Possessed

by Stephanie Doyle

  “Who are you?”

  Cass avoided the question and instead turned her head, searching for Dougie. He was still on the other side of the room with two cups of coffee in his hands, waylaid by one of the other detectives.

  “I’m…a consultant,” she answered pathetically.

  “I see. What kind?”

  “I’m not sure that matters.”

  “Oh it absolutely matters,” he told her, his voice colder than it had been when speaking to Dougie. “You suggested that this was difficult for me? This afternoon at my office two police officers came to inform me that my sister was dead. That she was slain in her apartment, murdered in cold blood, stabbed several times and, for the final injustice, had her tongue removed with a knife. The blood that poured out of her mouth seeped into the floor so that eventually it could be seen by the people who lived in the apartment below her. That’s how they discovered she was dead. I demanded to be taken to her apartment to see what had happened, and now that image will forever be burned into my memory.

  “Since then I’ve been made to sit here for hours while I’ve been asked and have answered the same questions over and over again, including those about my whereabouts during the time in which she was murdered. All this while my sister’s killer continues to walk free. And then the detective gives me you. You with a coat that I wouldn’t give to the Salvation Army. You, who, if I had to guess, is barely over the legal age limit. You, who has absolutely no idea what you’re doing. So I’ll ask again. Who are you?”

  Tell him about the nurse.

  The door to her room closed, and Cass now focused all her attention on Lauren’s brother. Who was innocent of his sister’s murder.

  “My name is Cassandra Allen, and Dougie wanted me to talk to you.”

  “Detective Brody wanted you to talk to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Cass shrugged. There was no point in lying to the man. She’d stopped hiding who and what she was years ago. But somehow she suspected that what she had to tell him was not going to go over all that well.

  “He’s hoping I’ll be able to determine if you killed your sister.”

  He breathed audibly. “And how exactly will you be able to determine that?”

  “Actually, he was hoping Lauren would tell me.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, sir. You see, sometimes…the dead…they speak to me.”

  His jaw dropped slightly, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re a psychic.”

  Although the way he said the word, it sounded more like “fake.”

  “I have a gift.”

  “You see things?”

  “No. I’m not clairvoyant.”

  “Feel things then. Isn’t that how it’s done?”

  “That’s clairsentience. And I don’t have that gift either. I can’t read your mind or see the future. I’m a medium, Mr. McDonough. I make contact with those who have passed through their loved ones. That’s all.”

  “That’s all,” he repeated, his voice calm and moderated but as sharp as glass. “You disgust me. People like you who prey on the innocent and trusting. The grieving. A gift? More like a sham. You are the worst sort of con artist. How do you live with yourself?”

  “I’m sorry you don’t believe me.”

  “Don’t apologize. Detective!” He stood then and raised his voice enough so that Dougie turned and came rushing back to the desk. “Are you part of this ridiculous scam?”

  Dougie looked at Cass, and she merely shrugged in defense. “Mr. McDonough, Miss Allen has been a consultant for the PPD now for some time and…”

  “I don’t give a damn what label you stick on her. I am done with this pretense of an investigation. Psychics! That’s who you bring in to help. No wonder you haven’t found Lauren’s killer. Is the mayor aware of your current police procedures?” He shook his head. “I’m leaving. If you insist I stay, you’ll be insisting to my lawyer.”

  “It’s okay, Dougie.” Cass squeezed through the two men, who were facing off and looked pretty close to coming to blows. At the slightest brush of her shoulder against his chest, she felt Malcolm shrink away from the contact, his revulsion evident.

  The physical slight didn’t stop her from revealing the truth. “You can let him go. He’s innocent.”

  McDonough quickly turned his angry gaze on her, pinning her in place with his fury.

  “You sure, Cass?” Dougie asked, not giving an inch of ground. “The guy sort of looks to me like he has a bad temper.”

  Instantly, Malcolm pulled his eyes away from Cass to meet Dougie’s hardened cop face.

  “I’m sure. You see, Mr. McDonough hates blood. Can’t stand the stuff. He gets physically queasy any time he sees it. Something he’s worked his whole life to hide, especially when he’s on a construction site. When Lauren was young, she had to have her tonsils out. A nurse came into her hospital room to draw some blood while he was there. Malcolm saw the needle, went after the nurse, pushed her off his sister and then stuck the needle in the nurse’s…well, in her bottom.”

  “How could you…” McDonough cut off his words, his incredulity proof enough that the story was true.

  “What’s that got do with what happened to Lauren?” Dougie wanted to know.

  Cass shook her head. “Don’t you get it? He didn’t stab his sister. He certainly didn’t watch her bleed to death or cut out her tongue. He couldn’t have. He wasn’t her killer, Dougie. He was her hero.”

  Chapter 3

  “I’m really sorry. I had no idea he was going to go off on you like that,” Dougie said.

  He had won the battle and was driving Cass home, her motor scooter tucked safely in the back of the Cherokee. After everything that had happened that night, she hadn’t put up much of a fight. It was late. At midnight, the neighborhood was sketchy, so she couldn’t imagine things improving at 3:00 a.m. It made sense. It just didn’t sit well with her to have to rely on anyone, even Dougie.

  “He was definitely pissed,” Cass agreed. Although the word pissed barely scratched the surface of the man’s outrage.

  “I didn’t think you would actually tell him about…you know.”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t planning to, but he kept pushing. And you know I don’t lie about that stuff anymore. Anyway, he never really even yelled. Just spoke to me in that kind of tone that makes you feel like you’re ten years old. I had this irrational urge to show him my ID and prove I was almost thirty.”

  Dougie glanced over at her quickly, then focused again on the road in front of him as he navigated the narrow city streets around Logan Square. “He wouldn’t have believed it. When you’re fifty you’re not going to look thirty.”

  She pointed to the thin, elfin nose that tipped up ever so slightly at the end. “It’s the nose.”

  He laughed and made a right turn then slowed to a stop in front of her apartment building.

  “You should move closer to Old City.”

  “Ugh. I just moved to this place because you were on my case. It’s fine. I’m not saying I’m going out jogging on my own after midnight, but I haven’t had any problems,” she said.

  He double-parked in front of her building. She hopped out and made her way to the trunk to get her scooter, but Dougie had beat her to it and was already lifting it to the ground.

  “I can take it from here.”

  He merely scowled at her and rolled the thing toward the building. It was only three stories tall, each apartment having its own entrance off of a series of cement steps. Hers was the basement apartment. Walking in front of him, she made her way down the steps and used her key to let herself in.

  “Seriously, Dougie. I could have carried it,” she said as she stood back and let him set the scooter inside what she called the foyer but what was really part of the kitchen. “I do it every day. I’m not as weak as I look.”

  “You look like you’re barely five foot and a hundred pounds wet.”

  “A
h, ha! See how wrong you are. I’m five foot two and a hundred and four pounds wet.”

  He chuckled and set the scooter aside, using the kickstand to stabilize it. He proceeded to check the place out, looking for bogeymen in the closets, she imagined.

  “Where are the creatures?” His affectionate term for her cats.

  “They’re probably on my bed sleeping.”

  “Good,” he muttered.

  “You really need to get over this paranoia.”

  “They don’t like me.”

  “Maybe that’s because you look at them and wonder why they’re not dogs.”

  “All pets should be dogs,” he insisted.

  “Spoken like a dog lover. What I don’t get is, if you love them so much, why you don’t just get one?”

  He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. “My schedule is too…whatever. Hey, check that out. Is that furniture?”

  He was pointing to the futon she’d recently purchased that sat in the corner of her sparse apartment. The foyer off the door opened up to a small kitchen that was no more than a space with a stove/oven, a counter with a sink that held most of her dishes and a refrigerator. Beyond that was the living room, although living room seemed too fancy a name for the compact square area beyond the kitchen.

  Dougie’s joke about the futon wasn’t completely off base. Cass liked to call herself a minimalist because it sounded as if there was a reason for the lack of furniture. Mostly, she just didn’t like clutter. She was a lousy housekeeper and the less she had, the less she needed to keep clean. Plus there were fewer places to leave dirty clothes.

  She had a low Japanese-style table where she knelt to take her meals, a small TV to catch the evening news, a yoga mat that spread almost the length of the living room and some Pilates bands that she was incorporating into her workout. And now the futon. The cushion covering the oak frame was bright red and amazingly comfortable for napping.

  Down a narrow hallway there was a bathroom on one side and a large closet that she liked to call her bedroom on the other. As a home, it wasn’t much, but the economic apartment and everything in it suited her needs. Which, in her mind, was all space and furniture were supposed to do.

  She shrugged off her coat, hung it on a hook on the foyer wall and turned to putting the events, all of the events, of the night behind her. She didn’t kid herself that it would be easy. McDonough’s harsh words stuck with her.

  How do you live with yourself?

  Not easily, she thought, but not for the reasons he assumed.

  Cass tried to be understanding. After all, his sister was dead and he was devastated. Sometimes people didn’t mean to hurt others, but they did anyway. No one knew that better than she did.

  Or she could forget about trying to be sympathetic and just write him off as a jackass. Maybe not as noble that way, but it was a hell of a lot more satisfying.

  “Is there going to be any fallout? From tonight, I mean. Can McDonough make trouble for you?”

  “Like I said, he’s got connections with the mayor. If the mayor talks to the chief about you…The chief knows about what you do, but you know he’s never liked the idea. If the mayor brings heat…I don’t know.” Dougie walked over and sat on the futon. His expression indicated that he was as surprised as she had been at how comfortable it was.

  “What is the connection with the mayor?”

  “Business. McDonough is one of the up-and-coming contractors in the city. A real rags-to-riches sort. His dad was an ironworker who married a socialite, Lauren’s mother. Malcolm went to college but eventually got into construction. He made money by establishing a reputation for bringing in jobs for less. Then he started speculating and he was never wrong. He had all the right money contacts because of his stepmother. And the union loves him because they think he’s one of them.”

  “But he isn’t?”

  “What do you think?”

  Hard to tell. There was something about the way he carried himself. The way his suit fit. It all screamed class, money and sophistication, making it hard to picture him in a pair of jeans with a hammer in his hand and a tool belt around his waist. Plus, with his short, dark blond hair, blue eyes and chiseled face, he would have to be described as classically handsome rather than ruggedly handsome. He wasn’t as tall as Dougie, maybe only six foot. Still, to her five-foot-two frame, he’d seemed rather large. Especially when he was standing over her, berating her and calling her disgusting.

  Putting aside his appearance, however, there was definitely a hardness about him that acted in contrast to the sophistication. So, while she couldn’t readily see him with a hammer, something told her he knew how to use one.

  “You sure he didn’t do it? I mean really sure?”

  “Nothing’s for sure, I suppose. The messages are never that clear. But I got the feeling she was worried about him. Worried how he would handle her death. Like she knew it was too much of a shock for him to take in. If he was shocked by it, he couldn’t have done it. That and the story about the nurse and the blood…she told me that for a reason.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he lost it, and the shock was about what he had done. There were bruises on the body. She was engaged in a fight with her killer for some time before he eventually stabbed her.”

  “But the tongue thing…that was done after?”

  Dougie winced. “Yeah.”

  “That smacks of a process. Intent. Not something a man might do after he’d realized that he’d just killed his sister in a rage.”

  He stood then and moved toward her, close enough to knock a finger under her chin. “Listen to you, Miss Detective.”

  “Comes from spending too much time with you.”

  “Ah, you can never spend too much time with me.” He smiled charmingly, then his gaze sharpened on her face. “Hey, McDonough didn’t get rough with you, did he? You’ve got a…”

  “Bruise. I know. I bent over at work and bang. It’s nothing.” She pulled away a little, not wanting to encourage further inspection. Dougie didn’t know what it cost her to make contact, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  He nodded. “I’ve got an idea. I know this bar that stays open until six in the morning for the restaurant people. We’ll go. We’ll have a few drinks, unwind and forget about McDonough and his sister.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m really beat.”

  He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “You find an excuse every time I ask you out.”

  “I do not. We’ve gone to lunch plenty of times.”

  “Lunch, yes. But never dinner. Never drinks.”

  “Dougie…” She sighed.

  They’d covered this ground before, earlier in their relationship. She wasn’t sure why he was bringing it up again, but she knew that she didn’t want to have to rationalize why they couldn’t date. He didn’t know what had made their one night together such a disaster but she would never forget it. What had happened would always be reason enough for her to keep her distance romantically. There were times she thought it might be easier if she simply told him, but not tonight. Three contacts in the span of a few hours. It was a lot even for her. She was exhausted.

  “All right. I’ll let it go. For now. But someday I’m going to convince you.”

  No, he wouldn’t. He was trying to move on with his life. She granted him that. But he had no idea how much further he still needed to go before he’d be over his wife’s death. If he would ever be.

  “Lock up behind me,” he said as he made his way through the kitchen to her front door. “And thanks for the help. My gut was telling me he was clean despite the ice man routine, but confirmation doesn’t hurt. You’re right about the tongue. There was something about it that smacked of…psycho-city.”

  “Psycho-city.” She smirked. “There’s a technical term. I take it to mean you think this person is deranged.”

  “I…I should shut my mouth. Who knows what this is. I don’t want to give you bad dreams.”

  “Thanks for seeing
me home.”

  “Sure.” He paused for a second, but she was a good two feet away from him. Too far away to even attempt a move if that’s what he was thinking.

  “She wants you to get some sleep,” Cass told him, understanding more than he did why he didn’t leave right away. “I connected with her briefly back at the station. She doesn’t think the insomnia will go away just because you’ve switched to nights. You’re not sleeping during the day, either.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask.”

  “Oh.” It would be a first if it were true. Dougie loved his wife. More than most, she supposed. Her death had almost killed him with grief. Cass often worried whether or not their friendship stemmed from the fact that she was his only link to sanity. His only link to Claire. She liked him enough that she didn’t dwell on it. He was her only real friend. If she had to give him a message from Claire from time to time to make him happy, she was willing to do it. But it forever prevented their relationship from going any further. “Well, she does. It’s why I mentioned it.”

  He nodded, then turned, and she shut the door behind him.

  Maybe it was some new phase of his recovery, she decided. Maybe he was truly ready to move on. If that was the case, she would be thrilled for him. He was a good man who deserved someone special in his life.

  That person just couldn’t be her.

  Turning the dead bolt and linking the chain, Cass thought about maybe asking him to lunch so they could talk about it. There was no way she was going to risk their friendship over one night’s weakness that for whatever reason he couldn’t seem to put in its proper place.

  The locks secured, Cass turned around and smiled when she spotted her feline friends. Two shorthair Americans, one black, one gray, both with mint-green eyes. They practically materialized out of nowhere to welcome her home.