Athena Force 7-12

by Carla Cassidy, Evelyn Vaughn, Harper Allen, Ruth Wind, Cindy Dees

  “That’s what it sounds like to me, Detective.”

  “We need you to tell us again what happened,” said Max. “In as much detail as possible this time. Do you think you’re up to that, sweetheart?”

  Roy rolled his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” rasped Faith. “I was on Greg’s cell phone…”

  They listened to her story with minimal interruption, like good detectives should, though she sensed Roy’s muscles tightening several times as he had to physically fight the urge to make snide comments.

  “…by then, Greg had gotten there with the security guard. They handcuffed Chet, and we called back to shore. And that’s that.”

  The detectives exchanged that look again. “You keep calling him Chet,” said Max.

  “So?”

  “So the guy doesn’t have any ID on him,” clarified Roy, each question like a shove. “No wallet. Just a pocket full of salt. So how do you know his name? Did he introduce himself, or were you previously acquainted?”

  Oh, great. Faith had been wondering, since her sisters’ announcement the previous day, just how deeply her genetically enhanced sensitivity went. It unnerved her that she could guess someone’s actual name—something you’d think wouldn’t just come across with acute sight, hearing, or smell. But it sure wasn’t imagination this time. “I guessed.”

  Even more unnerving was the intensity of Roy’s stare. He knows, she thought, and felt sick about it. He knows I’m a freak. Why wouldn’t he? He knew she was Cassandra, now. And he’d seen her respond to something no normal person could have heard, back in the police station.

  She met his gaze in a silent dare, waiting for the disgust, waiting for the dismissal.

  Waiting for him to turn away.

  Instead, Roy continued in cop mode. “Well it will be interesting to see who he ID’s as.”

  “Yes, it will. Do you at least believe he’s the killer?”

  “We can’t discuss open cases,” hedged Max.

  “You know that when the tests on that cord come back, my epithelials are a lot more likely to be on it than his are. He wore gloves. I was bare-handed.”

  “Why don’t we wait until the tests come back to worry about that, sweetheart?” asked Max.

  She nodded, and they finished their notes. Most of the other police had gone on, witnesses dismissed, evidence collected. The EMTs tried to talk her into going to the hospital, just to make sure none of her injuries were more serious, but Faith declined. She’d had enough people touching her for one day, and enough of small rooms.

  Her hands hurt, but they would heal.

  The rest of her…

  Greg had waited, the whole time, though he’d stayed back while she was questioned—one of the first rules of interview work, apparently, was to separate the witnesses. Only when Max beckoned him over did he return to Faith’s side.

  She looked from one man to the next. Greg, analytical and bespectacled, his mouth tight from the violence of the afternoon. Roy, exhausted from even less sleep than she’d had, pretending not to care. His jaw was still a dare, though, and his posture pure disapproval. And Max, the newcomer, least burdened by the subcurrents of everything that had happened, best able to stay objective.

  “Chet’s the serial killer,” she told them in her wounded, rasping voice. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “We only know what the evidence tells us,” said Max.

  “Yes, but what do your instincts tell you?”

  It was Roy who answered. “You’re the psychic, Cassandra.”

  His words seemed especially taut. This time, Faith didn’t bother to argue it.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Lynn as her fingers danced across the keys of her laptop. The dresser’s mirror reflected the top of her bent, chestnut head. “But didn’t everything turn out for the best? The charges against you were dropped. The killer has been caught.”

  “One of them,” Faith reminded her. “But it doesn’t feel…finished.”

  “You’re the psychic,” said Dawn, from where she sat on one of the chairs by the window. “You should know.” Her posture was casual, one booted leg hooked up over the chair’s arm, but Faith knew that, even without an imminent danger, Dawn was keeping watch. The three sisters were in Lynn and Dawn’s hotel room. As soon as Lynn and Dawn had seen Faith’s injuries, when she’d shown up for dinner, they’d dragged her up here for an explanation.

  It had been a long explanation. After that came Faith’s request.

  “I’m in,” announced Lynn, and vacated the chair to sit on the bed behind it. “It was easy, with your password as a starting point. Apparently with all the excitement this afternoon, nobody got around to blocking you out of the system yet.”

  “But nobody can see that I accessed it?” Faith took the chair. She’d unwrapped the bandages from her swollen hands, but they were still stiff and sore. She would have to type very slowly to see what needed seeing.

  “You’re cyber-invisible,” Lynn assured her.

  So Faith pulled up the files on that afternoon’s arrests, scrolling past larcenies and drug busts until she found the one she was looking for. “Here it is—Toulouse Street Wharf. They ran his prints and he turned out to be…Chester Elliott Simpson. Thirty. They’ve got him under psychiatric observation.”

  There were even some initial notes by the admitting doctor. May suffer from paranoia-based delusional disorder. Thinks women are witches. Perceives safety in superstitions like salt/running water. Violence against women—rebellion against perceived powerlessness? Investigate childhood/familial history of psychiatric disturbance.

  “Apparently he’s crazy,” translated Faith.

  “I suppose that’s a start,” said Lynn. “So what will it take for you to believe it’s over?”

  “Understanding why he did it.”

  Dawn looked over her shoulder, here with them and yet somehow, sadly, apart. “Because he’s a nutjob doesn’t work for you?”

  “And a life sentence without possibility for parole.”

  Faith could see Lynn’s wry smile reflected in the dresser mirror. “Considering today’s legal system, that could take a while.”

  “And finding Butch’s killer.” That was the biggest, she decided. Of course, everyone’s death was a tragedy beyond measure. Krystal had brought comfort to hundreds, through her readings and her otherworldly wisdom—Chet had killed that. Nessa’s possibilities were equally cut short. And Penelope Lafayette. And the mysterious first woman. But Butch…

  By endangering his life every day, by reining in his younger, brasher partner, by keeping an open mind about advice from an anonymous contact who could have been anybody but had in fact been her…

  The loss of Butch’s goodness would haunt Faith for the longest, she thought. And not just because, if Butch were still around, she and Roy might have had a chance.

  Maybe.

  “So which one do you want to start on first?” asked Dawn. She was clearly not the sort of person who hung back. Faith liked that. “Comprehension, conviction, or vengeance?”

  “Start on how?”

  Lynn leaned forward, her elbows propped on her knees, from her perch on the bed. “You know, Faith, one of the things that happened once Dawn told me where our abilities came from was, they seemed to get a little stronger. Or maybe it was just my confidence in them that increased. Have you noticed the same thing?”

  “I knew his name was Chet,” Faith admitted—but then the possibilities inherent in that, in who she really was, fully occurred to her. “And I sensed some of his secrets even through gloves, when I concentrated. So heaven knows what else I can find out about him and his motives. If I just trust myself, I mean.”

  Lynn shrugged. And Faith made her decision.

  She turned back to the computer and hunt-and-pecked another command. “Here’s Chet’s address, in Algiers Point. And—yes! That was quick. The detectives already executed a search warrant, so if we disturb anything looking around, we won’t hav
e tampered with evidence. Not that I suppose we can get inside….”

  Lynn and Dawn snorted in unison.

  “We can get inside,” Lynn assured her. “Even if Chester Elliott Simpson found out, I doubt he’ll be in any position to press charges for trespassing.”

  “Breaking and entering,” Faith corrected her.

  “Sis,” Lynn’s green eyes looked particularly mysterious. “I never have to break.

  “I just enter.”

  Chapter 19

  Dawn declined to accompany her sisters on this particular reconnaissance mission. “I’ve got things to do,” she’d said, without telling them more.

  So Lynn and Faith headed out alone. Luckily, Lynn had a rental car. They caught the Canal Street Ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers Point, a historic neighborhood opposite the French Quarter, and followed their printout map until they found—and deliberately passed—the Creole Cottage-style house listed as Chet Simpson’s primary residence.

  “It’s barely a quarter mile from the ferry landing,” noted Faith. “He could walk that far no problem, and ten minutes later he’s at the Quarter. He doesn’t even need a driver’s license. No wonder he likes to think running water will protect him. It’s not just a common superstition. He crosses the Mississippi every time he comes back to his lair.”

  The house was built on four-foot brick piers with a sharply slanting, continuous gable roof, a full-front gallery, and an exterior stairway to the second floor. It was dark.

  “So you really think you might be able to sense something in there?” asked Lynn, turning the corner and driving on. She’d explained that they wanted to case the place before they actually stopped the car.

  “I don’t know. But when I was in Roy’s house…he’s a friend…was a friend…” Okay, so Roy was complicated.

  Lynn slanted an intrigued glance her direction, but said nothing. And she wasn’t even the psychic.

  “It felt as if the house had memories. At the time I half figured I was imagining it, but now that I know I was engineered this way…maybe I can read this one, too. If we can get in.”

  Lynn grinned. “Oh, we can get in.”

  Not ten minutes later, the car was parked around the corner from Chet’s home and the two sisters were securely inside the front parlor, the door shut behind them.

  “I learned to pick locks,” Lynn whispered, flexing her hands in their expensive gloves, “at a very early age.”

  They stood in a front parlor, its double French doors framed on either side with ceiling-high shuttered windows. The ceiling showed exposed beams. The old fireplace had a wraparound mantel.

  The TV set and stereo speakers, standing like a miniature Stonehenge, seemed almost blasphemous amidst the history of the building.

  “You don’t need a light, do you?” asked Lynn.

  “Nope.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The sisters exchanged smiles in this darkness that, somehow, their eyes could penetrate. That momentary connection helped remind Faith of what she was here to do.

  To trust her instincts.

  And whatever she was, to trust herself.

  She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, laying the back of her hand on the mantel, to better connect with the home’s energy without leaving fingerprints.

  Bustling. Searching. Frustration. She could smell the powder used in lifting fingerprints, could smell the luminol sprayed into a few key areas in the vain search for bloodstains. Mostly, she could feel Roy’s presence, smell his scent from where he’d stalked through here, pissing off the crime-scene unit with his often unnecessary suggestions, arguing with Max.

  Then again, she was particularly familiar with Roy’s scent and his energy, for obvious reasons. “The police only left an hour ago,” she reported, surprised at how certain she felt about that little bit of information. “They found some things they could use, books and I think…yes, a flyer from the psychic fair. But they’re afraid it’s all circumstantial. They didn’t find the hair he took off his victims.”

  The Creole floor plan led to rooms on either side of the parlor, to rooms behind those, and to an open porch, or loggia, in back. Every room had doorways into every other connected room. There were no hallways.

  As Faith and Lynn slowly moved from one area to the next, Faith began to pick up on the house’s less recent history. “Some of it’s just…just a blur of normalcy. Several families were raised here since it was built. It almost feels as if the house resents having just one person living here, now. It was built for families….”

  Stopping herself, Faith looked at her newfound sister. “Like some people are.”

  Lynn returned her smile.

  Faith went back to reading the house. “The parts that stand out seem to be the periods of extreme emotion. Here—” she pointed at a rocking chair. “This is where a woman was sitting when they told her that her husband had been killed. That was maybe thirty…no, thirty-five years ago, I think. And over there—” she pointed into the kitchen “—that’s where her daughter walked out on her, after a screaming argument. The mother thought the daughter was throwing herself away on some guy. The daughter thought the mother was trying to run her life.”

  Amazing. It wasn’t so much that she could see or smell or hear the confrontations. It really was like imagining it.

  Except whatever Lab 33 had done to her, the things she “imagined” were already true.

  “And Chet?” prompted Lynn.

  “He watched them. From here. He was really upset to see his sister go. His mother said…” Faith concentrated, feeling the emotions more than hearing the words, but some words seemed to just fit. “She predicted that things would turn out badly for her daughter. You know how people are—you’ll be sorry, or don’t come to me when he leaves you. Like that. Later, the boyfriend did leave the sister, and that made Chet afraid. He thought his mom predicted it, maybe made it happen.”

  “Chet’s not all there, is he?”

  “Not really, no. But I think that mainly comes out when he’s excited, or upset.” When his heart started its strange, irregular rhythm.

  They headed up the stairs to find two large rooms with long, slanting ceilings, connected with a door in between. It was the far room that offered a door with outside stairs down to the porch.

  “This was the girls’ room,” explained Faith, crossing it. It seemed to be used for storage now—unused exercise equipment, old vinyl record albums, boxes of belongings nobody meant to ever reclaim. “I think that was an old Creole tradition. Daughters get the indoor stairway because they aren’t supposed to be coming and going a lot. But the boy’s room has an outdoor entrance, to give them their privacy when they go catting around.”

  “That’s awfully…” Lynn considered her words, then settled on, “sexist.”

  “You said it. It was here…” Again, she touched the doorjamb, careful to use just the side of her hand. It felt as if the house was calling her toward something, toward a touch of familiarity, so Faith leaned her cheek against the wood for a deeper sense.

  And with a hum of power, like that, the scene played out in front of her.

  A preteen boy, Chet, banished to his sister’s room. But he wanted to know what was going on. He came to stand here, right here, and peeked through the doorway. He was surprised to see his big brother and his girlfriend Claudia in the bed, doing things they probably shouldn’t be doing in his mama’s house. His brother got away with everything, and it wasn’t fair. Still, it sure was interesting, what she looked like naked, what they were doing….

  Until Claudia began to giggle. “I’m psychic, you know,” she told his brother, who until then was just grunting. “I can tell when we’re being watched!”

  And she sat up a little, as much as his brother’s weight would let her, and she pointed right at Chet. Then his brother saw, too. He roared, and leaped out of bed, and ran at him. Chet had never seen him like…like that…and he was scared.

  “Who am I, you l
ittle turd?” demanded his brother, pushing him down onto the floor, like always, planting a knee on his back. “You forget who I am?”

  It was an old litany, one Chet knew by heart. “You’re…you’re the Master.”

  “Damned right!”

  Faith’s eyes opened. She pulled away from the doorjamb, scrubbed at her cheek with her aching bare hand as she wished she could scrub away the snippets of understanding that were still rolling into her mind, as if on some kind of delay. “She wasn’t really psychic at all.”

  “What?” asked Lynn.

  Faith recounted the vision, the borrowed memory, whatever it had been. The more she described it, the more upset she felt. “And what’s really tragic—for Krystal and Nessa and Penny, I mean—is she wasn’t even psychic. Chet was a mouth-breather. Claudia heard him.”

  “And what about this brother? This Master?”

  “I can’t see him,” said Faith—too quickly, even to her own ears. The silence, after her confession, echoed.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as kind of odd?”

  Faith didn’t have an answer for that.

  “You were able to see Chet, right?” insisted Lynn. “You could see this Claudia person. Why can’t you see the brother?”

  That’s when Faith knew why. She just hated to face it. “Maybe for the same reason I went so long without realizing how many secrets my mom was keeping from me. It was there all the time, and I didn’t see it until I was ready to see it. Because I don’t want to know.”

  Lynn raised her eyebrows in the darkness and waited. Faith wondered how much her sister resembled Rainy Miller Carrington, at that moment.

  “Or maybe I don’t want to see him because of what he did to Chet.”

  “Which was…?”

  Faith shook her head and took a step backward into the girls’ bedroom. The one where Chet had been exiled so often, accused of being just a girl himself. “I can’t do it, Lynn. I can’t look at it straight-on. I know the brother tortured him, but how far it went past normal big-brother bullying—I’m not sure, and I don’t want to see it.”