Текст книги "Fear the Dark"

Автор книги: Kay Hooper

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“We’ll be there.”

TEN

Sarah Waters delivered the promised security tapes less than half an hour later and elected to stay at the command center and help the agents. She had, of course, put herself back on duty as soon as Annie Duncan’s murder was discovered, which meant she’d gotten next to no sleep.

Still, Dante reflected, she seemed to wear the same bright-eyed, brisk, unrumpled look that Robbie always managed—and just as effortlessly.

Dante wanted a shave and a shower. And he wouldn’t have minded a nap. He also suspected he looked decidedly rumpled but refused to ask and have that confirmed.

“I can review the security tapes, since I know most everybody in Serenity,” Sarah said, “but until we can narrow things down so I have some idea of who to look for, it seems fairly useless.”

“Yeah,” Dante said. “There was no camera covering that alley, front or back, we checked. If he’s on the recent security tapes, blending in with the crowd of townsfolk watching, we’d never know it. Not yet, at least.”

Robbie looked at the piles of folders on their round table and sighed. “Who was it that said we’d be a paperless society shortly after computers came along?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said, “but he was obviously an idiot. Even when we do store information on a computer, we always have hard-copy backups. Always. Boxes and boxes of files in the basement.”

Robbie nodded. “For the zombie apocalypse. I’m the same way about my books. Buy the e-versions for my tablet, but always buy a hardcover or paperback copy as well, for the shelves.”

“You’re weird,” Dante told her without looking up from his computer station.

“Yeah, yeah. Come the zombie apocalypse, you’ll be at my house looking for something to read by candlelight. Bring wine.”

“Come the zombie apocalypse, I’ll probably be looking for guns and food,” Dante said. And then he looked up to frown at her. “How did you pull me into that?”

“It’s a gift. Sarah, did you have a chance to eat before coming back on duty?”

“Yeah. I even managed a nap, though I don’t think Jonah believes that.”

Robbie sat down at the table, pulling the top dozen files off a fairly tall stack. “He’s looking pretty haggard. Normal for him?”

“It’s become a familiar look these last weeks,” Sarah said frankly as she sat and reached for files. “But before then . . . no. He’s a good chief, a good cop, and he works hard to do right by the people in this town. But he also knows how to delegate, and knows he needs rest to function at his best. Least he did. Until the teenagers vanished, and all this started.”

“He wanted to believe it was a stranger, didn’t he?”

Sarah paused in studying her topmost file and frowned. “You know, I’m not sure. I think maybe he knew all along that it was somebody here in Serenity. He’s the kind of cop who knows why people do the things they do, if you know what I mean.”

“A natural profiler,” Robbie said.

“I’d say so. It’s been minor things until this started. Something got stolen, he knew whose door to knock on. Kids causing trouble at the high school, he seemed able to sit them down and talk to them—and whatever he said, it stuck.”

“What other kinds of crime have you guys had to deal with?” Robbie asked.

“Usual. Vandalism, petty theft, a few domestic disturbances over the years. Nothing like this. Nothing even close to this.”

In the same casual voice, Robbie said, “When the teenagers disappeared, that was weird about the car doors and footprints.” Jonah had of course filled them in hours before on the other “oddities” of the various disappearances.

“Very weird,” Sarah said with some feeling. “You don’t know how much I’m hoping you guys can explain it—with or without psychic trimmings.”

“How do you feel about psychics?” Robbie asked.

“Total believer,” Sarah replied calmly and without hesitation. “Born and raised. My grandmother had the sight, and the whole family paid attention whenever she had something to say. And it was none of that vague you’ll-meet-a-dark-man bullshit either. Very specific. I came home from college once—went to UC Berkeley in California, so I didn’t get home often—and she told me flat-out to stop dating the guy I’d had only a couple of dates with. She’d never seen him, and I hadn’t mentioned him, even though I liked him. But she was adamant. ‘Stop. Do not see him again.’”

She had Dante’s attention now as well, both feds listening intently.

“I asked why, of course.”

“What did she say?” Robbie asked.

Sarah looked at Robbie. “She said, ‘He’s a killer. He will kill at least a dozen young women before the police find the evidence they need to put him away.’”

–

HE HATED THE blood. The way it smelled, the way it felt on his clothing, his skin.

He hadn’t realized there would be so much blood.

But she’d surprised him in what he’d thought would be a safe place, what with the curfew and all. As close as he dared get to the feds’ makeshift command center.

So he could touch the telepath’s mind.

Play with it a bit.

He didn’t need touch or even line of sight, but he did need to be close enough. He wasn’t sure exactly what his limits were, since this wonderful ability was fairly new to him, but he had sensed her when he’d reached the alley, so that had been close enough.

Until Annie Duncan picked the alley as a shortcut.

He couldn’t believe she’d done that. Couldn’t believe she hadn’t even worn her gun.

Stupid bitch deserved to die.

But he hadn’t liked killing her. Too messy. And not part of his plan.

He stood in the shower for a long, long time as soon as he got home, soaping his body again and again, using the hottest water he could stand. It hurt some of the scars still not completely healed, but he didn’t mind pain. If he’d minded pain, he’d probably be dead or addicted to painkillers by now.

He was neither.

The pain had only made him stronger.

And given him The Gift.

A Gift he intended to use to its fullest. After all, why else had he been singled out?

That was one of the things he’d wanted to discover in touching the mind of the telepath: how she had received her gift. But that information, that memory, had been buried deep, and he hadn’t been able to find the event that must have changed her life.

Not yet, at least.

He’d have to try again.

But he’d have to be even more careful now. Even more cautious in what he did, how he moved. Cops went insane when one of their own was murdered, he knew that. They’d be out in force every night, and they wouldn’t hesitate to start shooting if a shadow moved the wrong fucking way.

The darkness that had been his friend could become his enemy, if he wasn’t careful.

But he wasn’t done yet. He still needed to figure the telepath out. And that other one, the odd one who had somehow reached into Annie Duncan’s dead mind and found too many details of her death.

That was . . . strange. Unnerving. That was a kind of Mind Trick he didn’t understand. And didn’t like.

There should be rules, after all. Even about Mind Tricks.

Especially about Mind Tricks.

He soaped up his body one last time, finally sure he had rid himself of the stink of blood and death.

There were plans to be made.

And he was running out of time.

–

“WOW,” ROBBIE SAID. “I gather she was right.”

“Was she ever. I was majoring in law enforcement, so remaining silent about something like that really went against the grain. I asked her if I could stop it, alert the police, do something, but she said some things had to happen just the way they happened. This was one of them. Nothing I could do to change the outcome.”

Robbie and Dante exchanged glances.

“What?” Sarah asked. “Don’t believe me?”

“Oh, we believe you,” Robbie said immediately. “It was the other thing you said your grandmother said. That some things have to happen just the way they happen. It’s sort of the mantra of the Special Crimes Unit.”

“You mean you deal with that kind of shit all the time?”

“Yeah. Not fun.”

“Frustrating, I call it. And not a little bit scary when it comes to killers. One of the girls on my campus who was killed about two months later was a friend. She was his third victim, first college student. I never knew she was dating him, so I never got the chance to warn her. And I would have, no matter what Gran said. But . . . The police got close once or twice, but it was still almost two years before they caught that bastard.”

“Please tell me he was convicted,” Robbie begged.

“Of ten counts of first-degree aggravated murder and aggravated assault. They couldn’t prove he killed the first two victims, but the police were sure, and I think they convinced the families at least enough to give them some peace. In any case, he was arrested, charged, and with his guilt being a foregone conclusion, everybody agreed to a plea deal that locks him up forever and a day.”

“Not long enough to bring any of his victims back, but better than a death penalty.”

“I agree,” Sarah said. “Even if the system was working smoothly, which it most definitely is not, with the death penalty you get months, even years, of appeals, and after all that a few brief minutes of a needle or a gas chamber or the chair or whatever—and it’s done.” She paused, adding, “I always thought killers should be locked away in tiny cells with nothing to do but think about their crimes until they die.”

“I agree,” Robbie said.

“I’m not arguing,” Dante said, but absently, his attention back on his computer.

Robbie looked at him with a frown. “You sound preoccupied. What are you doing?”

“Reviewing the security videos from the courtyard where Luna Lang vanished—and the ones inside the Tyler house. Tyler really did get a top-notch security system: great outside cameras, and inside cameras covering all the common spaces and every single bedroom doorway—but the inside cameras are programmed to be on only from eleven P.M. to six in the morning, unless someone changes the programming. Outside, twenty-four-seven. And the outside cameras cover all the windows as well as the doors. Outside lighting is excellent, and on a timer from dusk to dawn.”

“That’s certainly extensive,” Robbie said. “If not a little paranoid. But given what happened . . . Did the FBI lab do a good job of enhancing the videos?”

“Tyler’s system is digital, so much clearer than your usual security cameras to begin with. The ones in the apartment complex courtyard were your garden-variety middle-grade cameras, slightly out of focus and grainy. The lab improved them considerably.”

He still sounded preoccupied. Robbie looked at Sarah, then said to him, “Dante? What is it?”

“Mmmm.”

“Dante, use your words.”

He looked at her rather blankly for a moment, then said, “You know the woo-woo stuff with car doors being open but photographed as closed, and footprints being visible but photographed as not being there at all?”

Robbie groaned. “Don’t tell me we have more useless information from those recordings.”

“No,” Dante said. “Not useless. I think. But I’m damned if I can figure out what I’m looking at.”

Robbie and Sarah immediately left their files and came to peer over his shoulders at the computer screen. He was using a split screen, and rewound both videos so he could start them at the right point. Then he started the tape on the left side of his screen, at normal speed.

They saw Luna Lang, the young, attractive wife and mother, dressed casually in jeans with her hair tied by a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She was walking briskly along the courtyard walkway to go to her neighbor’s condo. Everything about her looked utterly and completely normal.

Then normal stopped.

She stopped. Very abruptly. There was no sign of anyone else. No movement. And for several moments, she just stood there, her back to the camera. Then she turned and suddenly looked directly up at the camera. Her face was expressionless.

Like the face of a doll.

“Anybody else just feel a chill?” Sarah murmured.

“Oh, yeah,” Robbie responded, her gaze fixed on the screen.

Luna Lang moved quickly toward the camera, a visual that was disconcerting in and of itself. It was well above her head, and it was also obvious that she stood on something, though what was difficult to tell. But as they watched, she slowly changed the angle of the camera. Still wearing absolutely no expression, eyes blank.

She apparently got down from whatever she’d been standing on, disappearing from that camera’s range for a few seconds. But then she reappeared on a second camera, which showed her holding a lightweight metallic outdoor chair.

Seconds later, she was adjusting that camera as well, moving it slightly, slowly. There was a quick glimpse of her as she got down and moved the chair.

And then nothing.

Sarah swore under her breath. “There wasn’t a blind spot. Not until she moved those cameras. How could we have missed that? How could the security guards have missed it?”

Dante answered readily, even though he still sounded a bit preoccupied. “On the original video there was some static, just a few seconds of it, not uncommon enough to worry the guards at the time. And one section of that walkway looks pretty much like any other section. But once Mrs. Lang disappeared . . . that’s why Jonah had it sent out for enhancement. This is what the enhancement uncovered.”

The two women exchanged looks, and it was Robbie who said steadily, “He was controlling her. Somehow, he controlled her, made her change the angle of those cameras. Maybe even made her come to him.”

Sarah straightened slowly. “She sure as hell wasn’t herself. I knew—know—Luna Lang. She’s very expressive, always has been. But this . . . I’ve never seen a human face so blank. Even the dead have more expression.”

Robbie said, “If that’s his psychic ability, mind control, then it’s definitely unique. Human minds just aren’t that easily controlled. I mean, magicians and mentalists make it look easy, and the reality of hypnosis has convinced more than one person that it must be easy to actually control another mind just by suggestion—but they’re wrong. Almost no one can be hypnotized against their will, and even those that want to and can be can’t be forced to do anything their conscious minds would reject. And psychics can’t be hypnotized at all.”

“Really?”

“There are more psychics in the world than you might expect, and the SCU has studied a good number of them. Enough to conclude with fair certainty that psychics can’t be hypnotized.”

“Even by another psychic?”

“Especially by another psychic.”

“But you said he was in your head. Earlier, before you guys went out and found Annie.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s bugging me. I still don’t believe I was hypnotized, but he was definitely in my mind. Maybe trying to find out how much control he did have.”

“And it was enough to scramble your memories?”

“Not scramble, exactly. Everything made sense, it was just . . . it played out a different way, and I knew that wasn’t right.” She scowled. “Damn, this is difficult to explain. Especially when I haven’t figured it out myself.”

Dante said steadily, “Want another puzzle piece to add to the rest?”

“Not really,” Robbie said, but leaned down again to look at the other side of the paused split-screen. “Nessa?”

“Yeah. Watch.” He set the video in motion.

The camera was placed up high so that it covered the entire large kitchen as well as the space beside it, what designers called “keeping rooms” but which were basically just open dens with fireplaces and TVs.

“That light over the island stays on all night. And there are night-lights along the hallways and stairs, mostly because it’s a habit of Nessa’s to get up. I asked,” Dante said. “The cameras can go to infrared if the rooms go totally dark, that’s how the system’s programmed, but—well, just watch.”

There was no movement for a few seconds, and then a little girl in print pajamas, her long hair hanging down her back and her favorite stuffed animal under her arm, came barefoot into the kitchen. She put her toy on the center island, used a strategically placed kitchen stool to climb high enough to reach an upper cabinet, and got a glass for herself.

She filled the glass from the refrigerator’s dispenser, then stood sipping for a moment or two.

Then she went completely still.

“Shit,” Robbie breathed.

“Wait for it,” Dante said, still steady.

The little girl’s head tilted slightly, as if she were listening to someone. Then she put her glass on the island, walked around the island and to a distant corner—and appeared on a different camera, this one in what looked like a mudroom.

“The light isn’t normally kept on in there at two in the morning,” Dante said. “Which is when this recording was time-stamped.”

They could all see the door that probably led to the garage, see the security keypad beside it—

And then everything went black.

“She didn’t go near a light switch,” Sarah said. “How long—”

“Ten seconds,” Dante said. “The room stays totally dark for ten seconds, and then—”

And then the lights in the room came back on. Nothing looked disturbed. The door was still closed. The security keypad was still blinking the red light that indicated it was active.

Nessa was nowhere to be seen.

“I reviewed recordings from all the other cameras,” Dante told them. “Inside and outside the house. The only cameras that record Nessa when she gets up are in the great room and the mudroom. You don’t even see her in the hallway outside her bedroom, or on the stairs. You see her come into the kitchen, and you see her in the mudroom heading for the door. And then she vanishes.”

“You don’t see her in the garage?”

“No. Infrared recordings for out there during the night: two cameras, one trained on the door to the mudroom, the other trained on the double garage doors. No motion at all recorded out there. No sign of Nessa once she leaves. However she leaves.”

Robbie straightened and then moved restlessly away from the computer. “Well, it had to be the same, somehow. The same as Luna Lang. He got her to do whatever it took to make herself mysteriously vanish. Sarah, you guys printed the security keypad?”

“All of them.” Sarah had also straightened. “Nessa knew the code, but Caroline and Matt said she almost never touched the keypad. Still, we checked. Smudges mostly, what you’d expect from keypads touched two or three times a day by at least two people. And the smudges were only on the numbers that are part of the code.”

“I guess the cameras were out of her reach.”

“Very much so. And the nearest ladder was in the garage, high on a rack. A ladder much too heavy and unwieldy for a ten-year-old girl to manage.”

“Even if she’d had time.” Her frown deepening, Robbie swung around to look at the other two. “Time. Jonah said none of the clocks were affected in the Tyler house.”

“The videos are time-stamped,” Dante said. “That was something else I checked to make sure. No missing time on the recordings. When the mudroom goes dark for ten seconds, the camera’s clock keeps time. It doesn’t stop or slow down. Neither do any of the other clocks.”

“So,” Sarah said, “whether Nessa got herself out of the house or he got her out, it was managed without somehow tampering with any of the cameras.”

“Or maybe,” Jonah said from the front doorway, “that’s exactly how he got her out. By tampering with the cameras.”

ELEVEN

Robbie stared at him, still frowning. Then her frown cleared, and she swore under her breath. “We’ve been missing the obvious, haven’t we?”

“I think we were meant to,” Jonah said, closing the door and coming the rest of the way into the big room. He still looked tired, but it was clear his mind was working just fine. “Want to spook an entire town, have people disappear seemingly into thin air. Which any decent magician can do.”

“No mirrors or trap doors,” Sarah offered, still frowning.

“Who needs mirrors or trap doors when he can hack into a security system?” Jonah said.

“Goddammit,” Dante muttered. “You’re right; at the Tyler house, that’s the only thing that makes sense. And all he had to do at the condo complex was insert a line of code for a few seconds of static and then have Mrs. Lang move a couple of cameras a few inches.”

“Just about any computer geek could have done that,” Jonah said. “It’s a basic system, and even though it’s hardwired in, there aren’t exactly dozens of firewalls. It’s an apartment complex, not a bank. And not a theater; those cameras would have had to be hacked for Sean Messina to get out of the theater unseen. And they were installed a good ten years ago.”

“So not too difficult to hack,” Robbie noted.

“Not difficult at all. Now, the Tyler house, that would have been a lot harder. That would have taken some skill. Sounds almost impossible. Until you remember that security systems are designed to keep people out. Not in.”

Dante was rubbing his jaw absently. “Yeah, okay, but it still would have taken some skill to orchestrate the garage and outside cameras so the images remained frozen long enough for Nessa to get out and away, and yet keep the time stamp going.”

Jonah nodded toward the evidence board, where the shadow of a man’s outline represented their unsub—with no information beneath it. “So now we know three things about him. Can’t really prove he’s psychic, not in a courtroom. But now we know he’s good with computers and understands security systems. I can name off the top of my head a couple dozen men who barely know how to use their cell phones.”

“It’s a good start to the profile,” Robbie said. “Now we’re beginning to understand this guy.”

“Wait a minute,” Sarah said. “Luna looked hypnotized. And we didn’t see anyone around her.”

Robbie sighed. “He wasn’t within sight of me when he was messing with my memories. But that didn’t stop him from doing a pretty fair job, despite my shields. I seriously doubt Mrs. Lang had any shields at all. So . . .”

“She would have been easy,” Jonah said. “Nessa certainly would have. The only one of the others I would have called strong-minded is the judge.”

“Contrary to popular opinion,” Robbie said, “the more intelligent someone is, the easier they are to hypnotize. I’m guessing our psychic unsub would have been able to handle the judge too. At least long enough to get him away from his fishing site and maybe trussed up in the trunk of a car.”

“Which tells us something else about him,” Dante said.

Sarah looked at him, brows raised in question.

“Control is an issue with this unsub. He’s turned people into his puppets, mindlessly doing his bidding. I’m guessing he has little to no control over any of the people in his normal life. And that there’s probably someone he’d love to control but hasn’t yet gotten the nerve to try.”

Clearly uneasy, Sarah said, “How far would he take that when it comes to our missing people? I mean, okay, let’s say he used a little bit of psychic control and some decent computer skills to abduct these people. And then—what?”

None of them wanted to consider worst-case scenarios, but it was Robbie who finally said, “Since we don’t yet know why these people were taken, what their connection to him—and to each other—is, why these particular people were his targets, we can’t even speculate about what he did after he abducted them.”

“No,” Jonah agreed. “We can’t. All we can really know is that none of their bodies have turned up. Yet.”

–

HE HADN’T REALIZED how tired he was until he was showered and had to force himself to eat something. Had to eat. Had to keep his energy up.

But he realized just how tired he was when he heard faint sounds coming from his Collection, and had to concentrate hard for several moments until they were still and silent again.

He had been able to keep them still and silent even while he slept, but that was a different thing. He supposed, having done some reading on the subject, that what he used then was a kind of posthypnotic suggestion, planted deeply in their minds.

Maybe too deeply. The girl was, as far as he could tell, the only one who never stirred.

Maybe he had gone too deep with her.

He thought about it, but not really with any anxiety. After all, it was his Collection. It didn’t matter what they wanted or needed. They belonged to him. He only fed them because it pleased him to keep them alive.

For now, at least.

–

SARAH WAS FROWNING again. “Wait a minute. The first abduction. The teenagers. Simon Church’s old Jeep isn’t exactly crammed with electronics, unless you count those god-awful loudspeakers he jerry-rigged in the back. Nobody could hack into that thing except with an axe.”

“True,” Jonah conceded. He half sat on the conference table after finding a small space free of file folders. “But there’s still the mind-control thing. Or whatever it is. Hate to say it, but neither one of those kids could come close to winning an academic scholarship, and they were both very self-centered.”

“Easy targets,” Dante noted.

Sarah hadn’t stopped frowning. “Say you’re right about that. We are still left with two very large elephants in the room,” she said. “The first is those photographs I took that didn’t show the open car doors or the footprints both Jonah and I saw. And the second is those energy bubbles.”

Robbie shook her head. “I still think those energy bubbles have something to do with him and his abilities. I don’t know why it’s only outside and not inside, or how it monkeys with time like that. But I’m certain he’s the cause.”

“And the photographs?” Sarah’s voice was a bit tense.

Dante murmured, “The more intelligent the person . . .”

“You think he played one of his little mind games on me?” She didn’t quite snap the question.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said, holding up a placating hand. “But at least until he killed Officer Duncan, this unsub was apparently a two-trick pony. Computers. And some kind of psychic mind control. We really haven’t seen anything else from him in the way of skills.”

It’s not difficult at all to cut someone’s throat.

Nobody said that. Out loud, at any rate.

Jonah said, “Sarah, we know there was time for him to take those kids wherever he took them and still get back to the car before you found it.”

“Okay. But you saw the open doors and footprints too, Jonah. And there was not a lot of time between you leaving and Tim getting there with the tow truck.”

Nobody said anything, until finally she swore and said it herself. “Him too, huh?”

Jonah spoke carefully. “It was just before that cloudburst. You took the photos quickly, and Tim got the car hooked up to his tow truck quickly. If the unsub did have to . . . mess with your memories, both of you, it wouldn’t have been for long.”

“All he really had to do,” Robbie said, “was stall you two long enough to close the car doors and rake away the footprints—but leave the memory of that in your mind and Tim’s.”

Sarah remained stubbornly silent.

Robbie tried again. “I doubt he can create images on film, not that specific, at least. The energy he leaves is too . . . uncontrolled.” A thoughtful expression crossed her face briefly, but then she shook her head slightly and finished, “You took photos of the scene as it actually was; you only remember the way it looked when you found it, and showed it to Jonah.”

Grim, Sarah said, “Any way you can prove that?”

“In court? No.” Robbie sighed. “But I can probably prove it to you. Telepathically.”

“So you can read more than surface thoughts,” Jonah said.

“Memories sometimes. Especially if the person I’m reading has been . . . fretting about something. And I can usually project those memories back to whoever I’m reading. Look, Sarah, it’s up to you. I can keep my focus very narrow, and look only for those memories.”

Not exactly protesting, Sarah said, “Is it dangerous for you to try reading me with the unsub around somewhere?”

“I’m not so sure he’s near enough to matter,” Jonah said. “It’s not dawn yet, barely twenty-four hours since he abducted Nessa Tyler. And it’s been a very busy twenty-four hours for him. He has to be feeling the strain. Seeing Samantha go out the way she did is all the proof I need that psychic abilities take, sometimes, more energy than a psychic has to give.”

Robbie was nodding slowly. “He abducted Nessa, touched Sam’s mind at least once and probably twice, messed with my memories, murdered someone . . . And if he’s keeping our missing people alive, he has to do whatever it takes to accomplish that. You’re right. He can’t keep up that kind of pace, not unless he’s a hell of a lot more powerful than any psychic I’ve ever met. He has to eat, to sleep.”

“So,” Jonah said, “maybe this is our chance to try to get ahead of the bastard.” He looked at his second. “Sarah, I hate to ask, but it would help if we could cross off one more supposedly spooky thing from our list of what he can do. We’re never going to figure out who he is unless we know what he isn’t.”

“Okay, okay.” Sarah drew a breath and let it out. “Just . . . don’t expect me to like it.”

Keeping her own voice brisk, Robbie said, “I’m not a touch-telepath, but probably best if we’re both sitting down when I try this.”

“When you try it?”

“Well, I know I can read you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can read you right now. Control is one of the things we struggle with.” She looked suddenly at Dante, brows raised. “Maybe part of the unsub’s control issues?”

“Maybe. If those energy bubbles are what’s left over when he uses his abilities, it could be he doesn’t have as much control as he thinks he does, and is . . . spilling . . . the energy he can’t fully control.”

“That’s all we need. If Sam says his energy is negative, I believe her. Especially since we know now that he’s a killer. I hadn’t thought . . . but killing Officer Duncan could have added to that negative energy. I wonder if he even realizes.”

Sarah said, “Hate to interrupt, but can we please get this over with? Just because I’ve been comfortable with the idea of psychic abilities doesn’t mean I’m all that anxious to have my mind read. No offense,” she added to Robbie.

“None taken. I’m still not entirely comfortable with reading people, and I’ve been able to do it all my life.” She sat down at the table, while Sarah sat down immediately to her left.

“What do I do to help?” Sarah asked.