“He didn’t? What about his wife? Or was this after the divorce?”
“During, more or less. Millicent left him that year. And no, she didn’t believe, either. I don’t know the details, but from what I can surmise, it was a horrible time for India, incredibly traumatic. Her parents’ marriage falling apart like that, and both of them turning against her. They started off regarding her as a pathological liar, and ended up thinking her quite mad. No understanding at all—”
“Darrell, stop it!” wailed a high-pitched female voice as a commotion broke out in the crowd. Jamie turned to see that Tommy Finn had arrived on the scene. He and Darrell faced each other warily, surrounded by their leather-jacketed cousins.
The woman pleading with Darrell was pale, fragile, and very young, with enormous doe eyes and a fussing baby on her shoulder—Darrell’s wife, Missy. Apparently they were estranged; Jamie heard she’d moved out of the house on West Bonesteel.
“You shut your face, you whore!” screamed Darrell.
Tommy fisted his hands. “Don’t you call Missy a whore.”
Darrell reached into his right boot. He flicked his wrist, and something flashed—a switchblade.
Damn. Jamie strode quickly toward the crowd, not pausing as he grabbed a short length of two-by-four from a pile. He saw the young patrolman reach for his service weapon, and yelled, “No, Billy!” The rookie backed away, looking confused.
As he neared the group, Jamie saw Darrell thrust the blade toward his cousin. “You shut up, too, Tommy! You stole my wife! Me and Missy were happy till you got in the way!”
“Happy?” Tommy held his ground, refusing to back down from the knife. Not smart, but Jamie had to give him credit for balls. “You think she was happy when you beat her up so bad she landed in the hospital?”
“She had it comin’! She wouldn’t let me see my own son!”
“You tried to snatch him.”
“He’s my son! My flesh and blood! He belongs with me, not you!”
Tommy’s hands balled into fists. “Come near Missy or the baby again and you’re dead, Darrell! Dead! I’ll waste you myself, I swear to God!”
Jamie ducked under the yellow tape and muscled his way through the circle of cousins. Darrell wheeled on him, slashing the air with the blade. He vibrated with rage, his eyes wild and unblinking. Jamie knew instantly that he was fried on crack; trying to reason with him would be pointless.
Darrell said, “This is family business, Keegan! Stay the hell out of it!”
Jamie held his left hand out, his right tightening around the piece of lumber resting on his shoulder. “Give me the knife, Darrell.”
“You’re on their side!” Darrell shrieked, slicing wide arcs in the air with the switchblade as he moved closer and closer to Jamie. “Go to hell!”
Darrell lunged, and Jamie brought the two-by-four down hard on his forearm. He heard the soft snap of bone. Darrell grunted. The switchblade clattered to the ground. Jamie kicked it out of the way.
The young punk bellowed, more from fury, Jamie knew, than from his broken arm. He was too high to feel much pain, making him all the more dangerous. With his good arm, Darrell reached behind him and fumbled under his jacket. Jamie hauled back and slammed the piece of wood into his stomach.
Sucking air, Darrell dropped to his knees, both arms curled around his midsection. He appeared to struggle for a moment, as if trying to rise, and then he fell forward, retching. Jamie used the lumber to lift the back of Darrell’s jacket, not surprised to find a pistol grip poking above the waistband of his jeans. Tossing aside the two-by-four, he pulled out the little nickel-plated .32 semiautomatic, ejected the magazine, and racked the slide. “You’re a real genius, Darrell,” he muttered, shaking a bullet onto his palm.
Ignoring the belligerent murmurs of the Finn contingent, Jamie waved the patrolman over and handed him the .32, then pulled out his handcuffs. “The thing is this, Billy,” he said as he squatted down to shackle Darrell’s wrists together behind his back. “If I’d have let you pull your weapon, first thing this maniac would have done is whip out that little auto, which, by the way, he’s been carrying around fully cocked. Not a good idea to let an unhappy crack-head start squeezing off shots in a crowd.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Billy mumbled.
Jamie stood and nodded toward Darrell’s writhing form. “Read him his rights and take him to the hospital. I’ll meet you there later.”
“Okay, Lieutenant.”
Jamie turned and saw India Cook and Alden Lorillard standing on the other side of the yellow tape. Dr. Cook clutched the cat tightly in her arms as she stared at him, white-faced.
India had viewed the altercation in dazed silence. Everything had happened so fast, she could hardly follow it all, yet Keegan had managed to react with preternatural speed, defusing a volatile situation in less than a minute. As she watched him walk toward her, his long-legged gait graceful but powerful, his big hands loose at his sides, she reflected that this was a man who truly knew how to handle himself. He had a brain to go with all that brawn—and guts. She couldn’t recall ever having seen anyone—outside of TV and the movies—put himself on the line like that, risking his own safety for some greater purpose.
His fearlessness excited her, she realized with abashed amazement, thrilled her on a primal level that she had never experienced before. Instinct. The lure of the guy who kills the bears.
“Well done,” said Alden. “One more miscreant off the streets.”
“‘Fraid not,” Jamie said. “By tonight he’ll be out on bail and raising just as much hell as ever.”
Alden shook his head disgustedly. “Figures. The Finns really know how to play the system. The only one I have any use for is Tommy. He’s on my maintenance staff, and I must say, he’s not a bad worker. I actually kind of like the kid.”
“He’s the best of them,” Jamie agreed.
“Well, Jamie...” Alden shook the younger man’s hand. “You’re a handy man with a two-by-four. I’ve got a three o’clock meeting, or I’d buy you a beer.”
“I couldn’t drink it. I’m on duty.”
“Ah. Of course. India, my dear, always a pleasure.”
“Same here, Alden.”
As the older man walked away, Keegan smiled wryly at India. “Told you Darrell was the worst of the lot.”
She nodded and forced herself to look away from him, toward the crowd. Officer Billy wrestled Darrell into his patrol car while the Finns jeered—all except Tommy, who stood to the side with his arms wrapped protectively around Missy and the baby.
“Seeing Tommy like that,” India said, shaking her head, “it’s hard to believe he’d be capable of setting all those—”
She gasped as Phoenix jumped from her arms and tore out across the lot. To her surprise, he headed directly for Tommy, rising up on his hind legs to paw the young man beseechingly.
“Phoenix!” India crossed the tape and pulled the big tom back into her arms. As soon as she touched him, her mental TV switched on and a picture filled her mind—a picture of Tommy Finn opening a small can and placing it on the floor. She felt Phoenix’s excitement, his eager anticipation as he sniffed at the contents of the open can.
Tuna! She smelled tuna! Phoenix’s love of it was obviously so intense that even the memory of it conjured up its scent in his mind... and therefore India’s. She had never actually smelled a psychic image before, and it left her feeling a little disoriented.
“Dr. Cook?” Keegan started to reach out to her and then stopped himself. “Are you...”
“I’m fine.” She turned to Tommy Finn. “You know this cat, don’t you?”
Tommy’s eyes widened momentarily, then he swiftly marshaled his expression, throwing in a little sneer for good measure. “Lady, I never seen this cat till now.”
“No?” He wouldn’t meet her eyes, just looked around nervously, grinning and shaking his head. She said, “I think you have. I think you’ve fed him tuna fish.”
“T
una fish?” He backed up, his arm around Missy, his gaze on the cat. “Uh-uh, lady. You got the wrong guy.”
“I don’t think so,” she persisted as Tommy and Missy turned and began walking away. “I think—”
“Let them go,” Keegan said.
“But—”
“But he’s lying,” he said quietly. “I know.”
India gaped at him. “You do?”
“Absolutely.” He grinned.
“It’s that blue sense Sam was talking about, isn’t it?”
“It’s common sense. You saw the look on his face. You don’t have to have ESP to know that guy was lying through his teeth. As to the part about the tuna...” He shrugged. “Seems a likely thing to feed a stray cat if you don’t have any cat food in the house.” He tapped his forehead. “Deductive reasoning.”
“Ah. Then have you deduced why Tommy was lying?”
Jamie shielded his eyes to watch the young couple drive away in Tommy’s battered Trans Am, the baby in a car seat in back. “He doesn’t want to associate himself with the cat. I suppose he knows there’s some connection to the fire at Little Eddie’s. That doesn’t prove he’s the Firefly, though.”
“No,” India murmured thoughtfully. “It doesn’t.”
Jamie’s eyebrows rose. “Rescinding your accusation, Dr. Cook?”
“I never accused him,” she pointed out. “He seemed the most likely candidate, but now... I don’t know. Seeing him today...”
“Compared to Darrell, he doesn’t look half-bad, does he?”
“No,” she said candidly. “He doesn’t. I don’t know what to think.”
Keegan let out a long, weary sigh. “That makes two of us, then.”
Chapter Five
* * *
HAVING NO APPOINTMENTS the next day, India spent the morning painting the dining room ceiling. She broke for lunch at one, then pulled on a pair of woolen gloves and walked down to the road to get her mail.
She always wore gloves when she went to the mailbox. Bills, magazines, and junk mail, being machine-processed, generally held no lingering psychometric energy, but human-produced mail did. It wasn’t so bad if there was only one card or letter in the box; she could deal with a single correspondent’s vibrations. But if there were two or more, the vibes tended to mingle, creating a jumbled psychic resonance, similar to when a radio was caught between two stations and picked up bits and pieces of two different broadcasts. The effect was maddening.
She sorted through the mail as she walked back up the gravel drive to the house... the phone bill, the latest issue of Veterinary Economics, and a plain white envelope. She turned the envelope over several times, feeling the weight of a letter inside, but finding no mark of any kind on the outside. No address, no postage, nothing. Obviously it had been hand-delivered.
She plucked a glove off with her teeth and held the envelope with her bare hand. Nothing. Standing completely still on the front porch of her house, she closed her eyes and concentrated. Still nothing. No vibes of any kind. Odd, considering someone had to have handled it at some point.
Stuffing the glove and the other mail under her arm, India tore open the envelope and unfolded the sheet of paper within.
She drew in a sharp breath. The magazine, bill and glove slipped to the floor of the porch. On numb legs, she walked to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed information.
“What city, please?”
“Uh, Mansfield,” she replied shakily. “The police department.”
* * *
THE FRONT DOOR swung open as Jamie raised his fist to knock. The India Cook who greeted him—if you could call a blank stare a greeting—looked a far cry from her usual Lady in Black.
First of all, there were no sunglasses to hide those haunted coppery eyes, and her hair was mostly concealed beneath a neon yellow bandanna. She wore an oversize pink T-shirt—sans bra, he noted appreciatively—and blue leggings, heavily spattered with white paint. Her lack of footwear amused him primarily because of the revelation that her toenails were painted candy apple red. What kind of woman kept her fingernails short and bare, and painted her toenails red?
He raised his gaze to her face, finding it slightly flushed. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing anyone today,” she said self-consciously, turning and leading him through the foyer and across the hall. “It’s in here.”
Jamie heard the strain in her voice, and knew her nerves were stretched taut. He’d told her repeatedly on the phone to relax, to stay calm, that there was no real danger. Clearly his reassurances hadn’t worked, and why should they have? So far, all he’d done was drag her, against her will, into danger’s path. Not a sterling record on which to base promises of protection.
He followed her into a sizable living room, which, like the bedroom above it, was done up in warm off-whites, and featured a massive stone hearth. “There it is,” she said, pointing to a sheet of paper lying atop a big marble coffee table.
While she paced the length of the room, Jamie set the briefcase housing his document evidence kit on the floor, hiked his trousers, and squatted next to the table. Like the Firefly’s other notes, this one was comprised of mismatched cut-and-paste letters. But unlike his past messages, there was no mention of fire—only of death: “Back off, Witch. Or you’ll wake up some morning with a bullet for a third eye. The Firefly.”
Jamie placed the document kit on the table and unlatched it. He’d run the note into the lab, and then come back and check the mailbox and the surrounding road for further evidence—although if he had to wager a guess, he’d say it was unlikely he’d come up with anything. With one notable exception—the bit of burned magazine he’d found at the lumberyard—the Firefly seemed to know how to cover his tracks. Arson cases were always challenging, but this one was turning into a real nightmare, a nightmare with his captaincy hanging in the balance.
She stood over him, hands on hips. “You don’t need to go to all that trouble,” she said as he withdrew a pair of tweezers and used them to slide the note into a sheet protector. “They won’t find any prints on that.”
“Probably not, but you never know.” He secured the evidence in the briefcase, relatched it, and rose.
“I do know,” she said. “Whoever prepared that note wore heavy gloves. Not the thin latex kind he used with the other notes, but—”
“Whoa! Back up. How do you know about the latex gloves? Did Sam tell you?”
“No, Lieutenant, Sam didn’t tell me.” She stalked over to one of the bay windows flanking the fireplace and stared out at the rolling backyard. The afternoon sun glowed through her big T-shirt, revealing a wonderfully narrow waist and rounded hips. “Heavy gloves tend to muffle psi transmission, both on the sending and receiving ends. In other words, if someone wears them when he handles an object, the object is unlikely to absorb and retain his psychic energy. Likewise, if I’m wearing them when I touch something, I won’t pick up other people’s vibes. That’s why you see me wearing gloves a lot.”
“Uh-huh.” His gaze strayed to her thighs and calves, firm and shapely beneath those skintight leggings. He hadn’t realized what a fantastic body she had, and he almost wished he’d been kept in ignorance. She’d already gotten under his skin a lot more than was smart. He took a deep breath. “But how’d you figure out about the latex...”
She turned, unconsciously treating him to a brief and tantalizing silhouette of surprisingly generous breasts. “From what I gather, no fingerprints were found on the four arson notes.”
He took a deep breath, trying to keep his mind on business. “That’s right.”
She came to face him across the coffee table. “But when I handled the fourth note, I got a reading off of it. Meaning whoever pasted the letters down on those notes found a method for keeping his fingerprints off the paper—but it’s a method that doesn’t prevent psi transmission. Latex gloves are the obvious answer—or nitrile, or vinyl... anything really thin like that. I’ve always been able to pick up psychic vibes through
them.”
Jamie was grudgingly impressed. She’d internalized this psychic delusion to the point where she could actually draw logical conclusions from it. Scary.
She cocked her head. “So how did you figure out he wore latex gloves?”
He chuckled. “The documents lab found traces of a powdered lubricant on the notes. It’s the same kind of lubricant latex gloves are coated with.”
“The wonders of modern criminology,” she said dryly. “Too bad psychological profiles aren’t as accurate as lab tests. You told me pyromaniacs don’t go in for assault and murder. But now this particular pyro has gone and threatened to put a bullet in my brain some night while I’m sleeping.”
“An idle threat,” Jamie said in a tone he hoped sounded convincing. “I doubt he means to follow through.”
She seemed to perk up, but then Jamie realized what was coming. “Oh, you doubt this madman means to sneak into my house some night and put a gun to my forehead and pull the trigger. Well, how comforting.”
He circled the table; she backed up. “Dr. Cook—”
Her eyes ignited. “You can’t imagine how reassured I am to know there’s only a chance I’ll get my brains blown out in my sleep. What a relief!”
He held his hands up, palms out, and spoke in measured tones. “I’ll take you off the case immediately. I’ll announce it on the radio. I’ll put it in the Courier.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Can you guarantee me—I mean a one hundred percent guarantee—that this raving lunatic won’t try to follow through on this threat anyway?”
There was no use feeding a line of bullshit to a woman this smart. “No.”
She nodded, looking very catlike in her anger. Jamie half expected to see claws pop out of the tips of her fingers. “So what am I supposed to do to protect myself?”
“I gave it a lot of thought on the way over. Is there any place you can go, relatives you can stay with until this all blows over—?”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Lieutenant.” She was quivering. “I’ve got a veterinary practice to run, or hadn’t you noticed? A brand-new practice at that, and none too solvent. Thank God I don’t have a mortgage, or I’d never have lasted this long. If I leave town now, I’m going to lose what little business I’ve managed to drum up, and I can’t afford that.”
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