by A J Sherwood
“Thanks.” I straightened, letting Donovan hang up the phone.
He did so but with a very dark frown on his face, voice rising with every word into a crescendo of incredulity. “You’ve just been shot at and you want to go chase down a serial killer?!”
Okay, it did sound a little insane when he put it that way. “Donovan. I have a pretty sister and a cute niece. No way in hell do I want a serial killer out on the loose.”
Groaning, he grumbled somewhat rhetorically, “I wondered why you took this job. I thought maybe it was just the best use of your talents. But now I think you’re crazy enough to like it.”
I really didn’t have a leg to stand on. I went with the more sensible thing to say. “But I don’t like to be shot at.”
“Good,” Donovan said shortly, jamming his key into the door. “Keep it that way. Otherwise, I find a strait jacket and a therapist for you.”
With the insurance paying quickly out for me, I spent a good portion of the next day shopping. Mostly for couches. It actually was nice to have Donovan with me, as I wanted to pick furniture he could comfortably sit on too. The man was tall, not just big, so finding a couch he could lounge in without folding in half proved to be something of a challenge. Fortunately, we had a lot of furniture stores in Nashville and several days off to shop with. It was also kind of like a shopping date with my new boyfriend, and who wouldn’t be happy about that?
After three stores and about five hours, we found a love seat and a three-seater that worked, big overstuffed things that I could actually envision taking long naps in. By that point, I figured we’d need either an early dinner or a stop for snacks. Lunch had been light and not very filling. Donovan looked like he had low blood sugar and I wanted somewhere to sit for more than two minutes.
So, of course, that’s when Borrowman called.
Donovan answered with a resigned expression on his face and automatically put it on speaker so that I could hear and answer while driving. “Hey, Borrowman. You’re on speaker and Jon’s listening.”
“Good. Turns out I’ve got enough evidence to prove this guy is stalking not only the girls Sho found, but a few others as well. We picked him up already and are processing him now.”
I couldn’t help but do a double-take at the phone. “Already?! How did you get a warrant that fast?”
“Just so happens Judge Truman’s daughter likes to go jogging through the same park as Marsha Brown. I very helpfully pointed that out.”
“That is evil and underhanded,” Donovan said approvingly. “You want us at the station now, then?”
“If you could. I can only hold him for twenty-four hours, after all. I have proof he’s cyberstalking, but…I’d like to pin him for more, keep him locked up without the possibility of bail.”
“I’m with you on that one,” I assured him, already turning the vehicle around to head back toward the station. “We’ll be there in fifteen.”
“Okay. See you soon.”
Donovan thumbed the call off and pocketed the cell while giving me a sideways look. “You okay with doing that? You’re dragging a little.”
“I could use a cupcake,” I admitted honestly. “But I’ll survive.”
“A cupcake, huh. You really do have a sweet-tooth.”
I shrugged, guilty as charged. But we didn’t have time for a stop, and my cravings could wait.
The back parking lot of the police station revealed more open spaces than usual, so I parked closer than I normally did. We went through the usual spiel of signing in, Borrowman actually coming down to hover until we had visitor badges clipped on. Then he escorted us up to the interrogation room, speaking rapidly as he did so. “The guy’s clammed up tight. I might actually have to pull you into the room on this one. He’s creepy as hell, but apparently good at covering his tracks, as I haven’t found any evidence so far that he’s done more than cyberstalking. It’s just the coincidence of him stalking three missing girls, one dead, that’s making my alarms go off. That, and you’re sure of what he’s done.”
“No mistaking it,” I said grimly. “Trust me, that sort of experience is written in black all over his aura.”
“Let’s try through the mirror first,” Borrowman instructed, already handing Donovan the walkie-talkie, his free hand putting the earbud in. “The less criminals who can ID you, the better.”
I backed that opinion up one hundred percent and nodded in agreement before slipping sideways, brushing past Donovan to enter the dim and narrow room. The mirror was already on so that we could see out but no one could see in. I stared at the man seated at the table, slouched and idly picking at painfully short nails. Funny, how he didn’t look at all concerned. Then again, psychopaths never were. Oddly enough, he seemed muted to my sight.
A little frustrated, I tentatively took the sunglasses off. Interesting, I wasn’t as overwhelmed as I expected to be, not even with Donovan standing right next to me. He wasn’t as overpoweringly bright as usual, either. It was an odd state of affairs, one I had never experienced before, but I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe my powers were acting up because of the recent shock?
Shrugging, I put the glasses in my breast shirt pocket, focusing once more on the other side of the mirror. I suspected this would not be a case where I could stay in this safe room. I’d have to go in there eventually.
Donovan would not be happy about that.
Hoping I was wrong, I got into a good position so I could see around Borrowman’s back, clearly able to read every line in the other man.
“Derrick Pearson,” Borrowman greeted, taking a seat. “For the record, it’s Friday, April 12th, at 4:30 pm. I’m Detective Borrowman. This is the interview of Derrick Pearson regarding the cyberstalking of Marsha Brown.”
Pearson’s mouth curved up in a mockery of a smile. “Doesn’t hurt anyone if I follow someone online. Online friends, you heard of those?”
“I have, in fact.” Borrowman opened a folder and spread out several pictures along the table. “But when you print out that friend’s pictures, write down their daily schedules, including a list of people they see in real life, that’s going into stalker territory. The judge happened to agree with me on that one. But you know, maybe you can help me with that friend of yours. You know Marsha Brown was killed?”
Light grey eyes narrowed down to slits. “No.”
“Lie,” I denied quickly.
Borrowman didn’t even twitch a hand to acknowledge he heard me. “You stopped stalking her almost three weeks ago. Why?”
“I lost interest in her. She’s sorta a bitch.”
“That was strangely the truth,” I said slowly, disturbed. Was that why he’d killed these women? He lost interest, therefore they didn’t need to live anymore?
“So you lost interest in her. You didn’t happen to keep track of her movements on March 17th, did you?”
“No.”
“Lie.” I focused harder on his lines. The lies were easy enough for me to see, but I had a tingling sense we’d get the answer if he was the killer or not soon. Donovan must have sensed the same, as he watched like a silent wolf at my side, practically holding his breath.
“You didn’t see who followed her into the park? Who killed her?”
“No.”
Borrowman pressed his point in a flat voice. “Is that because you killed her?”
Matching his gaze, Pearson didn’t even flinch. “No.”
“He did it.” A zing of victory shot through me, strong enough to taste. “He relishes the kill, still remembers it fondly.”
A distasteful shudder went through Donovan. “Seriously? Guy’s not right in the head.”
Borrowman let the silence stew for a moment, watching his suspect. I had no doubt his mind churned, trying to quickly think of a way to confirm this one way or another. Find some question that would force a confession out of Pearson’s mouth. “Pearson, for the record, where were you on March 17th?”
“I dunno, working probabl
y.”
I snorted, because that was obviously a lie to everyone, not just me.
“So you’re saying I can call your workplace and confirm that?”
“You’ve got nothing on me, Detective,” Pearson stated, leaning in to smirk a little.
“I’ve got a psychic who knows you killed her,” Borrowman denied evenly. For the first time, Pearson’s expression twitched and his smugness dropped sharply. “I’ve got CCTV footage of you entering the park on March 17th at the time Marsha Brown was killed and coming back out without the hoodie or gloves you wore going in. I’ve got plenty of evidence showing you stalked Marsha Brown for months. I’ve got quite a bit, actually. Want to confess and save us both a lot of time and trouble?”
Upper lip curling up in a sneer, Pearson bit off, “Fuck. You. You can’t scare me with that psychic scare tactic.”
Borrowman’s head cocked, just slightly. Then he did something I’d literally never seen him do before. He took the ear piece out, put the walkie-talkie down, and disconnected it so that everything I said could be clearly heard in the room. “Let’s play match that picture, shall we? J, you in?”
I smiled. This man was ingenious. “Sure.”
Pearson jumped, his eyes automatically going to the mirror. He didn’t quite meet my eyes, of course, he couldn’t see me through the pane. But still, he knew I was there, and he knew I watched him. That knowledge unnerved him thoroughly.
Tapping a finger to the table, Borrowman brought Pearson’s attention back to the pictures in his hands. “Pay attention here, not there. Let’s see, let’s start with Andrea Morton. You killed her.”
“Yes,” I answered through the walkie-talkie and watched Pearson’s skin go pale.
“Sara Baldwin. You planned to kill her next.”
“Yes,” my voice came strongly through on the other side.
Pearson snarled and jerked back in his chair, staring at the mirror in panic.
“See what a fun game this is?” Borrowman sounded remarkably like an evil Willy Wonka. “Although I should probably warn you, Pearson. If J has to do all the work, it doesn’t look good for you. If you cooperate, you might be able to shave a few years off your sentence. But if a psychic has to testify instead? He says a lot more than you’ll want him to. Scary, what all a psychic can see. J’s one of the scariest I’ve ever met. He can tell you what you had for breakfast, that’s how good his eyes are. So what’s it going to be? You going to fess up, or do we continue playing the game?”
His mouth moved, but Pearson made no sound for several seconds, his silence dragging out to a minute. Then he croaked, “I’ll talk.”
I could hear the smile in Borrowman’s voice as he crooned, “By all means. Start talking.”
Borrowman got him to confess to everything else in the next hour. I didn’t even need to say much, just threw in the occasional ‘lie’ or ‘truth’ to keep Pearson unnerved and chatty. I thought my friend would throw a party afterwards, so happy to close a case he thought would go stale and cold. I certainly felt some relief over that, as I hated telling the family ‘we don’t know’ when they had lost a precious daughter.
Borrowman stepped out as we did, the file tucked under his arm, accepting the other walkie-talkie from Donovan. With a look full of gratitude, he said, “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” I assured him, studying the dark circles under the detective’s eyes. “You okay? You look short on sleep.”
“Thanks to your shooter,” Borrowman grunted sourly. “Captain Livingston is not happy about this, and when I say those words, I mean in caps, underlined, bolded, and italicized. She has let me know you are my main priority case.”
Strangely, I felt like apologizing. “Any progress so far?”
“Yes and no. The guy who owns the truck was able to give us an idea of what happened. He apparently left the keys in the truck when he was gassing it up—stupid, I know, but you’d be surprised how many people do that—so we have a jump-off point of where she grabbed it. He also gave me his fingerprints so that we could quickly eliminate him from all the prints we collected. It left us with eight—a full hand and three partials on the bottom steering wheel. The footage from the gas station also clearly shows her as female, as she has manicured hands and a distinctly feminine build, so that eliminates a lot of our suspect pool from previous cases you worked on.”
Police work was often about elimination more than anything else. Parsing through the available clues until finding the ones that actually led to the criminal was half the art of actual investigation. “Sounds like great progress for just three days. Thanks, man.”
Borrowman looked partially mollified. “At least you appreciate all of my hard work. Alright, give me an idea of what you’re planning to do next.”
I shrugged, as I didn’t plan on anything elaborate. “Swing by the office, check in with people, swing by my place, check in on things, go get dinner and make out with Donovan. What? You asked.”
Getting quite the look for that, Borrowman deadpanned, “TMI, dude. Way TMI. Alright, go. If something happens, let me know, I want to know where to lay hands on you if shit hits the fan again.”
“Roger that.” I gave him an analyst’s salute and sauntered for the door.
Donovan leaned in to whisper near my ear, “Making out?”
I waggled both eyebrows at him in a lecherous way, enjoying his grin, as I returned the visitor’s badge.
He cackled softly, low and smooth, lines sparking with happiness and a hint of lust.
Well. He was easy to please. I filed that note away as we headed for the HMMWV.
Because we’d come in and worked, I had to pop into to the office and write down a quick report. I always did that afterwards to make sure the records stayed straight and my memory didn’t play tricks with me the next morning. Besides, I wanted to update Sho and tell him that his work had caught the murderer.
As we hit the outside, I automatically put my sunglasses back on, then frowned. They were really too dark. I took them back off and fished out my medium shades, the ones I normally wore in buildings, and slipped them on as I climbed into the vehicle. Blinking, I took a look around, nodding in satisfaction. Yup, better.
“Not your darker shades?” Donovan asked from the passenger seat, half-intrigued. “You always wear those outside.”
“Yeah, I know. I guess because it’s a little overcast? I don’t really need them.” Even as I said the words, I doubted them. I’d worn eighty percent grey shades on even stormy days without issue. Maybe as I aged, I was gaining better control over my ability? That’d be nice. Maybe twenty-five would be some sort of psychic breakthrough for me.
“I’ll pocket the darker ones just in case, then.” Donovan took the glasses case and slipped them into one of his many cargo pockets.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I had to tease, “Babe, were you a magpie in a previous life?”
Donovan chuckled in a deep, rolling away that did funny things to my insides. “You’d think it, right? I always wore cargos as a kid, stuffed everything in them. I’ve never lost the habit as an adult. If I feel like I might need something, in a pocket it goes. When I was still in the Army my sergeant gave me an award one year for ‘most prepared.’”
“I’d rather be over prepared than under prepared,” I agreed in perfect understanding.
“Right? But I don’t like carrying bags, they’re cumbersome and you have to keep track of it. I’d rather clink when I walk.”
I laughed because he really did rattle a little as he moved. I liked it. I could always hear where he was.
As I drove, I realized I might not even need the medium shades on. If anything, I might be able to go lighter. Strange. Had being shot at rattled my psychic ability somehow? It hadn’t changed my reading ability, I’d proven that during the interrogation earlier. But everyone around me, while distinct, didn’t have the same brightness. It almost felt like they’d been dampened a few levels. Which was a good thing, but it unnerved me, bec
ause I couldn’t see a reason for it.
Not sure what to make of it, I resolved to ask Carol to take a reading on me after I reported in. Maybe she could figure it out.
We sailed into Psy’s back door and I exchanged hugs and handshakes, everyone checking on me, which I found heartwarming. I really did have good friends here. Jim came out to hear me tell the story again of what happened, not asking any questions, just listening intently as he leaned up against one of the nearby walls. Sho beamed silently, pleased that he had been instrumental in catching the killer.
Only after I finished did Jim remark to Donovan, “I think you just earned your paycheck.”
“Really didn’t want to validate my job that way, sir,” Donovan responded, making a sour face.
“Nor did I,” Jim assured him mildly, although his meridian line for worry hopped up and down like a frog in a skillet. “Still, I’m glad for the timing on hiring you. How’s it going with him staying with you? The meditation room here has a bed in it, remember, if it gets to be too much of a strain.”
I really wished Jim hadn’t said that. Donovan’s emotions flipped to over-protective in a split second. Putting a hand to the small of my back, he looked Jim dead in the eye. “He’s not an imposition. Sir.”
Jim lifted both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Wasn’t trying to imply anything, just giving another option if you two need one. While you’re here, Donovan, fill out an after-action report so that I can file it with the state and get your gun back from Evidence.”
“Sure.” Donovan followed after him. I could tell by the way he held his shoulders that he was still not entirely happy.
As everyone disbursed, Carol shifted in closer to ask, “So…I realize it might not be the right time and all, but when do you want to celebrate it?”
It wasn’t often that I got completely lost in a conversation, but this time qualified. I stared at her, feeling like I’d dropped in during the third act, without the slightest clue on what she referred to. “I’m sorry?”