The Third Eye (17 page)

“Of course you don’t,” Anne Summers said. “It’s a hellish responsibility, being born with a third eye. There’s actually a theory that psychic ability is an inherited trait. My grandmother had the gift.”

“Well, I’m sure mine didn’t,” Karen said, “or my mother would have told me about it. And however it is that people get it, I don’t consider a ‘third eye’ a ‘gift.’ ”

“You might as well, dear,” Anne said reasonably. “From what Rob’s told me, you’re very definitely endowed with one. You’ll find it pleasanter, under the circumstances, to think of it as a gift than as a curse.”

“We’re not going to be allowed to stay very long,” Rob said. “If there are things you want Karen to know—”

“Yes, let’s get down to business.” Anne spoke with sudden briskness. “As you can see, Karen, I’m out of commission. It’s a miracle, in fact, that I’m even alive. After dinner the other evening, I turned on the outside light and stepped out the kitchen door to carry out the garbage. Someone was waiting in the shadows at the corner of the house. As luck would have it, the sack I was carrying contained a broken coffeemaker. That slowed the force of the bullet and deflected it.”

Karen regarded the woman incredulously. “What sort of maniac would shoot somebody without any reason?”

“There was a reason,” Anne said. “I was becoming too much of a threat. I’d been getting too close and learning too much.”

“I told you about the kidnapping in Dallas,” Rob said to Karen. “That’s the case Anne’s been working on.”

“The vibes were strong,” Anne said. “That was one of those cases where the feelings just kept
coming
. I didn’t even
have to reach for them. I stood in that nursery next to those empty cribs, and it was as though the children were still in them. I could even see the couple who had taken them. If I were able to help with this new investigation, I’m almost certain I could find them.”

Karen stared at her.

“You mean you think those Texas people took our babies also?”

“Yes, I do,” Anne said. “The situations are so similar. With the Texas kidnapping, both a man and a woman were involved. They worked as a team, with the woman infiltrating the nursery and the man doing the driving. Rob says it was that way here.”

“What did the couple look like?” Much as she hated to be drawn any further into this, Karen found herself incapable of turning away from it. “Was anyone at the nursery able to describe them?”

“They never saw the man,” Anne said. “My feeling is that he was heavyset and had a beard. The members of the nursery staff who had contact with the woman guessed her to be in her late thirties. She wore a bandanna, which hid her hair color. I feel sure, though, that it was red.”

“Then they couldn’t have been the same couple,” said Karen. “The man who tied me up
was
bearded, but the woman’s hair was almost exactly the same shade as mine.”

“The woman was a redhead,” Anne repeated with certainty. “Perhaps she’s dyed it to fake a family resemblance to
you, but its natural color is red. The car they were driving was some sort of truck. No, strike that. Actually I think it was more of a bus or a van. It was blue, and the people had put mattresses in the back.”

“You think the couple in Dallas drove a van?” Karen shot a startled glance at Rob. “Those people today were driving a blue van.”

“
I
know that,” Rob said, “but I didn’t tell Anne.”

“There were mattresses,” Anne repeated, ignoring his interruption. Behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyelids were fluttering strangely and her voice had changed. It had taken on a rich, crooning quality that sounded the way woodsmoke smelled. “They drove those babies a long, long way. They took them into another state. When I looked into my mind to try to find them, I saw a mountain rising above a string of foothills. There was snow on its peak. You don’t find scenery like that in Texas. There is a house, and the children fall asleep there to the sound of rushing water. There aren’t as many there now as there once were. People keep taking them.”

The doorknob rattled.

Startled, Karen turned in time to see the door thrown open. A tall, gray-haired man in a white doctor’s coat stood in the doorway.

His face was flushed, and his eyes were bright with anger.

“What are you people doing here? Only immediate family members have access to this room.”

“I’m Officer Robert Wilson,” Rob began defensively, “and we’re conducting an investigation—”

“I know who you are,” the man said icily. “I met you with Chief Garrison. In case you’ve forgotten,
I
am Dr. Prior, the surgeon who removed a bullet from this woman’s abdomen. I informed you earlier, and I am now informing you again, that my patient is in no condition to have visitors.”

“I asked them to come,” Anne volunteered.

“Mrs. Summers is a psychic,” Rob said. “We think the person who shot her was trying to keep her from helping the police.”

“Then he’s done what he set out to do,” Dr. Prior said. “As Mrs. Summers’s physician, I care more about her health than about your investigation. Besides that, I was present this afternoon when Chief Garrison informed you that you were being removed from the kidnapping case. You have no authority to be in this room, and I want you out of here.”

“Anne,” Rob said, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Anne said. “I couldn’t have talked much longer anyway. Thanks for bringing your friend. Karen, good luck to you. Sleep well tonight, and dream.”

“Good night,” Karen said. “I hope you’re better soon.”

Out in the hospital corridor, the uniformed officer who had been so friendly upon their arrival was now bristling with hostility.

“You didn’t tell me you were off this case, Wilson,” he said accusingly. “You know the doc is going to go call Garrison.”

“I had to go in there,” Rob told him. “It was important for me to see Mrs. Summers. You don’t need to get stuck with the blame. Say I lied and shoved my way past you.”

“Rookie cops don’t decide what’s important,” the other man said. “If you join the force, you play by the rules.”

“Then maybe I shouldn’t be on it,” Rob said. “If the chief wants to talk to me, I’ll be over at my brother’s.”

He reached for Karen’s arm, got a death grip on it, and began to propel her rapidly down the corridor toward the elevators. The clock on the wall by the nurses’ station read eight thirty-seven. Visiting hours were now over, and they passed other departing visitors in a steady stream. From the open doorways on either side of the hall there came the murmur of live voices blended with the canned discord of an assortment of television programs.

“Slow down,” Karen said. “Please, Rob, I can’t keep up with you.”

For a moment, she thought he was going to ignore her. Then, abruptly, he slowed his stride and released his hold on her arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “I’m mad as hell, but not at you.”

“If it was that doctor who made you so angry—”

“It wasn’t,” Rob said. “Not the man himself, I mean. He was just doing his job. It was his timing—bursting in like that right when Anne was really getting rolling.”

“She was worn out,” said Karen. “We were pushing her too hard.”

“I don’t think we were. She wanted to talk. It was the medication that was making her groggy.”

“Why did you do it?” asked Karen. “Why did you bring me here, when you knew you weren’t supposed to? Why pretend you’re assigned to this case if you really aren’t?”

They were standing now in front of the row of elevators. Rob reached across and gave a vicious punch to the down button.

“Anne asked me to bring you,” Rob said. “I’d told her about finding Carla. She said then that she wanted to meet you. When this happened today, it made it imperative. Anne can’t work, and you can.”

“But you’re off the case now,” said Karen. “At least that’s what that doctor said. Is that the truth?”

“Yes,” Rob admitted, “but what does that matter? I knew Anne Summers long before the police department ever even heard of her. I can talk with her as a friend and former student.”

“That’s not how it was, though,” said Karen. “You came to my house tonight in uniform. You made it sound as though you were there on official business.”

“I had to,” Rob said without apology. “If I hadn’t, your parents would never have let you come with me.”

“But you had no right—”

“I
do
have a right!” Rob said belligerently. “I’m involved in this! I don’t need to be authorized by
anybody
!”

Karen stared at him in bewilderment.

“You care so much?”

“You’re damned right, I care!” Rob told her. “Matthew Wilson is my nephew!”

Sleep well tonight, and dream.

It did not happen immediately. For the early part of the night, Karen lay comatose, drugged by sheer fatigue, sunk in deep drifts of sleep so thick and all-encompassing that they provided insulation from the world. In the later hours, however, she slid from a condition of total oblivion into a second state of slumber. It was at this point that the dreams that had been lying coiled beneath her pillow began to emerge.

The first of the images were not her own. A snowcapped mountain loomed ahead of her, but it was not her mountain, it was Anne’s; and the house that lay beyond it was the house that Anne had described to her. The van parked out to the side had no letters on its side. It was the van that Anne had envisioned; its floor was covered with mattresses.

Karen thought, at first, that the river might be Anne’s as well. Viewed, rippling and swirling, from a distance, it might have been any wild river, drunk on the juices of springtime. As she drew nearer, however, she began to see that what had originally appeared to her to be froth was composed of tiny white bodies clad in diapers and nightgowns.

It was then that she knew that this river had not been inspired by one of Anne Summers’s visions. A pair of child-size sandals lay on its pebbled beach.

It was the sound of the river that woke her. The rush of water, cascading over rocks, tugging at tree roots, hurling itself against the bank and bouncing back again, was horribly familiar. The noise rose in her ears to a thunderous roar and threw her violently awake.

Cast up so abruptly onto the shores of consciousness, Karen was too shaken to think past the pounding of her heart. It had been a dream, she tried to reassure herself, not a vision. The two were distinctly different. Visions depicted reality, but dreams were imaginary. It would have been strange, indeed, if the events of the previous day had not triggered at least one good, old-fashioned nightmare.

Forcing her mind away from the spectacle of the child-spattered river, she transferred her gaze from the bedroom ceiling to the window. Beyond the pane, the sun was shining, but the pearl-colored sky was still smeared with the remnants of yesterday’s rainstorm. The diffused brilliance produced an eerie glitter that seemed to fill the air with flickering silver.

For a long time Karen lay quiet, letting herself become semihypnotized by the oscillating patterns of the shifting light. Finally she forced herself to sit up in bed. The effort it took to haul herself into a sitting position brought home to her how much abuse her body had taken. Tentatively, she felt for the spot on her head that had struck the stove corner. It was puffy and sore to the touch. The smudged yellow bruises that lay exposed below the sleeve of her T-shirt were additional ugly reminders of the previous day’s adventure.

Painfully, Karen dragged herself out of bed. When she went downstairs, she found her mother at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the paper.

“So you’re up!” Mrs. Connors said by way of greeting. “I thought you’d sleep a lot longer. How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” Karen told her. “I ache all over, especially my legs.”

“I bet you’re hungry,” her mother said. “You ate so little yesterday. What would you like for breakfast? There’s bacon and eggs, or, if you like, I can make French toast.”

“Eggs would be fine.” Karen eyed the newspaper apprehensively. “I suppose it made the front page?”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Connors, getting up from the table. “Where would you expect it to be? They even have a photo spread of the children. It’s disgusting the way those media people insist on wringing every drop of drama out of people’s heartache. There’s one bright spot, though—they don’t seem to have made the connection yet that you’re the same Karen Connors who found Carla Sanchez.”

“Well, that’s something, I guess,” Karen said.

She picked up the paper and spread it out on the table. An array of familiar infant faces gazed up at her. In the bottom right corner of the lineup, a round-cheeked Matthew Wilson beamed engagingly. The picture was a standard department-store photograph, shot against an artificial backdrop of autumn foliage. It appeared to have been taken quite recently, for the dimple-to-dimple grin displayed his current four teeth.

“See this baby?” Karen held up the paper. “He’s Rob Wilson’s nephew.”

“You mean, that police officer’s related to one of the children?” her mother exclaimed in surprise. “That explains, then, why he’s so wrapped up in this case. He’s already called you once this morning. He left his number and wants you to call back.”

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No, but he did say there haven’t been any ransom demands.”

“I can’t understand that,” Karen said. “It makes no sense. Why would anyone kidnap children except for ransom? This is the same thing that happened in Dallas. None of the parents there were contacted either.”

“Why do you mention that?” her mother asked her. “Do the police think the two cases are connected?”

“Yes,” Karen said. “Anne Summers, the woman Rob took me to visit at the hospital, was the psychic who worked on the case in Dallas. She thinks the kidnappings were committed by the same people.”

“The ones who shot her?”

There was a moment of silence.

Then Karen asked softly, “How did you know that? How did you know that Anne was shot?”

“You mentioned it last night when you left for the hospital.”

“I did not!”