Forty-Four (44) Page 5

  Kate was in there for what seemed like forever. When she emerged, her face was pale and her hair was being blown into her face. I could tell she was shaken. It was never easy seeing death, I knew that now, too.

  I started walking into the bitter wind. It was freezing. I pulled my coat tighter as I tried to think about why all this was happening. Bend was a small city and it hardly ever had any murders. The last one had been over a year ago when a husband shot his wife eight times one night, claiming he thought she was an intruder. The jury saw it differently.

  And now, within a month, two people had been killed. And for some reason, I was hooked into what was happening, had seen them both die.

  My phone rang.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Kate said.

  I went inside Thump and got in line for the cappuccinos. It was packed, but a couple left and I slipped into the corner table and waited. Kate walked over, heels pounding the floor.

  “Was it her?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Exactly how you described,” she said. “Long, dark hair, Asian woman. Found dead in the bathtub.”

  Kate had that older-than-her-years look again.

  “What in the hell is going on, Abby?” she said as she grabbed her cup. “Somehow you’re following some killer around in your dreams. How is that possible?”

  Soft music floated through the noisy crowd.

  “It was awful, just awful to see her,” she said. “The poor woman had this terrible expression frozen on her face. I’ll never forget it.”

  She closed her eyes and sat for a moment before taking out her notepad from her large, black purse.

  “Okay. Here we go.” She took a deep breath. “According to Mike, the paramedic, it was an accident.”

  “What?”

  “She was in the bathtub, and their theory is that she somehow passed out and drowned. Maybe she had a medical condition and fainted.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Well, it’s just their initial theory. Someone even suggested that it might be a suicide. I guess she recently broke up with her boyfriend of three years and she was distraught. But the coroner will do an autopsy and they’ll have a thorough investigation.”

  I sat in silence. I couldn’t believe it.

  “It wasn’t an accident, Kate. It was murder!” I said, a little too loudly.

  “I know,” she said in a hushed voice. “They’re going to talk to the ex-boyfriend too, Abby. And when they do the autopsy, my hope is that they’ll find that same drug in the body, like the first one. Then that will help make the case for murder as well as linking the two victims.”

  I sighed.

  “They are also canvassing the area, talking to neighbors. Something might come up there. Maybe somebody saw someone prowling around or leaving afterwards,” she said. “They are just starting the investigation.”

  I sat back in my chair and took a sip from my cup.

  “Do you think he is just picking them randomly?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  I had no idea why he was killing. I wasn’t able to pick up on his motive. I just knew that he was being very methodical and that he wasn’t done, that there would be more.

  “He won’t stop,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I figured. But he might leave town. Bodies can’t keep piling up, whether accidents or suicides, without the authorities becoming suspicious. He might move on to another place.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll do as many stories as I can on it. We will find this guy, flush him out. I still can’t believe it,” Kate said.

  She took a long hit of coffee and looked around.

  “Sure is busy down here today,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “The thing that I don’t get is why you’re involved,” she said. “You just don’t need this now. You need to get better and have some time for relaxed, fun things in your life. This shouldn’t be happening to you.”

  “Don’t worry so much about my life,” I said. “I have plenty of fun hanging out with Jesse. It’s not all gloom and doom.”

  She sighed and took another long sip of her drink.

  “You know what I mean. These dreams, or whatever they are, must be related to your accident. And it seems the more we try to move past it, the more it tries to suck you back. Seriously, Abby, I don’t want you to get too caught up in any of this.”

  I reached over and grabbed her hand.

  “I would do anything for that accident to have not happened. Really, I would. But I’m alive, and that’s good too. I can’t just look the other way when someone is killing people.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to calm down.

  “Okay, Abby, we’ll work on this together. But not as your primary focus. Your primary focus is getting better.”

  I didn’t understand why everybody was always telling me that. I was walking now, even running when I had to. Sure, school wasn’t going that great, but I was passing. Besides, I only had a semester left there. I thought I was doing okay, but sometimes when they made those comments about healing and getting better, it made me feel like I was crazy or something.

  “I don’t know if this helps,” I said. “It’s probably just obvious. But the killer doesn’t care about his victims at all. It’s a strong feeling. He doesn’t have any sort of regret or sadness when he kills them. He does it in a very matter-of-fact kind of way.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. He’s a sociopath. No emotions, no sense of right or wrong.”

  “That’s why I know he won’t stop. But I don’t know why he’s doing it, what he gets out of it.”

  “Because he’s a nut, that’s why,” Kate said, slamming down her cup, her emotions rushing up, sharp and edgy.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.” I took a sip of my drink and closed my eyes.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  A strong, dark feeling shot through my body.

  “Throwaways,” I said. “That’s how he sees them. They’re useful throwaways. For something, I don’t know what. He is saying this to himself. He believes it, too.”

  “That’s important, Abby. That’s a good clue.” She wrote it down in her notebook. “Can you actually hear his voice?”

  I concentrated again, surprised I was able to do this with people around. I could hear a whisper, a quiet voice coming from the same place where I drowned in those dreams.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said. “But it’s very soft, like a thought.”

  Her phone buzzed.

  “Okay, Abby, gotta get going. I’ve got to write this up and get it in. I really want to find this guy.”

  Kate stood up and pulled on her Calvin Klein trench. She swirled the last of the coffee around in the paper cup and took one more gulp before throwing it in the trashcan.

  “It was awful, Abby. I’m glad you didn’t see her. I mean, see her again, dead in the ambulance.”

  She gave me a hug.

  “You know, there’s a lot of this kind of psychic stuff that nobody knows about,” she said, lowering her voice. “What I mean is, that your condition, it’s not so crazy. This stuff happens, it’s not so uncommon. And you’re not alone. I’m right here with you and we’ll figure it all out.”

  I nodded and it made me feel warm and safe when she said that. To not be alone. That meant everything, even if it wasn’t really true.

  “Are you going back to school?”

  “Nah,” I said. Some of Jesse’s senioritis must have rubbed off because there was no way I was returning. Once you left that school parking lot, it was nearly impossible to go back. But I didn’t feel like going home either.

  “Maybe I’ll go down to the library and study there for a while.”

  “Okay, see you later,” she said.

  The library wasn’t too far, down a few blocks or so. I made my way in the cold, noticing that the giant banners for SnowFest were now hangi
ng high over the streets. Candy cane decorations and poinsettias were tied onto the lampposts and shoppers huddled together as they walked store to store. Snow was piled up at the edges of the streets.

  The library’s automatic doors flew open and warm air rushed out.

  I loved the library. The smell, the quiet, the calm. When I was a kid, Mom and I came here all the time and stayed for hours in the children’s section, pulling books off the shelves and reading them in the big, fuzzy beanbag chairs.

  I headed upstairs and found an empty computer. I started surfing around the web for a while. I checked the soccer scores of my favorite international teams, new clothes from PacSun Online, and the prices of airline tickets to Maui. Then I started looking at psychic web sites, which brought up a whole slew of sleazy pages, most of which were blocked by the library Internet system. But then I came across an article about a woman who had visions of earthquakes that always came true. A university was studying her.

  I was about half way done with the article when someone tapped me on my shoulder. I jumped and turned around to find a plump, gray-haired librarian standing behind me.

  “Oops, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she whispered in a soft voice. “I just wanted to let you know your time is up.”

  “What?” I screamed.

  “On the computer, dear,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “We have people waiting. One hour is the max allowed at one sitting, but I saw how busy you were so I let you go over by 10 minutes.”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said catching my breath.

  I clicked off my visited sites while she waved a young woman over. The librarian put her hand back on my shoulder, but I was expecting it this time.

  “Abby, if you’re staying in the library a while, I can let you know when a computer opens up again,” she said.

  I glanced up at her. She knew who I was. My stomach tightened and I braced.

  “It’s nice to see you getting around so well, dear,” she said. “Glad you’re doing better.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief as she walked back to her desk and started helping a mom with a toddler in her arms.

  CHAPTER 14

  Kate was excited as she talked.

  “They found an unidentifiable drug in her blood, too,” she said. “So now they are officially keeping both cases open until the toxicology reports are in. But those reports always take a while.”

  We were sitting in her car in a parking lot, waiting for Matt.

  “Well, that’s good, right?” I said.

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “But I can tell nobody is too excited. Unofficially, it was an accident and if the drug report doesn’t show something else, that’s what it will remain.”

  “What about all the water on the floor?” I asked. I remembered the struggle. The floor had to have been soaked.

  “He must have cleaned it up,” she said. “It looked like she was just taking a bath and fainted.”

  Kate had already written one story about Lana Chang, who worked as a receptionist at a physical therapy office on the east side of town. She was 32, had a steady boyfriend until recently, and worked as a bartender on the weekends at Velvet, a bar that was popular with the locals.

  “Did I mention that Erin kind of knew her?” Kate said.

  “No,” I said. “She sure must have been shocked. Did you tell Erin that you thought she was murdered?”

  “We talked about it, but I just kept to the facts,” she said. “She thinks it’s strange though. And she said that there was no way it was a suicide. Not in a million years.”

  “But you didn’t tell her about my visions, right?” I said. I was sure Kate wouldn’t have done that, but if she got angry enough she might have let it slip out.

  “Of course not,” she said. “Nobody knows. Well, except for Matt.”

  That didn’t bother me. He would be cool about it.

  “Good,” I said.

  Matt walked across the parking lot and was all smiles when he saw us. He climbed in the backseat.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. He gave Kate a kiss and patted my back.

  “Hey, Matt,” I said.

  We drove over to Rosa’s for tacos. Matt seemed really interested in the visions and the murders and we talked about them as we ate dinner.

  “Hey, I know some homeless guys who hang out in that area where that girl was killed,” Matt said, digging into the salsa with a big tortilla chip. “You know, those teenagers who hang around the river near downtown selling drugs and stuff. Anyway, I could ask around, see if they have seen anybody suspicious lately.”

  “Great,” Kate said, taking a bite and not looking over at him.

  She rolled her eyes at me. I knew she was wondering in that exact moment why she was dating someone who had friends who were homeless drug dealers.

  CHAPTER 15

  Everything settled down in the weeks before Christmas, letting us slip back into our somewhat regular lives. The investigations were still open, but stagnant. I hadn’t had any more visions and there hadn’t been any more murders in town either.

  The mountain opened early and Jesse was up there every weekend and even during the week sometimes. He had landed a part-time job serving burgers and fries, which paid minimum wage plus a free lift ticket for the winter. He invited me along, but I didn’t see the point. I couldn’t board anymore and just sitting around at the lodge would make me think of the things I couldn’t do, the person I used to be.

  I took some jobs that included walking the neighbor’s dog in the afternoons and gift wrapping at Macy’s. I didn’t mind them so much. The dog was friendly and Macy’s gave me good discounts. I worked in the back of the store out of view and although I occasionally saw a familiar mom or a teacher, it wasn’t too often. It was also kind of nice to associate with other people who weren’t part of Bend High, even if the store was filled with grumpy old women employees complaining about their adult children. It amounted to just Christmas money, but I was able to buy Jesse some cool snowboarding goggles, a Kate Spade leather wallet for Kate, and an Italian silk tie for Dr. Mortimer.

  I hadn’t seen much of Dr. Mortimer lately, but he still kept in touch through emails and text messages. He always asked about my recovery and school. He also talked about the insane hours he worked at the hospital, sometimes not even having one day off all week. I figured that would help Kate in that he didn’t seem to have too much time to find a girlfriend.

  The local meteorologist predicted that we were heading for the coldest winter on record. Jesse loved it. Besides boarding up at the mountain, he could be found flying down inclines all over town, including the hills at local golf courses.

  Even though we hadn’t talked about my new feelings since that day at the house, I was sure I was still in love with him. And at least he knew it. I had decided to just let it sit for a while. I couldn’t take any more rejection, and at least we were back to being friends. That felt good and for now it was enough. But I was still hoping that he would be able to forgive me someday and that we could be together.

  Matt was still hanging around, especially at the six o’clock hour, but I was getting the feeling that Kate was growing a little tired of him. Most nights she didn’t get home until late and while I assumed she was probably working, I kind of had my own hunch about things. Kate was tight lipped, as always when it came to her personal life, but on Saturday especially I began to wonder what was really going on. She had left a message saying she was working late and then would be out for the evening. I had assumed she would be with Matt.

  Jesse and I had gone out to see Blood Thirsty 2 and I got home late. I had forgotten to leave the lights on and the house was dark. As I walked up, fumbling for my keys, I saw Matt sitting on the doorstep, shivering.

  “Hey, Abby,” he said. He had a canvas under his arm and was only wearing his usual long-sleeved striped T-shirt with a thin down vest. He must have been frozen to the bone. His scraggly goatee had snow sticking to it.

  “Matt! What
are you doing out here?”

  I opened the door and quickly handed him one of my coats. He put it on and I turned up the heat high.

  “You must be freezing,” I said.

  “Yeah, a little,” he said. “It’s cold out there!”

  “Hey, where’s Kate?” I asked. “I thought you guys were hanging out tonight.”

  Matt suddenly looked sad.

  “I don’t know. I was hoping she was here, that’s why I stopped by.”

  I realized that Matt probably had been out in front for hours.

  “She canceled earlier, said she was working late. I went over to her office, but she wasn’t there. I wanted to give her one of my organic carob muffins that I made this morning.”

  He looked around the living room as I turned on lights and took off my coat.

  “But she’s not here either,” he said.

  Matt handed me a small foil package. I could only imagine what germs were festering in the muffin, but I took it anyway.

  “I’ll give it to her,” I said. “Kate’s a workaholic. I’m sure she is on some huge story. Did you try her cell?”

  “Yeah, since the afternoon.”

  That told me something right there. I had called her a little while ago and she picked up right away. What was she up to?

  “Well, here’s the new one. Wanna take a look?” he said.

  I took the canvas from under his arm and leaned it up against a wall. We studied it for a few minutes, and then studied it some more. It was very abstract with thick brush strokes and depressing shades of blacks and grays. I tried to imagine it in full color, that there were oranges and blues and purples dancing together, that maybe it was really amazing. Maybe I didn’t get it because of my color blindness. It probably was much better than how I saw it.

  “Cool,” I said. “Is it the desert at sunset?”

  Matt put his hand under his chin and was quiet for a minute.

  “I like to think my art meets the viewer half way. It presents itself uniquely to each person. So that’s cool if you see the desert at sunset.”