“Then why didn’t it work out that way?”
“I don’t know. The fire spread too fast, maybe. The neighbors gathered too quickly. The dream—vision—you had before the fire made you too wary to be caught. Whatever the reason, they failed. But maybe what they failed at was taking you rather than killing you.”
“That’s a pretty big leap,” she said slowly.
“Yeah, I know. But it bothers me that they haven’t tried to arrange a little car crash for us—especially if they really did send those damned flowers. If they did, they pretty much had to be following us all the way from Chicago; we know damned well they were on us all the way to Chicago. That’s a lot of miles, and faking an accident wouldn’t have been hard. At these speeds, just bumping another car can be a one-way ticket to the morgue. So why haven’t they at least tried?”
“Unless they don’t want me dead,” she finished.
Tucker nodded. “Unless they don’t want you dead.”
Sarah thought about it, then shook her head. “But what about Margo? That little accident was meant to be deadly, and you said they were probably after me.”
“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” he admitted. “But that’s just one instance where it appears that death was clearly the intent—all the rest of the evidence is going the other way.”
She tried to get her thoughts organized, something that was getting harder to do. Whether it was her interrupted sleep last night, the hasty flight from the hotel, or just stress and exhaustion over the whole frightening business, Sarah was having a difficult time thinking clearly.
“Are you saying you think some of the psychics who were supposedly killed really weren’t?”
“When some of the newer information came in this morning, I noticed that in at least a third of those cases, either no body was found or else what was found was…pretty messed up. A lot of burn victims from house fires, car and plane crashes, things like that. Drownings where the body had…been in the water a long time. Identification was sketchy and often depended on the location of the bodies or the fact that nobody asked questions. If a man or woman lives alone and a body is found in their house or car; if that person is missing; if the body is the right sex, roughly the right size and age, wearing the missing person’s clothing or jewelry—in a lot of cases, the assumption is made. And even when identification was made through so-called positive means, as in dental records or even DNA…well, records can be switched. I’d say that would probably be child’s play for people with police officers in their pockets.”
“You mean…innocent people might have been killed just to provide bodies?” That belated realization hit her hard.
“If the stakes are high enough, why not?”
“My God.”
Tucker looked at her quickly. “I’m sorry.”
She wondered vaguely what he’d heard in her voice, but all she said was, “Do you think that if we checked the Richmond newspapers for the days after the fire, we might read that the body of a woman was found dumped somewhere? A woman about thirty, five four, a hundred and five pounds, maybe with dark, reddish hair? A woman who might have been mistaken for me in the right circumstances?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we check?”
He sent her another quick glance. “Sarah, it isn’t your fault. If some other woman died…blame them, not yourself.”
“I’d like to know,” she said steadily. “I need to know.”
“Why? What good would it do?”
Sarah couldn’t tell him that. She only knew that it was a question she had to have answered. But all she said was, “It would be another piece of information, wouldn’t it? Another bit of evidence that—that we’re guessing right. You said yourself we need to know all we can.”
“I don’t think that’s your reason.”
“It’s reason enough.” She waited through several moments of silence, then prompted, “Tucker?”
“All right. When we get to Syracuse, I’ll see what I can find out. Just remember that Richmond is a big city. People die there. None of those deaths has to be connected to you.”
She didn’t respond to that, but said instead, “If the other side really is taking some of the psychics reported dead as well as those reported missing, what are they doing with them? What do they want with me?”
“If the object was to kill you, then you might pose a threat to them. If getting their hands on you and other psychics is the object, then obviously you have some kind of value to them. They want or need to use you somehow.”