Kay Hooper: Touching Evil

"I don't have any pressing appointments," she said lightly.

He sighed. "I'll come back in a few hours, and we'll check again."

"Sure."

When she was alone again, Hollis turned her face toward the window. The blustery night had been followed by a miserable day, according to the nurses. Wet, dreary, cold. So she wasn't missing much, at least as far as the view out the window went.

But she would have liked to see it.

She really would have liked to see it.

Hollis?

"Hello, Annie. Were you around when the doc was here? I'm still blind, you know." Her voice was the same as it had been with the doctor, even and calm, almost placid.

Hollis, listen to me. Are you listening?

"Sure. Sure I'm listening."

You have to see.

"I can't."

Yes, you can. The eyes are yours now, Hollis. They belong to you. They were a gift, so you could see. You must see.

"But I can't. Just darkness. That's all I see." Do you want to help Maggie?

Hollis sat very still, her fingers curling on the arms of the chair to grip hard. "You know I do." Then you have to see, Hollis.

"But-" You have to see.

John didn't say a word in protest as it was all laid out for him. But something changed in his face, and Maggie, watching him, could feel the pain.

"I'm sorry, John," Quentin said. "We could be wrong."

With a twisted smile, John said, "I hope you are. But somehow… it makes sense to me. It would explain so much, wouldn't it? How he got into high-security places, for instance. A snap for a computer genius."

Reluctantly, Maggie said, "John, it could also explain Christina's death."

He looked at her, and she felt another flash of pain that was quickly and ruthlessly shoved aside. "Yes, it could. Of all his victims, Christina was the most likely to be able to identify him, given enough time. He must have known that. Must have realized, when she survived the attack, that he couldn't let her live.

Especially if he got into the apartment and saw the work she was doing trying to find her attacker. It could also be why he didn't bother to go after Hollis Templeton or Ellen Randall a second time when they survived the initial attacks; he wouldn't think they had any chance of identifying him, so they were no threat to him."

Maggie thought that if they both survived this, she would have to do something about this tendency of his to repress pain. But for now, all she could do was say, "If I'd been able to walk through her apartment afterward, maybe I could have seen all this."

"It would have killed you," John said flatly.

Andy, who had been mostly silent until then, said, "John, I swear to you I believed Christina committed suicide."

"I know that, Andy. You have nothing to apologize for."

"Then why do I feel so rotten about it?"

"Never mind. What we have to do now is figure out where Simon could be."

Quentin said, "We've started on that. Given that he had access to quite a bit of money before his presumed death, it seems logical to assume that he planned carefully. I think we'll find evidence that he liquidated some assets and investments and possibly sold property as well before he took that boat out to die."

John frowned. "Thinking back, I was a bit surprised there was so little money. Plenty for Christina to live comfortably, but given what he'd been earning with those cutting-edge software programs of his, I expected to find more."

"There was more," Jennifer announced as she came into the conference room. "While some of the guys are looking for property he might have sold, I've been on another computer, checking out his financial records in the months before his supposed death. Quentin was right-Simon Walsh was moving around a lot of money. No one amount large enough to raise any flags, but taken together it's pretty obvious he shifted a sizable portion of his net worth somewhere I haven't been able to trace."

"He put it in another name," Quentin said. "He laid all the groundwork for disappearing long before he did."

Andy said, "I still don't get why he went to so much trouble to hide his face when he'd already blinded his victims. I mean, I could see him being extra careful with Christina, but the others? None of them knew him, right?"

Quentin said, "I think wearing a mask and wig is tied in with why he blinds them. He doesn't want them to see but, even more, he doesn't want them to know it's him. And he's convinced they would know, if they were able to see him, touch his face, even get a whiff of his natural scent. Because he recognizes their faces somehow, or believes he does, and because he believes he knows them, he believes they could know him."

"It makes sense, I guess," Andy said. "As much as this twisted bastard makes any kind of sense."

"So how do we find him?" Jennifer demanded.

Maggie half listened without offering comment as the others discussed various ways they might find Simon Walsh's secret torture chamber. What would it take, she wondered, to push a precarious mind even further into insanity? Maybe even… break it for good? Was that an effective way to destroy evil, by splintering it so that not even its own will could hold it together any longer?

"Maggie?"

She blinked at John. "Hmm?"

He leaned slightly toward her, his hand coming to rest warmly on her thigh. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." She managed a smile. "Just… wondering why I couldn't see this. Couldn't see him. Christina had pictures of him, of course. She showed them to me."

"You couldn't see him because none of the victims ever saw him. He made sure of that."

"I know. Still."

He squeezed her thigh gently, then leaned back and looked across the table to meet Quentin's gaze. "Do you think we'll find him by figuring out what properties he sold before he faked his death?"

"I think we've got a fair shot at it. To do what he does requires isolation and privacy. And he's got to feel safe there, certain no one will find him."

Andy said, "You know, he could still have Tara Jameson at that place. We haven't found a body yet, and he's had her barely forty-eight hours. Plus we think he may have been interrupted if Quentin's source actually found him or at least got close enough to draw his attention. So he could still be… working on her."

Maggie, remembering the painting, said, "I don't think she's alive… but she could be."

"Which means," Quentin said, "he could have a hostage. So assuming we do find a likely place where he might be holed up, we'll have to be damned careful approaching."

Grimacing, Andy said, "Yeah. No fucking S.W.A.T. team. If we blunder in and a victim dies because of it…"

He didn't have to finish that sentence, because all of them could do it for him.

Half an hour later they had a printout of a list of properties Simon Walsh had sold in the months before his death. It was a long list. And they found Tara Jameson's name on it. She had been the realtor involved in one such deal.

"You were right," Andy said to Maggie. "He did know her."

Maggie nodded, but said only, "Anything else helpful on the list?"

"So far," John said, "it looks like different buyers. But at least half a dozen were sold to what look like holding companies. It may take some time to find out who actually owned them."

"Of all of us, you're most likely to be able to find information on businesses without wasting time," Quentin noted.

"I can make some calls," John said. "I still have plenty of contacts here in Seattle." He carried his copy of the list to the phones at the other end of the room.

"I'll go get a map," Jennifer said. "We can start pinpointing all these."

Maggie studied the list, waiting for something to jump out at her. Even so, she was very surprised when something did.