Deadly Visions (3 page)

“I can't tell yet. I don't think he knew the person. He was confused; he didn't know why this was happening to him. He sometimes went by the name Bobo, am I right?”

Joe glanced at Howe and Carla. They each responded with a vague shrug. Joe pulled out his notepad and jotted down the name.

“His last moments were filled with fear …and regret.”

“Regret?”Joe asked.

“Unfinished business. He knew his life was over.”

“Okay, we're going to need a little more than this,” Howe said.”Can you tell us something,
anything,
that gives us a hint as to who the killer was?”

Monica smiled sardonically.“Something other than lame generalities?” She uncapped a Sharpie pen and
drew on her pad.“It's bizarre…. I'm having a tough time sensing another physical presence here.”

“We seriously doubt he tore out his own throat,” Carla murmered.

“No, I'm not saying that. I just feel—” She stiffened. Her eyes sprung open.

Joe cocked an eyebrow.”Get something?”

Monica dropped to her knees and took several sharp breaths. She glanced upward, her eyes glittering in the moonlight.”Two attackers.”

“Two?” Howe repeated.

“Yes. I'm sure of it.”

“Describe them,” Carla said.

“I—I can't.”

“Why not?” Howe asked.

She didn't reply as she drew furiously, although Joe couldn't see how she could sketch anything in the dim light.

“You drawing us a picture of 'em?” Howe asked.

“It won't be much use to you,” she said, still squinting at her pad.”There are no faces.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Carla asked.

Monica glanced away.“You're going to think I'm crazy, but I believe his attackers were …” Her voice trailed off as she suddenly tensed.

“What?” Carla said.

“We have to get out of here.”

Joe studied Monica's face. Her forehead was pinched, and her lips were trembling.“What's wrong?” he asked.

“No!” Monica ran back toward the car.

They sprinted after her.“Ms. Gaines?” Joe said.

“Oh, God,” she cried out.“Please, God,
no.
” She slipped on the wet grass and fell to the ground.

Joe crouched next to her.”Are you okay?”

She wiped her perspiring face with the sleeve of her jacket.“The killers weren't…human. At least, one of them wasn't.”

“Then, what were they?”

Monica glanced back toward the murder scene.“You're going to think I'm out of my mind.”

“Try us,”Carla said.

“They …were spirits.”

The three detectives stared at her in silence.

“I know. Sounds weird as hell to me too.” She tried to smile.“If you want to have me fitted for a strait-jacket, a size six should do the job.”

“Spirits,”Joe repeated.

She nodded.”Ghosts, maybe, although I'm not sure they ever really lived. Their souls are many thousands of years old.”

Howe chuckled.“Okay And in what language do we read them their Miranda rights?”

“Lay off, Howe.” Joe could see the woman was absolutely terrified. Her hands shook, her breathing was ragged, and tears ran down her face.

“I can't tell you any more,” she whispered.”Can we leave now?”

“That's it?” Howe said.”You drag us out here in the dead of night and tell us that a pair of
ghosts
did this? Is this some kind of sick joke?”

“No joke.” She nervously glanced around the site.“Can we please leave?”

Joe took her hands and gently pulled her to her
feet.“How many other times have you sensed anything like this?”

“Never. Check my record. I wasn't even sure that I believed in ghosts.”

“But you do now.”

“Yes,” she whispered.”Oh God, yes. I do.”

Joe picked up the sketch pad. There, in Monica's distinctive style, was a drawing of a man being attacked by wispy, cloaked figures floating over him.

“Shit,” Howe whispered.

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Carla asked.“Anything that might help us to—”

“A circle with two intersecting lines,” she said.

Joe tensed.

Monica caught their shocked looks.”It was on him someplace, wasn't it?”

“Can you tell us what it means?” Carla asked.

“I don't know. It may have been a signature …or a warning.”

“A warning about what?” Joe said.

“I can't be sure.” She looked down at her sketch pad.”But I have a feeling we're about to find out.”

After dropping Monica off at her hotel, Joe, Carla, and Howe stood on the sidewalk along Courtland Street to compare notes. For a long while they didn't say anything. Joe watched a homeless man gathering cans nearby, trying to stay ahead of the approaching street-sweeper.

“Ghosts,” Howe finally said with disgust.“If we didn't already look like asses for listening to a psychic, we sure will now.”

“She had the symbol pegged though,” Carla said. She turned to Joe.”Any idea how she did that?”

Joe shrugged.”The same way most psychics do it. There are dozens of people in our department and the coroner's office who knew about that symbol on his chest. She or an advance person could have posed as a reporter and bribed someone for the in-formation. She may have even approached an employee at the funeral home.”

Howe grimaced.”Really?”

“It's been known to happen. If you wave a hundred-dollar bill in an embalmer's face, chances are good that he'll talk to you.”

“Good to know,” Howe said.“When I go, I'll make sure my kids just put me out with the garbage.”

Carla chuckled.”So what's next?”

“Now she wants to visit the other crime scenes.” Howe sighed.“She thinks it might help give her a stronger impression as to what happened. Are you up for it, Spirit Basher?”

“Only if you promise to stop calling me that.”

The soft rays of dawn began to appear as Joe parked in front of the three-story apartment building that had once been the Robert E. Lee Elementary School. Joe had attended fourth and fifth grades there, but the reconfigured corridors and converted lofts bore little resemblance to the place where he had once been so mesmerized by Ms. Eversole's fluorescent eye shadows and terrified by Mrs. Lydecker's cruel taunts. He'd moved there with his wife, Angela, during his days as a professional magician, and the
large, high-ceilinged loft had allowed him the space to construct and rehearse his stage illusions. Now, al-most eight years after he'd abandoned his performing career, he couldn't imagine living anywhere else. He hadn't particularly enjoyed his elementary-school days, but he did love the life that he and Angela had made for themselves there.

Angela. It had been almost three years since she'd died of ovarian cancer. Three years since she had let out that long last breath that he could still hear sometimes in the dark dreams that crept into his head every week or so. Throughout the twenty-two months of doctors, hospitals, and lab tests, he'd tried to prepare himself and his eight-year-old daughter, Nikki, for that moment, but it was impossible. Hell, he
still
didn't know how to deal with it. It had been too easy to worry about his daughter and not dwell on the fact that he had just lost the love of his life. But now, with Nikki growing older and maturing into an intelligent, well-adjusted adolescent, it was harder than ever to escape the feelings of loss.

He unlocked the door to his apartment and walked into the spacious living area. The streetlights cast a pale glow over the wood floor, broken by criss-crossing grids of shadows from the wire-reinforced windows.

Sam Tyson sat upright on the sofa, sound asleep, as an infomercial for teeth-whitening strips flickered on the television in front of him.

“Hi, Daddy,” Nikki whispered. She stood in the doorway on the other side of the room, wearing her glasses and the oversized Stars on Ice T-shirt that she slept in.

“What are you doing up?”

“I heard you come in. I wanted to make sure you weren't some thief who was going to hurt Sam.”

“Yeah, good thing he came over for you to baby-sit him, huh?”

Nikki picked up a cotton throw blanket and gently pulled it over Sam.“That's okay. He told me stories about what a good magician you were.”

“Again? Sorry about that.”

“He thinks you should quit being a cop and go back to doing that.”

“Is that what you think too?”

“Nah. Mommy told me that you were hardly ever home back then.”

He smiled.“That's right. And I gotta tell you, these days a magician is even lower than a mime on the show-business food chain.”

Nikki made a face.“
Nothing
'
s
lower than a mime on the show-business food chain.”

“You may have a point.”

“So what's Monica Gaines like?”

Joe glanced at Sam, but he was still sound asleep.“She's interesting. A little more intense than she is on the 1-900 commercials.”

“Does she know who did it?”

Joe thought about telling Nikki about Monica's reading of the crime scene. Probably not a good idea.“I'm afraid she doesn't. I think she's going to check out some of the other ones though.”

“Good.”

“Why is that good?”

Nikki sat on a chair arm.“After you told me you
were going to meet her, I checked out her website. She's helped solve over a hundred cases.”

“Don't believe everything you read, okay? The way these people work, they throw out dozens of impressions in every investigation, and if one or two of them happen to hit, they claim that as a success.”“But she has quotes from police detectives.”“Often even the officers involved in the cases tend to forget about all the false clues and focus just on the hits. Almost anytime that anyone has recorded the psychics and logged all of their impressions and compared those with things that turn out to be really worthwhile, they end up looking a lot less miraculous.”“Did you record Monica Gaines tonight?” Joe smiled and pulled a micro cassette recorder from his jacket pocket.”You bet.”

Monica Gaines knelt before the hotel minibar, trying to decide whether or not to grab a second bottle of rum.

What the hell.

She twisted off the cap and poured it into her half-empty can of diet Coke. If only she could maintain her buzz for the rest of time she was there. She'd flown in the previous afternoon, and she already wished she were back home, asleep in her own bed or curled up on her sofa and reading prep notes for the next batch of shows.

After hundreds of investigations, it was easy to size up the cops she encountered. That night, Carla was the only faintly open-minded one. Howe was too busy playing the part of a smart-ass, and Joe Bailey
would probably never believe in her. She'd heard of the Spirit Basher, but Bailey was younger and more personable than she'd imagined. She was relieved he hadn't displayed the cynical, nasty streak that most die-hard skeptics had. Despite his obvious disbelief in her abilities, he seemed to be a reasonable man.

A knock at the door.

Before Monica could answer it, she heard a sharp click, and the door swung open.

A pale, plump man in his mid-forties stepped into the room. Derek Haddenfield.”Hello, Monica.”

“I knew I shouldn't have given you a key.”

Haddenfield chuckled.”Did you have a productive evening?”

“I don't know yet.”

“When
will
you know?”

“When I can tell them who the killer is. You know how this works.”

Haddenfield nodded.“My team gets into town early tomorrow. I thought it would be a good idea for you and me to get together and coordinate.”

She took a sip of her drink.“Couldn't this have waited until later?”

He smiled.“I know you can never sleep after going out for a reading.” He glanced at the two empty rum bottles.“At least not until you drink enough to pass out.”

She turned away.“That's none of your business.”

“Sure it is. Everything you do is my business. We're partners.”

“I'm starting to have regrets.”

“It's too late for that, Monica.” Haddenfield sat on the edge of the bed.”Get some rest. You've just begun the most important seventy-two hours of your life.”

J
oe stared at Captain Sheila Henderson.“You're kidding, right?”

“Afraid not, Bailey. We want you to stick with Monica Gaines for a while.” Henderson, a forty-seven-year-old woman whose hair was pulled back so tight that it threatened to tear off her face, sat on the corner of her battered maple desk. She had only recently been promoted, which ignited another round of innuendo that plagued all fast-tracking female cops; i.e., they slept their way to the top or were lesbians who benefited from a mysterious“gay network.” As far as Joe could tell, however, Henderson had risen through the ranks only because she was a damn good cop.

He'd been summoned to Henderson's office only minutes after arriving at headquarters. Although he'd tried to catch a few hours'sleep, he was still groggy.

“Look, I was useless out there. Gaines said the murders were committed by evil spirits. They're just words. There's no way I can debunk that.”

“I know. But if she does decide to put something over on our guys, I need you there to explain it. What do you have going on now?”

“Well, I'm gathering evidence on the Northlake insurance fraud ring. This afternoon they're going to be in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping center, practicing choreography for auto accident setups. I'm planning to camp out in one of the storefronts and videotape them.”