The Collector (Emergence Book 1)

by Kelly Lynn Colby

  Trying to balance without touching anything, I was grateful for Officer Turner’s help. She removed each one with her gloved hands and dumped them in an evidence bag. I was relieved I hadn’t worn my good pair of hiking boots.

  Collins flipped the bag over. He shook his head as he shared his findings with Flores. “Definitely contaminated the scene.”

  Flores held up his hand as he looked at me from the corner of his eye.

  Was he looking for a reaction? “I’m sorry. I’d never seen a dead body before.” My stomach lurched as the full force of what was happening overcame my thinking mind.

  Flores pulled out a business card and put it in my shaking hand. “Come by 1200 Travis tomorrow afternoon. We’ll get a full statement then.”

  Something about the man demanded respect and I didn’t have the energy to fight it. “Yes, sir.”

  As I followed Officer Turner to a place to change, Collins’s loud whisper carried, “You’re just going to let her go?”

  I stopped to remove my socks to hear Flores’s response.

  “You know she didn’t kill him, but she knows something she’s not sharing. A bit of trust goes a long way.”

  Collins snorted. “With enough rope…”

  Chapter Seven

  The offices for the HPD Homicide Division looked like any other cubicle farm, except that the constant flow of people were not in khakis and polos. Rather, some were in handcuffs, some crying, some angry, and many were in uniform. The emotional deluge washed over my exhausted brain, a steady hum that made it difficult to focus. As long as I didn’t touch anyone, I could keep it under control.

  I hadn’t slept at all last night. Maybe it would be more accurate to say early this morning. With that damn statue whispering to me, falling asleep was almost impossible. Add in the haunting visual of Albert’s murder that assaulted me every time I did manage to close my eyes, and I counted exactly zero sheep.

  When Flores walked into the precinct sipping from a steaming Styrofoam cup, something about the way he carried himself made me believe in him. Still, I rubbed my extra pair of leather gloves, trying to decide if I should take one off before shaking his hand. Then I’d know for sure if he suspected me or not. I had years of experience at reading people and translating that knowledge into useful information. Though I’d sworn never to use the curse to manipulate people again, times like this made that oath difficult to keep.

  Flores nodded at me, but addressed another man behind him. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Tanner. We know where to find you if we have any follow up questions.”

  The tall, dark-haired gentleman in an expensive business suit shook the detective’s hand. I didn’t know why he was here, but holy cow was he hot from the back. Muscles stretched his jacket’s shoulders as he lifted his arms to put on a pair of designer sunglasses. A ruby ring flashed in the filtered light. As he passed me headed for the glass doors, he cocked a half grin in my direction. His lip quirked up slightly higher on the left side. Happiness flowed behind him, tickling the tips of my fingers. Good thing I didn’t have that glass of wine I really wanted with breakfast. I might have just followed that gorgeous specimen out the door. I could have used a little escapism after what I’d witnessed—though, admittedly, feeling happy at such a negatively charged place felt inappropriate.

  Since Flores was wearing the same suit as the night before, I doubted he’d had time to make it home.

  Flores held up a finger to me as another uniformed officer walked up to him with a white woman. She wore a mismatched pants suit and had her hair tied up in a messy bun. I didn’t have to touch her to read her emotions. Her tear-streaked face spoke of despair and loss. Flores guided her to a hallway. I couldn’t hear what he said, but his tone was soothing.

  A Hispanic man with a brown fedora and pock-marked face sat on a bench with his back leaned against the wall. He wore a button-up Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, a contrast even in the mixed bag of the precinct. Something about him was familiar, but I couldn’t place his face. His gaze dropped from the ceiling and focused directly on me. My skin crawled at the direct attention. Who was this guy?

  “Rough night.”

  My body jumped an inch out of the seat at the unexpected voice on the other side of Flores’s desk.

  Detective Collins held out a bottle of water for me. “The Collector’s clients have been in one after another since the news broke of his death. Seems he’ll be missed.”

  I swore I heard accusation in his voice. My instinct was backed up by the cramping of my gut. Collins was angry about something.

  As I reached for the water, my exposed forearm brushed against something on Flores’s desk. The familiar sensation of being pulled into an impression shook my core. Dammit. Not right now.

  I plunged into the mind of a teenage girl. Instead of the steady flow of events like most remnants, this one cascaded one emotion over another. She must have held whatever I touched a lot. My heart beat faster at new love, then crashed to my toes with the loss. Anger at her mother was rampant in the swing of feelings. At least I could separate myself from this impression since it was so fractal.

  Before I could yank my arm away, a boy’s voice overtook the frantic disparity of the girl’s. I’d never touched an item that held remnants from two different individuals. This was new. Curiosity encouraged me to lower my guard and let myself fully immerse in the boy’s memory.

  I sat on a frilly, violet bed, holding a diary with a broken lock. “She doesn’t love me. Now I know the truth,” I said over and over again. Everything hurt, except for my numb fingers squeezing the book. My vision blurred with tears and I didn’t know how I would go on without her. I curled up on her bed for the last time, and cried, as the diary slipped from my hands.

  The remnant ended abruptly. I shoved myself back from the desk. My fingers ached from numbness and I rubbed them to return feeling. That was the worst part. When I wasn’t inside the impression anymore, why did my body continue to feel the aftereffects? I wasn’t really there to begin with. This was one of those things that would have been nice to discuss with Albert.

  I looked to see what I’d touched and the broken-lock diary the boy had held in his hand sat on top of a pile of files in an evidence bag. I remembered the water bottle Collins’s had offered as it bounced off the edge of the desk and hit the ground. I crossed my arms over my chest and blinked at it as it rolled away. I couldn’t seem to move myself to action.

  “I got it.” Flores bent down and picked it up as he headed my way.

  Collins mumbled something I couldn’t make out as he passed Flores, who nodded.

  I still hadn’t cleared my head from the impression. The teenager’s words circled in my mind. The teenage boy had really loved that girl. Teenager remnants were the worst. The hormones pumped into their bodies made everything seem wonderful or horrible with very little even keeled. I would lose my mind, literally, if I was exposed to a high school environment.

  With a grunt, Flores sat down heavily in his chair and placed the bottle close to me. “Did you get any sleep?”

  I wanted to answer his question, but couldn’t shake the impression. “She doesn’t love me. Now I know the truth.” As soon as I said the words, my muscles relaxed, and my mind cleared. Shit, I really needed a better way to separate myself from those experiences.

  The look of confusion on Flores’s face was one I’d seen before. But his reaction was unique. “What did you say?” He picked up the diary’s bag and checked the seal.

  Of course, it was still intact. I didn’t read the damn thing. Yet, the fact that he associated my involuntary rambling to the diary showed a different way of thinking. I was right about him. He’d get to the truth and find Albert’s killer.

  Flores opened a desk drawer and slid the evidence bag inside. As he closed it, he studied me with those intuitive eyes. I rubbed my upper arms in discomfort. He must be good at getting confessions. That mix of concern and sternness had its own kind of power.

 
; The arrival of a man with a pad of paper and a couple pencils interrupted the tension between us. “Detective Flores? I’m ready.”

  Flores stood almost too quickly and offered his seat to the new arrival. “Ms. Young, this is Horace Newman. He’s the best sketch artist in the city.”

  “Hey, Flores, we’ve got another one for you,” called an officer near the glass doors.

  A tall Hispanic man with a pockmarked face carried a fedora in his hands beside the uniformed cop.

  “I’m coming, Davis.” Flores waved his acknowledgement. He paused, staring at my gloved hands, like he wanted to ask me something.

  I tucked them under my knees—I wasn’t about to explain—and addressed Horace. “What do you need me to do?”

  Horace beat his pad of paper with the end of his pencil. “Tell me what you remember.”

  Concentrating was a real challenge in the emotionally messy police station. With my eyes closed, I tried to visualize what I witnessed without getting swallowed by the terror and pain. The backlight shadowed the killer’s features. “He was white with blue eyes and dark hair.”

  I peaked at Horace who blinked at his sketchbook. I was going to have to work harder. I didn’t really want to re-experience the murder, but I needed to help wherever I could. My fingers flexed in my lap as I imagined gripping Albert’s shoulders. The metallic smell of blood assaulted my nose, then the eerie sound of Albert’s misplaced laughter grated my nerves. It was so dark in my memory of his memory.

  Then, the murderer yanked the knife and his forearms glistened in the streetlight from the window. At first, I thought he’d cut himself. Then I realized they were scars. Old ones. That had to be helpful.

  “I remember his arms the clearest. Would that help?”

  Chapter Eight

  My fingers drummed against the steering wheel of my car while I tried to wrap my mind around walking into Chipped. It was such a normal Tuesday morning activity when nothing about the world felt normal anymore.

  In less than forty-eight hours, my life shifted from being the only cursed one, to maybe finding another, to finding that person murdered, to becoming a suspect, and finally to completely failing to describe the killer. Was I now just supposed to go to work like nothing happened?

  A light flipped on inside the store. Jeff must have had another fight with his wife. He never beat me in unless he’d spent the night. That somehow brought me comfort. At least some things remained the same.

  Since electronic equipment never held an impression, a career in computers was a no-brainer. When working in an office full of people proved too overwhelming, I used my inheritance to open Chipped instead. Every now and then, someone—usually Amelia from her comfy desk chair in her comfy corporate position—asked for my help debugging code, but the bulk of business involved retrieving data from broken computers and fixing cracked phone screens.

  Working might have been just what I needed to re-center myself. With Walter at home, it no longer qualified as a sanctuary. That damn statue had served its purpose. Maybe it was time to kick it to the curb. I didn’t know how many nights I could go without sleep.

  A wave of cold air hit me as I unlocked my store. “Jeff, what did I tell you about the thermostat?”

  My only employee shrugged his rounded shoulders from behind the counter without looking up from his game. “The server was getting hot.”

  Sometimes, I wondered why I kept him around.

  He smiled, showing his straight, upper teeth. His bottom teeth looked like a traffic accident, so, he always kept them hidden with his lower lip. I tried to convince him no one cared about crooked teeth once you were older than twenty-two, but he remained super sensitive to the perceived flaw. If he was so worried about the way he appeared to other people, you’d think he’d dress in something other than old video game and band T-shirts.

  As I passed Jeff to drop my purse in the back, my muscles tingled in a gentle, soothing way. Most men would be stressed out with the recent fight with his wife, but Jeff radiated contentment. Now I remembered why I kept him. His emotions were so mellow, it was like working with an android, which suited me just fine. Of course, that also might have been why he routinely found himself out of the house. Who was I to judge? I hadn’t had a steady relationship since college and had no intention of changing that streak.

  When I hit the threshold between the floor and the back room, crumbs littered the area and were ground into the carpet. Behind me, I tracked the trail of crackers to the register where Jeff shoved another in his mouth with one hand and maneuvered his avatar on screen with another.

  Now that I noticed the mess, I couldn’t see anything but the disaster. “Seriously?”

  He looked up at me, the picture of innocence.

  I shook my head as I grabbed the vacuum. “I’m starting to relate to your wife.”

  “Sorry.” Jeff mumbled as he brushed crumbs from the counter to the floor.

  He was so lucky I liked cleaning. It was therapeutic. A way to control my world when my curse overwhelmed me. The hum of the machine as it sucked up the crumbs and other miscellaneous dust provided just enough white noise for me to think. It was surreal that Albert Johnson, the Collector, was murdered before I even knew of his existence. The artist called to me from his work. I answered, but now he was gone. What kind of cruel trick was that? Who was in charge of this nonsense? I’d like to have a word.

  With the worn-out carpet clean and Jeff emptying the bin, I hovered over the voicemail button on the phone. My elbow hit the desk as a noise from Jeff’s video game surprised me. The laptop flashed, asking if Jeff wanted to play another round. He probably did, but he had work to do. I wished the store was bustling with customers to keep my mind focused on something besides Albert Johnson. If he was like me, there had to be others, right?

  In a moment of absolute clarity, I closed Jeff’s game and pulled up Google. I hadn’t found anything about Albert Johnson, but maybe if I searched for the Collector, I might have better luck.

  As soon as I hit enter, a whole world popped onto my screen. Reviews praised his innovative, experimental process. The Collector got his name because he went to estate sales all over Texas and found unique items to create his art. Though no article mentioned it, I knew that must be how he found the emotional remnants. For the same reason I avoided antiquing, Albert immersed himself in that world. I couldn’t imagine subjecting yourself to such turmoil all the time. How had he centered himself? My mother’s singing voice only worked for so long. Alcohol only numbed it. What was his trick?

  His deep brown eyes danced with joy in each picture as he pointed out different pieces in his amalgamations. He didn’t seem to have any compunction about touching any of it. How did he do that? A lump formed in my throat. I would never get to ask him.

  Tight dreads framed his chiseled, golden-brown face. My mind superimposed his death mask of washed out skin and blood-soaked hair. Unable to see anything else, I stood up and grabbed the duster.

  When my mind was back under control and the display monitors gleamed in the filtered light, I returned to the search. I wasn’t about to give up. The store might end up cleaner than when I first moved in, but I would find answers.

  A few more clicks took me to an events page. The Collector hosted a show at the Loblolly Gallery on Montrose Saturday night. That’s the night Flores asked me about. Was he killed after his show? My curiosity compelled me to learn all I could. I didn’t know how long galleries kept art after a show, but maybe someone there saw something weird. What could it hurt to check it out?

  My stomach growled, reminding me I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday afternoon. “Jeff, do you want to GrubHub something?”

  “Sure,” he called from the employee restroom.

  I closed the laptop and went into the back. The “break room,” as we liked to call it, was through a door next to back storage. It had a little table with a couple of folding chairs, a hot plate, a full-sized fridge and sink, and a cot that Jeff called
his second home. The old socks smell attested to the regularity.

  “I’ll order the food while you clean this up.” I grabbed a Diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge while I scrolled the cheapest selections for the day.

  The bell at the door rang, announcing a customer. Time to pay the rent.

  At the counter stood a young man, maybe early twenties, with an average white-guy haircut and average white-guy jeans. He set down a laptop and drummed on its surface as he looked behind the counter like someone was hiding behind it.

  “Can I help you?”

  My question startled him, but he recovered quickly. “Yeah, I’m locked out of my stupid computer. Can you help me get in?”

  Dammit. I hate these jobs. “Sometimes I can. It’ll cost you $50 for the analysis.”

  “No problem. You’d be saving my butt.” He pulled out his wallet and dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the counter.

  I set my soda down maybe a bit too hard. Usually people complain about how much everything cost. Dropping that much cash without blinking an eye for a guy his age made me suspicious. It wouldn’t be my first stolen laptop. Well, some good had to come from this curse, right? I took my gloves off and opened the laptop. The screen flashed to wallpaper of two toddlers.

  I cocked my head at the twins that shared zero resemblance with the customer. “Cute kids.”

  The guy’s face flushed red. “Their mom thinks so. This thing used to be my sister’s, which is why it’s probably cursed.”

  He didn’t have a clue what that word really meant. “I’ll see what I can do.” I held out my hand to shake his.

  When his skin touched mine, my eye twitched and my esophagus burned like I’d eaten a habanero, seeds and all. I couldn’t read his mind. That wasn’t part of my ability, but my body reacted in predictable ways to others’ emotions. Over the years, I’d learned what each sensation meant. This customer was nervous and suffered from a heavy sense of guilt. Now that didn’t mean for sure that he’d stolen the laptop. I was positive about his feelings, but couldn’t necessarily discern their source. Nevertheless, this wasn’t my first rodeo.