Touching Evil

CHAPTER TWENTY

John didn't say a word in protest as it was all laid out for him. But something changed in his face, and Maggie, watching him, could feel the pain.

"I'm sorry, John," Quentin said. "We could be wrong."

With a twisted smile, John said, "I hope you are. But somehow… it makes sense to me. It would explain so much, wouldn't it? How he got into high-security places, for instance. A snap for a computer genius."

Reluctantly, Maggie said, "John, it could also explain Christina's death."

He looked at her, and she felt another flash of pain that was quickly and ruthlessly shoved aside. "Yes, it could. Of all his victims, Christina was the most likely to be able to identify him, given enough time. He must have known that. Must have realized, when she survived the attack, that he couldn't let her live.

Especially if he got into the apartment and saw the work she was doing trying to find her attacker. It could also be why he didn't bother to go after Hollis Templeton or Ellen Randall a second time when they survived the initial attacks; he wouldn't think they had any chance of identifying him, so they were no threat to him."

Maggie thought that if they both survived this, she would have to do something about this tendency of his to repress pain. But for now, all she could do was say, "If I'd been able to walk through her apartment afterward, maybe I could have seen all this."

"It would have killed you," John said flatly.

Andy, who had been mostly silent until then, said, "John, I swear to you I believed Christina committed suicide."

"I know that, Andy. You have nothing to apologize for."

"Then why do I feel so rotten about it?"

"Never mind. What we have to do now is figure out where Simon could be."

Quentin said, "We've started on that. Given that he had access to quite a bit of money before his presumed death, it seems logical to assume that he planned carefully. I think we'll find evidence that he liquidated some assets and investments and possibly sold property as well before he took that boat out to die."

John frowned. "Thinking back, I was a bit surprised there was so little money. Plenty for Christina to live comfortably, but given what he'd been earning with those cutting-edge software programs of his, I expected to find more."

"There was more," Jennifer announced as she came into the conference room. "While some of the guys are looking for property he might have sold, I've been on another computer, checking out his financial records in the months before his supposed death. Quentin was right-Simon Walsh was moving around a lot of money. No one amount large enough to raise any flags, but taken together it's pretty obvious he shifted a sizable portion of his net worth somewhere I haven't been able to trace."

"He put it in another name," Quentin said. "He laid all the groundwork for disappearing long before he did."

Andy said, "I still don't get why he went to so much trouble to hide his face when he'd already blinded his victims. I mean, I could see him being extra careful with Christina, but the others? None of them knew him, right?"

Quentin said, "I think wearing a mask and wig is tied in with why he blinds them. He doesn't want them to see but, even more, he doesn't want them to know it's him. And he's convinced they would know, if they were able to see him, touch his face, even get a whiff of his natural scent. Because he recognizes their faces somehow, or believes he does, and because he believes he knows them, he believes they could know him."

"It makes sense, I guess," Andy said. "As much as this twisted bastard makes any kind of sense."

"So how do we find him?" Jennifer demanded.

Maggie half listened without offering comment as the others discussed various ways they might find Simon Walsh's secret torture chamber. What would it take, she wondered, to push a precarious mind even further into insanity? Maybe even… break it for good? Was that an effective way to destroy evil, by splintering it so that not even its own will could hold it together any longer?

"Maggie?"

She blinked at John. "Hmm?"

He leaned slightly toward her, his hand coming to rest warmly on her thigh. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." She managed a smile. "Just… wondering why I couldn't see this. Couldn't see him. Christina had pictures of him, of course. She showed them to me."

"You couldn't see him because none of the victims ever saw him. He made sure of that."

"I know. Still."

He squeezed her thigh gently, then leaned back and looked across the table to meet Quentin's gaze. "Do you think we'll find him by figuring out what properties he sold before he faked his death?"

"I think we've got a fair shot at it. To do what he does requires isolation and privacy. And he's got to feel safe there, certain no one will find him."

Andy said, "You know, he could still have Tara Jameson at that place. We haven't found a body yet, and he's had her barely forty-eight hours. Plus we think he may have been interrupted if Quentin's source actually found him or at least got close enough to draw his attention. So he could still be… working on her."

Maggie, remembering the painting, said, "I don't think she's alive… but she could be."

"Which means," Quentin said, "he could have a hostage. So assuming we do find a likely place where he might be holed up, we'll have to be damned careful approaching."

Grimacing, Andy said, "Yeah. No fucking S.W.A.T. team. If we blunder in and a victim dies because of it…"

He didn't have to finish that sentence, because all of them could do it for him.

Half an hour later they had a printout of a list of properties Simon Walsh had sold in the months before his death. It was a long list. And they found Tara Jameson's name on it. She had been the realtor involved in one such deal.

"You were right," Andy said to Maggie. "He did know her."

Maggie nodded, but said only, "Anything else helpful on the list?"

"So far," John said, "it looks like different buyers. But at least half a dozen were sold to what look like holding companies. It may take some time to find out who actually owned them."

"Of all of us, you're most likely to be able to find information on businesses without wasting time," Quentin noted.

"I can make some calls," John said. "I still have plenty of contacts here in Seattle." He carried his copy of the list to the phones at the other end of the room.

"I'll go get a map," Jennifer said. "We can start pinpointing all these."

Maggie studied the list, waiting for something to jump out at her. Even so, she was very surprised when something did.

She knew this city, knew it well. But she wasn't certain why the address of a waterfront warehouse should leap out at her the way it did. Why? It was one of half a dozen other warehouses, at least three of them fairly remote or isolated. So why did this one feel so… right?

Because Quentin's friend Joey had been found at the waterfront?

Or… because of the sound?

… I know I heard another sound, a sound that bothered me somehow. Because I recognized it, or thought I should have…

Hollis had said that. And Ellen had said the same thing. Even Christina had mentioned hearing something, something she hadn't been able to remember. What had they heard?

Maggie half closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to bring that faint, half-heard, and half-understood sound out of the hodgepodge of impressions and sounds and scents stored in her own subconscious after all the interviews with the victims.

Water.

Water lapping against pilings.

Maggie looked around the room. John was on the phone, jotting down notes on a legal pad. Jennifer, Andy, and Quentin were bent over a map spread out on the table, carefully marking locations from possibilities on the list.

Maggie looked at the list, then laid it down atop her sketch pad. There was only one waterfront location remote enough to provide the privacy and secrecy he needed. She should tell them. She knew that. There was really no excuse not to tell them.

Her car was here at the station, John had driven her back there to get it this morning, both of them surprised to find the car not only intact but apparently untouched, her sketch pad safely inside, and she had driven it here, where it was more likely to remain safe.

She got up and went to pour herself some coffee, having already noticed the pot was empty. Picking it up with a shrug, she left the conference room, ostensibly to get more water.

On her way out of the station, she left the pot on top of somebody's filing cabinet.

"Well," Jennifer said, staring down at the map, now marked with numerous little red flags, "if we eliminate all the places that aren't remote or isolated enough for his… needs… we end up with six possibles. All warehouses or storage facilities of some kind."

John joined them and said, "Only three of the addresses on this list are no longer in use, at least according to my sources." He bent over the map and pointed them out. "Here. These three. Supposedly either empty or storing bits of equipment and machinery forgotten long ago."

Quentin frowned at the map. "Two warehouses and one storage building. But only the two warehouses are remote enough to satisfy his requirements, I'd guess, and they're miles apart."

"So which one do we check first?" Jennifer asked.

Before anyone could offer a suggestion, Scott spoke from the doorway, his voice strained. "Where's Maggie?"

John looked around swiftly, realizing only then that she had been out of the room far too long. "She's…" He steadied his voice, something in Scott's face sending cold fear through him. "She went to get more water for coffee, I think. Why?"

"I found the file on the last victim from 1934."

Quentin was frowning at him. "And?"

Scott opened the folder he carried and silently held up a photo all of them could see clearly. All too clearly.

The last woman killed in 1934 could have been Maggie's twin.

"Christ," John breathed. And he knew, even before they looked for her, that Maggie was no longer in the building, that she knew or guessed where Simon would be and had slipped away to face him.

Responsibility. Atonement.

"She's gone after him," he told the others, hearing the hoarse fear in his own voice.

"Alone?" Andy stared at him. "In Christ's name, why?"

John shook his head, unable to even begin to explain any of it right now. "Just-trust me. That's where she's gone."

Quentin didn't waste time with questions, just said, "She hasn't got much of a head start on us, but if we're to catch up to her in time we'll have to split up to check both warehouses."

"No S.W.A.T team," John said immediately, repeating Andy's earlier statement. "If a bunch of cops show up and she's there, he could-" He couldn't even finish the thought.

Quentin said, "I agree."

Andy groaned. "Shit."

"Do you trust anybody else to go in, with Maggie in the line of fire?" Quentin asked him.

"No. Dammit."

"Then it's us. John, are you armed?"

"In my car."

Andy scowled at him. "Goddammit, John."

John shrugged into his jacket. "Don't worry, Andy, I have a permit to carry. And I'm a good shot."

"Listen to me. If you shoot the man who killed your sister, there'll be a lot of sympathy, but-"

"If I shoot him, it'll be because I have absolutely no other choice. It won't be for revenge. Trust me on that." He looked at Andy steadily.

"Shit. Okay, Jenn and Scott will come with me." He stared at the map, at the two remaining flags. "Want to flip a coin?"

Quentin studied the map for only an instant. "John and I'll take the waterfront warehouse."

Andy looked at him. "Because of Joey?"

"Yeah. Because of Joey."

"Let's go," John said.

It didn't occur to Maggie until she got there that the warehouse might have been wired for security. But as she approached the place on foot after leaving her car nearly a hundred yards back along the rutted road, she also realized that he would have done nothing to draw undue attention here. The isolation alone would protect him, that and the fence Maggie had scaled just after parking her car.

It was still a gray, dreary day, cold, not raining but almost, and nothing dry crackled under her foot to give away her approach. The warehouse she neared was a huge, hulking old building, part concrete and part rotting timbers, with a slate roof and very few windows. Maggie found the door easily enough but paused with her hand on it, her eyes closing briefly.

Useless not to admit she was terrified. Because he was in there. And because there might be a dying or dead woman in there with him, a woman Maggie wanted desperately to save if she could. If she could.

What she couldn't do was open the door to those inner senses. They could give her an edge-or destroy her. They could help her find him-or kill her with another woman's mortal injuries long before he could get his hands on her.

So she did her best to keep those inner senses firmly under control, shut deep inside herself and as inactive as she could possibly force them to be. It required almost as much focus and concentration to not use the senses as it did to use them, and she was all too aware that she would not be able to do it indefinitely. A few minutes, maybe.

Maybe.

She drew a deep breath, then slowly pulled the heavy door open. The hinges didn't creak. Inside was darkness, but as she stepped in and eased the door shut behind her, her eyes quickly adjusted. She could smell old machinery and dust.

And blood.

It stopped her, but only for an instant. She picked her way carefully among splintering crates and looming pieces of rusting equipment, gradually getting a feeling for the size of the place. And seeing, finally, a light in the distance.

She moved toward it cautiously, becoming aware that he had not enclosed the space in which he… worked. Perhaps he was claustrophobic. He had been before, she remembered. Hated enclosed places, just hated them.

When had that been? 1934? At the very beginning, in 1894? She wasn't sure. Her memories of other lives were only instincts, flickering bits of knowledge, precarious certainties. The universe refused to make it easy for her.

He had picked a warehouse with soaring spaces above and arranged his… working space… within walls made only of old crates and unused equipment in an area near the waterside end of the building. A worktable with various tools and ropes and bottles of unidentifiable liquids. A gurney off to one side, presumably so that he could wheel his victims out to whatever transportation he used.

And in the center of the space…

It looked obscene. A double bed with carved oak head and footboards. And beside it, a chair. A beautifully upholstered, wingback chair. With a footstool.

From her angle, Maggie could see a woman's wrists raised and tied to each side of the headboard, but she couldn't see if Tara was alive or dead.

And even with her inner senses closed off, she could feel pain. Pain from this victim and those who had gone before her, distant whispers of agony so acute they had soaked into the very matter of this place, the particles that made it real. Maggie had to stop for a moment and press her hands to her mouth, concentrate on blocking, closing out, holding within.

When she finally opened her eyes again, she saw him.

He had come out of the shadows and was doing something at his worktable, and even from here she could dimly make out a wordless humming, almost a crooning sound. When he turned toward the bed, she saw that he wore a plastic mask, not a horror mask, but one with perfect, smoothly polished features, like those of a statue, white and lifeless. Female features. And the black wig he wore swept down on either side of the white mask, so that he had the creepy look of a mannequin.

She also saw that he was holding a knife.

Maggie took a quick step forward, then froze as a shadowy figure emerged from between two large crates near her, paused only to make a beckoning gesture to Maggie, and then flowed toward the work area. A slender, childlike young woman with a heart-shaped face and delicate features and long, dark hair.

Annie.

"Bobby… Bobby…"

He jerked to a stop, the eerily pretty white face turning quickly.

"Bobby…"

Understanding, Maggie eased her way to one side so that she would be approaching from a different direction and then moved toward him, hoping her own voice wasn't shaking too badly, and sounded as eerie as Annie when she called out, "Bobby… I'm sorry, Bobby, so sorry. I didn't mean what I said…" She didn't know where the words came from. Memory. Instinct.

The knife he held clattered to the stone floor, and he backed up another step, his physical posture one of tension and uneasiness while that white face remained expressionless. He fumbled behind him on the table, then held out a gun in one black-gloved, shaking hand.

Maggie wondered if it was the gun he had used to kill Quentin's friend Joey.

"Bobby," Annie murmured sadly, "you hurt me, Bobby. Why did you hurt me?" She glided into the circle of light, facing him. Confronting him. The nightgown she wore was fine linen, and thin, and her feet were bare. "Why did you hurt me, brother?"

He made an odd, harsh sound.

"Bobby," Maggie called, moving toward them slowly. "Bobby, I didn't mean it when I said you weren't a man. I didn't mean to laugh at you." She cast a quick glance toward the bed and flinched at the blood-soaked mattress, the pale, thin body that was bruised and battered. The missing eyes.

She couldn't tell if Tara was dead or alive.

For an instant, her control wavered, and she felt a jolt of pain so intense it nearly doubled her over. Desperately, she struggled to shore up those inner walls, to close out the suffering she couldn't afford to share this time.

"Bobby." Annie glided another few steps toward him, holding out her hands beseechingly as she drew his attention away from Maggie. "I've been trying to find you, Bobby. I miss you so much…"

He made another choked sound and this time ripped off the mask and wig. Maggie recognized him from the pictures Christina had shown her. He was an ordinary man with brown hair, a high forehead, and pale grayish eyes. Slender but with wide shoulders and those oddly incongruous, outsize hands, their power obvious even gloved. Especially gloved.

But otherwise an ordinary man.

"You're dead," he said hoarsely to Annie.

Maggie moved into the light. "We're both dead, Bobby. You killed us. You killed us a long time ago." She was terrified she was wrong about this. Terrified of not being strong enough to destroy his evil. Terrified of dying.

He swallowed hard, staring at her now. "Deanna… I killed you. Why won't you stay dead?" His voice cracked. "Why in hell's name won't you stay dead?"

Annie uttered a sweet laugh. "We're stronger than you, Bobby. We always have been. Didn't you know that?"

Shattering the quiet, he fired two times directly at her.

The bullets hit the crate behind her, splintering wood. She smiled at him. "We're stronger, Bobby. We'll always be stronger."

"No! I'm stronger! I can kill you! I can kill you all!"

"You didn't kill me, Bobby," Hollis said as she stepped out of the shadows a few yards to Maggie's right.

He let out a sort of wail and backed up until he was up against the worktable and could retreat no farther. "No. No, I can kill you. I did kill you…"

Without planning to, Maggie said, "And it doesn't do any good to blind us, Bobby. We see you. We always see you."

"Always," Hollis echoed as she took another step toward him. Her eyelids were reddened and the marks of the attack were only half healed on her face, but blue eyes gazed at him, clear and steady, and she wore a small, contemptuous smile. "Did you really think you could take my eyes, Bobby?"

"I did," he muttered. He laughed suddenly, his own eyes gleaming with tears or madness. "I did. I took them. I cut them out. I did. I know I did. I put them in a bowl and watched them float. I took your eyes, Audra. I took-they were brown eyes. I remember that. Brown eyes. And I took them. And you couldn't see me."

"I see you now." Her voice was flat, cold. "I see you, Bobby. We all see you. You'll never be able to hide from any of us ever again."

"No," he mumbled, the gun wavering, his wide shoulders hunching. "No, please."

"We see you," Annie repeated.

"We see you," Maggie echoed.

He laughed-a strange, high sound-and watching him, Maggie saw his eyes change. In those flat gray depths, something was coming apart, disintegrating. She felt a peculiar sensation, as if some force, some energy, had blown past her, pressure more than air, nearly causing her ears to pop.

It all happened within the space of seconds, and then, before she could move or react, that wavering gun pointed at her, steadied, and he whimpered, "No-"

Maggie had a split second to gaze into eyes that now held nothing but a kind of dumb hatred, and then a third shot echoed through the warehouse.

She expected pain, waited for it. But the pistol in Simon Walsh's hand clattered to the floor, and he crumpled almost soundlessly.

It was over. It was finally over.

Before Maggie could do more than catch her breath, John was there, holding her hard with one arm while the pistol in his free hand remained pointed toward Walsh.

"Maggie-"

"For a minute there," she heard herself say with astonishing calm, "I thought you were going to be too late."

"He nearly was," Quentin commented, moving out of the shadows near where Annie had been. He went to warily check for a pulse in Walsh, keeping his own gun at the ready but relaxing when he found no heartbeat. "I didn't have a clear shot from my angle, so it was all up to him."

"Tara-"

But Quentin was already moving toward the bed and seconds later looked at them with grim eyes.

"She's alive, but just barely." He took out his cell phone to quickly summon an ambulance, while Hollis joined him at the other side of the bed, helping him to gently untie Tara Jameson's wrists and murmuring soothingly to the terribly injured woman.

"You two took a hell of a chance," John said, his voice jerky. "Jesus, Maggie-"

Maggie sent a fleeting glance around, unsurprised to find Annie gone, then smiled up at him. "I know. It was just something I-"

"Felt you had to do. Yeah, I got that." He flicked the gun's safety on, then stuck the weapon inside his jacket and put both hands on her shoulders. He didn't shake her, but the desire to do so was evident in the way his fingers tightened. "Want to tell me how you thought you could win this little confrontation without so much as a big stick?"

She shook her head. "I knew my face gave me an edge, that it would catch him off guard to see me here. It gave me the control, at least for a little while. I thought… maybe the only way to fight his evil would be to shatter it-or at least the mind holding it. To have one of his victims face him, knowing all his secrets. It was the only thing I could think of to do. I had to try, John."

"Just don't ever do anything like that to me again."

"No, I won't." She looked at him searchingly.

"I won't have nightmares about killing him," John assured her. "And no regrets. When you put a mad dog out of his misery, you're only doing him a favor."

"You had no choice," she said anyway.

"I know." He pulled her into his arms. "Are you all right? Even I can feel the pain in this place."

Maggie considered, then smiled at him. "When you touch me, all I feel is you."

"Good," John said, and kissed her.

Nearly an hour later, Andy stood outside the warehouse with the others waiting for his forensics team to arrive and said, "So that was what evil looked like. I wasn't impressed."

"No," Maggie said.

He gazed at her with lifted brows. "No?"

"No. That was just the shell evil lived in for a while."

"You mean because he's dead now?"

"Because the evil was destroyed this time before the flesh was."

Andy blinked, looked at John and Quentin, then shook his head. "Never mind. I don't think I want to know what it was all about."

"Wise of you," Quentin murmured.

Scott joined them, saying, "The Caddie is parked in that shed over there. A '72, looks like. Just what your friend Joey described, Quentin."

He smiled faintly. "Yeah, he always did know cars."

Jennifer asked, "How the hell did Hollis Templeton get here?" Since Hollis had left in the ambulance with Tara Jameson, she asked the question of the others.

Maggie shrugged. "She said… a little voice told her she should be here. So she came. Didn't say how."

"Jesus," Scott said.

Andy looked at him, seemed about to say something, and then obviously thought better of it. He settled his shoulders with the air of a man deciding things.

"Well, as far as we're concerned, Simon Walsh raped and killed women. He was the Blindfold Rapist."

"Nobody's arguing with you, Andy," Quentin said mildly.

"No?"

"No."

Andy heaved a sigh. "Good. Now, will somebody please tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to put in my report?"

Quentin grinned at him. "You can try the truth. Of course, the truth is a bit complicated. I mean, what with Maggie and Hollis being here, to say nothing of Annie."

"Annie?"

"The little voice Hollis heard," Quentin explained solemnly. "She was here. Well, sort of."

John looked at him. "So you saw her too?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Good. I was afraid it was just me."

Andy stared at them both for a moment and, again, very obviously decided he didn't want to know. They all heard the sounds of sirens approaching, and he groaned. "I'll either get a medal or get committed."

"Welcome to my world," Quentin said.