The Collector (Emergence Book 1)

by Kelly Lynn Colby

  Chapter Five

  I barely made it to the front door before every meal I ever ate poured out of me. After I purged enough to catch my breath, I noticed the blood-dipped pencil still clutched in my gloved hand. It fell from my grip and I rubbed the coagulated blood on the wall.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my unstained glove. This was not what I signed up for. Obviously, he couldn’t answer any questions. It wasn’t like I could speak to the dead. I had to get out of there.

  As I fled to the elevator, my conscience tore at my resolve. I couldn’t just leave him there.

  Alone.

  Mutilated.

  I pivoted and headed back for the red door.

  The acidic smell of vomit mixed with rot from the bloody corpse overwhelmed my nasal passages. What do people do in these circumstances?

  Scenes from my favorite crime procedurals popped into my mind. I’d never be able to watch another with the same sort of detachment. I understood stumbling across a murder victim in a visceral way now. What was I supposed to do?

  I almost snapped my fingers as I remembered. Call 911 of course.

  “This is 911. Where are you calling from?” The woman’s voice was so calm and logical she helped focus my panic.

  I took a deep breath and spouted out the address.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Can you tell me what your emergency is?”

  “My emergency?” What was I supposed to tell her? I followed an invitation from an artist psychically embedded in a statue, and when I got here, the artist was a dead body. It sounded totally reasonable. I was sure she would send a padded wagon instead of a paddy wagon. My hand massaged my forehead. “I found a dead guy on the floor of his condo.”

  “Is the victim breathing?”

  “Breathing?” Oh my god, I hadn’t checked. What if he was still alive and I wasted this precious time in panic?

  My guilt overrode my fear as I re-entered the crime scene. The shelf of impressions hummed as I walked past, but I didn’t get any details. I didn’t have the energy to listen.

  By the kitchen, blood splattered the floor more aggressively than I’d noticed the first time. Bile burned my esophagus at the shoe prints on the tile. Shit, I contaminated the crime scene on my flight, didn’t I?

  The streetlamps glowed through the kitchen window, casting the scene in a jaundiced light. Death’s gray haze discolored Albert’s dark eyes. The picture in the black and white photo online gave him more color than he had now.

  A dizzy spell washed over me. I leaned against the refrigerator so I wouldn’t pass out. My imagination saw shadows move along the far wall. A quick search revealed the light switch, which I flipped on.

  In life, his skin must have been a gorgeous deep brown, not the splotchy taupe that reflected the fluorescent lighting. His short, relaxed dreads blended in beautifully with his tight beard. His death grimace was a mockery of the confident grin from the newspaper article.

  The voice on the phone made me jump. I’d forgotten I was holding it. “Ma’am, are you still there? Is he breathing?”

  “Not for a while now would be my guess.”

  “Ma’am? Can you still hear me? Uniformed officers and an ambulance are on their way to your location. ETA two minutes.”

  “Thank you.” It was the only thing I could think to say as I hung up the phone.

  I’d never seen a dead body before. Even when my grandparents died, my mom wouldn’t let me attend the wake. She knew I was a sensitive child and didn’t want to scar me for life. She didn’t realize that my sensitivity had nothing to do with life or death. It was being assaulted with emotions I was too young to understand. It made me close myself off from as much as I could as a sort of protective measure.

  Did he do the same thing? Albert Johnson died alone. Was this my future? What if he was the only other person like me on the planet, the only hope I had to free me from this isolation?

  The murderer couldn’t get away with this, with taking away the only bit of hope for answers I had, with causing this beautiful man to die in agony. I dropped to my knees in the clean spot by his head. My gloves came off before I knew what I was doing.

  My logical mind screamed at me. The shows said not to touch anything. Then again, I’d already screwed up with my footprints. My emotional mind, the part that held the curse, prodded me along. If I could see the murderer, I could give his description to the police. I could at least point them in the right direction. If this was me, I’d want some sort of justice.

  Before reason won the battle, I put both hands on the shoulders of Albert’s plaid, button-up shirt. The turmoil of a murder left a strong impression and my mind plunged into the storm.

  I scrambled into the kitchen and slipped on the tile floor. The man chasing me dropped on top and banged my head on the floor, stunning me. I felt no pain, but my body vibrated with adrenaline. Yet, I couldn’t seem to make my limbs fight back.

  “Stop it! This isn’t happening to me. Separate.” Talking out loud seemed to help build a gap between real and memory.

  The edges of my sight darkened as I concentrated on Albert’s perspective and tried to keep it his. The attacker grabbed a knife from the counter and pricked Albert’s neck as he threatened him. “Where is it?”

  “You?” Fear tightened my bowels as Albert recognized his pursuer.

  He was white with dark hair, but his more identifying features were covered in shadow. If only he’d been facing toward the kitchen window, then I could have seen something.

  “Yes, me. You didn’t think you could keep it up forever, did you?” The knife wielder growled more than talked. “Where is it?”

  My chin tingled at a cut of the knife as Albert shook his head no. “That was a long time ago. I don’t know where it ended up.”

  At that moment, I knew Albert Johnson was the owner of the voice from Walter. I’d found him. Joy lifted my dread until I remembered these were the last memories of a dead man. Had I missed my opportunity?

  Fully straddling Albert, the attacker’s face was still hidden, but I could make out scars on his forearm, like he had attempted suicide. His shoulders slumped, which cued a rush of fear from Albert, who renewed his squirming. My heart sped up with his. He must have sensed something from his attacker, but I couldn’t feel that man’s emotions on Albert. Had he not felt anything as he attacked another human being? Or maybe it wasn’t intense enough to leave behind a remnant? Or Albert’s emotions could be so strong that it drowned anything from his attacker? It wasn’t like I’d done a case study. I was far from an expert on impressions. I wasn’t even sure how they worked.

  Albert’s voice rose in pitch. “I haven’t said anything to anybody. A deal’s a deal.”

  Albert bounced his hips to knock loose the man pinning him down, but the attacker was too strong for the smaller artist.

  “I’ve heard that before.” The knife plunged into Albert’s chest. “This way no one will find it.”

  Albert screamed, and I screamed as his agony ripped through my chest. He tried to turn away from the repeated blows, but he couldn’t breathe. The teeth of the attacker reflected the dull light from the living room as he leaned into the knife hilt, forcing a gush of blood to bubble out.

  Then something changed. Albert’s emotions morphed from fear to agony to—joy. He laughed.

  The attacker took both the dying man’s cheeks in his hands. Tears poured from Albert’s eyes. His mutilated chest tortured him, but surfing on top of all that pain was something else. I could feel it in my fingertips and toes. Happiness.

  I’d never experienced anything like that. Did Albert want to die?

  Albert giggled like he was being tickled by an outside force. A reflection of what he experienced, my diaphragm ached from the strain of mingling screams and laughs. It was difficult enough to get air in at all through the excruciating wounds.

  I could feel him weakening, everything faded and became less intense. Albert’s fog as he neared death allowed me to separate
my experience from his. Those were not my wounds. My centering force, my mother’s voice, sang in the background. I even managed to tap a finger to the beat. With my true physical form partially isolated from Albert’s, I forced myself to concentrate on the murderer’s face.

  His features drifted in and out of focus through Albert’s blurred vision. Pieces of a face, high cheek bones, a nondescript nose, a glimpse of bright blue eyes.

  “Oh,” the killer said, seeming to understand something I did not. “Of course.”

  He kissed Albert’s face and stood up. “Thank you.”

  The joy left Albert and all he could do was struggle to breathe. His hand scraped the floor after the man who just killed him.

  “I won’t make the same mistake.” The murderer held Albert down with a foot as he yanked the knife from his chest.

  The pain faded as Albert’s eyes blinked closed. A bitter sense of disappointment for something undone coated the last layer of the impression.

  I tore my grip from his shirt before he took his last breath. Tears fell from my face as my lungs worked at breathing. I didn’t know if that was enough. I couldn’t see the man clearly at all. Why had Albert kept his condo so dark? I thought artists liked light. If it had only been brighter, I could have helped.

  My fear turned to anger at my impotence. What good was this stupid curse if I couldn’t use it to help someone?

  An officer froze in the doorway of the kitchen, his gun pointed at me, as he shouted, “Don’t move!”

  Chapter Six

  Cops flooded the condo building. A few uniformed officers questioned the neighbors who gawked at the macabre scene. I leaned against a wall in the hallway rocking my shoulders, trying not to look at my vomit all over the floor or make eye contact with the loitering people and their fake grief. If any of them actually cared about Albert, they would have called someone long before I showed up. Also, the fingers pointing my way put me on edge.

  No one had talked to me since the officer who first confronted me in the kitchen. I told him I’d seen someone flee the scene and wanted to give a description. Though it was all bullshit, I hoped my Oscar-worthy performance convinced him. The bags wrapped around my fingers seemed to testify to the opposite.

  The homicide detectives had been in the apartment for at least a half an hour before one came out and approached me. Short, but well built, his gray suit looked tailored around his strong shoulders and thin waist. It was not what I expected from a cop’s paygrade. I thought he looked of Latin descendent based on his honey skin tone paired with the subtle waves in his deep brown hair. This was Houston though. He could just as easily be a dark-skinned Greek or Italian. What threw me off were his eyes. The haunting amber color seemed to read me.

  I had the urge to confess everything. So instead, I threw out my lie. “I saw a guy run from here. I think I can describe him.”

  The detective raised a bushy, though not obnoxiously so, eyebrow. He pulled out his phone, seemingly comfortable with long pauses that made me want to jump in with more confessions. He tapped a few things in. “That’s what Officer Pradock said.” He held his hand out for me. “I’m Inspector Flores and you are—”

  Latino it was then. I pulled my hands from behind my back to reveal the plastic bags the crime scene people insisted on putting around them for evidence. “Fauna Young.”

  He rubbed his unshaven chin. “You touched things, didn’t you?”

  My gaze unconsciously drifted to the mess I made in the hallway. Flores followed my focus and took more notes in his phone. “What did you see?”

  The memory of the shadowed face shifted across my mind. He looked like almost every white guy I’d ever seen. If only I could separate the feelings from the vision, maybe I could concentrate and get a better picture. “It was a white guy with blue eyes.” I realized what an idiot I sounded like. “I’m sorry. It was dark and with only the light from the kitchen window…”

  Flores took notes on his phone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t believe a word I said. Or maybe it was my own guilt at not being a better witness. I could be a lot more accurate if I was allowed to watch the impression again. I didn’t know which scared me more, explaining to the detective what I could do or experiencing the murder again.

  “How tall was he?”

  Shit. I didn’t see him standing. Even if I had, it would’ve been from Albert’s point of view. How tall was the artist? My head throbbed with the complexity of the situation. “Um, taller than me? He had dark hair and seemed to be in pretty good shape.”

  My description sounded like a random jogger in Midtown. All that was missing was the designer dog. Maybe I should have just called 911 and left. I wasn’t any help at all.

  With a crack of his neck, Flores looked me straight in the eye. “Where were you last night?”

  The question threw me. “Uh.” Where was I last night? I didn’t even remember what day it was. I was sure I’d stood in this hallway for eons. “That was Saturday?”

  He nodded, his amber eyes bit through my skin like maybe he had the curse too.

  “Out with my girlfriends.” Oh crap, he thought I was a suspect. How was he going to allow me to help solve the murder if he thought I committed the crime? “You can call my girlfriends. They’ll verify.” Though we did go home early because the DJ sucked and Gina really wanted to go antiquing the next morning. My vision gave no confirmation of when Albert was attacked except that it was dark outside. It was selfish, I knew, but I hoped it all happened while we were still at the club. I needed my alibi to hold up.

  More notes in his phone. Okay. That was enough.

  “Look. I just bought a piece of Albert Johnson’s work and the store owner gave me his address. I came by to—”

  Flores perked up. “Albert Johnson? His neighbors called him ‘The Collector’ and didn’t know his actual name. Apparently, it was his stage name for his artist career.”

  My rocking against the wall increased as adrenaline pumped through me. No wonder I couldn’t find anything about the guy under his real name. He must have had a website for his art under the pseudonym. My fingernails scratched the inside of the plastic bag, itching to get to my laptop. Wait. Did knowing his real name make me look more or less like a suspect? I needed Flores to see me as an ally if I were to find answers.

  After clearing my throat, I stood up straight and tried to match Flores’s confident stance, though I felt anything but. “Look. I just came to ask about his art and his door was ajar. When I saw the man lying on the floor, I called 911.” I held up my fingers with blood on the tips. “The lady on the phone asked if he was still breathing. So, I checked.”

  Flores typed as quickly as I talked. Then waved over one of the crime scene guys. “Tyler, can you take those off and get a close look at the blood please?”

  Holy shit, he might believe me. I held my breath as the lab tech approached me without questioning the detective.

  Tyler had huge bags under his eyes and a slight overbite that caused him to chew on his lower lip. “Please hold still,” he whispered, like making the sound was all the effort he could put forth.

  I flinched as he untied the bag around each wrist and took more pictures of my hands from multiple directions. When Tyler dropped the camera around his neck and reached for my wrists with his gloved hands, I flinched reflexively. I’d had enough of other peoples’ emotions for one day. Tyler blinked at me and reached for my wrist again. I blew out a steady breath and cued Mom’s hymn, as his fingers touched my skin. The plastic gloves served as a measly barrier. My eyes twitched, the curse’s way of expressing Tyler’s stress, but it was weak. Experience had taught mee that meant exhaustion. Or everything was shorted out with the overuse today.

  Flores spoke quietly with the first officer that unnecessarily pulled his gun on me. Good. He could verify that I was near Albert’s head which was a perfectly reasonable spot to check for a pulse. Plus, my knees and fingers were the only part of me that had any blood on them.
How could I be anything other than a witness? Maybe an idiot who should have called 911 when she noticed the smell and the open door, but only a witness, nevertheless.

  After Flores finished typing into his phone, he motioned for another uniform. “Officer Turner, I need a large evidence bag and a jumpsuit.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  As Flores focused on me again, I felt entirely exposed. A bit of energy surged through my veins as Tyler the tech released me.

  “So?” Flores asked him.

  Tyler yawned, as he explained, “I’d have to run tests to be sure, but the blood’s started to break down.”

  Flores looked at me. “So, not fresh?”

  My mouth hung open as I tried to decide if I should answer or if Tyler was supposed to.

  The tech simply shook his head, while Flores kept his focus on me. Was he letting me know I was lying? Why was he letting me hear the tech’s conclusion? Yes, I was lying about what I saw, but not my innocence. I should have just told him the truth. He’d have totally believed me, right?

  The woman cop Flores sent off earlier returned and held up some items.

  “Please find Ms. Young a private place to change, then collect her clothing.” He handed the officer my driver’s license. “And make sure she gets home safely.”

  Out of the condo door pushed the burly, older detective who had arrived with Flores. I could only assume it was his partner. “Hold up. I need to see her shoes.”

  Flores didn’t flinch at this partner’s gruff demeanor. He must be used to it. “Fauna Young, this is Detective Collins.”

  If Flores was tight and controlled, Collins was a whirling dervish. His mostly white hair stuck out in every direction adding no contrast or framing to his round, rosy-pale face. He gave a withering look to his partner, as if annoyed with the formalities. “Now that we are acquainted, hand over your shoes?”