by Jo Macgregor
On the other side of the glass barrier, safe from any attack I might launch, stood a man wearing a neat suit, striped tie, and polished shoes. He wore his hair short at the back and sides and longer in front, and although he wasn’t young, he had the fresh, enthusiastic face of a rookie. I stepped up to the glass and greeted him, showing him my driver’s license when he asked for ID and opening the doughnut box to show it hid no weapons.
“I’m Special Agent Tyler Washington. How can I help you today?” he asked in a surprisingly deep voice.
“I’m here to speak to Special Agent Ronil Singh.”
“Senior Special Agent Singh is out of the office this morning.”
“Ah, no,” I said, disappointed.
“He didn’t mention expecting anyone. Did you have an appointment with him?”
“Yeah, I do,” I lied. “And I drove all the way over from Pitchford to see him.”
The agent rubbed a hand over the full beard that failed to disguise his cherubically round cheeks. “I’m his colleague; perhaps I can assist you. What’s it in connection with?”
My father would’ve told me to back off and not make a nuisance of myself. But making a nuisance of myself was something I was good at, and I wasn’t one to overlook my talents. Plus, I suspected it would be a whole lot easier to pump this young man for information than to face off with Singh again.
“I’m … er … a confidential informant on one of his cases, and I’m here to assist with your recent discovery,” I said.
“Oh.” Washington sounded more interested now. “Hang on. I’ll just get the magnetometer.”
A minute later he was with me in the anteroom, which he called the “mantrap,” running a security wand over my body and the doughnuts. When nothing beeped, he shook my hand, indicated the side office, stepped aside to let me enter first, and shut the door behind us. Good. With any luck, I’d get what I came for and be gone without Singh being any the wiser, or at least without him being able to stop me until the deed was done. I sat in one of the chairs around the central table. Washington pulled out the chair to my left, hesitated, and then went to sit on the other side of the table instead. Was he looking to create more formality through distance, or had he intuitively sensed in some primal part of his brain that the spot to the left of me was already taken?
“So,” he said, “what case is this in connection with?”
“The New England serial killings. The ones the media is calling the Gay Slayer.”
His eyes widened. “I see. And you have new information for us?”
“Maybe. I’d need to touch some of the items recovered from the latest scene to be sure, though.”
“Touch them? Why?”
I’d hoped I would be able to get what I wanted without having to explain in too much detail, but I could see that wasn’t going to happen. I opened the Dunkin’ Donuts box and offered him one. When his mouth was full, I said, “I don’t know whether Ron’s told you about my involvement with this case. How I’ve given him feedback on the objects left at the dumpsites?”
“Not a word.”
“Well, you know Ron,” I said, making it sound like he and I were old buddies. “Always plays his cards close to his chest, am I right?”
Washington grinned and began nodding then checked himself.
“Thing is, I have a certain … skill.” This was always the hard part, trying to make it sound real. Trying not to make myself sound as though I had long since parted company with my right mind. “I can kind of read objects. When I touch them, I sometimes get images and memories associated with them.”
“You’re a medium?”
“No, no, I don’t speak to departed spirits.” Often. “I use post-cognition and psychometry.” I deliberately used the scientific-sounding terms in an attempt to sound more legitimate, but judging from the frown crumpling Washington’s sweet face, they meant nothing to him. “I’m a psychic and clairvoyant.”
He laughed. “And Ron consulted you? No way!”
“How else would I know that your killer has left a button with each of his kills?”
His eyes widened, then narrowed. He munched his doughnut, assessing me, while I arranged my features into the sort of benign expression I imagined an innocent and trustworthy person would wear and tried not to stare at a yellow sprinkle nestling in his black beard.
“You don’t trust me? Test me. Let me touch something that might have an emotional memory associated with it, and I’ll tell you what I get.” When he hesitated, I added, “Come on, Agent. What’ve you got to lose?”
He tilted his head as if acknowledging the point and handed me his pen. I closed my fingers around the glossy black-and-gold Sheaffer and pulled my attention away from the office and the agent across from me and my worry that at any moment Singh might storm in and catch me.
A few seconds later, I opened my eyes. “I saw a young man, clean-shaven. He’s someone significant to you. A brother or partner? He has a mole right here.” I tapped a spot on my chin.
Washington’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “That sounds like Darnell, my husband.”
“Darnell, yes. That’s his name. I sensed it clearly.” I’d sensed no such thing.
“Wow,” he said, definitely intrigued even if not yet convinced.
“He gave you this as a gift,” I said. “It was in a flat box wrapped in black paper with a silver ribbon.”
Agent Washington’s eyes bugged out. “It was his gift to me when I graduated the academy.”
“Yes.” I nodded as though I’d seen that too. “Yes, it was. So special. So, as you see, I’m pretty accurate. If you have an item collected from the latest site — or from any of them, really — I could probably give you some very useful information.”
Washington chewed on his lip, considering.
I dug into my well of therapy skills and added, “It must be tough wanting to crack this case but having no leads to work on.” He nodded. “You investigators must feel so helpless and powerless, so frustrated!” He nodded again. Two agreements and they’re more likely to acquiesce to the third suggestion. It was called a yes-set and was one of the few things I remembered from a lecture on the theory of hypnotherapy. “Maybe I could just see if I get anything? It might give you a useful direction to explore.”
He studied me for a long moment then said, “Wait here,” and left.
Like taking candy from a G-man baby.
– 14 –
I picked at a cuticle, staring at the blank walls and wondering whether the camera eyeing me from above was recording this. Whether Singh would watch it later.
Washington returned within minutes, bearing a manilla envelope. “This is all I have access to right now. The only reason I’ve got them at all is because I’ve been researching whether they’re unique or special in any way. Did you know there’s a button collection in the Smithsonian?” He fished in the envelope and pulled out two small plastic bags; each contained a button that I recognized. One of them was the metal snap button Singh had brought me ten days ago. The other, a wooden button he’d brought me back in March, had belonged to Jacob Wertheimer.
I pointed at the bags. “I’ve already read those two and told Ron what I got off them.”
Disappointed, Washington started to drop them back into the envelope.
“Hang on,” I said. “What’s that in the bag with the wooden button?” Leaning closer, I saw that it was a short piece of frayed black twine. When I’d touched the button previously, I’d seen black thread in my vision, but Singh hadn’t shown me any twine, let alone allowed me to try get a reading off it. “Can I touch the thread?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, all of this has already been through forensics.”
“Get any fingerprints or DNA?”
“Nope.”
“The killer’s a careful one, isn’t he? Organized.”
Washington nodded, confirming one of my hypotheses. I took the baggie, opened the seal, and extracted the piece of nylon twine. Bracing my
self for what might be coming, I closed my hand and my eyes and felt the familiar ripple over my scalp. The image, when it came, was faint but still visible.
Tomatoes.
Red and green tomatoes hang on a vine. A rotting wooden trellis sags under the weight of the plants.
A split tomato lies on the dry ground. Insects burrow into it, squirming through the soft, ripe flesh and the blue-white fur of mold on its skin.
I opened my eyes to see Washington waiting expectantly. “I saw tomatoes growing on a vine on a trellis.”
The agent’s mouth formed a perfect O.
“That mean something to you?” I asked.
He took the piece of black nylon back. “We had this analyzed. It’s tomato twine, the kind of cord usually used to tie tomatoes to stakes and trellises.” Judging by the wonder that permeated his voice, Washington’s conversion to Team McGee was complete.
I stared at the wooden button in the baggie for a moment then held out my hand for it. I’d learned more about how my ability worked since I’d last touched that button. It was possible that if I read it again, I might be able to get more. Again, I closed my fingers and my eyes and concentrated. At once, a darkness swamped me, stealing my breath and pulling me down toward a black hole of pain. I pushed back, dragging my mind away from the edge of that abyss, sending it instead to my hand where the button was hot against my palm.
Blue eyes wide with panic stare out from a young man’s pale, terrified face. A face surrounded by black hair and sprinkled with freckles.
A man’s hand, a left hand with a ring on the third finger, moves over the young man’s stubbled jaw and bloody lip then trails down his neck where a wire garrote bites into the flesh. The hand brushes aside an open red-and-blue-plaid shirt and touches the naked chest, circling bruises with a forefinger.
“You like that?” the voice, rough with emotion, says.
The only answer is a strangled sound.
The hand moves lower, opens jeans, presses hard into the flesh beneath with fingers and knuckles, and rubs. “Huh? You like that?”
The hand moves back up to the throat and tightens the garrote.
I gasped awake, panting. Immediately, I forced myself to try re-enter the vision, but what I saw when I shut my eyes again was a different scene.
The young man’s face, skin pinpricked with red dots, is empty of life, now. The blue eyes are stippled with red and stare fixedly upward, seeing nothing.
Two hands wearing latex gloves thread a wooden button with black twine, secure it with a double knot, then thread the other end of twine through the eye of a large curved needle. One hand pinches the bloodied lips together between finger and thumb, and the other begins sewing, setting stitch after neat stitch until the mouth is tightly closed with the button fastened in the center of the lips.
I opened my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and told Washington exactly what I’d seen. He nodded, asked a question or two, and then sat back in his chair, apparently processing what he’d just heard. I returned the button to its baggie, aware of the creeping fatigue that always swept through me after a vision, but Washington wasn’t done yet.
He pulled another evidence baggie out of the envelope and handed it to me as he took back the button. “I think you should give this a go too.”
Inside the evidence bag was a scrap from the cuff of a long-sleeved shirt. The disintegrating fabric was stained a reddish brown and a shard of cracked button still poked through the buttonhole. I took it out of the bag and held it between both palms. Even as I closed my eyes, my lids began to flutter, and my scalp tightened. A tingle woke my fingers, and lights flickered at the edges of my dark field of vision.
The sleeve of a shirt. Blue.
Blue as the sky above the arm held up, thumb extended.
A car approaches. Hope.
The car passes by. Disappointment.
Walking backward. Willing another car to appear on the deserted road.
A car draws near, and the thumb goes up once more.
The car slows. Stops.
Excitement. The hand punches the air. At last!
I blinked several times as the vision faded.
“This fabric was once baby blue,” I said. “And it wasn’t his — the killer’s, I mean. I think it was a victim’s. A young man, white.”
“You saw him?”
“No, just his arm and hand. But I can sometimes tell more from the feel and the energy, you know? Which victim did this come from?”
“One of the old unidentified ones,” Washington said.
“He was hitchhiking,” I said. “And a car stopped to pick him up.”
“Wow. You saw that? What kind of car was it?”
“A dark sedan.” I tried to remember exactly what I’d seen. “Dark blue or green, maybe? I can’t be sure. It was an old model, from the seventies or eighties, I think, and there was an emblem on the front.” I closed my eyes and pictured the scene again. “It looked like silver wings.”
“Wasn’t that what old Fords used to have? Or was it Chevys?” Washington said excitedly. “Could you see the plates?”
I shook my head. I’d seen it from the hitchhiker’s point of view, and he hadn’t been looking at those.
“Anything else? Could you see where this happened?” the agent asked.
“Not really. Only that it was a highway running through a forest.”
That described half of New England. Why couldn’t I have seen something useful, a road sign, for example, or the car’s plates?
Washington chose another doughnut, but before biting into it, he asked, “How far can you see? Can you tell if we’ll catch the killer?”
“Sorry, I can’t see the future. At least, I haven’t so far.” As I was giving him back the fabric cuff, a thought crossed my mind. “Can I try holding all the items together?”
Maybe holding multiple objects that the killer had touched would potentiate the effect, or something they had in common might strike me. Of course, it might give me a big blast of nothing — the separate items could just as easily cancel out each other’s effect as increase their impact — but there was no harm in trying. I took the buttons, twine, and cuff and held them between my palms. Shutting my eyes, I doubled over my hands in concentration. My eyelids fluttered and series of images swarmed through my mind.
A handful of buttons fall onto a floor. The buttons, metal and wood and plastic of all colors, bounce and roll to a stop on the worn wooden boards. The protruding loop of a brass button with an embossed anchor motif on the front wedges itself into a crack.
A man. He’s tall and thin, and his eyes are filled with derision and hate.
A house. A white house with a porch out front and the weathervane-topped roof of another building behind. A tall tree to the side casts deep shade onto the house.
Beyond the tree, there is a pool of darkness more intense than the absence of light. It pulls me to the core of itself where death lies, old and silent.
I was in so deep that I yelped out loud when a hand clamped down on my shoulder. Shaking my head to clear it, I glanced up. Oh, crap. Singh.
“What are you doing here?” He spoke softly, but the icy tone carried the power of a shouted demand.
I dropped the items on the table. “I, er, I was just chatting with Agent Washington.”
Singh directed his icy gaze at the poor agent who wore the expression of a little boy caught stealing cookies. “I’ll talk to you later.” Grabbing the box of doughnuts with one hand and my elbow with the other, Singh hoisted me out of my chair and steered me out of the room. “You, Ms. McGee, will stop interfering in this investigation effective immediately. Is that understood? You will not call me. You will not text me. You will not come to this office and attempt to extract confidential information from a federal agent under false pretenses. Are we clear?”
“But I can help!” I cried as he propelled me down the corridor toward the entrance. “I saw—”
“Are we clear?” he repeated as he
pushed me back into the mantrap.
I returned his glare with one of my own. “Yes.”
He nodded curtly and opened the outer door. I stepped outside but kept a foot wedged in the doorway like a persistent salesman. Speaking rapidly, I said, “I saw a bunch of stuff! Tomatoes and twine and that the victim was hitchhiking and—”
“Nothing we didn’t already know.”
“But there was—”
He thrust the doughnut box into my hands. “Goodbye, Ms. McGee.”
“—much more,” I finished. But I was speaking to the closed door.
– 15 –
Face flaming, I stormed back to my car. How dare he? Where did he get off treating me like that? He’d all but grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and tossed me out like a pesky little kid. Screw him and his condescending, disdainful attitude. I’d show him. If he didn’t want my help, if he didn’t value my contributions or respect me enough to include me in his investigation, fine. I’d go it alone.
I slammed the car door shut and searched for a piece of paper and pen, in a hurry to capture what I’d seen and felt before it faded. I found a half-dry Sharpie and an old receipt under my seat and quickly drew the tomatoes hanging on the sagging trellis, as well as the arm with the hitchhiker’s thumb and the car in the background.
Was Washington having his ears singed by Singh even now? Poor guy. I hoped I hadn’t gotten him in too much trouble. I was seriously tempted to go back and give him the rest of the doughnuts and to give Singh a piece of my mind while I was at it, but I didn’t want to make things worse for Washington or give Singh the pleasure of detaining me in the mantrap and arresting me for some ridiculous reason. Plus, what mattered most was what I’d just seen.