Touching Evil (39 page)

"I can make some calls," John said. "I still have plenty of contacts here in Seattle." He carried his copy of the list to the phones at the other end of the room.

"I'll go get a map," Jennifer said. "We can start pinpointing all these."

Maggie studied the list, waiting for something to jump out at her. Even so, she was very surprised when something did.

She knew this city, knew it well. But she wasn't certain why the address of a waterfront warehouse should leap out at her the way it did. Why? It was one of half a dozen other warehouses, at least three of them fairly remote or isolated. So why did this one feel so ... right?

Because Quentin's friend Joey had been found at the waterfront?

Or ... because of the sound?

. . .
I
know I heard another sound, a sound that bothered me somehow. Because I recognized it, or thought I should have . . .

Hollis had said that. And Ellen had said the same thing. Even Christina had mentioned hearing something, something she hadn't been able to remember. What had they heard?

Maggie half closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to bring that faint, half-heard, and half-understood sound out of the hodgepodge of impressions and sounds and scents stored in her own subconscious after all the interviews with the victims.

Water.

Water lapping against pilings.

Maggie looked around the room. John was on the phone, jotting down notes on a legal pad. Jennifer, Andy, and Quentin were bent over a map spread out on the table, carefully marking locations from possibilities on the list.

Maggie looked at the list, then laid it down atop her sketch pad. There was only one waterfront location remote enough to provide the privacy and secrecy he needed. She should tell them. She knew that. There was really no excuse not to tell them.

Her car was here at the station, John had driven her back there to get it this morning, both of them surprised to find the car not only intact but apparently untouched, her sketch pad safely inside, and she had driven it here, where it was more likely to remain safe.

She got up and went to pour herself some coffee, having already noticed the pot was empty. Picking it
up with a shrug, she left the conference room, ostensibly to get more water.

On her way out of the station, she left the pot on top of somebody's filing cabinet.

"Well," Jennifer said, staring down at the map, now marked with numerous little red flags, "if we eliminate all the places that aren't remote or isolated enough for his ... needs . . . we end up with six possibles. All warehouses or storage facilities of some kind."

John joined them and said, "Only three of the addresses on this list are no longer in use, at least according to my sources." He bent over the map and pointed them out. "Here. These three. Supposedly either empty or storing bits of equipment and machinery forgotten long ago."

Quentin frowned at the map. "Two warehouses and one storage building. But only the two warehouses are remote enough to satisfy his requirements, I'd guess, and they're miles apart."

"So which one do we check first?" Jennifer asked.

Before anyone could offer a suggestion, Scott spoke from the doorway, his voice strained. "Where's Maggie?"

John looked around swiftly, realizing only then that she had been out of the room far too long. "She's . . ." He steadied his voice, something in Scott's face sending cold fear through him. "She went to get more water for coffee, I think. Why?"

"I found the file on the last victim from 1934."

Quentin was frowning at him. "And?"

Scott opened the folder he carried and silently held up a photo all of them could see clearly. All too clearly.

The last woman killed in 1934 could have been Maggie's twin.

"Christ," John breathed. And he knew, even before they looked for her, that Maggie was no longer in the building, that she knew or guessed where Simon would be and had slipped away to face him.

Responsibility. Atonement.

"She's gone after him," he told the others, hearing the hoarse fear in his own voice.

"Alone?" Andy stared at him. "In Christ's name, why?"

John shook his head, unable to even begin to explain any of it right now. "Just—trust me. That's where she's gone."

Quentin didn't waste time with questions, just said, "She hasn't got much of a head start on us, but if we're to catch up to her in time we'll have to split up to check both warehouses."

"No S.W.A.T team," John said immediately, repeating Andy's earlier statement. "If a bunch of cops show up and she's there, he could—" He couldn't even finish the thought.

Quentin said, "I agree."

Andy groaned. "Shit."

"Do
you
trust anybody else to go in, with Maggie in the line of fire?" Quentin asked him.

"No. Dammit."

"Then it's us. John, are you armed?"

"In my car."

Andy scowled at him. "Goddammit, John."

John shrugged into his jacket. "Don't worry, Andy, I have a permit to carry. And I'm a good shot."

"Listen to me. If you shoot the man who killed your sister, there'll be a lot of sympathy, but—"

"If I shoot him, it'll be because I have absolutely no other choice. It won't be for revenge. Trust me on that." He looked at Andy steadily.

"Shit. Okay, Jenn and Scott will come with me." He stared at the map, at the two remaining flags. "Want to flip a coin?"

Quentin studied the map for only an instant. "John and I'll take the waterfront warehouse."

Andy looked at him. "Because of Joey?"

"Yeah. Because of Joey."

"Let's go," John said.

It didn't occur to Maggie until she got there that the warehouse might have been wired for security. But as she approached the place on foot after leaving her car nearly a hundred yards back along the rutted road, she also realized that he would have done nothing to draw undue attention here. The isolation alone would protect him, that and the fence Maggie had scaled just after parking her car.

It was still a gray, dreary day, cold, not raining but almost, and nothing dry crackled under her foot to give away her approach. The warehouse she neared was a huge, hulking old building, part concrete and part rotting timbers, with a slate roof and very few windows. Maggie found the door easily enough but paused with her hand on it, her eyes closing briefly.

Useless not to admit she was terrified. Because he was in there. And because there might be a dying or dead woman in there with him, a woman Maggie wanted desperately to save if she could. If she could.

What she couldn't do was open the door to those inner senses. They could give her an edge—or destroy
her. They could help her find him—or kill her with another woman's mortal injuries long before he could get his hands on her.

So she did her best to keep those inner senses firmly under control, shut deep inside herself and as inactive as she could possibly force them to be. It required almost as much focus and concentration to
not
use the senses as it did to use them, and she was all too aware that she would not be able to do it indefinitely. A few minutes, maybe.

Maybe.

She drew a deep breath, then slowly pulled the heavy door open. The hinges didn't creak. Inside was darkness, but as she stepped in and eased the door shut behind her, her eyes quickly adjusted. She could smell old machinery and dust.

And blood.

It stopped her, but only for an instant. She picked her way carefully among splintering crates and looming pieces of rusting equipment, gradually getting a feeling for the size of the place. And seeing, finally, a light in the distance.

She moved toward it cautiously, becoming aware that he had not enclosed the space in which he ... worked. Perhaps he was claustrophobic. He had been before, she remembered. Hated enclosed places, just hated them.

When had that been? 1934? At the very beginning, in 1894? She wasn't sure. Her memories of other lives were only instincts, flickering bits of knowledge, precarious certainties. The universe refused to make it easy for her.

He had picked a warehouse with soaring spaces above and arranged his ... working space . . . within
walls made only of old crates and unused equipment in an area near the waterside end of the building. A worktable with various tools and ropes and bottles of unidentifiable liquids. A gurney off to one side, presumably so that he could wheel his victims out to whatever transportation he used.

And in the center of the space . . .

It looked obscene. A double bed with carved oak head and footboards. And beside it, a chair. A beautifully upholstered, wingback chair. With a footstool.

From her angle, Maggie could see a woman's wrists raised and tied to each side of the headboard, but she couldn't see if Tara was alive or dead.

And even with her inner senses closed off, she could feel pain. Pain from this victim and those who had gone before her, distant whispers of agony so acute they had soaked into the very matter of this place, the particles that made it real. Maggie had to stop for a moment and press her hands to her mouth, concentrate on blocking, closing out, holding within.

When she finally opened her eyes again, she saw him.

He had come out of the shadows and was doing something at his worktable, and even from here she could dimly make out a wordless humming, almost a crooning sound. When he turned toward the bed, she saw that he wore a plastic mask, not a horror mask, but one with perfect, smoothly polished features, like those of a statue, white and lifeless. Female features. And the black wig he wore swept down on either side of the white mask, so that he had the creepy look of a mannequin.

She also saw that he was holding a knife.

Maggie took a quick step forward, then froze as a
shadowy figure emerged from between two large crates near her, paused only to make a beckoning gesture to Maggie, and then flowed toward the work area. A slender, childlike young woman with a heart-shaped face and delicate features and long, dark hair.

Annie.

"Bobby . . . Bobby . . ."

He jerked to a stop, the eerily pretty white face turning quickly.

"Bobby . . ."

Understanding, Maggie eased her way to one side so that she would be approaching from a different direction and then moved toward him, hoping her own voice wasn't shaking too badly, and sounded as eerie as Annie when she called out, "Bobby ... I'm sorry, Bobby, so sorry. I didn't mean what I said . . ." She didn't know where the words came from. Memory. Instinct.

The knife he held clattered to the stone floor, and he backed up another step, his physical posture one of tension and uneasiness while that white face remained expressionless. He fumbled behind him on the table, then held out a gun in one black-gloved, shaking hand.

Maggie wondered if it was the gun he had used to kill Quentin's friend Joey.

"Bobby," Annie murmured sadly, "you hurt me, Bobby. Why did you hurt me?" She glided into the circle of light, facing him. Confronting him. The nightgown she wore was fine linen, and thin, and her feet were bare. "Why did you hurt me, brother?"

He made an odd, harsh sound.

"Bobby," Maggie called, moving toward them slowly. "Bobby, I didn't mean it when I said you
weren't a man. I didn't mean to laugh at you." She cast a quick glance toward the bed and flinched at the blood-soaked mattress, the pale, thin body that was bruised and battered. The missing eyes.

She couldn't tell if Tara was dead or alive.

For an instant, her control wavered, and she felt a jolt of pain so intense it nearly doubled her over. Desperately, she struggled to shore up those inner walls, to close out the suffering she couldn't afford to share this time.

"Bobby." Annie glided another few steps toward him, holding out her hands beseechingly as she drew his attention away from Maggie. "I've been trying to find you, Bobby. I miss you so much . . ."

He made another choked sound and this time ripped off the mask and wig. Maggie recognized him from the pictures Christina had shown her. He was an ordinary man with brown hair, a high forehead, and pale grayish eyes. Slender but with wide shoulders and those oddly incongruous, outsize hands, their power obvious even gloved. Especially gloved.

But otherwise an ordinary man.

"You're dead," he said hoarsely to Annie.

Maggie moved into the light. "We're both dead, Bobby. You killed us. You killed us a long time ago." She was terrified she was wrong about this. Terrified of not being strong enough to destroy his evil. Terrified of dying.

He swallowed hard, staring at her now. "Deanna . . . I killed you. Why won't you stay dead?" His voice cracked. "Why in hell's name won't you
stay dead?"

Annie uttered a sweet laugh. "We're stronger than you, Bobby. We always have been. Didn't you know that?"

Shattering the quiet, he fired two times directly at her.

The bullets hit the crate behind her, splintering wood. She smiled at him. "We're stronger, Bobby. We'll always be stronger."