"This way." Quentin turned, and they followed him into the building.
Maggie was so accustomed to guarding herself that it usually required a conscious effort to open the barriers inside and let all her senses probe her surroundings. She didn't like any of the sensations but by now at least knew what to expect when she reluctantly dropped her guard.
With all the broken windows in the place, there was light enough to see, if not very well. Stairs rose upward along the right side of the foyer. A hallway stretched past the stairs toward the rear of the building, with doorways lining it, most of them gaping open because of missing or severely damaged doors. Peeling paint covered the woodwork, and stained wallpaper dangled in ragged strips from the walls.
Fixtures such as doorknobs and lights had been removed and all else of any possible value long ago carted out of the building either legitimately or by vandals. Beneath their feet, creaking floorboards were barely covered by ancient linoleum, and the place smelled of dirt and mold and many years of cooking and living.
And blood.
Heavy, coppery, the stench rose up, threatening to choke her. All she saw on the floor was the faint brown trail Quentin had described, but what she smelled was something still warm and wet and sticky.
Maggie tried to unobtrusively breathe through her mouth. Could Quentin really smell that, or had he only known that she could?
"According to the reports," John said, switching on his flashlight and shining it around them, "the police found nothing here. At least nothing they considered evidence."
"Just like his other dumping places, right?" Quentin's voice was as matter-of-fact as John's had been. He turned on his own flashlight and led the way to the stairs, walking beside the intermittent brown trail of dried blood.
"So they told me. Drummond claims to have a very efficient forensics team, and they have a solid reputation. According to their reports, they went over this entire building and searched a block in every direction. Nothing."
Nothing, Maggie thought, but Hollis Templeton's blood. She concentrated on turning on her flashlight, on walking up the stairs behind Quentin and ahead of John, all of them avoiding the dried blood trail. She could feel the familiar inner quivering, the cold weight in the pit of her stomach, and her legs felt stiff, awkward as they moved. At first distantly, she became conscious of twinges of pain and dull aches that slowly intensified until they throbbed inside her.
The darkness came in flashes that lasted only a second or two, and Maggie climbed steadily without outwardly betraying the fleeting moments of blindness.
The smell grew stronger.
She had hoped that more than three weeks would have made it all feel more distant and unreal, that she could get through this without exposing her pain to these two men, but that seemed increasingly unlikely.
At the top of the stairs, Quentin pointed his flashlight toward the rear of the building, down a hallway. "She was left in a room at the back of the house. Odd, really. Why carry her upstairs at all? Why not just dump her downstairs?"
Softly, hardly aware of speaking, Maggie said, "He wanted her to have to drag herself all that way."
Almost as softly, Quentin asked, "Why did he want that?"
Maggie walked past him, only dimly aware of the question. She followed the blood trail down the hallway, her light pointed at the floor, until she found herself in a room. Like the rest of the place, it was peeling paint and ancient wallpaper and not much else. A broken window allowed light into the room, though it wasn't much light. She walked to the center of the room and pointed her flashlight to one of the rear corners, where the blood trail ended and a roughly rectangular shape of less dusty floor hinted that something had lain there for a while.
"There was a mattress," John said, his voice low but nevertheless startling in the silence. "It's where he left her. The police don't believe he brought it here, just found it here. They have it now, of course."
Maggie stood there stiffly for a long moment, wanting to fight everything she felt but trying not to. It came at her in waves, the stench of the blood, the warm stickiness of it that clotted and chilled with the icy wind touching it. And the pain, all the degrees of it, sharp jolts and dull aches and the swelling agony that was as much emotional as physical. And the intermittent flashes of darkness that lasted seconds now, horrible darkness filled with terror and panic and loss, such loss…
She had forgotten her companions and started when John grasped her arm. She was coughing. When had she started coughing?
"Maggie?"
"I have to… get out of…" She jerked her arm free of his grasp and lurched toward the door, almost stumbling.
John started after her, but Quentin caught his arm to stop him.
"Jesus," the other man murmured softly.
Staring at him in the dim light, John was surprised to see something that looked like awe on his friend's mobile face. "What?" he demanded. "What is it? What was wrong with Maggie?"
"Wrong? I don't know if I'd call it wrong." Quentin drew a deep breath. "But I don't envy your Maggie, I'll tell you that."
John didn't question the possessive. "Why?"
"It explains a lot," Quentin mused. "How she's able to establish such a strong bond with victims, how she's able to so accurately draw what they see. Christ, no wonder it looks like magic to those around her."
"She's psychic?"
"It's not quite that simple, John. There's psychic… and then there's gifted. Or cursed. Did you see her face just now? She was in agony. Actual physical pain."
"Why? What was hurting her?"
"He had hurt her. The rapist. He attacked her, raped and beat her, took her eyes-and left her here to suffer." Quentin shook his head. "John, that's what Maggie was feeling. She was feeling everything Hollis Templeton felt in this room more than three weeks ago."
CHAPTER FIVE
Jennifer Seaton was a good cop. But even more, she was an intuitive cop who had learned to trust her hunches. So while Scott worked the phones attempting to track down those missing files, she got on her computer, connected to the Washington state library system database, and conducted a different kind of search.
She hit possible pay dirt before Scott did, but since it was very late on a Saturday afternoon it took her another half hour just to track down a library still open for business.
"I understand the request, detective," the head librarian said, the confusion in her voice belying the words, "but we're locking the doors in ten minutes, -
"Police emergency," Jennifer said, ruthlessly misusing her authority. "If you'll hold them for me until I get there, I'd appreciate it. I'm leaving now."
As she hung up the phone and rose to her feet, Scott said sourly, "Oh, yeah, leave me with this, why don't you?"
"Any luck?" she asked, pausing by his desk and digging into her pocket for another cinnamon-flavored toothpick.
"All I've got so far is a growing list of stations with old files stored in their basements. Nobody really knows what they've got, and nobody's volunteering to go down and check, especially on a cold Saturday afternoon. And I can't say that I blame them." He raked fingers through his hair and peered up at her. "Calling it a day?"
"No, I'll be back in about an hour. I may have found a shortcut for us-or at least another source we can use."
"Well, bring me back a snack, will you? I missed lunch, and there's nothing here but stale sandwiches and some really stale donuts."
Jennifer nodded. "I'll see what I can do. Where's Andy?"
"Beats me. He was at his desk a minute ago."
"If he gets back before I do, ask him not to leave for the night until he talks to me, okay?"
"Sure."
Jennifer left the station and made her way to the side lot where her car was parked. The streetlights had come on even though twilight made it easy to see, and she paused beside her car to look around, uneasy for no reason she could explain to herself. Being intuitive didn't make her overly imaginative, so she was surprised to realize that she definitely had the creeps.