by Kylie Brant
McLain’s Law
By Kylie Brant
Published by Kylie Brant
Copyright 2012 by Kylie Brant
Cover by Middle Child Marketing, LLC
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
All characters in this book are fictional.
www.kyliebrant.com
Chapter 1
The cacophony of sound in the headquarters of Philadelphia’s southwest police district made Michele Easton pause momentarily as her senses adjusted to the chaos. Phones rang shrilly, and officers raised their voices to be heard over the melee. One handcuffed man nearby shouted obscenities at the impassive officer escorting him out of sight.
Slowly sweeping the crowded expanse with her gaze, she remained still for a moment longer. Rows of desks filled the room, cordoned off from others with partitions and file cabinets. No one paid her any attention as she stood there, probably looking as out of place as she felt. No one except for a man sitting next to a desk, answering an officer’s questions with resignation in his expression. His eyes swept Michele leeringly, before giving her a lascivious wink.
She raised her chin bracingly. It had taken too long to muster the courage to come here today to allow her hard-won resolve to wilt now. She headed toward a large corner to her left, where an officer sat a desk. His nameplate identified him as Sergeant Alberts.
Minutes passed while she waited for the officer to transfer his attention from his paperwork to her. When that failed to happen, she finally spoke. “Excuse me, Sergeant.”
“Ma’am?” he said, without raising his eyes.
“I’d like to talk to one of the officers investigating the disappearances of those children.”
Her words managed a feat her mere presence hadn’t. His gaze jerked up to meet hers, his pencil stilling. “Are you one of the parents?”
“No.” Michele’s tone was startled. She had never considered that she would be mistaken as such. “I believe I have information that may be pertinent to the investigation.”
“Pertinent,” the man repeated as he squinted at her. It took effort not to fidget under his scrutiny. She’d taken pains with her appearance, choosing an understated navy suit and pumps and pulling her hair up in a neat chignon. Maybe that explained his close inspection. The other ‘guests’ here were dressed far less formally.
He shrugged. “Over there.” He pointed toward one of the endless rows of desks. “Second row, third desk. Officer Riley is assigned to the case. You can talk to him.” His attention drifted back to his pile of forms.
Michele turned away and walked swiftly in the direction he had indicated. She stopped before the nameplate of Officer Michael Riley. The occupant of the desk was nowhere in sight.
Uncertainty reared. She hadn’t suspected it would be this difficult just to find someone to give her information to. Perhaps she should accept this final chance to leave before subjecting herself to the ordeal of facing a police officer.
Instead Michele squared her shoulders and slipped into a straight-backed chair at the side of the desk. She wasn’t going to change her mind now. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, be that much of a coward. She would wait as long as she needed to.
As it turned out, her wait was a short one. It was only a few minutes before a young officer with curly brown hair approached her.
“Hello,” he said appreciatively, his open face breaking into a smile. “Sorry if you’ve been waiting for me. I just went for a fresh cup.” He held up his coffee mug. “Can I get you any?” When Michele declined, he slipped into his chair and twirled to face her. “Now, how can I help you?”
“I came, Officer, because I think I may be able to help you.” Michele steeled herself to face his curious gaze unflinchingly. “The sergeant said you’re assigned to the disappearances of those children?”
Michael Riley made a deprecating face. “Yeah, me and a half-dozen other guys. I’m just a rookie, so it’s my job to do all the paperwork. Take statements, file reports, separate the real informants from the crackpots . . .” A quick look at Michele’s frozen expression made him break off. “Oh, hey, I didn’t mean you. That you’re a crackpot, I mean. Or an informant. I mean, I don’t really know . . .” His face got redder and redder.
Michele forced a reassuring smile. This was obviously going to be every bit as hard as she had feared. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “If we could just get started?”
Still blushing, the officer nodded vigorously, almost knocking his coffee mug over in his haste to grab a pen and paper. “First I need some preliminary information from you—your name, address, that kind of thing,” he told her, trying to regain his former composure.
Michele nodded resignedly and gave him the information he sought. She had been sure that she would have to identify herself in order to be considered reliable. Wasn’t that why she hadn’t called the information in anonymously?
“Okay, that’s about all I need from you. Except for any information you can give me about the case, that is.” The officer grinned at her.
Michele took a deep breath. “First of all, there are five children who have been abducted, not four. Three boys and two girls. They’re being held together, in a ramshackle building of some kind.”
“This is great, really great!” the young officer enthused as he wrote furiously. “This may be the break we’ve been waiting for. Do you have the address of the building, ma’am?”
“No.”
At her abrupt response, the officer raised his earnest brown gaze to Michele’s. “Well, that’s okay. Do you think you could take us there? You know, maybe retrace your steps with our help . . . .” At the sight of Michele shaking her head he stopped. “You do know where this building is, don’t you, ma’am?”
“Not exactly.” Michele chose her words carefully, silently damning herself for coming, for ever believing that once she told someone she would have a modicum of inner peace. Her gaze was level as she looked at the officer and said, “I’ve never actually seen the outside, you see. Or the inside, exactly. Everything I’ve seen has been in a dream.”
* * *
“Lieutenant?”
At Riley’s diffident voice, Connor McLain stopped in mid-sentence. He ignored his friend’s smirk as he said with exaggerated patience, “Yeah, Mike?”
The rookie entered the tiny cubicle and stood uncomfortably under the two detectives’ scrutiny. “Uh, Lieutenant, I think I have someone here you may want to talk to. She has some information about the missing children.” The officer stopped and waited.
The detectives looked at each other, and then Connor’s eyebrows rose inquiringly. “You took her statement?”
At the older man’s prodding, the rookie shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir.”
“And?”
“And I think you may want to talk to her yourself, sir. She seems to know an awful lot about the case.”
Connor resignedly held out his hand, and Mike put the statement in it. He perused it quickly, before raising his eyes disbelievingly to the rookie’s. “A psychic? You want me to talk to a psychic?”
The young man flushed as the other detective snickered. “Not a psychic, exactly.” The officer corrected him uncomfortably. “She’s not a mind reader or anything like that,” he reported as he tried to remember how Michele had described it
to him. “She just . . . dreams things.”
At this, the other detective in the room guffawed out loud. Connor sent him a pained look, before looking at the officer in front of him with lowered brows. “Now look, Mike. You know that long talk we had about relevant information?”
The younger man didn’t quail. “Yes, sir. But, sir? She knows about the jacket.”
Connor stopped. The other detective, Cruz Martinez, leaned forward. “What about the jacket?”
“Everything,” Officer Riley went on doggedly. “And I remember what you told me, Lieutenant, really I do. But I wondered, how could she know these things if she wasn’t for real? So I just thought you’d like to talk to her.”
The two detectives exchanged glances. “Yeah, I would like to talk to her, Mike. Bring her in, will you?”
“Yes, sir!” The rookie eagerly left the cubicle.
“A psychic who sees things in dreams,” scoffed Cruz. “C’mon, Connor. I know how you feel about people like that. Why didn’t you lay into that kid?”
Connor leaned back in his desk chair. His tone was mild when he answered. “That kid,” he stressed, “is still learning, Cruz. Besides, you heard him. She knows about the jacket.”
“She can’t know about the jacket. We kept it out of all the papers, it hasn’t been on the news. So how could she know?”
“How indeed?” mused Connor, a hard edge entering his voice. “That’s exactly what I want to find out.”
Cruz rose to leave the small room as Mike came back. As the officer ushered Michele past him, Cruz did an exaggerated double take. Connor frowned at his partner’s too-typical reaction to an attractive female.
“That will be all, Detective,” Connor drawled with deceptive mildness.
Cruz sauntered from the room, turning before he exited. “Anything you need, Connor, just . . . whistle.” With that he strode away chuckling.
The woman looked nervous throughout the exchange. She appeared as though she would bolt when Riley said, “Michele Easton, sir.” He looked at her and explained, “The lieutenant wants to go over your statement with you, ma’am.” Over her protests, he turned and left the room, closing the door after him.
Connor indicated a chair and waited for the woman—Michele Easton—to slowly sink into it before seating himself in back of his desk. Cruz’s reaction to the woman before him had been well deserved, he thought detachedly. Tall and slender, Easton was more than attractive—she was downright great looking. Her fine-boned face had the aloof loveliness of a fashion model. Her dark hair was matched by sooty lashes, which framed large gray eyes.
Something inside Connor twisted with distaste. She reminded him of a porcelain statue of a princess his sister had received as a child. Although beautiful, this woman possessed the same distant demeanor. He supposed she would be a challenge to some men. That untouchable aura would provoke the most primitive instincts, make a man want to be the one to muss her a bit, tumble that prim hairdo and change the ice goddess into a writhing woman driven by her senses.
Other men—not Connor. He’d been down that road before, and the experience had taught him a valuable lesson. Women like this were all surface glitter; there was no warmth, no genuine humanity, beneath. Scratch them, and they bled dollar bills. She was beautiful, all right. She was also probably bat-shit crazy. Or worse.
He faced her knowing that none of his suspicions would be reflected on his face.
“Look, Lieutenant Connor, I don’t see the need to repeat the information you already have in front of you.” She gestured to her statement, which Officer Riley had left.
“McLain.”
At the terse reply her startled gray gaze flew to the detective’s. “Pardon me?”
Connor tapped his nameplate laconically. “Lieutenant Connor McLain.”
“Oh.” Michele was nonplussed for a moment. Her eyes flickered from the nameplate to the detective. She felt foolish for not noticing the plate before. It was an unusual name, as was the man to whom it belonged. She didn’t know how she would have envisioned a detective lieutenant, but she was sure this man wouldn’t have entered her mind. Didn’t the department have regulations about the length of his hair? Dark blond waves were cut around his ears and left long enough in back to spill over his collar. And his eyes . . . She experienced an involuntary shiver when their gazes locked. They were narrow chips of pale green ice, framed by lashes as thick and gold as his hair. They were a predator’s eyes, and they were trained on her with the unblinking gaze of a bird of prey.
Michele trained her features into a calm mask and forced herself to meet his gaze squarely, revealing none of her inner trepidation. “As I was saying, Lieutenant McLain, I’ve told your officer all I can. I really see no reason to repeat it. Everything I know is in that statement.”
“Humor me, then,” he suggested silkily. “I just have a few more questions for you, before you go.” He looked down at the statement Riley had prepared. “You work at Counseling and Psychological Associates?”
Michele hesitated, then nodded.
“What do you do there?”
“I’m a child psychologist.”
At Connor’s raised eyebrows, Michele elucidated. “We specialize in emotional and learning problems of children and adolescents.”
“Have you ever had dealings with any of the missing children or their families in the past?” asked Connor. At Michele’s negative answer he continued. “Any knowledge of them through some of your clients, perhaps?”
“I have had no previous contact with, or knowledge of, any of the victims or their families, Lieutenant,” she replied with far more equanimity than she was feeling.
“Except in your dreams.”
Michele studied the man in front of her closely, but his features were totally impassive. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking or feeling about her statement. He probably thought she was nuttier than a fruitcake. Not for the first time, she wished she had never come here today. “Except in my dreams,” she agreed wearily.
Connor tossed the sheet containing the information she had given Michael Riley onto his desk, then leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about these psychic phenomena of yours,” he invited.
Michele was fairly certain that she heard sarcasm laced in his level tone, and suddenly her earlier trepidation faded. She hadn’t been forced to come here, hadn’t in fact wanted to. She didn’t need this man, who looked like he would be more at home in an action movie than in a Philadelphia police station, to sit there and treat her like some kind of loony-tune. The fact that it was what she had expected and feared before coming here didn’t excuse it.
“I don’t claim to be a psychic,” she informed him, for the first time allowing some of her frustration to creep into her voice.
McLain’s expression showed innocent surprise. “What do you claim to be, then?”
“Just an ordinary person.”
“One who has dreams about crime victims.”
“One who sometimes dreams about people and events that have no relation to herself.” Michele leaned forward earnestly. “If I had to give it a name, I suppose clairvoyance comes closest to describing it. But definitions don’t really matter. All that matters is that you listen to me. Lieutenant, I’m sure you’re skeptical. I don’t blame you for that. All I ask is that you try to listen with an open mind and act on any information that may be of value to you.”
He eyed her for a long moment. “Continue,” he invited. She was vividly aware that he had promised to do neither.
Michele took a deep breath. “About a month ago I started having disturbing dreams about some of the children who have been disappearing.”
“That’s not surprising.” The detective appeared to choose his words carefully. “The media have covered all the stories, the chief of detectives and the police commissioner have addressed the topic several times. The mayor and his running opponent have each seized on the issue to grab poll points.”
But she shook her head impat
iently. “What I see isn’t what has been on TV or in the papers. My dreams are more like—” she searched for the words to describe the scenes that flashed through her sleep “—as if I’m there, at a distance. A spectator.” She glanced at the detective to see if he understood.
He picked up a pencil from the littered top of his desk and twirled it between his fingers. “If you’ve been having these dreams for a month, why did you wait? Why didn’t you come in four weeks ago?”
Michele hesitated. He had unerringly found her point of weakness. “Because there wasn’t really anything to tell,” she said finally. “At the time, all I saw were flashes of the children’s faces, nothing that would make you believe it was any more than a reaction to a dramatic news story.” Nothing but the children’s terrified struggles and screams for help that had reverberated through her nights and left her wide-awake, shaking and haunted.
“But now they’re different?”
Looking down for a moment, she hoped that her face reflected none of her inner turmoil. “Now they’re different. I see all five of the children together. I see where they’re being held. They’re kept bound and gagged, and they sleep on pallets of some sort.”
McLain looked at her without speaking for a long moment. “There’s just one thing wrong with your information,” he said finally. “We believe only four children have disappeared.”
“Then you believe wrong,” Michele asserted flatly. “There are three boys and two girls. The youngest is a boy who appears to be only three or four.”
Connor’s gaze sharpened. “As I’m sure you’re aware from the publicity, the victims have ranged in ages from six to nine.”
“The rest of the children would fall in that age category, I think, but I’m telling you there’s another child involved,” Michele reiterated firmly. “He’s blond, blue-eyed, with a pointed chin and a pug nose. He’s wearing jeans, a red long-sleeved shirt and red tennis shoes.”
Connor felt as if someone had dropped a brick on him. Michele Easton had just given a perfect description of Davey Lockhart, a three-year-old who had been taken out of his stroller while his mother had dashed into a grocery store for a pack of cigarettes. But the boy’s disappearance was not considered by the police to be connected to the other four. It didn’t fit the profile, for one thing. The child was much younger than the other victims. The store he had been taken from was miles away from the twelveblock area from which the others had disappeared. The mother had expressed her belief that Davey had been snatched by her estranged husband, and the police were proceeding on that assumption, as well.