Night Vision

by Maggie Shayne

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Girl Blue: Chapter 1

  Girl Blue: Chapter 2

  Girl Blue: Chapter 3

  Also by Maggie Shayne

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Megan sat up in bed, cold sweat coating her skin, her trembling hands already clutching the telephone. Sure, it was upside down, but that was sort of beside the point. Obviously, her subconscious thought this was it. The big one. Time to do some good. Her eyes were drawn to the television on the far side of the room. She’d fallen asleep with the set still on, and at the moment it was showing a photo of the missing woman, Sarah Dresden, smiling at the camera, obviously unaware what the future held for her. Underneath the photo was a telephone number: Pinedale Police Department’s tip line.

  Bringing the receiver closer, she dialed the number. She had never phoned the police department after one of her episodes before. Never.

  “PPD Tipline, can you help us?”

  Cute, she thought. “I, um ... I need to speak with the chief, please.”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  She didn’t want to answer that. “It’s about the missing woman,” she said instead. “I know where she is.”

  “Hold on.” The voice betrayed no emotion, but there had been a brief hesitation before the reply.

  A second later, a male voice came on the line. “Chief Skinner speaking.”

  “Good,” she said. “Look, I’ve never done anything like this before. But... I think I know where your missing woman is. Sarah Dresden.”

  “Uh-huh. And how did you come by your information, Miss...?”

  She swallowed hard, gathered up her courage. “I get...visions.” She heard his sigh and realized she’d better talk fast before he hung up on her and filed her call away with all the other cranks he must receive. “Never anything this important. Actually, I’ve always wished...but it doesn’t matter. My visions are always on the money. I swear.”

  “Look, lady, I don’t have time for—”

  “Sarah is twenty-five, a pretty brunette, a runner—”

  “All of that information has been covered by the local news, ma’am.”

  “She had a butterfly tattoo on the back of her neck, and was wearing red sneakers with white laces.”

  He paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t know if that’s right or not. I’d have to check the reports.”

  “Check. I’ll hold.”

  “All right.” She heard papers shuffling. “Why don’t you tell me where you think she is, while I look?”

  Maybe she had his attention. Maybe he was going to take her seriously now. No one in her life ever had. God, this could be a banner moment for her. If only the information she had to share was more positive. “I had a dream about her last night. She’s not alive, Chief. Her body is in the river, snagged on some rocks underneath the Amstead Road Bridge.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She swallowed hard.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “It would give you considerably more credibility if you’d give us your name. Caller ID says—”

  “Megan Rose,” she said. “I live here in Pinedale, out on Sycamore Street. I own the Celestial Bakery in the village, corner of Silver and Main. And I’d appreciate your discretion about this. I’m not sure how my customers would feel about my calling you like this.”

  “I’m not sure that will even be an issue, ma’am.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I found the reports on the Dresden woman. She was last seen wearing suede hiking boots, not red sneakers. And there are no unusual markings on her body, no tattoos of any kind. Sorry, ma’am. It was a nice thought, though.”

  She felt her jaw drop and her head swirl. What the hell? How could such a vivid dream be so wrong? God, would her so-called gift ever be of any use to anyone? She swallowed hard.

  “You have a nice day now, Ms. Rose.”

  “Uh, Chief?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  She sighed heavily. “You left your headlights on when you parked your car this morning. You might want to check.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Megan hit the cutoff button and set the phone down, then leaned back against her headboard and wiped the sweat from her brow. Damn, damn, damn. She thought she had finally seen something important. Something more than the useless tidbits her visions provided every day of her life. Something big.

  No such luck.

  The damn dream had started out as the same one she’d been having since she was twelve years old—the one where she saw the handsome man’s face hovering in the mists and heard a voice telling her she was going to break a curse and save his life. Then it had taken a unique turn, and the image had changed to one of the missing woman, first smiling like in the photo on TV, and then lifeless and pale, her hair tangling around her face just below the surface of the Genesee River.

  Probably her subconscious had heard the television news report talking about the missing woman. Probably her mind had woven what she heard into her dream, a bad case of wishful thinking. Not wishing the woman was dead, of course, but wishing she could help find her, and finally be believed.

  She thought again of the man, the one she was supposed to save from some kind of curse, and she sighed. “Whoever you are, mister,” she said softly, “my feeling is, you’re doomed.”

  Sam Sheridan knocked twice before stepping into the chief’s office. “Morning, Chief.”

  “Morning, Sam. How’s your mother?”

  “Mom sends her love and a slice of apple pie.” Sam set the Tupperware container on his boss’s desk. The older man had been an intimate family friend a lot longer than he’d been Sam’s boss, and old habits died hard. “She says you’re expected for dinner on my birthday, and she won’t take no for an answer.”

  The chief smiled, his wrinkles showing more deeply when he did. “You bet your ass I’ll be there. Your old man would come back from beyond and knock me senseless if I missed it.”

  Sam nodded, a twinge of sadness twisting his belly, even though it had been twenty-seven years. Ed Skinner turned to the window, absently parting the blinds' slats and looking out over the parking lot below.

  “Listen, Sam, I wanted to talk to you about this Dresden case. There’s– Well. I’ll be damned.”

  “Chief?” Frowning, Sam moved closer to the window.

  “I left my headlights on,” the chief said.

  Sam smiled. “Old age creeping up on you, that’s all. I’ll flip ’em off on my way out if you want.”

  The chief let the blinds snap back into place, turned to face Sam again. “Where you heading?”

  “Questioning some witnesses on the Sarah Dresden case. People who might have seen something in the area along the riverbank where we found the body this morning.”

  The chief nodded. “Press hasn’t been notified about the body yet, have they?”

  “No, sir. Hell, she’s barely been out of the water an hour.”

  “No leaks that you know of?”

  “None.”

  The chief pursed his lips. “Sam, I’ve got something else I want you to be aware of. Sam lifted his brows. “A woman by the name of Megan Rose, owns a local bakery and knows more about this case than she ought to.”

  Sam tipped his head. This was the first thing remotely like a lead they’d had in the series of rape-murders plaguing the small western New York town. “Like what?�
�

  “Like where the body was. I just got off the phone with her.”

  Sam felt a little shiver go up his spine. “Did she say how she knew?”

  “Claims she’s some kind of psychic.”

  Sam would have laughed if the topic had been a less serious one. As it was, he just shook his head. He didn’t believe in that sort of garbage, despite the fact that his grandmother claimed a touch of E.S.P. herself. She’d never predicted anything beyond his own impending demise, and he wasn’t about to give that any credibility.

  “I’d like to find out how she really knew, and what else she might know,” the chief said.

  Sam nodded. “You want me to question her?”

  “I’m thinking we might try a more subtle approach; we don’t want to scare her off. Let me do a little checking on her first. Stay available. I’ll let you know how I want you to proceed.”

  Sam nodded. “Whatever you say, Chief.”

  Chapter 2

  Megan glanced into the rearview mirror when she heard the siren, and cussed to herself when she saw the lights. And now she understood her premonition that she would arrive at the bank three minutes after it closed, and that as a result, a check would bounce tomorrow. She’d left early to circumvent fate, and she’d driven fast to further ensure her success.

  Only now she realized that if she’d never had the damned vision, she never would have been driving several miles an hour above the speed limit, and never would have been pulled over, and maybe, never would have been late. Was there such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy?

  Not only was her gift of little practical use, it was often downright cruel.

  She pulled off onto the shoulder and sat there, drumming her fingers and looking at her watch while the officer took his sweet time doing whatever it was they did in their cars while the speeders sweat it out and everyone they knew drove past and saw them. She took her wallet out of her purse, slid her license out of her wallet. Might as well save whatever time she could. She took the registration from the glove compartment and rolled down her window. Then she drummed her fingers some more as the seconds ticked away.

  Finally, a cop came walking up alongside her car, uniform, sunglasses. He glanced inside, quickly into the backseat, then leaned down.

  “Li—”

  “License and registration,” she said, handing both to him.

  He took them, peering at them through his sunglasses. “Do you know–”

  “How fast I was going? Yes. Forty-three. And yes, I know this is a thirty-five-mile-per-hour zone. I won’t even argue with you. I was speeding, I admit it. Trying to get to the bank before it closes, but I’m obviously not going to make it now.”

  “You always finish peoples’ sentences for them?”

  She looked up at him, noticed the line of his jaw, square chin with a little dimple in the center. Something niggled at her. The sunglasses hid his eyes. “Always.”

  “A little boy’s dog was hit here last week. Kid cried for three days straight.”

  She closed her eyes, nodding. “Point taken. Speed limits are posted for a reason.”

  He nodded. “I’ll go run this. It’ll take a minute.”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s too late to make the bank now anyway. Tomorrow a check is going to bounce.”

  “You know which one?”

  She glanced at him, frowning. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Call whoever has it tonight, ask them to wait until noon to deposit it, and then go to the bank in the morning.”

  She tipped her head to one side. His solution was so simple she could not for the life of her figure out why she had bothered racing for the bank in the first place.

  He tapped her license against his fingertips. “Be right back.”

  Something was off here. Why had her so-called gift bothered to warn her about making the bank on time? Nothing all that earth-shattering was going to happen, and she could even avoid the bounced check.

  She smiled to herself, shook her head at her determination to make her visions useful, helpful, and how those efforts always backfired. “I suck,” she muttered.

  Then she closed her eyes, leaned back on her seat, and waited for the handsome cop to come back. Just once, she thought, she would like to find a missing child, or identify a murderer, or solve a bank robbery. Other psychics got to do dramatic, wonderful things like that. Meanwhile, she foresaw a “closed” sign in the bank window, and failed to see the speed trap until Officer Studly back there sprang it on her.

  She smiled again, almost laughed at her own silliness. At least she'd met the good-looking cop. She wondered if he was married.

  He tapped her car door. She turned to see him holding her license and registration out to her. No gloves. No wedding ring either. “You’ll be glad to know you’re not wanted for anything.”

  “Hey! I resent that remark.”

  The cop, stone-faced until then, smiled slowly as he got her joke. “I meant by the law.”

  “So did I,” she told him.

  His smile flashed then, full force and almost blinding, and again something niggled at her. Something powerful. “I’m gonna let you off with a warning this time.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “Thanks, Officer. I appreciate that.” She reached up to take the license and registration from his hand, but when her fingers brushed over his, she froze as a flash of light and sensation hit her all at once. She knew her hand closed powerfully around his and that her head slammed back against the seat and her eyes rolled. And then she was gone, down, down through a dark tunnel, until she emerged on the other side into the pouring rain and driving wind. Small green pup tents whipped, tore, stakes popping, cords snapping. Teenage boys huddled together, a canvas wrapped around their shoulders, mini rivers running past their feet. A large tree. A creaking limb.

  “Hey. Hey, come on, are you okay?”

  His voice drew her back through the tunnel, back into her body, where she landed with the same thudding, jolting impact she always did. She felt warm pavement underneath her back, and a warmer hand cupping her nape. Her eyes popped open.

  Her cop was leaning over her, a hand supporting her head, his face close to hers. He’d apparently pulled her out of the car when the vision hit. And no wonder. They’d never hit her so hard before, with such a physical impact.

  She blinked her eyes clear and stared up at him. The sunglasses were gone, and she could see his eyes. They were deep brown, with thick, dark lashes. And they were painfully familiar.

  He was the man she’d been dreaming about from the age of twelve. She realized it suddenly and with a shock that nearly made her gasp out loud. God, she knew his face like she knew her own.

  “There you are,” he said softly. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine.”

  “I know I am.” What on earth was happening here? Something...this was no accidental meeting. She blinked a couple of times, pressed a hand to her head. The rush was gone. She felt normal again, physically, at least. She sat up, but her cop pressed his hands to her shoulders, telling her to stay down for a minute. “I’m fine,” she said. “Really. You didn’t go calling for backup over this, did you?”

  “I radioed for an ambulance when you passed out,” he told her.

  She blinked at him. “Cancel it, will you?”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded. “It’s not the first time this has happened to me.” It was the first time it had knocked her senseless, however. “And I didn’t pass out.”

  “You didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “Can I sit up now?”

  He nodded, extended a hand, and helped her into a sitting position. Then he tapped the microphone that was clipped to his collar, calling her attention to his corded neck, and spoke in cop jargon. She was pretty sure he was canceling the ambulance he’d ordered for her.

  She was getting to her feet, and he was still holding her, helping her. He said, “So if that wasn’t pass
ing out, what was it? Some kind of seizure?”

  She studied his face. Hell, she was going to have to tell him. It wasn’t life and death, or even minor crime solving, but then again, who was she to say? It could be important. He was the man of her dreams, after all. And it would be cruel not to tell him. “It wasn’t a seizure. It was...a vision.”

  His brows went up. “A vision. As in...a psychic vision?”

  “I get them sometimes. I think when I touched your hand...” She watched his face, waiting for one of the looks she had come to expect: the blatant disbelief of her overly critical father, who would call her a compulsive liar and probably punish her for it; the horrified fear of her zealot mother, who would call her evil, offensive to God, and would probably punish her for that.

  The man’s face betrayed no emotion, neither skepticism nor fear. “So you’re psychic, then?”

  She swallowed her fears. “Yeah. Just not usually about anything important. I do have some advice for you, though.”

  “Really? For me?”

  She nodded, staring into his eyes. She didn’t tell him about her dreams, about her having seen his face in her mind for such a long, long time. She didn’t ask him if he was under any sort of curse that he knew of. No sense giving him further reason to doubt her sanity.

  She wanted to see this man again. And she kind of thought she needed to. So, she’d start him off easy. And even then, he probably wouldn’t believe her. No one ever believed her.

  He walked with her the few steps to her car, opened her door for her, waiting patiently for her advice.

  She stood beside the open door, lost in her explorations of his face. God, he was handsome. “You’re, um...taking a group of teenage boys camping this weekend?”

  He blinked, clearly surprised that she would know that. “Yeah. Over at Letchworth. It’s a departmental program, and it’s my turn.”