Julia grabbed Cheney’s arm. “You know he’s killed her, Cheney, you know it, the moment he burst through her front door.”
“Not necessarily, I didn’t hear a gunshot.”
“But you have his gun! He could have strangled her or stabbed her or hit her on the head.”
“No, I didn’t hear anything like that.” A lie, but it wouldn’t help her to hear about the thud. “Hang in there, Julia, we don’t know, simply don’t.”
Sherlock turned in the front seat to face them. “What should we know about Kathryn Golden?”
‘Sorry, let me give you guys some quick background.” And he did. “—and when she called me this morning, she told me she’d had another vision, that Makepeace was coming in a car. I rolled my eyes, I’ll admit it, but it made me look in my rearview every other second, and I spotted him.
“I would have sworn most everything from the so-called vision she treated us to yesterday, any of us could have known or guessed—and for the rest, she probably had a source inside the SFPD.”
“What do you think, Julia?”
“Kathryn’s always bragged about all the insiders she knows. A cop too? Why not?”
“Savich, you’ve got maybe twelve more minutes,” Cheney said. He paused, looked down at his cell and punched in Kathryn Golden’s number. A man answered on the first ring. “Is this you, Agent Stone? A little late, aren’t you? Too late. Oh yes, tell the bitch you’ll be too late for her too. I’m coming for her,” and he punched off.
“Makepeace answered,” Cheney said. “I don’t know Golden’s status. I heard a bit of an English accent this time, which means he wasn’t trying to hide it.”
Sherlock said, “Or he’s rattled and he couldn’t control it.”
Savich looked at Julia’s face in his rearview mirror and pushed the Beemer to eighty miles per hour. They streamed around cars and drivers’ startled faces. He grinned. “Okay then, let the cops chase us to the psychic’s house if they want.”
They pulled into Kathryn Golden’s driveway behind three local cop cars, Dix and Ruth right behind them. “Julia, stay in the—”
“Don’t even think it, Cheney Stone.”
Captain Paulette, siren blaring, screeched to a stop at the curb. He waved at the cops spilling out of the house. “Stay back, guys,” Frank said over his shoulder as he jogged up to the Livermore police, and showed his badge. He was back in a moment.
“The front door was open, nobody home. The local cops want to know what’s going on. When their lieutenant gets here, I’ll have to tell him. I told them it’s a kidnapping, or a murder. They’re calling in their forensic people to dust for prints, and that’s fine. Damn, you know, you guys are sure keeping me pumped.”
“I’d like to go inside,” Savich said. Frank ran interference for them, and when Lieutenant Draper drove up three minutes later, Frank filled him in. Draper sent some of the cops who had come out of the house to spread out and question all the neighbors. There was no clue to what Makepeace was driving.
When Savich stepped into the entrance hall, there was a dead, queasy silence, a layer of fear in the air.
Sherlock said beside him, “You can feel how empty the house is.”
Savich nodded, and thought, And the fear, your fear, that fear is still here. But he didn’t kill you here, in the house. He took you.
“ I wondered how he got here so fast, as I’m sure all of you have as well,” Frank said, “and so I checked and guess what—Ruth, you heard the second special media report, my wife did too. The first one was over an hour before.”
Cheney said, “So that makes him as much as an hour away. He could have killed her right here, but he took her. What does that tell us?”
Dix said, “Maybe he was afraid the cops would drive up any second, so he got in and got out fast, taking her with him.”
Julia said, “Maybe he took her because the news said she was working with the police to help find him. They talked about her vision—maybe he believes she really did see him driving after Cheney and me.”
Savich said, “If he does believe she’s psychic, then he’d want to take her out of the mix.”
Dix thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay, I can buy that. Why not?”
Julia said, “I agree. It would make sense from his point of view. Maybe he thinks she knows where to find me.”
Savich breathed in the dead heavy air again. He felt Kathryn, felt her fear, her terror, and he felt something else, something cold and deadly.
Dix said, “Fact is, we really have no idea why he grabbed her so quickly.”
Savich said, “No, we don’t. Captain Paulette, we’ll go back to San Francisco. You’ll let us know if the police find any witnesses, all right?”
When they’d stepped outside Kathryn Golden’s house into the late afternoon heat, Julia’s cell phone rang. She stepped away. “Wallace? Yes, I know, but have you heard about Kathryn being kidnapped? No, no, unfortunately the police have no idea where she is. What—? There are six of us in all. Yes, three are FBI agents and one is a sheriff. Really, Wallace, what—”
She listened, then slowly punched off, and said, “That was Wallace Tammerlane.” To Dix and Ruth, she added, “He’s a psychic medium, one of August’s best friends. The thing is, he’s asked that all of us come to his house, as soon as we can get there. He said it’s urgent.”
Cheney said, “But what does he want?”
“He didn’t tell me, only said it was about Kathryn and it’s urgent.”
Ruth looked from one face to the next. “We don’t have much of a choice, do we? So, let’s go see the psychic.”
Dix said, “Why do I think I’m about to take a bus to never-never land?”
CHAPTER 42
When all of them arrived at Wallace Tammerlane’s beautiful Victorian an hour and ten minutes later, Wallace’s black-garbed butler, Ogden Poe, greeted them at the door and ushered them into the living room. Wallace and Bevlin were seated in chairs facing each other in front of a roaring fire.
“What are you doing here, Bevlin?” Julia asked.
Bevlin shrugged. “Wallace wanted me to come over. It’s better with more people, you know.”
What was better, Sherlock wondered, but she knew a showman when she saw one and was willing to wait. “Some digs,” she said to Julia as she stepped into the living room. “Look at all those little teacups and saucers. I’ve seen similar ones in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. And all the old photos of the Crimean War, I wonder where those come from?”
Bevlin said to Sherlock as he rose, “I don’t like Victorian fuss. I like space and views.”
“You’re a hippie philistine,” Wallace said. “Red beanbags— just saying it makes me shudder.”
“Those red beanbags represent small vibrant areas of being,” Bevlin said, whatever that meant, Cheney thought.
“All of this is very interesting,” Julia said, aware that the three FBI agents and Sheriff Dix Noble were getting more impatient with each passing minute, “but we have more important things to do. Wallace, since you demanded that all of us come, let me make the introductions.”
Wallace shook hands with the three FBI agents, pausing briefly in front of each of them. To Sherlock, he said, “Sometimes people look at you and smile, and don’t see your substance. That’s always a very bad mistake to make, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Sherlock said, “one would think it is.”
He turned to Ruth, looked at her closely, then slowly nodded. “You are extraordinarily good at your job, Agent Warnecki. You see so very much, don’t you?”
“We all see too much sometimes, don’t you think?” Ruth said.
When he reached Dix, he became very still. Finally, he said, “I see a nearly desperate man, Sheriff Noble, about what I don’t know, but it’s clear to me that you’re frustrated and angry.”
“You think?” Dix said. “You’re a whiz at reading people, aren’t you?”