Deadly Messengers (34 page)

A fine mist of talcum powder like particles erupted into the air. As she peered at the writing on the page, the particles disappeared. Had she imagined them?

The two microscopic words printed there were bizarre.

I’m sorry?

What did that mean?

She looked up at Doug. The tear was gone. His dark eyes were locked upon her, making her feel like … feel like, like … prey.

“I’m sorry? I don’t under-saannnd—”

The words sounded slow and distant like she spoke within a vacuum. Then her voice disappeared. Her mind felt as though it were being absorbed, stripped away from her. The surroundings of the room, everything, took on a phosphorous green and silver hue.

The shapes in the kitchen, the fridge, the coffee cups, the table, the sugar bowl on the bench, even Doug McKinley seemed to phase in and out. Distorted. Then clear. Gray and white. Then dark. Her head felt ready to burst. A pounding roared in her ears, as though her heart shunted blood at a gallon a second. Small flexing shadows of red and pink floated before her eyes.

Just as suddenly, the pressure began to fade. An instant relief flowed through her as an odd silken calm engulfed her mind, a tsunami of peace.

When she looked over toward Doug, all she saw was his face, swimming in a peaceful, blue fog, reaching out to her. When the vapor's wisps touched her, they felt cool and wonderful
.

Where was she?

A voice spoke to her. Not a normal voice, a sound that surrounded her, as though she were transported inside a gigantic speaker box. The words were stretched and distorted, playing at slower than normal speed, forcing her to concentrate to understand their meaning. She closed her eyes, and listened. Those words held a sense of importance. Great importance.

“Ken-dalll. Kennn…dal.”

Her name. Was that her name?

“Yes,” she heard herself reply even though she hadn’t thought to answer.

“I haave a mishun foor you, Ken—dal. Do you underrr-stand?”

“Yeess.”

The voice grew clearer. Relief embraced her. She really wanted the words to remain inside her head, to understand their meaning. Her life depended on those words. They were her life raft on this strange ocean, the voice, her way home. The voice became everything to her.
Everything.
It was the voice of her father, her mother, her favorite teacher, her first love. Whatever words the voice spoke belonged to her.

“You know Kendall. You’re a very, very good girl. You’ll help them understand.”

“Yes. I want to help you.”

Every word felt clear, entering her brain like water poured into a long glass. “Tell me, Kendall, what made you the angriest you can remember? What wrong in the world must be righted?”

Kendall’s mind went in search of the feeling.

Of course, the answer was simple.

Her mother. That night. The terrible men at the car’s window. Looking in, at her, at her mother.

The thought, amplified by the voice, made the image raw and overwhelming. She felt nauseous as though someone had punched her in the stomach.

“Mom! They killed my mother.”

“Who killed her?”

She heard the question distantly, sweeping down from the heavens.

Was this God talking to her?

“Those men at the window. We’re stopped at the lights. They want the car.
Get out.
Get out.
GET THE FUCK OUT!
They’re screaming. My mom … she’s saying
NO!
Protecting me.
Don’t get out! Kendall. Kendall. It’s okay. Okay. We’ll be okay. Okay …
The door. They’ve got the door open.”

Kendall felt her breath catch in her throat. She saw her mother struggle with the man as he attempted to pull her from the car.

“
Kendall, run.
Then … blood.
On me
. Everywhere. Blood dripping from the window. Blood. So much—”

The feelings she’d hidden, avoided, all these years came flooding back with the fury of a wild winter storm.

“My fault. I couldn’t drive. Drank too much. Mom told me, call. Anytime, she’d come. Get me.
Too much blood
.”

The storm of emotion swirling inside, elevated her above the scene. Now she had a bird’s eye view of the inside of the car. Her mother’s body slumped in the driver’s seat beside her. The two men, men she could never identify, never brought to justice, running away down the darkened street. A sound came, so filled with pain she wanted to tear her head from her body. A scream.
Kendall’s own scream.

“Mom. MOM! Nooo—”

The words entered and then whirled inside like a pop song stuck in your head:
I hate them. I hate them. I hate them. I hate me.

“
They killed my mom. My fault. I called her.”

Hot, burning tears ran down her cheeks. Her heart shattered. The voice must be God come to take her to her mom.

“Terrible, Kendall. So unfair. But we can fix it. We can stop them from killing again. I’ve found them for you. This time you
can
stop them, so they never hurt anyone again.”

Happiness flooded into the darkened places the memories had exposed, relief following close behind.

She could avenge her mother. She
wanted
to avenge her mother, wanted to save others. Kendall’s tears slowly stopped. A smile spread across her face.

“Good, girl, Kendall. Now listen carefully. This is important, the most important moment of your life. You must promise not to stop until it’s done. To follow straight and true. Do you understand?”

The words filled Kendall’s world.

“I understand, yes. Straight and true.”

THE RADIO ANNOUNCER SEEMED FAR too chirpy for O’Grady. When he’d awoken early this morning, he’d thought he was better off working, looking over the video footage. Nothing had come of it, except he now felt even more tired after staring at a video screen for so long.

Trip was still with Kendall Jennings exploring the notion this McKinley had a source within the coroner’s office. They both believed his knowledge of the drugs prescribed to the killers was either a good guess or somebody had loose lips. In any case, they needed to satisfy themselves how he’d gotten the information. Cross your T’s and dot your I’s was O’Grady’s mantra.

O’Grady had decided to take a break. After hours, he’d gotten nowhere with the video, so he thought to head home and get some rest. He could then revisit the CCTV footage with fresh eyes. The last time he’d enjoyed more than three hours sleep was … heck, it was so long ago, he couldn’t remember.

He switched off the radio, preferring to listen to the engine than Mr. Happy’s irritating banter. Every single traffic light seemed against him. A higher authority was against him getting home. The idea of using the siren had even crossed his mind.

A few miles from the precinct, stopped at his fifth or sixth red light, was when a dreadlocked kid with a torn t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, jumped out in front of his car. He carried a water bucket and a squeegee and, after delivering a big smile toward O’Grady, began to clean his windscreen.

O’Grady sighed.
What next,
he thought
,
as he absently stared out his side window, trying to put mental distance between himself and the teenager. The kid went at it as if performing high-quality detailing.

Normally, he didn’t pay them. Sometimes he told them who he was and warned them off. It was an annoying practice at best, and dangerous at worst. The windscreen, in fact, the car hadn’t been washed since … actually, he couldn’t remember that either.

O’Grady rifled through the center console looking for change. Amid the fuel vouchers and candy wrappers, he found a few quarters. The lights would change any second, and Dreadlocks, having just finished, had moved toward his driver’s side window.

Pressing the automatic window button, O’Grady waited nonchalantly, while the window lowered.

“Hey, man.” O’Grady, dropped the coins into Dreadlocks open hand.

“Thank you, sir.” Dreadlocks nodded and pushed the change into his pocket. “Have a great day.”

Then Dreadlocks was gone, repositioning himself at the intersection ready for the next red light. He had a cocky swagger to his walk and O’Grady pondered what the windshield cleaner would think if he knew he’d just illegally scrubbed away at a police car.

As O’Grady pressed the button to send the window up again, his gut tensed.
His walk.
Wendy Thompson’s words struck him. “When I waved goodbye to Kate at those lights, she was just Kate. What did I miss?”

The windshield cleaner walking toward Kate Wilker’s car in the CCTV film flashed into his mind. The way he walked, the hunch of his shoulders as he stood at the driver’s window, the way he scratched at his arm, O’Grady had noticed them, their familiarity. But he’d dismissed the interaction as anything important. The guy was less than fifteen seconds at the window. That couldn’t be enough time to relay a message or whatever had occurred between the mysterious stranger and Tavell and Benson?

He’d watched the videos of the killers prior to their actions so many times he saw them in his mind’s eye as though they were playing on a screen. He checked the
walk
. Most of all he thought back to the way Kate Wilker’s windshield washer scratched his arm like something crawled under his skin.

He thought back to Tavell’s and Benson’s stranger. Did he scratch at his body as well? Such a small, common action, he’d paid little attention. The videos weren’t great, that didn’t help.
Damn
, he was trained to notice unique body movements, and he’d missed it.

The nagging thoughts, the coincidences, the strands on the web, so distant and unreachable, wrapped around him in that second. It’d been right there before him. This
could
be the connection.

These seemingly random events were
something
. What kind of something and how they fit together, he needed to work out. But first, he needed to check the videos again, side by side, to confirm what he suspected—that they were dealing with the same guy making contact.

O’Grady swung the car around, brakes squealing, and headed back to the precinct, his mind ticking over the possibilities.

Why would the perps be so open, meeting in public so near to the eventual crime scene? A new type of terrorist activity, he bet.

No, that didn’t fit. If the FBI suspected these were terror attacks and not random massacres, they would be involved? Hell, if it were terrorists, Homeland Security would be on their doorstep quicker than you could say, “suicide bomber.” There’d been no demands, no claims of responsibility, so cross out terrorism.

What if it were some kind of suicide or murder club?

No, problems there, too. The killers didn’t fit any criminal profile he’d seen. He mentally drew a line through the theory. No matter what area he prodded, it didn’t make sense. If it turned out to be an alien invasion, he wouldn’t be surprised.

By the time he was seated back in the video room and had begun to revisit the Kate Wilker CCTV footage along with Benson & Tavell’s encounters, O’Grady had come full circle. Was it just his weary mind grasping at straws?

He glanced at the clock.
Ten-forty-eight
. He needed his partner back here. Extra eyes sometimes made all the difference. He dialed Trip’s number, but the call went to voicemail. Could he still be interviewing McKinley? Surely he was done by now. More likely, he was with Kendall Jennings somewhere else? Annoyance played with him.

It should have been a simple, quick interview. O’Grady had checked McKinley’s history the night before. Clean. A few parking tickets was all. The access to the drug usage of the killers had played on him. He’d pointed it out to Trip, who’d simply said, “I’ll ask the question.”

It was another anomaly with this case—itchy strangers, psychic retirees, and killers with erroneous profiles. How did the coincidental anomalies tie together? If they tied together.

As he cued the video, his old partner’s voice banged in his head.
They never are and never will be just coincidences. They’re shining neon signs.

They might be neon signs, but he just wasn’t getting the message.