The Soul Catcher

by Alex Kava

Something rustled in the bushes behind her. Did Brandon have a change of heart? Maybe he was coming back to apologize. Then she realized he had taken the path at the opposite end. She jerked around, scrambling to her feet and squinting into the dark.

  Something moved. Something in the shadows. Oh, jeez! It was only a branch.

  She needed to get the hell out of here before she scared herself to death. She reached down for her purse. Something whipped in front of her, a glowing cord that looped over her head. It pulled tight against her neck before she could grab at it.

  Ginny tried to scream but it came out as a gasp, stuck in her throat. She choked and gulped for air. Her hands and fingers clawed at the cord, then clawed at the hands that held it. She dug her fingernails into skin, ripping at her own flesh, and still couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t keep it from tightening even more. Already she felt herself slipping to her knees. There were flashes of light behind her eyes. No air. She couldn’t breathe. Her feet kicked, then slipped out from under her. Now her neck bore all the weight as her body dangled on a single cord.

  She couldn’t regain her balance. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Her knees wouldn’t work. Her arms flayed. Her fingers dug even deeper into her own skin, but nothing helped. When blackness came, it came as a relief.

  CHAPTER 12

  Downtown

  Washington, D.C.

  Gwen Patterson transferred the strap of her briefcase to the other shoulder and waited for Marco. She squinted into the dimly lit pub, the antique gas-flamed lanterns and candelabras preserving the historic atmosphere of the saloon. This late on a Saturday evening Gwen knew Old Ebbitt’s Grill would be free of all the politicos who usually hung out there, which would make getting a booth possible and would please her friend, Maggie O’Dell, who seemed to hate the political atmosphere of the District.

  Ironically, the very things about the District that Maggie hated, Gwen thrived on. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere more exciting and loved her brownstone in Georgetown and her office overlooking the Potomac. She had lived here for more than twenty years, and though she had grown up in New York, the District was her home.

  Marco smiled as soon as he saw her and waved her down the aisle to where he was standing.

  “She beat you this time,” he said, and pointed to the booth at the end of the aisle where Maggie was already seated, a glass of Scotch on the table in front of her.

  “Not like this is a first.” She winked at Maggie, who was always on time. Gwen was the late one.

  Maggie smiled, watching Marco fawn over her, helping her with her coat, even taking the briefcase. He started to hang it from the brass hook beside their table, then thought better of it and leaned it carefully and safely inside their booth.

  “What are you carrying around these days?” he complained. “Feels like a load of bricks.”

  “Close. It’s a load of my new book.”

  “Ah…yes, I forget that you are now a famous author as well as a famous shrink to the pundits and politicos.”

  “I’m not sure about that famous-author part,” she told him as she smoothed her skirt with both hands and scooted into the booth. “I doubt that Investigating the Criminal Mind of Adolescent Males will make it onto the New York Times bestseller list anytime soon.”

  Marco’s massive eyebrows rose, along with his hands, in mock surprise. “Such a large and weighty subject for such a small and beautiful woman.”

  “Now, Marco, every time you flatter me like that I end up ordering the cheesecake.”

  “Sweets for the sweet. Seems appropriate.”

  This time Gwen rolled her eyes at him. He patted her shoulder and headed off to greet a pair of Japanese men waiting at the door.

  “Sorry,” she said to Maggie. “We go through this every time.”

  “It must pay off. He gave us the best booth in the place.”

  Gwen sat back and took a long look at her friend. Maggie seemed pleasantly amused by the whole charade. Maybe it was simply the effects of the Scotch, because when Maggie had called earlier, she had sounded depressed, almost pained and stricken. She had told Gwen she was in the city and wanted to know if she had time for dinner. Gwen knew her friend had to be working. Maggie lived in Virginia, almost an hour away, in one of the District’s ritzy suburbs. She seldom drove into the city for recreation, least of all on the spur of the moment.

  “How did the book signing go?” Maggie sipped her Scotch, and Gwen caught herself wondering if this was her first. Maggie noticed. “Don’t worry. This is my one and only. I need to drive home later.”

  “The signing went well,” she said, deciding to bypass an opportunity to lecture Maggie about her newly acquired habit. The fact was, she worried about Maggie. She rarely saw her anymore without an accompanying glass of Scotch. “I’m always surprised how many people are interested in the strange and twisted minds of criminals.” She waved down a waiter and ordered a glass of chardonnay. Then to Maggie, she said, “I’ve been cabbing it all day, so I get more than one.”

  “Cheater.”

  Gwen was relieved that Maggie could still joke about it, especially after their last dinner together when Gwen had suggested Maggie needed the Scotch more than she wanted it. Gwen had gotten off with only a glare that told her to butt out. Useless, really. Maggie was stuck with her friendship, and with it—whether she liked it or not—came a buttinsky maternal instinct that Gwen couldn’t even explain to herself.

  Gwen was fifteen years older than Maggie, and ever since the two met, back when Maggie was a forensic intern at Quantico and Gwen a consulting psychologist, Gwen had felt a protectiveness toward Maggie that she had never experienced before. She had always believed she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. But for some reason she became the proverbial mama bear, ready to claw the eyes out of anyone who threatened to hurt Maggie.

  Now Gwen shoved her menu aside, ready to play psychologist, friend and mother. She hadn’t learned how to separate those roles. So what if she never did. Maggie could use someone to look after her, whether she believed it or not.

  “What brought you to the city? Something at headquarters?”

  Maggie worked out of Quantico in the Behavioral Science Unit and rarely made it to FBI headquarters at Ninth and Pennsylvania Avenue.

  Maggie nodded. “Just got back from visiting Ganza. But I was out at Arlington before that. Today was Agent Delaney’s funeral.”

  “Oh, Maggie. I didn’t realize.” Gwen watched her friend, who was doing an excellent job of avoiding Gwen’s eyes, sipping her Scotch, rearranging the cloth napkin on her lap. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  It came too quickly and too easily, which for Maggie meant “No, of course not.” Gwen waited out the silence, hoping for more. Maggie opened her menu. Okay, so this was going to take some pulling and prodding. Not a problem. Gwen had a Ph.D. in pulling and prodding, though officially her certificate called it a Ph.D. in psychology. Same difference.

  “On the phone, you sounded like you needed to talk.”

  “Actually, I’m working a case and could use your professional insight.”

  Gwen checked Maggie’s eyes. That’s not what she meant earlier on the phone or she would have said so. Okay, so if her friend wanted to talk shop and put off the real stuff, Gwen could be patient. “What’s the case?”

  “The standoff at the cabin. Cunningham wants a criminal profile of these guys, so that we might connect them to whatever organization they belong to. Because six young men certainly didn’t do this on their own.”

  “Right. Yes, of course. I read something about that in the Washington Times.”

  “And the criminal psychology of adolescent male minds is your new specialty,” Maggie said with a smile that Gwen recognized as pride. “Why would six teenage boys put down their guns, take cyanide capsules and then lie down and wait to die?”

  “Without knowing any of the details, my first reaction is that it wasn’t their idea. They s
imply did what they were told or instructed to do by someone they feared.”

  “Feared?” Maggie looked suddenly interested, leaning in, elbows on the table, her chin on her hands. “Why do you automatically say feared? Why not because they believed so strongly in their cause? Isn’t that the reasoning behind most of these groups?”

  A waiter delivered Gwen’s glass of chardonnay and she thanked him. She wrapped her hands around the glass and set the wine swirling. “At that age they don’t necessarily know what they believe. Their opinions, their ideas are still easily molded and manipulated. But boys usually have a natural tendency to fight back. There’s actually a physiological reason for that.”

  Gwen sipped her wine. She didn’t want to sound like she was lecturing Maggie on something she already knew, but her friend seemed eager to hear more, so she continued, “It’s not just their higher levels of testosterone, but boys have lower levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. And serotonin inhibits aggression and impulsivity. That could explain why more males—especially adolescent males—than females carry through with suicide, become alcoholics or shoot up school yards as a way to solve their problems.”

  “Also why their first instinct when trapped in a cabin with an arsenal of guns would be to think they could impulsively shoot their way out.” Maggie sat back and shrugged. “Which brings me back to the same question, why lie down and die?”

  “Which brings me to my same answer.” Gwen smiled. “Fear. Someone may have had them convinced they had no alternative.” Gwen watched as Maggie cradled the Scotch. “But you already knew most of that, didn’t you? Come on, now, I’m not telling you anything new here. Why did you really call me for dinner? What do you really need to talk about?”

  The silence continued longer than Gwen normally allowed.

  “To be honest—” Maggie grabbed the menu again and avoided Gwen’s eyes “—I’m really, really hungry.” But she glanced over the top and managed a tense smile at Gwen’s frown. “And I needed to be with a friend, okay? A living, breathing, wonderful friend whom I absolutely adore.”

  This time Gwen got a glimpse at Maggie’s deep brown eyes. They were serious, even a tad watery, which was why she went back to hiding them behind the menu. Gwen could see she was trying to cover up a vulnerability that had slipped too close to the surface; a vulnerability that the tough Maggie O’Dell worked hard to keep to herself and harder to conceal from others, even from her living, breathing, wonderful friends.

  “You should try the hickory burger,” Gwen said, pointing to the menu.

  “A burger? The gourmet is recommending a burger?”

  “Hey! Not just any burger, but the best damn burger in town.” She saw Maggie relax. The smile genuine now. Okay, so Gwen would pull and prod next time. Tonight they would eat burgers, have a couple of drinks and simply be living, breathing friends.

  CHAPTER 13

  He needed to sit. The haze seemed thicker this time. Had he taken too much of his homemade concoction? He needed it only to enhance, only to help him see beyond the dark. He certainly didn’t need this. He needed to sit. Yes, sit and wait for the haze to move from back behind his eyes.

  He’d sit and concentrate on his breathing, just as he was taught to do. He would ignore the anger. Wait. Was it anger? Frustration, maybe. Disappointment, yes. But not anger. Anger was a negative energy. Beneath him. No, it was simply frustration. And why wouldn’t he be frustrated? He honestly thought this one would last longer. She had certainly tried. And he was almost sure that on the third time he had seen it. Yes, he was quite certain he had seen the light behind her eyes, that glimmer, that flash, that moment of life escaping the body, just as she drew her final breath. Yes, he had seen it and he had come so close.

  Now it would be days, maybe even a week before he could try again. He was running out of patience. Why the fuck did she have to give in so soon? One more chance was all he needed. He had been so close. So close that he didn’t want to wait.

  He gripped the book and let the feel of its leather binding soothe him. He sat on a hard bench in a dim corner of the terminal, ignoring the screech of hydraulic brakes, the endless clacking of heels rushing, bodies shoving—all of them in such a fucking hurry to get where they were going.

  He closed his eyes against the lifting haze and listened. He hated the noise. Hated the smells even more—diesel fuel and something that smelled like dirty wet socks. And body odor. Yes, body odor from the assholes who abandoned their cardboard homes in the alley to venture in and beg for pocket change. Worthless assholes.

  He opened his eyes, pleased that his vision was clearing. No more haze. He watched one of the worthless assholes by the vending machines, checking the return slots for change. Was it a woman? It was difficult to tell. She wore everything she owned, layer after filthy layer, pant cuffs dragging behind her, adding to the slow motion of her absent shuffle. Her ragged and stretched-out stocking cap gave a crooked point to her head and made her dirty blond hair stick out like straw. Such a coward. No survival instinct. No dignity. No soul.

  He laid the book in his lap and let it fall open to the page where he had left his homemade bookmark—an unused airline ticket, creased at the corners and long expired. He needed to let the book calm him. It had worked before, the words offering guidance and inspiration, even direction and justification. Already his hands grew steady.

  He pulled his shirt cuff down over the caked blood. She had scratched him good. It had hurt like hell, but nothing he couldn’t ignore for the time being. He’d wash his hands later. Right now, he needed to feel some sense of completion and validation. He needed to calm the frustration and find some reserve of patience. Yet, all he could think about was having come so close to his goal. He didn’t want to wait. If only he could find a way so he didn’t need to wait.

  Just then the pointy-headed loser stuck her smelly, gloved hand in his face. “Can you spare a dollar or two?”

  He looked up into her smudged face and realized she was quite young, maybe even once attractive underneath that dirt and smell of decay, of rotten and sour garbage. He searched her eyes—clear, crystal blue and, yes, there was light behind them. No hollow look of despair. Not yet. Maybe he didn’t need to wait, after all.

  CHAPTER 14

  Newburgh Heights, Virginia

  The cold wind pricked at Maggie’s skin, but she continued running, welcoming the sensation. Delaney’s death had triggered a swell of emotions that she hadn’t anticipated, that she wasn’t prepared to deal with. And his funeral had released an avalanche of memories from her childhood, memories she had worked long and hard to keep safely behind a barrier. The battle to contain them left her feeling numb one minute and angry the next. Amazing that both emotions could be so exhausting. Or perhaps the exhaustion came from keeping them concealed, shoving them down away from the surface, so that no one could witness how easily she could feel nothing one moment and explode the next. No one, that is, except Gwen.

  Maggie knew her friend could sense her vulnerabilities, despite Maggie’s effort to hide them. It was one of the curses of their friendship, a comfort as much as an annoyance. Sometimes she wondered why the hell Gwen put up with her, and at the same time, she didn’t want to know the answer. Instead, she was simply grateful for this wise, loving mentor who could take one look into her eyes, see all the turmoil, sift through the hidden wreckage and somehow manage to inspire strength and good from some reserve Maggie hadn’t even known existed. And tonight Gwen had been able to do all that without a single word. Now, if only Maggie could hold on to that strength.

  When she first became a criminal profiler she thought she could learn how to compartmentalize her feelings and emotions, separate the horrors and images she witnessed as part of the job from her personal life. Not that Quantico taught them such a thing. But since she had done it all her life with the unpleasant memories and images of her childhood, why wouldn’t she be able to do it with her career? The only problem was that every time she thought she ha
d the technique down pat, one of those damn compartments sprung a leak. It was annoying as hell. Especially annoying that Gwen could see it no matter how hard Maggie tried to hide it from her.

  She picked up the pace. Harvey panted alongside her. The big dog wouldn’t complain. Ever since she had taken him in, he had become her shadow. The pure white Labrador retriever had become a bit overprotective with her, jumping at sounds that Maggie never heard, barking at footsteps whether they belonged to the mailman or the pizza-delivery person. But then Maggie could hardly blame him.

  Last spring the dog had witnessed his owner being violently kidnapped from their home, by a serial killer named Albert Stucky, who Maggie had already put in jail once and who had escaped. And though Harvey had put up a good fight, he hadn’t been able to stop the attacker. For months after Maggie had taken him in, he looked out the windows of Maggie’s huge Tudor home, looking, waiting for his owner. When he realized she wouldn’t return, he attached himself to Maggie with such a protectiveness that she wondered if perhaps the dog was determined not to lose a second owner.

  What would Harvey think if he knew, if he could possibly understand, that his previous owner had been taken and killed simply because she had met Maggie? It was Maggie’s fault that Albert Stucky had taken Harvey’s owner. It was one of the things she had to live with, one of the things that caused her nightmares. And one of the things that was supposed to have its own little compartment.

  Her breathing came in rhythmic gasps, timed to the pounding of her feet and the beat of her heart, which filled her ears. For a few minutes her mind cleared, and she concentrated instead on her body’s basic responses, its natural rhythms, its force. She pushed it to its limit, and when she felt her legs strain, she pushed harder, faster. Then suddenly, she noticed Harvey favoring his front right paw though he didn’t dare slow down, forcing himself to stay alongside her. Maggie came to an abrupt halt, surprising him with a tug of the leash.