Touching Evil

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Even though the weather had worsened by late afternoon, Jennifer and Kendra elected to keep searching for David Robson rather than return to the station. They stopped at a small cafe for coffee and checked in with Andy and Quentin by phone, pleased to discover there was another possible lead in the search for the old black Caddie that might or might not belong to the rapist. Even though Quentin sounded more frustrated than hopeful when he reported to his partner what little information they had so far.

"Nearly fifty old black Caddies in the city, dammit. It's going to take time to run all the names through the computer even to give us a place to start."

Kendra, who knew her partner, merely said, "It isn't your fault Joey decided to take matters into his own hands."

"Yeah? Then whose fault is it?"

"He's a big boy, Quentin. A very big boy."

Quentin didn't laugh. "And he never would have gone looking for this bastard if I hadn't pointed him in that direction."

"You asked him to find out who claimed a kidnapping that never happened, that's all. Anything more is Joey's doing, not yours."

"Yeah, yeah." Quentin sighed. "Listen, you and Jenn be careful out there tonight, okay? Watch your backs."

"You know something?" Kendra asked bluntly.

"No. I just have a very bad feeling about tonight." He sounded restless.

Kendra, who had almost as much respect for Quentin's "feelings" as she did his premonitions, nevertheless thought he was probably letting his worries about Joey get the best of him. But all she said was "We'll be careful. Two transients we talked to about an hour ago swear they know David Robson and that he'll be at the Fellowship Rescue Mission tonight, so that's probably where we'll be."

"Okay. Keep checking in, will you?"

"You bet." Kendra turned her phone off and returned it to her shoulder bag, then filled Jennifer in on the relevant details.

"Your partner sounds a little antsy," Jennifer noted.

Kendra nodded. "Yeah, I give him another hour or so, and he'll be out here himself looking for Joey."

"They're friends?"

"That I couldn't tell you. All I know is that Quentin feels responsible for the guy, maybe because they knew each other as kids."

"Baggage from the past. We all have that, I expect." Jennifer sipped her coffee.

"True." Kendra looked out at the dreary streets and added, "It's already getting dark. I figure the shelters are getting busy about now."

"Yeah. We'll give it a few more minutes, then go on over to the mission, okay?"

"Suits me."

It was raining when they left the cafe, the wind fitful as it gusted one moment and died off the next, and the temperature had fallen to hover only a few degrees above freezing. So it wasn't surprising that they found the Fellowship Rescue Mission to be a very popular place.

"We'll have a full house, all right," Nancy Frasier told them. "I've already opened the rooms upstairs and put out all the cots and sleeping bags we've got."

"We're still looking for David Robson," Jennifer said. "Mind if we wander around and talk to people?"

"It's fine with me, as long as things stay polite. Some of these people are a little… uneasy around cops, remember."

"We'll keep it low-key," Kendra responded with a smile.

"Thanks, I'd appreciate it." Frasier sighed. "We've already had a couple arguments today. I knew it was tense out on the streets, but the nerves are coming inside now."

"Because of the rapist?" Jennifer asked.

"That's a big part of it. Because two of the victims were found in this area. Because the women are frightened and the men are getting tired of the way the women are looking at them. Because we're heading toward the holiday season. Because the weather's really lousy." She sighed again. "Take your pick."

Somebody down the hall yelled for Nancy to come help get something unstuck, and she left the two cops with an apologetic grimace.

"If we split up," Jennifer said, "we can get through here faster."

Mindful both of her partner's warning and the reason she was with Jennifer, Kendra said, "Maybe, but I say we stick together. If these guys are as tense as the director says, some of them might be in a more confrontational mood than usual."

"And they'll be less likely to take on both of us?" Jennifer nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right. Want to start down here or upstairs?"

"Down here, I guess. It looks like the main room for the men is already full." They heard a sudden burst of laughter and a few colorful curses coming from that room, and Kendra added, "Rules or not, somebody always manages to smuggle in a bottle."

"My favorite pastime," Jennifer muttered sardonically as they moved toward the men's dormitory. "Arguing with a drunk or two."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and find David Robson quickly," Kendra offered.

But nobody was more surprised than she was when they did, in fact, find him ten minutes later, after another man told them Robson had gone upstairs to find himself a more private area of the house.

"Thinks he's too good for the rest of us," their informant sniffed, sounding quite insulted.

The man sitting on the next cot disagreed. "Naw, he don't think he's better'n us, he's just skittish as hell. Somebody dropped a shoe on the floor a while ago, and he damn near ran back out the door."

"Why's he nervous?" Kendra asked.

The man gave a thick chuckle. "Says a ghost is after him. So you'd better not say boo to him, ladies." He cackled happily at his own wit.

Jennifer and Kendra exchanged glances, then thanked the men and made their way back out of the dormitory and to the front stairs.

"After all this," Jennifer said, "if the guy turns out to be completely delusional, I'm going to be really pissed."

"I know what you mean."

They climbed the stairs to the second floor, encountering the director in the hallway. When they reported what the men downstairs had told them, she said, "If he's looking for more privacy, he may have taken one of the small back bedrooms; several of them haven't started to fill up yet."

They looked into two such bedrooms, finding one occupied by a snoring man who didn't come close to matching the description they had and the other still empty. In the third room they checked-the most isolated bedroom in the house-they found David Robson.

Jennifer realized instantly why Terry's description had been so unhelpful. Robson looked like two-thirds of the men presently at the shelter, virtually interchangeable with them. He could have been any age between thirty and fifty. He was hunched and thin, wearing shabby clothing too lightweight for the weather, and both his rather wild hair and his thick beard were a nondescript brown with threads of gray. His eyes were heavy-lidded, a muddy brown color, and more than a little bloodshot.

Also like so many of the men in this place, he was uneasy in the presence of police, literally backing himself into a corner of the small room and clutching in front of him an ancient canvas duffel that apparently contained all his worldly possessions.

Working together instinctively, the two women separated a bit as they came in, with Kendra moving a couple of feet to one side to lean casually against a low chest and leaving Jennifer to step closer to Robson. It was a tactic designed to make him feel less threatened, but it only half worked; his eyes moved nervously back and forth between them almost continually.

"I didn't do nothing," he protested as soon as Jennifer told him who they were.

"We know that, David," she replied soothingly. "We'd just like to ask you a few questions, that's all. About that ghost you saw a few weeks back."

He stiffened and pressed himself even tighter into the corner. "I didn't see nothing. Whoever said I did is a liar."

Jennifer hadn't expected it to be easy but nevertheless stifled a sigh. "You aren't in trouble, David, I promise. Nobody wants to hurt you. We'd just like to know what you saw that night. You were on the catwalk, weren't you? Sleeping in that old warehouse? And you looked out the window?" Not being in a courtroom, she didn't have to worry about leading her witness; all she wanted was something-anything- that might help her find or at least identify the rapist.

He swallowed visibly and made a little sound in the back of his throat, a frightened sound. "He went to drown the puppies. I know he did. He went to drown them, and now he's looking for me."

"We won't let him find you," Jennifer reassured him. "You're safe here. Did he have the puppies in a sack, David?"

He nodded jerkily. "Yeah, a bag. Carried it over his shoulder."

"And you saw them moving?"

"Poor things. Poor little things. He'd already hurt 'em, cause they was bleeding. I saw the blood on the bag. He never liked dogs. Never liked 'em at all. Probably cause they didn't like him. Dogs know who's good. Dogs know."

Jennifer tried not to let the excitement she felt alter her relaxed and unthreatening tone. "It was night, David, and you weren't close; how did you know it was blood you saw?"

"I saw it! I smelled it!"

Wary of getting him too agitated, she tried another tack. "Did you see him when he got to the building, David? Did you see his car?"

Robson clutched his duffel closer to his chest with one arm, while his free hand plunged into the bag and brought out a ring of rusted keys. "D'you think he dropped these? I think he dropped these. I'll give them to him when he comes to get me, and maybe he'll leave me alone. D'you think he'll leave me alone? He likes keys."

Jennifer glanced at Kendra, finding the agent studying Robson with a faint frown, then returned her attention to the man as she wondered if she was asking the right questions. You never knew, not with a witness like this one.

"The car, David. Did you see it?"

He stared at the keys in his hand, then dropped them back in the bag and began rummaging again. "It was here. I know it was right here…"

"David, did you see the car?"

"What? Oh. He took the puppies out of the trunk."

"You saw that? What color was the car, David?"

"Black. Black as the inside of hell. Big sonofabitch too. Maybe a Lincoln, I don't know."

Jennifer drew a breath and probed carefully. "So he carried the bag of puppies into the building. Did he have the bag when he came back out, David?"

"Had the bag. But it was empty. He'd drowned the puppies and left them in there. I told you that!" he snapped suddenly.

"I'm sorry, David, I'd forgotten." She paused, then said, "You know who he was, don't you? You know who the ghost was?"

He made another of those frightened sounds in the depths of his throat. "Dead. They said he was dead, but the devil can't die. I know he's the devil. I know it! I saw him one time. Saw him looking at her, and there was nothing in his eyes. Nothing. Why was that?" he demanded of Jennifer suddenly, desperately. "Why was there nothing?"

"I don't know, David. Maybe if you told me who he is-

"No! If I tell you, he'll know! He always knew, always. Always watching, smiling. Always knew when I messed up the code." The muddy eyes shifted between Jennifer and Kendra, worried, fearful, increasingly anxious. "I'm a good programmer! I am! He knew that, even though he got me fired."

"David-"

"You're going to tell him I'm here, aren't you? You're going to help him get me!"

"No, David, we just want to-"

It happened with horrifying suddenness. The duffel bag fell to the floor, and Robson was holding a pistol, his hand shaking so badly that it was pure chance it was aimed toward anything at all when it went off.

Jennifer was moving, reacting instinctively as she lunged toward him, dimly aware that Kendra was moving as well. But both of them were just a little too far away and just a heartbeat too slow in reacting.

The bullet tore through the sleeve of Jennifer's coat and slammed Kendra back against the wall.

Some time around eight John heard the shower, and by the time Maggie came out he had the soup ready for them. She looked more fragile than he'd ever seen her, faint purple shadows under her eyes despite the sleep and far too much tension in the set of her shoulders.

He could still see a thin red line across her throat.

"You didn't have to stay," she said at one point.

"Finish your soup."

Maggie looked at him for a moment, catlike golden eyes grave, then silently did as he ordered.

"Now I understand why you never walked through Christina's apartment after she died," he said suddenly. "Because she died there. Because you would have felt it."

"Yes. I wasn't sure it would happen, that I'd feel all of it, but there was a chance, especially since I-I felt some of what she felt when she was shot. Even though I was nowhere near there when it happened. And even without the connection I felt to Christina, what I was sensing had been getting so much stronger, so much more… intense with every day that passed." She shrugged a bit jerkily. "I'd started being careful about crime scenes even before she died, just to be on the safe side."

"You should have told me that." "You wouldn't have believed me." John knew that was true, so he could hardly deny it. He remained silent while they finished the meal. He cleared up afterward, sending her to the living room with coffee, and joined her there a few minutes later. She was curled up on one end of the couch, the over-large black sweater and dark sweatpants she wore making her skin appear even more pale than usual and her hair more vibrant.

When John joined her on the couch, she was looking at her hands, and said absently, "I feel like Lady Macbeth. All that blood on my hands. I can still smell it." Steadily, he said, "All I smell is lavender soap." She tucked her hands down between her knees and shifted her gaze to his face. "It's supposed to be soothing and relaxing, that scent. Usually, it is." "Maggie, maybe you should go back to bed." "No. I… don't want to be alone. Do you mind?" "Of course not. But you didn't get enough rest." "Enough for now. It was the first time in days I was able to really sleep. Probably because I knew you were here. Have I thanked you, by the way?"

"For what? For staying? I wanted to, Maggie." "For staying. And for pulling me out of that building. I don't know if I could have gotten out if you hadn't been there."

"Promise me you won't ever do that again. Go into a place like that alone."

"No, I won't." Her smile was a little shaky. "I wouldn't dare, not after this. That was very scary."

John would have chosen a stronger word, but all he said was "For me too."

"I'm sorry." She lifted her hands and looked at them again as if she couldn't help herself.

"The blood's gone, Maggie."

"Yes. I know." She allowed her hands to fall, to rest on her thighs, but kept her gaze on them.

He hesitated, not at all sure if he was ready for this. For any of this. "We don't have to talk about it."

Maggie smiled again, wry this time. "Okay."

"I didn't mean-Maggie, it's not that I doubt what you can do."

"I know. You're just… very uncomfortable with it."

Trying to keep it light, he said, "Stop plucking my feelings out of the air, will you?"

She looked at him finally, that little smile lingering. "One of the major drawbacks of… getting too close to an empath, I'm afraid."

"It's not something I expected," he confessed.

"I don't mean to invade your privacy. I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "I don't have any no-trespassing signs, not where you're concerned. It just takes some getting used to, that's all."

"I know. I know it does."

He wasn't saying any of what he wanted to say, and his own inadequacy disturbed him. All too aware that the wrong words would hurt her, still unsure if he was ready for this, he watched her turn her restless gaze to the muted television.

"More rain," she murmured. "Always rain. People in Seattle don't tan-"

"They rust," he finished.

"I keep forgetting you grew up here."

"I've thought about moving back. Oddly enough, I miss the rain."

It picked up outside just then, drumming against the roof of Maggie's small house, and she nodded. "I think I'd miss it too. It's a very soothing sound."

The silence that fell between them wasn't particularly soothing, and John didn't have to be psychic to feel that. There was too much left unsaid, and yet he knew they were at a turning point, a crossroads come upon so suddenly that neither one of them had been prepared for it.

"Maggie-"

"We really don't have to talk about it," she said. "About any of it. Too much has happened for either of us to be sure of anything right now."

This time, he didn't hesitate. "I'm sure of what I feel. I'm just not sure of what you feel. I mean-" He shook his head as she looked at him, wryly aware that he was as awkward as a teenager facing, for the first time, the girl who was so desperately important to him that every word spoken took on terrifying significance. "Maggie, you feel so much of other people's emotions, other people's pain. I can't help wondering if you even have the energy left to… feel for yourself."

She was obviously surprised, a little puzzled, even uneasy. But she didn't duck the question. "Sometimes it's easier to be alone."

"Because there's been too much of other people's feelings? Because when you're alone, you can find peace?"

"Is that so wrong?"

John hesitated, then reached over and brushed back a strand of her hair, allowing his hand to linger against her face. "God knows I can't blame you for making that choice. But it's an unbalanced existence. You said it yourself, Maggie-life is about balance. How can you go on giving and giving of yourself, your energy and compassion-and empathy-without at least sometimes taking something for yourself?"

"Because it isn't that simple." Her eyes were steady, the curve of her mouth a little vulnerable.

"I'd ask you to give as well as take."

She half nodded, agreement but also an obvious pleasure in the touch of his hand against her skin as she moved. "People do. It's only fair. I just… don't know how much I can give right now."

"And if I said whatever you can give will be enough?"

"I don't think I'd believe you." She drew a breath. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. This wouldn't even be happening if you hadn't been shaken up by today."

"The hell it wouldn't." John didn't give her a chance to argue, just pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Maggie had told herself almost from the day she had met John that if this happened she'd be able to stop it. Really easy-just say no. Tell him she didn't want this, didn't want him. Tell him she wasn't the slightest bit interested in acquiring a lover, thank you very much. Even if it wasn't love, even if it was only desire. Passion was very clearly and very certainly something she didn't need in her life.

She had been very sure of that.

She had been very wrong.

To her astonishment, it was about warmth as much as it was passion, about the simple, necessary human lifeline that was the touch of flesh on flesh. Her body, racked so often and so long with the pain of others, craved the healing warmth of him, the pleasure he created just by touching her. And her weary spirit longed for the closeness, the intimacy he offered.

There was no pain in this, no fear, no darkness. There was nothing but elation and the certain knowledge that some things really were meant to happen.

Without knowing if she had moved or he had moved her, she found herself on his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. She felt his hair, silky between her fingers, felt his mouth hungry and insistent on hers. She felt his hands slip under her sweater and touch her skin, felt them slide upward slowly until they could close over her breasts, and heard a little sound escape her, so eager it almost embarrassed her. Almost.

John drew back just far enough to look at her, his eyes darkened to emerald and so intense she couldn't look away. "Just give what you can, Maggie," he said roughly. "I swear I won't hurt you."

She touched his face with both hands, almost as if she were blind and needed her sensitive fingertips in order to see. She touched his mouth, and then her lips followed, teasing his, taking his. "I never thought you would."

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8

As promised, the rain grew even heavier after midnight and the wind began to whine and moan like something lost and lonely.

Maggie didn't mind. Her lamplit bedroom was warm and tranquil-at least for the moment-and she was discovering how good it felt to lie close to someone else in an intimate and peaceful bed. It felt very good. She wanted to hold on to this, to make the moment last, and knowing it couldn't made it all the more achingly sweet.

John shifted position slightly and rose on an elbow to look down at her. "You're very quiet."

She smiled. "Listening to the rain. Wishing the night could last a little longer than it will."

"There's that fatalism again," he said, intentionally light.

"Sorry. Character fault, I'm afraid. But… the morning will come, John."

"And then the next morning, and the one after that. Mornings don't mean endings, Maggie."

"Sometimes they do."

"Not this time." He shifted again, pulling her closer so that his forearms were beneath her shoulders and his fingers could tangle in her long, thick hair. "I don't intend to lose you."

Maggie responded as she had to when he kissed her, her arms going up around his neck and her mouth every bit as urgent as his. It was rather terrifying, she thought dimly, that he could have this effect on her when she had known him barely a week. Then again, sometimes a week was a lifetime, and sometimes knowledge had nothing to do with time.

There was nothing of the normal awkwardness of new lovers between them. No fumbling or uncertainty. He knew without asking what would please her, just as she knew what would please him. Yet even as Maggie knew that to glide her fingertips up his spine would elicit a shudder of need, there were also the still unfamiliar sensations of this particular body against hers, unexpectedly hard and powerful.

She knew he was a silent, intense lover, yet there was also the discovery that her voice murmuring his name had the power to affect him like an actual physical caress. And just when she was certain he couldn't possibly make her feel more than she already had, he did.

"It's obvious to me," she murmured a long time later, "that you didn't spend all your time building a business empire."

John chuckled and drew her a bit closer to his side. "A man has to have hobbies."

"Ah. And, naturally, you applied yourself to those hobbies with all the energy and dedication at your command."

"Naturally."

"Well, none of it was wasted."

"Thank you. You're not so bad yourself." He hesitated only a moment. "Maggie?"

"Don't say it, okay?" She kept her voice quiet.

He was silent, then murmured, "Because you already know."

"Because I don't need to hear it. Not now. Later… when it's all over. Tell me then, all right?"

John didn't answer aloud, just wrapped both his arms around her and held her, wide awake as he listened to the wind moan outside.