by Deanna Chase
“So,” said Sharon. “No news is good news?”
Mac realized he’d been grinning and abruptly stopped.
“No,” he said. “Not in this case.”
“Oh,” Sharon said, looking toward the kitchen. She’d been about to go back to her computer when she stopped, apparently remembering something. “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at the transcript I texted everyone but the abductor misquoted the Bible.”
Mac scowled.
“Did he?” he said, before he took a sip of coffee.
“Yes,” she said nodding. “I compared it to several versions online.” She sat on the couch and brought up the transcript. “The King James, the New International Version, the New American Bible, and others,” she said pointing at the screen. “He says ‘With whom the kings of the earth had committed incest’ but the correct quote is actually ‘With whom the kings of the earth had committed fornication.’ He did the same one more time. ‘Drunk with the wine of her incest’ ought to be ‘Drunk with the wine of her fornication.’”
Mac sat down next to her.
“That’s an interesting slip,” he said. “One might even say Freudian.” He paused. “The killer was nervous.”
“Killer?” Sharon asked.
“He’s not a kidnapper, not in the conventional sense,” Mac said. He leaned toward her. “He intends to kill Esme,” he said very quietly. “That’s clear. No ransom request, claimed not to have known her name. She’s little more than a means to an end for him. With the raving phone call and the incest slip, he’s starting to come into focus.” Mac paused and then thought out loud. “Good verbal skills, aggressive behavior, dares to call when he knows the call will be traced. Arrogant, probably intelligent.” He looked at the computer screen. “Incest? Maybe something he’s experienced.” His gaze shifted to Sharon. “Do you see where this is headed?”
“A serial killer,” she whispered.
“A sexually-motivated serial killer. But what we don’t know is why he hasn’t killed Esme yet.”
At that moment, Isabelle and Anita came in from the kitchen. Anita took a tray of pastries to the sideboard near the stairs as Isabelle followed with another. Mac focused on her. The killer had wanted to speak with her. He’d been so nervous on the phone with her that he’d misquoted the Bible. Something about a psychic being part of the team had unnerved him.
And that felt wrong in Mac’s gut. Again he got the feeling this man was simply not what he seemed. Serial killers didn’t get nervous on the phone or make Freudian slips while quoting Bible verses. But whatever he was after, Isabelle played into it and was likely the reason that Esme was still alive.
He clenched his jaw and shook his head. He needed more time and yet time was close to being gone. This was the third day, the third, virtually unprecedented. He had to have more time. Whatever the killer wanted, he had to be thwarted. He had to be stalled.
An idea began to form in Mac’s mind as he watched Isabelle quickly smile at him and follow Anita back into the kitchen. The killer had to be lulled into a sense of security. They’d give him what he wants. What was it he said? ‘It’s a war between you and me.’ Fine. Make him believe that he had won.
“What does DC say?” Ben asked.
Sharon was gone and Mac was sitting alone on the couch, Ben standing next to him, waiting. Mac stood.
“Exactly what you’d think,” Mac answered quickly. “But I’ve got a plan.”
Ben smiled–not a smile of relief or even happiness. It was the smile of a man who wanted the tide to turn–the grim grin of someone who felt his time was coming.
“Of course you do,” Ben said.
“I’m going to what?” Isabelle asked, not quite believing what she’d just heard.
“Get on television and say you’re a fake,” Ben said, repeating what Mac had just said.
Ben, Mac, and Sharon stood across the center island of the kitchen. Anita stood at Isabelle’s side.
“I don’t understand,” Anita said. “How is that going to help?”
“We’re going to give him want he wants,” Mac said to Anita. “Lull him into thinking he’s got time. That he’s got the upper hand.”
“He’ll get careless,” Ben said.
“He’s already making mistakes,” Sharon said.
“At the very least, he’ll be off balance,” Mac said, still not looking at Isabelle. “That shoe will be on the other foot for a while.”
Anita was silent, looking at the three of them and then she turned to Isabelle. Anita’s lips were pressed together in a slight grimace and she blinked once and then twice.
This is so ironic, Isabelle thought. In all my life, being a psychic has never felt so good. Working with people, making a real difference. And now…she was supposed to deny it, just when she’d had her first, big break. Even if she got the chance to say that she’d lied about being a fake–what good would it do? You couldn’t unring the bell. All the years of trying to make people understand–gone.
Anita swallowed and reached out to her but then hesitated, her hands wavering in the air.
Isabelle took them in hers.
“Let’s do it,” Isabelle said quietly.
“Thank you,” Anita said, clutching Isabelle’s arm.
Isabelle patted Anita’s hand.
“The important thing is Esme,” Isabelle said, mustering a smile. “Didn’t I say that we’re going to find her?”
Anita hugged her tight.
“It’s not what I want,” Mac said, when they were finally alone.
Sharon had left to compose the statement that Isabelle would read, and Ben and Anita had followed her. Though her words were measured, Mac could see that Isabelle was deeply upset.
“But it was your idea,” Isabelle said. “Wasn’t it?”
“I mean I don’t want you sidelined,” he said, coming around the island, moving one of the stools out of the way. “I want you with me,” he said, taking her gloved hand in his.
Isabelle shook her head and looked down at their hands.
“Sometimes I think I don’t understand you,” she said quietly.
“Really?” he said. “Even after…last night? Or after our hands touched?”
“Do you believe I have psychic ability?” she asked suddenly and looked up at him.
The question came as a surprise.
“What?” he said, sensing that everything turned on this.
“You’ve never once acknowledged it,” she said. “As far as you’ve ever said, everything I contribute is something your investigation has already revealed. Or it’s a decent guess. Or a logical thing to say.”
Her eyes flicked back and forth between his, and he felt the squeeze of her hand.
“Mac, do you believe I have psychic ability or don’t you?”
He wanted to be able to say yes, that he believed her unequivocally, without a doubt in his mind. It’s what she wanted to hear, maybe even needed to hear. But sadly, it wasn’t true and Isabelle didn’t deserve a lie.
“I’m a man of science,” he began. “I rely on facts, on data.”
Isabelle’s shoulders suddenly sagged, and she quickly lowered her gaze. In moments, she had dropped his hand and was backpedaling.
“No,” he said reaching toward her, but it was too late. A lopsided smile appeared on her lips and her eyes teared up. “Isabelle,” he said quietly, “don’t.”
“No, that’s all right,” she said quickly, holding up her hands to fend him off as she continued to back away.
Then she ran through the swinging doors, one gloved hand covering her mouth.
“Here we go,” muttered Prentiss, as he poured milk for his cereal.
He sat at the folding card table in the kitchen-slash-living-room of the studio apartment, the small TV set next to the sink. The live image showed that the podium in front of the giant lawn was empty, but as Prentiss settled into the folding chair and set the milk carton down, the father came to the microphone.
; “Thanks for giving us your time this morning,” said the older man. Like yesterday, when he and his wife had begged for information regarding Esme, he was wearing a dark brown, pin-striped suit and black tie. “We have an announcement to make.” He glanced nervously down at the index card in his hand as cameras clicked furiously. “Actually, it’s more of an introduction. So,” he said, glancing off camera, “let me just introduce Isabelle de Grey.” He walked off in the direction he’d glanced and suddenly the psychic was on screen. The firing of flash bulbs and shutter releases exploded as she replaced the father. The woman was pretty, Prentiss thought, as he spooned a mouthful of cocoa-flavored balls into his mouth. Instead of the hurried shots of her running down the sidewalk or riding in the back of an SUV, the camera focused on just her.
“As many of you have heard,” she read from a quaking sheet of paper that she held in front of her. “My name is Isabelle de Grey and I have been referred to as a psychic.” Prentiss’s ears pricked up. “But I’d like to state, for the record, that I am not.” Prentiss stopped chewing. “I do not claim to have any abilities beyond those of the every day and the physical. I am not a psychic nor do I believe that such people exist. I have been here,” she glanced off camera but had to blink at the sudden fury of flashing bulbs, “with the Olivos family as a friend and supporter. I see now, though, that my presence has only been a distraction from the real and only reason that any of us should be here: to see Esme safely returned to her family. Therefore, I’m leaving, and I apologize to the Olivos’s for any harm I might have caused.”
With that, she simply folded the paper in half and left. A cacophony of voices immediately filled the air. Questions were shouted.
But Prentiss didn’t hear them. Instead, he stared down at the soppy cereal in his bowl and the spoon that he gripped in his shaking hand. In one savage movement, he swept everything off the table–the bowl, the milk carton, the old newspapers. They crashed against the cabinets under the sink, milk and cereal spewing in every direction, before clattering to the floor.
“No!” he wailed.
CHAPTER NINE
“Just leave the entire box,” Isabelle told the agent. “I’ll just be here.”
The evidence room wasn’t exactly a room. It was more like a giant wire cage with metal shelving stacked high with cardboard boxes. The agent set the box on the metal table and glanced at Sergeant Dixon, who’d driven her here. The evidence room at the FBI’s downtown headquarters wasn’t a particularly cheery spot. But right now, that actually suited her.
The agent glanced at her, and then the police sergeant, but then he shrugged and left.
“You don’t have to stay,” she told Sergeant Dixon, putting her purse on the table and opening the box.
“Well,” he replied. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to stay.”
“Suit yourself,” she said.
After the press conference, she’d been livid. Her cell phone hadn’t stopped ringing with calls or chiming with texts. Probably clients wanting their money back, she thought. She’d turned it off. Nor had she spoken to Mac, though he’d tried to talk to her. Instead, she’d stormed out.
But once she was in the car with the sergeant, she had come to a decision: to stop following everybody else’s orders, their leads, and their tips. She’d make her own. She was a psychic after all. And she’d prove to Mac, once and for all, that it was no lie.
The sergeant had looked at her out of the corner of his eye when she’d asked where the objects from the parking structure would be. He hadn’t objected in the slightest to bringing her here, and the way he wanted to stay suggested he might not be as doubting as the other police and FBI agents.
Except, once upon a time, she’d also thought Mac was different.
Even as she overturned the box of bagged and tagged objects onto the table to spread them out, she thought of him. How could he think she was lying? Or maybe he thought she was deluding herself. She didn’t know which was worse. And who was the dark-haired woman who made him sad?
The sergeant helped her space out the objects, turned them over so they weren’t hidden by the paper tags inside the small bags.
“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked.
For whatever causes the least pain, she thought, as she took a seat in the only chair in the cage.
“I’m looking for common people,” she said. “The same person who might show up more than once, specifically Esme or the man in the dark suit. I’m hoping that one of these things is going to have him.”
“Then you’ll know who it is?”
“If it belonged to him, yes. If it belongs to someone else, I might only get a better look at him.”
“The chances of him having dropped something are going to be pretty low,” the sergeant said, turning over a bag with a quarter in it.
“I know,” Isabelle said, unbuttoning the tiny clasp of her right glove.
“If you want to start removing those objects from their bags and just rest them on top, that’d save some time.”
In response, the sergeant picked up the first bag.
“But wear some latex gloves,” Isabelle said quickly, “or I’ll read you.”
He stared down at the bag as though it’d come alive in his hand.
“Right,” he said slowly.
At the doorway, they’d passed a box of disposable gloves.
Isabelle looked down at the silicone earbud cover in the bag. No point in stalling. There was no way to tell what might prove useful or not without reading it. She opened the bag, took off her glove, and dumped the dirty little piece of rubber into her hand.
She was in a classroom with a slideshow going on. Sleepy. Trying to take notes. At the head of the class was an older woman who droned and, in between them, a sea of people’s heads. She was riding a bike home but not in a part of campus Isabelle recognized. Now it was nighttime.
Isabelle dropped the earbud piece onto the plastic bag and took a deep breath.
Nothing.
As her vision of the evidence room returned, she realized that the sergeant was already halfway through unbagging everything. He’d laid the bags out in a rough grid pattern, ten by ten. There were nearly one hundred items.
“Wow,” she muttered.
“I’ve arranged them by floor,” he said. “So it’s not as bad as it looks. The row closest to you,” he said pointing, “is from the first floor. Like the piece you just, uh, read.”
She smiled at him. At least he wasn’t a naysayer.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
On top of the bag at bottom right was a yellow highlighter pen. She lightly laid her fingers on it. A textbook jumped into view and the highlighter traced a bright yellow band over an equation in the center of the page. She was hungry, the library was too cold, and her back hurt. She crossed the street to the parking structure. Another student in a car, a woman, started to follow her to her parking space. A priest passed her on his way to the street. A male student was just leaving the first floor, taking the stairs up. Geez, she hated it when cars followed you to find your space.
Isabelle lifted her hand from the pen and let her eyes focus again. At least that had had some views of the parking structure. She took a breath and reached to the next item–it was a penny. Her hand hesitated, hovered just above it.
“A lot of people have handled that,” said the sergeant.
Isabelle nodded. Money was the worst. She sat up a little straighter, gritted her teeth, and laid an index finger on the coin. The images flashed by like an assault. Faces, stores, cashiers, homes, cars, more faces, a shrieking child with a stick of peppermint candy. Isabelle snatched her hand back. She clutched it to her chest with the gloved one as though it’d been burned and tried to slow her suddenly rapid breathing. The evidence room was some time coming back into focus and the glowing lightbulbs above seemed brighter now.
“Are you all right?” asked the sergeant quietly.
She nodded and glanced over the re
st of the items. Two pennies and a quarter, up on the higher levels of the structure. Something to look forward to.
Prentiss listened to the phone ringing as he danced back and forth on the balls of his feet. When he’d removed the gag from the girl, there’d been hardly any spit. Two days without water. She might make it another. But without the television coverage and buzz that the psychic created, what was the point?
“Hello?” a man answered.
“Get the fucking psychic!” Prentiss screamed into his cell phone. “What the fuck is the matter with you people?”
“Hold on,” said the man. “Just calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down! Get the fucking psychic.”
He heard the man tell someone to get Isabelle.
“There,” the man said. “We’ve sent for her. She’ll be here soon.”
“Who am I talking to?” he screamed. “Is this the father?”
“No,” said the voice calmly. “This is Gavin MacMillan, FBI.”
“Well get the fucking father on the line!”
A distinct clicking noise immediately followed.
“This is Esme’s father,” said an older man. Prentiss recognized his voice from television. He started to calm down.
“That was a stupid thing you did, Esme’s father,” Prentiss said, his voice shaking. “Stupid.”
“Can I speak to Esme?” the father asked.
“No, you cannot speak to Esme!” Prentiss yelled, instantly angry again. “You speak to me. I speak to God and you speak to me! You got it?”
“Please,” the man said. “Just let me hear her voice.”