“I found something in the desk. My desk, not hers. It was in a drawer I never use because it’s in an awkward position in the desk layout, and apparently she’d been using it to store work-related things she no longer used. Mostly old notebooks. I went through all of them, and they were all the shorthand notes she’d taken. Dictation, notes about schedules and appointments, that sort of thing.”
“What was unusual about that?”
“Nothing. But when I was going through the last notebook-which was actually the one that had been on top, by the way-a slip of paper fell out. I’m guessing it was something she wrote down during a phone call, and the date puts it just before the murders began.” He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, adding, “My prints are all over it, but I figured it didn’t really matter. It’s clearly a private note, since it doesn’t match anything in my schedule, and I doubt it has any value as evidence-except to maybe point the investigation in a different direction.” He placed the small piece of paper on the conference table and pushed it across to her.
Out of habit, Hollis nevertheless used the eraser of the pencil she was holding to draw the paper closer so she could study it. “Looks like her handwriting,” she said.
“I’m no expert, but I’ve seen a lot of her handwriting over the years. She wrote that. Plus, that’s the sort of doodling she tended to do when her mind was on something else.”
The “doodles” were clear enough. A little cat face; a couple of hearts with arrows through them; stairs leading to nowhere; a sun setting off the edge of the paper with its rays beaming; a female eye, with long lashes and carefully detailed iris; and two circles connected by a series of smaller circles.
The paper was clearly from a notepad; it was a neon green, and across the top was printed: It works in practice, but not in theory.
“There were other notepads like this one in her desk,” Hollis remembered. “The kind with preprinted cartoons or funny sayings on them.”
“Yeah. She said they lightened up the serious tone of a lawyer’s office, but she only used them for personal or throwaway notes.”
Hollis nodded, and studied what Tricia had written in the center of the notepad.
J.B.
Old Hwy
7:00 5/16
It was followed by two large question marks.
“Did Tricia know Jamie Brower?” Hollis asked.
“She never mentioned it, if she did.”
“How did she react when Jamie was murdered?”
“Shocked and horrified, just like the rest of us.” Caleb frowned. “She did take a few vacation days unexpectedly, now that I think about it.”
“Did she leave town?”
“She said she was going to. The time off was because her sister had had surgery, and Tricia needed to go to Augusta and help take care of the kids.”
Hollis pushed the note to one side and hunted through the folders stacked on the table until she found the one she wanted. She looked through several pages, frowning, then paused. “Okay. According to her sister’s statement, at the time of Tricia’s death she hadn’t seen her in more than three months. I thought I remembered reading that.”
“Tricia lied to me?” Caleb was baffled. “Why? I mean, it’s not like I even asked her why she needed the time off. She had so much vacation and sick time accumulated, I remember telling her to take a week or two if that’s what she needed. But she came back to work about… four days later.”
Hollis looked through the folder for several more minutes, pausing here and there, and finally closed it. “We’ve backtracked every victim’s life for about two weeks prior to their murders, which means we have information that starts tracking Tricia just a few days after Jamie was killed.”
“So you don’t know if she was here in town or went somewhere else.”
“No. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find out, though. Her apartment manager has been very cooperative, and Tricia was a friendly neighbor, so her neighbors noticed her.”
“A lesson to all of us not to become too isolated, I guess.”
“One way to look at it.” Hollis hesitated, then said, “Did Tricia ever show up to work with unexplained bruises or burns, anything like that?”
“No. I told you her former boyfriend showed no signs of abusing her. I never saw a bruise, and since she seldom wore makeup I think I would have noticed.”
“True enough.” Hollis smiled. “Thanks for bringing this in, Caleb.”
He took the hint and rose to his feet. “I only hope it turns out to be helpful.”
“I’ll let you know,” she promised. “That closure we were talking about.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He hesitated just an instant, then turned and left the conference room.
Hollis was just about to call Ginny in and find out if the younger officer wanted to share a pizza and do some brainstorming when she felt a sudden chill, as if someone had opened a window into winter.
She watched gooseflesh rise on her arms and had to force herself to look up, toward the doorway.
Jamie Brower stood there.
“Oh, shit,” Hollis murmured.
She wasn’t solid flesh, but neither was she a ghostly, wispy thing; she was definitely clearer and more distinct than Hollis had yet seen her. In this form, anyway.
Her expression was anxious, worried; Jamie said something-or tried to. All Hollis heard was that peculiar hollow silence.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to hold her own voice steady. Trying not to feel terrified. “I can’t hear you.”
Jamie moved a step closer to the table and Hollis. Or rather-and very eerily-floated closer, since she didn’t seem to actually take a physical step.
Again, she tried to say something.
This time, Hollis could-almost-hear something. Like a quiet voice speaking from the far end of a huge room.
She focused, concentrated. “I can just barely hear… Try again, please. What do you need to tell me?”
Jamie’s mouth moved as she tried to communicate, the intensity of her need so obvious that Hollis could literally feel it, like something pushing at her.
Unnerved, Hollis lost both concentration and the desire to keep trying. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but I just can’t hear you,” she said, her own voice unsteady now.
An expression of pure frustration crossed Jamie’s lovely face, twisting it, and she threw up her arms in the gesture of someone reaching the end of her limits.
Half the folders on the conference table spewed their contents into the air.
When the rain of paper and photographs had ended, Hollis found herself sitting in the middle of a mess.
Alone.
Ginny came into the room a moment later, looking around in surprise. “Hey, it looks like somebody lost her temper.”
“Yes,” Hollis said. “Somebody did.”
“Okay,” Paige said, “getting creeped out here.”
Isabel and Rafe looked at each other, then stopped holding hands.
Paige reached up to smooth down her hair, and they could all hear the crackle. “Jesus,” she muttered. “I’m going to have to write a detailed report on this one. It’s the first time that my ability to tap into other psychics’ abilities actually manifested itself physically.”
“Some psychic abilities do manifest themselves physically,” Isabel reminded her.
“Yeah, but not many. I know your visions do that. Have you had one of those, by the way?”
“Not since I’ve been in Hastings.”
“I wonder if you could now.”
“I don’t know. I assume not, since the visions are just another aspect of the clairvoyance.”
“And both are boxed up inside a shield that might as well be Fort Knox.”
“You’re serious? It’s that tough?”
“And then some. Bishop had me test his and Miranda’s shield once, and it hit about eight or nine on our scale. Of course, we don’t know how consistent that sort of ability is; it may vary widely according to the circumstances-i.e., why the shield is being used by the psychic at that particular moment. When we did the test, they weren’t especially motivated or feeling driven to protect themselves. If they had been… who knows?”