The man turned back to the woman. He tenderly removed the white dress and the delicate silver and gold chain from her ankle, then he lifted the body and gently lowered it down into the pit. A streak of lightning brightened the landscape. For an instant the stark light illuminated a grisly tangle of limbs and hair far at the bottom of the hole.
________
For the past several moments Jake Reynolds had carefully observed Roberta. When he’d reached for another strip of paper, he had touched her leg. She began to sway. He called her name, yet she gazed straight ahead with a look of fear and revulsion on her face.
When he put his arms around her and lifted her down from the stool, she didn’t resist. In the cramped quarters, the dryer on one side, the wall on the other, he held her. Her breath quickened. He could feel her heart beating rapidly.
Jesus, where was she? Jake gazed down into her face, a face whose loveliness was even more apparent in her trancelike state. His arms tightened around her waist.
Suddenly she shuddered, then moaned low in her throat. A moment later, eyes clouded with confusion, she stared at him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She gently disengaged his arms and stepped back. “I—I felt dizzy for a moment,” she said, her voice breathy. “I guess I’m still pretty weak.”
He waited.
She smiled, looked away. “Well, I think I better give it up for the night,” she said. “Thanks for the help. It would have taken me hours to do this much.”
She was dismissing him.
They said good night at the back door.
Several minutes later, in his car at the corner stop sign, Jake let out his breath. Dammit, his main objective for dropping in on her had been to learn as much as possible about the woman in the woods—the woman with the ankle bracelet. He had gotten nowhere there.
But the trance? That was no fainting spell. She’d had some sort of vision. Her mother had hinted at something. Psychic?
Roberta was certainly being cautious. Her distrust of shrinks was obvious. He suspected that if she discovered her mother had asked him to treat her surreptitiously—something he would never undertake—it was all over.
He didn’t want it to be over. She intrigued him. Thoughts of her occupied his mind, and not all those thoughts were platonic. More than once that evening in her laundry room his libido had surfaced just watching her on the stool. When she’d reached above her head, her short top had inched upward, exposing the underside of her full lace-and-satin-clad breasts. Time and again his arm had brushed her bare legs. And finally, when she was in his arms…
Forget it, he told himself. In a few months she’ll be married and living thousands of miles away.
But then again—
An alarm far in the recesses of his mind went off. How long had it been since he’d allowed himself to become involved emotionally with a woman? He knew exactly how long. Three years. Since Susan’s death.
He rammed the gearshift into first, grinding gears, then pressed down hard on the accelerator. Slamming on the brakes, he barely avoided hitting the pickup entering the intersection. The driver laid on his horn. Jake cursed and drove away.
________
Roberta sat in a tight ball in the floral wing chair, wrapped cocoon like in the quilt from her bed. Although the house was still warm, she couldn’t shake a chill that racked her body. An hour had passed since Jake had left.
A deep pit with more than one body. How many? Three? Five?
Oh, God. Had the killer seen her? He had been moving toward her when she blacked out. Was it possible that Hanley, coming after her, calling her name, had scared him off? Was the killer looking for her right now, to silence her?
Roberta shivered.
A slight throbbing continued above her eyes. Absently rubbing it, she tried to visualize the killer. No clear image existed in her mind. Brief flashes, fragmented. A large man with dark hair and beard.
The throbbing over her eyes intensified. She rubbed it again, vaguely conscious of it. Suddenly fear stabbed her. What if, just by thinking about him, she was able to link with him psychically?
She felt a queasiness in her stomach.
What was he doing now? The pain grew. Had he hurt the latest woman he’d abducted? Would he strangle this one as well?
A thought came to her. During a clairvoyant episode, could she in some way communicate with the victim?
And then she knew she had to try.
She willed herself to go to him. The pain drilled deeper into her head. Think about him. Think about her. The headache intensified, making her weak, sick. She would feel herself becoming weightless, then firmly grounded. Again and again she attempted it, stopping when the pain became unbearable, only to try anew when it eased. An hour later, physically exhausted, mentally drained, she gave up and went to bed.
As she lay in bed, she decided there was no way in hell she could do this alone. She had to confide in someone.
Jake was nothing, absolutely nothing, like her father.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The top of Robbi’s head felt warm in the sun. She shook her hair out, leaned back on her palms, and sighed contentedly. “I should be working. Not sitting in the sun being a bum.”
Jake lowered himself beside her on the dock. He handed her a fishing pole, the line already in the water. “We have rules around here. Today’s rules are, number one, no talk of work. Can’t even think about it. Number two, the guest may not catch more fish than the host.”
She took up the slack on the line. “Sounds fair.”
“Besides, you did your work for the day. You appropriated me as a program speaker for the dance next week,” he said, rummaging around in a tackle box getting swivel, hook, and sinker for his own line.
She found herself staring at him, thinking how attractive he was. She suspected he was watching her as well, but with his eyes hidden behind the mirrored sunglasses, she couldn’t be sure.
That morning Roberta had shown up unexpectedly at Jake’s house at the lake. She’d found him in the carport tinkering under the hood of a gleaming black ‘40 Ford pickup. His slow, warm smile when he saw her approaching had produced a strange, sweet wrenching in her stomach.
Now, a half hour later, she felt relaxed, content, as though she’d been going there for years. She shifted her gaze and stared at the Hyatt Regency resort spread out along the shoreline to her right. A speedboat on another part of the lake and the perpetual shriek of a jay were the only sounds to break the stillness of the morning.
He loaded his own hook with red salmon eggs, then cast it into the water. After peeling off his polo shirt, he leaned against the corner piling, facing her.
“Why did you come up here this morning?” he asked.
“To find out why you keep popping into my life.”
“Do I?”
“It certainly seems that way.”
“Synchronicity.”
Roberta turned a puzzled face to him. “Enlighten me.”
“I believe we were meant to meet. We may each have pieces to a puzzle. Fitted together, they could form the whole picture.”
“That’s rather philosophical for a psychiatrist.”
He made no comment, but his lips stretched into a tiny smile.
“What pieces do I have?” she asked.
“I’ll know when you tell me.”
“So very cryptic. How will I know what it is that you want to hear?”
“Tell me everything you can remember about the man and woman in the woods. The woman in particular.”
The incident in the woods. Synchronicity? That was exactly why she had come to him, to talk about that day. A chill passed through her.
For the second time she told Jake all she could remember.
He had listened without interrupting, his head nodding occasionally. But when she finished, he seemed disappointed.
“That’s it? Think.”
She started to shake her head, then something flickered in
her mind. She’d forgotten about the ankle chain. From the time she told her mother and sister about it until the other night when she’d seen the killer removing it and the white dress from the body, she’d completely forgotten about it.
“An ankle bracelet.”
He leaned forward eagerly. “Yes?”
“From my perspective I saw it clearer than the woman herself. It was gold and silver and there was something dangling from it. A charm.”
“Could you make out the charm?”
“No.”
“Are ankle bracelets popular among women?”
“I don’t know anyone who wears one.”
“You’d forgotten about seeing it. What jogged your memory?”
“Is this one of the puzzle pieces?” she asked.
“A very big piece.”
Her stomach twisted. Last night, after much soul searching, she had decided she would tell him everything. If he believed, as her father had, that she was a liar seeking attention, she would just march to her car, drive away, and not look back.
Robbi ran fingers through her hair, pulling it back from her face. A pinprick of pressure worked above her eye. “I saw it again in a vision. Last night.”
“A psychic experience?’
She nodded, then studied his face for signs of disbelief, disapproval, and saw none.
“How long have you been sensitive?”
“As far back as I can remember.” Then she told him about the flashback vision of the deep pit in the woods.
“A pit,” he said, when she had finished. “With other bodies. Christ.”
“That’s what I saw. I can’t say if it’s real or not. I went to a psychic after my accident. She spoke of lost souls…angels. She spoke of a man—a bad man— who was linked to me. She said I was in grave danger.”
“From this man?’
“Yes.”
“It sort of ties in with your visions, doesn’t it?”
“Frighteningly so.”
“Okay.” He gave the rod a tug, reeled the line in a few feet. “Tell me about your clairvoyance. What’s your opinion?”
“From what I’ve read on the subject, I seem to possess the three main types of ESP. Telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Telepathy, however, hasn’t played a part in this drama.”
“You mean you’re not tuned in to either the victim or the killer?”
“That’s right. It’s merely information related to me. Sometimes only in flashes, other times it plays out longer.” The pressure grew, spread across her forehead. She pressed fingertips to her temple. “The psychic said my ESP abilities were potent, yet limited.”
“Can you see images at will?”
“Apparently not. Last night I exhausted myself trying. No luck.”
“Roberta, that isn’t something you should attempt on your own. It can be dangerous.”
She nodded, glanced away.
He pointed at her fishing rod. “You’re getting a bite. Quick, set the hook before it gets the bait.”
She gave the rod a short yank, felt the drag as the hook set. A moment later she landed a small rainbow trout.
“Good eating size,” Jake said, gently removing the hook. “A couple more like these and we’ll have our lunch.”
She laughed, the retreating pressure above her eye gone, forgotten.
________
Jake, his chair tipped back to rest on the wood siding of the house, sat on the deck at the small round table amid the remnants of their grilled-trout lunch and watched his guest through the silver lenses of his sunglasses. Roberta was picking a bouquet of wildflowers across the yard.
He thought her a very alluring woman. Exquisite even, though he couldn’t say why. From the moment he’d set eyes on her in the hospital, a blind woman with no makeup, wearing a plain gown, something tugged at him. The sunlight coming through the window had presented a fascinating illusion, bathing her in a radiant, pearly aura. She had looked so…he wanted to say bewitching, but felt ridiculous just thinking it.
Who and what was this woman with the strange knowing eyes? She had visions, nightmare visions. Reality seen through extrasensory means.
She returned to the table, a bunch of pink and purple sierra primroses in her hand. He watched her pour water into a plastic cup and arrange the bouquet.
“Question,” Jake said, pointing to the chair opposite him.
She sat, fussed with the wildflowers.
“You say you’ve been sensitive all your life?”
“It started when I was about three. I had…three or four experiences in my early childhood.”
“What did you see?”
“Are you going to scrutinize me through those glasses?” she asked evenly.
He pulled off the mirrored glasses and laid them on the table.
“I saw the deaths of my grandmother, my best friend, and my brother.” She cleared her throat. “Then nothing until three weeks ago, when Angie killed her husband, Sam.”
“All deaths?”
She nodded, looked away. “You were going to tell me about your piece of the puzzle.” She seemed eager to change the subject.
“In a minute. Tell me about the abduction in the alley.”
Roberta explained that that particular vision came to her in dream form. “But later I had a vision—the one at the pond—and it was the same woman from the bar.”
“Are you familiar with the bar? Any idea where it is?”
“No.”
The wind came up and they moved inside. In Jake’s rustic living room, among the knotty pine and leather, the potted trees and driftwood-mounted bromelaids, he and Roberta sat on a sofa upholstered in a Pendleton print of red, gold, and turquoise.
Without looking at Roberta, he said, “So he selects a woman, snatches her off the street, and takes her to where he lives. Why?”
“He’s lonely?”
“But he kills them.”
“Yes. You’re the professional, what do you think?”
“It’s possible he’s lonely, seeking a companion. It’s also possible she cannot live up to his expectations. He may have a certain role model in mind, a role no woman can realistically meet. If he’s a psychopathic killer, the act of killing is his principal objective and his methods and motives will be known only to him. He’s going to kill again if he hasn’t already.”
“God, for some insane reason he’s linked to me. Either I’m supposed to stop him or I’m in line…as a victim. If that’s the case, then…” Her words died away. She buried her face in her hands.
Jake wanted to go to her. He wanted to fold her into his arms and hold her tight, comfort her. He wanted to, but he held back. Instead, he said, “I’ll have someone at the police department check this out… see if there’re other women reported missing.”
“Other women? Do you know of one?”
“A patient of mine. Missing since mid-June. She’s blond, slender, and wears a gold and silver ankle bracelet.”
“My God.”
“On my insistence her mother reported her missing. As far as Mrs. Sardi’s concerned, Belinda took off alone. You see, she was a chronic runaway, I’ve had her in group since she was sixteen. Family problems mostly. Peer pressure. No father, mother wrapped up in other things.”
“But you don’t think she left town willingly?”
“No. She was twenty-two, no longer a kid. She started coming to me on her own six months ago. She really wanted to get it together. And dammit, she was doing just that. At our last session the patient sitting in my office was a woman with a focus, a future. She’d been working for a radio station for six months and had just gotten a promotion and raise. She wanted to go into broadcasting, was planning to enroll at UNR in the fall.” It occurred to Jake that Belinda Sardi was probably dead, her body lying in a pit with other hapless victims. No one would know she was dead. No one would mourn her.
“Why don’t we just go to the police and tell them everything?” Roberta asked.
“Becau
se they won’t believe you. What crime? Where are the bodies? They’re overworked as it is without throwing something conjectural their way. Did you report what you saw on the day of your accident?” he asked.
He caught a flash of compunction in her eyes before she looked away without answering.
“It probably would have served no purpose unless, of course, you can pinpoint the area where the bodies are hidden.”
“Not likely,” she said. “There are thousands of acres of wilderness up there. And I can’t be sure that what I saw that day was actually happening right in front of me. It’s possible they were miles away.”
“Well, one thing is certain. If this man is really out there, we’ll find him. After all, you have a direct pipeline to him. As long as he doesn’t know you’re eavesdropping, sooner or later he’s bound to give himself away.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Roberta sat at her desk at the center, staring out the window. Her mind wandered, and even the simplest task was an effort. If she were able to completely immerse herself in her work, then and only then did the man in the woods recede to a remote place in her mind.
The phone rang, startling Robbi out of her grim reverie. She snatched up the receiver, eager for any diversion.
“Hello. Is this a bad time?”
“Jake?” Her stomach fluttered.
“Yes. What’s your schedule like? Can you break away?”
“To do what?”
“I thought we’d cruise around. See if we can locate that bar.”
Robbi glanced at her watch. Four forty-five. Before he’d called, trying to concentrate on anything had been an effort; it’d be impossible now. “Meet me at my house in half an hour?”
Robbi stood on the sidewalk, waiting. A light breeze tugged at the hem of the dress’s pleated skirt, threatening to rush underneath and billow the whole thing about her hips. She held it down with splayed fingers.
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