Kay Hooper: Touching Evil

She knew this city, knew it well. But she wasn't certain why the address of a waterfront warehouse should leap out at her the way it did. Why? It was one of half a dozen other warehouses, at least three of them fairly remote or isolated. So why did this one feel so… right?

Because Quentin's friend Joey had been found at the waterfront?

Or… because of the sound?

… I know I heard another sound, a sound that bothered me somehow. Because I recognized it, or thought I should have…

Hollis had said that. And Ellen had said the same thing. Even Christina had mentioned hearing something, something she hadn't been able to remember. What had they heard?

Maggie half closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to bring that faint, half-heard, and half-understood sound out of the hodgepodge of impressions and sounds and scents stored in her own subconscious after all the interviews with the victims.

Water.

Water lapping against pilings.

Maggie looked around the room. John was on the phone, jotting down notes on a legal pad. Jennifer, Andy, and Quentin were bent over a map spread out on the table, carefully marking locations from possibilities on the list.

Maggie looked at the list, then laid it down atop her sketch pad. There was only one waterfront location remote enough to provide the privacy and secrecy he needed. She should tell them. She knew that. There was really no excuse not to tell them.

Her car was here at the station, John had driven her back there to get it this morning, both of them surprised to find the car not only intact but apparently untouched, her sketch pad safely inside, and she had driven it here, where it was more likely to remain safe.

She got up and went to pour herself some coffee, having already noticed the pot was empty. Picking it up with a shrug, she left the conference room, ostensibly to get more water.

On her way out of the station, she left the pot on top of somebody's filing cabinet.

"Well," Jennifer said, staring down at the map, now marked with numerous little red flags, "if we eliminate all the places that aren't remote or isolated enough for his… needs… we end up with six possibles. All warehouses or storage facilities of some kind."

John joined them and said, "Only three of the addresses on this list are no longer in use, at least according to my sources." He bent over the map and pointed them out. "Here. These three. Supposedly either empty or storing bits of equipment and machinery forgotten long ago."

Quentin frowned at the map. "Two warehouses and one storage building. But only the two warehouses are remote enough to satisfy his requirements, I'd guess, and they're miles apart."

"So which one do we check first?" Jennifer asked.

Before anyone could offer a suggestion, Scott spoke from the doorway, his voice strained. "Where's Maggie?"

John looked around swiftly, realizing only then that she had been out of the room far too long. "She's…" He steadied his voice, something in Scott's face sending cold fear through him. "She went to get more water for coffee, I think. Why?"

"I found the file on the last victim from 1934."

Quentin was frowning at him. "And?"

Scott opened the folder he carried and silently held up a photo all of them could see clearly. All too clearly.

The last woman killed in 1934 could have been Maggie's twin.

"Christ," John breathed. And he knew, even before they looked for her, that Maggie was no longer in the building, that she knew or guessed where Simon would be and had slipped away to face him.

Responsibility. Atonement.

"She's gone after him," he told the others, hearing the hoarse fear in his own voice.

"Alone?" Andy stared at him. "In Christ's name, why?"

John shook his head, unable to even begin to explain any of it right now. "Just-trust me. That's where she's gone."

Quentin didn't waste time with questions, just said, "She hasn't got much of a head start on us, but if we're to catch up to her in time we'll have to split up to check both warehouses."

"No S.W.A.T team," John said immediately, repeating Andy's earlier statement. "If a bunch of cops show up and she's there, he could-" He couldn't even finish the thought.

Quentin said, "I agree."

Andy groaned. "Shit."

"Do you trust anybody else to go in, with Maggie in the line of fire?" Quentin asked him.

"No. Dammit."

"Then it's us. John, are you armed?"

"In my car."

Andy scowled at him. "Goddammit, John."

John shrugged into his jacket. "Don't worry, Andy, I have a permit to carry. And I'm a good shot."

"Listen to me. If you shoot the man who killed your sister, there'll be a lot of sympathy, but-"

"If I shoot him, it'll be because I have absolutely no other choice. It won't be for revenge. Trust me on that." He looked at Andy steadily.

"Shit. Okay, Jenn and Scott will come with me." He stared at the map, at the two remaining flags. "Want to flip a coin?"

Quentin studied the map for only an instant. "John and I'll take the waterfront warehouse."

Andy looked at him. "Because of Joey?"

"Yeah. Because of Joey."

"Let's go," John said.

It didn't occur to Maggie until she got there that the warehouse might have been wired for security. But as she approached the place on foot after leaving her car nearly a hundred yards back along the rutted road, she also realized that he would have done nothing to draw undue attention here. The isolation alone would protect him, that and the fence Maggie had scaled just after parking her car.

It was still a gray, dreary day, cold, not raining but almost, and nothing dry crackled under her foot to give away her approach. The warehouse she neared was a huge, hulking old building, part concrete and part rotting timbers, with a slate roof and very few windows. Maggie found the door easily enough but paused with her hand on it, her eyes closing briefly.

Useless not to admit she was terrified. Because he was in there. And because there might be a dying or dead woman in there with him, a woman Maggie wanted desperately to save if she could. If she could.

What she couldn't do was open the door to those inner senses. They could give her an edge-or destroy her. They could help her find him-or kill her with another woman's mortal injuries long before he could get his hands on her.

So she did her best to keep those inner senses firmly under control, shut deep inside herself and as inactive as she could possibly force them to be. It required almost as much focus and concentration to not use the senses as it did to use them, and she was all too aware that she would not be able to do it indefinitely. A few minutes, maybe.

Maybe.

She drew a deep breath, then slowly pulled the heavy door open. The hinges didn't creak. Inside was darkness, but as she stepped in and eased the door shut behind her, her eyes quickly adjusted. She could smell old machinery and dust.

And blood.

It stopped her, but only for an instant. She picked her way carefully among splintering crates and looming pieces of rusting equipment, gradually getting a feeling for the size of the place. And seeing, finally, a light in the distance.

She moved toward it cautiously, becoming aware that he had not enclosed the space in which he… worked. Perhaps he was claustrophobic. He had been before, she remembered. Hated enclosed places, just hated them.

When had that been? 1934? At the very beginning, in 1894? She wasn't sure. Her memories of other lives were only instincts, flickering bits of knowledge, precarious certainties. The universe refused to make it easy for her.

He had picked a warehouse with soaring spaces above and arranged his… working space… within walls made only of old crates and unused equipment in an area near the waterside end of the building. A worktable with various tools and ropes and bottles of unidentifiable liquids. A gurney off to one side, presumably so that he could wheel his victims out to whatever transportation he used.