Sarah flopped down onto the couch. “You sure this is necessary?”
He came toward her, placing one hand in his pocket, which exposed his sidearm in the holster. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s not enough.”
She leaned back on the couch. “Can you get me something then?”
“Sure. What?”
“A drawing pad and some pencils. Colored ones.”
As night descended, Sarah sat at the dining table with the pad of paper in front of her. She hadn’t seen Giovanni since he had dropped the supplies off, but another agent was with her—the rude woman.
They hadn’t spoken since the woman had arrived, but she was clearly annoyed at having to be there. She stomped around the house and planted herself somewhere and didn’t move or talk for a long time. Then she stomped somewhere else and folded her arms as if she were an older sister forced to babysit.
“You really don’t need to be here with me,” Sarah said.
“I’ve been ordered to protect the princess, so that’s what I have to do.”
Sarah drew for a while in silence. “Have I done something to offend you?”
“Yes, you offend me. Do you have any idea how hard I worked to get into the FBI? How long it took? How much bullshit I had to take from these Neanderthal adrenaline junkies to finally earn their respect? And you just come in and are a consultant on our most famous case in decades? What, are you sleeping with Kyle?”
Sarah hadn’t expected that much venom that quickly. She sat in silence for a moment and thought about what to say.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Sarah said softly. “Because I’m a freak. They’re using me. As soon as I’m not useful to them, they’ll throw me aside. But I’m so desperate that I’m willing to do it, just for the chance that I might be able to change my life. I’m sorry that threatens you for some reason, but I have as much right to be here as you do.”
The woman turned away, staring out the windows in the front room. Sarah could’ve reacted with vitriol; she could’ve been as angry and bitter as the woman was. But instead, she wanted to try something else. She reached out to her, opening her awareness just enough that a whisper of the woman’s mind came to her. Like a brush on the shoulder.
Sarah saw the woman as a young child. She was bullied, mercilessly picked on by the other kids—and home was even worse.
Flashes came to Sarah—a mother who was in and out of mental institutions, an alcoholic father, poverty so deep that Sarah saw the young girl without a coat in the winter. She had risen from atrocious circumstances to earn her place in a bureaucracy that favored men.
Sarah suddenly felt a deep pang of sympathy for her.
“I’m sure it wasn’t easy,” Sarah said. “Getting where you are.”
She shook her head and glanced back. The woman’s face was softening. “You have no idea.”
“I have some idea. I grew up Amish. Women are second-class citizens. We’re married off quite young and usually don’t have any say in who we marry. Then we’re just used for breeding.”
“So maybe you have some idea,” she said.
Sarah smiled, and the woman, though not quite there yet, at least didn’t frown.
Returning to her drawing, Sarah didn’t even realize when the woman came up behind her and began watching her. Sarah didn’t stop until the drawing was done.
“What is that?” the woman said.
“I don’t know. I saw it.”
“Saw it where?”
Sarah didn’t know how much the woman had been told about her position as Kyle’s “assistant,” and she wasn’t about to go around blabbing it. All she said was, “I don’t know. Somewhere.”
“You don’t have to be coy. I know exactly who you are and why you’re with the Bureau.”
“Oh.”
“So what is this?”
Sarah looked the drawing over. Two young boys sitting straight, their backs to a wall, masks over their faces. “I keep seeing it. Two kids with masks over their faces in a room. I can’t see anything else in the room. I heard screaming the last time I saw this, but I don’t know where it came from.”
“Those masks are creepy.”
Sarah ran her finger over them. “I don’t know what they mean.” She looked up at the woman. “You probably think I’m crazy, right?”
The woman sat down. Sarah could see her badge clipped to her skirt. Her name was Melanie Foster.
“No,” Melanie said, “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“Most people do. Maybe I am. Maybe this is just what crazy people do, and sometimes they’re right.”
“I don’t think Kyle would’ve hired you if he thought that. He’s a bare-bones kinda guy. Life is rational thought and nothing else. Big fan of Ayn Rand. I really don’t think he would bring you in if you didn’t show him something special.” She paused. “What did you show him?”
“You sure you want to know?” Sarah said, running the tip of an eraser over the edge of the bench the two children were sitting on.
“No, I guess not. But… do you see things with me?”
“Nobody from your past is here if that’s what you mean.”
She swallowed before speaking. “My father…”
The hostility suddenly made sense. “Is that why you’ve been so rude to me? You’re scared I’m gonna tell you something about your father?”
Melanie looked away at the far wall in the room that held the photo of a family who were probably just actors. “If that bastard is on the other side, I hope he’s burning in hell.”
Sarah kept her mind tightly shut. With some effort, she kept the thoughts out. But it exhausted her. Like contracting your stomach for a long period of time. She didn’t want to know why Melanie had said that, or what her father had done to her. Melanie clearly didn’t want her to know, either.
“I better head back to the front room,” Melanie said. “Someone will be here to relieve me around midnight. If you hear the alarm and voices, it’s just us.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
Melanie rose and went back to the living room. She sat on the couch and stared out the window. With a single thought, Sarah could know exactly what she was thinking, what demons lurked behind her eyes that made her the way she was and made her so frightened of Sarah. But she didn’t open herself. She’d had enough monstrous thoughts for the day. Instead, she pushed the drawing away from her and headed to her room, hoping that she’d be able to get some sleep tonight without any nightmares.
38
One thing that always fascinated Wolfgram was how much information one could buy with nothing more than a credit card and a valid email address. He’d run several searches on different individuals over the years and was amazed how much was in the reports. But Sarah King’s was different.
There was almost nothing in them. A modest credit score, one arrest for public intoxication, an address and phone number, and practically nothing else. The woman certainly was an enigma. No matter, though; he could get what he needed from other sources.
Wolfgram, whenever possible, preferred to be nude. He was nude now as he went about his household chores, and by the time he was done, he was ready for his afternoon nap.
His nap schedule was rigid. Every day at 4:00 p.m., rain or shine, he would take an hour nap. Not fifty-eight minutes, not sixty-three minutes, exactly sixty minutes. If he woke up early, he would try and sleep again for the remaining time. He kept a pair of pantyhose underneath the pillow, and he took one side and slipped it over his head. He wouldn’t be able to sleep without something covering his face.
Exactly fifty-nine minutes later, he woke and lay in bed another minute before rising. He stretched his back and his arms, his shoulders and thighs. He had seen lions once in Kenya waking to a sunrise, and they stretched every part of themselves. He had done it ever since.
Though evening was falling, it was still light out. He had some time.
He spent it in the shower. The shower calmed and relaxed him. S
ometimes he’d play opera or yoga music on the stereo in his bedroom and sit in the shower for hours, until the water ran ice cold.
But he had too much excitement buzzing within him to do that today, so the shower was no longer than usual, and then he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a baseball cap. In his medicine cabinet were several full makeup kits. A blue zip-up bag contained false beards and mustaches. He chose the brown beard, not quite full and not quite stubble, and stuck it to his cheeks with eyelash glue. He waited a few moments, glaring at himself in the mirror as the glue dried.
When he felt he looked just right, he left the house and got into his Oldsmobile. Twenty-five minutes away by service roads was a car rental agency. He parked in their customer parking lot and went inside.
The clerk was a young man of no more than twenty, with a buzz cut. He smiled widely and said, “How can I help you, sir?”
“I’d like to rent a car, please,” Wolfgram said.
“Just need a driver’s license and a major credit card.”
He produced a false driver’s license and a credit card. The driver’s license was connected to a real man who had passed away last year. All of his false identifications and credit cards were connected to men who had passed away. The best lies, he thought, contained partial truths.
After the paperwork, Wolfgram waited by the front entrance for his car to be brought around. As he did so, his phone rang. He took it out and checked the ID. It was Dara.
He had forgotten about Dara. But there was something pleasant about her. Comfortable, not entirely revolting, like most women in his life. So he answered.
“Hello, Dara.”
“Hey. What’re you doing?”
“Just heading in to grade some papers. How about you?”
“Getting off a shift at the hospital. I was wondering if you wanted to grab a late dinner. I gotta run home and change, but I was thinking after.”
“I can’t… But maybe later tonight if you can wait that long. Perhaps ten or so?”
“Um, yeah, why not? I’ll just have a snack. Let’s do it the European way.”
The car, a dark four-door sedan that wouldn’t stick out no matter where it was, pulled up to the front of the rental agency. “I’ll pick you up at ten, then.”
“Okay, see you.”
Wolfgram hung up and got into the car. The clerk asked him to inspect it so he wouldn’t be liable for damage that was already there when he returned the car, but Wolfgram waved him away and drove off.
The freeways, unfortunately, were bumper to bumper. A giant sea of taillights. Wolfgram listened to Beethoven’s Fifth and then his Sixth symphony, on the radio. Hardly the last note had played by the time he got off the exit.
A few more streets, and he was in front of Sarah King’s apartment complex.
He was familiar with the building. It had an interesting allure, and he’d googled its website after he had driven by once. It had been a dormitory for a defunct college that had been a few blocks away and then turned into a mental institution in the ’60s. The institution had been shut down in the ’80s and turned into an apartment complex. Of all the places for a psychic to live, if that’s what she indeed was, he wondered why she would choose someplace filled with what must’ve been so many horrific memories.
Sarah King just became even more interesting to him.
Wolfgram parked across the street and stared at the building. He knew Sarah wouldn’t be here. That story painted the FBI as buffoons; there was no way it had been sanctioned by the Bureau. It had caught them off guard. Which meant they were probably concerned for Sarah’s safety. Unless they were entirely incompetent, she should be in protective custody somewhere—that was the protocol anyway.
Law enforcement was quite curious to Wolfgram. He’d worked as a police officer for several years, during college. He thought he could learn about procedure, but that was not covered to the extent he had wished. Instead, he attended law enforcement seminars on forensics.
The best one he had ever seen was given by a homicide detective from San Diego named Jon Stanton. The man was teaching at the front of a large auditorium of local, state, and federal law enforcement agents. He was emphasizing the importance of observation, of not letting any detail escape the investigator’s attention. To demonstrate, he told the attendees he would leave and they could move anything in the auditorium, and when he came back in, he would figure out what it was.
Several people moved some of the dry-erase markers, some moved pens or pencils, one took an item of trash from the bin in the corner, but Wolfgram one-upped them. He removed something from the auditorium entirely so that Stanton couldn’t find it.
Stanton came in, observed the auditorium like a bloodhound on a scent, and determined that someone had removed a pen that was on the floor. They’d taken it outside. He then walked out the way Wolfgram had and returned with the pen a few moments later—the pen Wolfgram had thrown into a dumpster outside. It was the most incredible thing Wolfgram had ever seen.
It was from Stanton’s seminars, which Wolfgram had attended four of while a police officer, that he learned the art and science of forensics—both how to find evidence and how to conceal it.
He scanned the surrounding streets and saw what he was looking for about half a block up. Two men in a sedan parked inconspicuously in front of a house. They had their eye on Sarah’s complex. Wolfgram grinned and pulled away. He drove past them, careful not to look, and then glanced in his rearview.
He turned at the intersection and headed for the freeway entrance. This was just a curious diversion from his real destination.
39
The moon shone fiercely, a glowing ball of silver light hanging in a dark sky. Sarah stared at it through the shutters in her bedroom. She lay on the bed a long time, just watching it. She and the moon had always had a history.
When she was a little girl, she would run into the woods when she was hurt. Her father was a strict disciplinarian and would beat her with a belt when she misbehaved, as though she was a mule. On these nights, the dark forests were her friends, her comfort.
There was a stream near her home. Several large stones jutted out from the shore, and she would sit on them for hours and stare at the gushing water below her. Sometimes the moonlight would be so bright that she could see her reflection in it. And there, among the whispering trees and the wind that kissed her skin, she’d open her mind.
She would see things that were to come and things that had been. The dead would tell her things as though they were angels and devils sitting on her shoulders. She saw civilizations fall and cities demolished. But she also saw love and hope. She saw civilizations rebuilt and new nations formed. She saw history before her, and she was too young to know what it was. Now, in her twenties, she wished she could remember what it was she had seen. If she had kept a journal… But then again, maybe the visions would have terrified her.
Sarah stripped off her clothes before hopping into the shower. The water was hot, and she let it run over her a long while before getting out and into her pajamas, which consisted of an old sweatshirt and sweatpants. The bed was cold, and laying her head back, she stared at the way the moonlight appeared slotted on the ceiling from the beams being cut by the shutters. And at some point, as she stared, her mind began to drift and sleep overtook her.
Sarah stood in the middle of a house. Not like any house she had ever been in and she wondered how she’d gotten here. Was she sleepwalking? Was this where she had been all along?
Noises were coming from somewhere. The sounds were too muffled to know what they were. Maybe the television, maybe an animal whining to get out.
“Hello?” she said.
No answer. She stood frozen for a long time, scanning the home. Past the kitchen in front of her were sliding glass doors leading to a backyard. A small kitchen table held an empty beer can. In the living room was a flatscreen television on the wall and furniture that looked old and ragged, though it was so dark she couldn’t rea
lly tell. There were no paintings or photographs up as far as she could tell.
More sounds, this time louder.
“Who’s there?” she said.
No reply. The sounds continued.
Sarah hesitantly took a step in the dark. The only light was the moon coming through the sliding glass doors—a full moon, like the one she thought she had just been looking at before. She stood in the kitchen and looked around. Dishes in the sink, cupboards open, the floor sticky. Not a place that was kept clean. Turning around, she saw a set of stairs leading down to a basement. The sounds grew in pitch and then leveled off. They were definitely coming from the basement.
The downstairs was completely dark except for a dim glow at the bottom, something like an old hanging lightbulb. And the light was coming from around a corner.
“Hello? Is someone down there? Hello?”
Still no reply, though she was certain that the basement was where the sounds were coming from. Gingerly, she took the first step and then another and another. Before long, she was at the bottom of the stairs in the light.
She turned the corner and froze.
In the center of the room, a nude man lay on the floor. Prostrate, he was bleeding out of his side. Another man stood over him, blood dripping from both his hands. The man had fury in his eyes, a type of anger Sarah had never seen before. The man on the floor was whining.
The other man reached into the wound on the man’s side and pulled out something slick and wet. Sarah screamed, and the man’s gaze shot to her. She turned around to run, but the stairs were gone. There was nothing but a brick wall. She pounded against it with both fists, but it was immobile. Behind her, the man was grinning and took a step toward her…
Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) Page 17