangular shape of less dusty floor hinted that something had lain there for a while.

"There was a mattress," John said, his voice low but nevertheless startling in the silence. "It's where he left her. The police don't believe he brought it here, just found it here. They have it now, of course."

Maggie stood there stiffly for a long moment, wanting to fight everything she felt but trying not to. It came at her in waves, the stench of the blood, the warm stickiness of it that clotted and chilled with the icy wind touching it. And the pain, all the degrees of it, sharp jolts and dull aches and the swelling agony that was as much emotional as physical. And the intermittent flashes of darkness that lasted seconds now, horrible darkness filled with terror and panic and loss, such loss . . .

She had forgotten her companions and started when John grasped her arm. She was coughing. When had she started coughing?

"Maggie?"

"I have to ... get out of. . ." She jerked her arm free of his grasp and lurched toward the door, almost stumbling.

John started after her, but Quentin caught his arm to stop him.

"Jesus," the other man murmured softly.

Staring at him in the dim light, John was surprised to see something that looked like awe on his friend's
mobile face. "What?" he demanded. "What is it? What was wrong with Maggie?"

"Wrong? I don't know if I'd call it wrong." Quentin drew a deep breath. "But I don't envy your Maggie, I'll tell you that."

John didn't question the possessive. "Why?"

"It explains a lot," Quentin mused. "How she's able to establish such a strong bond with victims, how she's able to so accurately draw what they see. Christ, no wonder it looks like magic to those around her."

"She's psychic?"

"It's not quite that simple, John. There's psychic . . . and then there's gifted. Or cursed. Did you see her face just now? She was in agony. Actual physical pain."

"Why? What was hurting her?"

"He had hurt her. The rapist. He attacked her, raped and beat her, took her eyes—and left her here to suffer." Quentin shook his head. "John, that's what Maggie was feeling. She was feeling everything Hollis Templeton felt in this room more than three weeks ago."

CHAPTER
 
FIVE

Jennifer Seaton was a good cop. But even more, she
was an intuitive cop who had learned to trust her hunches. So while Scott worked the phones attempting to track down those missing files, she got on her computer, connected to the Washington state library system database, and conducted a different kind of search.

She hit possible pay dirt before Scott did, but since it was very late on a Saturday afternoon it took her another half hour just to track down a library still open for business.

"I understand the request, detective," the head librarian said, the confusion in her voice belying the words, "but we're locking the doors in ten minutes, —

"Police emergency," Jennifer said, ruthlessly misusing her authority. "If you'll hold them for me until I get there, I'd appreciate it. I'm leaving now."

As she hung up the phone and rose to her feet, Scott said sourly, "Oh, yeah, leave me with this, why don't you?"

"Any luck?" she asked, pausing by his desk and digging into her pocket for another cinnamon-flavored toothpick.

"All I've got so far is a growing list of stations with old files stored in their basements. Nobody really knows what they've got, and nobody's volunteering to go down and check, especially on a cold Saturday afternoon. And I can't say that I blame them." He raked fingers through his hair and peered up at her. "Calling it a day?"

"No, I'll be back in about an hour. I may have found a shortcut for us—or at least another source we can use."

"Well, bring me back a snack, will you? I missed lunch, and there's nothing here but stale sandwiches and some
really
stale donuts."

Jennifer nodded. "I'll see what I can do. Where's Andy?"

"Beats me. He was at his desk a minute ago."

"If he gets back before I do, ask him not to leave for the night until he talks to me, okay?"

"Sure."

Jennifer left the station and made her way to the side lot where her car was parked. The streetlights had come on even though twilight made it easy to see, and she paused beside her car to look around, uneasy for no reason she could explain to herself. Being intuitive didn't make her overly imaginative, so she was surprised to realize that she definitely had the creeps.

It was a sudden sensation, a chill that crawled slowly over her body and raised the hair on the nape of her neck. What her mom had sometimes referred to as "somebody walking over my grave." It wasn't a commonplace feeling, and Jennifer had learned to pay attention and be wary, because she had come to realize that it invariably meant her subconscious had noted something important and/or dangerous that her conscious mind was as yet unaware of.

A cop's instincts, Scott called it.

So what was it? The scene she studied was perfectly normal, a few cops moving in or out of the building, a couple of civilians walking briskly past on the sidewalk, not much else. A slight wind stirred the nearby trees, their bare limbs scratching against one another while the last dead leaves clinging to them rattled dryly.

Jennifer shivered and zipped her jacket all the way. "You're getting jumpy, Seaton," she muttered to herself. As if she could possibly be in danger here in the parking lot of the police station. It was absurd. But she couldn't help looking back over her shoulder as she unlocked her car, and she was careful to check the backseat thoroughly before she got in.

There was nobody there, of course. But as she put the key into the ignition, Jennifer saw a folded piece of paper lying on the dashboard. Something that definitely hadn't been there when she had returned alone from lunch and locked the car up. She was wearing gloves, as usual this time of year, so didn't hesitate to carefully unfold it.