Contact

by Evelyn Vaughn

  And she sat up a little, as much as his brother’s weight would let her, and she pointed right at Chet. Then his brother saw, too. He roared, and leaped out of bed, and ran at him. Chet had never seen him like…like that…and he was scared.

  “Who am I, you little turd?” demanded his brother, pushing him down onto the floor, like always, planting a knee on his back. “You forget who I am?”

  It was an old litany, one Chet knew by heart. “You’re…you’re the Master.”

  “Damned right!”

  Faith’s eyes opened. She pulled away from the doorjamb, scrubbed at her cheek with her aching bare hand as she wished she could scrub away the snippets of understanding that were still rolling into her mind, as if on some kind of delay. “She wasn’t really psychic at all.”

  “What?” asked Lynn.

  Faith recounted the vision, the borrowed memory, whatever it had been. The more she described it, the more upset she felt. “And what’s really tragic—for Krystal and Nessa and Penny, I mean—is she wasn’t even psychic. Chet was a mouth-breather. Claudia heard him.”

  “And what about this brother? This Master?”

  “I can’t see him,” said Faith—too quickly, even to her own ears. The silence, after her confession, echoed.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as kind of odd?”

  Faith didn’t have an answer for that.

  “You were able to see Chet, right?” insisted Lynn. “You could see this Claudia person. Why can’t you see the brother?”

  That’s when Faith knew why. She just hated to face it. “Maybe for the same reason I went so long without realizing how many secrets my mom was keeping from me. It was there all the time, and I didn’t see it until I was ready to see it. Because I don’t want to know.”

  Lynn raised her eyebrows in the darkness and waited. Faith wondered how much her sister resembled Rainy Miller Carrington, at that moment.

  “Or maybe I don’t want to see him because of what he did to Chet.”

  “Which was…?”

  Faith shook her head and took a step backward into the girls’ bedroom. The one where Chet had been exiled so often, accused of being just a girl himself. “I can’t do it, Lynn. I can’t look at it straight-on. I know the brother tortured him, but how far it went past normal big-brother bullying—I’m not sure, and I don’t want to see it.”

  But there were some things she had to see, weren’t there? Understanding was more important than her cowardice. So Faith took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, strode into the middle of the boys’ bedroom—and concentrated.

  “Chet hated feeling so powerless,” she announced, translating the swirl of impressions that registered within her as surely as sound and smell and temperature. “Then one day…it’s really hot out. They don’t have air conditioning yet. Claudia sneaks in before his brother gets home from…from his job? Or college classes. Since it’s so hot, she strips naked to wait for him. She’s been drinking, cold beer against the heat, maybe more than beer. She sees Chet peeking at her, and she’s bored, so she starts teasing him about being a little pervert, about her having psychic powers to control him…oh…”

  Face it.

  “The bitch is teasing him about his…his reaction to her being naked. She tells him she’s making it happen to him. Not like a natural response, but like witchcraft. Now he feels even more powerless. It scares him. He’s telling her to make it stop, and she just taunts him some more….”

  Come on, Chester. You have to do what I tell you, or it’ll freeze that way.

  “He’s so scared. He wants to shut her up, so he runs at her, and he’s pushing at her, trying to cover her mouth, but squeezing her throat works better. He’s so upset, he doesn’t realize she can’t breathe…or maybe he doesn’t care. And then—”

  She had to pull back from the present-tense narration. It was too disgusting, too immediate. “He killed her. That shut her up, for good. It made him feel powerful. Manly, even. I think on some level he connected the two—her death, and the sexual rush he felt. But when his brother got home…”

  What did you do? Oh my God, what did you do?! Why do I always have to clean up after you?

  “His brother got rid of the body. Got rid of the evidence. Everything except…”

  Faith looked down at her own hand, but now she was Chet, looking down at his. Skinny hand. Long fingers. And a shank of bleached blond hair that he’d twisted around his hand while trying to shut her up. He’d torn it free when his brother came in. Faith saw herself—saw him—slide it into his pocket where the Master wouldn’t see.

  But where did he put it then?

  She took a shuddering breath, returning to the present.

  “Celeste Deveaux—she’s the medium I told you about. She said the spirit of the first victim was a ‘bare wisp of lingering anguish.’ That must have been Claudia.” Maybe with this new information they could learn her last name and bring her a final, last bit of peace.

  “But here’s what I don’t get,” insisted Lynn. “Like I said. You can see Chet. You can even see the girlfriend. Why not the brother?”

  Faith was ready to face that, too. “Because it’s someone I know. And I don’t want it to be him.”

  “If you’re anything like Dawn and me, it’s not like you have that wide a circle of acquaintances.”

  Faith scrubbed her hands across her pants legs, still trying to wipe them clean. “Not Evan, my roommate. He grew up in the Garden District, not Algiers Point. And he’s gay.”

  “Check. Not Evan.”

  “And…and I don’t think Roy.” Oh God, not Roy. But she felt sure she would know his scent, know his energy, even from memories trapped in the walls and ceiling and floors of an old house. Besides…“His grandparents were from the Irish Channel. Why would his parents have moved across the river? And I saw family pictures at his house. I didn’t see Chet there.”

  “We can come back to Roy. Who else?”

  And Faith knew. It was partly process of elimination, and partly a lifting of the veil of fear. Either she owned this skill of hers or not.

  “Greg,” she whispered, real grief aching in her throat. “I don’t know how he was able to hide the truth from me, but it was my boss Greg, before he grew his beard.”

  No wonder he’d gone into evidence. He’d gotten early experience, cleaning up his brother’s mistakes.

  Then another terrible thought occurred to her. She knew where Greg worked! “We’ve got to get to the station before he destroys all the evidence against Chet!”

  “That would be the evidence that will clear you, right? Come on!” The sisters hurried out of the house and ran down the block toward the corner, no longer as worried about being seen. But as they jogged around the corner, toward Lynn’s rental car, Faith’s step slowed.

  The car looked shorter than before.

  That was because of the four flat tires.

  “Damn!”

  “Okay,” said Lynn. “Don’t panic. This doesn’t seem like the best neighborhood. Was it a random crime, or something more personal?”

  Faith tried sniffing the car—and sneezed, violently. Then again. Her nose burned and her already swollen throat ached. She had to back away from the car, eyes watering.

  “What is this?” demanded Lynn, swiping a finger across one fender. But Faith knew what it was.

  Cayenne pepper. Exactly what she’d smelled when Butch was killed!

  That’s when she heard the faint metallic click, echoing down the block. Then another. “Lynn, down!”

  Both girls hit the asphalt as a shot exploded into the night. Faith found herself up close and personal with hardened tar. Window glass rained down on top of her. She pulled herself over to where Lynn lay. Not my sister. Not my sister. “Lynn!”

  “I’m fine.” Lynn shook glass out of her hair. “I move faster than you, remember?”

  Faith tried to lean past the fender, but began to sneeze again. “Damn!”

  “He knows what you can do,” gu
essed Lynn.

  “He what?”

  “Some people use pepper to repel guard dogs, or to throw them off a scent. Apparently he just…adapted it.” When Faith stared, Lynn explained, “I know security.”

  Faith remembered sniffing the letter that Chet had left at the Biltmore, while Greg watched. But surely that wouldn’t have been enough! “Have you got a cell phone?”

  “Of course I’ve got a cell phone. Who doesn’t have a cell phone? Oh.” When Faith extended her hand, Lynn gave her the phone.

  This time, Faith didn’t dial through the detective division. She went straight to the source.

  “Chopin here.”

  “Don’t hang up,” she murmured. “If you’re able to record phone calls, start recording. You’re going to want to hear this.”

  “Gee,” said Roy, drily. “You wouldn’t be some kind of anonymous contact, would you? Got more psychic hunches for me?”

  “Either you’re a good detective or you aren’t, Serpico.” Well, whoever Serpico was, she’d gotten the impression he was one of the good guys. “Just listen for a few minutes. Oh. And, shots fired at Charbineau off Pelican, in Algiers Point.”

  She could hear his swearing even as she pocketed the phone, raised her hands—and stood into the open, August night.

  Lynn said a less-than-ladylike word herself.

  “It’s okay, Greg,” Faith called. “It’s just me. Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”

  “Who says I’m going to regret it?” he demanded. But although he was still pointing the weapon at her, he wasn’t firing. Not yet.

  Then again, he had a point. If he’d been able to hide his knowledge of the real serial killer, to murder Butch, to try to kill her—or Cassandra, as he’d thought she was at the time—and still keep all traces of guilt out of his breath, out of his heartbeat, out of his energy…clearly Chet wasn’t the only member of the family missing some piece of humanity. Why would he regret it?

  “I thought we had a connection,” she said, and took a step closer to him, her arms still spread to show her harmlessness. “I know you’re just trying to protect your brother. It’s like you told me at lunch. Families can be a lot of trouble, but you still love them, right?”

  Greg laughed. “And I thought you majored in pre-law, Faith, not psychology.”

  “I minored in psychology, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to play you. Didn’t I go out with you, as soon as I quit? Aren’t you the one I always went to, when I was upset about anything?”

  Greg said nothing—until she took a step closer. Then he raised the gun, which had begun to sink. “I don’t have much to lose here.”

  “Sure you do. I know you were trying to kill Cassandra in the cemetery, not Butch. That makes it an accident.” Actually, it didn’t. If he was trying to kill her, intent followed the bullet. But she wasn’t telling him that.

  “You don’t know the NOPD! A cop killer is a cop killer.”

  “And an accident is an accident. But deliberately shooting me here, right in front of the home you grew up in—you can’t excuse that one.”

  “Who’ll know?”

  Anyone listening to the tape Roy was hopefully making, for one. But Faith knew she couldn’t count on that. “My sister. You saw us go into the house, right? Maybe you were already inside, checking for whatever the police had missed. Then we came. That’s why you flattened her tires and waited for us.”

  “Who says I’ll leave your sister talking?” demanded Greg.

  Which was when Lynn stepped up beside him, grabbed his gun-hand, and said, “I do.”

  Greg squeezed off one shot into the asphalt before Lynn wrenched the gun free with her superstrength. Then, looking wide-eyed from her to Faith, Greg turned and ran.

  Faith took off after him. “Don’t lose the gun,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Do not lose that gun! Uh…weapon.”

  “I didn’t plan to,” said Lynn, catching up more easily than seemed fair. “What’s the big deal?”

  “Ballistics should be able to match it to Butch’s murder, that’s what,” Faith panted. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be able to outrun me?”

  “Why not tire the guy out first?”

  Good point. And Faith, either because of her genetic engineering or just because she had almost twenty years on Greg, was no bad runner either. She and Lynn stretched full out, their footsteps quickly syncing with each other’s.

  “We’re…passing the old…gas station,” Faith gasped, as they sprinted past the old historical site. That was for the benefit of the police, of course, not for Lynn. “I think he’s…headed for the…ferry.”

  Sure enough, Greg had turned onto Seguin.

  Worse, they could hear the clanging bells that announced the ferry’s imminent departure from the landing.

  “Should we stop him?” called Lynn, barely winded.

  “He’s heading…in a good direction….” So they kept running. The clanging got louder, and she heard a scraping noise—the ferry pulling up the skirt boards. Greg wasn’t taking the pedestrian stairway. He was racing down the car ramp, ducking past the gate arm.

  “Hey!” yelled a guard. “Ferry’s departing! Stop—”

  The sisters, pounding past him, seemed to surprise him into silence.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lynn.

  Greg leaped onto the ferry. And it really was departing, sliding out of its mooring and into the broad, dark river. Lynn picked up her pace, quickly outstripped Faith and launched herself outward, across the water—

  Landing solidly on two feet.

  “Faith!” she exclaimed, spinning and holding out her gloved hand.

  The ferry was a good four feet from the ramp now, and drawing farther away by the second—five feet…six…

  Hoping her genetic abilities went past sensory perceptions, Faith put on an extra burst of speed, hurdled the open space—

  And landed with one skidding foot, then both knees.

  The phone flew out of her pocket at the impact, skidded across the ferry deck, and arced out into the river with a solid plunk.

  She regained her feet in time to help her sister chase Greg Boulanger around several cars and, finally, to tackle him to the floor. They wrestled his arms behind him until the security guard, already angered by their flagrant disregard for safety, made it to their side.

  “You’ve got handcuffs, right?” panted Faith, both annoyed and admiring that Lynn was barely breathing hard. “You’d better use them, then call the NOPD…and let him know…to meet us.”

  She held her breath for a moment, as the guard patted Greg down, but luckily the man didn’t disturb anything. Which was good, considering what Faith had just smelled.

  Now she knew why Greg had gone to Chet’s house.

  He had the locks of the victims’ hair, Chet’s souvenirs of his killings, in his left hip pocket.

  Chapter 20

  “Police stations,” said Lynn, “aren’t my favorite places.”

  “Trust me,” said Faith. “It’s better on this side of the mirror.”

  They stood, as unobtrusive as they could make themselves, with a handful of officers watching Max and Roy interrogate Greg Boulanger through the one-way mirror. Greg was seated in the same chair Faith had used earlier that day, handcuffed to the same table.

  She felt fairly confident that, unlike her, Greg couldn’t hear them commenting. Especially since she and Lynn weren’t actually supposed to be watching this, and so were speaking in the barest of whispers. Luckily, they both had some version of superhearing.

  “We know you’ve been covering for your brother, Greg,” growled Roy, on the other side of the glass. Sleeves rolled up and hair fingered off his forehead, he looked good doing it, too. “You let him into the morgue. You falsified evidence. And we’ve got the .38.”

  “Which Faith Corbett gave to you.”

  “No, which her sister gave to the patrolman who first met the ferry. Neither one of us touched it.” Roy was in Greg’s face now, full
fury. “Yours are the only prints on it, Greg. And oh yeah—the freakin’ thing is licensed to you!”

  “Someone stole it.”

  “Then you committed a crime by not reporting it stolen!”

  “Then I’ll pay the fine.”

  One of the officers said to another, “He’s staying pretty cool.” She was right. What really surprised Faith was, Greg’s pulse and breathing remained steady throughout the interrogation. He was guilty—she’d stared down the barrel of the gun that had murdered Butch. She knew he was guilty.

  But if she’d come upon this interrogation knowing nothing, even she would have been fooled.

  “I don’t know what it is,” she murmured to Lynn. “Either it’s because he honestly feels no guilt, or because someone taught him. Or both.”

  “Taught him what?”

  “How to control his body reactions. This guy could pass a lie detector test without breaking a sweat.”

  “Actually,” whispered Lynn, “that’s how you pass a lie detector test.” But she wrinkled her nose, teasing, as she said it.

  Faith loved that she had sisters to tease her, now.

  “Look, Chopin, the bitch may have you fooled,” said Greg. “But you need to know something about her, man. She’s a freak of nature. She hears things, feels things—even smells things that normal humans can’t even register.”

  “Yeah,” said Roy, as if he’d already known that. Considering this afternoon, maybe he had. “And it makes her a real pistol in the sack.”

  That got a reaction out of Greg, just as he’d meant it to. An almost imperceptible catch in his breath, a faint acceleration of his pulse. Greg controlled it with deeper breathing. In only a moment, he’d regained his balance.

  But Faith had seen him falter, all the same. And she recognized the technique. “Oh my God.”

  Then she recognized that the other police officers out here had noticed her—and were staring. Thanks, Roy.

  “I’m sure that’s just an interrogation trick,” Lynn told them, shy but determined to defend Faith.

  “Actually, no, I have been to bed with him.” Whether or not she was a pistol. Most of the male cops looked impressed. A few of the female cops looked jealous. “But what I meant was—my roommate, Krystal. She taught me the same techniques. They’re common, sure—controlling your body’s stress through your breathing, that sort of thing, but still. She also knew about my, er, heightened senses.”