Touching Evil (22 page)

"Maybe they'll be able to track down why the 1894 date is important. If it is," Jennifer said. "In the meantime—Andy, if it's okay with you, I'm heading over to the Central precinct. Their file clerk isn't
absolutely
sure,
but there might be some really old file boxes in their storage room. I want to check them out, see if I can find those missing 1934 files or possibly some from 1894."

Andy looked at the stacks of files on the conference table and sighed. "Yeah, go ahead. Nothing in this mess is helping us."

Scott asked, "Jenn, want me to come along?"

She grinned at him. "Oh, no, pal. You get to put all these useless files back where they belong and then try to find out what happened to the ones the North precinct clerk
swears
were lost in the move to their new building."

With a grimace, Scott said, "It is not fun being the low man on the totem pole." But he seemed cheerful enough as he picked up a file box and followed Jennifer from the room.

"They need to be busy," Andy told Maggie and John with a sigh. "Neither one of them has been a detective long enough to be comfortable with the realization that seventy-five percent of police work is sitting around—either going through papers, trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of facts, or just trying to talk through the problem until it starts to make sense."

"Sometimes I think most of life is like that," John offered wryly.

"I don't blame them for being restless," Maggie said, her brooding gaze fixed on the bulletin board. "It's hell just sitting here waiting. Wondering when the phone is going to ring."

When it did at that moment, Andy lifted a brow at her and scooped it up. He said, "Brenner," and listened for several minutes, and didn't have to mutter, "Oh, Christ," for everyone in the room to know the news was bad.

As soon as he hung up, John guessed, "Samantha Mitchell?"

"No," Andy said heavily. "The bastard's having a busy week. We've got another missing woman."

In the storage room of the Central precinct station, Jennifer found a lot of files. A lot of old files, some going all the way back to the 1890s. But she didn't find anything of interest for 1894; there had been relatively few murders reported in Seattle around then, and none that even came close to fitting their criteria.

Worse, there was absolutely no sign of any more files for 1934. For that entire decade, as a matter of fact.

After more than an hour of fruitless search, she was dusty, irritable, and had three paper cuts and a headache. She was also inclined to appreciate computers a lot more than she had before all this had started. Those machines had their bad points, but at least they didn't get dust up her nose or slice up her fingers.

She made her way to the station's lounge and sat down with a soft drink, glumly considering her options. They weren't promising. Maybe Scott could track down those files lost in a move to a new building, but it didn't seem likely. Unless she wanted to physically visit every storage room and basement of every station in the city—and she did not—then she had to accept that this particular trail might well have dead-ended.

Jennifer hated dead ends.

She had been so
sure
that something useful would be found in the old files. Oh, she'd been offhand about it with Scott, but from the moment she had seen that first sketch from 1934, the adrenaline rush had been intense. All her instincts had been screaming at her. Finally, after all these months, a break in the investigation.

Except that it wasn't, of course. Dammit.

"Hey, Seaton, what're you doing in our neck of the woods?"

She looked up and managed a faint smile for Terry Lynch as he joined her at the table. "Slumming, of course."

He eyed her consideringly, his deceptively open face as friendly and guileless as always but his gaze sharp. "There's a smear of gray dust on your nose."

"Because you have a filthy storage room," she told him, using a paper napkin to dab at her face.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Looking for anything interesting?"

Jennifer gave him an abbreviated version of the Drummond's-got-us-digging-through-old-files speech, perfectly aware that Terry wasn't buying it. Not easy, she reflected silently, to lie to an old partner. Or an old lover.

But he nodded gravely, only his wry blue eyes telling her he knew she was bullshitting him. In a chatty tone, he said, "You guys any closer to getting that rapist?"

"Not so you'd notice."

"Just heard there's another woman missing."

"Oh, shit. Do we know it's him?"

Terry shrugged. "I think your boss is checking it out; any woman goes missing in the city, you guys get the call, you know that."

Jennifer frowned. "If it is him—he's moving a hell of a lot faster."

"Looks like."

She barely hesitated. "Are you hearing anything on the streets, Terry?" He was a patrolman, having failed the detective exam Jennifer had passed with flying colors; the blow to his ego hadn't ended their relationship, but her transfer to another precinct nearly a year ago had.

He wrapped both hands around his coffee cup and hunched his shoulders in the thinking posture she recognized with a pang. "Not really."

"Not really? So you did hear something—but aren't sure it means anything?"

His smile twisted. "Still reading me like a book. Yeah, there was one thing. I was going to call you, but. . . hell, Jenn, it sounds so screwy."

"In this case," she told him dryly, "screwy is beginning to be the order of the day, Terry. What is it?"

"Well, we picked up a transient day before yesterday, got him for creating a disturbance outside a store. You know how it is. Anyway, the guy was mostly drunk and not making a whole lot of sense, but he did say something that caught my attention."

"Which was?"

"Said he'd seen a ghost."

"Oh, come on, Terry—he was drunk and babbling. Probably had the DTs."

Terry nodded. "Yeah, I thought the same thing. But, see, there were a couple of odd things. For one, he didn't sound as crazy as he should have, somehow. And it turns out this guy used to be some hotshot computer expert. Apparently, he had too many problems being bipolar to hold on to his job and ended up on the streets."

"Sad," she commented. "But sadly not so unusual."

"No. But here's the other odd thing. We found him about two blocks away from where that last rape victim was found—Hollis Templeton? And he was staring toward that building while he was babbling about having seen a ghost a few weeks before. So I wondered."

Jennifer wondered too. "Terry ... is he back on the streets?"

He grimaced. "Afraid so. But my guess is, he'll still
be in the area. There's a mission near where we picked him up where guys like him can get a bed and a meal. You might try there. I don't have much of a description to give you—he was so filthy it was hard to say what he looks like. White male, maybe forty, six feet, not more than a hundred sixty, brown and brown." He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the name and address of the mission as well as the man's name, then tore out the sheet and handed it to her.

She accepted it but didn't get up right away. Instead, she said wryly, "You told the file clerk to suggest I just might find what I was looking for here, didn't you, Terry?"

He smiled. "You know how fast word gets around, Jenn. Especially with Scott Cowan calling every station, too innocently asking about old files. So I figured one of you'd show up here sooner or later. I just asked Danny to hint we might have the files you wanted here."

"And then let you know I was coming?"

"Like I said—I was going to call you about it. But I figured you might think I was just using it as an excuse and refuse to even take my call."

"You might have told me all this
before
I spent so much time in your filthy storage room."

"Yeah, I might have."

She got to her feet, smiling. "So you weren't using it as an excuse?"

"Well, not entirely."

"I would have taken the call, Terry."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She saluted him casually and left the lounge. It wasn't until she was in her car and looking at the note he'd given her that her smile faded. Another dead-end lead? Would she discover only a
poor, damaged man with a damaged mind playing tricks on him?

Or something else?

Maggie wasn't especially eager to walk through the home of the most recent missing woman, but she knew only too well that time mattered; the sooner they could determine with certainty whether Tara Jameson had been abducted by the Blindfold Rapist, the better. So when Andy suggested she and John go along and check out the apartment while he talked to the fiance who had reported her missing, she agreed.

"Another high-security place," John noted as they stood before the apartment building.

"The bastard seems to like them," Andy agreed sourly. "Our department shrink says it's some kind of challenge, that maybe he goes out of his way to take the women from supposedly secure locations even though he could get them a lot more easily when they went out to grocery shop or something."

"A challenge," John mused.

"Yeah."

"This is an older building, isn't it? I remember it being here twenty years ago."

"Yeah, but it's been updated, at least as far as security goes."

Maggie, who was silently marshaling her energy and trying to narrow her focus in order to retain at least some kind of detachment, only half listened until they entered the building, checked in at the security desk, and Andy asked her where she wanted to start.

"The fiance is waiting in her apartment with one of my people," he added.

Maggie looked around the bright lobby. "This is awfully public. Is there a service elevator?"

"Yeah, down that hallway there, and it's the only one goes to the basement. It was checked out, even though the security videotapes for both here and the basement access door don't show anyone the guards didn't okay in the areas, and nothing at all suspicious." He nodded toward the security desk and the two guards who were watching them warily.

"Still, it's the most likely way for him to get her out of the building, right?" "I'd say so."

"Then I want to start there. Go up to her floor in that elevator."

"I'll go with you," John said.

Maggie didn't object, just nodded.

"Eighth floor," Andy told them. "Apartment 804. I'll be there with her fiance." He headed off toward the regular elevators.

"Are you sure you're up to this?" John asked her abruptly.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Maggie, you were upset when you got to the hotel this morning, and you're still upset. When you went home last night, you were more tired than anything else. So I can't help wondering what happened later."

She was only a little surprised; either his perception was sharpening where she was concerned, or else she wasn't hiding her tension very well. "It was ... a nightmare, that's all. I didn't sleep well."

John had the feeling she had evaded the subject and yet hadn't really lied to him, which made him all the more curious to find out the whole truth. But all he said was "You don't have your sketch pad today. It's the first time."

"So? I don't always carry it."

"I think you usually do, especially during an ongoing investigation."

Maggie shrugged. "Usually—not always."

"So why not today?"

"Maybe I forgot it."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Well, then?"

She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head. "Never mind. The only thing I'm thinking about right now is whether Tara Jameson is or isn't the sixth victim."

John followed as she moved toward the service elevator. "You know, you could just try saying it's none of my business," he commented mildly.

"I guess I could," she murmured.

He decided to take a chance and push just a little bit. "Unless maybe it is. I think you're too honest to lie about that. So is it my business, Maggie? Is there something you're not quite sure you should tell me?"

She glanced at him, then drew a breath and said calmly, "Several things, actually. But not here and not now. Okay?"

Bearing in mind Quentin's warning, John got a grip on his curiosity and nodded. "Okay."

A flicker of gratitude crossed her face, which made him glad he'd agreed. It also made him wonder even more what could have upset her so much; clearly, she wasn't looking forward to telling him about it.

Maggie paused in the hallway a few feet from the service elevator and visibly braced herself.

John was hardly given to premonitions, but a sudden uneasy impulse made him say, "Maybe this isn't a good idea."

She looked at him gravely. "Why not? Because I might
imagine
something terrible? But my own imagination can't hurt me, can it, John?"

He chose his words carefully. "After what I saw in the Mitchell house, I know it's more than imagination, Maggie. I just... I don't want to see you hurt like that again."