Touching Evil

CHAPTE R ELEVEN

Andy decided to strictly limit who in his department would know of the FBI agents' involvement, choosing to tell Scott and Jennifer, but not the other detectives.

"All my people have busted their asses on this case," he told Maggie and John, "but these two kids took some initiative and thought outside the box. Besides, I know for a fact they'll be happy about it-and not everybody would."

Scott and Jennifer were definitely pleased, especially when John told them of both the agents' profiling expertise, Kendra's computer skills, and the full range of databases available to them with federal authority.

"Maybe they'll be able to track down why the 1894 date is important. If it is," Jennifer said. "In the meantime-Andy, if it's okay with you, I'm heading over to the Central precinct. Their file clerk isn't absolutely sure, but there might be some really old file boxes in their storage room. I want to check them out, see if I can find those missing 1934 files or possibly some from 1894."

Andy looked at the stacks of files on the conference table and sighed. "Yeah, go ahead. Nothing in this mess is helping us."

Scott asked, "Jenn, want me to come along?"

She grinned at him. "Oh, no, pal. You get to put all these useless files back where they belong and then try to find out what happened to the ones the North precinct clerk swears were lost in the move to their new building."

With a grimace, Scott said, "It is not fun being the low man on the totem pole." But he seemed cheerful enough as he picked up a file box and followed Jennifer from the room.

"They need to be busy," Andy told Maggie and John with a sigh. "Neither one of them has been a detective long enough to be comfortable with the realization that seventy-five percent of police work is sitting around-either going through papers, trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of facts, or just trying to talk through the problem until it starts to make sense."

"Sometimes I think most of life is like that," John offered wryly.

"I don't blame them for being restless," Maggie said, her brooding gaze fixed on the bulletin board. "It's hell just sitting here waiting. Wondering when the phone is going to ring."

When it did at that moment, Andy lifted a brow at her and scooped it up. He said, "Brenner," and listened for several minutes, and didn't have to mutter, "Oh, Christ," for everyone in the room to know the news was bad.

As soon as he hung up, John guessed, "Samantha Mitchell?"

"No," Andy said heavily. "The bastard's having a busy week. We've got another missing woman."

In the storage room of the Central precinct station, Jennifer found a lot of files. A lot of old files, some going all the way back to the 1890s. But she didn't find anything of interest for 1894; there had been relatively few murders reported in Seattle around then, and none that even came close to fitting their criteria.

Worse, there was absolutely no sign of any more files for 1934. For that entire decade, as a matter of fact.

After more than an hour of fruitless search, she was dusty, irritable, and had three paper cuts and a headache. She was also inclined to appreciate computers a lot more than she had before all this had started. Those machines had their bad points, but at least they didn't get dust up her nose or slice up her fingers.

She made her way to the station's lounge and sat down with a soft drink, glumly considering her options. They weren't promising. Maybe Scott could track down those files lost in a move to a new building, but it didn't seem likely. Unless she wanted to physically visit every storage room and basement of every station in the city-and she did not-then she had to accept that this particular trail might well have dead-ended.

Jennifer hated dead ends.

She had been so sure that something useful would be found in the old files. Oh, she'd been offhand about it with Scott, but from the moment she had seen that first sketch from 1934, the adrenaline rush had been intense. All her instincts had been screaming at her. Finally, after all these months, a break in the investigation.

Except that it wasn't, of course. Dammit.

"Hey, Seaton, what're you doing in our neck of the woods?"

She looked up and managed a faint smile for Terry Lynch as he joined her at the table. "Slumming, of course."

He eyed her consideringly, his deceptively open face as friendly and guileless as always but his gaze sharp. "There's a smear of gray dust on your nose."

"Because you have a filthy storage room," she told him, using a paper napkin to dab at her face.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Looking for anything interesting?"

Jennifer gave him an abbreviated version of the Drummond's-got-us-digging-‌through-old-files speech, perfectly aware that Terry wasn't buying it. Not easy, she reflected silently, to lie to an old partner. Or an old lover.

But he nodded gravely, only his wry blue eyes telling her he knew she was bullshitting him. In a chatty tone, he said, "You guys any closer to getting that rapist?"

"Not so you'd notice."

"Just heard there's another woman missing."

"Oh, shit. Do we know it's him?"

Terry shrugged. "I think your boss is checking it out; any woman goes missing in the city, you guys get the call, you know that."

Jennifer frowned. "If it is him-he's moving a hell of a lot faster."

"Looks like."

She barely hesitated. "Are you hearing anything on the streets, Terry?" He was a patrolman, having failed the detective exam Jennifer had passed with flying colors; the blow to his ego hadn't ended their relationship, but her transfer to another precinct nearly a year ago had.

He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup and hunched his shoulders in the thinking posture she recognized with a pang. "Not really."

"Not really? So you did hear something-but aren't sure it means anything?"

His smile twisted. "Still reading me like a book. Yeah, there was one thing. I was going to call you, but… hell, Jenn, it sounds so screwy."

"In this case," she told him dryly, "screwy is beginning to be the order of the day, Terry. What is it?"

"Well, we picked up a transient day before yesterday, got him for creating a disturbance outside a store. You know how it is. Anyway, the guy was mostly drunk and not making a whole lot of sense, but he did say something that caught my attention."

"Which was?"

"Said he'd seen a ghost."

"Oh, come on, Terry-he was drunk and babbling. Probably had the DTs."

Terry nodded. "Yeah, I thought the same thing. But, see, there were a couple of odd things. For one, he didn't sound as crazy as he should have, somehow. And it turns out this guy used to be some hotshot computer expert. Apparently, he had too many problems being bipolar to hold on to his job and ended up on the streets."

"Sad," she commented. "But sadly not so unusual."

"No. But here's the other odd thing. We found him about two blocks away from where that last rape victim was found-Hollis Templeton? And he was staring toward that building while he was babbling about having seen a ghost a few weeks before. So I wondered."

Jennifer wondered too. "Terry… is he back on the streets?"

He grimaced. "Afraid so. But my guess is, he'll still be in the area. There's a mission near where we picked him up where guys like him can get a bed and a meal. You might try there. I don't have much of a description to give you-he was so filthy it was hard to say what he looks like. White male, maybe forty, six feet, not more than a hundred sixty, brown and brown." He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the name and address of the mission as well as the man's name, then tore out the sheet and handed it to her.

She accepted it but didn't get up right away. Instead, she said wryly, "You told the file clerk to suggest I just might find what I was looking for here, didn't you, Terry?"

He smiled. "You know how fast word gets around, Jenn. Especially with Scott Cowan calling every station, too innocently asking about old files. So I figured one of you'd show up here sooner or later. I just asked Danny to hint we might have the files you wanted here."

"And then let you know I was coming?"

"Like I said-I was going to call you about it. But I figured you might think I was just using it as an excuse and refuse to even take my call."

"You might have told me all this before I spent so much time in your filthy storage room."

"Yeah, I might have."

She got to her feet, smiling. "So you weren't using it as an excuse?"

"Well, not entirely."

"I would have taken the call, Terry."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She saluted him casually and left the lounge. It wasn't until she was in her car and looking at the note he'd given her that her smile faded. Another dead-end lead? Would she discover only a poor, damaged man with a damaged mind playing tricks on him?

Or something else?

Maggie wasn't especially eager to walk through the home of the most recent missing woman, but she knew only too well that time mattered; the sooner they could determine with certainty whether Tara Jameson had been abducted by the Blindfold Rapist, the better. So when Andy suggested she and John go along and check out the apartment while he talked to the fiance who had reported her missing, she agreed.

"Another high-security place," John noted as they stood before the apartment building.

"The bastard seems to like them," Andy agreed sourly. "Our department shrink says it's some kind of challenge, that maybe he goes out of his way to take the women from supposedly secure locations even though he could get them a lot more easily when they went out to grocery shop or something."

"A challenge," John mused.

"Yeah."

"This is an older building, isn't it? I remember it being here twenty years ago."

"Yeah, but it's been updated, at least as far as security goes."

Maggie, who was silently marshaling her energy and trying to narrow her focus in order to retain at least some kind of detachment, only half listened until they entered the building, checked in at the security desk, and Andy asked her where she wanted to start.

"The fiance is waiting in her apartment with one of my people," he added.

Maggie looked around the bright lobby. "This is awfully public. Is there a service elevator?"

"Yeah, down that hallway there, and it's the only one goes to the basement. It was checked out, even though the security videotapes for both here and the basement access door don't show anyone the guards didn't okay in the areas, and nothing at all suspicious." He nodded toward the security desk and the two guards who were watching them warily.

"Still, it's the most likely way for him to get her out of the building, right?" "I'd say so."

"Then I want to start there. Go up to her floor in that elevator."

"I'll go with you," John said.

Maggie didn't object, just nodded.

"Eighth floor," Andy told them. "Apartment 804. I'll be there with her fiance." He headed off toward the regular elevators.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" John asked her abruptly.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Maggie, you were upset when you got to the hotel this morning, and you're still upset. When you went home last night, you were more tired than anything else. So I can't help wondering what happened later."

She was only a little surprised; either his perception was sharpening where she was concerned, or else she wasn't hiding her tension very well. "It was… a nightmare, that's all. I didn't sleep well."

John had the feeling she had evaded the subject and yet hadn't really lied to him, which made him all the more curious to find out the whole truth. But all he said was "You don't have your sketch pad today. It's the first time."

"So? I don't always carry it."

"I think you usually do, especially during an ongoing investigation."

Maggie shrugged. "Usually-not always."

"So why not today?"

"Maybe I forgot it."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Well, then?"

She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "Never mind. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is whether Tara Jameson is or isn't the sixth victim."

John followed as she moved toward the service elevator. "You know, you could just try saying it's none of my business," he commented mildly.

"I guess I could," she murmured.

He decided to take a chance and push just a little bit. "Unless maybe it is. I think you're too honest to lie about that. So is it my business, Maggie? Is there something you're not quite sure you should tell me?"

She glanced at him, then drew a breath and said calmly, "Several things, actually. But not here and not now. Okay?"

Bearing in mind Quentin's warning, John got a grip on his curiosity and nodded. "Okay."

A flicker of gratitude crossed her face, which made him glad he'd agreed. It also made him wonder even more what could have upset her so much; clearly, she wasn't looking forward to telling him about it.

Maggie paused in the hallway a few feet from the service elevator and visibly braced herself.

John was hardly given to premonitions, but a sudden uneasy impulse made him say, "Maybe this isn't a good idea."

She looked at him gravely. "Why not? Because I might imagine something terrible? But my own imagination can't hurt me, can it, John?"

He chose his words carefully. "After what I saw in the Mitchell house, I know it's more than imagination, Maggie. I just… I don't want to see you hurt like that again."

Maggie almost reached out and touched him, wanting to reassure him, needing to, but stopped herself with an effort she hoped didn't show. Steadily, she said, "If Tara Jameson is the sixth victim, she's the one hurting right now. Whatever I feel is… temporary."

"That doesn't mean it hurts any less."

Instead of denying that, she merely said, "I'll be fine." She didn't give him a chance to protest again but went to the service elevator and pushed the button.

The doors opened almost immediately, and before she stepped inside, Maggie cautiously allowed her inner senses to reach in and probe the innocent-looking cubicle.

The elevator was well used, and at first all she got was a jumble of images and flashes of emotion, mostly irritation and low-level anxiety. Not unusual, she knew, for a building in which often harried, stressed people lived and visited.

Then, on the extreme edges of her awareness, she felt something… alien.

Dark. Hungry. Cold. So cold…

It grew stronger, pressing in on Maggie until she found it difficult to breathe. The darkness was black, viscous, slimy like an oil slick, and it wrapped around the hunger that was cold and grotesque in its twisted urgency.

"Maggie?"

She blinked and looked at John, at his hand gripping her arm, and wondered vaguely what her face looked like to make him feel so much concern. As if a door had closed-or opened-all she could sense right now was him, his worry about her, and other, less defined but no less powerful emotions. "I'm fine," she murmured.

"Are you? Then why did you say that?"

"Say what?" She didn't remember saying anything aloud.

"You said, 'deliver us from evil.' Almost as if you were reciting the prayer."

After a moment, Maggie pulled her arm gently from his grasp. "Funny. I'm not even religious." She tried to focus again, recapture that cold, dark presence, but all she could feel right now was John, even without the physical contact. As if that door that had opened refused now to be closed. And a very large part of her wanted to burrow in and surround herself with him, luxuriate in the warmth and strength that was more familiar and yet more tantalizing than anything she could remember feeling before.

"Maggie, what is it? What did you sense?"

She wondered if he was even aware of the term he had used, but didn't ask. She stepped into the elevator and watched him follow, watched her own finger push the button for the eighth floor. Only when the doors closed did she ask a question of her own. "Have you ever wondered about the nature of evil?"

He was frowning at her, still disturbed. "I don't know that I have. Why? Is that what you felt-evil?"

Maggie nodded. "Evil. Him. He was here. In the elevator. It's… the first time I've been able to feel him like that." And she didn't even try to explain how horribly unnerving that was.

"How can you be sure it was him?"

"His… desire… wasn't normal. The hunger he was feeling."

"Christ," John muttered.

"I'm sorry, but you asked."

His mouth tightened. "What do you sense now?"

"Nothing, really." You. "It was just a flash, maybe what he was feeling right before he left the elevator."

"Did he have her with him?"

Maggie frowned, only then realizing. "I don't think so. I mean, I don't think he had her here in the elevator. But I'm certain he'd taken her, because he was… anticipating… what he would do with her."

"But he didn't take her down in the elevator?"

"No."

As the elevator doors opened on the eighth floor, John was saying, "Then how the hell did he get her out of the building?"

"I don't know."

They both looked around as they moved down the hall toward Apartment 804, John silently gesturing toward the security camera positioned to get a clear view of the entire hallway. It didn't seem possible that anyone could have carried an unconscious woman from any of the apartments without being observed- and taped-by security.

"Somehow, he must have tampered with the system," John said. "But that still doesn't explain how he got her out of the building."

Maggie stopped suddenly, getting another flash of that darkness, as well as a sense of determination, of effort. "It was… difficult," she murmured. "It took more strength than he expected."

"What did?" John asked quietly.

"Getting her out of here."

"How did he do that, Maggie?"

Her head turned slowly as she scanned the hallway. Other apartment doors. A few tall green plants and occasional tables and framed prints and mirrors providing pleasant decoration. Fire extinguishers and glassed-in fire hoses placed strategically here and there.

… nearly rusted shut…

Her gaze fixed on a large, gilded mirror halfway between the elevator and Tara Jameson's apartment, and she walked toward it slowly. She was disconcerted when she saw her own reflection, wondering idly why she was so pale and why her eyes looked so peculiar, the pupils enormous. Then John came up behind her, and she stared at his reflection, briefly confused by what she saw.

No, that wasn't right. He was-

… nearly rusted shut…

"Maggie?"

"It's behind the mirror," she said.

He moved her gently aside and used his handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints as he carefully pulled the heavy mirror far enough away from the wall so he could look behind it.

"Son of a bitch. An old laundry chute. A big one."

"It was almost rusted shut," Maggie said. "But he got it open."

John eased the mirror back into place, his face grim. "So that's how he did it. Dropped her in this, probably with some kind of cart waiting underneath the chute opening in the basement to catch her. Then took her out."

"That's how he did it. Though I still don't know how the cameras missed him." She swayed slightly and felt John's hand grip her arm. "Sorry. I seem to be a little tired."

"I'm taking you home,' he said.

"But I should-"

"Maggie, do you have any doubt that Tara Jameson is the sixth victim?"

"No."

"Then you don't need to go into that apartment."

"Yes, I do. John, what if I can sense more of him in there? What if I can get something that could tell us who he is?"

"You haven't been able to before."

"No-not until the elevator. Not until now. So I have to try."

John muttered a curse under his breath but didn't try to stop her when she moved toward the apartment. He also didn't let go of her arm.

Expecting them, Andy had left the apartment door ajar, and as soon as they crossed the threshold they could hear him just beyond the foyer, talking to Tara Jameson's fiance.

Maggie eased her arm free of John's grasp and took a step away from him, trying to concentrate, to focus. And this time it was with an almost brutal suddenness that knocked the breath out of her that she felt the wave of terror, the iron arms holding her from behind, the bite of chloroform. And something else.

That cold, dark, twisted hunger. And… familiarity.

"Maggie?"

She found herself once more supported by John, his touch bringing her out of it and wrapping her in warmth and worry. Through a throat that felt strangely constricted, Maggie said, "He knows her, John. He knows her."

Hollis?

She came awake abruptly, riding out the usual first moment of panic, of wondering why it was dark and what the weight across her eyes was. Then she was awake, aware. Napping in her chair in front of the window.

Hollis.

"Yes, I'm awake. Why am I awake?"

Hollis, we're running out of time. I've tried, but I can't-she won't let me in.

"Who? Who're you talking about?"

Hollis, listen to me. And trust me, you have to trust me.

"I don't even know your name."

Is that important?

"Well, yes, I think so. If I keep on calling you figment, somebody's going to hear me talking to you and lock me away. At least with a proper name, I can claim you're my imaginary friend. That's probably what you are anyway."

All right, Hollis. I'm-my name is Annie.

"Annie. That's a nice name. Okay, Annie-now, why should I trust you?"

Because you're the only one I've been able to clearly reach. And because you have to help me.

"Help you do what?"

Help me to save her. And there isn't much time. He's seen her now. He's seen her, and he wants her too.

Hollis felt a chill crawl up her spine. "Do you-do you mean the man who attacked me?"

Yes. We have to try to save her, Hollis. I can't reach her. But you can. You have to warn her.

Hollis sat there for a moment longer, her fingers gripping the arms of her chair tightly. But then she swallowed and said, "I'm a blind woman, Annie. What can I do?"

Will you help me?

"Just… tell me what you want me to do."

It took hardly more than fifteen minutes to drive to Maggie's small house in a quiet suburb of the city. Since it was dark by the time they arrived, John didn't bother trying to form an impression of the house, just followed her inside.

Almost as soon as they crossed the threshold, he saw her shoulders shift slightly, as though throwing off a burden, and he thought, Quentin was right again. This place is her sanctuary.

The living room they stepped into was very much Maggie, he thought. Nothing fancy but obviously good quality, the furniture was comfortable and casual, and the slight clutter of books and magazines combined with the riotous growth of numerous green plants gave the room a cozy, lived-in feeling. There were several framed paintings on the walls and one impressionist-style work propped on the fireplace mantel that struck a vague cord of familiarity in him.

"Nice place," he commented.

"Thanks." Maggie shrugged out of her flannel shirt and tossed it over a chair, and the close-fitting black sweater she wore underneath was a startling reminder to him of just how slender she was.

All that hair and the layers of clothing she invariably wore were both deceptive, he decided. And he had a shrewd hunch she used the camouflage quite deliberately.

"I could use some coffee," she said, pushing her hair back away from her face with both hands in an absent gesture. She was still too pale and obviously tired.

"You? I'd offer something stronger, but since I don't drink I usually don't have anything on hand."

"Coffee's fine." John knew he should leave her alone to rest, but he was reluctant to leave her at all.

"Coming up. Make yourself at home." She headed off toward the kitchen.

John followed, saying, "Mind if I keep you company?"

"No, not at all." She gestured toward the three comfortably wide and strong-looking stools on one side of the big center work island and moved toward the sink on the other side. "Have a seat. When I moved in here, I remodeled and commandeered what used to be the dining room for part of my studio. A studio I needed; a dining room was wasted space."

"Your guests probably end up in here anyway," he said, shrugging out of his leather jacket and hanging it over the back of one of the stools as he looked around at the bright, spacious French Country kitchen.

"Usually," she agreed.

He sat down. "I'm not surprised. This is a wonderful room.

She eyed him while measuring what looked like freshly ground coffee into an honest-to-God percolator. "I would have figured you for a different style. More classical, maybe."

He was only a little surprised; she was an artist, after all, and undoubtedly given to summing up personal style fairly quickly. "Generally speaking, that is more my style. But I like a lot of what's popular now. Like this room-French Country, but more French than Country."

Maggie smiled. "I'm not overly fond of roosters or sunflowers, to say nothing of chintz. This works for me."

John watched her more intently than he realized, wanting to take advantage of this time to gain a better understanding of Maggie. It was becoming more important to him, and he didn't bother to ask himself why.

With the coffee started, she got milk from the refrigerator and put it on the work island, then went to get two cups from the cabinet, saying abruptly, "Back at the station, when you were singing the praises of Quentin and Kendra, I notice you didn't mention their psychic abilities."

"No, I didn't."

"Still an unbeliever?" she asked, half mocking and half not.

"I don't even think that was it. Maybe I just wanted to keep everything… grounded."

"Grounded in reality?"

"No. Just grounded in the ordinary. The expected. Andy is pretty open-minded, didn't even blink when he found out about you, but I wasn't sure about Scott and Jennifer."

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."