Touching Evil

CHAPTER SIX

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5

Gazing around the large, spacious room, Quentin said, "There are hotel rooms and then there are hotel rooms."

Without looking up from her laptop, Kendra said, "That's the third time you've said something like that. Keep it up, and John will think the FBI makes its agents stay in backstreet dives crawling with roaches and rats."

"I never said it was that bad." Quentin went into the kitchenette to pour himself a fresh cup of coffee, then came back into the parlor. "But you must admit-this is much, much better than our usual digs."

Kendra did look up then, rather absently glancing around the spacious, airy parlor of their two-bedroom suite. It was a room geared to business functions, with half the space taken up by a generous desk containing every modern technological amenity-including a multiline phone, a fax machine, and a computer supplied by the hotel-and a conference table that seated eight. On the other side of the room, a sitting area grouped around a large television promised relaxation, conversation, or entertainment.

It was a luxurious space in the sense of true luxury, nothing ornate or gilded, but beautiful, well-made, and comfortable furnishings and fixtures, and muted but tasteful decorating. Not exactly surprising for the best hotel in the city.

She smiled slightly as she watched Quentin contemplate with satisfaction the oil painting hanging over the desk, but said mildly, "With your taste for luxury, I don't know why on earth you ever joined the Bureau."

"I don't have a taste for luxury, I just enjoy being in a room that isn't a carbon copy of every other room in the place."

Pretending as always that she hadn't noticed him neatly evade the implied question about his past, Kendra said, "Well, while you're enjoying that, could you please hand me the forensics file? Once I get the last of that fed into our personal-investigation database here, we'll have everything the police say they have."

"You're as paranoid as John is," he told her, taking a file from the stack on the desk and handing it across the conference table to her.

"I resent that," John said, coming out of Quentin's bedroom, closing up his cell phone. His leather jacket was hanging over a chair in the sitting room, and he slid the phone into a pocket before joining them at the conference table.

"You should never resent the truth," Quentin said. "Did you get hold of Maggie?"

"I got her voicemail. Asked her to drop by here in the next couple of hours if possible or to meet me at the station at four." John gave Quentin a wry look. "I was very polite and low-key. No pressure, no demands, just a pleasant request."

Seriously, Quentin said, "There will come a time for demands, John, believe me."

"What do you mean?"

It was Kendra who answered, her gaze remaining on the files whose information she was feeding into the laptop's database; her fingers flew even as she spoke. "In this sort of investigation, the emotions of everyone involved tend to grow more powerful and erratic as time goes on. Naturally. Not just for the victims, but for the investigators as well. It'll be hard on all of us, but particularly on an empath. At some point, Maggie's natural instincts for self-preservation will demand that she distance herself from all the pain around her."

"And that's when we make demands?" John asked, watching Kendra in unconscious fascination. It was his first encounter with Quentin's usual partner, and so far he wasn't having much luck in figuring her out. A quiet, contained woman with rich brown hair and soft brown eyes, she was pretty without being in any way extraordinary-except that she obviously was.

"That's when we'll have to. Always assuming she's a help in the investigation and not a drawback."

"Why would she be a drawback?"

"Powerful emotions tend to cloud the mind and affect judgment, among other things. Worse for an em-path, naturally. Maybe she's learned to handle that, or maybe not. If not, feeling her own and everyone else's pain could drive her to do things she wouldn't ordinarily do."

"For instance?"

"She could get careless with her actions or incautious in sharing information. Get obsessed with a particular line of investigation to the exclusion of all else or, conversely, have increasing difficulty in even remembering things from one day to the next. She could strike out at those around her."

Quentin murmured, "That would be us."

Kendra nodded, but added, "She could also feel driven to resolve the situation as quickly as possible, whatever the cost to herself."

"You said her instincts for self-preservation would protect her," John objected.

"Eventually, yes. But from all we've been able to find out, Maggie's been doing this for some years, which means she has to be strongly motivated to see it through. But this is quite probably the worst investigation she's been involved in, given the depth and scale of the sheer human suffering. Rape is bad enough for any woman to just have to imagine; feeling that physical and emotional trauma even at second hand has got to be sheer hell. When you hurt badly enough, you'll do almost anything to stop the pain as quickly as possible."

"She could do that by walking away."

"Could she?" Kendra glanced up, her fingers pausing only an instant, then continued with her work and continued speaking calmly. "Whether or not you believe she's an empath, John, you can't deny that for anyone to deliberately expose themselves on a regular basis to the worst pain and trauma experienced by other people argues an incredible amount of resolution and dedication. She's driven to do this out of some deeply felt motivation, and whatever it is, it won't allow her to just walk away."

"So she'll stick it out as long as she can bear it," Quentin said. "Deliberately opening herself up to pain and emotions none of us would choose to feel-if we had a choice. Fighting herself and her own instincts harder than she'll ever have to fight anyone or anything else."

"In other words, she's a loaded gun," John said.

"More like nitroglycerin in a paper cup."

John sighed. "But she can help us?"

Quentin nodded. "Oh, yeah, you were right about that. She can help us. She might even be able to help herself, by the time this is over. But the duration is apt to be… painful for everyone concerned."

"I buried my sister a few months ago," John said steadily. "More painful than that?"

Quentin hesitated, traded a quick glance with Kendra, then said, "Could be, John. I know that's hard for you to believe, but the truth is that when new pain follows old pain, the weight of the whole tends to be a hell of a lot heavier than any individual wound."

Her eyes once again on the forensics file, Kendra said, "Four victims so far, and the rapist has left us virtually no hard evidence to consider. Nothing even remotely objective for us to concentrate on. That means our investigation is going to have to focus on the people involved. Victims, their backgrounds, friends and families. People in pain, all around us. Frightened, angry, grieving, hurting people."

John looked from one to the other of them with a frown. "Are you two trying to persuade me to leave Maggie out of this?"

"We never attempt the impossible," Quentin said.

"Almost never," Kendra corrected.

Quentin considered that, then shrugged and said to John, "Anyway, what we're trying to do is warn you that things are likely to get a lot worse before they get better, even for you."

"How could things get worse?"

Wincing, Quentin replied, "Never, never ask that question. Things can always get worse-and usually do. We've got a vicious madman roaming around out there, and he hasn't exactly left us a trail of bread crumbs to follow in order to stop him. We have four victims so far and no sign whatsoever that there won't be more. We don't know how he's choosing said victims, who appear to have virtually nothing in common except that they're female and white-which gives us about half the population of a major city to worry about. We have a police lieutenant with political aspirations in charge of a police department that seems to have just about reached the limits of its resources. We have a frightened city, an increasingly militant press- and we have to walk on eggshells while trying to investigate this because we're not supposed to be involved."

Quentin drew a breath, traded another glance with Kendra, then finished, "How could things get worse? Jesus, John-how could they not?"

"All right, point taken."

Quentin didn't press it. "When Kendra finishes our database, we'll run a comparison with everything the Bureau has on unsolved aggravated rape cases; even though most such seemingly isolated crimes aren't technically FBI territory, we've begun in recent years keeping track of as many as possible simply because sexual predators tend to grow more and more violent the longer they remain at large. And they usually have a history-if we can find it and track it."

"What do you mean?"

"He's been active here in Seattle for about six months, as near as the police can estimate. But his ritual is too well-established for him to be that new at it."

"I thought you weren't a profiler."

"I'm not the best at it. But I work with a few of the best, and I've picked up a thing or two. Kendra agrees with me on this. Our guy is no rookie."

"So he's been… active… somewhere else?"

"Probably."

"Wouldn't the police have checked for that?"

Quentin nodded. "Sure. According to the reports, they did. But in checking NCIC and VICAP and various other sources, it looks like they only listed the most obvious similarities between these attacks: that he blinds and maims his victims, never speaks to them, dumps them somewhere else in a fairly isolated place when he's finished with them. Not nearly enough specifics and similarities to provide for a thorough search of all the available files, in our experience."

"What other similarities are there?"

It was Kendra who replied. "He goes to extraordinary lengths to make certain these women can never identify him, yet it's clear he watches them for at least a period of time before he grabs them. He has very specific reasons for taking the women he takes, and it has nothing to do with how easily he can get his hands on them. He's varied his methods of blinding, becoming arguably more adept and skilled at it, which indicates it's a fairly recent part of his ritual. He may well have begun by simply blindfolding his victims or knocking them unconscious before raping them: a possibility that must be noted. The fact that he blinds them now could be a natural evolution and escalation of his ritual-or it could be because at least one victim in his past saw him and was able to identify him."

After a moment, John said, "You mean this bastard might have been caught at some point? Jailed?"

"Possibly."

"And-what? Escaped?"

"Maybe. Or maybe served his time. I'm estimating he's between thirty and forty now, so he certainly could have served time in prison at some point."

"Do you believe he did?"

Kendra paused in her typing long enough to turn to a new page in the report she was studying, then replied, "No, somehow I don't think he's seen the inside of a jail. I think he moves around, changing location after some specific period of time or specific event or point of transition in his ritual."

"So," Quentin said, "we'll run all the information- and educated guesswork and skilled speculation-we can muster and compare it to the Bureau files drawn from police departments all over the country. If we're very lucky, we just might find enough to be able to build a history on this bastard. And with a history we can study, there's a better chance of figuring him out, of knowing where and how to look for him."

Kendra said, "Once the database is set up, it'll probably take a day or two to run the comparison, at least with the information we've got, and that may only give us a long list of possibles we'll have to narrow down."

John looked at Quentin. "How does she do that? Type and talk at the same time?"

"Her uniquely flexible mind," Quentin murmured.

"It's a little scary," John noted.

"Yeah. I think she does it just to unnerve me." Kendra smiled but didn't look up from the file. "It would also probably be wise to check in with the police and find out if they have anything new."

"That's why I asked Maggie to meet me at the station," John said. "Not that I expect them to have anything new, but Andy would sure as hell start to wonder if I didn't keep turning up there to ask every day or two." He was looking at Kendra, but when she stopped typing suddenly and looked at Quentin, he followed her gaze and felt an odd little chill.

Quentin didn't seem to be looking at anything in particular, except perhaps something only he could see. His eyes were unfocused yet curiously fixed, unblinking, and he was very, very still.

"Quentin?" Kendra's voice was quiet. "What is it?" He didn't answer immediately; it was a full minute of silence before he stirred and looked at them, saw them. His expression hadn't changed, but there was something bleak in the depths of his eyes. Slowly, he said, "The police will have something new, John. Any minute now."

Hollis knew that Maggie was relaxed; she could hear that in the other woman's casual tone. It was an interesting voice, oddly compelling for something so soft and pleasant, and as deceptively benign as the surface calm of a deep pool. But what lay beneath the surface? Something always did.

"We can talk about anything you like," she was saying. "Just like when I came back yesterday. Pick a topic. The weather, sports-cabbages and kings."

Hollis smiled. "My favorite quote was always the one about believing six impossible things before breakfast. That always seemed like a good attitude to have."

"I know what you mean. The way the world is these days, it's almost incomprehensible how anyone could have a closed mind. It seems like most every day there's a story in the news about one of our certainties being turned on its ear."

"Maybe that's what it means to be human," Hollis offered. "Forever questioning our certainties."

"Maybe," Maggie agreed. "It's as good a definition as any other, I guess." She paused, then said, "Only a few more days until the bandages come off. How do you feel about that?"

"You sound like the hospital shrink," Hollis noted, neatly avoiding an answer.

"Sorry. Occupational hazard, I suppose; I spend so much time asking people how they feel about one thing or another. But I am curious. If the operation was successful and you can see again, do you think that will help you to get past this and move on with your life?"

Hollis didn't really want to answer but heard herself answering anyway. "In some ways, sure. If I can see, he won't have… destroyed everything. I'd still have my art, and still in the same way, so that'd probably help. Give me something to concentrate on."

"But your art is going to be different no matter what," Maggie said. "Nobody experiences violence without coming out of it fundamentally changed."

"You mean the dreams?" Hollis asked the question jerkily.

"Yes." Maggie's voice remained quiet, easy, as if nothing she said was at all unusual. "Your dreams have become more violent and far more vivid, with nightmares common. You wake up often in the night, suddenly, even without nightmares. Most of your senses have become sharper, and you'll be quicker to react to them. And it'll be a long time-if ever-before you feel completely safe again."

"You're more blunt about it than the shrink was."

"I don't see any reason to soft-pedal it. You're an intelligent woman, and you've had plenty of time to think these last weeks. To wonder. To ask yourself what is and will be different now. Your art will be. I don't have to know what you drew or painted before to be certain of that."

"Yeah, I know." Hollis gripped the arms of the chair, her fingers clenching and unclenching restlessly. "But how will it be different?"

"There's no way to be sure until you find out for yourself. I'd guess that if you paint you'll discover a tendency toward starker images, more vivid colors. You may choose subjects you avoided before, or even fixate on one or two images to the exclusion of most others."

"Images like the scalpel he used to take my eyes?"

"Maybe. Or some other image that represents violence or loss to you. It might have no connection at all to what happened to you-at least to all appearances. But it will be connected. And you'll know how or will have to figure it out. The images won't leave you alone until you deal with them." Maggie's voice remained matter-of-fact but was not without compassion or understanding.

Hollis drew a shaky breath. "My mind was always preoccupied with images before this. But how will there be images, visible images, from this? What happened to me was all… darkness. I never saw anything at all."

"Your other senses will fill in the blanks. What you heard and felt, what you smelled, what you touched and what touched you."

"Evil touched me. How will I paint that?" "I don't know. But you'll know. Eventually, you'll know. And you'll have to paint it or somehow give it form. That's what artists do."

"Is that what you do? Give evil form?" "I… suppose I do. Or at least try to give it a face." Hollis half laughed under her breath. "You know what's most ironic about all this? I came out here for a whole new start. I inherited enough money to be able to quit my crass commercial-art job and spend a few years finding out if I had enough talent to be a real artist. And I'd barely got my studio set up when this happened. Fate just loves to kick us in the ass."

"Yeah, I've noticed." Maggie paused, then added, "I suppose it's useless to ask you if you remember anybody watching you before the attack. Following you." "I don't remember anything out of the ordinary. So if he was watching me, I never saw him. Which is a very, very creepy thought. Why did he-do you know why he picked me?"

"The police haven't found a helpful common denominator among the victims. Different physical appearances, different jobs and lifestyles, a fairly wide range of ages-though he does seem to lean toward women in their twenties. It was probably nothing you did, Hollis, and it certainly wasn't your fault. You just fit whatever requirements he's put together in his twisted mind."

"Do you think… he'll do it again? Attack another woman?"

"Yes."

The immediate, calm answer made Hollis hesitate, but only for a moment. "Until he's stopped. Yes, of course. But why? Why is he doing this?"

It was Maggie's turn to hesitate, but then she replied slowly. "I'm sure a psychologist or profiler could develop all sorts of motivations. And I'm sure they'd be right. There are always reasons, at least explainable-if not understandable. Even for monsters."

"But there's only one real reason, isn't there? One real motivation behind his acts?"

"Yes. There's always a single driving motivation behind a predator like this one."

Hollis tilted her head, listening to that voice, the steady calm that was so deceptive. She wondered what it was she could almost hear moving about in the unseen depths beneath Maggie's tranquillity.

Something… cold. No, not really cold. Chilled. Something dark and chilled.

Fear? Knowledge? Understanding?

For some reason, Hollis was unwilling to ask aloud. Maybe because she didn't know Maggie well. Maybe because she was half convinced she was imagining way too much in the darkness behind her bandages.

Or maybe just because she was afraid of the answer.

She forced herself to concentrate on the subject of a monster's motivation. "What is it? Why does he do this to us, Maggie?"

"Because he wants to. Because he likes it."

Hollis drew a breath. "Yes. I… felt that. The way he touched me. As if the very texture of my skin intrigued him somehow. The way he… smelled me."

"He enjoyed your scent?"

"Must have. Or wanted to remember it later. He kept… sniffing. I'd feel his breath on my skin, then hear him sniff. My arm, my throat, breasts. All over. I'd stopped… begging… by then." Hollis heard her own voice as though it belonged to someone else, the words coming faster and faster, almost spilling out of her.

"I was tied up, unable to move. When I'd come to the first time, it was to realize he'd taken my eyes. I struggled then, fought him. Cursed him. But it was no use; no matter how loud I screamed or how hard I struggled, it didn't seem to affect him at all. He… did what he wanted to do. Raped me. And after that, after I'd stopped screaming and cursing, he… beat me-almost methodically. It seemed to take all my will to deal with the pain without screaming. I didn't want him to hear me scream from the pain. Didn't want him to… have that satisfaction. So I didn't make a sound, just concentrated on listening to him."

"What else did you hear, Hollis?"

"Him. Breathing. He was very quiet, but once or twice I heard him humming to himself. Not a tune I recognized, although there was something familiar about it. Not even a tune, really. Just humming. And…"

"And?"

"There was something else, but… I can't remember. I know I heard another sound, a sound that bothered me somehow. Because I recognized it, or thought I should have. Something. But I don't remember now."

Hollis knew Maggie leaned toward her, and didn't start when a cool hand covered one of hers.

"You'll remember when you can, Hollis."

"I remember everything else. I remember every goddamned thing he did to me. I remember the way his breath smelled in my face, like spearmint chewing gum. The way he smelled of Ivory soap. The way his skin felt against mine, hot and slick with sweat. The way he… grunted in the back of his throat while he raped me. I remember… everything. Except that. Why not that?"

"There's a reason. There's always a reason."

"You mean my mind doesn't want me to remember? But why that? All the horrible things he did to me-and I can't remember a sound? Just a sound? Why?"

"I don't know. But we'll figure it out. I promise you, Hollis, we'll figure it out." Maggie drew a little breath, and Hollis thought she heard a catch in the sound, but the other woman's voice was steady when she said, "Can you start from the beginning? Can you tell me everything that happened from the moment he grabbed you?"

"Yes," Hollis said. Her hand turned and gripped Maggie's tightly. "I think I can now."

Hollis Templeton's room was around a corner and near the end of an unusually quiet corridor on a quiet floor of the hospital; her doctors felt she would be better off not disturbed by the hustle and bustle common in most of the building. So when John got off the elevator and passed the silent waiting room, he found himself half consciously walking more quietly down the deserted hallway so as not to intrude upon the peaceful atmosphere.

He turned the corner having seen no one and stopped abruptly when he did see someone. Maggie. She was outside Hollis's room, leaning back against the wall beside the closed door. She was hugging her sketch pad with both arms, her head bent, long hair falling forward to mostly hide her pale face, but even from this distance John could see her shoulders shaking and hear the muffled but wrenching sobs.

Before she could see or sense him there, John stepped silently back around the corner and retreated to the doorway of the waiting room, more shaken than he wanted to admit to himself.

Magic. No, it wasn't magic, what she did. Whether her ability was paranormal as Quentin insisted or merely an overdeveloped sensitivity to the feelings of others, the undeniable fact was that Maggie suffered right along with the victims of violence she tried to help. He wondered if he had the right to ask her to put herself through that. If anyone did.

And, not for the first time, he wondered why she did it. He had considered having her background investigated, certainly something he could have done, but it wasn't his habit to acquire information about people that way. Especially people he wanted to work with. Digging into somebody's past without so much as a by-your-leave was hardly a good first step to induce trust and cooperation.

Both Quentin and Kendra had adamantly stated that Maggie's motives had to be both powerful and deeply felt, and John could see that clearly enough. To willingly put herself through what she did, her reasons would have to be strong ones.

So what were they? What could possibly drive a sensitive woman, with the intelligence and artistic talent to be anything she wanted, to torture herself this way?

John shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and waited there, leaning beside the doorway, all too aware that only Maggie could answer that question. And nobody had to tell him it wasn't something she would willingly discuss, especially with a virtual stranger.

Both the question and that reluctant answer were difficult to accept, and he thought about both, so preoccupied that he didn't hear her approach until she spoke.

"What are you doing here?" Except for a faint redness around her eyes and a hint of strain in her face, there were no lingering signs of that storm of emotion John had briefly witnessed.

"I called the station. Andy said you were probably here talking to Hollis Templeton. He said he'd tried to call you."

"I turned off my cell phone. I usually do during interviews." Maggie frowned slightly. "But I got your message; I was planning to meet you at four."

He nodded, accepting that. "Yeah, well, it might be a good idea if we go there now."

"Why?"

He didn't want to tell her, but there was no choice. "The police think there's been another attack, Maggie. A woman was reported missing a couple of hours ago. Her husband just returned from a business trip and discovered her gone and the front door literally standing open."

Maggie was very still, staring up at him. "There's something else, isn't there? What else?"

He really didn't want to tell her.

"John? What is it?"

"She's pregnant. More than six months."

Hollis remained in her chair by the window, but only because she felt too drained to move. Talking about the attack, telling Maggie all the horrible, painful details, even those she hadn't dared think about, had exhausted her. But not nearly as much as she had expected it to.

And her emotional state was much better than it had any right to be, she knew that. She felt peculiarly calm, almost… at peace.

Because of her.

"Because of Maggie?" By now, it seemed almost normal to discuss things with her figment. Reassuring, even.

Yes.

"Why? Just because she listened? Because she was sympathetic and understanding?"

No. Because she took some of your pain.

Hollis frowned. "What do you mean?"

She took it away. Took it into herself so that you wouldn't hurt so much.

"You don't-surely you don't mean she actually physically absorbed what I was feeling?"

She has a unique gift. It's why I wanted you to talk to her. So you could begin to heal.

"But… she felt it? All the pain?"

Yes.

Hollis was horrified; she wouldn't have wished that on anyone, and for Maggie to have suffered so when she was only trying to help… "Dammit, why didn't you warn me?"

I couldn't warn you. Neither could she. We both knew you'd fight not to inflict such pain on another. We both knew you wouldn't tell her the things she had to know if you had been warned it would hurt her too.

As upset as she was, Hollis had a realization then, one she was surprised hadn't occurred to her before. "You know her, don't you? You know Maggie."

Yes. I know Maggie. I know her very well.