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DEAN KOONTZ THE VISION
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold or destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
THE VISION
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons
PRINTING HISTORY G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / November 1977 Berkley edition / March 1986
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com
ISBN: 0-425-09860-5
BERKLEY® Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
40 39 38
This book is for Claire M. Smith
with love and gratitude
Monday, December 21
1
“GLOVES OF BLOOD.” The woman raised her hands and stared at them, stared through them. Her voice was soft but tense. “Blood on his hands.” Her own hands were clean and pale. Her husband leaned forward from the back seat of the patrol car. “Mary?” She didn’t respond. “Mary, can you hear me?” “Yes.” “Whose blood do you see?” “I’m not sure.” “The victim’s blood?” “No. In fact . . . it’s his own.” “The killer’s?” “Yes.” “He has his own blood on his hands?” “That’s right,” she said. “He’s hurt himself?” “But not badly.” “How?” “I don’t know.” “Try to get inside of him.” “I am already.” “Get deeper.” “I’m not a mind reader.” “I know that, darling. But you’re the next best thing.” The perspiration on Mary Bergen’s face was like the ceramic glaze on the plaster countenance of an altar saint. Her smooth skin gleamed in the green light from the instrument panel. Her dark eyes also shone, but they were unfocused, blank. Suddenly she leaned forward and shuddered. In the driver’s seat Chief of Police Harley Barnes shifted uneasily. He flexed his big hands on the steering wheel. “He’s sucking the wound,” she said. “Sucking his own blood.” After thirty years of police work, Barnes didn’t expect to be surprised or frightened. Now, in a single evening, he had been surprised more than once and had felt his heartbeat accelerate with fear. The tree-shrouded streets were as familiar to him as the contours of his own face. However, tonight, cloaked in a rainstorm, they seemed menacing. The tires hissed on the slick pavement. The windshield wipers thumped, an eerie metronome. The woman beside Barnes was distraught, but her appearance was less disturbing than the changes she had wrought inside the patrol car. The humid air became clearer when she entered her trance. He was certain he was not imagining that. The ordinary sounds of the storm and the car were overlaid with the soft humming of ghost frequencies. He sensed an indescribable power radiating from her. He was a practical man, not at all superstitious. But he could not deny what he felt so strongly. She bent as far toward the dashboard as her seat belt would allow. She hugged herself and groaned as if she were having labor pains. Max Bergen reached out from the rear seat, touched her. She murmured and relaxed slightly. His hand looked enormous on her slender shoulder. He was tall, angular, hard-muscled, hard-faced, forty years old, ten years older than his wife. His eyes were his most arresting feature, they were gray, cold, humorless. Chief Barnes had never seen him smile. Clearly, Bergen harbored powerful and complex feelings for Mary, but he gave no indication that he felt anything but contempt for the rest of the world. The woman said, “Turn at the next corner.” Barnes braked gently. “Left or right?” “Right,” she said. Well-kept, thirty-year-old stucco houses and bungalows, most of them California-Spanish in style, lay on both sides of the street. Yellow lights glowed vaguely behind drapes that had been drawn against the chill of the damp December night. The road was much darker than the one they had left. Sodium vapor lamps stood only at the corners, and purple-black, rain-pooled shadows filled the long blocks between them. After he made the turn, Barnes drove no faster than ten miles an hour. From the woman’s attitude, he gathered that the chase would end nearby. Mary sat up straight. Her voice was louder and clearer than it had been since she began to use her strange talent, her clairvoyance. “I get an impression … of a … a fence. Yes … I see it now . . . he’s cut his hand … on a fence.” Max stroked her hair. “And it’s not a serious wound?” “No . . . just a cut . . . his thumb . . . deep . . . but not disabling.” She raised one thin hand, forgot what she meant to do with it, let it flutter back into her lap. “But if he’s bleeding from a deep cut, won’t he give up tonight?” Max asked. “No,” she said. “You’re sure?” “He’ll go on.” “The bastard’s killed five women so far,” Barnes said. “Some of them fought like hell, scratched him and cut him and even tore out his hair. He doesn’t give up easily.” Ignoring the policeman, Max soothed his wife, caressed her face with one hand and prompted her with another question. “What kind of fence do you see?” “Chain-link,” she said. “Sharp and unfinished at the top.” “Is it high?” “Five feet.” “What does it surround?” “A yard.” “Storage yard?” “No. Behind a house.” “Can you see the house?” “Yes.” “What’s it like?” “It’s a two-story.” “Stucco?” “Yes.” “What about the roof?” “Spanish tile.” “Any unique features?” “I can’t quite see . . .” ‘A veranda?” “No.” “A courtyard maybe?” “No. But I see … a winding tile walkway.” “Front or back?” “Out front of the house.” “Any trees?” “Matched magnolias … on either side of the walk.” “Anything else?” “A few small palms . . . farther back.” Harley Barnes squinted through the rain-dappled windshield. He was searching for a pair of magnolias. Initially he had been skeptical. In fact, he’d been certain the Bergens were frauds. He played his role in the charade because the mayor was a believer. The mayor brought them to town and insisted the police cooperate with them. Barnes had read about psychic detectives, of course, and most especially about that famous Dutch clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos. But using ESP to track down a psychopathic killer, to catch him in the act? He didn’t put much faith in that. Or do I? he wondered. This woman was so lovely, charming, earnest, so convincing that perhaps she’d made a believer of him. If she hasn’t, he thought, why am I looking for magnolia trees? She made a sound like an animal caught in a saw-toothed trap for a long time. Not a screech of agony, but a nearly inaudible mewl. When an animal made that noise, it meant, “This still hurts, but I’m resigned to it now.” Many years ago, as a boy in Minnesota, Barnes had hunted and trapped. It was that same pitiful, stifled moan of the wounded prey that caused him to give up his sport. Until tonight, he had never heard precisely the same sound issue from a human being. Apparently, as she used her talent to zero in on the killer, she suffered from contact with his deranged mind. Barnes shivered. “Mary,” her husband said. “What’s the matter?” “I see him … at the back door of the house. His hand on the door . . . and blood … his blood on a white door frame. He’s talking to himself.” “What’s he saying?” “I don’t . . .” “Mary?” “He’s saying filthy things about the woman.” “The woman in the house—the one he’s after tonight?” “Yes.” “He knows her?” “No. She’s a stranger . . . random target. But he’s been . . . watching her . . . watching her for several days . . . knows her habits and routines.” With those last few words she slumped against the door. She took several deep breaths. She was forced to relax periodically to regroup her energies if she were to maintain the psychic thread. For some clairvoyants, Barnes knew, the visions came without strain, virtually without effort; but apparently not for this one. Phantom voices whispered and crackled, came and went in staccato bursts on the police radio. The wind carried fine sheets of rain across the roadway. The wettest rainy season in years, Barnes thought. Twenty years ago it would have seemed normal. But California had steadily become a drought state. This much rain was unnatural now. Like everything else that’s happening tonight, he thought. Waiting for Mary to speak, he slowed to less than five miles an hour. Matched magnolia trees flanking a winding tile walk . . . He found it taxing to see what lay in the headlights directly in front of him, and extremely difficult to discern the landscaping on either side. They might already have passed the magnolias. Brief as it was, Mary Bergen’s hesitation elicited Dan Goldman’s first words in more than an hour. “We haven’t much time left, Mrs. Bergen.” Goldman was a reliable young officer, the chief’s most trusted subordinate. He was sitting beside Max Bergen, behind Barnes, his eyes fixed on the woman. Goldman believed in psychic powers. He was impressionable. And as Barnes could see in the rearview mirror, the events of the evening had left a haunted look on his broad, plain face. “We don’t have much time,” Goldman said again. “If this madman’s already at the woman’s back door—” Abruptly, Mary turned to him. Her voice was freighted with concern. “Don’t get out of this car tonight—not until the man is caught.” “What do you mean?” Goldman asked. “If you try to help capture him, you’ll be hurt.” “He’ll kill me?” She shuddered convulsively. New beads of sweat popped out at her hairline. Barnes felt perspiration trickle down his face, too. She said to Goldman, “He’ll stab you . . . with the same knife he’s used on all the women . . . hurt you badly . . . but not kill you.” Closing her eyes, speaking between clenched teeth, she said, “Stay in the car!” “Harley?” Goldman asked worriedly. “It’ll be all right,” Barnes assured him. “You’d better listen to her,” Max told Goldman. “Don’t leave the car.” “If I need you,” Barnes told Goldman, “you’ll come with me. No one will be hurt.” He was concerned that the woman was undermining his authority. He glanced at her. “We need a number for the house you’ve described, a street address.” “Don’t press,” her husband said sharply. With everyone but Mary he had a voice like two rough steel bars scraped against each other. “It won’t do any good whatsoever to press her. It’ll only interfere.” “It’s okay, Max,” she said. “But I’ve told them before,” he said. She faced front once more. “I see . . . the rear door of the house. It’s open.” “Where’s the man, the killer?” Max asked. “He’s standing in a dark room . . . small. . . the laundry room . . . that’s what it is … the laundry room behind the kitchen.” “What’s he doing?” “He’s opening another door … to the kitchen … no one in there … a dim light on over the gas range … a few dirty dishes on the table … he’s standing … just standing there and listening . . . left hand in a fist to stop the thumb from bleeding . . . listening . . . Benny Goodman music on a stereo in the living room …” Touching Barnes’ arm, a new and urgent tone in her voice, she said, “Just two blocks from here. On the right. The second house … no, the third from the corner.” “You’re positive?” “For God’s sake, hurry!” Am I about to make a fool of myself? Barnes wondered. If I take her seriously and she’s wrong, I’ll be the punch line of bad jokes for the rest of my career. Nevertheless, he switched on the siren and tramped the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun on the pavement. With a squeal of rubber, the car surged forward. Breathlessly she said, “I still see . . . he’s crossing the kitchen . . . moving slowly …” If she’s faking all this, Barnes thought, she’s a hell of a good actress. The Ford raced along the poorly lit street. Rain snapped against the windshield. They swept through a four-way stop, then toward another. “Listening . . . listening between steps . . . cautious . . . nervous . . . taking the knife out of his overcoat pocket. . . smiling at the sharp edge of the blade . . . such a big knife …” In the block she had specified they fishtailed to a stop at the curb in front of the third house on the right: a pair of matched magnolias, a winding walk, a two-story stucco with lights on downstairs. “Goddamn,” Goldman said, more reverently than not. “It fits her description perfectly.”
2
BARNES GOT OUT of the car as the siren moaned into silence. The revolving red emergency lights cast frenetic shadows on the wet pavement. Another black-and-white had pulled in behind the first, adding its beacons to the cascade of bloody color. Several men had already climbed out of the second car. Two uniformed officers, Malone and Gonzales, hurried toward Barnes. Mayor Henderson, round and shiny in his black vinyl rain slicker, looked like a balloon bouncing along the street. Close behind him was whip-thin little Harry Oberlander, Henderson’s most vocal critic on the city council. The last man was Alan Tanner, Mary Tanner Bergen’s brother. Ordinarily, he would have been in the first car with his sister; but he and Max had argued earlier and were keeping away from each other. “Malone, Conzales . . . split up,” Barnes said. “Flank the house. Go around it and meet at the rear door. I’ll take the front. Now move it!” “What about me?” Goldman asked. Barnes sighed. “You better stay here.” Goldman was relieved. Taking the .357 Magnum from his holster, Barnes hurried up the tile walk. The name “Harrington” was printed on the mailbox. As he rang the doorbell, the rain suddenly lost most of its power. The downpour became a drizzle. Alerted by the sirens, she had watched his approach from the window. She answered the door at once. “Mrs. Harrington?” “Miss Harrington. After the divorce, I took my maiden name.” She was a petite blonde in her early forties. She had a lush figure, but she wasn’t carrying any excess weight. Apparently, her primary occupation was taking good care of herself. Although she wore jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t appear to be going out for the evening, her hair looked as if it had been styled minutes ago, her false eyelashes and makeup were perfectly applied; and her nails were freshly painted the color of orange sherbet. “Are you alone?” Barnes asked. Lasciviously, she said, “Why do you ask?” “This is police business, Miss Harrington.” “What a shame.” She had a drink in one hand. He knew it wasn’t her first of the night. “Are you alone?” he asked again. “I live by myself.” “Is everything all right?” “I don’t like living by myself.” “That’s not what I meant. Are you all right? Is there any trouble here?” She looked at the revolver that he held at his side. “Should there be?” Exasperated with her and with having to talk above the loud swing music that boomed behind her, he said, “Maybe. We think your life’s in danger.” She laughed. “I know it sounds melodramatic, but—” “Who’s after me?” “The newspapers call him The Slasher.’ ” She frowned, then instantly dropped the expression as if she had remembered that frowning caused wrinkles. “You’re kidding.” “We have reason to believe you’re his target tonight.” “What reason?” “A clairvoyant.” “A what?” Malone entered the living room behind her and switched off the stereo. She turned, surprised. Malone said, “We found something, Chief.” Barnes stepped into the house, uninvited. “Yeah?” “The back door was open.” “Did “you leave it open?” Barnes asked the woman. “On a night like this?” “Was it locked?” “I don’t know.” “There’s blood on the door frame,” Malone said. “More of it on the door between the laundry room and the kitchen.” “But he’s gone?” “Must have run when he heard the sirens.” Sweating, aware of his too-rapid heartbeat, wondering how to fit clairvoyance and the other psychic phenomena into his previously uncomplicated view of life, Barnes followed the younger officer through the kitchen and laundry room. The woman stayed close beside him, asking questions that he didn’t bother answering. Hector Gonzales was waiting at the back door. “There’s an alleyway behind that chain-link fence,” Barnes told him. “Get back there and search for our man, two blocks in each direction.” The woman said, “I’m bewildered.” So am I, Barnes thought. To Malone he said, “Beat the shrubs around both sides of the house. And check out that line of bushes near the fence.” “Right.” “And both of you, keep your guns drawn.”
* * *
Waiting by the squad cars in front of the house, Harry Oberlander was baiting the mayor. He shook his head as if the very sight of Henderson amazed him. “What a mayor you are,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Hiring a witch to do police work.” Henderson responded like a weary giant spotting yet one more tiny challenger with delusions of grandeur. “She’s not a witch.” “Don’t you know there’s no such thing as a witch?” “Like I said, Councilman, she’s not a witch.” “She’s a fake.” “A clairvoyant.” “Clairvoyant, shmairvoyant.” “So clever with language.” “It’s just a fancier name for a witch.” Dan Goldman watched Oberlander, as weary of the argument as the mayor was. There are no worse enemies, he thought, than two men who used to be best friends. He would have to separate them if Harry became dissatisfied with words and started to throw a few fast but largely ineffective punches at the mayor’s well-padded belly. It had happened before. “You know why I sold you my half of the furniture business?” Oberlander asked Henderson. “You sold out because you didn’t have any vision,” Henderson said smugly. “Vision, smision. I sold out because I knew a superstitious fool like you would run it into the ground sooner or later.” “The store’s more profitable now than ever before,” Henderson said. “Luck! Blind luck!” Fortunately, before the first punch could be thrown, Harley Barnes came to the front door of the house and shouted, “It’s all right. Come on.” “Now we’ll see who’s the fool,” Henderson said. “They must have caught him.” He ran across the sidewalk and the slippery wet lawn with that unexpected grace peculiar to certain very fat men. Oberlander scurried after him, an angry mouse snapping at the heels of a behemoth. Suppressing a laugh, Goldman followed.
* * *
Alan Tanner sat behind the steering wheel in order to be in the front seat with his sister. When he saw Harley Barnes at the door of the house, he said, “Did they get the killer, Mary?” “I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was hollow, she sounded drained. “Wouldn’t there have been a shot?” “I don’t know.” “There would have been some commotion.” “I guess so.” From the rear seat Max said urgently, “Mary, is it safe for Goldman?” She sighed and shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I really can’t say. I’ve lost the thread. I don’t see anything else.” Max rolled down his window. The damp air carried his voice well. “Hey, Goldman!” The officer was halfway across the lawn. He stopped and looked back. “Maybe you’d better stay here,” Max said. “Harley wants me,” Goldman said. “Remember what my wife told you.” “It’s all right,” Goldman said. “Nothing’s going to happen. They caught him.” “Are you sure of that?” Max asked. But Goldman had already turned and was headed for the house again. Alan said, “Mary?” “Hmmmm?” “Are you feeling well?” “Well enough.” “You don’t sound good.” “Just tired.” “He presses you much too hard,” Alan told her solicitously, He didn’t even glance back at Max. He spoke as if he and his sister were alone in the car. “He doesn’t realize how fragile you are.” “I’m okay,” she said. Alan wouldn’t quit. “He doesn’t know how to prompt you, how to help you refine the visions. He doesn’t have any finesse. He always presses too hard.” You creepy little bastard, Max thought, staring hard at his brother-in-law. For Mary’s sake, he said nothing. She was easily upset when the two men in her life argued. She preferred to pretend that they were charmed by each other. And while she never entirely took Alan’s side, she always blamed Max when the argument became particularly bitter. To get his mind off Alan, he studied the house. A shaft of light thrust through the open door, silhouetted some of the dense lumps of shrubbery. “Maybe we should lock the car doors,” he said. Mary turned sideways in her seat and stared at him. “Lock the doors?” “For protection.” “I don’t understand.” “For protection from what?” Alan asked. “The cops are all up at the house, and none of us has a weapon.” “You think we’ll need one?” “It’s a possibility.” “Are you getting psychic now?” Alan asked. Max forced himself to smile. “Nothing psychic about it, I’m afraid. Just good sense.” He locked his and Mary’s doors, and when he saw that Alan wouldn’t cooperate, he latched both doors on the driver’s side. “Feel safe now?” Alan asked. Max watched the house.
* * *
Barnes, Henderson, and Oberlander crowded into the laundry room to examine the smears of blood that the killer had left behind. Miss Harrington squeezed in beside the chief, determined not to miss any of the excitement. She appeared to be delighted to have been the madman’s choice. Dan Goldman preferred to remain in the kitchen. As Barnes explained how these few pieces of physical evidence matched the clairvoyant’s visions, the mayor would begin to gloat. Harry Oberlander would be embarrassed, then outraged. The nasty bickering would quickly escalate into a loud and vicious exchange. Goldman had had enough of that. Besides, the big kitchen deserved an appreciative inspection. It had been designed and furnished by someone who enjoyed cooking and who could afford the best. Miss Harrington? Goldman wondered. She didn’t seem to be a woman who would welcome the opportunity to pass several hours in front of a stove. No doubt, the cook had been her ex-husband. Quite a lot of money had been spent to create a professional kitchen with a country home atmosphere. The floor was of Mexican tile with brown grouting. There were oak cabinets with porcelain hardware, white ceramic counter tops, two standard ovens and a microwave oven, two large refrigerator-freezers, two double sinks, an island cooking surface, a built-in appliance center, and a dozen other machines, tools, and gadgets. Goldman liked to cook, but he had to make do with a battered gas range and the cheapest pots, pans, and utensils on the market. His envious appraisal of the kitchen was interrupted when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a door opening beside and somewhat behind him, no more than a yard away. It had been ajar when he’d entered the room, but he hadn’t thought anything of it. Now he turned and saw a man in a raincoat stepping out of a pantry that was lined with canned goods. The stranger’s left hand was bloody, the thumb tucked into a tight fist. She was right, Goldman thought. Christ! In his raised right hand the killer held a butcher knife by its thick wooden handle. Time ceased to have meaning for Goldman. Each second extended itself a hundredfold. Each moment expanded like a soap bubble, encapsulated him, separated him from the rest of the world where clocks maintained their proper pace. In the distance Henderson and Oberlander were arguing again. It didn’t seem possible that they were only one room away. They sounded extremely odd, as if they had been recorded at seventy-eight revolutions per minute and were being played back at forty-five. The stranger stepped forward. Light slithered along the well-honed edge of the blade. As if moving against incredible resistance, Goldman reached for the revolver at his hip. The knife ripped into his chest. High and to the left. Too deep to contemplate. Curiously he felt no pain, but the front of his shirt was suddenly soaked with blood. Mary Bergen, he thought. How could you know? What are you? He unsnapped his holster. Too slow. Too damned slow! Although he didn’t realize that the blade had been wrenched loose from him, he watched with horror as the knife arched down again. The stranger jerked the weapon free, and Goldman collapsed against the wall, framed by a spray of his own blood. There was still no pain, but his strength was draining out of him as if there was a tap in his ankle. Can’t fall down, he told himself. Don’t dare fall down. Wouldn’t have a chance. But the killer was finished. He turned and ran toward the dining room. Clutching his wounds with his weakening left hand, Goldman staggered after the man. By the time he reached the archway and leaned against it to catch his breath, the killer was nearly to the living room. Goldman had the gun out of his holster, but he found it too heavy to lift. To get Har-ley’s attention, he fired into the floor. With that explosion, time resumed its normal flow and pain finally smashed through his chest, and suddenly he found it difficult to breathe and his knees buckled and he went down.
* * *
Alan interrupted himself in the middle of a sentence. “What was that?” “A shot,” Max said. Mary said, “Something’s happened to Goldman. I know it as sure as I’m sitting here.” Someone rushed out of the house. His raincoat flapped and billowed like a cape. “That’s him,” Mary said. When he saw the squad cars, the man stopped. Confused, he looked left and right, didn’t seem to trust either route, and turned back toward the house. Harley Barnes appeared at the open door. Even from where he sat, even through the dirty window and the shadows and the thin rain, Max could see the oversized revolver in the cop’s hand. Obscenely, fire licked from the muzzle. The madman spun as if in an inept ballet, then fell, rolled along the walk. Surprisingly, he scrambled to his feet and headed for the street again. He hadn’t been hit. If he’d taken a bullet from the .357 Magnum, he would have stayed down. Max was certain of that. He knew a great deal about firearms. He owned an extensive collection of guns. Barnes fired again. “Dammit!” Max said furiously. “Small town cops. Overarmed and undertrained. If that ass misses his man, he’ll kill one of us!” The third shot took the killer in the back as he reached the sidewalk. Max could tell two things about the bullet. Because it didn’t exit from the killer’s chest and pierce the car window, it had been insufficiently packed with powder. It was designed for use on crowded streets; it had just enough punch to stop a guilty man without passing through him and harming others. Secondly, considering how it had lifted the man off his feet, the bullet was surely hollow-nosed. After an instant of graceless flight, the killer slammed hard into the police cruiser. For a moment he clung to Mary’s door. He slid down until he was peering at her. “Mary Bergen . . .” His voice was hoarse. He clawed at the window. “Mary Bergen.” Blood spouted from his mouth and painted the glass. Mary screamed. The corpse dropped to the sidewalk.
3
THE AMBULANCE CARRYING Dan Goldman turned the corner as fast as it could without flipping on its side. Max hoped the siren was fading more rapidly than the young patrolman’s life. On the sidewalk the dead man lay on his back. He stared at the sky and waited patiently for the coroner. “She’s upset about the killer knowing her name,” Alan said. “He saw her picture in her newspaper column,” Max said. “Somehow he heard she was coming to town to find him.” “But only the mayor and the city council knew. And the cops.” “Somehow this guy heard. He knew she was in town and he recognized her. There’s nothing supernatural about it. Is that what she thinks?” “I know there’s a simple explanation, and you know it. Deep down she knows it, too. But considering what she’s seen in her life, she can’t help wondering. Now, I’ve talked to Barnes. He can spare a man and a car for us. We should get Mary back to the hotel so she can lie down.” “We will,” Max said, “when everything’s settled with the mayor.” “That could be hours.” “Half an hour at most,” Max said. “Now, if that’s all you wanted to talk to me about—” “She’s dead tired.” “Aren’t we all? She’ll be okay.” “The loving husband.” “Go to hell.” They were standing behind the first squad car. Mary still sat inside with her eyes closed and her hands folded in her lap. The rain had stopped. The air was moist and fragrant. Glancing nervously at the people who had come out of their homes to gather around the pathetic scene, Alan said, “There’ll be reporters here any minute. I don’t think she should have to put up with a lot of reporters tonight.” Max knew what his brother-in-law wanted. Tomorrow Alan began a two-week vacation. Before leaving he hoped to have a final conversation with his sister, just the two of them, one last uninterrupted hour in which to convince her that she had married a man who was terribly wrong for her. His fists were the only tools Max had to prevent this domestic sedition. He was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than Alan. He had shoulders and biceps designed for dock work, and the outsized hands of a basketball star. However, he knew that split lips and broken teeth and a cracked jaw would silence Alan Tanner only temporarily. Short of killing him, there was no way to put an end to his meddling. Anyway, Max no longer tried to solve his problems with his fists. He had promised Mary and himself that his violent days were gone forever. Other than strength and the will to use it, Alan had all the weapons in this intensely personal war. Not the least of them was his appearance. He had black hair and blue eyes, like Mary. He was handsome, while Max was so rough-hewn that he barely avoided ugliness. Alan’s powerfully sensuous features, highlighted by a look of boyish innocence, could affect even a sister. Especially a sister. Alan’s voice was as sweet and persuasive as an actor’s. He was able to create moods and build drama with his voice. He employed it subtly to gain Mary’s sympathy and to cause her to look upon her new husband with mild, unconscious, but insidious displeasure. Max knew his mind was better than average, but he also knew that Alan was his intellectual superior. It wasn’t the voice alone that won arguments. There was wit behind those mellifluous tones. And charm? Whenever Alan needed it, charm oozed from him. I’d like to roll him up tight like an empty tube of toothpaste, Max thought. Squeeze all the charm out of him and see if there’s any truth behind it. Most important of all, Alan and Mary had shared thirty years; he was thirty-three and, as an older brother, was welded to her by blood, common experience, more than a little tragedy, and three decades of day-to-day life. As the crowd grew around him, Max watched yet another police car approach. He said, “You’re right. She shouldn’t be here any longer than necessary.” “Of course not.” “I’ll take her to the hotel right away.” “You?” Alan asked, surprised. “You have to stay here.” “Why?” “You know why.” “Tell me anyway.” Grudgingly, Alan said, “You’re better at this than I am.” “Better at what?” Max asked. “You know why you need to hear it? Because it’s all you’ve got going for you. It’s the only thing you can use to hold her.” “Better at what?” “So insecure.” “Better at what!” “You’re better at getting the money. Does that satisfy you?” Mary made a good living as the author of a syndicated newspaper column about psychic phenomena. She had also earned a lot of money with three best-selling books about her career, and she could have survived quite well on her speaking fees alone if she’d wanted. Although she traveled extensively, aiding authorities with investigations of violent homicides whenever they asked her to do so, she didn’t profit from any of that. She didn’t charge for her visions. Once she helped a famous actress locate a hundred-thousand-dollar diamond necklace that was lost, and she took no fee. She never required more than expenses—airline tickets, car rentals, meals, and lodging—from those whom she assisted; and she refused even that much if she thought she’d been of little or no service. When Max first came into her life, the collection of expense money was her brother’s duty. But Alan had no talent or taste for quibbling with mayors, councilmen, and bureaucrats. As often as not, when Mary had done her work and the guilty man had been found, the local politicians who had summoned her tried to get rid of her without paying what they owed. Alan seldom pressured them. As a result, tens of thousands of dollars in expenses were lost each year; and although Mary earned considerable sums, she was slowly going broke. Within two months following the wedding Max straightened out Mary’s financial affairs. He renegotiated her contract with the lecture bureau and doubled her speaking fee. When her contract with the newspaper syndicate came due for renewal, he made a far more advantageous deal than she had thought possible. And he never failed to get a check for expenses. “Well?” Alan said. “All right. You take her back to the hotel. But remember what you said. I’m better at getting the money. And I always will be.” “Of course. You have a nose for it,” Alan said. His smile had no warmth. “You sniffed out Mary’s money pretty damned fast, didn’t you?” “Go,” Max said. “Too much truth in that for you?” “Get out of here before you find yourself looking up your own ass for the rest of your life.” Alan blinked. Max didn’t. Alan walked over to Harley Barnes. Gradually Max became aware of a number of people in the crowd who were staring at him. He stared back at them, one at a time. Each grew self-conscious and turned away—but each looked at him again as soon as he moved his gaze. None of them was close enough to have heard the argument. He realized that they were staring because his face was contorted by rage, because his shoulders were drawn up like those of a stalking panther, because his huge hands were in tight fists at his sides. He tried to relax, to let his shoulders fall. And he put his hands in the pockets of his raincoat so that no one could see he was too infuriated to uncurl them.
4
THE HOTEL ROOM had four ugly lamps with garishly patterned shades, but only one of them was on. In a black vinyl armchair that stood on a swivel base Alan folded his hands around a glass of Scotch that he wasn’t drinking. The light fell over him from the left, carving his face with sharp shadows. Mary was sitting up in bed, on top of the covers, well out of the light. She wished Max would get back so they could go out for a late supper and a couple of drinks. She was hungry and tired and emotionally exhausted. “Still have a headache?” Alan asked. “The aspirin helped.” “You’re drawn … so pale.” “There’s nothing wrong that eight hours of sleep won’t cure.” “I worry about you,” he said. She smiled affectionately. “You’ve always worried about me, dear. Even when we were children.” “I care about you very much.” “I know that.” “You’re my sister. I love you.” “I know, but—” “He presses you too hard.” “Not this again, Alan.” “He does.” “I wish you and Max could get along.” “So do I. But we never will.” “But why?” “Because I know what he is.” “And what’s that?” “For one thing, he’s so different from you,” Alan said. “He’s not as sensitive as you are. He’s not as kind.” He seemed to be pleading with her. “You’re gentle, and he’s—” “He can be gentle, too.” “Can he?” “With me he can. He’s sweet.” “You’re entitled to your opinion.” “Oh, thank you very much,” she said sarcastically. Anger flared briefly in her but was quickly extinguished. She couldn’t stay angry with Alan for more than a minute. Even a minute was stretching it. “Mary, I don’t want to argue with you.” “Then don’t.” “We never had cross words, not in thirty years . . . until he came into the picture.” “I’m not up to this tonight.” “You’re not up to anything because he presses you too hard and too fast when he’s guiding you through your visions.” “He does it well.” “Not as well as I did it.” “At first he was too insistent,” she admitted. “Too anxious. But not anymore.” Alan put down his Scotch, got up, turned his back on her. He went to the window. Moody silence enveloped him. She closed her eyes and wished Max would get back. After a minute Alan walked away from the window. He stood at the foot of the bed, staring down at her. “I’m afraid to go away on vacation.” Without opening her eyes, she said, “Afraid of what?” “I don’t want to leave you alone.” “I won’t be alone. I’ll be with Max.” “That’s what I mean—alone with Max.” “Alan, for Christ’s sake!” “I mean it.” She opened her eyes, sat up straighter. “You’re being silly. Ridiculous. I won’t listen to any more of this.” “If I didn’t care what happens to you, I could walk out right now. Whether you want to hear it or not, I’m going to say what I think is true about him.” She sighed. “He’s an opportunist,” Alan said. “So what?” “He likes money.” “So do I. So do you.” “He likes it too much.” She smiled indulgently. “I’m not sure you can ever like it too much, dear.” “Don’t you understand?” “Enlighten me.” Alan hesitated. There was sadness in his beautiful eyes. “Max likes other people’s money too much.” She stared at him, surprised. “Look … if you’re saying he married me for my money—” “That’s precisely what I’m saying.” “Then it’s you who’s pressing me too hard.” There was steel in her voice now. He changed his tone with her, spoke softly. “All I’m trying to do is make you face facts. I don’t—” She raised herself up, away from the headboard. “Am I so ugly that no one would want me if I were poor?” “You’re beautiful. You know that.” She wasn’t satisfied. “Then am I some mindless little twit who bores men to death?” “Don’t shout,” Alan said. “Calm down. Please.” He seemed genuinely grieved that he had hurt her. But he didn’t change the subject. “Plenty of men would give everything they own to marry you. And for all the right reasons. Why you ever picked Max—” “He was the first decent prospect, the first full-fledged man who asked.” “That’s not true. I know of four others who asked.” “The first two were spineless wonders,” she said. “The third one was about as gentle and considerate in bed as a bull is in the ring. The other one was virtually impotent. Max wasn’t any of that. He was different, interesting, exciting.” “You didn’t marry him because he was exciting, or because he was intelligent or mysterious or romantic. You married him because he was big, strong, and gruff. A perfect father image.” “Since when have you practiced psychiatry?” She knew Alan didn’t want to pick at her like this. He continued only because he felt she needed to hear it. He was being a conscientious big brother. Even though he was misguided, his intentions were admirable. If she hadn’t been certain of that, she would have asked him to leave. “I don’t have to be a psychiatrist to know that you need to lean on someone. You always have. From the day you realized what your clairvoyance was, what it meant, you’ve been frightened of it, unable to deal with it yourself. You leaned on me for a while. But I wasn’t tall enough or broad-shouldered enough to fill the role for long.” “Alan, for the first time in my life I have the urge to slap your face.” He came around and sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her left hand in both of his. “Mary, he was a newspaper hack, a washed-up reporter who hadn’t covered a major story in ten years. You knew him just six weeks before you were married.” “That’s all the longer I needed to know him.” She relaxed, squeezed Alan’s hand. “It’s working out fine, dear. You should be happy for me.” “You’ve only been married four months.” “Long enough to like him even better than I did when he proposed.” “He’s a dangerous man. You know his past.” “A few fights in barrooms . . . and he doesn’t go to barrooms anymore.” “It’s not as innocent as that. He nearly killed some people in those brawls.” “When they’ve had too much to drink and are feeling mean, some men will go after the biggest man in the room. Max was a natural target. He didn’t start any of those fights.” “So he says.” “No one ever pressed charges.” “Maybe they were afraid to.” “He’s changed. What he needed was someone who loved him, someone he could feel responsible for. He needed me.” Alan nodded forlornly. “Want a drink?” “I’ll wait for Max.” He drank his Scotch in three swallows. “You’re absolutely sure about him?” “About Max? Positive.” He went to the window again, studied the night sky for a moment. “I don’t think I’ll be returning to work with you after my vacation.” She got up, went to him, took hold of his shoulder and turned him around. “Say again?” “I’m a fifth wheel now.” “Nonsense. You take care of so much of my business—” “That’s nothing a secretary couldn’t handle,” Alan said. “Before Max, I was vital. I was your guide through the visions. But there’s nothing important for me to do anymore. And I don’t need this constant friction with Max.” “But what will you do?” “I’m not sure. I think I’ll start by taking two months vacation instead of two weeks. I can afford it. You’ve been very generous to me and—” “Not generous. You earned your share. Alan—” “I’ve got enough money put away to keep me for years. Maybe I’ll go back to the university . . . finish that degree in political science.” “Will you move out of the house in Bel Air?” “That would be best. I can find an apartment.” “Will you live with Jennifer?” “She dropped me,” he said. “What?” “For another guy.” “I didn’t know.” “I didn’t want to talk about it.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be. She wasn’t my type.” “You two seemed happy.” “We were . . . briefly.” “What went wrong?” “Everything.” “You won’t move far away, will you?” “Probably just to Westwood.” “Oh, then we’ll practically be neighbors.” “That’s right.” “We’ll have lunch once a week.” “All right,” he said. “And dinner occasionally.” “Without Max?” he asked. “Just you and me.” “Sounds lovely.” A childlike tear rolled out of the corner of her eye. “No need for that,” he said, wiping it away. “I’ll miss you.” “A brother and sister can’t live in the same house forever. It’s unnatural.” The sound of a key in the lock made them turn to the door. Max came in and stripped off his raincoat. Mary went to him, kissed him on the cheek. Putting an arm around her, refusing to acknowledge Alan, Max asked, “Feeling better?” “Just tired,” she said. “Everything went smoothly in spite of Oberlander,” Max said. “I got the check for expenses.” “You always do,” she said proudly. During that exchange Alan went to the door and opened it. “I’ll be going.” Only minutes ago she had hoped he would leave before Max returned in order to avoid one of those tiresome quarrels. Now she felt that Alan was drifting out of her life, and she was unwilling to let go of him so soon or so easily. “Can’t you stay for another drink?” He looked at Max and shook his head. “I don’t think that would be wise.” Max said nothing. He didn’t move, smile, or even blink. His arm at Mary’s waist was like a stone bannister against which she rested. She said, “We haven’t talked about what happened tonight. There’s so much to be discussed.” “Later,” Alan said. “You’re still just going to spend your vacation driving up the coast?” “Yeah. I’ll spend some time in San Francisco. I know a girl there who’s invited me for Christmas. Maybe after that I’ll head for Seattle.” “You’ll call me?” “Sure.” “When?” “A week or so.” “Christmas Day?” “All right.” “I’ll miss you, Alan.” “Watch out for yourself.” “I’ll watch out for her,” Max said. Alan ignored him. To Mary he said, “Be careful, will you? And remember what I said.” He went out, closing the door behind him, leaving her alone with Max.
* * *
The small, downtown tavern was dimly lit, quite busy as late evening approached, but cozy in spite of the crowd. Max and Mary sat in a corner booth, and the bartender made two perfect vodka martinis. Later they ate roast beef sandwiches and split a bottle of red wine. When she had finished half of her large sandwich, she pushed the rest of it aside, poured a third glass of wine for herself, and said, “I wonder if Dan Goldman’s hospital bills will be covered.” “The town carries a comprehensive insurance policy on its cops,” Max said. “Goldman got hurt in the line of duty, so he won’t be stuck for a penny of it.” “How can you be so sure?” “I knew you’d want me to be.” “I don’t understand.” “I knew you’d wonder about Goldman’s hospital bills, so I asked the mayor.” “Even if the bills are covered,” she said, “I guess he’ll lose some pay while he’s off work.” “No,” Max said. “I asked about that, too.” She was surprised. “What are you—a mind reader?” “I just know you too well. You’re the softest touch there ever was.” “I am not. I just think we should do something nice for him.” Max put down his sandwich. “We can buy him either a new electric range or maybe a microwave oven.” She blinked. “What?” “I asked some of Goldman’s buddies what he needs. Seems he’s a serious amateur chef, but his kitchen leaves a lot to be desired.” She smiled. “We’ll get him the range and the oven, and the best set of pots and pans—” “Hold on a minute,” Max said. “He’s got an apartment kitchen, not a restaurant. Besides, why do you think you owe him anything?” Staring into her wine, she said, “If I hadn’t come to town, he wouldn’t have been hurt.” “Mary Bergen, the female Atlas, carrying the world on her shoulders.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Do you remember the first conversation we ever had?” “How could I forget? I thought you were weird.” The night they’d met he had been uncharacteristically shy. They’d been guests at the same party. He’d seemed at ease and self-confident with everyone but her. His approach had been so self-conscious and awkward that she felt sorry for him. He had begun with one of those analyze-yourself party games. She smiled, remembering. “You asked me what machine I would choose to be if I could be any machine in the world. Weird.” “The last woman who answered that question said she’d be a Rolls Royce and go to all the best places. But you said you’d be some piece of medical equipment that saves lives.” “Was that a good answer?” “At the time,” Max said, “it sounded phony. But now I know what you are, and I realize you were serious.” “And what am I?” “The kind of person who always asks for whom the bell tolls—and always cries buckets at even slightly sad movies.” She sipped her wine. “I played the game right back at you that night, asked you what machine you’d be. Remember?” Max nodded. He pushed his unfinished sandwich aside, picked up his wine. “I said I’d be a computer dating service so I could hook you up with me.” She laughed girlishly. “I liked it then, and I like it now. It was a surprise finding a romantic under that big tough exterior.” Max leaned across the table, spoke softly. “Know what machine I’d be tonight?” He pointed to the colorfully lighted juke box at the far end of the bar. “I’d be that music machine. And no matter what buttons people pushed, I’d play love songs for you.” “Oh, Max, that’s positively saccharine.” “But you like it.” “I love it. After all, I’m the lady who cries buckets at even slightly sad movies.”
5
THE NIGHTMARE WOKE her, but the dream continued. For a minute after she rose up in fear from her pillows, colorful snatches of the nightmare swam in the air before her. Ethereal snapshots. Blood. Shattered bodies. Broken skulls. They were more vivid than any visions she’d ever known. The shadows of the hotel room settled over her once more. When she grew accustomed enough to the darkness to see the outlines of the furniture, she got up. The room was a carousel. She reached out for a brass pole that wasn’t there, for something to steady her. When she regained her balance, she went into the bathroom. She didn’t close the door because she worried she might wake Max. For the same reason, she didn’t use the main light. Instead, she turned on the much dimmer, orange-filtered heat lamp. In that eerie light her mirror image disturbed her: dark rings around the eyes, skin slack and damp. She was used to a reflection that was the envy of most women: silky black hair, blue eyes, fine features, a flawless complexion. Now the person looking back at her seemed a stranger, an alien. She felt personally threatened by what she had seen. The dead bodies in the nightmare were the first parts of a chain in which she might be the final link. She drew a glass of cold water, drank it, then another. The tumbler rattled against her teeth. She had to use both hands to hold it. Each time she shut her eyes, she saw the same remnant of the nightmare. A dark-haired girl with one blue eye gazing sightlessly at the ceiling. The other eye swollen in a macabre wink. Face torn, bruised, misshapen. Worst of all, Mary felt that if the blood were swabbed from that face, and if its smashed features were restored, she would know it at once. She put the glass down, leaned against the sink. Who? she thought. Who was that girl? The distorted face would not resolve itself. As if she craved more fear than the dream had given her, she remembered the psychopath who had died that same night: his twisted features; his marble-chip teeth; his hands pressed to the squad car windows; his whispery voice, cool as cellar air when he spoke her name. He had been an omen, a warning to her. But an omen of what? There might be nothing mysterious about his knowing her name. He could have heard she was in town, even though that information was limited to a select few. He might have recognized her from the photograph that accompanied her column, although the picture was not a good one and was six years old. That was Alan’s explanation. Although she had no good reason to disagree with Alan, she knew that his explanation was inadequate. Maybe the madman had known her because he’d had his first (and necessarily last) telepathic experience in the instant that death seized him. Or perhaps there was a meaning to the incident that couldn’t be defined in rational terms. When she recalled the madman’s demonic face, one thought circled through her mind: He’s a messenger from Hell, a messenger from Hell. . . . She didn’t know what that meant. But she didn’t dismiss the thought simply because it had a supernatural ring to it. Through her extensive travels, through her many conversations with clairvoyants like Peter Hurkos and Gerard Croiset, through her conversations and correspondence with other psychically gifted people, she had come to think anything was possible. She’d been in homes where poltergeists were active, where dishes and paintings and bric-a-brac and heavy furniture sailed through the air and exploded against walls when no one had touched them or been near them. She hadn’t decided whether she’d seen ghosts at work or, instead, the unconscious telekinetic powers of someone in the house; but she did know that something was there. She had seen Ted Serios create his famous psychic photographs, which Time and Popular Photography and many other national publications had tried unsuccessfully to debunk. He projected his thoughts onto unexposed film, and he did so under the intense scrutiny of skeptical scientists. She had seen an Indian mystic—a fakir but not a faker—do the impossible. He planted a seed in a pot of earth, covered it with a light muslin sheet, then went into a deep trance. Within five hours, while Mary watched, the seed germinated, the plant grew, and fruit appeared—several tiny mangoes. As a result of two decades of contact with the extraordinary in life, she scoffed at nothing. Until someone proved beyond doubt that all psychic and supernatural phenomena were pieces of a hoax (which no one ever would), she would put as much faith in the unnatural, supernatural, and suprarational as she did in what more dogmatic people believed to be the one, true, natural, and only world. . . . messenger from Hell. Although she was half convinced that life existed after death, she didn’t believe that it was accurately described by the Judeo-Christian myths. She didn’t accept the reality of Heaven and Hell. That was too simplistic. Yet, if she didn’t believe, why this unshakable certainty that the madman was a satanic omen? Why phrase the premonition in religious terms? She shuddered. She was cold to her bones. She returned to the bedroom but left on the bathroom light. She was uneasy in the dark. She put on her robe. Max snored peacefully. She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. He was instantly awake. “What’s the matter?” “I’m scared. I need to talk. I can’t stand to be alone.” He closed his hand around her wrist. “I’m here.” “I saw something awful . . . horrible.” She shuddered again. He sat up, switched on the lamp, looked around the room. “Visions,” she said. Still holding her wrist, he pulled her down to the bed. “They started when I was asleep,” she said, “and went on after I woke up.” “Started when you were sleeping? That’s never happened before, has it?” “Never.” “So maybe it was a dream.” “I know the difference.” He let go of her wrist, pushed his hair back from his forehead. “A vision of what?” “Dead people.” “An accident?” “Murder. Beaten and stabbed.” “Where?” “Quite a distance from here.” “Name of the town?” “It’s south of us.” “That’s all you’ve got?” “I think it’s in Orange County. Maybe Santa Ana. Or Newport Beach. Laguna Beach. Anaheim. Someplace like that.” “How many dead?” “A lot. Four or five women. All in one place. And …” “And what?” “They’re the first of many.” “You sense that?” “Yes.” “Sense it psychically?” “Yes.” “The first of how many?” “I don’t know.” “You saw the killer?” “No.” “Pick up anything about him?” “No.” “Not even the color of his hair?” “Nothing, Max.” “Have these killings taken place yet?” “I don’t think so. But I can’t be sure. I was so surprised by the visions that I didn’t make any attempt to hold on to them. I didn’t pursue them like I should have.” He got out of bed and slipped into his own robe. She stood up, moved against him. “You’re shivering,” he said. She wanted to be loved and sheltered. “It was horrible.” “They always are.” “This was worse than usual.” “Well, it’s over.” “No. Maybe it is over or shortly will be for those women. But not for us. We’re going to get tangled up in this one. Oh, God, so many bodies, so much blood. And I think I knew one of the dead girls.” “Who was she?” he asked, holding her still closer. “The face I saw was so badly disfigured. I couldn’t tell who she was, but she seemed familiar.” “It had to be a dream,” he said reassuringly. “The visions don’t come to you out of the blue. You’ve always had to concentrate, focus your attention in order to pick them up. Like when you start tracking a killer, you have to handle something that belonged to his victim before you can receive images of him.” He was telling her what she already knew, soothing her in the manner of a father explaining to his still frightened young daughter that the ghosts she had seen in the dark bedroom were only the draft-stirred curtains she could now see with all the lights on. Actually it didn’t matter to her what he said. Just hearing him speak and feeling him close, Mary grew calm. “Even when you’re searching for a lost ring or necklace or brooch,” Max said, “you have to see the box or drawer where it was kept. So what you saw tonight had to be a dream because you didn’t seek it.” “I feel better.” “Good.” “But not because I believe it was a dream. I know it was a vision. Those women were real. They’re either dead by now or they soon will be.” She thought of the brutally beaten faces and she said, “God help them.” “Mary—” “It was real,” she insisted, letting go of his hand and sitting on the mattress. “And it’s going to involve us.” “You mean the police will ask for your help?” “More than that. It’s going to affect us … intimately. It’s the start of something that’ll change our lives.” “How can you know that?” “The same way I know everything else about it. I sense it psychically.” “Whether or not it’s going to change our life,” he said, “is there any way we can help those women?” “We know so little. If we called the police, we couldn’t tell them anything worthwhile.” “And since you don’t know what town it will happen in, which police department would we call? Can you pick up the vision again?” “No use trying. It’s gone.” “Maybe it’ll return spontaneously, just the way it came the first time.” “Maybe.” The possibility chilled her. “I hope not. As it is, I’ve got too many nasty visions in my life. I don’t want them to start flashing on me when I’m not prepared, when I’m not asking for them. If that became a regular thing, I’d end up in a madhouse.” “If there isn’t anything we can do about what you saw,” Max said, “then we have to forget about it for tonight. You need a drink.” “I had some water.” “Would I ever suggest water? I meant something with more bite.” She smiled. “At this hour of the morning?” “It’s not morning. We went to bed early, remember. And we’ve been asleep only half an hour or so.” She looked at the travel clock. Eleven-ten. “I thought I’d been conked out for hours.” “Minutes,” he said. “Vodka and tonic?” “Scotch, if you’re having it.” He went to the small breakfast table by the window. The liquor bottles, glasses, and ice were there. In spite of his size, he was not awkward. He moved like a wild animal—fluidly, silently. Even the preparation of drinks was a study in grace when Max did it. If everyone were like him, Mary thought, the word “clumsy” wouldn’t exist. He sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “Will you be able to get back to sleep?” “I doubt it.” “Drink up.” She sipped the Scotch. It burned her throat. “What are you worrying about?” he asked. “Nothing.” “You’re worrying about the vision.” “Not at all.” “Look, worry accomplishes nothing,” he said. “And whatever you do, don’t think about a blue giraffe standing in the center of a giant custard pie.” She stared at him, incredulous. Grinning, he said, “What are you worrying about now?” “What else? A blue giraffe in a custard pie.” “See? I stopped you from worrying about the vision.” She laughed. He had such a stern, forbidding face that his humor always came as a surprise. “Speaking of blue,” he said, “you look perfect in that robe.” “I’ve worn it before.” “And every time you wear it you’re breathtaking. Perfect.” She kissed him. She explored his lips with her tongue, then teasingly drew back. “You look perfect in it, but you’d look even better out of it.” He put his drink beside her on the nightstand and untied the sash that was knotted at her waist, opened the long blue robe. A pleasant tremor passed through her. The cool air caressed her bare skin. She felt soft, vulnerable; she needed him. With his heavy hands, now light as wings, he traced lazy circles on her breasts, cupped them, pressed them together, gently massaged them. He got on his knees before her, nuzzled her cleavage and kissed her nipples. She took his head in her hands, pushed her fingers through his lush, shining hair. Alan was wrong about him. “My lovely Max,” she said. He moved his lips down her taut belly as she lay back, kissed her thighs, delicately licked the warm center of her. He slipped his hands under her buttocks, lifted slightly. After many minutes during which her murmurs rose and fell, rose and fell again like the enigmatic susurration of the sea, he raised his head and said, “I love you.” “Then love me.” He took off his robe and joined her on the bed.
* * *
Agreeably exhausted, they separated at midnight, but the spell was not broken. Still enchanted, eyes closed, she drifted. In some ways she was more intensely aware of her body than she had been during intercourse. Within minutes, however, memories of the vision returned to her: bloodied and crumpled faces. With her eyes closed, the backs of her lids were like twin projection screens on which she saw nothing but carnage. She opened her eyes and the dark room appeared to crawl with strange shapes. Although she didn’t want to disturb Max, she couldn’t keep herself from tossing and turning. Eventually he switched on the light. “You need a sedative.” He swung his legs out of bed. “I’ll get it,” she said. “Stay put.” A minute later he came back from the bathroom with a glass of water and one of the capsules that she too frequently required. “Maybe I shouldn’t take it on top of liquor,” she said. “You drank only half of your Scotch.” “I had vodka before that.” “The vodka’s through your system by now.” She took the sedative. It stuck in her throat. She choked it down with another swallow of water. In bed again, he held her hand. He was still holding it when the chemically induced sleep finally began to creep over her. As consciousness spun away from her like a child’s ball rolling down a hillside, she thought about how wrong Alan was about Max, how terribly and completely wrong.
Tuesday, December 22
6
“ANAHEIM POLICE.” “Are you a police officer, Miss?” “I’m the receptionist.” “Could I speak to an officer?” “What’s the nature of your complaint?” “Oh, no complaint. I think you people do a wonderful job.” “I meant, are you reporting a crime?” “I’m not sure. A very strange thing happened here.” “What is your name?” “Alice. Alice Barnable.” “Your address?” “Peregrine Apartments on Euclid Avenue. I’m in apartment B.” “I’ll connect you with someone.” “Sergeant Erdman speaking.” “Are you really a sergeant?” “Who’s this?” “Mrs. Alice Barnable.” “What can I do for you?” “Are you really a sergeant? You sound too young.” “I’ve been a policeman for twenty years. If you—” “I’m seventy-eight, but I’m not senile.” “I didn’t say you were.” “So many people treat us senior citizens as if we’re children.” “I don’t, Mrs. Barnable. My mother’s seventy-five, and she’s sharper than I am.” “So you better believe what I’ve got to tell you.” “And what’s that?” “Four nurses share an apartment above mine, and I know they’re in some sort of bad trouble. I called up there, but no one answers the phone.” “How do you know they’re in trouble?” “There’s a puddle of blood in my spare bathroom.” “Whose blood? I’m afraid I don’t follow you.” “You see, the water pipes that serve the apartment above mine are exposed, and they run up one corner of my spare bath. Now, I don’t want you to think I live in a cheap place. The pipes are painted white, hardly noticeable. The building’s old but elegant in its way. It’s not cheap. It’s quaint. My Charlie left me enough to let me live very comfortably.” “I’m sure he did, Mrs. Barnable. What about the blood?” “Those pipes run through a hole in the ceiling. The hole’s a tiny bit bigger than it needs to be. Just a quarter of an inch of space all the way around the pipe. During the night, blood dripped out of that hole. The pipes are streaked with it, and there’s a large sticky spot on my floor.” “You’re sure it’s blood? It might be rusty water or—” “Now you’re treating me as if I’m a child, Sergeant Erdman.” “Sorry.” “I know blood when I see it. And what I wondered—I wondered if maybe your people should take a look upstairs.”
* * *
Patrolmen Stambaugh and Pollini found the door to the apartment ajar. It was spotted with fingerprints that were cast in dried blood. “Think he’s still in there?” Stambaugh asked. “Never can tell. Back me up.” Pollini went inside with his gun drawn and Stambaugh followed. The living room was inexpensively but pleasantly furnished with wicker and rattan. On the white walls were colorful framed prints of palm trees and native villages and bare-breasted, nut-brown girls in striped sarongs. The first body was in the kitchen. A young woman in black and green pajamas. On the floor. On her back. Long yellow hair streaked with clotted red bands spread around her like a fan. She had been stabbed—and kicked in the face more than once. “Christ,” Stambaugh said. “Something, huh?” “Don’t you feel sick?” “Seen it before.” Pollini pointed to several items on the counter by the sink—a paper plate, two slices of bread, a jar of mustard, a tomato, a package of cheese. “Important?” Stambaugh asked. “She woke up during the night. Maybe she was an insomniac. She was making a snack when he came in. Doesn’t look like she put up a fight. He either surprised her, or she knew and trusted him.” “Should we be talking like this?” “Why not?” Stambaugh gestured toward the rooms that they hadn’t yet investigated. “The killer? He’s long gone.” Stambaugh greatly admired his partner. He was eight years younger than Pollini. He’d been a cop only six months, while the older man had been on the force for seven years. In his view, Pollini had everything that a great lawman required—intelligence, courage, and street wisdom. Most important of all, Pollini was able to do his job without letting it touch him. He didn’t flinch at the sight of shattered bodies, not even when he encountered the most pathetic victim of all— the battered child. Pollini was nothing less than a rock. Although he tried to imitate his mentor, Stambaugh usually got sick to his stomach in the midst of too much spilled blood. “Come on,” Pollini said. He led Stambaugh back through the hall to the spare bath, where the harsh light glared on blood-splashed porcelain and on the hideously stained white vanity top. “There was a struggle this time,” Stambaugh said. “But not much of one. It was over in seconds.” Another young woman, wearing only panties, was curled fetally in a corner of the bathroom. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the breasts and stomach, back and buttocks. There were between fifty and a hundred wounds. Her blood had pooled around the pipes that came up from Alice Barnable’s first-floor apartment. “Funny,” Pollini said. “Funny?” Stambaugh had never seen such slaughter. He could not comprehend the violent mind behind it. “Funny that he didn’t rape either of them.” “Is that what he should have done?” “His kind does, ninety percent of the time.” Across the hall the spare bedroom contained two unmade beds but no bodies. In the master suite they found a nude redhead on the bed nearest the door. Her throat had been cut. “No struggle at all,” Pollini said. “He caught her while she was sleeping. Doesn’t look like he raped this one either.” Stambaugh nodded. He was unable to speak. Both women in the master bedroom appeared to be Catholics who were, if not devout, at least attentive to their faith. A number of religious objects were scattered on the floor. A damaged crucifix lay beside the redhead’s nightstand. The wooden cross had been broken into four pieces. The aluminum image of Christ was bent at the waist, so that its crown of thorns touched its bare feet; and its head was twisted around so that Christ was looking over his shoulder. “This wasn’t just broken in a scuffle,” Pollini said, stooping over the remains of the icon. “The killer pulled this off the wall and spent a good bit of time demolishing it.” Two small religious statues had been on the redhead’s dresser. These were also broken. Some of the pieces had been ground into chalky dust; there were a few white heel prints on the carpet. “He sure has something against Catholics,” Pollini said. “Or against religion in general.” Stambaugh reluctantly followed him to the last bed. The fourth dead woman had been stabbed repeatedly and strangled with a rosary. In life she had been beautiful. Even now, naked and cold, her hair matted with blood, nose broken, one eye swollen shut, face dark with bruises, there were still traces of beauty. Alive, her blue eyes would have been as clear as mountain lakes. Washed and combed, her hair would have been thick, lustrous. She had long shapely legs, a narrow waist, a flat belly and lovely breasts. I’ve seen women like her, Stambaugh thought sadly. She would have walked with her shoulders back, with evident pride in herself, with joy apparent in every step. “She was a nurse,” Pollini said. Stambaugh looked at the uniform and cap that were on a chair near the bed. His legs felt weak. “What’s the matter?” Pollini asked. Stambaugh hesitated, cleared his throat. “Well, my sister’s a nurse.” “This isn’t your sister, is it?” “No. But she’s about my sister’s age.” “You know her? She work with your sister?” “Never saw her before,” Stambaugh said. “Then what’s wrong?” “This girl might have been my sister.” “You cracking up on me?” “I’m okay. I’m fine.” “You’ll get used to this stuff.” Stambaugh said nothing. “This one was raped,” Pollini said. Stambaugh swallowed hard. He was dizzy. “See that?” Pollini asked. “What?” “On the pubic hair. It’s semen.” “Oh.” “I wonder if he had her before or after.” “Before or after what?” “Before or after he killed her.” Stambaugh hurried into the master bath, dropped to his knees before the toilet, and threw up. When his stomach spasms passed, he knew that in the past ten minutes he had learned something important about himself. In spite of what he’d thought this morning, he never wanted to be like Ted Pollini.
7
MAX CAME BACK to the room at eleven-thirty, just as she finished dressing. He kissed her lightly on the mouth. He smelled of soap, shaving lotion, and the cherry-scented pipe tobacco that he favored. “Out for a walk?” Mary asked. “When did you wake up?” “Only an hour ago.” “I was up at eight-thirty.” “I slept ten hours. When I finally managed to throw myself out of bed, I felt dopey. I shouldn’t have taken the sedative on top of liquor.” “You needed it.” “I didn’t need to feel the way I felt this morning.” “You look wonderful now.” “Where have you been?” “At the coffee shop downstairs. Had some toast and orange juice. Read the papers.” “Anything that’s connected with what I saw last night?” “The local paper has a nice story. You and Barnes catching The Slasher. They say Goldman is already off the critical list.” “That’s not what I meant. The dead women in the vision. What about them?” “Nothing in the papers.” “There will be this afternoon.” A worried look crossed his face. He put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got to relax once in a while. You’ve got to let your head clear out now and then. Don’t run after this one, Mary. Forget about it. Please. For me?” “I can’t forget,” she said unhappily. She wished desperately that she could.
* * *
Before leaving town, they stopped at an appliance store, chose and paid for an electric range and microwave oven for Dan Goldman. Later they got off the freeway at Ventura to have lunch at a restaurant they knew. They ordered salads, manicotti, and a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon by Robert Mondavi. From their table they had a view of the ocean. The slate-gray water looked like a mirror reflecting the turbulent sky. The surf was high and fast. A few gulls swooped along the shoreline. “It’ll be good to get home,” Max said. “We should be in Bel Air before two o’clock.” “The way you drive, we’ll be there long before.” “We can go over to Beverly Hills for a few hours of Christmas shopping.” “Since we’re going to get home in time, I’d rather see my analyst. I’ve got a four-thirty appointment. I’ve been missing too many of them lately. I’ll do my shopping tomorrow. Besides, I haven’t given any thought to Christmas gifts. I don’t have any idea what to get you.” “I can see your problem,” he said. “I am the man who has everything.” “Oh, are you?” “Naturally. I have you.” “That’s corny.” “But I mean it.” “You make me blush.” “That’s never been difficult.” She put her right hand to her cheek. “I can feel it. I wish I could control it.” “I’m glad you can’t,” he said. “It’s charming. It’s a sign of your innocence.” “Me? Innocent?” “As a baby,” he said. “Remember me in bed last night?” “How could I forget?” “Was that innocence?” “That was heaven.” “So there.” “But you’re still blushing.” “Oh, drink your wine and shut up.” “Still blushing,” he said. “I’m flushed from the wine.” “Still blushing.” “Damn you,” she said affectionately. “Still blushing.” She laughed. Beyond the window thick curdled clouds continued to roll in from the ocean. Over the spumoni and coffee Mary asked, “What do you think of adoption?” He shook his head in mock despair. “We’re too old to find parents now. Who would want kids as big as us?” “Be serious,” she said. He stared at her for a long moment, then put down his spoon without eating the spumoni on it. “You really mean you and me . . . adopting a child?” She was encouraged by the wonder in his voice. “We’ve talked about having a family,” she said. “And since I’ll never be able to have a baby of my own . . .” “But maybe you will.” “No, no,” she said. “The doctor made that very clear to me.” “Doctors have been known to be mistaken.” “Not this time,” she said, almost too softly to be heard. “There’s too much wrong . . . inside of me. I’ll never have a baby, Max. Never.” “Adoption …” Max thought about it while he sipped his coffee. Gradually he began to grin. “Yeah. It would be nice. A cute little baby girl.” “I was thinking about a little boy.” “Well, sure as hell this is one thing we can’t compromise on.” “We can,” she said quickly. “We’ll adopt a girl and a boy.” “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” “Oh, Max, you really do like the idea. I can tell. We could talk to an adoption agency this week. And if—” “Hold on,” he said, his smile fading. “We’ve been married only four months. We should take our time, get to know each other and ourselves better than we do. Then we’ll be ready for children.” She didn’t hide her disappointment. “How long will that take?” “It’ll take as long as it takes. Six months … a year.” “Look, I know you. You know me. We love each other and we like each other. We’ve got intelligence, common sense, and loads of money. What else do we need to be good parents?” “We need to be at peace with ourselves, in ourselves,” he said. “You don’t fight anymore. You’re at peace with yourself.” “I’m only halfway there,” he said. “And you’ve got things to face, too.” Defiantly, although she knew the answer, she said, “Like what?” “You’ve got to face up to what happened twenty-four years ago, remember what you’ve refused to remember . . . every detail of the beating you took … everything about what that man did to you when you were six years old. Until you come to terms with that, you’ll continue to have the nightmares. You’ll never know real peace of mind until those memories are confronted and exorcised.” She tossed her head, throwing her long hair over her shoulders. “I don’t have to face what happened then to be a good parent now.” “I think you do,” he said. “But Max, there are so many kids without homes, without hope or a future. Right now we could give two of them—” He squeezed her hand. “You’re playing Atlas again. Mary, I understand you. There’s more love in you than in anyone I’ve ever known. You want to share it; that’s the meaning of you. And I promise you’ll have the opportunity. But adoption is a big step. We’ll take it only when we’re ready.” She couldn’t get angry. She smiled and said, “I’ll wear you down. I promise.” He sighed. “You probably will.”
* * *
Mary didn’t like to drive fast. When she was nine years old her father died in an accident. She’d been in the car when it happened. To her, the automobile was a treacherous machine. As a passenger, she endured high speeds only when Max was at the wheel. With him in command, she was able to relax and even to feel exhilarated as the scenery whipped past her window. Max was her guardian. He watched over her and protected her. It was inconceivable that anything bad could happen to her when she was with him. He took great pleasure in handling the Mercedes at speeds that tested his skills and his ability to avoid police detection. He enjoyed the car as much as he did his gun collection; and when he drove, he was as single-minded as when he made love. On a long, uncrowded straight stretch of freeway, with all “his attention riveted on the car beneath him and on the blurred pavement that succumbed to him, he rarely had patience for conversation. He looked like a bird of prey, flint-eyed, silent, hunched over the steering wheel. When he drove like that, Mary could see the recklessness, the taste for excitement and violence that had gotten him into dozens of fights. Oddly, she wasn’t frightened by that aspect of him; instead, she found him more attractive than ever. They rocketed toward Los Angeles at ninety miles an hour.
* * *
The eighteen-room English Tudor house in Bel Air looked cool and elegant in the shade of thirty-foot trees. The two-acre estate had cost her virtually every dollar that she had earned from her first two best-sellers, but she had never regretted the cost. When they parked in the circular drive, Emmet Churchill came out to greet them. He had gray hair and a neat mustache. He was sixty years old, but his face was unlined. A life in service had been remarkably agreeable to both Emmet and his wife. “Good trip, Mr. Bergen?” “Fine,” Max said. “Had it up to one-twenty for a few miles, and Mary didn’t scream once.” “I would have,” Emmet said. Mary had expected to find another Mercedes in the driveway. “Isn’t Alan home?” “He stopped by for fresh clothes,” Emmet said. “But he was anxious to be off on vacation.” She was disappointed. She’d hoped for another chance to convince him that he and Max could get along if they tried. “How’s Anna?” she asked Emmet. “Couldn’t be better. When you called this morning to say that you’d be home, she started planning dinner right away. She’s in the kitchen now.” “As soon as Max freshens up, he’ll be going to Beverly Hills to do some shopping,” Mary told Emmet. “You’ll want to get our luggage out of the Mercedes before he leaves.” “Right away.” She started toward the front door. “And would you get my car out of the garage? I’ve got a four-thirty appointment with Dr. Cauvel. I want—” The man coming at her, relentless, power in the blow, a knife deep in her stomach, blade twisting, flesh tearing, blood erupting, pain erupting, blackness flowing, flowing . . .
* * *
She regained consciousness as Max put her down on the bed in the second-floor master suite. She clung to him. She couldn’t stop shaking. “Are you all right?” “Hold me,” she said. He did. “Easy. Easy now.” She could feel the strong, unhurried beat of his heart. After a while she said, “I’m thirsty.” “Is that all? Aren’t you hurt? Should I call a doctor?” “Just get me some water.” “You passed out.” “I’m fine now.” When he came back from the bathroom with the water, he helped her sit up. He held the glass, tilted it as she drank, nursed her as if she were a sick child. When she was finished, he said, “What happened?” Leaning against the headboard, she said, “Another vision that I didn’t ask for. Only … it’s different from anything that’s come before.” She must have gone pale, for he said, “Calm down. It’s over.” He looked good. Marvelous. So big and reliable. She did calm down somewhat, merely because he told her she should. “I didn’t just see the damned thing, Max. I felt it. A knife. I felt a knife going into me, ripping me apart …” She put one hand on her belly. There was no wound. No bruise. The flesh wasn’t even tender. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You saw yourself being stabbed to death?” “No.” “What did you see?” She got up, waved him away as he moved to support her. She went to the window and looked out at the forty-foot pool behind the main house, at the lush grounds and at the Churchill’s little house at the far end of the property. Ordinarily she would have been calmed further by this evidence of prosperity; but now it had no effect on her. “I saw another woman. Not me. But I felt her pain as if it were mine.” “That’s never happened before.” “It did this time.” “Have you ever heard of another clairvoyant having the same experience? Hurkos? Croiset? Dykshoorn?” “No.” She turned from the window. “What’s it mean? What’s going to happen to me?” “Nothing will happen to you.” Convinced that she wasn’t ill, he began the gentle interrogation that could guide her through a vision in progress or through the memory of a vision that had passed. “Has this thing you just saw happened yet?” “No.” “This woman who will be stabbed . . . was she one of those you saw in the nightmare last evening?” “No. A new one.” “Did you see her face clearly?” “I did. But only briefly.” Mary sat in a wing-back chair by the window. Her hands, against the brown crushed-velvet upholstery, were pale, almost translucent. She felt lighter than air, as if her existence were tenuous, as if she were fading away. “What did this woman look like?” Max asked. “Pretty.” He paced before her. “Color of hair?” “Brunette.” “Eyes?” “Green or blue.” “Young?” “Yes. About my age.” “Did you sense her name?” “No. But I think I’ve seen her before.” “You thought the same of one of them last night.” She nodded. “What gives you the idea you know her?” “I can’t say. It’s just an impression.” “Was the scene of this crime the same as in last night’s vision?” “No. This woman will be murdered … in a beauty parlor.” “At a hairdresser’s?” “Yes. The beautician is a man.” “What will happen to him?” “He’ll be killed, too.” “Any other victims?” “A third. Another woman.” She had sensed a great deal in the few seconds that the psychic images had coruscated through her mind. However, with each datum came the brutal recollection of that knife she had shared mystically with the dying woman. “What’s the name of the beauty shop?” Max asked. “I don’t know.” “Where’s it located?” “Not far from here.” “In Orange County again?” “Yes.” “Which town?” “I don’t know.” He sighed, sat down in the armchair opposite hers. “Is the killer the same as the one you saw last night?” “No doubt about it.” “So he’s a repeater, a psychopath, a mass murderer. He’s going to kill four or five people in one place and three in another.” “That may only be the start,” she said softly. “What does he look like?” “I still don’t know.” “Is he a big man or small?” “I don’t know.” “What’s his name?” “I wish I knew.” “Is he young or old?” “I don’t even know that.” The room was stuffy. The air was stale, almost rank. She got up and opened the window. “If you can’t get an image of him,” Max said, “how can you tell it’s the same killer in both visions?” “I just can, that’s all.” She sat down, face to the window. She felt hollow, light. She could imagine being carried off by the breeze, slight as it was. The unbidden visions had sucked a lot of energy from her. She wouldn’t be able to endure many more of them. Certainly not a life full of them. Pretty soon, she thought, I won’t need a tornado like Dorothy did. Just a puff of air will carry me off to Oz. “What can we do to keep him from killing?” Max asked. “Nothing.” “Then let’s put him out of our minds for now.” She scowled. “Know when I feel worst? You know when I feel so awful I hardly want to live?” He waited. Her hands were in her lap, her fingers at war with one another. “It’s when I know something horrible will happen—but I don’t know enough to stop it from happening. If I must have this power, why wasn’t I given it without strings attached? Why can’t I turn it on and off like a television set? Why does it sometimes get all cloudy for me when I need it the most? Am I supposed to be tormented? Is it a nasty joke? A lot of people are going to die because I can’t see clearly. Dammit, dammit, dammit!” She jumped up, strode to the television. She turned the set on, off, on, off, on, off, with nearly enough force to break the switch. “You can’t feel responsible for what you see in your visions,” he said. “But I do.” “You’ve got to change.” “I won’t. I can’t.” He stood up, went to her, took her hand from the television controls. “Why don’t you freshen up? We’ll do some shopping.” “Not me,” she said. “I have an appointment with Dr. Cauvel.” “That’s two and a half hours from now.” “I’m not up to shopping,” she said. “You go. I’ll make the rounds tomorrow.” “I can’t leave you here alone.” “I won’t be alone. Anna and Emmet are here.” “You shouldn’t drive.” “Why not?” “What if you have another attack while you’re behind the wheel?” “Oh. Then Emmet can drive me.” “What’ll you do until you see the analyst?” “Write a column,” she said. “We sent a packet to the syndicate last week. We’re already twenty columns ahead of schedule.” Although she didn’t feel well, she managed a light tone. “We’re twenty ahead because you wrote fifteen of them. It’s time I did my share. Being twenty-one ahead won’t hurt.” “There’s some material on my desk about that woman in North Carolina who can predict the sex of unborn babies just by touching the mother. They’re studying her at Duke University.” “Then that’s what I’ll write about.” “Well, if you’re positive …” “I am. Now scoot over to Gucci, Giorgio’s, The French Corner, fuel Park, Courrèges, Van Cleef and Arpels—and buy me beautiful things for Christmas.” Trying to keep from smiling, he said, “But I already have something picked out at Wool-worth’s.” “Oh,” she said, playing along with him, “then you won’t mind that I’m only getting you a gift certificate for some McDonald’s hamburgers.” He pretended to be disappointed. “Well, I might stop at Gucci and Edwards Lowell for a few things that’ll go with the Woolworth’s piece.” She grinned. “You do that. Then maybe I’ll let you sleep in here tonight instead of on the couch.” He laughed and kissed her. “Mmmm,” she said. “Again.” She knew that she was loved, and that knowledge compensated somewhat for the horror of the past few days.
8
THE FOCAL POINT of Dr. Cauvel’s office was a collection of hundreds of glass dogs that were displayed on glass and chrome shelves to one side of his desk. No member of the menagerie was larger than Mary’s hand, and most were a great deal smaller than that. There were blue dogs, brown dogs, red dogs, clear dogs, milky white dogs, black dogs, orange and yellow and purple and green dogs, transparent and opaque, striped and polka-dotted, hand-blown and solid glass dogs. Some of them were lying down, some sitting, standing, pointing, running. There were basset hounds, greyhounds, airedales, German shepherds, Pekingese, terriers, Saint Bernards, and a dozen other breeds. A bitch with a litter of fragile glass puppies stood near a comic scene of dogs playing tiny glass instruments, flutes and drums and bugles for beagles. Several curious figures shone darkly in the silent zoo: snarling hellhounds, demons with dog faces and forked tongues. Glass was also the focal point of the doctor himself. He wore thick spectacles that made his eyes appear abnormally large. He was short, athletic looking, and compulsively neat about himself. The spectacles were never smudged; he polished them continually. Mary and the doctor sat across from each other at a folding table in the middle of the room. The psychiatrist shuffled a deck of playing cards. He dealt ten of them face-down in a single row. She picked up a six-inch loop of wire that he had provided and held it over the cards. She moved it back and forth. Twice it dipped toward the table as if invisible fingers were tugging it out of her hands. After less than a minute of dowsing, she put down the loop and indicated two of the ten cards. “These are the highest values in the batch.” “What are they?” Cauvel asked. “One might be an ace.” “Of which suit?” “I don’t know.” He turned them over. An ace of clubs. A queen of hearts. She relaxed. He revealed the other cards. The highest value was a jack. “Incredible,” he said. “This is one of the most difficult tests we’ve tried. But out of ten attempts, you’ve been ninety percent accurate. Ever think of going to Las Vegas?” “To break the bank at the twenty-one tables?” “Why not?” he asked. “The only way I’d have a chance is if they spread out the cards and let me use a wire loop on them before they dealt.” Like all his movements and expressions, his smile was economical. “Not likely.” For the past two years her Tuesday and Friday appointments had begun at four-thirty and ended at six o’clock. On these days she was Cauvel’s final patient. During the first three quarters of an hour she participated in some experiments in extra-sensory perception for a series of articles he intended to publish in a professional journal. He devoted the second forty-five minutes to treating her in his capacity as a psychiatrist. In return for her cooperation he waived his fee. She could afford to pay for treatment. She permitted the current arrangement because the experiments interested her. “Brandy?” he asked. “Please.” He poured Remy Martin for both of them. They moved from the card table to a pair of armchairs that faced each other across a small round cocktail table. Cauvel used no standard technique with his patients. His style was very much his own. She liked his quiet, friendly approach. “Where would you like to begin?” he asked. “I don’t know.” “Take your time.” “I don’t want to begin at all.” “You always say that, and you always begin.” “Not today. I’d just like to sit here.” He nodded, sipped his brandy. “Why am I always so difficult for you?” she asked. “I can’t answer that. You can.” “Why don’t I want to talk to you?” “Oh, you do want to talk. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” Frowning, she said, “Help me start.” “What were you thinking about on your way here?” “That’s no place to start.” “Try it.” “Well … I was thinking about what I am.” “And what’s that?” “A clairvoyant.” “What about it?” “Why me? Why not someone else?” “The top researchers in this field believe we all have the same paranormal talents.” “Maybe,” she said. “But most people don’t have it to the extent that I do.” “We just don’t recognize our potential,” he said. “Only a handful of people have found a way to use their ESP.” “So why did I find a way?” “Haven’t all of the best clairvoyants suffered head injuries at some time prior to the discovery of their psychic powers?” “Peter Hurkos did,” she said. “And a number of others. But not all of us.” “Did you?” “Suffer a head injury? No.” “Yes, you did.” She sipped her brandy. “What a wonderful taste.” “You were injured when you were six years old. You’ve mentioned it a few times, but you’ve never wanted to pursue it.” “And I don’t want to pursue it now.” “You should,” Cauvel said. “Your reluctance to discuss it is proof that—” “You’re talking too much today.” Her voice was hard, too loud. “I pay you to listen.” “You don’t pay me at all.” As always, he spoke gently. “I could walk out of here right now.” He took off his glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. “Without me,” she said sharply, disliking his studied calm, “you wouldn’t have the data to write those articles that make you a big man among the other shrinks.” “The articles aren’t that important. If you want so much to walk out, do it. Shall we terminate our arrangement?” She sagged back into her chair. “Sorry.” She seldom raised her voice. It wasn’t like her to shout at him. She was blushing. “No need to apologize,” he said. “But don’t you see that this experience twenty-four years ago might be the root of your problem? It could be the underlying cause of your insomnia, of your periodic deep depressions, of your anxiety attacks.” She felt weak. She closed her eyes. “You want me to pursue it.” “That would be a good idea.” “Help me start.” “You were six years old.” “Six . . .” “Your father had money then.” “Quite a lot of it.” “You lived on a small estate.” “Twenty acres,” she said. “Most of it landscaped. There was a full-time … a full-time …” “Gardener.” “Gardener,” she said. She wasn’t blushing anymore. Her cheeks were cold. Her hands were icy. “What was his name?” “I don’t remember.” “Of course you do.” “Berton Mitchell.” “Did you like him?” “At first I did.” “You said once that he teased you.” “In a fun way. And he had a special name for me.” “What did he call you?” “Contrary. As if that were my real name.” “Were you contrary?” “Not the least bit. He was teasing. He got it from the nursery rhyme. ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ …” “When did you stop liking Berton Mitchell?” She wanted to be home with Max. She could almost feel his arms around her. “When did you stop liking him, Mary?” “That day in August.” “What happened?” “You know.” “Yes, I do know.” “Well then.” “But we never seem to get further into this thing unless we start from the top each time.” “I don’t want to get further into it.” But he was relentless. “What happened that day in August when you were six years old?” “Have you gotten any new glass dogs recently?” “What did Berton Mitchell do that day in August?” “He tried to rape me.”
* * *
Six P.M. Early winter night. The air was cool and fresh. He left the car at the coffee shop and walked north along the highway, his back to the traffic. He had a knife in one pocket, a revolver in the other. He kept his hands on both weapons. His shoes crunched in the gravel. The wind from the passing cars buffeted him, mussed his hair, pasted his overcoat to his legs. The beauty shop, Hair Today, occupied a small detached building on Main Street, just north of the Santa Ana city limits. With its imitation thatched roof, leaded windows, plaster and exposed-beam exterior, the place resembled a cottage in the English countryside—except for the floodlights shining on the front of it, and except for the pink and green paint job. The block was strictly commercial. Service stations, fast-food restaurants, real estate offices, dozens of small businesses, all of them nestled in neon and palm trees and jade-plant hedges, flourished like ugly flowers in the money-scented Orange County air. South of Hair Today was the sales lot of an imported automobile dealership. Row after row of sleek machines huddled in the night. Only the windshields and chrome gleamed malevolently under mercury-vapor lights. North, beyond the beauty shop, lay a three-screen motion picture theater, and beyond that a shopping center. A dirty white Cadillac and a shiny Triumph stood on the macadam parking area in front of Hair Today. He crossed the lot, walked between the cars, opened the cottage door, and went inside. The narrow front room was a lounge where women marked time until their appointments. The carpet was purple and plush, the chairs bright yellow, the drapes white. There were end tables, ashtrays, and stacks of magazines, but at this late hour there were no customers waiting. At the rear of the room was a purple and white counter. A cash register rested on it, and a woman with bleached blond hair sat on a stool behind it. In back of the woman a curtained archway led to the working part of the shop. The sound of a hand-held hair dryer penetrated the curtain like the buzz of angry bees. “We’re closed,” the bleached blonde said. He went to the counter. “Are you looking for someone?” she said. He took the revolver out of his pocket. It felt good in his hand. It felt like justice. She stared at the gun, then into his eyes. She licked her lips. “What do you want?” He didn’t speak. She said, “Now wait.” He pulled the trigger. The sound was masked somewhat by the noisy dryer. She fell off the stool and didn’t get up. The hair dryer shut off. From the back room someone said, “Tina?” He walked around the dead woman, parted the curtains and stepped through them. Of the four salon chairs, three were empty. The last customer of the day sat in the fourth chair. She was young and pretty, with an impossibly creamy complexion. Her hair was straight and wet. The hairdresser was a burly man, bald, with a bristling black mustache. He wore a purple uniform shirt with his first name, Kyle, embroidered in yellow on the breast pocket. The woman drew a deep breath, but she couldn’t find the courage to scream. “Who are you?” Kyle asked. He shot Kyle twice.
* * *
“My father wasn’t at home that day,” Mary said. “And your mother?” “She was up at the main house. Drunk as usual.” “And your brother?” “Alan was in his room, working on his model airplanes.” “The gardener, Berton Mitchell?” “His wife and son were away for the week. Mitchell … got me into his place, enticed me into it.” “Where was this?” “Down at the far end of the estate, a little cottage with a green shingle roof. He often told me that elves lived with his family.” An awesome force pressed against her from all sides. She felt as if she was enfolded by leather wings, muscular wings that were draining the heat from her, squeezing the life out of her. “Go on,” Cauvel said. Relentlessly the warmth dropped out of her like mercury falling in a thermometer. She was a cold, hollow reed of glass, brittle, breakable. “More brandy?” “When you’ve finished telling me,” Cauvel said. “I need help with this.” “I’m here to help you, Mary.” “If I tell, he’ll hurt me.” “Who? Mitchell? You don’t believe that. You know he’s dead. He was found guilty of child molestation, of assault with intent to kill. He hung himself in his cell. I’m the only one here, and I won’t let anyone hurt you.” “I was alone with him.” “You’re speaking so softly I can’t hear you.” “I was alone with him,” she said again. “He . . . touched . . . me . . . exposed himself.” “Were you frightened?” “Yes.” The pressure was intense, unbearable, and getting worse. Cauvel didn’t speak, and she said, “I was frightened because he wanted me … to do things.” “What things?” The air was foul. Although only she and the doctor were in the room, she felt that some creature had its lips to hers and was forcing its rank breath into her lungs. “I need brandy,” she said. “What you need is to tell me all of this, to remember every last detail, to get it out in the open once and for all. What things did he want you to do?” “Help me. You’ve got to guide me.” “He wanted to have intercourse, didn’t he?” “I’m not sure.” Her hands were numb. She could feel cords biting into them. But there were no cords. “Oral intercourse?” Cauvel asked. “But not only that.” Her ankles were sore. She could feel cords that were not there. She moved her feet. They were leaden. “What else did he want to do?” Cauvel asked. “I don’t recall.” “You can remember if you want to.” “No. Honestly, I can’t. I can’t.” “What else did he want you to do?” The embrace of the imaginary wings was so tight that she had difficulty breathing. She could hear them beating the air—wicka-wicka-wicka . . . She stood up, walked away from the chair. The wings held her. “What else did he want you to do?” Cauvel asked. “Something awful, unspeakable.” “A sex act of some sort?” Wicka-wicka-wicka . . . “Not just sex. More than that,” she said. “What was it?” “Dirty. Filthy.” “In what way?” “Eyes watching me.” “Mitchell’s eyes?” “Not his.” “Who then?” “I can’t remember.” “You can.” Wicka-wicka … “Wings,” she said. “Rings? You’re speaking too softly again.” “Wings,” she said. “Wings.” “What do you mean?” She was shaking, vibrating. She was afraid her legs would fail her. She returned to the armchair. “Wings. I can hear them flapping. I can feel them.” “You mean Mitchell kept a bird in the house?” “I don’t know.” “A parrot perhaps?” “I couldn’t say.” “Work at remembering it, Mary. Don’t let go of this thought. You’ve never mentioned wings before. It’s important.” “They were everywhere.” “The wings?” “All over me. Little wings.” “Think. What did he do to you?” She was silent a long while. The pressure began to ease a bit. The sound of wings faded. “Mary?” Finally she said, “That’s all. I can’t recall anything else.” “There is a way to unlock those memories,” he said. “Hypnosis,” she replied. “It works.” “I’m afraid to remember.” “You should be afraid not to remember.” “If I remember, I’ll die.” “That’s ridiculous, and you know it.” She pushed her hair back from her face. For his benefit, she forced a smile. “I don’t hear the wings now. I can’t feel them. We don’t need to talk about wings anymore.” “Of course we do.” “I won’t talk about wings, dammit!” She shook her head violently. She was surprised and frightened by her own vehemence. “Not today anyway.” “All right,” Cauvel said. “I’ll accept that. That’s not the same thing as saying you don’t need to talk.” He began to polish his glasses once more. “Let’s go back to what you remember. Berton Mitchell beat you.” “I suppose he did.” “You were found in his place?” “In his living room.” “And you were badly beaten?” “Yes.” “And later you told them he did it.” “But I can’t remember it happening. I recall the pain, terrible pain. But only for an instant.” “You could have lost consciousness with the first blow.” “That’s what everyone said. He must have kept hitting me after I passed out. I couldn’t have stood up to him for long. I was just a little girl.” “He used a knife, too?” “I was cut all over.” “How long were you in the hospital?” “More than two weeks.” “How many stitches for the wounds?” “More than a hundred altogether.”
* * *
The beauty shop smelled of shampoo, cream rinse, and cologne. He could also smell the woman’s sweat. The floor was littered with hair. It swirled around them as he moved onto her and into her. She refused to respond to him. She neither welcomed him nor struggled against him. She lay still. Her eyes were like the eyes of the dead. He didn’t hate her for that. In the long run he’d never cared for passion in his women. For the first few months a new lover’s aggression and delight in sex was tolerable. He could be tender for a short time. But always, after a few months, he needed to see fear in them. That was what brought him to climax. The more they feared him, the better he liked them. As he lay on her, he could feel this woman’s heart thumping wildly, accelerated by terror. That excited him, and he began to move faster within her.
* * *
“You took a number of Mitchell’s blows on your head,” Cauvel said. “My face was black and blue. My father called me his little patchwork doll.” “Did you suffer a concussion?” “I see where all of this is leading,” she said. “But no. No concussion. Absolutely not.” “When did your visions begin?” “Later the same year.” “A few minutes ago you asked me why you’d been singled out to be a clairvoyant. Well, there’s nothing mysterious about it really. As in the case of Peter Hurkos, your psychic talent came after a serious head injury.” “Not serious enough.” He stopped polishing his spectacles, put them on, and studied her with huge, magnified eyes. “Is it possible that a severe psychological shock could trigger psychic abilities in the same way that certain head injuries seem to do?” She shrugged. “If you didn’t acquire your power as a result of a physical trauma, then maybe you acquired it because of a psychological trauma. Do you suppose that’s possible?” “It could be,” she said. “Either way,” he said, thrusting a bony finger at her, as if repeatedly tapping a window between them, “either way, your clairvoyance probably goes back to Berton Mitchell, to what he did to you that you can’t remember.” “Maybe.” “And your insomnia goes back to Berton Mitchell. Your periodic depressions go back to him. What he did to you is the underlying cause of your anxiety attacks. I tell you, Mary, the sooner you face up to this, the better. If you ever let me use hypnosis to regress you and guide you through the memories, then you’ll never need my help again.” “I’ll always need your help.” He scowled. His deeply tanned face was scored by lines like saber slashes. An ambitious portrait painter would have wanted to catch him with that expression, for it made him look fierce, yet fair and reliable. It was that expression that drew her to him at a party three years ago; and his distant but paternal manner caused her to seek his advice when her dependency on sleeping pills became absolute. “If you’ll always need my help,” he said, “then I’m not helping you at all. As a psychiatrist, I must make you find all the strength you need inside yourself.” She went to the bar and picked up the decanter of brandy. “You said I could have another if I kept talking a while.” “I never break a promise.” He joined her at the bar. “The day’s nearly over. I’ll have another, too.” As she poured for them, she said, “You’re wrong about Mitchell.” “In what sense?” “I don’t think all of my problems date back to him. Some of them started the day my father died.” “I’ve heard you expound on that theory before.” “I was in the car with him when he was killed. I was in the back seat and he was driving. I saw him die. His blood sprayed all over me. I was only nine. And the years after he died weren’t easy. In three years my mother lost all the money my father left us. We went from rich to poor between my ninth and twelfth birthdays. I think an experience like that would leave some scars, don’t you?” “It has,” he said. He picked up his brandy glass. “But it’s not responsible for the worst scars.” “How do you know?” “You’re able to talk about it.” “So?” “But you aren’t able to talk about what happened with Berton Mitchell.”
* * *
When he finished with the woman, he stood, pulled up his pants, zipped his fly. He hadn’t even taken off his coat. He stepped back from her, looked at her. Given the opportunity, she made no effort to cover herself. Her skirt was bunched around her hips. Her blouse was unbuttoned; one plump breast was visible. Her hands were fisted. Her fingernails had gouged her palms, and ribbons of blood were on her hands. Terrorized, reduced to little more than a cowering animal, she represented his ideal woman. He took the knife out of his coat pocket. He expected her to scream and scramble away from him, but as he moved in for the kill, she lay as if she were dead already. She was past fear now, past feeling anything. Kneeling beside her, he placed the point of the blade at her throat. The flesh dimpled around it, but she didn’t blink. He raised the blade high, held it in her line of sight, over her breasts. No response. He was disappointed. When time and circumstance allowed, he preferred to kill slowly. To get any thrill from that game, he required a lively woman for prey. Angry with her for spoiling the moment, he rammed the knife down.
* * *
Mary Bergen gasped. The razor edge ripping her skin, opening muscle, opening the reservoir of blood, opening the dark place where pain was stored . . . She leaned into the corner formed by the wall and the side of the antique oak bar. She was only half aware that she knocked over an unopened bottle of Scotch. “What’s the matter?” Cauvel asked. “It hurts.” He touched her shoulder. “Are you sick? Can I help?” “Not sick. The vision. I feel it.” The knife again, thrust deep . . . She put both hands to her stomach, trying to contain the eruption of pain. “I won’t faint this time. I won’t!” “A vision of what?” Cauvel asked worriedly. “The beauty shop. The same one I saw a few hours ago. Only it’s happening now. The slaughter . . . God almighty . . . happening somewhere, happening right this minute.” She put her hands to her face, but the images would not be shut out. “Oh, God. Sweet God. Help me.” “What do you see?” “A dead man on the floor.” “The floor of the beauty shop?” “He’s bald . . . mustache . . . purple shirt.” “What is it you’re feeling?” The knife . . . She was sweating. Crying. “Mary? Mary?” “I feel . . . the woman . . . being stabbed.” “What woman? There’s a woman?” “Mustn’t black out.” She started to sag, and he held her by both shoulders. She saw the knife gouging flesh again, but she felt no pain this time. The woman in the vision was dead; therefore, there was no more pain to share. “Have to see his face, have to get his name,” she said. The killer standing up from the body, standing in a cape, no, a long coat, an overcoat. . . “Can’t lose the thread. Mustn’t lose the vision. Have to hold it, have to find where he is, who he is, what he is, stop him from doing these awful things.” The killer standing, standing with the butcher knife in one hand, standing in shadow, his face in shadow but turning now, turning very slowly and deliberately, turning so that she’ll be able to see his face, turning as if he is looking for her— “He knows I’m with him,” she said. “Who knows?” “He knows I’m watching.” She didn’t understand how that could be true. Yet the killer knew about her. She was certain of that, and she was scared. Suddenly half a dozen glass dogs leaped from the display shelves, flew through the air, and smashed with a great deal of force into the wall beside Mary. She screamed. Cauvel turned to see who had thrown them. “What the hell?” As if they had come to life and had acquired wings, a dozen glass dogs swept off the top shelf. They spun, glittering like fragments of an exploded prism, to the high center of the room. They bounced off the ceiling, struck one another with the musical rattle of Chinese wind chimes. Then they streaked toward Mary. She raised her arms, covered her face. The miniatures battered her harder than she had expected. They stung like bees. “Stop them!” she said, not certain to whom she was speaking. A hellhound with pointy horns struck the doctor in the forehead between the eyes and drew blood. Cauvel turned away from the shelves, moved against her, tried to shield her with his body. Another ten or fifteen dogs bulleted around the room. Two of them smashed through a stained glass panel in the bar. Others burst to pieces on the wall around Mary, icing her hair with chunks and slivers of colored glass. “It’s trying to kill me!” She was struggling unsuccessfully to avoid hysteria. Cauvel pressed her into the corner. More glass dogs whistled across the room, swooped over the psychiatrist’s desk, scattered a sheaf of onionskin papers. The figurines clattered against the Venetian blinds without shattering, rose up again, zigzagged crazily from one end of the chamber to the other, then pelted Cauvel’s shoulders and back, rained fragments over Mary’s bowed head. Yet another squadron of dogs took flight. They danced in the air, swarmed ominously, fluttered against Mary, flew away, came back with greater determination, struck her with incredible force, stung, bruised, hung over her like locusts. As suddenly as the macabre assault began, it ended. Almost a hundred glass miniatures remained on the display shelves, but they did not move. Mary and Cauvel huddled together, not trusting the calm, waiting for another attack. Silence prevailed. Eventually he let go of her and stepped back. She was unable to control the tremors that broke like waves within her. “Are you all right?” he asked, oblivious to the blood on his own face. “I wasn’t meant to see him,” she said. Cauvel was dazed. He stared, uncomprehendingly. “His face,” she said. “I wasn’t meant to see it.” “What are you talking about?” “When I tried to see the killer in the vision,” she said, “I was stopped. What stopped me?” Cauvel gazed at the shards of glass on all sides of them. He began to pick splinters of glass from the shoulders and sleeves of his suit jacket. “Did you do this? Did you make the dogs fly?” “Me?” “Who else?” “Oh, no. How could I?” “Someone did.” “Something.” He stared at her. “It was a … spirit,” she said. “I don’t believe in life after death.” “I wasn’t sure about that myself. Until now.” “So we’re haunted?” “What else?” “Many possibilities.” He looked concerned about her. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “Did I say you were?” “We’ve seen a poltergeist in action.” “I don’t believe in them either,” he said. “I do. I’ve seen them work before. I was never sure if they were spirits or not. But now I am.” “Mary—” “A poltergeist. It came to stop me from seeing the killer’s face.” Behind them the display shelves toppled and struck the floor with a thunderous crash.
9
MAX WAS NOT at home. Without him Mary felt that the house was a mausoleum. Her footsteps on the hardwood floor seemed louder than usual, the echoes full of sinister voices. “He called earlier,” Anna Churchill said, as she wiped her hands on her apron. “He asked me to delay dinner half an hour.” “Why?” “He said to tell you he wouldn’t be back until eight o’clock because Woolworth’s is open late for Christmas shopping.” She knew that Max had meant to make her laugh with that message, but she couldn’t even smile. The only thing that would lift her spirits was the sight of him. She didn’t want to be alone. As she went through the parlor on her way to the mahogany staircase, she felt dwarfed by the heavy European furniture. With the memory of the poltergeist fresh in her mind, she expected each piece of furniture to come to life, and she didn’t know how she would survive if the chairs and sofas and corner cabinets began to rush at her with murderous intent. The furniture did not move. Upstairs, in her bathroom, she took a bottle of valium from the medicine cabinet. She had been able to conceal her nervousness when she was with Emmet and Anna; but now her hands shook so badly that she needed almost a minute to get the safety cap off the container. She poured a glass of cold water, swallowed one of the capsules. One didn’t seem like much. She felt she could use two. Maybe three. “God, no,” she said, and she quickly replaced the cap before temptation got the better of good judgment. As she was leaving the bathroom, the empty water glass fell to the floor, shattered. Startled, she whirled around. She was sure she hadn’t set the tumbler on the edge of the sink. It had not fallen: something had knocked it off. “Max, please come home,” she said softly.
* * *
She waited for him in the second-floor den, his favorite room, a room crammed full of guns and books. Antique rifles expertly restored and mounted in wall display boxes. Matched sets of Hemingway, Stevenson, Poe, Shaw, Fitzgerald, Dickens. A pair of 1872 No. 3 Colt Derringers in a silk-lined, brass-bound carrying case. Novels by John D. MacDonald, Clavell, Bellow, Woolrich, Levin, Vidal; volumes of nonfiction by Gay Talese, Colin Wilson, Hellman, Toland, Shirer. Shotguns, rifles, revolvers, automatic pistols. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ross Mac-Donald, Mary McCarthy, James M. Cain, Jessamyn West. Guns and books were an odd combination, Mary thought. However, next to her, they were the two things that Max liked most. She tried to read a current bestseller that she had been meaning to begin for weeks, but her mind wandered. She put the book aside, went to Max’s desk, sat down. She took a pen and a writing tablet from the center drawer. For a while she stared at the blank page. Finally she wrote:
Page 1 Questions: Why am I having these visions when I don’t seek them out? Why, suddenly, for the first time, am I able to feel the pain that the victims in the visions feel? Why hasn ‘t any other clairvoyant ever felt his visions? How could the killer in the beauty shop possibly know I was watching? Why would a poltergeist attempt to keep me from seeing this killer’s face? What does all of this mean?
Ever since she was a child, through major and minor crises, she had felt that it helped to write down her problems. When they were before her, summarized in a few words, somehow more concrete in ink than in reality, they usually ceased to appear insoluble. After she finished composing the list, she read each question carefully, first silently and then aloud. On the next page of the tablet she wrote: Answers. She thought for a few minutes. Then: I don’t have any answers. “Dammit!” she said. She threw the pen across the room.
* * *
“Harley Barnes speaking.” “Chief Barnes, this is Mary Bergen.” “Why, hello. Are you still in town?” “No. I’m calling from Bel Air.” “What can I do for you?” “I’m writing a column about what happened last night, and I had some questions. The man we caught last night . . . what was his name?” “Can’t you get it with your clairvoyance?” “I’m afraid not. I can’t see everything I want.” “Name’s Richard Lingard.” “A resident of your town, or an outsider?” “Born and raised here. I knew his dad and mom. He owned a pharmacy.” “His age?” “Early thirties, thereabouts.” “Is he … was he married?” “Divorced years ago. No children, thank God.” “Are you sure …” “Sure there aren’t children? Oh, yes. Positive.” “No. I meant … is he … really dead?” “Dead? Of course he’s dead. Didn’t you see him?” “I just thought . . . Have you found anything unusual about him?” “Unusual? In what way?” “Did his neighbors think he was odd in any way?” “They liked him. Everyone liked him.” “Was anything strange found in his home?” “Nothing. He lived like anyone else. It’s frightening how ordinary he was. If Dick Lingard could turn out to be a psychopathic killer, then who can you trust?” “No one.” “Mrs. Bergen . . .” Barnes hesitated. “Did you take the knife?” “What knife?” “Lingard’s knife.” “You can’t find it?” “It vanished from the scene.” “Vanished? Does that happen often?” “Never before to me.” “I don’t have it.” “Perhaps your brother picked it up.” “Alan wouldn’t do that.” “Or your husband?” “We’ve worked with the police many times, Chief. We know enough not to make souvenirs out of the evidence.” “We’ve searched Mrs. Harrington’s place from top to bottom. The knife isn’t there.” “Maybe Lingard dropped it on the front lawn.” “We’ve gone over every inch of that, too.” “He might have dropped it in the gutter when he collapsed against your squad car.” “Or on the sidewalk. We didn’t search for the knife immediately, like we should have done, and there was a large crowd of spectators. Maybe one of them picked it up. We’ll ask around. I imagine we’ll come across the thing. At least we don’t need it for any trial. Death solved that problem. There’s no way a smart attorney can get Richard Lingard out on the streets again.”
* * *
At seven-thirty the all-news radio station in Los Angeles carried a story about four young nurses who had been found beaten and stabbed to death in their Anaheim apartment. Beverly Pulchaski. Susan Haven. Linda Proctor. Marie Sanzini. Mary didn’t recognize even one of them. Perplexed, she sat back from the edge of her chair. She recalled the battered face in last night’s vision: the black-haired, blue-eyed woman. She was certain she knew that face.
* * *
8:00 P.M. She met Max at the front door. When he came inside and closed the door, he put his arms around her. His clothes were cold, crisp with the night air, but the warmth of his body pressed through the fabric. “Six hours of shopping,” she said, “and no packages?” “I left them to be gift-wrapped. I’ll pick them up tomorrow.” Grinning, she said, “I didn’t know Woolworth’s did gift-wrapping.” He kissed her cheek. “Missed you.” She leaned back in his arms. “Hey, where’s your overcoat? You’ll catch the flu.” “It got splashed with mud,” he said. “I dropped it off at the dry cleaner’s.” “How’d it get muddy?” “I had a flat tire.” “A Mercedes wouldn’t.” “Ours did. The spot where I had to change it was muddy. I got splashed by a passing car.” “Did you get his license number? If you did, I’ll—” “Unfortunately I didn’t,” Max said. “At the time it happened I thought, ‘If I could get the bastard’s number, Mary would find out who he is and thrash him within an inch of his life.’ ” “Nobody hurts my Max and gets away with it.” “I also cut my finger changing the tire,” he said, holding up his right hand. The cuff of the shirt sleeve was soaked with blood, and one finger was bound in a bloody handkerchief. “There’s a sharp metal edge on the jack,” he said. She took hold of his wrist. “So much blood! Let’s see the cut.” “It’s nothing.” He pulled his hand away before she could remove the handkerchief. “It’s stopped bleeding.” “Maybe it needs stitches.” “It needs pressure, that’s all. It’s a deep cut, but the area’s too small to take stitches. And the sight will ruin your dinner.” “Let me look. I’m a big girl now. Besides, it has to be properly cleaned and bandaged.” “I’ll take care of that,” he said. “You go ahead to the table. I’ll join you in a few minutes.” “You can’t handle it yourself.” “Of course I can. I wasn’t always married, you know. I lived alone for years.” He kissed her forehead. “Let’s not upset Mrs. Churchill. If we don’t get to the table soon, she’ll be in tears.” With his good hand he pushed Mary toward the dining room. “If you bleed to death,” she said, “I’ll never forgive you.” Laughing, he hurried to the staircase and climbed the steps two at a time to the second floor.
* * *
Dinner was to Mary’s taste, hearty yet not heavy. They had onion soup, salad, Chateaubriand with bearnaise sauce, and strips of zucchini marinated in oil and garlic, then broiled briefly. Over coffee in the library, drifting on a pool of serenity formed by a second valium taken just before Max arrived for dinner, she told him about her day: Cauvel, the pain-filled vision, the poltergeist that had kept her from probing the vision for the name and face of the killer. They discussed the radio report of the dead nurses in Anaheim, which he had also heard, and last of all she told him about her conversation with Harley Barnes. “You’re emphasizing the missing knife,” Max said. “Isn’t Barnes’ explanation credible enough? A spectator could have taken it.” “Could have—but didn’t.” “Then who did?” She was beside him on the sofa. She kicked off her shoes, drew one leg under her, delaying until she could summon the right words. This was a delicate situation. If Max was unable to believe what she had to tell him, he would think her at least slightly mad. “These visions are totally different from any I’ve ever known,” she said at last. “Which means the killer, the source of the psychic emanations, is different from any killer I’ve ever tracked before. He isn’t an ordinary man. I’ve been trying to find a theory that will make sense of what’s happened to me since last night, and when I talked with Barnes I found the key. The missing knife is the key. Don’t you see? Richard Lingard has the knife.” “Lingard? He’s dead. Barnes shot him. Lingard couldn’t have taken his knife anywhere but to a drawer in the morgue.” “He could have taken it wherever he wanted. Barnes killed Lingard’s body. Lingard’s spirit took the knife.” Max was amazed. “I don’t believe in ghosts. And even if spirits do exist, they don’t have substance, at least not as we think of it. So how could Lingard’s spirit, a thing of no substance, carry off a very substantial knife?” “A spirit has no substance, but it does have power, “she said emphatically. “Two months ago, when you helped me cover that story in Connecticut, you saw a poltergeist in action.” “What of it?” “Well, a poltergeist has no apparent substance, yet it tosses around solid objects, doesn’t it?” Reluctantly he said, “Yes. But I don’t believe a poltergeist is the spirit of a dead person.” “What else could it be?” Before he responded she said, “Lingard’s spirit carried away the butcher knife. I know it.” He drank his coffee in three long swallows. “Suppose that’s true. Where’s his spirit now?” “In possession of someone living.” “What?” “As soon as Lingard’s body died, his spirit slipped out of it and into someone else.” Max got up, walked to the bookshelves. He looked at Mary with eyes that studied, weighed, and judged. “In every session with Cauvel, you’ve come closer to remembering what Berton Mitchell did to you.” “So you think that because I’m on the verge of knowing, I might be seeking escape from the truth, escape in madness.” “Can you face up to what he did?” “I’ve lived with it for years, even if I have suppressed it.” “Living with it and accepting it are two different things.” “If you think I’m a candidate for a padded room, you don’t know me,” she said, irritated in spite of the valium. “I don’t think that. But demonic possession?” “Not demonic. I’m talking about something less grand than that. This is the possession of a living person by the spirit of someone dead.” His square, almost ugly face was creased with worry. He spread his arms, his hands, palms up, a supplicant bear. “And who is this living person?” “The man who killed those nurses in Anaheim. He’s possessed by Lingard, and that’s why the psychic emanations he puts out are so different.” Max returned to the sofa. “I can’t accept it.” “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” “The poltergeist phenomena in Cauvel’s office . . . You think—” “That was Lingard,” she said. “There’s a problem with that theory,” he said. She raised her eyebrows. “How could Lingard’s spirit be in two places at once?” he asked. “How could Lingard be in possession of a man who he’s forcing to commit murder—and at the same time be throwing glass dogs around Cauvel’s office?” “I don’t know. Who’s to say what a ghost can do?”
* * *
At ten o’clock, Max came to the master bedroom. He had gone downstairs to the library for a novel and had returned carrying a thick volume—not the book he’d been after. “I talked to Dr. Cauvel just now,” he said. Mary was sitting up in bed. She used a flap of the dust jacket to mark her place in the book she was reading. “What did the good doctor have to say?” “He thinks you are the poltergeist.” “Me?” “He says you were under stress—” “Aren’t we all?” “Especially you.” “Was I?” “Because you remembered about Berton Mitchell.” “I’ve remembered about him before.” “This time you recalled more than ever. Cauvel says you were under great psychological stress in his office, and that you caused the glass dogs to fly about.” She smiled. “A man your size looks just too cute in pajamas.” “Mary—” “Especially yellow pajamas. You should wear just a robe.” “You’re avoiding this.” He came to the foot of the bed. “What about the glass dogs?” “Cauvel just wants me to pay for them,” she said airily. “He didn’t mention money.” “That’s what he was angling for.” “He’s not the type,” Max said. “I’ll pay half the value of the dogs.” Exasperated, Max said, “Mary, that’s not necessary.” “I know,” she said lightly. “I didn’t break them.” “I mean, Cauvel isn’t asking to be paid. You’re trying to avoid the main issue.” “Okay, okay. So how did I cause glass dogs to fly about?” “Unconsciously. Cauvel says—” “Psychiatrists always blame the unconscious.” “Who’s to say they’re wrong?” “They’re stupid.” “Mary—” “And you’re stupid for believing Cauvel.” She didn’t want to argue, but she couldn’t control herself. She was frightened by the direction the conversation was taking, although she didn’t know why she should be. She was terrified of some knowledge that lay within her, but she couldn’t understand what that might be. Standing like a preacher, holding his book as if it were a Bible, Max said, “Will you listen?” She shook her head to indicate she found him too irritating to bear. “If I’m responsible for his figurines getting busted up, am I also to blame for the bad weather in the East, for the war in Africa, for inflation, for poverty, for the recent crop failures?” “Sarcasm.” “You encourage it.” The tranquilizer was doing her no good whatsoever. She was tense. Trembling. Like a shallow-water, feathery sea anemone quivering in the subtle currents that preceded a storm, she was nervously aware of unseen forces that could destroy her. Suddenly she felt threatened by Max. That doesn’t make sense, she thought. Max isn’t any danger to me. He’s trying to help me find the truth, that’s all. Dizzy, confused, on the verge of anomie, she leaned back against her pillows. Max opened his book and read in a quiet but urgent voice: ” ‘Telekinesis is the ability to move objects or to cause changes within objects solely by the force of the mind. The phenomenon has most often and most reliably been reported in times of crises or in severe stress situations. For example, automobiles have been levitated from injured people, debris from the dying in fire-swept or collapsed buildings.’ ” “I know what telekinesis is,” she said. Max ignored her, kept reading: ” ‘Telekinesis is often mistaken for the work of poltergeists, which are playful and occasionally malevolent spirits. The existence of poltergeists as astral beings is debatable and certainly unproven. It should be noted that in most houses where poltergeists have appeared, there resides an adolescent with serious identity problems, or some other person under severe nervous strain. A good argument could be made that the phenomena often attributed to poltergeists are usually the product of unconscious telekinesis.’ ” “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I pitch those dogs around just when I was about to see the killer’s face in the vision?” “You really didn’t want to see his face, so your subconscious threw those figurines to distract you from the vision.” “That’s absurd! I wanted to see it. I want to stop this man before he kills again.” Max’s hard gray eyes were like knives, dissecting her. “Are you sure you want to stop him?” “What kind of question is that?” He sighed. “Do you know what I think? I think you’ve sensed, through your clairvoyance, that this psychopath will kill you if you pursue him. You’ve seen a possible future, and you’re trying like hell to avoid it.” Surprised, she said, “Nothing of the sort.” “The pain you felt—” “Was the pain of the victims. It wasn’t a foreshadowing of my own death.” “Maybe you haven’t foreseen the danger consciously,” Max said. “But subconsciously, perhaps, you’ve seen yourself as a victim if you pursue this case. That would explain why you’re trying to mislead yourself with poltergeists and with talk about possession.” “I’m not going to die,” she said sharply. “I’m not hiding from anything like that.” “Why are you afraid to even consider it?” “I’m not afraid.” “I think you are.” “I’m not a coward. And I’m not a liar.” “Mary, I’m trying to help you.” “Then believe me!” He looked at her quizzically. “You don’t have to shout.” “You never hear me unless I shout!” “Mary, why do you want to argue?” I don’t, she thought. Stop me. Hold me. “You started this,” she said. “I only asked you to consider an alternative to this business about possession. You’re overreacting.” I know, she thought. I know I am. And I don’t know why. I don’t want to hurt you. I need you. But all she said was, “Listening to you, I’d think I was never right about anything. I’m always overreacting or mistaken or misled or confused. You treat me as if I’m a child.” “You’re treating yourself with condescension.” “Just a silly little child.” Hug me, kiss me, love me, she thought. Please make me stop this. I don’t want to argue. I’m scared. He started toward the bedroom door. “This isn’t the time to talk. You’re not in the mood for constructive criticism.” “Because I’m behaving like a child?” “Yes.” “Sometimes you fucking piss me off.” He stopped, turned back to her. “That’s like a child,” he said calmly. “Like a child who’s trying to shock a grownup with a lot of dirty words.” She opened her book to the page she had marked and, refusing to acknowledge him, she pretended to read.
* * *
She would rather have suffered disabling pain than even temporary estrangement from Max. When they argued, which was rarely, she felt miserable. The two or three hours of silence that invariably followed a disagreement, and which were usually her fault, were unbearable. She spent the remainder of the evening in bed with a copy of The Occult by Colin Wilson. As she began each page, she could not remember what had been on the page before it. Max stayed on his side of the bed, reading a novel and smoking his pipe. He might as well have been a thousand miles away. The eleven o’clock television news, which she switched on by remote control, headlined a grisly story about slaughter in a Santa Ana beauty salon. There was film of the blood-smeared shop and interviews with police officials who had nothing to say. “You see?” Mary said. “I was right about the nurses. I was right about the beauty salon. And, by God, I’m right about Richard Lingard, too.” Even as she spoke, she regretted the words, and especially her tone of voice. He looked at her but said nothing. She looked away, down at her book. She hadn’t meant to revive the argument. Quite the opposite. She wanted to get him talking once more. She wanted to hear his voice. Although she often started arguments, she had never been able to initiate the conclusion of one. Psychologically, she wasn’t capable of making the first gesture for peace. She left that move to the men. Always. She knew that wasn’t fair, but she could not change. She supposed that this inadequacy dated back to her father’s violent death. He had left her so suddenly that she still sometimes felt abandoned. All of her adult life she had worried about men walking out on her before she was prepared to end the relationship. And of course she wasn’t ever going to be ready to end her marriage; that was for keeps. Therefore, whenever she and Max argued, whenever she had reason to worry about his leaving, she forced him to pick up the olive branch. It was a test which he could pass only if he would sacrifice more pride than she; and when he had done that, he would have proved that he loved her and that he would never leave her as her father had done. The death of her father was more important than whatever Berton Mitchell had done to her. Why couldn’t Dr. Cauvel see that?
* * *
In the dark bedroom, when it became evident that neither of them could sleep, Max touched her. His hands affected her in the same way that the rapidly vibrating tines of a tuning fork would affect fine crystal. She trembled uncontrollably and shattered. She broke against him, weeping. He didn’t speak. Words no longer mattered. He held her for a few minutes, and then he began to stroke her. He slid one hand over her silk pajamas, along her flank, across her buttocks. Slow, warm movement. And then he popped open two buttons on her blouse, slipped his hand inside, felt her warm breast, his fingers lingering on her nipple only for an instant. She put her open mouth to his neck, against the hard muscle. His strong pulse was transmitted to her through her tender lips. He undressed her and then himself. The bandage on his hand brushed her bare thigh. “Your finger,” she said. “It’ll be fine.” “The cut might come open,” she said. “It might start to bleed again.” “Sshhh,” he said. He was not in the mood to be patient, and although she hadn’t said a word, he sensed she was equally anxious. He rose above her in the lightless air, as if taking flight, then settled over her. Although she had expected nothing more than the special joy of closeness, she climaxed within a minute. Not intensely. A gentle rush of pleasure. However, when she came a second time, moments before he finished far down inside of her, she cried out with delight. For a while she lay at his side, holding his hand. Finally she said, “Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me as long as I live.” “As long as you live,” Max promised.
* * *
At five-thirty on Wednesday morning, in the middle of a nightmare vision of the killer’s next crime, Mary was catapulted from sleep by the sound of gunfire. A single shot, ear-splitting, too close. Even as the boom was bouncing off the bedroom walls, she sat up, threw off the blanket and sheet, swung her legs out of bed. “Max! What’s wrong? Max!” Beside her, he switched on the lamp, jumped up from the bed. He stood, swaying, blinking. The sudden light hurt her eyes. Although she was squinting, she could see there was no intruder in the room. Max reached for the loaded handgun that he kept on the nightstand. It was not there. “Where’s the pistol?” he asked. “I didn’t touch it,” she said. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the gun. It was floating in the air near the foot of the bed, floating five feet above the floor, as if it were suspended from wires, except that there were no wires. The barrel was pointed at her. The poltergeist. “Jesus!” Max said. Although no visible finger pulled the trigger, a second shot exploded. The bullet tore into the headboard inches from Mary’s face. She panicked. Gasping, whimpering, she ran across the room, hunched as if she were crippled. The gun traversed to the left, covering her. She came to a corner, stopped. Trapped. She realized she should have gone in the opposite direction, where she could have at least locked herself in the bathroom. The third shot smashed into the floor beside her feet. Bits of a throw rug and splinters of wood sprayed up. “Max!” He grabbed at the gun, but it slid away from him, rose and fell and swung from side to side, bobbled and weaved, forced him into a clumsy ballet. She looked for something to hide behind. There was nothing. The fourth shot passed over her head, piercing a framed, glass-covered watercolor of Newport Beach harbor. Max connected with the pistol, clutched it. The barrel twisted in his hands until it was pointed at his chest. Sweating, cursing, he struggled to pull the weapon from a pair of hands that he couldn’t see. Surprisingly, after a few seconds, the unseen contestant surrendered, and Max staggered backward with the prize. She stood with her back to the wall, hands to her face. She couldn’t take her eyes from the barrel of the gun. “It’s safe now,” Max said. “It’s over.” He started toward her. “For God’s sake, unload it!” she said, pointing at the gun in his hand. He stopped, stared at the pistol, and then took the magazine out of the handgrip. “All of the bullets should be taken from the clip,” she said. “I doubt that’s necessary if I—” “Do it!” His big hands were shaking as he took the bullets from the magazine. He placed all of the pieces on the bed; pistol, empty magazine, unspent ammunition. For a minute he studied the items, as she did, waiting for one of them to rise off the blanket. Nothing moved. “What was it?” he asked. “Poltergeist.” “Whatever it was—is it still here?” She closed her eyes, tried to relax, tried to feel. After a while she said, “No. It’s gone.”
Wednesday, December 23
10
PERCY OSTERMAN, THE Orange County sheriff, opened the door for Max and Mary, motioned for them to go ahead of him. The room was gray. The paint was gray, the floor tile gray, the windowsills gray with dust. A set of gray metal storage shelves was bolted to one wall, and the wall opposite the shelves contained a lot of built-in file drawers with burnished steel fronts. The few pieces of furniture were fashioned of tubular steel and gray vinyl. The screens over the ceiling lights were gray, and the fuzzy fluorescent illumination transformed the scene into a chiaroscuro print. The only spots of brightness in the room were the well scrubbed porcelain sinks and the slanted autopsy table, which was fiercely white with polished, gleaming stainless steel fixtures. The sheriff was all hard lines and sharp angles. He was nearly as tall as Max, but forty pounds lighter and far less muscular. Yet he did not appear wasted or weak. His hands were large, boney, almost fleshless, the fingers like talons. His shoulders sloped forward. His neck was thin with a prominent Adam’s apple. In his pinched, sun-browned face, his eyes were quick, nervous, a curious pale shade of amber. Osterman’s frown was ominous, his smile easy and kind. He was not smiling when he opened one of the six large drawers and pulled the shroud from the face of the corpse. Mary stepped away from Max, moved closer to the dead man. “Kyle Nolan,” Osterman said. “Owned the beauty shop. Worked there as a hair stylist.” Nolan was short, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested. Bald. A bushy mustache. Shave off the mustache, Mary thought, and he’d look like that actor, Edward Asner. She put one hand on the drawer and waited for a rush of psychic impressions. Although she didn’t understand how or why, she knew that, for a time after passing away, the dead maintained a bubble of energy around them, an invisible capsule that contained memories, vivid scenes of their lives and especially of their last minutes. Ordinarily, contact with the victim of a murder, or with the victim’s belongings, would generate a torrent of clairvoyant images, sometimes clear as reality and sometimes hopelessly blurry and meaningless, most of them dealing with the moment of death and with the identity of the killer. In this case, for the first time in her experience, she sensed absolutely nothing. Not even a shapeless flurry of movement or color. She touched the dead man’s cold face. Still nothing. Osterman closed the drawer, opened the one next to it. As he folded back the shroud, he said, “Tina Nolan. Kyle’s wife.” Tina was an attractive but hard-faced woman with brittle, bleached hair that her husband should have found professionally embarrassing. Although they had been closed hours ago by the coroner, her eyes had come open again. She stared at Mary as if she were trying to impart some dreadfully important news; but in the end she provided nothing more than poor Kyle had done. The woman in the third drawer was in her late twenties. She had once been beautiful. “Rochelle Drake,” Percy Osterman said. “Nolan’s last customer for the day.” “Rochelle Drake?” Max said. He came closer, peered into the drawer. “Don’t I know that name?” “Recognize her?” Sheriff Osterman asked. Max shook his head. “No. But . . . Mary? Does that name mean anything to you?” “No,” she said. “When you foresaw these killings, you said you thought you knew one of the victims.” “I was wrong,” she said. “These people are strangers.” “That’s odd,” Max said. “I’d swear . . . well, I don’t know what I’d swear … except this one’s name . . . Rochelle Drake . . . it’s familiar.” Mary was not paying much attention to him, for she perceived a familiar electricity in the air, a stirring of psychic forces. The Drake woman was going to provide what the other bodies should have offered but didn’t. Mary opened her mind to the psychic emanations, made herself as receptive as she could, and put her hand on the dead woman’s forehead. Wicka-wicka-wicka! Wings. Startled, Mary pulled her hand away from the corpse as if she had been bitten. She felt wings, leathery wings, shuddering like the membranes of drums. This isn’t possible, she thought frantically. The wings have something to do with Berton Mitchell. Not with this dead woman. Not with the man who killed her. The wings have to do with the past, not the present. Berton Mitchell couldn’t be involved in this. He hung himself in a jail cell nearly twenty-four years ago. But now she could smell the wings as well as feel them, smell the wings and the creatures behind them—a dank, musty, musky odor that nauseated her. What if the man who murdered Rochelle Drake and the others was not possessed by the spirit of Richard Lingard? What if, instead, he was possessed by the soul of another psychopath, by the spirit of Berton Mitchell? Wasn’t it conceivable that Lingard himself had been possessed by Berton Mitchell? And when Barnes shot Lingard, perhaps Mitchell’s spirit moved on to another host. Perhaps she had unknowingly crossed the path of an old nemesis. Perhaps she would spend the remainder of her life in pursuit of Berton Mitchell. Perhaps she would be compelled to follow him from one host to another until he finally found the opportunity to kill her. No. That was madness. She was thinking like a lunatic. Max asked, “Is something wrong?” Wings brushed her face, her neck, shoulders and breasts and belly, fluttered against her ankles and up her calves and then against her inner thighs. She was determined not to succumb to fear. But she was also half convinced that if she didn’t stop thinking about the wings, they would carry her off into everlasting darkness. A ridiculous notion. Nevertheless, she turned away from the morgue drawer. “Are you receiving something?” Max asked. “Not now,” she lied. “But you were?” “For an instant.” “What did you see?” he asked. “Nothing important. Just meaningless movement.” “Can you pick it up again?” Max asked. “No.” She mustn’t pursue it. If she did, she would see what lay behind those wings. She must never see what lay behind those wings. Osterman closed the drawer. Mary sighed with relief.
* * *
Sheriff Osterman went with them to the far corner of the municipal parking lot, where they’d left their car. The December sky was like the morgue— shades of gray. The fast-moving clouds were reflected in the polished hood of the Mercedes. Shivering, Mary put her hands in her coat pockets and hunched her shoulders against the wind. “Heard good things about you,” Osterman told Mary in his peculiarly economical way of speaking. “Often thought about working with you. Pleased when you called this morning. Hoped you’d come up with a lead.” “I hoped so, too,” she said. “Foresaw these murders, did you?” “Yes,” she said. “Those nurses in Anaheim, too?” “That’s right.” “Same killer, you think?” “Yes,” she said. Osterman nodded. “We think so, too. Have some evidence of it.” “What sort of evidence?” Max asked. “When he killed the nurses,” Osterman said, each word sharp and quick, “he busted up some stuff. Religious things. Two crucifixes. Statuette of the Virgin Mary. Even strangled one girl with a rosary. Found something similar in this beauty shop case.” “What?” Mary asked. “Pretty ugly bit of business. Maybe you don’t want to hear it.” “I’m used to hearing and seeing ugly things,” she said. He regarded her for a moment, amber eyes hooded. “Guess that’s true.” He leaned against the Mercedes. “This woman in the beauty shop. Rochelle Drake. She wore a necklace. A gold cross. He raped her, killed her. Tore the cross off her neck. Pushed it up … inside of her.” Mary felt ill. She hugged herself. “Then he’s a psychopath with some sort of religious hangup,” Max said. “Appears so,” Osterman said. He looked at Mary and asked, “So where do you go from here?” “Down to the shore,” she said. “King’s Point,” Max said. “Why there?” She hesitated, glanced at Max. “That’s where the next murders will take place.” Osterman did not seem surprised. “Had another vision, did you?” “Early this morning,” she said. “When will it happen?” “Tomorrow night,” she said. “Christmas Eve?” “Yes.” “Where in King’s Point?” “On the harbor,” she said. “Pretty good-sized harbor.” “It’ll be near the shops and restaurants.” “How many will he kill?” Osterman asked. “I’m not sure.” She was so cold, colder than could be accounted for by the California winter day and the wind, cold in the pit of her stomach, cold in her heart. She was wearing a stylish but thinly lined calfskin coat from North Beach Leather. She wished she’d chosen her heaviest fur. “Maybe I’ll be able to stop him before he kills anyone else,” she said. “You feel a responsibility to stop him?” Osterman asked. “I won’t have peace of mind until I do.” “Wouldn’t want this talent you’ve got.” “I never asked for it,” she said. A truck rumbled by in the street. Osterman waited for the noise to die down. “King’s Point used to be in my jurisdiction,” he said. “Two years ago they voted in their own police force. Now I can’t poke my nose in unless they ask. Or unless a case that starts in the county ends up on their doorstep.” “I wish I could be working with you,” Mary said. “You’ll be working with a jackass,” Osterman said. “Excuse me?” “Chief of police at King’s Point. Name’s Patmore, John Patmore. A jackass. He gives you trouble, tell him to” call me. He kind of respects me, but he’s still a jackass.” “We’ll use your name if we have to,” Mary said. “But we aren’t entirely without influence down there. We know the owner of the King’s Point Press.” Osterman smiled. “Lou Pasternak?” “You know him?” “Damned good newspaperman.” “Yes, he is.” “Quite a character, too.” “A little bit of one,” she agreed. The sheriff offered his hand to Mary, then to Max. “Hope you two do my job for me this time.” “Thanks for your help,” Max said. “Don’t hesitate to ask for more if you need it. It’s been my pleasure.” As Mary got into the Mercedes, a gust of wind sang in the power lines overhead.
* * *
They reached King’s Point at two-thirty in the afternoon. Their first glimpse of it, as they topped a rise in the road, was from high above the harbor. The sky was low. Thick gray clouds scudded inland. A mile offshore the ocean was shrouded in mist; and closer to the beach formidable waves churned beneath half a dozen scuba-suited surfers, fell frothily onto the sand, and exploded into spray against the stone breakwaters on both sides of the harbor entrance. The town was on the Pacific Coast Highway, a few miles south of Laguna Beach, in a perpetually smogless pocket of sunshine and money. The sun was in hiding today, but the money was everywhere evident. Houses on the verdant hillsides were priced from $75,000 to $500,000, nearly all of them with well manicured decorative gardens and ocean views. Waterfront homes with docks were not as expensive as those in Newport Beach, but real estate brokers had no time for would-be customers who flinched at a base price of a quarter million dollars. In the flat land between harbor and hills the houses were cheaper—there were some apartment buildings, too—but even they were expensive by most standards. The travel guides said that King’s Point was “charming” and “quaint” and “picturesque,” and for once they were telling the truth. The lawns were lush and green; the many small parks were filled with palms of all varieties, oleander, jade plants, magnolia trees, schefflera, dracaena, olive trees, and seasonal flowers. The houses were well cared for, freshly painted every year or two as protection against the corrosive sea air. Businessmen were required to forgo the most offensive neon signs, and were forbidden by law to paint their stores in anything but soft natural tones. The residents of King’s Point appeared to think that with the proper local ordinances they could keep out everything that made the rest of the world a less desirable place to live. And they did keep out much that was tasteless, cheap, and gaudy. But they can’t keep out everything they don’t want, Mary thought. A killer has come in from outside. He’s walking among them now. They can’t use local ordinances to keep out death. From spring through early autumn the population of King’s Point was sixty percent higher than in the winter. During these vacation months the motels were booked weeks in advance, the restaurants raised their prices except for locals who were recognized, the shops hired extra help, and the white beaches were crowded. Now, two days before Christmas, the town was quiet. When Max turned off the main highway onto a city street, they encountered very little traffic. King’s Point Police Headquarters was a single-story brick building of absolutely no architectural period, style, charm, integrity, or responsibility. It looked like an oversized, flat-roofed storage shed with windows. Even three blocks from the harbor, in the flats below the hills, in a limbo between the highest-value real estate parcels—waterfront and view—it was no credit to its neighborhood. Inside, the public reception room was depressingly institutional: brown tile floor, muddy green walls, washed-out green ceiling, strictly utilitarian furniture. Tax money had purchased three desks, six-drawer filing cabinets, IBM typewriters, a copier, a small refrigerator, a United States flag, a glass-fronted case full of riot guns and pistols, a dispatcher’s corner with radio—and a civilian secretary (Mrs. Vidette Yancy, according to the name plate on her desk) who was in her fifties, a woman with tightly curled white hair, pale skin, bright red lipstick, and an enormous bosom. “I’d like to see Chief Patmore,” Mary said. Mrs. Yancy took a minute to correct a word she had just typed. “Him?” she said at last. “He’s out.” “When will he be back?” “The chief? Tomorrow morning.” “Could you give us his home address?” Max asked, leaning against the formica counter that separated the foyer from the work area. “His home address?” Mrs. Yancy said. “Surely. I can give you that. But he isn’t at home.” “Where is he?” Mary asked impatiently. “Where is he? Why, he’s up in Santa Barbara. He won’t be back until ten tomorrow morning.” Mary turned to Max. “Maybe we should talk to a deputy.” “Deputy?” Mrs. Yancy said. “There are five officers under the chief. Of course, only two of them are on duty right now.” “If this guy’s like we’ve heard,” Max said, “it won’t do any good to talk to subordinates. He’ll expect to be dealt with directly.” “Time’s running out,” Mary said. “Don’t we have until seven o’clock tomorrow evening?” Max asked. “If my vision’s accurate, we do.” “Then if we see Patmore early tomorrow, that’ll be soon enough.” “The officers on duty are out on patrol right now,” Mrs. Yancy said. “Did you want to report a crime?” “Not exactly,” Mary said. “Not exactly? Well, I have the forms right here, you know.” She opened a desk drawer, began to rummage through it. “I can take down the information and have an officer get back to you.” “Never mind,” Max said. “We’ll be in tomorrow at ten o’clock.”
* * *
At the bay end of the harbor, valuable shoreline was occupied by commercial enterprises—yacht clubs, yacht sales offices, dry docks, restaurants, and shops. Each of these businesses was as clean and attractive and well maintained as the many expensive homes that lined both sides of the harbor channel. The Laughing Dolphin was a restaurant and cocktail lounge that fronted on the harbor. On the second level a narrow open-air deck was suspended over the water. In good weather patrons could get pleasantly drunk while the sun warmed their faces. This afternoon the deck was deserted. Max and Mary had it to themselves. Holding a mug of coffee laced with brandy, Mary leaned against the wooden railing. If you stepped out of the brisk sea breezes, the day was only chilly; but the wind from the ocean was downright cold. It nipped at her face and brought a healthy color to her cheeks. When she looked up and to her right, she could see the Spanish Court, the hotel where she and Max had reserved a room. It stood on the north hill, high above the harbor. It was majestic, all white plaster and natural woods and red tile. Closer to hand, eight dinghies were sailing in formation, snaking back and forth across the smooth slate-colored water. Against a backdrop of sixty-, eighty-, and hundred-foot sailing ships and motor yachts, the small vessels were lovely and amusing. Even today, without the sun upon them, their sails were dazzlingly white. Their graceful progress was a definition of serenity. “Study the boats, the houses, the entire harbor,” Max said. “Maybe something you see will trigger the vision.” “I don’t think so,” she said. “It was knocked out of my mind forever when I woke up and found I was being shot at.” “You’ve got to try.” “Do I?” “Isn’t that why you wanted to come?” “If I don’t go after this killer,” she said, “he’ll eventually come after me.” The wind gusted suddenly, flapped Mary’s leather coat against her legs, rattled the large plate-glass windows of the cocktail lounge behind them. She sipped her coffee. Tentacles of steam writhed across her face and dissolved in the wintry air. Max said, “Maybe it’ll help if you tell me again how it’s going to happen.” When she didn’t answer, he coaxed her. “Tomorrow night at seven o’clock. Not too far from where we’re standing right now.” “Within a couple of blocks,” she said. “You said he’ll come with a butcher knife.” “Lingard’s knife.” “Some knife, anyway.” “Lingard’s,” she insisted. “You said he’ll stab two people.” “Yes, two.” “Kill them?” “Maybe one of them.” “But not the other.” “At least one will live. Maybe both.” “Who are these people he’ll stab?” “I don’t know their names,” she said. “What do they look like?” “I couldn’t see their faces.” “Young women, like in Anaheim?” “I really don’t know.” “What about the high-powered rifle?” “I saw it in the vision.” “He’s got a butcher knife and a gun?” “After he’s stabbed those two people,” she said, “he’ll take the rifle up into a tower. He intends to shoot everyone.” “Everyone?” “A lot of people, as many as he can.” At the far end of the harbor, a dozen sea gulls kited in from the ocean, riding very high on the wind, white feathers silhouetted dramatically against the stormy sky. “How many will he kill?” Max asked. “The vision ended before I could see.” “Which tower will he use?” “I don’t know.” “Look around,” Max said. “Look at each one of them. Try to sense which it will be.” To her right, three hundred yards farther around the bend of the harbor’s bay end and five hundred yards from the Laughing Dolphin, the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity lay one block from the waterfront. She had been inside it once. It was a brooding Gothic structure, an impressive fortress of weathered granite and darkly beautiful stained glass windows. The hundred-foot bell tower, which had a low-walled open deck directly beneath its peaked roof, was the highest point within two blocks of the harbor. The sound of sea gulls distracted her for a moment. Above the formation of sailboats that were playing follow the leader, still soaring inland, the gulls began to squeal with excitement. Their sharp voices were like fingernails scraped across a blackboard. She tried not to hear the birds, concentrated on Trinity. She received nothing. No images. No psychic vibrations. Not the vaguest premonition that the killer would strike out at King’s Point from Trinity’s bell tower. St. Luke’s Lutheran Church was between Mary and the Church of the Holy Trinity. It was two hundred yards north and a half a block from the harbor. It was a Spanish-style building with massive carved oak doors, and a bell tower slightly more than half as high as the one at the Catholic church. Nothing from St. Luke’s either. Just the ghostly wind and the cries of agitated sea gulls. The third tower was to her left, two hundred yards away, at the edge of the water. It was only four stories high, part of Kimball’s Games and Snacks, a clapboard and cedar-shingled pavilion that housed an amusement arcade. In the summer camera-laden tourists climbed to the top and took photographs of the harbor. Now the place was closed for the season, quiet, empty. “Will it be Kimball’s tower?” Max asked. “I don’t know,” she said. “It could be any of them.” “You’ve got to try harder,” he said. She closed her eyes and concentrated. Screeching angrily, a gull swooped down, flashed past their faces with only eight or ten inches to spare. Mary jumped back in surprise, dropped her coffee mug. “You okay?” Max asked. “Startled. That’s all.” “Did it touch you?” “No.” “They don’t dive that close unless you trespass on their nesting grounds. But there’s nowhere around here they’d lay eggs. Besides, it’s not the time of year for that.” The dozen gulls that had entered the harbor a few minutes ago were circling overhead. They weren’t taking advantage of the wind currents as gulls usually do; there was nothing lazy or graceful about their flight. Instead, they twisted and fluttered and soared and dived and darted frantically among one another within a tightly defined sphere of air. They seemed tortured. It was surprising that they didn’t collide. Screeching at one another, they performed an unnatural, frenzied dance in midair. “What’s upset them?” Max wondered. “Me,” she said. “You? What did you do?” She was trembling. “I tried to use my clairvoyance to see which tower the killer will use.” “So?” “The gulls are here to stop me from doing that.” Astounded, he said, “Mary, that makes no sense. Trained gulls?” “Not trained. Controlled.” “Controlled by whom? Who sent them?” She stared at the birds. “Who?” he asked again. “Lingard’s ghost?” “Maybe,” she said. He touched her shoulder. “Mary—” “You saw the poltergeist that was after me, dammit!” In a let’s-calm-down-and-be-reasonable tone of voice that drove her mad, he said, “Whatever causes poltergeist phenomena can lift and hurl inanimate objects—but not living animals.” “Listen,” she said, “you don’t know everything. You don’t know—” She looked away from him, looked up. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “The birds.” The gulls still capered maniacally overhead, but they were silent. Perfectly silent. “Strange,” Max said. “I’m going inside,” she said. She almost reached the mullioned door that connected the deck to the second-floor cocktail lounge when a sea gull struck her from behind, between the shoulders, like a hammer blow. She stumbled and instinctively put one arm across her face. The wings beat at her neck. Battered the back of her head. Thundered in her ears. These weren’t like the wings that she associated with Berton Mitchell. Those wings had been leathery, membranous. These were feathered. But that didn’t make the sea gulls any less frightening. She thought of the bird’s wickedly sharp, hooked beak, thought of it pecking out her eyes, and she screamed. Max shouted something that she couldn’t hear. She started to reach for the bird, realized it might tear her fingers, jerked her hand back. Max knocked the gull away from her. It flopped on the deck, temporarily stunned. Max opened the door, pushed her inside, went in after her, and pulled the door shut. The bartender had seen the attack, and he was hurrying around the end of the counter, wiping his hands on a towel. A heavyset, red-haired man at the bar swiveled around on his stool to see what was happening. In one of the black vinyl booths by the windows a young couple—a pretty blonde in a green dress and a dark, intense man—looked up from their drinks. Before the bartender had taken three steps, a sea gull struck the mullioned door behind Max. Two small panes broke inward. Glass tinkled musically on the floor. The cocktail waitress dropped her tray and ran toward the stairs that led down to the restaurant foyer. With a sound like a shotgun blast, another gull slammed into one of the five-foot by six-foot windows that overlooked the harbor. The glass cracked but held. The injured bird toppled backward to the deck outside, leaving a smear of blackish blood to mark the collision. “They’ll kill me.” “No,” Max said. “That’s what they want!” He held her protectively, but for the first time since she had known him, his arms didn’t seem big enough, his chest broad enough, his body strong enough to guarantee her safety. A sea gull caromed off the window beside the young couple’s table. The glass cracked in a jagged, lightning-bolt pattern. The pretty blonde shrieked and scrambled out of the booth. An instant after her companion prudently followed her, another gull rammed the same window and shattered it. Large shards of glass collapsed onto the dark pine table, bounced up in many smaller pieces, and showered over the vinyl where the couple had been sitting. The decapitated gull landed in the center of the table; and its bloody head plopped into the woman’s martini. Two more gulls flew in through the broken window. “Don’t let them!” Mary shouted hysterically. “Don’t let them, don’t, don’t, oh don’t, please don’t!” The young couple went to their knees, taking shelter behind and half beneath a table. Max pushed Mary into the nearest corner. He shielded her as best he could with his body. One of the birds sailed straight at him. He threw up one arm to ward it off. The creature squealed in anger, shied away, circled through the room. The other gull attempted to land on one of the round tables in the middle of the lounge. Its wings knocked over a centerpiece—a copper and stained-glass lantern with a candle inside—and the candle set fire to the tablecloth. The bartender used his damp towel to extinguish the flame. The gull swooped from the table to the shelves of liquor behind the bar. Two, three, four, half a dozen, eight bottles crashed to the floor. On his stool, a few feet from the crazed gull, the red-haired man was too bewildered to be frightened. He watched the bird with fascination as it flapped and kicked and sent more bottles to the floor. The fragrance of whiskey blossomed through the room. The first gull flew at Max again. It came in above him, fluttered wildly in the corner, then with malign intelligence dropped behind his back, onto Mary’s head. Its feet tangled in her hair. “God, no! No!” She grabbed at the bird, not caring about its beak, not caring if it pecked her ringers. It was unclean. She had to get it off her. Max reached for it, too. Then it rose from her, up and away once more, circling into the room. In a second, however, it darted back and thumped into the wall beside her head. It dropped to the floor at her feet and twitched spasmodically. Gasping for breath, her hands to her face and fingers spread, she backed away from it. “It’s terror-stricken,” Max said. “Kill it!” She hardly recognized her own voice; it was altered by fear and hatred. He hesitated. “I don’t think it’s dangerous anymore.” “Kill it before it flies up!” He kicked the bird into the corner, raised his foot, and with evident reluctance stepped on its head. Gagging, Mary turned away. The other gull flew away from the bar and left the room through the broken window. Everything was quiet, still. At last the intense, dark-skinned young man stood up, helped the blonde to her feet. The heavyset, red-haired man at the bar tossed down his drink in one gulp. “Christ, what a mess!” the bartender said. “What happened? Did anyone ever see gulls act like that before?” Max touched her cheek. “Are you okay?” She leaned on him and wept.
11
6:30. Lights speckled the nighttime King’s Point hills like orange flame gleaming from within a jack-o’-lantern with a thousand eyes. To the west the ocean and sky melted into a single black shroud. Max parked at the curb, switched off the headlights. He leaned over and kissed Mary. “You look lovely tonight.” She smiled. Surprisingly, in spite of what had happened to her today, she felt lovely, feminine, buoyant. “That makes six times you’ve told me.” “Seven’s a lucky number. You look lovely tonight.” He kissed her again. “Do you feel better? Are you relaxed?” “The man who invented valium should be made a saint.” “You should be made a saint,” he said. “Now don’t move. I’m feeling terribly chivalrous. I’ll come around and open your door.” The wind from the sea was no stronger than it had been during the day, although with nightfall it grew colder and seemed also to grow noisier. It shook badly fitted shutters until they clattered. It worried loosely hinged garage doors, made them groan and creak. It scraped tree branches against the side of the house, tipped over empty trash barrels, stirred brittle feathered-end palm fronds together in a chorus of snakelike hissing, and rolled a few discarded soda cans along the streets. Sheltered from the worst of the wind by dense shrubs, pine trees and date palms, the small single-story house at 440 Ocean Hill Lane looked warm and cozy. Soft light radiated from the leaded windows. A carriage lamp glowed beside the front door. Lou Pasternak—owner, publisher, and editor of the twice-a-week King’s Point Press—answered the bell and hustled them inside. While they told each other how well they looked and how happy they were to see each other again, Pasternak kissed Mary on the cheek, shook hands with Max, and hung their coats in the closet. Being in Lou’s presence was, she thought, as relaxing as taking a tranquilizer. Except for Max and her own brother, Mary liked Lou more than any other man she’d ever met. He was intelligent, kind, too generous. He was also the worst cynic she had ever met, but the cynicism was tempered by humility and a marvelous sense of humor. She worried about him because he drank too much. But he knew he did, and he was able to talk about his drinking dispassionately. He argued that if you understood how screwed up the world was, if you saw how like a paradise it could be, if you understood that what could be never would be because most people were hopeless jackasses—well, then you needed a crutch to get through life with your sanity intact. For some people, he said, it was money or drugs or any of a hundred other things. His crutch was Scotch. And damned good bourbon. “My mother,” Mary sometimes said to him, “led a miserable life as an alcoholic.” “Your mother,” Lou always responded, “sounds like an alcoholic who didn’t know how to hold her liquor. There’s nothing worse than a sloppy drunk—unless it’s a self-pitying drunk.” His drinking didn’t appear to interfere with the full life he led. He had built and still operated an extremely successful business. His editorials and reportage had won several national awards. At forty-five, although he had never been married, he had more women friends than any man Mary knew. At the moment he lived alone, but that would not last. Although she had seen him consume Herculean quantities of liquor, she had never seen him drunk. He did not stagger, slur his speech, become maudlin or loud or obnoxious. He not only could hold his liquor, he thrived on it. “I don’t drink to escape my responsibilities,” he had once told her. “I drink to escape the consequences of other people’s inability to meet their responsibilities.” “Alcohol killed my mother,” she warned him. “I don’t want to see you die.” “We all die, my dear. It’s just as good to drop of a rotted liver as it is to be felled by cancer or a stroke. Actually, I think it’s better.” She loved him as much as she loved Max, though in different ways. He was a stocky man, a full foot shorter than Max’s six four, even slightly shorter than Mary. He was solidly constructed. His neck, shoulders, arms, and chest were thick with muscle, powerful. He was wearing a white shirt; the sleeves were rolled up; and his forearms were matted with hair. His face was in stark contrast to his body. He had the fine features of an inbred aristocrat. He combed his brown hair straight back from his face. His brow was high; his lively brown eyes were deeply set and sensitive; his nose was narrow, the nostrils delicate; and his mouth was almost prim. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles that made him look as if he was a college professor. “Bourbon and ice,” he said, picking up a tall glass from the slate-topped foyer table. “My third since I got home from work. In case the wind blows down the power lines later on, I intend to be so lit up that I can do my bedtime reading by my own light.” Although there were armchairs and a comfortable sofa, the living room was primarily furnished with books, magazines, record albums, and paintings. Stacks of books stood beside and behind the couch; books filled the space under the coffee table; recent issues of magazines overflowed a rack meant to hold a hundred of them. The one wall that was free of records and books was covered with original oils, pastels, and watercolors by local painters. Dozens of pieces in every imaginable style had been squeezed so close that their beauty overlapped; they intruded upon one another; but Lou’s taste was so good that even under these circumstances the eye was caught and held by each work at some point during a long evening. One of the armchairs was more tattered and lumpy than the other. That was where Lou sat, reading half a dozen books each week, drinking too much, and listening to opera, Benny Goodman, or Bach. It was the friendliest room Mary had ever seen. Lou brought their drinks. He put Bach, interpreted by Eugene Ormandy, on the stereo at low volume. “Now let’s hear the whole story. Since you called this morning, I’ve been half crazy wondering what this is about. You were so mysterious.” Interrupted frequently by Lou’s questions, digressing into discussions of poltergeists, Mary told him everything. She began with the tracking down of Richard Lingard and ended with the sea gull attack at the Laughing Dolphin. When she finished, the house was abnormally quiet. A grandfather clock ticked solemnly in the dining room. Thinking about what she had said, Lou poured himself more bourbon. When he returned to his armchair, he said, “So tomorrow night at seven o’clock this killer will stab two people, perhaps killing one of them. Then he’ll climb a tower and start to shoot.” “You believe me?” she asked. “Of course. I’ve followed your work for years, haven’t I?” “You believe about Lingard’s spirit?” “If you say I should, why wouldn’t I?” She glanced at Max. “Will this man have anyone to shoot at tomorrow night?” Max asked. “Won’t just about everyone be at home with their families on Christmas Eve?” “Oh,” Lou said, “he’ll have plenty of targets around the harbor. There’ll be Christmas Eve parties on dozens of boats. People on the decks. People on the docks. People everywhere.” “I don’t think we can stop the stabbings from taking place,” Mary said. “But maybe we can keep him from shooting anyone. Policemen can be stationed in all three towers.” “One problem,” Lou said. “What’s that?” “John Patmore.” “Your chief of police.” “Unfortunately, he is. It’s not going to be easy to convince him that he should heed your visions.” “If he thinks there’s even the slightest chance I might be right,” Mary said, “why shouldn’t he cooperate? After all, his job is to protect the people of King’s Point.” Lou smiled crookedly. “My dear, you should know by now that many cops don’t see their jobs quite the same way as taxpayers do. Some cops think that all they’re required to do is wear fancy fascist uniforms, ride around in flashy patrol cars, collect envelopes of graft money, and retire at the public expense after twenty or thirty years of ‘service.’ ” “You’re too cynical,” she said. “Percy Osterman told us Patmore’s difficult,” Max added. “Difficult? He’s stupid,” Lou said. “Ignorant beyond description. The only reason you can’t accuse him of being scatterbrained is because he doesn’t have any brains to scatter. I’m sure he’s never heard the word ‘clairvoyant.’ And when we are finally able to make him understand what it means, he won’t believe it. If something’s not within his personal experience, he doesn’t accept its existence. I’m positive he’d argue against the reality of Europe simply because he’s never been there.” “He can call some police chiefs I’ve worked with,” Mary said. “They’ll convince him I’m genuine.” “If he’s never met them, he won’t believe a word they say. I tell you, Mary, if ignorance is really bliss, then he’s the happiest man in the world.” “Sheriff Osterman said we could tell Patmore to call him for an endorsement,” Max said. Lou nodded. “That might help. Patmore’s impressed with Osterman. And I’ll go with you to see him if you’d like. But I’ve got to warn you that I won’t help your cause very much. Patmore hates me.” “I can’t imagine why,” Max said. “Except, you probably talk like this about him to his face.” Grinning, Lou said, “I’ve never been able to hide my true feelings, and that’s a fact. You’ve met Mrs. Yancy, his flunky?” “She was the only one in the office this afternoon,” Max said. “Isn’t she a gem?” “Is she?” “A miracle worker,” Lou said. “It’s a miracle when she works.” “She didn’t seem too efficient,” Mary said. Lou said, “She’s a steady worker—and if she gets any steadier, she’ll be motionless.” Mary laughed, sipped her dry sherry. “Now, getting back to those sea gulls,” Lou said. “Do—” “No more about the gulls,” Mary said. “No more about any of that. Tomorrow’s soon enough. Tonight I want to forget about clairvoyance and talk about something else. Anything else.”
* * *
Dinner was filet mignon, salad, baked potatoes, and cold asparagus spears. As Max was opening the bottle of red wine they’d brought as a gift, Lou noticed the bandage. “Max, what happened to your finger?” “Oh … I cut it changing a flat tire.” “Stitches?” “It wasn’t that serious.” “He should have seen a doctor,” Mary said. “He wouldn’t even let me look at it. There was so much blood—blood all over his shirt.” “I thought you might have been in a fight again,” Lou said. “I don’t go to bars anymore,” Max said. “I don’t fight these days.” Lou looked at Mary, raised an eyebrow. “It’s true,” she said. “You worked two years for me,” Lou said. “In all that time you never went more than a month or six weeks without getting in a bad fight. You went to the worst bars along the coast—biker bars and worse, to all the places where you were most likely to wind up in trouble. Sometimes I wondered if you went drinking more for the fighting than for the liquor.” “Maybe I did,” Max said, frowning. “I had problems. What I needed was someone who needed me. Now I’ve got Mary, and I don’t fight.” Although he had promised not to talk about clairvoyance anymore that night, Lou found himself unable to drop the subject during dinner. “Do you think the killer knows you’re in town?” “I don’t know,” Mary said. “If he’s possessed by a spirit, and if the same spirit possessed those gulls, then surely he knows.” “I guess he does.” “Won’t he play it safe until after you leave town?” “Maybe he will,” she said. “But I doubt it.” “He wants to get caught?” “Or he wants to catch me.” “What do you mean by that?” “I don’t know.” “If—” “Can we change the subject?”
* * *
After she had finished eating, Mary excused herself from the table and went to the bathroom at the far end of the house. When he was alone with Max, Lou asked, “What about this notion of hers?” “That Lingard’s come back from the dead?” “Do you put any stock in that?” “You’re the student of the occult,” Max said. “You’re the one with hundreds of books on the subject. Besides, you’ve known her longer than I have. You’re the one who introduced us. What do you think?” “I’ve got an open mind,” Lou said. “I gather you don’t.” “Her analyst says she threw those glass dogs.” “Unconscious telekinesis?” Lou asked. “That’s right.” “Has she ever shown telekinetic ability before?” “No,” Max said. “What about the revolver?” “I think she was controlling that, too.” “Shooting at herself?” “Yes,” Max said. “And she was guiding the sea gulls?” “Yes.” “Controlling living animals … that’s not telekinesis.” “It’s telepathy of a sort,” Max said. Lou refilled his wine glass. “That’s rare.” “It has to be telepathy. I can’t believe those sea gulls were guided by a dead man’s spirit.” “Why would she want to kill herself?” “She doesn’t,” Max said. “Well, if she is the poltergeist behind these phenomena, if she levitated that revolver, then it seems to me that she was trying to kill herself.” “If she was suicidal,” Max said, “she wouldn’t have missed. But she did miss with the glass dogs, with the revolver, and with the gulls.” “Then what’s she doing?” Lou asked. “Why is she playing the part of a poltergeist?” Max frowned. “I have a theory. I think there’s something special about this case, something unusual. She’s foreseen something about it that she refuses to face up to. Something devastating. Something that would completely unhinge her if she thought about it for long. So she pushed it out of her mind. Of course, she could only push it out of her conscious mind. The subconscious never forgets. Now, every time she attempts to pursue a vision that’s connected to this case, her subconscious uses the poltergeist phenomena to distract her.” “Because her subconscious knows it will be harmful for her to pursue this man.” “That’s right.” An icy tremor passed through Lou Pasternak. “What could she have foreseen?” “Maybe this psychopath will kill her,” Max said. The thought of Mary dead hit Lou with surprising force. He had known her for more than a decade, had liked her from the moment he met her, and had grown to like her more each year. Liked her? Only that? No. He loved her, too. In a fatherly way. She was so gentle, good-natured. So vulnerable. But until this moment he had not realized how deeply he had come to love her. Mary dead and gone? He felt sick, feverish. Max watched him with steady gray eyes that revealed nothing of his own emotions. He appeared unaffected, unmoved by the prospect of his wife’s death. He’s had more time to consider it than I have, Lou thought. He’s had time to become accustomed to the idea of Mary dead. He cares as much as I do, but his feelings have settled from the surface into darker, more affecting regions. “Or maybe the psychopath will kill me,” Max said. “The two of you should give up on this one,” Lou said. “Go home right now. Stay out of it.” “But if she did foresee something of that sort,” Max said, “won’t it happen regardless of what we do to avoid it?” “I don’t believe in predestination.” “Neither do I. Yet . . . what she foresees always seems to happen. So if we don’t go after this killer, will he come after us?” “Damn you,” Lou said. “You’ve made me stone cold sober.” He drank his wine, poured more. “There’s something else,” Max said. “When she was six years old, a man apparently sexually molested her.” “Berton Mitchell,” Lou said. “How much has she told you about that?” “Not much. The general outlines of it. I gather she can’t remember most of it.” “Did she tell you what happened to Mitchell?” “He was found guilty,” Lou said. “He hung himself in his prison cell, didn’t he?” “Do you know that for a fact?” “She told me.” “But do you know it for a fact?” Lou was puzzled. “Why would she lie?” “I’m not saying she lied. But what if no one ever told her the truth?” “I don’t follow you.” “Suppose,” Max said, “that Berton Mitchell was never sentenced to a prison term. Suppose he had a good attorney who got him off scot-free even though he was guilty. It happens. If you were the father of a six-year-old girl who’d been molested and horribly traumatized, would you want to tell her that her assailant had walked away unpunished? Wouldn’t you worry that she might suffer even more serious psychological damage if she knew that the monster who had abused her was on the streets, free to try for her again? If Berton Mitchell was acquitted, Mary’s father might have decided the best thing was for her to believe that Mitchell was dead.” “Surely she would have discovered the truth when she got older,” Lou said. “Not necessarily. Not if she didn’t want to discover it.” “Alan would have told her.” “Maybe Alan never knew the truth either,” Max said. “He was only nine at the time. Their father would have lied to both of them. And if—” Lou held up one hand for silence. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say Berton Mitchell was acquitted. What’s that have to do with this case?” Max picked up his fork and poked at the rumpled pile of potato skin on his plate. “I told you I think Mary’s foreseen something that terrifies her.” “That she’ll be killed. Or you will.” “Perhaps that’s it. But maybe she’s also seen that the killer we’re after is … Berton Mitchell.” “He’d be sixty years old if he was alive!” “Is there some law that says all psychopathic killers have to be young?” Max asked.
* * *
In the bathroom Mary washed her hands, picked up the towel, looked in the mirror above the washbasin—and did not see her own face. Instead, she saw the face of a total stranger—a young woman with pale yellow hair and even paler skin and wide-set blue eyes, her features distorted by terror. The mirror had become a window on another dimension, for it did not reflect anything in the bathroom. The blonde woman’s face was disembodied, floating in misty shadows. Above and to the right of her, the only other object in the void beyond the mirror was a golden crucifix. Mary dropped the towel, backed away from the sink until she bumped into the wall. In the mirror a man’s hand, also disembodied, appeared in the foreground of the surrealistic collage of psychic images. It was gripping a butcher knife. Mary had never received a clairvoyant vision in this fashion. For a moment she didn’t know what to expect. She didn’t know what she should do; she was afraid both to move and to stay still. The disembodied hand raised the knife. The blonde’s face receded like a ball flying away, whirling and spinning and tumbling through endless space. The hand and the butcher knife receded, too, in pursuit of her. Concentrate, Mary told herself. For God’s sake, don’t let the vision get away from you. Hold on to it at all costs. Hold it and expand upon it. Develop it until it provides the name of the man whose hand holds the knife. The crucifix swelled until it filled the mirror. Then, in perfect, eerie silence, the icon exploded into a dozen jagged pieces and was gone. Concentrate . . . The woman’s face reappeared. And the knife loomed large in the mirror. The blade gave off a fierce light of its own, as if it were made of neon tubing. “Who are you?” Mary asked aloud. “You with the knife. Who in the hell are you?” Suddenly the hand was no longer disembodied. The woman’s face vanished, and the shoulder and the back of a man’s head entered the scene, cloaked in shadow. The killer started to turn slowly, turned through laces of wan light and shifting shadows, turned so he would be facing out from the mirror, turned as if he knew Mary was now behind him, turned slowly and silently, turned as if in response to her request for his name . . . Worried that she might lose the vision an instant before she had her answer, as had happened to her in Dr. Cauvel’s office the day before, Mary said, “Who? Who are you? I demand to know!” To her right, six feet away, the latch on the bathroom window opened with a sharp click! Startled, Mary looked away from the image in the mirror. The window slid up. The wind threw aside the flimsy brown and black curtains and rushed into the room, making banshee noises as it came. The night beyond the window was dark, far darker than she had ever seen. Over the howling of the wind came another sound: wicka-wicka-wicka! Wings. Leathery wings. Just beyond the window. Wicka-wicka-wicka I Perhaps it was a coincidental sound. The curtain rod vibrating in its fixtures? A branch or shrub rustling rhythmically against the side of the house? Whatever the cause of it, she was certain she was not merely imagining the sound this time; nor was she receiving it as part of her psychic impressions. Some creature was actually close at hand, beyond that open window, some unimaginably bizarre creature with wings. No. Insanity. Well, go look, she told herself. Go see what it is that has these wings. See if it’s anything at all. End this forever. She couldn’t move. Wicka-wicka-wicka! Max, help me, she said. But the words formed without sound. To her left, beside the sink, the door of the medicine cabinet was wrenched open by invisible hands. Thrown shut. Wrenched open. Thrown shut. The next time it came open, it stayed that way. All of the contents of the cabinet—bottles of Anacin, aspirin, cold tablets, iodine, cough syrup, laxatives; tubes of toothpaste, skin cream, shampoo; boxes of throat lozenges, Band-Aids, gauze pads—leaped from the shelves to the floor. The shower curtain was flung back by an invisible hand, and the shower rod sagged and bent as if someone quite heavy was hanging from it. The rod tore out of the wall and fell into the tub. The commode seat began to bash itself up and down, faster and faster, making an incredible din. She took one step toward the bathroom door. It swung open as if urging her to leave—then a second later went shut with a crash like a thunderclap. It opened and closed itself repeatedly, almost in time with the clatter of the commode seat. She put her back to the wall once more, afraid to move. “Mary!” Max and Lou were on the other side of the door, briefly visible as it swung open. They were staring, amazed. The door closed with even greater power than it had before, flew open, shut, open, shut. Max tried to come in as the door opened again, but it slammed in his face. The next time it opened he grabbed the doorknob and forced his way inside. The door stopped moving. The wind at the window decreased to a slight draft. There were no wings beating now. Stillness. Silence. Mary looked at the mirror above the washbasin and saw that, while the images in it had changed, it was still not an ordinary mirror and did not reflect the room in front of it. The pale blonde, the crucifix, and the man with the butcher knife were gone. The mirror was black—except for the very bottom of it, where blood appeared to seep through the glass and over the frame, where it dripped into the room, as if the world on the other side was nothing but a lake of gore with a surface that reached slightly above the lower edge of the mirror. The blood splashed on the faucets that were directly below the mirror, spattered the white porcelain sink. Confused, Max said, “What the devil is this? What’s happening here?” He looked from the mirror to Mary. “Are you hurt? Have you cut yourself?” “No,” she said. And only then did she realize that he saw the blood, too. Max touched the rim of the mirror. Impossibly, incredibly, the blood came off on his fingers, Lou squeezed into the small bathroom to have a better look. Gradually the blood—on the mirror, faucets, porcelain, and on Max’s finger—became less vivid, less brilliantly red, less substantial, faded until it was gone, as if it had never been.
