He gave her a politely patient look. “Analyzing crime scenes is what I do, Gwen.”
“Yes, I know. Sorry, it’s just that—never mind. I think I see where you’re going with this.”
“In my experience, it takes a very strong talent to overwhelm another person’s aura and stop the heart,” Judson said. “I’ve met very, very few psychics who can generate that much firepower and even fewer who can focus their talent so that it can be used as a lethal weapon. In those rare situations, the killer almost always needs to have physical contact with the victim. But there are exceptions.”
A chill feathered her senses. “Yes, I know. You think that whoever murdered Evelyn used a paranormal weapon of some kind, don’t you?”
“That’s the only explanation that works for this scenario. According to what Sam and his lab techs have discovered, psi-based weapons have to be used at fairly close range. They aren’t very powerful or accurate beyond a range of about twenty feet.”
Gwen took a long breath and let it out slowly, with control. “I’ve heard the Coppersmith R-and-D lab does research in that field.”
“Paranormal weapons have other limitations, as well. They can only be activated by someone who possesses some talent. And if they are crystal-based technology, they have to be tuned to the wavelengths of the individual who intends to use it. There are other issues, as well. Naturally occurring crystals that can be weaponized are extremely rare. Sam has tried growing them under lab conditions, but he’s had only limited success.”
Gwen wrapped her arms around herself. “Still, such weapons do exist.”
Judson met her eyes across the room. “You sound like you’ve had some personal experience.”
“Two years ago Zander Taylor used a paranormal weapon to murder Mary and Ben.”
Judson frowned. “Are you certain of that?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because he tried to use it on me, too. Now it looks like Evelyn has been killed in the same way. It’s as if Zander Taylor has come back from the grave and brought his damned camera with him.”
“What camera?”
“That’s what his dreadful device looked like, a small camera. Just point and shoot.”
Judson watched her for a long moment.
“How did you escape?”
“We were in the lab. There’s a great deal of energy in that place. Something went very wrong when Zander tried to use his camera. The device sort of exploded, I think.”
Judson gave her a politely skeptical look. “Sort of exploded?”
“It’s hard to explain. All I know is that he suddenly started screaming. He ran for the falls and jumped.”
“That’s all there was to it?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re a damn good liar,” he said. He smiled. “I like that in a woman.”
Eight
“When did you start talking to yourself?” Judson asked.
He’d held the question back until after the waiter had brought two glasses of wine to the table. The name of the restaurant was the Wilby Café. It featured a typical Pacific Northwest menu that ran the usual gamut from salmon and Dungeness crab cakes to steak. The establishment’s most outstanding virtue in his opinion was its convenient location. The café was located within walking distance of the Riverview Inn.
He could tell his question caught Gwen off guard. That had been his intention. She was expecting to be interrogated on the subject of Zander Taylor and the camera weapon. He’d get around to that eventually but he preferred the indirect route. It was usually easier to get straight answers out of people if they didn’t see the questions coming. He’d spent enough time in Gwen’s company now to know that she had long ago learned to keep secrets.
When it came to keeping secrets, he thought, they had a lot in common.
Gwen paused, her wineglass halfway to her lips, and looked at him for a long, considering moment. He didn’t care about the delay. He could sit here and look into her eyes forever. He realized that he was still a little jacked. Not like he could shut down completely around her, he thought. Something about Gwen kept him on edge and heated his blood as well as his senses.
For a while he wondered if she was going to answer the question. She had a right to her privacy, but, damn, he wanted to know more about her. And he knew that the talking-to-herself thing was not just an old habit.
She reflected a moment longer. In the end she took a sip of wine and set the glass down very precisely on the table.
“I wasn’t talking to myself today,” she said. “I was in a waking dream, talking to Evelyn’s ghost in the mirror.”
She watched him, waiting for his reaction.
“Huh.” He ran through the possible scenarios. “The ghost is some sort of dreamstate image manifested by your intuition?”
Gwen relaxed visibly. Her eyes cleared and she smiled. “Yes. That’s exactly what happens when I see the ghosts. But it’s almost impossible to explain that to people because it sounds like I’m claiming to have visions.”
“Which is exactly what is going on, when you get right down to it.”
“Sort of, yes.” She eyed him, once again wary. “You don’t appear too freaked. Most people look at me funny when I tell them about the ghosts. My aunt said I mustn’t ever tell anyone about the visions. She said I should learn to ignore them. But after she died, I went into the foster care system. Eventually I made the mistake of confiding in a counselor. Everyone concluded that I was seriously disturbed. The next thing I knew, I landed in the Summerlight Academy. By the time I graduated, I had learned to keep my secrets, believe me.”
“When did the ghost visions start?”
“When I was about twelve. They got stronger as I went through my teens.”
“That’s about the age when Emma, Sam and I came into our talents,” he said.
“I’d see the ghosts in unexpected places, almost always on some reflective surface,” Gwen said. “The first time it was a mirror in an old antique shop. I was terrified. Somehow I knew that it was not a real ghost, but in a way, that just made the experience more unnerving.”
“Because you wondered if you were crazy.”
“For a time, yes,” she said. “So did everyone else around me. But it was Evelyn who helped me to understand that the visions are actually lucid dreams that occur when I’m awake. I can go into a lucid dream on purpose. But the energy laid down at the scenes of violence seems to trigger the ghost dreams.”
“A lucid dreamer is someone who knows when he or she is dreaming, right? The dreamer can take control of the dream.”
“Yes.” Gwen took another sip of wine. “It’s not an uncommon experience. A lot of people occasionally have lucid dreams. But in my case, the talent is linked to my psychic intuition and my ability to see auras. I’ve come to the conclusion that seeing ghosts at old murder scenes is actually just a side effect of my type of paranormal sensitivity.”
“How did you figure out that the ghosts were always at old murder scenes?”
“After the first few instances, I went online and researched the locations where I had seen the ghosts. It didn’t take long to find out that in most cases there was a record of a murder or unexplained death in the vicinity. My intuition was picking up some of the psychic residue and interpreting it as a vision of a ghost.”
“The energy laid down by violence is powerful stuff,” he said. “A lot of people are sensitive to it, even those without any measurable talent. Almost everyone has had the experience of walking into a room or a location that gives off a bad vibe.”
“I know. But in my case the reaction is a little over-the-top.”
“How bad was the Summerlight Academy?” he asked.
“I was miserable at the time, but looking back, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was very lonely at first and I was scared, but I soon met Abby and another talent, Nick Sawyer, there. The three of us bonded. I’m not sure why. We just did. We stuck together until we graduated, and we’re still very close. We’re family. The other good thing about Summerlight was that I met Evelyn there. She was the one who helped me deal with my talent.”