FBI agent Ronil Singh, of the Rutland field office, was the poster boy for tall, dark and handsome, and so pointedly polite that I immediately suspected he was visiting me under sufferance.
I offered my visitors coffee, and when I went to the kitchen, Ryan, Darcy and Lizzie followed.
“You told the FBI about me?” I said.
“Is that a problem?” Ryan asked.
I set a tray with cups, cream, sugar and some of the animal crackers I’d bought in town. Ryan grinned when he saw these, grabbed a gorilla and bit its head off.
“I always figured cops were supposed to be skeptical unbelievers,” I said.
“I always figured cops were supposed to believe the evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“I checked on the necklace.”
“And?”
“Carl Mendez did give it to Laini, and he did have it specially made. And she was a cyclist.”
So, the vision had been accurate. That pleased me. Scared me a little, too.
Ryan helped himself to an elephant and a cougar. “Go on, you can say it …”
“What?” I said, all innocence.
“You told me so.”
“I did, indeedy. And I’ve got more, but it’ll have to wait.”
I put the coffee pot on the tray and handed the lot to Ryan to carry into the living room, where Agent Singh was standing, staring at the figurines on the shelf. If you think those are creepy, you should see the doll in the attic, bud.
Singh sat down only after I did and accepted a cup of coffee, but he left it untouched for the rest of the interview. Darcy snuffled at his feet, and Lizzie put her front paws on the couch beside him, begging for affection.
“Sit,” Singh said, and to my surprise, they did.
“Agent Singh is one of the investigators on the Jacob Wertheimer case,” Ryan said.
“You’re not here about Laini Carter?” I asked.
“That’s not under our jurisdiction, ma’am,” Singh replied.
“Right.” I sipped my coffee. “So, how can I help you?”
“Officer Jackson here contacted us because he believes you may have some” — Singh hesitated, clearly searching for the right words — “extraordinary knowledge of the crime?”
“Knowledge? No, I don’t know anything. I just sometimes get … impressions when I touch objects or visit places where something traumatic has happened.”
“I see. And have you had this ability all your life?”
“No, just since December.” Singh gave me a questioning look, and I found myself babbling, “I banged my head a few times, then drowned and apparently died. When I came back, I started experiencing things.”
“Was there no medical explanation for your symptoms?”
His face remained blank and his manner polite, but I could tell he thought I was brain damaged.
“None that the doctors could find.”
Giving up on getting any attention from Singh, both dogs wandered over to Ryan, who slipped them each an animal cracker.
“And what impressions did you get when you handled the rib bone that your dog found?” Singh asked me.
Now it was my turn to search for words. I tried to explain the suffocating darkness and fear and the sense of evil without sounding like a complete loon. Singh’s eyebrows twitched once or twice, and he pressed his lips together as if to prevent himself from commenting.
When I petered out with, “And that’s all,” he grimaced and said, “I see,” in a way that made me think he clearly didn’t see at all.
Opening his briefcase, he removed four brown paper sacks with folded tops and placed them on the coffee table in front of me. Lizzie and Darcy immediately abandoned Ryan and came over to investigate, but Singh stretched out an arm and pointed a finger at the doorway.
“Kitchen,” he said firmly, and they both sulked out.
“How do you do that?” I asked, amazed.
“These bags” — Singh indicated the collection with a sweep of his hand — “each contain a single object. I would like you please to touch or handle the objects one by one and let me know what you … get.” I didn’t think I was imagining the note of cynicism in his voice.
“Okay, sure.”
Feeling like a contestant in a game show, I unfolded the top of the nearest bag, stuck my hand inside and pulled out a man’s wristwatch. I held it in one hand, then in both, but felt none of the sensations I associated with getting a reading. I closed my eyes and concentrated, sending my full attention to the timepiece in my hand.
I shrugged and dropped the watch back in the bag. “Sorry, nothing.”
Singh nodded, as if this was exactly what he’d expected.
The next bag contained a small silver crucifix. Again, I held the object, closed my eyes, and concentrated. Again, I got nothing.
“Look, I don’t always get a reading. In fact, most of the time I don’t. I can’t make it happen.” Even to my own ears, it sounded like I was making excuses.
“Of course, I understand perfectly,” Singh said, his lip just hooking in the beginnings of a sneer.
Scowling at Ryan for putting me in the position of feeling like a performing monkey, I tipped the contents of the second to last bag into my hand. It was a matchbook, pure black except for a silver exclamation mark embossed on the front and a New York address on the back. I held it tightly, shut my eyes and channeled my anger into my hands. My fingers prickled, my scalp tightened, and my breath caught at the image that flashed into my mind.
A young woman, early twenties, heavy makeup.
Topless.
Surprised, I looked up — just in time to catch the look Singh exchanged with Ryan. His expression was one of clear derision, and it pissed me off royally. I closed my eyes again and doubled down over the matchbook. It took me a couple of seconds, but I got it again, like re-entering a dream when you’ve just woken up but are still half-asleep.
A woman, topless, wearing a sequined G-string. She’s in a box. No, a booth — a small booth with gold walls and a heavy red curtain across the doorway.
Music plays. She writhes and wriggles, rubbing her hand over her breasts and between her legs.
A man looks on, his expression caught between would-be cool and growing lust.
She dances across to him, straddles his thighs.
I opened my eyes and told Singh, “I got something on that one.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. A topless woman wearing a silver wig was giving a lap dance to a man.” I smiled, savoring the moment. “To you.”
Agent Singh kept his face impassive and said nothing, but he ran a finger under his collar as if it was suddenly too tight.
I shook out my tingling fingers and took a deep breath before tipping the last bag over the table. A button rolled out — round, made of light wood, with a raised rim and four central holes. I picked it up and at once felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. Heavy darkness closed in, and a suffocating sense of wrongness robbed me of breath. I teetered on the edge of an abyss of deep shadows. And fell.
The button, fused to my hand, was pulling me down, down, deeper down. No!
Wrenching my eyes open, I opened the tightly closed fingers of my right hand and dropped the button back onto the table. I rubbed the palm of my hand, which burned as though I’d been holding a red-hot coal.
“This is it? This is the thing the killer left with the bodies of his victims?” I said, my voice sounding breathy.
The agent shot Ryan a filthy look. “What the hell, Jackson — you told her? So much for this being an objective test!”
“I only told her the killer had left something with each of his victims, not what that something was,” Ryan snapped back. “It could just as easily have been the cross or the matches.”
Singh frowned at me and demanded, “What did you just see?”
“I didn’t really see anything except darkness.” A stygian gloom blacker than the darkest night. A darkness that was less the absence of light than the presence of something ancient and evil. “And I got a bad feeling, same as when I touched the bone the other day. But this time, I didn’t feel fear. I mean, I was scared, but for me. It didn’t feel like there was fear connected to the button.”
“Darkness and a bad feeling. Fear but no fear,” Singh repeated. “That’s it?”
I nodded.
“I see. Well, I think we’re done here.”
Clearly, I hadn’t won him over.
He dropped the button back into the bag and returned all the bags into his briefcase. “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
“You’re most welcome,” I said coldly.
“We’ll take it from here and contact you if we have any further questions.”
Translation: don’t call us, we’ll call you.
“What if I have more visions about this?” I asked.
Seeming reluctant, he handed me his business card. “You can call if you get something new.”
I made no effort to see him out. As usual, after having a vision, I felt limp and drained. Sighing, I closed my eyes and relaxed back into the couch cushions.
That was when it happened.
A hand caresses a stubbled jaw and a bloodied lip, then trails down a throat, over a wire garrote. Pushes aside an open shirt to stroke a naked chest, circling bruises with a forefinger, on its way down lower. Opens the fly, slowly, one button at a time, kneading the flesh beneath with fingertips and knuckles. Rubs. Harder and harder.
Shuddering and swallowing down nausea, I opened my eyes and said, “He’s white.”
Agent Singh, who was almost out of the room, stopped and turned. “What’s that?”
“Your perpetrator. He’s white. Left-handed, I think. He wears a ring.” I tapped the third finger of my left hand. “So he’s probably married.”
Both men’s attention was riveted on me now.
“The perp is definitely male?” Singh asked.
“Yes. That is, I didn’t specifically see … But yes, he’s male.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” I raised a hand to my throat. “And he killed this victim by strangling him with a wire.”
Singh and Ryan exchanged a glance.
“The victim wore a red-and-blue plaid shirt, and blue jeans with buttons, not a zipper. Levis, maybe,” I said.
“Did you get anything else?” Singh asked.
I stared at my hands for a few moments, trying to recapture the feel of the vision.
“He likes them. Sexually, I mean,” I said. “He wants to have them. And to know them. No, to be them.” I nodded. That was it. “He wants to be them in some way.”
Ryan’s mouth was open, and Singh’s eyebrows were raised so high they almost merged with his hairline.
“Give me that button again,” I said.
Wordlessly, Singh walked back over to me and tipped the button out of the bag and into my palm. As if readying myself for a dive into deep water, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Then I brought both palms together, holding the button between them. My eyelids fluttered as my vision went dark.
Two hands, wearing latex gloves now, thread the button with black twine. Secure it with a double knot. Thread the other end of twine through the eye of a large, curved needle. One hand pinches the bloodied lips together between finger and thumb, and the other begins stitching …
With an involuntary cry, I opened my hands and dropped the button. Singh bent to retrieve it from the carpet while Ryan said, “You’re as white as a sheet, Garnet! What did you see?”
I pushed the back of a hand against my mouth and swallowed down my nausea.
“You found that button on his mouth, on the victim’s mouth.”
Singh returned the button to the paper bag. “No, we didn’t.”
“The remains were skeletonized, and the bones were scattered, Ron,” Ryan said. “You can’t say for sure where the button was originally left.”
“Neither can she.”
“He sewed the boy’s mouth closed, with the button and black twine,” I said. “Excuse me.”
As I rushed out of the room, I heard Ryan ask Singh, “The other victims — were the buttons on their mouths, too?”
I couldn’t hear Singh’s reply over the sound of me retching into the guest toilet. When I’d emptied my stomach, I washed my hands with hot water for several minutes, trying to scrub off the lingering sensation of darkness, wishing I could scour the images I’d seen off my corneas.
I walked to my front door, from where I watched Ryan and Singh talking animatedly by the fed’s car. At a movement in my peripheral vision, I turned my head just in time to see my neighbor’s curtain twitch. No doubt Nosy Ned would be popping by soon to get the scoop on Chief Jackson’s latest visit. I took several deep breaths, calming myself, and crouched down to hug Lizzie for comfort.
Ronil Singh’s car started and pulled away, and the dogs — released from his inexplicable control — left me and bounded down the path to greet Ryan’s return to the house. He studied my face as he approached.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
“Sure?”
“Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t.
“Grab your coat,” he replied. “We’re going for a drive.”