Touching Evil

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.

It was only then that she realized she was rubbing the nape of her neck. She stopped, aware now of the tingling, uneasy sensation. Moving her head no more than necessary, she shifted her gaze to sweep the area, trying to see whatever it was that had put her instincts on alert.

There weren't many people about, and those were grouped near the mission, unthreatening as far as she could tell. A damp, chilly breeze had sprung up, and she could hear it stirring trash in the gutter on the other side of the street and rattling a loose street sign nearby.

But as far as she could determine, there was nothing else. Nothing to make her feel so uneasy.

"Jumping at shadows, Seaton," she muttered.

She got into her car, locking the doors immediately, and sat there for a moment. She was tired and more than a little bit unnerved to find her thoughts drifting toward Terry. She glanced at her watch, wavered for just a bit, then swore under her breath and started the car to head back to the station.

Later, she thought. There'd be time later for Terry.

"It sounds like Tara Jameson," Andy reported. "According to descriptions and the photo we have, she's very delicate, almost childlike. Dark hair, long and straight; almond-shaped dark eyes; high cheekbones; sensitive mouth."

"You're still at the apartment?" John had called Andy on his cell phone.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Forensics turned up a few human hairs in the laundry chute, so you two were probably right about that being the way he got her down to the basement. From there, it looks like he took her out of the building through a service door that was supposed to be securely locked; it wasn't forced but picked by somebody who knew what he was doing. We still don't know how the bastard managed to avoid getting his picture taken by the security cameras, but I've got my people looking at all the tapes and checking out the computer that runs this place's electronics system. Her door wasn't forced, the apartment's security system was deactivated with her own code-all par for the course for this guy."

"Have you had any luck trying to find whoever sent the ransom note to Mitchell?"

"Not so far." Andy lowered his voice. "So if your FBI buddy finds anything, let me know pronto."

"I will."

When he closed his phone and dropped it into a pocket, Maggie said steadily, "It's her, isn't it? The painting is of Tara Jameson?"

John half turned on the couch to look at her where she sat curled up at the opposite end. "From the description Andy gave me, yes."

She drew a breath and leaned her head back against the couch, looking at him. "I thought it was Samantha."

"No, it definitely isn't her. And knowing that, do you still believe Samantha's dead?"

"Yes." Maggie didn't hesitate.

John was trying his best to understand this but couldn't help wondering if at least some of what he was hearing now was nothing more than symptoms of a mental deterioration Quentin and Kendra had hinted was possible. What if Maggie had simply suffered too much?

"I'm not losing it, John." Her voice was very quiet, and she smiled faintly when he gave her a startled look. "No, I can't read your mind. But I do have a sense of how you're feeling, and I know you're worried about me. Don't be, at least not about this. I'm okay."

"Are you?"

"Yeah. Tired and unnerved, I won't deny that, but otherwise okay."

"And the painting? How were you able to paint something that didn't yet exist?"

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I don't know. I mean, I don't understand it myself. All I know is that if he hasn't done that to her yet-he will. Unless we stop him."

"But you can't see the future?"

"No. I can't see the future." She managed a faint smile. "I did ask if you were ready to accept the extraordinary and look for the unexpected."

"Yeah, but… this? You talk about an evil that won't die, about balance that has to be restored, and then show me a painting of a tortured dead woman you say you painted even before she was abducted? I don't know, Maggie. I just don't know how to make sense of this."

Maggie couldn't really blame him.

"And what about your connection to it all? If you can't see the future, and your psychic ability is… limited… to feelings, then how can you be so certain this bastard we're after is some kind of eternal evil? Because you feel it?"

"Yes. And because I've felt it before."

"When?"

She hesitated, wondering if there was any chance at all he could accept this. "In 1934."

After a long moment of silence, John said, "I really wish you had something stronger than coffee in the house."

"Yeah. Me too."

He drew a breath and let it out slowly. "You're saying you lived then? That you were another person- living another life?"

"That's what I'm saying."

"And you knew this… eternal evil then?"

"He was attacking women then the way he is now, I know that. When Andy and the others showed us those pictures of women killed back then, I knew it was him. Not a copycat killer borrowing somebody else's rituals, but him."

"Because you felt it."

She nodded. "I don't know anything that could help the investigation, nothing that could help us find him, catch him. I don't know what he looks like, what his name is. I don't even know why he's picking women who look like the ones he killed back then. All I know is that the evil inside him has been alive a long, long time. And I know it's my fault."

"What?"

"Balance, remember? A positive force intended to oppose a negative one? Somehow, I was supposed to stop him. Back in the beginning, before his evil grew too strong, I was somehow in a position to change whatever happened then. To stop him, destroy him. Or maybe just turn him in a different direction. I don't know for sure. I don't remember. I just feel."

"And if what you feel is wrong?"

"It isn't."

"How can you be so damned sure? Maggie, what you're talking about is… incredible. To say the least. You failed to stop a killer a lifetime ago, and because of that he became some kind of unstoppable evil?"

"He isn't unstoppable. He just hasn't been stopped-up to now."

"And you have to stop him-now?"

She nodded. "I have to stop him. Because I didn't before. I can't… move on until I do what I'm supposed to do. And I have a very strong feeling this is my last chance to correct that mistake. Maybe we only get so many chances, I don't know. Maybe if I fail this time, someone else gets a shot at restoring the balance and I get sent back to learn the lesson a different way. I just… I just know that it's my responsibility this time around. I have to stop him."

"Karma."

"If it makes more sense to you to put it that way. Fate. Destiny. We're connected, he and I. Tied together by a mistake. If there's anything I know, anything I'm absolutely certain of, it's that once you've touched evil- I mean really touched it-you're forever changed. In a way, you are bound to it, tied to it, so that it becomes a part of you."

"There's nothing evil in you," he said immediately.

"Oh, but there is. It's not my evil, but I carry it inside me. That painting proves it. His evil. I carry his evil in my own soul… and I have for a long, long time."

Suddenly, John understood. "That's why you do it. That's why you surround yourself with victims, suffer right along with them. It's atonement, isn't it, Maggie?"

For the first time, she avoided his steady gaze. "Consciously? No. Not at first. But I've always been drawn to people in pain. Always felt a kind of relief if I could help them in some way. Gradually, over the years, I realized there was… something I was trying to fix, some mistake I wanted to correct. I didn't know what it was, not then. It wasn't until Laura Hughes was attacked that I began to understand the truth."

"Truth?" Unable to be still any longer, John rose and began wandering around the room, not quite pacing. "Christ."

"I know it all sounds unbelievable."

"You could say that, yeah."

"It is the truth, John. I wish it wasn't. I wish this was all about one evil man doing evil things in a single lifetime, something we could both accept, even if not understand. But that isn't what it's about. That's never been what it's about."

"Jesus, Maggie."

"I'm sorry. But you had to know the truth about it."

He swung around to stare at her. "So is this where you also tell me the truth about Christina?"

Maggie was honestly startled. "How did you-"

"I don't have to be psychic to know there's more to her death than what you've told me. Why do you think I kept after you about it? What do you know about her death, Maggie?"

His cell phone rang before she could formulate an answer, but Maggie didn't feel much of a sense of reprieve; from the determination on his face, she doubted he would accept anything less than the truth this time.

"Yeah, hello." He listened for a moment, then went to a notepad Maggie kept by her living-room phone and quickly jotted something down. "Okay. Yeah, I've got it. I'll call Andy and tell him. You won't do anything stupid, will you?" He listened a minute longer, then said, "Well, listen to Kendra and stay put, okay? Let Andy and his people take care of it. Yeah, I will."

When he ended the call, Maggie said, "I take it Quentin and Kendra found whoever sent that ransom note?"

"They have a name and an address." He called Andy's cell phone and repeated the information, adding, "Quentin says the information is solid, and he's pretty sure this Brady Oliver either knows where Samantha Mitchell is or knows someone who does.

No information on whether she's alive or dead. Yeah. No, I'm at Maggie's. For a while probably; call me on my cell in case I'm in transit, okay?" He listened a moment longer, then said, "Yeah, I'll tell her." He closed the phone.

"Tell me what?"

"He said he just called in to check for messages and found one from Hollis Templeton. She wants to see you as soon as possible."

"He doesn't know why?"

"No, just that she needs to talk to you."

Maggie looked at her watch. "Visiting hours will be over for the night by the time I can get there."

"Andy said he's cleared it with the hospital if you want to go tonight. But if you're too tired, tomorrow is probably soon enough."

Maggie wasn't so sure. "Hollis wouldn't have called if it wasn't important. I'd better go now."

"I'll drive," he said.