The Killing Vision

MONDAY, JULY 9

10:17 AM

Joel and Wade were working on a job at Mayor Carver’s house in Marvin Heights, a gated subdivision out by the college, and Joel was angry.

Not only had Wade refused to tell him anything about where he had been all weekend, but he became absolutely livid when Joel told him that Marla had called looking for him. Joel knew it was none of his business where Wade had been, and in truth he didn’t care. But Wade had a family, and he had responsibilities. And— dammit—he had the obligation to tell his wife what the hell he’d been up to all weekend. Joel only pushed so far; Wade had his limits, and they were undeniably short. Reluctantly, Joel tried to focus on his work, which at the moment was adding another cable outlet in the mayor’s living room.

The room was huge, and it likely would have swallowed Joel’s whole house. One entire wall was lined with shelves crammed with books, and opposite that was a stone fireplace so massive that the mantle was several inches above their heads; on the paneled wall above that was the stuffed head of a large moose, its glass eyes peering down at them in a rather condescending way. A monstrous grand piano sat beside a pair of French doors that looked out over a regal patio and a large pool beyond. The furniture was sparse and tailored, clustered into groups about the room, what Martha Stewart would have undoubtedly called “conversation areas.” Joel was more accustomed to conventional surroundings—rooms in which he felt like a colossal floundering whale, afraid to move lest he scrape shelves and tables free of their knick-knacks with his awkward, beefy limbs. The living rooms of old ladies cluttered with dusty framed photographs resting on crocheted doilies or the dens of families where so many toys littered the room that you couldn’t walk. Here he felt small. Well, not small exactly, but maybe this was how a normal-sized person felt in a normal-sized room.

Mrs. Carver, a large-boned woman with short blonde hair and thick lips, darted in and out of the room nervously, as if she feared they would take off with the family heirlooms. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she told them from the doorway. “If you need me.”

Wade finished drilling a hole into the floor and blew the sawdust from it. “Go downstairs to the basement and find the service entrance,” he told Joel. “Run a tap from the main cable over to here.”

Joel skulked across the great room toward the hall where he had seen Mrs. Carver disappear. “Hello?” he called. The hallway seemed endless, its walls lined with plaques and certificates, testimonies to the mayor’s influence.

He stopped and stared at one.

Presented to

MAYOR LARRY CARVER

In appreciation of his years of dedicated service.

Cedar Hill Park Board



Joel wondered what the mayor could have done to receive this plaque, other than show up at the meetings and approve the budget.

There were countless others. The Cedar Hill School Chess Club. The Rotary Club. The Optimists Club. Mayor Carver was indeed a busy man.

There was a photograph of the mayor receiving some type of medal on a blue ribbon from a balding, bespectacled goon Joel recognized from TV as the governor. The mayor towered over him; he was a robust man, tall and muscular beneath his suit, with a finger-combed mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed beard just starting to go gray. Joel stared at him. He’d never seen him outside of the fuzzy photos in the newspaper or waving distantly from a convertible in the Veterans Day parade. He looked…odd. Handsome and smiling, yet the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. His eyes were soft and brown, but something about them seemed flat and emotionless, almost glassy. Like the eyes of the moose in the other room. Dead and cold.

“Can I help you?” Joel looked away from the picture to see Mrs. Carver staring at him. She was twisting her diamond wedding band.

“I need to get to the basement,” he said.

She nodded and pointed to a plain door at the end of the hall. “Light switch is on your left.”

Joel descended into the musty darkness, nearly bashing his forehead against a beam before reaching the landing. The dim bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling lit a pathway through piles of old furniture and moldy cardboard boxes. He pulled the flashlight off his belt and shined it into the dark corners, scaring up a few spiders, searching for the entrance of the cable into the house.

Though his eyes searched the dusty beams above him, his mind was on yesterday. On the group. The sensitives. He wondered what kind of work some of them did. It was difficult to imagine any of them in a factory or teaching school; some of them, like Barry and Joseph he was fairly sure, had no jobs at all.

He headed for the corner of the basement where he thought the cable entrance should be, playing the light at the mass of wires and cables tacked onto the crossbeams. Just as he found it, the toe of his shoe caught against the leg of an old kitchen chair, and the pile of newspaper clippings on its seat spilled into the floor. Spitting out a curse, he knelt and began picking them up.

Then he saw it. Just below a window encrusted with dust, out of his line of sight when he had been standing, was a break in the drywall where pulsing light was spilling through. There was a door built into the wall; he could see the hinges. Curious, he stepped over to it and felt around until he got a grip on an edge, then pulled it open.

Behind the door was a small room, about eight feet square, no more than a closet, really. Its walls, floor, and ceiling were upholstered in red vinyl. Light came from four strategically placed recessed strobe fixtures that illuminated the only other object in the room: a sort of leather sling that was suspended from above by shiny chrome chains. The strobes pulsed slowly and monotonously, like the flash of some insane phantom photographer.

He stared, dumbfounded. He had an idea, of course, what the sling was for, and a smile played at the corner of his mouth. He tried to picture the mayor’s wife strung up in here like a slab of meat, naked and sweating. Give it to me, Larry! A dry laugh escaped his lips. Without thinking he brushed his fingertips against the sling.

Instantly a flood of visions and emotions crossed before him and was gone. He reeled a bit, looking at the thing. Then he reached out and grabbed it.

What he saw was a mass of writhing, tangled bodies locked together in sexual bliss beneath the flashing lights. Images swam on top of images, dark indistinguishable faces dissolving from one to another. Voices moaned and screamed—some in pleasure, some in pain, most a combination of both. Once he saw Larry Carver’s face vividly, his features pinched and distorted in ecstasy.

But it was the thrill shooting through him that would not allow him to let go of the sling. The sexual energy pounding in his chest, his loins. He had never felt anything like it. It felt so strong, like a jolt of electricity. Wave after wave flowing through him. An orgasmic spark that began in his groin and spread through his limbs like a shock of lightning. It was sheer, undiluted lust of a magnitude he never knew could exist.

Only the sudden weakness in his legs made him let go, and he steadied himself against the vinyl wall. His breath was heaving, and a viscous sweat had broken out on his forehead. Then he realized something else: he had an erection. The first one he’d had in ten years.

Trembling, he stepped out of the room and shut the wall behind him. He wondered about the faceless, nameless people he had envisioned, some in the sling, some writhing on the floor. He wondered what the governor would have thought of Mayor Larry Carver if he’d been able to see what Joel just experienced. Probably would have strangled him with that blue ribbon. But then, who knew? Maybe the governor had been a guest here. Maybe the governor had even been in the sling. Maybe the governor had liked it.

Joel bent down to grab the newspapers he had scattered over the floor and began stacking them. He stopped. All of the papers had to do with Sarah Jo McElvoy. He looked at a front-page story from April: Girl Still Missing. Sarah Jo smiled up at him from the color picture—a school portrait most likely—that accompanied the article, and Joel felt a chill up his spine. The stories started with her disappearance and went right up through finding her body last week. He shuffled through the pile. There were dozens of them, all stories from the Cedar Hill Post-Dispatch, from front-page articles to small stories buried farther in the paper.

Suddenly, the red room didn’t seem quite so sexy. He began to wonder exactly what had happened in there.

Was the mayor involved in this? Had the mayor taken that girl? If so, what had he done with her? To her?

He wondered if he had missed something in those visions, if there was some small part that had gotten by him while he was lost in the flood of ecstasy. But he didn’t think so. He could try it again, grab the sling and search his feelings again, but the visions before were so murky—more physical than visual, and nothing really clear except Larry Carver’s moaning face.

And besides, now he was afraid. If there were something to all this, if the mayor were somehow involved in the girl’s death, Joel wasn’t sure he wanted to find out this way. Not in a dank, musty basement surrounded by dark shadows and a pulsing strobe light.

He looked again at the clipped articles in his hand, wondering if he should go to the police, doubting that he ever could, knowing he would never be able to convince them of anything. What would he say to them? There was no way he would ever tell them about his ability, and even if he did they would never believe him.

Perhaps he could just tell them about the room, about the articles. Maybe it would throw some suspicion this way. He debated taking a few of the articles to show the police, but then decided against it. Anyone could cut things out of the paper; that certainly didn’t make a murderer. But he had to admit it was still strange.

He finished stacking up the newspapers and moved on to his real work, his fingers trembling.

Not surprisingly, his erection was gone.

* * *

1:40 PM

Halloran and Chapman stood at the edge of the cemetery with Chief Pettus, watching the mourners file back to their cars from the green tent set presumptuously amid the gray headstones. Today, Sarah Jo McElvoy was finally being laid to rest in Our Lady of Peace Gardens. Halloran got just a glimpse of Sarah Jo’s mother; she was wearing dark glasses against the intense summer sun and had a fresh cigarette between her lips. A lady in a navy blue suit—who was probably Mrs. McElvoy’s age but looked much younger—was helping her toward the funeral home limo. A couple of news reporters were shouting questions at them, holding microphones as far over the caution tape as their arms would stretch. Mrs. McElvoy and her friend in the blue suit sailed past them without stopping, almost like jaded Hollywood celebrities.

The whole thing looked like a circus. Television cameras and newspaper reporters were everywhere, and Halloran was grateful Pettus had stretched out the yellow tape as a boundary for the media. Since Carmelita Santos’s disappearance had been made public, Cedar Hill had become a national news story. All three networks had converged on the town, and not to be outdone, CNN and Fox News had also set up shop. Several patrolmen were stationed around the scene, just in case anything got out of hand.

All three men surveyed the crowd of mourners, looking for anyone who seemed out of place or suspicious, but it was hard to tell. There were so many people, and most he felt sure were friends or family. There were quite a few children as well, most likely Sarah Jo’s classmates, all huddled together in a somber group, some of them crying. Even the mayor had been here; he had given a small speech before the service (some drivel that had been captured for posterity by the news cameras) before being escorted to his car and whisked back downtown.

Chapman loosened his tie and blew out a breath. His freckled forehead was glistening in the heat. “See anything unusual?”

Halloran shook his head. “Other than the fact that we’ve got the TV news covering a Cedar Hill funeral, no.” He looked over the crowd, wondering if, as he had suspected, Sarah Jo’s killer might be mingling with the mourners, passing himself off as just another grieving friend.

“This is crazy,” Pettus said. “I’ve spent my whole life in this area. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Chapman stared straight ahead, not looking at him. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “This scares me.”

Halloran glanced at him, then went back to studying the crowd. Chapman wasn’t the only one who was scared. Halloran was more than a little uneasy himself. Hell, Cedar Hill hadn’t had a murder in over ten years, back when he was still patrolling the streets. That was the Bollinger murder—the kid that had stabbed his grandmother to death before school one morning. Shane Bollinger. That was the kid’s name. He’d been tried as an adult, but his attorney had skirted the death penalty by having him plead insanity. Now the kid (shit, he must be about thirty by now) was rotting away in some prison somewhere.

But that had been a family squabble. This was something else entirely, and if his instincts were correct, Carmelita Santos was already victim number two.

They had gone over all the possibilities with the Santos couple and the other people living in the house with them. Everyone’s whereabouts could be accounted for during the time Carmelita had disappeared. And no one else in the neighborhood reported seeing anything or anyone usual. Chapman had raised the question of looking at the other migrant workers in the area, especially anyone who might have suddenly disappeared and grabbed the opportunity to take a pretty little Mexican girl with him. But so far, visits to local farm owners concluded that all their summer help was accounted for. There were absolutely no leads at all.

“What’re you thinking about?” Chapman asked.

“Carmelita Santos.”

Chapman nodded. “Me, too.”

“Time’s running out.”

“Yep.”

Halloran watched the news people scrambling about. He thought he recognized a couple of the reporters from TV, and he realized that none were from the local station over in Springfield. “This is turning into something big,” he told Chapman. “One murdered girl is one thing, but now that another one is missing, I think the people of this town are going to demand some action. And they’re going to want it real quick.”

Halloran looked at his watch. A press conference was scheduled in front of the city hall for 3:00. Police Chief Pettus and Halloran would be detailing the efforts of the investigations so far, and Mayor Carver would be there for public reassurance. He hated these things, and luckily he had had to do very few over the years. But they were important, and sometimes they led to some very promising leads. He had to admit, though, that scheduling this conference was one of the few good things Pettus had done; he seemed to understand now the depth of what was going on, the magnitude of it. And that was surely good.

Halloran blew out a breath. “Guess we’d better get downtown and get set up,” he said.

* * *

6:02 PM

All day Joel had been obsessing over his experience in the mayor’s basement. And while he had to admit to being both alarmed and turned on by the red room with its suspended sling, he was mostly still wondering about the newspaper clippings and what they might mean. Could the mayor somehow be involved? Could he actually have killed Sarah Jo McElvoy? Why else would he have kept those articles?

Wade hadn’t seemed to notice that Joel was preoccupied all afternoon, even though Joel failed to respond to Wade’s inane conversation a couple of times. More than likely, Wade was too concerned with whatever he had been doing all weekend to worry over whether Joel was paying attention to him. Joel was fairly sure that Wade had probably been out with another woman; he didn’t need to touch him to know that. And Marla knew as well; you didn’t need to be psychic to know when your spouse was sleeping around.

Joel had microwaved a Hungry Man dinner, and he parked himself in the recliner with a TV tray and a beer, settling in to watch the news and eat his supper the way he did every night. He had just flipped on the television and scooped up a big forkful of mashed potatoes when the image blazed on the screen and he nearly knocked his tray over.

The mayor was on TV. He was standing behind a podium beneath a green tent, surrounded by flowers and men in dark suits. “I want to pledge to the people of Cedar Hill, and especially the McElvoy family, that justice will be served. The sanctity of our city’s children has been violated, and we will take action.” The tape cut back to a long shot, and Joel realized the mayor had been speaking at Sarah Jo McElvoy’s graveside service. A chill went through him. The son of a bitch might have killed her, and here he was trying to bolster the public. The station cut back to the studio, and the female anchor began giving the story of another girl, Carmelita Santos, who had been missing since Saturday. There was another tape, this time a press conference on the steps of City Hall. The mayor was speaking again, and Joel could only stare at him, entranced by his wagging beard and his stone-dead eyes, wondering if he were looking at the face of a monster.

Then some detective came on, detailing what the police had managed to find out so far. It wasn’t much, he admitted, and he was asking for any help the public could give, any tips or leads that might bear following up. The guy looked to be in his early forties, with thick dark hair and a mustache. His face was worn and haggard. Joel liked him at once; there was a sincerity to his voice, a grit in his demeanor that meant business. His name flashed on the screen: Michael Halloran. Joel scrambled to find a pen on the end table beside the recliner, and he scrawled Halloran’s name down on his napkin.

When he looked up again, the tape of the conference was over and the TV was showing a picture of the Santos girl. She was a pretty, black-haired child, her dark eyes shining in happiness and innocence, and Joel immediately knew she was probably dead. There was no flash of visions, no alarming voices or smells. It was just a sudden knowledge, like knowing he’d left the mail on the kitchen table or knowing that he would look outside his window and see the cable truck sitting in the driveway. He just knew.

Before him, his dinner began to congeal, untouched.

* * *

All evening Joel was restless and anxious, turning over in his head what little he knew. Even when he finally was in bed, his mind refused to turn off. It was like some damned blaring radio that had no volume control and was stuck on the same station.

And then, just before midnight, it hit him. He would go see the mayor at his office. He would drop by City Hall on the pretext of following up on the new cable hookup, just to see if they were satisfied with the work he and Wade had done at the house.

And he would shake the mayor’s hand.

* * *

11:55 PM

Sometimes on nights like this, he would go outside and stand naked in the yard, feeling the velvety touch of the summer night air on his bare skin. He would listen to the drone of insects, the occasional call of a whippoorwill, the soft hooting of an owl. He would feel the tickle of the grass beneath his feet, its surface wet with dew. He would sniff the heavy scents of earth and roses and, in the spring, cherry blossoms. Occasionally, when it was raining, he would stand in the downpour, letting the shower wash him clean and innocent as a newborn baby.

But tonight he had a mission, and he did not remain outside.

In a dark, dusty corner, buried beneath a mound of moldering junk was a rusting Maytag chest freezer. He had found it back in the winter, and on a whim, he’d plugged it in and was surprised to discover that it still worked. It was then that a plan had begun to fester in his mind.

He began with experiments on animals— stray dogs and cats mostly. He strangled them, then wrapped their bodies in old sheets before hiding them in the freezer. Even with the thermostat set a little above freezing, they remained remarkably preserved for several weeks. And when spring came and the river began to thaw, he took them there to dump them in the water. He took only one a day; he did not want to risk someone noticing a cluster of dead animals floating downstream all at once.

He knew then that it was time to go forward. He had thought about it for a couple of years. How he would do it. What it would feel like. He just didn’t know who it would be. Not until that day in April when Sarah Jo caught his attention.

He’d seen her one afternoon as she passed the water treatment plant down by the river. He’d been there scouting out new places to fish, and he’d stopped to take a leak in the bushes. He heard her before he saw her; she was singing, some song by Miranda Lambert. He hid behind a tree as she passed by on the dirt road, swinging an instrument case in her fist as she walked. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, which bounced with her steps, and her jeans fit tightly around her buttocks, molded to them. He watched her until she disappeared. She never even knew he was there.

The next day he waited in the same spot, and she came by again at just about the same time. Again he watched her, and again she didn’t see him.

For a week he hid in the bushes and watched her every afternoon, planning everything he would do. And the night before he did it, he lay sleepless and sweating on top of his bed, his heart hammering with excitement, fondling the leather gloves he planned to use on her.

In the end, it had not gone as smoothly as he had hoped. For one thing, it had been raining; for another, Sarah Jo was a fighter. He had squeezed and squeezed her throat, but she refused to succumb. His rain-slick gloves couldn’t get a good enough grip on her neck, and the more she struggled, the harder it became to hold her. He finally wrestled her to the ground and kept his knee on her back while he pulled out his pocket knife. She was screaming in terror, flailing her hands blindly at him. He held up her head by her hair and sliced her throat open. The screams stopped with a gurgle.

He truly had not wanted it to end like that. Cutting her made the whole ordeal almost pointless. He had ruined her. Now, however, it was too late.

At first he had worried about the blood. There was so much of it. But that night, after several hours of heavy rain, the river overflowed its banks there at the low spot by the treatment plant, and any traces of Sarah Jo’s blood on the ground had been washed away with the muddy water. His clothes were another matter; in the end he drove to the lake and burned them in a barbecue pit at a public picnic area.

Once he was home, he worked feverishly through the evening while the lightning flashed outside and the thunder shook the walls. He had so much to do, and he was terrified of being caught.

The first thing he did was to carefully remove Sarah Jo’s shoes, then her jeans and panties. The sight of her nakedness sent a ripple of excitement through him, and it took every ounce of his mental strength to keep himself from tearing into her. The second thing he did was to take the sawed-off end of an old shovel handle (which was roughly the same diameter as an erect penis) and insert it firmly in her vagina. It was a difficult procedure; she was small and her flesh was dry.

With that done, he placed her into the freezer, positioning her carefully and covering her with a sheet, then lowered the lid. He piled the junk back on top of the freezer and left it for the night, taking her things with him. He would burn them later. The instrument case with the clarinet inside would be more of a problem; for the moment he hid it in the trunk of the car.

The next day when he was sure he would be alone for awhile, he went back to her. Her skin was pale and blotchy and a bit of blood and other fluids had leaked from her torn throat and pooled into pink ice at the bottom of the freezer, but otherwise, she was perfect. He wrenched the wooden handle from her, and saw with breathless excitement that she stayed open, molded to the shape of the wood, just as he had hoped. From a small metal box on a high shelf, he pulled out a vinyl dildo and worked it into her while he touched himself. He did not take long; he was too excited.

He used her several more times over the next few weeks, but the thrill soon began to wear thin. For one thing, the fact that her throat had been cut detracted from her beauty; she was spoiled. At first he tried hiding her throat with an old scarf or a corner of the sheet, but it didn’t help; he knew the cut was there, and soon it was all he thought about while he was with her. For another thing, he was terrified of being caught, of someone opening the forgotten freezer and finding her there.

So one night in the middle of June, he took her out for the last time. He looked her over for any loose hairs or threads that might be attached, then took his pocketknife and carefully scraped underneath her fingernails. If someone found her downriver, he wanted to be sure they would not be able to connect her with him.

He took her down to the same spot at the river where he had dumped the animals. For a terrifying moment, he was sure she wouldn’t float, that she would sink to the bottom into the muck and someone would find her the next morning. But she did float. He covered her with loose branches and set her adrift, watching as the pile moved away from him in the moonlight, agonizingly slow.

He waited anxiously for the next few days, listening to the news for any word that her body had been found, but there was nothing. He began to breathe easier. Maybe she had drifted on down to the next county; maybe she would never be found.

But a week later during the Fourth of July fireworks those kids had stumbled upon her. Again he was terrified, sure that she would be linked to him, and he had braced himself for the arrival of the cops at his door. But there had been nothing so far. They were all perplexed. Although they had mounted a massive search of the shoreline on both sides of the river for more than a mile, they had been unable to find where he had dumped her. Their investigation seemed to have stalled.

Then, on Saturday, when he had been on his way to the park to have another look at the river landing, he saw Carmelita. She was walking along the deserted drive into the park, her long black hair trailing in the breeze, her hips moving seductively with her every step. He pulled up beside her. She noticed him and smiled. He asked her where she was going. To the park, she said. What a coincidence, he told her, so am I; I’ll give you a ride. My name is Carmelita, she said when he asked, her tongue dancing across the syllables like a dream. That’s beautiful, he said. She didn’t seem to notice when he slipped on his gloves. Then, just inside the park gate, right beneath the sign that said $500 FINE FOR LITTERING, he turned and grabbed her throat. She was dead in just a couple of minutes.

Again he anxiously monitored the details of the investigation into her disappearance, but as before, he had been extremely careful. There had been no witnesses. No leads. No trace of her.

And now he opened the lid of the freezer and peered down into her angelic face. This was the second night he had visited her, and it almost seemed as if she became more beautiful each time.

“I’m here,” he whispered. “There’s no need to be afraid.”





TUESDAY, JULY 10

9:40 AM

For the first time in five years, Joel called in sick. He had not had much sleep last night; his mind had been too busy turning over what he would say to the mayor when he saw him today. So, when his alarm clock blared on at 6:00, he fumbled for the snooze and smacked it. And then again. And again. Finally, at seven, he called Wade. Half an hour later when Wade pulled into the driveway, Joel expected him to come to the door to check on him. He didn’t, though; just climbed into the cable truck and drove away, barely giving the house a glance. Joel watched him from the front window and was relieved.

When Wade was gone, Joel took a shower, then sat at the kitchen table with his coffee and a cigarette. His heart was pounding dully but insistently. He had a few Lortabs from a visit to the dentist last year; he briefly considered taking half of one to calm himself. Then he thought better of it. This was one time when he wanted his senses sharp and unimpeded. He dressed in his cleanest uniform and ran a brush through his hair.

“Mayor Carver?” he said to the mirror. “I’m Joel Roberts from Cable-Com. Just wanted to make sure you were happy with our work yesterday.” He extended his hand, trying to look natural as he did it. He had no idea what he would do or say after he took the mayor’s hand. He only hoped he could stay in control of himself.

Outside, he looked at Wade’s truck sitting beside his Explorer in the morning sun. He wondered if he should get in it, feel the wheel and the seats, see if he could pick up anything on his brother and what he had done all weekend. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Part of it he suspected; the rest he didn’t want to know.

In town he parked as close to City Hall as he could get. The city was still swarming with reporters, and they seemed to have all camped out on the City Hall lawn. He weaved his way through them, stepped through a metal detecting device, and entered the lobby of the building.

The mayor’s office was directly in front of him. He cleared his throat and headed toward the door. His heart was hammering and his hands were shaking, and he cursed himself for not breaking off just a bit of a Lortab to take the edge off things.

Larry Carver’s receptionist was a young blonde, and Joel wondered if she’d ever seen the sling in the mayor’s basement. She looked up at him and smiled. “May I help you?”

“I’m Joel Roberts. I’d like to see the mayor.”

She nodded, the smile never leaving her face, though it seemed to have grown cold. “What did you need to see him about, Mr. Roberts?”

Her question momentarily threw him off guard. “I…we did some work for him yesterday at his house. I’m with Cable-Com. The cable company.”

She nodded again. “Did he need to pay you for something? Do you have an invoice I can give him?”

“No,” he said, working to keep his voice steady. “I just came by to make sure he was happy with everything.”

She scribbled on a pad. “I can leave him the message that you came by.”

“Look,” he said, his composure beginning to slip a bit, “I’d just like to see him, okay?”

She put down her pen and gave him that cold smile again. “I’m sorry, but he’s not here.”

Joel felt his whole countenance fall. “He’s not?”

“No. He’s out of town at a meeting. Left this morning. I’m afraid he won’t be back in the office until tomorrow.”

Joel stared at her, and part of him wanted to say insanely, “I’ll wait,” just to wipe that distant smile from her face. But instead he said simply, “Tomorrow?”

She nodded. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Roberts?”

He shook his head, turning for the door. “I guess not,” he said. “Just…give him the message.”

Back in the lobby he took a seat on a bench and watched the passersby for a little while, wondering what to do next. After a few moments, it came to him. He headed outside and down the street to the police station.

* * *

10:40 AM

Halloran had been buried in paperwork all morning, mostly stuff he’d neglected the past few days while he and Chapman were roaming around Cedar Hill. He had checked for any updates on the Santos girl, and when there was nothing new, he made a small note of it in his report and resumed work on his backlog. So when Camron stuck her head in his office door and told him he had a visitor, he welcomed the break.

He looked up from his desk to see a huge bear of a man in a Cable-Com uniform stepping through his door. The guy looked young, in his twenties, but his eyes seemed ancient and wounded. “Lieutenant Halloran?”

Halloran stood. “That’s me,” he said, offering his hand.

The big man looked at it, then down at Halloran’s desk. “Sorry, I don’t shake hands.”

Halloran forced his expression to stay neutral. This was going to be interesting. He motioned to the empty chair across the desk. “Have a seat.”

As the man sank into the chair—gracefully for such a large guy, Halloran thought—he cleared his throat. “My name is Joel Roberts,” he said. “I work for Cable-Com here in town.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Roberts?” Halloran had pulled out a legal pad and a pencil, ready to take notes.

“I understand you’re on the Sarah Jo McElvoy case.”

Halloran froze. He looked at the man across the desk. “That’s right.”

Roberts’ face was unreadable. “I think I may have found something interesting.”

Halloran sat up straight. “Go on.”

“Wade—that’s my brother—the two of us work for the cable company. Yesterday we were running a new outlet in Mayor Carver’s house.”

Halloran listened as Roberts told his story—how while working a job at Mayor Carver’s house he had stumbled upon a secret room with a sex sling, about finding a pile of newspaper clippings relating to the McElvoy girl’s disappearance. Halloran took notes of it all, a sensation of both dread and excitement prickling at his neck. When Roberts finished speaking, Halloran laid his pencil down gently. “So you think the mayor may have something to do with this?”

Roberts looked at Halloran, then glanced away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just thought I should tell you what I found.”

Halloran looked at his scrawled notes. “Did your brother…”

“Wade.”

“Did Wade see any of this?”

Roberts shook his head. “No. I never even told him about it.”

“Why not?”

The big man looked at his hands. “I don’t know. It was just…too creepy.” He opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped.

“Yes?”

Roberts chuckled humorlessly. “Wade’s got a big mouth,” he said.

“I see.” Halloran looked down at his notes.

Roberts was watching him anxiously. “Do you think it means anything? I mean, you will follow up on it, right?”

Halloran set his pencil down on the pad. “Mr. Roberts, right now we can’t afford to ignore any leads we might get. All I ask of you is that you not tell anyone what we talked about here today. Agreed?”

Roberts nodded. “Sure.”

“You realize we have another missing teenager in Cedar Hill.”

“How could I not?” Roberts said. “It’s all over the TV and the radio.”

Halloran studied his face, looking for any signs of instability. But there were none. Just those dark, haunted eyes. “Mr. Roberts, be assured that we will check this out. And in the meantime, you hear of anything else that may help us, please don’t hesitate to call me.” He slid one of his business cards across the desk and Roberts took it. “Thanks for coming in.” He reached across the desk to shake the man’s hand, then remembered. “Any particular reason you don’t like to shake hands?”

A struggle of emotions flashed across the big man’s face. “Just a hygiene thing,” he answered. “I have a phobia about germs.”

When Roberts had gone, Halloran sat looking at his notes, his mind playing through all his conversations with Carver. The mayor seemed like a rock-solid guy, genuinely concerned about both girls and how the situation was impacting the community. Still, sometimes the most stable individuals could snap and do the most atrocious things. Could it be possible that Larry Carver was involved in such a heinous thing?

He needed to talk to Chapman. And to the chief.

* * *

11:00 AM

Joel emerged into the sunlight, squinting in the brightness. He felt like such an idiot. Coming here and talking to Halloran was probably a bad idea. He was sure Halloran thought he was a wacko. Those notes he had taken were probably already wadded up in his trashcan.

He crossed the street and headed down the sidewalk toward the small lot where he had parked. The air was cooler today, not so heavy. A velvety breeze stirred the air with the scents of pine and fresh-mowed grass. Across town, the bells in the courthouse tower were chiming the hour. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied he might actually be enjoying his time out. He snapped on his sunglasses and trudged on, trying to ignore the heaviness he felt in his chest.

“Joel!”

He spun around to see a young woman moving toward him, waving, her blonde hair dancing about her face. It took him a moment to recognize her, and then he suddenly remembered her from the group on Sunday. “Dana?”

Her smile grew broader as she reached him. “Hi! What’re you doing?”

He shrugged. “Just taking care of some business.”

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, and he could tell she meant it. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you much Sunday. What did you think of the group?”

He smiled. “It was all right.”

“Kind of overwhelming at first, huh?”

“Yeah. Kind of.”

“Will you come back?”

He looked at her, into her deep blue eyes. “Maybe.”

She looked at her watch. “Hey, you wanna have lunch? I’m supposed to meet some friends at Gidalfo’s, but I’m just really not in the mood. There’s a little deli right over here. If you’re hungry, that is.”

He stared at her dumbfounded. A beautiful, vivacious young woman was asking him to lunch. He laughed. “Sure,” he said.

* * *

The place was Parrothead’s. The décor was early patio—plastic lawn chairs and tables with colorful umbrellas. Murals on the walls depicted beach scenes and stuffed exotic birds swung from the ceiling. Jimmy Buffett—who seemed to be the whole inspiration of the place—sang on the sound system. Their waitress brought drinks in brightly colored plasticware.

“Isn’t this place a blast?” Dana said. “I discovered it during my freshman year. I love Jimmy Buffett.”

“Me, too,” Joel said. “I saw him in concert once.”

“Really? How was it? I’ve heard his shows are pretty wild.”

Joel laughed. “Well, the audience was anyway. Most everybody was drunk.” He didn’t tell her about being pressed up against everyone on the way out of the stadium, how the barrage of thoughts and images hitting him from all sides was so crushing that he was in tears by the time he reached the parking lot. How after that night he’d never again gone where there was a chance he might get caught up in a crowd. Not even to the movies.

Dana took a sip of her Diet Coke. “So what’s your claim to fame?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You know, your talent. Your sensitivity. Me, I can read objects. Just like my mom and dad. Most everybody in the group can do that.”

“Yeah, I can do that, too,” Joel said. “Sometimes. Mostly I can read people—their thoughts and feelings, things in their past.” Dana gave him an alarmed look and he laughed. “I can’t just read their minds or anything,” he said quickly. “I have to touch them first.”

“I can’t read everything,” Dana said, stirring her ice with her straw. “It has to have some kind of emotional attachment to it. Jewelry, clothing, stuff like that. Money is the absolute worst; there’s so much desperation linked to it.”

“I’ve never picked up anything off money before,” Joel said, amazed.

“You’re lucky.”

Joel unwrapped his straw and took a sip of his Coke. “So what can some of the others in the group do?”

Dana thought for a moment. “Well, there’s Deb, of course. She can pick up things from places—voices and feelings, not really visions so much.”

“That’s got to be a bitch,” said Joel.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the two of us, we can at least avoid touching things when we go someplace. It would be pretty awful to be bombarded by stuff all the time. It’s only happened to me once or twice.”

“I asked her about that once,” Dana said. “She told me it was kind of like having a ringing in your ears. You just get used to it after a while, and you learn how to tune it out. Plus, I don’t think she picks up stuff just from driving down the street or going into the grocery. There has to be some real feelings to the place.”

Joel nodded. “I understand.” He thought of Mayor Carver’s basement, of the secret room and its sling. He shuddered. “Emotion seems to be the key to all of it, doesn’t it?”

“She doesn’t really talk about it much,” Dana said, staring at the table. “I know that she had a breakdown as a teenager. Had to be hospitalized for a while. That was after a class trip to Gettysburg.”

“Gettysburg? The battlefield?” God, Joel thought, that must have been horrible. He remembered his experience at the museum, and tried to imagine how a teenage girl would feel being assailed by the horror and sensations of thousands of Civil War soldiers. He couldn’t even begin to understand how Deb must have felt, in spite of his similar experience. “She must have lost her mind,” he said.

Dana nodded. “She just about did.”

Their waitress brought their sandwiches, and Joel bit into his greedily. “What about the others?” Joel asked between bites.

“Well,” Dana said, tearing open her bag of potato chips, “There’s Joseph, the old guy. He and Barry can both see the future.”

Joel stopped chewing. “Really? Both of them?”

Dana nodded. “I think Joseph’s comes and goes. But Barry…”

“What about him? Father Michael said he’s had some rough times. That he tried to kill himself.”

“Yeah,” Dana said softly.

“What happened?”

“Well, I only heard him talk about it once,” Dana said. “It was one of the first times I’d been to the group, and it just about terrified me. I was almost too scared to go back.”

Joel’s curiosity was brimming. “What did he say?”

“He was living in Memphis with his fiancée. They’d been together about two years, and they were in the middle of planning their wedding. One night, out of the clear blue, he had a vision of her being murdered. Stabbed to death, actually.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Yeah. He didn’t know what to do. It was the first time he’d had a vision. He didn’t know if he should tell her because he didn’t want to upset her. And he wasn’t sure it was even real. He just about lost it, worrying over it. In the end, he told her about it, and they just kind of laughed it off.” Dana fell silent and took a sip of her drink.

“I don’t have to guess how it ended,” Joel said.

She nodded. “Barry was the one who found her. She’d been attacked in the parking lot of their apartment house. She managed to crawl to the back door, but she died before anyone could help her. They never caught the maniac who did it.”

Joel was shaking his head in disbelief. “Poor guy.”

“He began having more visions. Some pretty bizarre ones, I think. You remember Flight 800?”

“The plane that blew up over New York?”

“Yeah. He saw that a day before it happened. Nine-eleven, too. He tried to contact the authorities about it, but they ignored him, though he was investigated by the FBI after the fact. Now I’m sure they wish they’d listened.”

Joel shivered. “Creepy.”

“I think it was right after that he did it. Slashed his wrists. Luckily, he was late with his rent. His landlord showed up, found him bleeding to death in the bathtub.”

Joel pushed his sandwich away. He suddenly wasn’t very hungry anymore. “Well,” he said. “I don’t feel like such a freak.”

Dana laughed. “I know what you mean.”

“I take it he still has visions.”

“I assume so.”

“Has he ever had a vision about anyone in the group?”

Dana shrugged and popped a chip into her mouth. “Not sure. If he had one about me, I don’t think I would want to know.”

“I hear you,” Joel said. He watched Dana’s hands as she picked up her sandwich, watched her lips as she bit into it. He wondered what he would discover if he touched her, what secrets in her heart would be revealed. He had begun to feel something stirring within him while sitting here with her. Something warm and exciting yet strangely terrifying. He was feeling a growing attraction to her, an attraction he hadn’t felt for anyone in so many years. He wondered what she thought of him, if she considered him fat and gross. He tried not to think about that. He knew what he looked like, and he didn’t need an inner voice—one that was starting to sound more and more like Clifton or Wade—reminding him. So, before he had a chance to stop himself, he blurted out, “Are you seeing anyone?” And when Dana looked up at him in surprise, he felt sure he had done the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“No,” she said, smiling, “it’s all right.

“I just say things before I think sometimes. I didn’t mean to—”

“No.”

He looked at her. “Excuse me?”

She smiled. “No. I’m not seeing anyone.”

Joel felt his face grow hot. He tried to return her smile, but he couldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he found himself talking to his sandwich. “You seem like a really nice girl,” he said. “I just get nervous when I talk to…” He trailed off, unsure of whether to say “girls” or “women.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, if you wanted to, if you’re not busy maybe we could—”

“Joel,” Dana said, “are you asking me out on a date?”

His face and even his ears were white-hot. “Yes.”

“Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”

* * *

2:55 PM

Halloran and Chapman sat in the conference room looking over all the faxes that had been sent to them in the past few hours. After Joel Roberts had left the office, Halloran had ordered a criminal records check on him. He had also ordered one on Larry Carver.

But Halloran wasn’t finding anything too unusual in either man’s record. One speeding ticket in 1987 was the extent of Larry Carver’s brush with the law. Similarly, Joel Roberts had had one DUI six years ago. That was it.

Halloran threw the papers on the conference table. “Nothing,” he announced.

Chapman looked up from his files, shaking his head. “Same here.”

Halloran fingered his cigarettes through his shirt pocket. Somehow, knowing he wasn’t allowed to smoke in here made him need one all the more. “What do you make of the newspaper clippings?”

Chapman looked at him. “Weird.” He chewed the tip of his pen. “What would he be doing with those?”

“Don’t know.” Halloran reached for his coffee. It was cold. “I’d give anything to see them for myself.”

Chapman raised his eyebrows. “You think this guy’s telling the truth?”

Halloran shrugged and took a sip of the cold coffee. “I’d just like to see, is all.”

“You think the mayor would consent to that?”

“Don’t know.”

“If he didn’t, you’d need a search warrant.”

“Yep.”

“For the mayor’s house.”

“That’s right.”

Chapman leaned back in his chair. “You’ve got some damned big balls, Mike.”

* * *

11:15 PM

At ten-thirty he had come suddenly awake, thinking of Carmelita. He thought of her black hair and her brown thighs waiting for him and instantly he was hard.

Carefully and quietly, so as not to wake anyone, he went to her. And he knew it was the last time. He had kept Sarah Jo too long, and he had left himself open to discovery. He did not want that to happen again. Even though Carmelita was smooth and beautiful as porcelain, he could not take chances. So, as he touched her, he knew he was saying goodbye. Knew this was the last time he would stroke her face and brush his lips across her breasts. It was a beautiful moment, tender and poignant.

When he was finished, he quietly got dressed and began cleaning Carmelita up just as he had Sarah Jo. He was very careful to brush her hair and to scrape beneath her fingernails with a knife. He combed out her pubic hair and her eyebrows, then wiped her skin down with alcohol. He folded the sheet up around her body. The river would take care of the rest of the evidence.

Sweat was pouring down his neck and chest, soaking through his shirt. He stopped to rest, looking at the shrouded body in the semi-darkness. He slid to the floor, never shifting his gaze.

He remembered the other day when he had seen her walking down the road toward the park, how instantly alive he had felt. The mere sight of her swaying hair, her light step, seemed to send a rush of desire, a hungering lust, through his veins. That urge, that need, more powerful than the instinct to breathe, had consumed him like fire. As soon as she smiled at him, he had known what he would do. What he would have to do.

Watching his hands inside the gloves was like watching the hands of a stranger. They seemed to be beyond his control, like small savage animals writhing in desperation. The feeling of her throat under his thumbs, however, even through the gloves, was enough to ground him in reality. The throb of her pulse—strong and quick at first like the heart of a bird, then slowing and erratic—pounded through him as if she were linked to him. Her fists flailed against him vainly, striking against his chest and giving his head a glancing blow. And as her gasping stopped and the light faded from her eyes, the sense of power, of lust, was stronger than ever in him, and he had to kiss her, even as the life ebbed from her.

And now, as he crouched in the darkness, looking at the shrouded form beside him, he realized he was weeping. Why had he done this? What was inside him that made him do it? And why was he so powerless to control it?

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. He had to get himself together. He had to stop crying and control himself.

He had work to do.