Copper Beach dl-1

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Maybe.” Grady Hastings winced. “I’m sounding crazier by the minute, aren’t I?”

  “No,” Sam said. “You’re sounding more and more like a man who was set up.”

  Abby looked at him. “You think Grady was somehow hypnotized to go to the Vaughn house that day?”

  “That’s what it feels like,” Sam said.

  “But why? The Key is an interesting book, but the only thing that makes it really valuable is the psi-encryption.”

  “The contents of the book weren’t important,” Sam said. “The idea was to test you to see if you really could break a psi-code.”

  “Good grief,” Abby said. “This is starting to make some sense.”

  “You and Grady were both unwitting participants in someone’s experiment,” Sam said. “The experiment was a success. Whoever conducted it is now after you.”

  “The blackmail notes,” Abby said.

  “Wait,” Grady blurted out. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” Sam said. “Not all of it. But I think I’m finally getting close.”

  Abby looked at Grady. “Sam is an expert on paranormal crystals.”

  Grady nodded. “I was starting to figure that out.” He looked at Sam. “You’re one of those Coppersmiths, aren’t you? You’re connected to the family that owns Coppersmith Inc.”

  “That’s right,” Sam said.

  “Your labs must be awesome,” Grady said wistfully. “State–of–­the-art and then some.”

  “And then some,” Sam agreed. “We do a little R–and–D work with hot rocks, too.”

  “You mean paranormal crystals, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Awesome. I’d give anything to have access to a lab like that.” Grady looked around the bare visitors’ room, his gloom deepening. “But I’ll be lucky to get out of here someday, and even if I do, there won’t be anything left of my lab. I’ll have to start over.”

  “Why do you say that?” Abby asked.

  “My equipment and my crystals are in the shed in back of the house I’m renting,” Grady said. “Lease is up next month. I don’t care about my furniture and clothes, but as soon as the rent comes due, the landlord will clean the place out. He’ll probably put my crystals and lab instruments into a yard sale. All my stuff will be gone.”

  “I know exactly how it feels to have someone else mess with your stuff,” Abby said. She sat forward. “If you like, Sam and I can pack up your rocks and your lab equipment and store it for you.”

  Grady looked startled. “You’d do that for me after I pointed a gun at you?”

  “Yes, because I don’t think you ever really meant to point that gun at me. By the way, Sam is not just a crystal expert, he is also a security expert.”

  “Yeah?” Grady was curious now.

  “He’s investigating what happened to you and me at the Vaughn house,” Abby explained. “He’s been working for me for a few days, and as of now he’s working for you, too. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

  Sam looked at her, brows elevated. “Well.”

  Abby turned back to Grady. “Consider yourself one of Sam’s clients.”

  Grady processed the new data. For a few seconds, he looked hopeful. Then his eyes went flat. “I can’t afford to hire a private investigator.”

  “Lucky for you I work cheap,” Sam said. “Like Abby said, consider yourself a client.”

  “Yeah?” Grady started to look hopeful again. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Sam said.

  “And you’ll pack up my lab stuff before the landlord sells it?” Grady asked urgently.

  “Don’t worry,” Abby said. “We’ll take care of your stuff.”

  “All part of the service,” Sam said. He got to his feet. “I don’t suppose you still have the key to your house?”

  “No key,” Grady said. “They took that away, too. But the lock on the porch door is nothing special. You shouldn’t have any trouble getting inside the house. The hard part will be getting into the shed out back. I installed my own door and security system, mostly to keep my landlord out.”

  “Give me the code,” Sam said.

  “See, that’s the tricky part,” Grady said. “It’s not an off-the-shelf system. It’s PEC-based.”

  “Yeah?” Sam looked intrigued.

  Grady glanced around the room and then lowered his voice. “You’ll need a crystal to work it.”

  “What kind of crystal?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You just have to be able to generate a little energy through it. Find a resonating frequency, and the lock will open.”

  Sam moved his hand, calling subtle attention to the fire crystal in his ring. “Will this do?”

  Grady studied the copper stone. Abby felt energy hum briefly in the atmosphere.

  “Sure, that will work,” Grady said. “Nice stone. I don’t recognize it.”

  “Synthetic,” Sam said easily. “It was grown in one of the Coppersmith labs.”

  “Awesome.”

  Abby rose before Grady could ask any more questions. “We’ll report back as soon as we have some information.”

  “That would be cool,” Grady said, brightening. “I don’t get many visitors. In fact, you’re the only ones I’ve had.”

  Abby frowned. “You don’t have any family?”

  “Not that you’d notice. I think there are some people on my mom’s side somewhere, but I never heard from them after she died.”

  “What about your father?” Abby asked.

  “He skipped out before I was born.”

  A chill of intuition twisted through Abby. “Did you go into the foster-care system after your mother died?”

  “For a while,” Grady said. “But everyone decided that I was on the crazy side, so I ended up in a special school for wackos.”

  Abby stopped breathing for a couple of heartbeats. Her talent flared. She was aware that Sam was motionless. His eyes were a little hot.

  “Was the name of the school by any chance the Summerlight Academy?” Abby asked.

  “Yeah.” Grady widened his eyes. “How’d you know?”

  “I’m a graduate, too.”

  “No kidding?” Grady sighed. “Well, I guess we both survived.”

  “Yes,” Abby said, “we did. And when this is all over, I will introduce you to some other graduates. You can join our alumni club if you like.”

  Grady started to smile. The smile stretched into a grin. “A club for graduates of the Summerlight Academy? That would be sort of cool.”

  Outside, in the parking lot, Abby got into the SUV and fastened her seat belt. She waited until Sam climbed in beside her.

  “Given what we know of the laws of para-physics, what are the odds that Grady Hastings and I both have the Summerlight Academy in common?” she asked.

  “Realistically, the odds probably aren’t all that bad, given your psych profiles and the diagnosis that you both got when you were in your teens,” Sam said. “I doubt that there are a great number of boarding schools in the Seattle area that accept students with your unusual issues.”

  “Okay. What are the odds that both of us wound up together in Vaughn’s library that day by sheer luck or coincidence?”

  Sam started the SUV and snapped it into gear. “Zero.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. Where does that leave us?”

  “Looking for a psychic who knows how to locate other genuine psychics in the Seattle area. Someone who has access to the Summerlight Academy records.”

  “If he has access to the records,” Abby said, “he would have a lot of information about the students’ psych profiles and their personal situations. I’ll bet that bastard picked poor Grady because he knew he was not only a talent but also alone in the world. There is no family to worry about him or to protect him.”

  “The son of a bitch would also know that you have a complicated relationship with your family. I’m guessing he would have preferred to use someone like Hastings, a l
oner, to break the psi-code, but he doesn’t have much choice. There aren’t a lot of sensitives with your kind of ability running around the Pacific Northwest. There are others who can find the lab book for him, but it would be almost impossible to find another code breaker.”

  “In other words, he was stuck with me.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “It’s always nice to be appreciated for one’s talent.”

  40

  THE HOUSE GRADY HASTINGS HAD LEASED WAS A RUN-DOWN bungalow in West Seattle. The rental looked as sad and depressed as Hastings had looked sitting in the locked ward at the psychiatric hospital, Sam thought. The place was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. The small lawn was patchy and studded with weeds. Yellowed shades were pulled down to cover the grimy windows.

  Sam went up the concrete steps and set down the stack of packing boxes he had picked up at a container store. He checked the lock. Grady was right. It was standard-issue and probably original to the house. It took less than thirty seconds to open it.

  “Doesn’t look like Grady’s landlord has put much money into upkeep,” he said. He twisted the old-fashioned knob and opened the door.

  “No.” Abby followed him up the steps. She had a large roll of Bubble Wrap tucked under one arm. “Why bother? I doubt if Grady was a demanding tenant. All he cares about is his work with crystals.”

  “True. As long as he had his lab, he was probably content.”

  Abby smiled a secret smile.

  He eyed her with suspicion. “What?”

  “Nothing. It just occurred to me that Grady isn’t the only person around who is content so long as he has his lab.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not the one sitting in a psychiatric hospital.”

  “There is something to be said for that.” Abby followed him into the house, put down the roll of Bubble Wrap and closed the door. When she turned around and saw the nearly empty space, she froze. Outrage heated the atmosphere around her.

  “There’s hardly any furniture left,” she yelped. “Someone stole Grady’s stuff.”

  “It’s possible,” Sam said. “Empty houses are magnets for thieves. But I think it’s more likely the landlord jumped the gun and started clearing out Grady’s things.”

  “Bastard. I hope he wasn’t able to get into the shed in back. Grady will be crushed if his lab stuff is gone.”

  Sam walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. The shed sitting in the yard looked like a ramshackle wooden fortress. The one window was boarded up. The gleaming new metal door was closed.

  He walked across the weed-infested yard and examined the lock on the door. Abby followed him.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone has gotten inside yet,” he said. “But it’s probably a good thing we’re here. Got a hunch the landlord will be taking a blowtorch to this door when he figures out that a regular locksmith can’t open it.”

  He raised his ring to the dull, gray crystal embedded in the metal on the wall next to the door. Cautiously, he focused a little energy through the Phoenix stone. He sensed the familiar tingling current of power. The lock crystal began to heat with violet-hued ultralight.

  There was a sharp click as the lock disengaged. Sam opened the door.

  “The kid’s good,” he said. “Very, very good.”

  “And certainly not as crazy as everyone, including me, believed,” Abby said.

  “Maybe not.”

  He found a switch on the wall. The lights came on, revealing a battered metal workbench and a number of old metal cabinets. The concrete floor was bare.

  He examined the lab with professional interest. The small space did not gleam with steel and polished equipment like the Coppersmith labs. There were no state–of–­the-art computers. The chemistry equipment on the workbench looked as if it had been assembled from various do–it–yourself science kits and then seriously modified. An old burner designed for heating the contents of test tubes sat on one corner. A cumbersome, obviously hand-built laser occupied the far end of the bench.

  “You know,” Abby said, gazing around the crowded room. “If anyone else, members of the media, say, or the shrinks at the psychiatric hospital, saw this place, the first words that would spring to mind would be mad scientist.”

  “I was just thinking that this lab looks a lot like mine,” Sam said.

  Abby cleared her throat. “­Mmm-hmm.”

  He went to the bench to examine the laser. “Not as high-end, but most of the basics are here.”

  “­Mmm-hmm.”

  He glanced back and saw that her eyes were sparkling with amusement. He sighed. “Go get the boxes and the Bubble Wrap. I want to take a look around before we pack this equipment.”

  “Okay.” Abby turned and hurried back up the steps.

  When she was gone, he went slowly, methodically, through the shed, opening cabinets and drawers. He discovered a number of stones and crystals, most of which would have been overlooked by the average rock hound. But with his senses mildly jacked, he could tell that several of the stones were hot.

  He was holding one half of a split geode, studying the glittering crystals inside, when Abby reappeared.

  “Find something interesting?” she asked.

  “Nothing yet that would explain the voices that Grady heard.” He put the geode down and took another look around. “He said the voice came from a crystal.”

  “A green crystal.”

  “I found several varieties of green quartz, a small piece of green tourmaline and some green andradite, but none of it was giving off enough energy to explain the voices he was hearing.”

  “Shall I start wrapping up the equipment while you look around?”

  “All right. But I’d better dismantle the laser for you.”

  She smiled. “It looks like he found it in a scrap yard.”

  “He probably bought the various parts online and assembled them himself.”

  Sam started back to the workbench. A faint hiss of energy made him pause in mid-stride. To his slightly heightened senses, it sounded as if a small insect was buzzing somewhere nearby. He turned on his heel, searching for the source, and caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye. When he tried to take a closer look, he discovered he could not focus clearly on the object that was giving off the energy.

  “What is it?” Abby asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.” He stopped trying to see the object with his normal vision and raised his talent to the max. The dull gray of the concrete floor and the faded paint on the walls were abruptly transformed. The basement was now lit with ultralight. The rocks and crystals in Grady’s collection glowed, bathing the space in a paranormal rainbow.

  The buzzing-insect sound grew louder but not more distinct.

  “Got it,” Sam said.

  “What?” Abby asked. “Where? I don’t see anything except the rocks and equipment that you’ve already checked.”

  “Go hot. You’ll hear it, too.”

  Energy warmed the atmosphere as she went into the zone.

  “Good grief,” she said. “You’re right. It sounds like a scratchy old audio recording of some kind.”

  “That’s exactly what it is.” Sam went to the filing cabinet and examined the array of precision-cut objects on top. “A recording. It’s emanating from one of these.”

  “Those aren’t crystals or rocks. They look like modernistic glass sculptures.”

  “They’re prisms,” he said. “Very special prisms. Grady probably used them to focus energy as well as light.”

  “There’s a recording inside one of those prisms?”

  “That’s the only explanation that fits,” he said. “It must have been laid down with psychic energy, and probably tuned to Grady’s wavelengths. That’s why we can only detect a faint buzz but not distinct words.”

  He picked up a heavy green glass prism. The shiver of energy got a bit louder but not much. “It’s very weak to our senses, but it was probably a lot louder, stronger and
clearer to Grady.”

  Abby moved closer. “I’ve never seen a prism like that one.”

  “It’s called a retroreflector, a trihedral prism. It’s designed to reflect energy or a beam of light back to its source, regardless of direction. Standard equipment in labs. But this particular prism focuses paranormal energy, not the normal kind. If it was tuned to Grady’s aura, it would focus on him whenever he was in the vicinity.”

  “Once it acquired the fix, it activated the recording?”

  “I think so, yes. The prism detected our presence and triggered the psychic message when we entered the room, but since it isn’t tuned to either of us, we can barely sense the recording. Grady was never able to tell where the voice was coming from, because every time he tried to look at the prism, it reflected his own psychic wavelengths right back at him, blinding him while simultaneously playing the message.”

  “Sheesh. Over time, that would have driven anyone nuts.”

  “I think it would be more accurate to say that it had a hypnotic effect on Grady. Let me have some of that Bubble Wrap.”

  Abby picked up the scissors she had brought and cut off a length of the wrap. “I’ve never heard of a psi-recording. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”

  “The technology is in the experimental stage. This prism came out of a very sophisticated, cutting-edge R–and–D lab.”

  She handed him the Bubble Wrap and glanced around the room. “What about the gun? Where do you think Grady got that?”

  “Whoever recorded the hypnotic message in this thing probably made sure the gun was conveniently at hand when Grady went to Vaughn’s house that day.”

  “Poor Grady. That thing looks valuable.”

  “It’s worth a fortune to certain people.”

  Abby frowned. “Think it came from your competitor’s labs?”

  “No.” Sam peeled off a strip of packing tape and secured the Bubble Wrap around the prism. “This didn’t come from the Helicon Stone labs.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Trust me.”

  “So who else is running a hotshot R–and–D lab that could turn out something like that prism?”