The Vanishing

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  Slater glanced at her, frowning a little. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  I can do this.

  Slater took out his flashlight.

  “You’re the expert here,” he said. “Do you want to take the lead?”

  And suddenly she knew that she had been fooling herself all along. She could not do this.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, sliding into her vision voice. “Can’t go in there.”

  She could hardly breathe. Her heart started to pound. The vision coalesced. She saw herself falling, falling, falling forever into the bottomless depths of the ice-cold water.

  No. You can’t go in there. The nightmares will overwhelm you. You’ll go mad. You will throw yourself into Fogg Lake and drown.

  “Catalina?”

  Slater’s voice came to her from another dimension. She stared at him.

  “What are you doing to me?” she asked in her vision voice.

  “Catalina, wake up.”

  Slater moved forward, clamped his hands around her arms and pulled her hard against his chest. His aura flared, enveloping hers. He was an icer, one of the monsters. She should be going cold, freezing to death. Instead there was heat. A lot of heat. Her own aura welcomed it as if it were a lifeline.

  “Catalina,” he said. “Talk to me.”

  She wrapped her arms around him and let him pull her back to the surface. To safety. She could breathe again.

  With an effort of will she managed to drag herself out of the last vestiges of the vision of herself drowning in Fogg Lake. She took a deep breath. Her senses steadied. So did her nerves.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Had a bad flashback. An old nightmare that I’ve had for years. It just welled up out of nowhere.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about nightmares. I’m familiar with the subject.”

  She managed a shaky smile. “I know.”

  “Will it be easier if we keep physical contact on the way in?”

  “Two auras are stronger than one,” she said. “Yes, I think that might help. I’ve developed a phobia about going back into the caves. So did Olivia. I feel that if I can just get past the entrance I’ll be okay. More or less. If I try to fight it, I want you to force me through it.”

  “Not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “This is for Olivia. Promise me you’ll do it.”

  Slater studied her for a moment and then nodded once. “All right, let’s give the two-are-stronger-than-one theory a shot.”

  He held out his hand. She took it. His fingers gripped hers very tightly. He started to take the lead.

  “No,” she said. “I need to go first.”

  Clutching his hand, she cranked up every ounce of raw willpower that she possessed and broke into a run. If she could just crash through . . .

  Slater ran with her. She shot through the opening in the rocks at full speed. Icy water closed over her head. She was going down, drowning . . .

  She would not give in to the cold darkness. She was not alone. She fought her way back to the surface.

  She flew past the entrance, Slater’s hand in hers. His flashlight blazed, lighting up the stone walls of the cave tunnel.

  And then it was over. They were safely on the other side. She was not going mad and she was not about to throw herself into the lake.

  She scrambled to a halt and discovered that she could still breathe. Encouraged, she clamped down on her frazzled senses. Back in control.

  Exhilaration shot through her. Memories returned in a disorienting flood. Not nightmares. Not hallucinations. Real memories.

  “I’m okay,” she said, still a little amazed.

  “Let’s go take a look at the crime scene,” Slater said.

  CHAPTER 23

  Slater set a battery-operated camping lamp on a rocky outcropping and aimed his flashlight at the jumble of rocks in the center of the big cavern.

  “That’s where the murder took place?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Catalina said. She pointed at a boulder near the deeply shadowed entrance of a side tunnel. “Olivia and I were hiding over there.”

  He was about to ask if she could still sense the energy of the crime scene, but the tension in her shoulders and the shadows in her eyes rendered the question unnecessary. He knew it had taken a lot of raw nerve for her to get past the entrance of the cave complex. She needed a little time to steady herself.

  “Walk me through it,” he said. “Just as you would any other crime scene.”

  She slanted him a quick, searching glance. “I’ll try, but it’s been fifteen years. Also, keep in mind that I was a witness. I saw it all happen.”

  “That makes a difference?”

  “Of course it does. My memories were not all that clear afterward, and neither were my senses. It was the same for Olivia. The combination of our panic and the hallucinations and, later, the nightmares really did a number on us. We both had trouble sleeping. We frequently woke up in the middle of the night with screaming nightmares. Scared our parents, and us, too. Eventually we recovered from the trauma, but Olivia and I both have throwback dreams occasionally.”

  “I understand, believe me.”

  Catalina slanted him an unreadable look. “That kind of thing can really complicate a romantic relationship.”

  “No shit.”

  Catalina’s brows rose. “I thought that was my line.”

  “I borrowed it because it seemed appropriate.”

  “Right.” She straightened her shoulders, raised her chin and walked to a large rock. “All these years, every time I tried to think about the details of that night I got an anxiety attack. But now I remember very clearly that this is where the short man with the glasses was standing.”

  “If Uncle Victor is right, the guy with the glasses was John Morrissey.”

  “If you say so. He took a clunky-looking instrument out of a black case and set it up here.”

  She was standing several feet away from him, but he could sense the energy rising in the atmosphere. The powerful currents of her aura were as distinctive as her scent and just as addictive. He would always know if she was nearby, he realized. He had already figured out that he wanted her, but the electrifying kiss in the kitchen had sealed his fate. No matter what happened, whether they made it into bed or not, he would never forget her.

  But they would make it into bed, he promised himself.

  “Can you be a little more specific about the device Morrissey brought with him?” he said.

  “It looked like something you would see in a laboratory,” Catalina said. “But it didn’t have the appearance of an instrument or a piece of equipment that had come off a production line. I think it might have been handmade.”

  “It probably was. I’ll bet Morrissey built it himself.”

  “I remember that he told the other man the thing had to be properly tuned. It was clear Morrissey was having a problem doing that. Even a lot of low-tech gadgets don’t work well in the caves, or anywhere else around Fogg Lake. Flashlights and a few other old-fashioned battery-powered devices are about it.”

  “The paranormal radiation is too strong,” Slater said absently. He thought about that for a moment. “It sounds like the two men came in here with a clear objective. They were planning to search for something. They were hoping that the gadget Morrissey had brought along would help them locate whatever it was they expected to find.”

  “That makes sense.” Catalina went still. “But I think . . . I think the killer screwed up.”

  Slater knew from the change in her gaze and in her voice that she was sliding into her other vision. But she wasn’t being overwhelmed by whatever it was she perceived. She was in control this time.

  He waited.

  “Morrissey is very intent on what he is doing,” Catalina said, speaking in an eeri
e, dreamlike cadence. “He is excited. Impatient. He is concentrating very hard. But he is suddenly distracted. He is . . . bewildered. Then he realizes something is wrong. He’s . . . sinking into himself. He can’t breathe. He knows now that he is dying. You stupid bastard. You’ll never find what you’re looking for without me.”

  The last bit sounded like a direct quote, but Slater refrained from verifying that because he did not want to interrupt the vision. Catalina backed away from the rock where the man had been killed. She clasped her hands very tightly together.

  “The killer is excited, too,” she continued in the dream voice. “He is thrilled. But suddenly he is alarmed. Furious. He runs toward one of the side caves. There are witnesses. He cannot allow them to live.”

  Catalina snapped out of the trance. She was damp with perspiration and she was breathing quickly.

  “Are you all right?” Slater asked.

  “Yes,” she said, once again in her normal voice. “I can tell you what alerted him. He spotted a camp lantern that we left behind. He realized there might be someone else around. We knew he would find us so we fled down that tunnel. He called out to us. Told us he was an undercover cop. We didn’t believe him. We just kept going. Eventually he gave up, but we couldn’t be sure he was gone.”

  “So you spent the night in the caves.”

  “We were afraid he might be waiting for us out here. We stayed put until we were sure it was morning. We knew that people would be out looking for us.”

  “Any idea why the killer gave up trying to find you?”

  “Sure.” Catalina unlocked her hands and gestured toward one of the side tunnels. “He wasn’t from around here. He didn’t know how to navigate the caves. He must have realized that if he went too far into the complex he would get hopelessly lost. It’s not just that the tunnels are a maze—there’s also the paranormal radiation. It’s very disorienting. You start seeing things. The deeper you go, the worse it gets.”

  “Hallucinations?”

  Catalina looked at him. “Oh, yeah.”

  “How did you and Olivia keep from getting lost?”

  “We followed the currents of a hot paranormal river going in. Followed the same currents out the next morning.”

  “But the killer wasn’t able to follow you, at least not very far.”

  Catalina raised her brows. “A lot of the locals can’t navigate the energy rivers in these caves. Olivia and I are both pretty strong, but even working together it was all we could do to sort them out.”

  “I don’t doubt it. There’s a considerable amount of disorienting energy here near the entrance. It’s bound to get really hot in the side tunnels.” Slater swept the flashlight around the cavern. “Back to Morrissey and the killer. According to the records, no body was ever found.”

  “Olivia and I saw the killer dump the body into the underground river.” Catalina turned to look at the stream of deep water that emerged from a cave on one side of the cavern and vanished into a flooded tunnel a short distance away. “The current is very strong. If you throw something into that water it disappears very quickly.”

  Slater walked to the river and stopped a safe distance from the edge. He aimed the flashlight down into the depths. The water was incredibly clear.

  “Does anyone know where this river ends up?” he asked.

  “No. Some of the locals have tried putting a coloring agent into it to see if the dye shows up in any of the local springs or lakes, but so far no one has been able to locate an exit point.”

  Slater aimed the light at the mouth of the flooded tunnel where the water disappeared.

  “The killer knew it was unlikely that the body would ever be recovered,” he said.

  “Or else he just thought the river was as good a way as any to get rid of the evidence of the crime.”

  Slater thought about that and then shook his head. “No, I think he knew it was a safe way to dump Morrissey’s body.”

  “What makes you so sure of that?” Catalina asked. “I told you he wasn’t from around here. Neither was Morrissey.”

  “Trust me, if Morrissey and the killer were able to find the entrance to this cave complex on a fog-bound night, they knew about the river. At least, the killer knew about it. What about his prints? Can you see where he exited the cavern?”

  Catalina concentrated for a moment. “He left the same way he came in. There isn’t any other exit, at least none that I know of. But on the way out his prints are very hot and a little unstable. He’s in a murderous rage.”

  “If we go back outside will you be able to see where he went after he left this place?”

  “No. I can track prints on hard surfaces like stone, but out in the woods the raw earth absorbs paranormal radiation very quickly. After fifteen years it would be impossible to find the killer’s prints.”

  “Any idea of where he might have headed when he left this place?”

  Catalina hesitated. “There are only three options. The first is that he went into town, but that would have been extremely risky because he was a stranger.”

  “And strangers get noticed in a hurry around these parts.”

  “Yes,” Catalina said. “The second option is that he went into the woods. But at night in heavy fog he would have gotten disoriented in a hurry. You can’t even trust an old-fashioned compass here. The third possibility is that he took a boat out on the lake.”

  “Is that a viable option?”

  “At night? In the fog? It would have been extremely risky, even for someone who was familiar with the terrain. The thing about the lake is that the only way to navigate it is by keeping within eyesight of the shoreline. The fog makes that extremely difficult at night. Over the years Olivia and I have tried to convince ourselves that if we really did witness a murder, the killer must have died out there on Fogg Lake.”

  “But you didn’t believe that,” Slater said.

  “We didn’t know what to believe. Our memories were so jumbled. As time went by we became more and more certain that we had seen a murder and that we did find a place to hide that night. But all of the details were hazy. Until now.”

  “Did any boats go missing around the time of the murder?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Catalina said. “There aren’t very many boats here, so if one had disappeared it would have been noticed.”

  “Given that the killer probably left by way of the lake and the fact that no one reported a stolen boat, there is only one logical conclusion,” Slater said.

  “The killer drowned in the lake while trying to get away?”

  “No,” Slater said. “The conclusion is that the killer wasn’t alone that night.”

  “Well, Morrissey was with him, but he was a stranger, too.”

  Slater looked at her. “The reason the killer was able to come and go from this place without leaving a trace is because he had an accomplice here in Fogg Lake.”

  CHAPTER 24

  It took a moment for the shock of Slater’s explanation to wear off. Catalina pulled her scattered thoughts together with an effort.

  “But that would mean someone in town was involved,” she said at last.

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  Catalina widened her hands. “Yes, it is hard to believe. It means that a person my parents considered a friend was involved in the murder and the cover-up.”

  “Not necessarily. You said your family moved here when you were a little girl. The individual who assisted the killer might have left town long before that.”

  Catalina’s spirits rose. “Right. People move away from Fogg Lake all the time. Most leave right after high school. That’s what Olivia and I did. Our parents left at the same time we did.”

  “Still, the implication is that someone who was once a member of the community is connected to the murder.”

  “That is very . . .
depressing, to be honest.”

  “Got news for you, Catalina. Not everyone who has a connection to Fogg Lake is a good guy just because he hails from your hometown. That’s one of the reasons the Foundation employs the cleaners, and it’s the primary reason for the existence of Halcyon Manor.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. All right, moving along, I’ll warn you up front that if you start questioning the locals about a possible accomplice to a murder that no one believes actually occurred, you’re going to run into a brick wall.”

  “Because I’m from the Foundation. That is why I will let you handle that end of the investigation.”

  Catalina suppressed a groan. “I doubt if I will have any more luck than you would.” She looked around the cavern. “I got past the phobia about entering this place, but it still creeps me out. Are we finished here?”

  “One more thing. Do you think you could find the cavern where you and Olivia hid from the killer that night?”

  “Why? Is it important?”

  “Something about your memories of the place makes me think it might be very important.”

  “The mirrors and the chandeliers?”

  “Yes,” Slater said.

  “I’m sure they were just the products of our hallucinations. Like you thinking you were locked in an attic.”

  “Maybe. But I’d like to take a look.”

  “All right.”

  Flashlight in hand, she led the way across the cavern to the entrance to the tunnel where she and Olivia had hidden on the night of the murder. Slater picked up the camp lantern he’d brought and followed her.

  The hot energy flowing down the tunnel quickly became a stream, and then a river.

  “You’re right,” Slater said. “There is a strong current in here.”

  “It gets heavier the deeper you go,” she said. She turned a corner and paused in a small cavern. “This is where the killer gave up the chase. Even after all this time I can sense panic in his prints. He’s frustrated and angry but mostly he’s afraid of getting lost.”

  “But you and Olivia kept going.”

  “If he had managed to follow us I don’t think he would have found us.”