The condo was empty of everything but the built-in kitchen—stove, fridge, mission-style blond-wood cabinets, and a granite island. The carpet in the living room was new and didn’t match the carpeting I saw through an open door in what I assumed was a bedroom. The new carpeting was a giveaway that whatever had gone down here had happened in front of or on where I guessed the couch had been.
Every place, indoors or out, retains trace memories of strong emotional occurrences, which is why you can walk into a random building and get the creeps or suddenly feel much happier than before you stepped inside. The more recent the happy, sad, or brutal occasion, the stronger the trace. You don’t have to be an empathic psychic or even believe in the woo-woo stuff to feel it. Everyone has been in a few of those places where they felt immediately happy or couldn’t wait to get out of, even if they couldn’t say why. This place screamed run at the top of its lungs.
I pressed my nails into my palm to steel myself then sat on the new carpeting. This was where the body had lain. No one had to tell me, it was as plain in my mind’s eye as if the carpet still showed blood and the police chalk outline. I sat there and waited for some information to come.
There were three basic ways my abilities worked. One was simple awareness of random thoughts and emotions of people nearby, a sort of tide that more or less constantly washed around me.
Or I could purposely home in on someone and actively read his or her mind.
And there was the knowledge. I’ve never understood exactly how the knowledge worked and I couldn’t control its coming or going, but sometimes I’d get full-blown information about events that could include visions of people or happenings that didn’t come from anyone or anything in my personal orbit. The knowledge was useful, but it physically hurt and left me rung out.
The knowledge hit me now full force.
“Two people on the victim,” I said. “No, not two people. A woman and something else. Mean bastard, that something else. Can’t see what it is, some sort of spell around it, hiding it. The thing stabbed the victim. It had skill and knew what it was doing, perfectly placed knife in the neck. Carotid artery. Lots of blood. The thing that looks like a man, kneeling, putting two fingers into the blood and then licking the fingers clean. The woman pulled the thing away, snapping at it like a mother with a misbehaving child.
I ran my hand through my hair. “God, this room. It’s red everywhere. Red with blood. And anger. With need and desire. Insane desire. All consuming. No good sense left in her at all. No sense, but cunning.”
I looked up at Dee. “The woman is a fool, but a dangerous one. She scares me.”
“Can you see the woman?” he said, his voice low. He stood next to me. I was vaguely aware of his hand gently rubbing my shoulder, him pushing a little of his magic into me both to help me see and to make me feel better. “Can you describe her?”
I shook my head. “Too hazy.”
“Age?” he said. “Hair and eye color? Skin color? Anything?”
I shook my head. “She smells like rosemary.”
A chill ran through me. I blinked and was back in the emptied apartment. My head felt like someone had hit it with an iron bar. All the reasons I’d stopped doing this work flooded back to me.
Dee put out his hand to help me to my feet. My three companions waited to talk to me until I’d shaken off the effects.
“Anything useful?” I asked when my head cleared some and I started feeling back to myself.
Tyron shrugged. “Maybe. You said the woman smells like rosemary. Any idea what that’s about?”
“Not really,” I said. “Maybe she’s a gardener. Or a cook.”
Juliana was tapping one Louboutin-shod foot on the floor, the way she did when she was thinking, but whatever her thoughts, she kept them to herself.
“Can we get out of here?” I said. “I could use some fresh air.”
As we closed the door behind us, a fortyish Asian man standing in the hallway in front of the condo opposite waved a hand to get our attention.
“You don’t want that one,” he said, looking at Dee and me.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
“Nice young couple like you two—” The man shot Tyron and Juliana a cold glare. “Real estate people won’t tell you, but someone got killed in that unit. Murdered. It was ugly. You don’t want that place.”
I don’t know what got into me but, despite my giant headache, I felt suddenly silly and rambunctious. Probably because I was still pissed at being asked to help, even if it was Dee who’d done the asking.
“What!” I said, opening my eyes wide and glancing over my shoulder to glare at Juliana and Tyron. I turned back to face the man. “Thank you so much! We were thinking about taking it, but we certainly won’t be now.”
“Good,” the man said. “That’s good.”
I stomped off in my best imitation of a huff, leaving my three companions to catch up. I’d wondered why the unit was still empty all these months after the owner’s death. Bad vibes would drive off anyone with even the tiniest bit of intuition, and the watchful neighbor likely drove off the rest. Which was fortunate for the dead man’s family since the aura of the place hadn’t been changed by new people living there, in which case I would have picked up even less than I had.
“Come for a coffee?” Juliana said when we were back on the street again.
Caffeine might have helped my throbbing brain, but I shook my head. “Thanks, no. I have other business to take care of.”
Juliana and Tyron at least suspected that Dee and I were a couple, but we kept things strictly professional on the work front. I nodded in his direction and he nodded back—the way you do with work colleagues—and then did the same with Tyron.
I walked away from them toward the Financial District and didn’t look back. Emotions pinballed inside me. Even though I didn’t remember exactly what I’d said in the murder room, the feeling of it hung around like the stink of stepped-on shit even after you’ve wiped off your shoe. Someone killed that man. I wanted to know who and why. I wanted the killer brought to justice and the dead man’s family to have some answers, even if they didn’t get peace.
That was why Juliana, Tyron, and even Dee were so anxious to get me into that apartment. They knew that once I’d felt that man’s death, I’d want to see justice done and would join the investigation.
Jeez, I really was predictable.
But right now, I needed to think about Petra and her missing aunt. She needed answers as well, and the aunt needed finding before the something terrible I sensed in her future came to pass.
3
I walked up First Street, past the Japanese American Museum to Main, peeking into the windows at The Edison, the old power plant reborn as a hip lounge where the city’s bright young things gathered for trendy drinks and very expensive grilled cheese sandwiches. I followed Main to Fifth Street and went up Fifth past Pershing Square, a lovely park surrounded by great old buildings, letting my feet and intuition guide me. I walked and walked, turning when my intuition said to or backtracking when my senses started going cold. Aunt Mich had been downtown at some point, but she wasn’t here now. The buff-colored building was nowhere to be found.
Eventually, I wound up back across the street from the condo complex where a man had been so brutally murdered. I huffed out a breath and pulled my car keys from my purse. It was time to get out of downtown and back to the ocean.
At home, I called Petra Folger and told her I’d thought I’d had a lead, but it’d turned out to be a bust.
Her anguished sigh was loud in my ear.
“Have you called Danyon and Peet yet?” I said. “Two weeks is a long time for a missing person. The sooner someone gets on her trail, the better.”
“I haven’t called them,” she said. “I—”
I waited for her to say whatever she needed to spit out.
“Please,” she said. “We met for a reason. I trust you. I feel strongly that you will find her.”
> “I’m not actually looking for her,” I said. “I did have this one bit of intuition about where she might be, but I was wrong. You need to hire someone who can look for her fulltime.”
“Can I hire you?”
Technically there was no reason why she couldn’t. I wasn’t an employee of Danyon and Peet; I was a consultant. But I was also only one person. If she’d hire D&P, she—and I—would have a lot more resources to draw on. I still couldn’t tell her I worked with them without taking the chance that the counterfeiting VP might find out someone had been snooping in his office. Petra had some connection with that company or she wouldn’t have been sitting in their reception area after midnight.
“An agency has more to offer you than I can on my own,” I said.
I heard another sigh, this one quieter and less anguished than the first.
“All right,” she said. There was a pause. “I need to pay you for the work you did do. For trying at least.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It is,” she said firmly. “I’d prefer to pay you in person, but I’ll mail a check if you’ll give me the address. Or PayPal. Bitcoin. Whatever you use.”
I never gave out my home address and didn’t have a PayPal account, much less a bitcoin wallet. Why would I?
“How about we meet at the Starbucks,” I said and named the street.
Her voice brightened. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Fine. I’ll see you there.”
When I arrived, Petra was already sitting at an outdoor table. I parked, walked over, and sat down.
“Do you want to order a coffee or something first?” she asked.
I shook my head. I wasn’t planning on staying long. Get the money issue settled, get back in the car, get on with my life.
“What do I owe you,” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Really. I haven’t helped you.”
She frowned slightly and reached into her purse. I’d already decided I’d say no two or three times, and if she kept pushing I’d gracefully take what she offered. A game of take it/no, thank you/ just take it at Starbucks wasn’t my idea of a good time. Especially since we were sitting outside, and a pretty steady stream of people were passing on the sidewalk. I wasn’t a fan of public scenes.
But it wasn’t cash or a checkbook she drew from her bag. It was a small, silver box. The lid was engraved with an exquisitely wrought rowan tree with tiny enameled red berries.
She held it out to me. “This came in the mail today. No return address.”
“Is there anything inside?” I asked, not taking the box. I wasn’t going to risk touching something that might touch off new psychic knowledge. I wanted Aunt Mich found and I wanted Petra to get the help she needed—but from Danyon and Peet or some other agency much better equipped for the search than I could be on my own.
Petra shook her head. “There’s nothing inside. The box is empty.”
“Was there a note with it?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head again. She still held the box. It was hard to resist taking it out of curiosity and politeness, but I did.
The rowan tree is sacred in the old Celtic religions, symbolizing death and rebirth. The Irish say the first woman was created from one. Whoever sent this box to Petra surely knew all that and more. There was meaning here, a message. The magic pouring off the box was dark and dirty. No way was I going to touch that thing.
Sure, if the person who’d snatched Aunt Mich had sent the box, holding it might tell me something about where she was or who the kidnappers were, but then again it might not. Touching it might tell the sender as much or more about me than I might learn about them. It was a tradeoff I wasn’t willing to make.
“Does the tree on the lid mean anything to you?” I asked.
She shook her head a third time. “It’s just a tree. An apple tree? Are the red things apples? Cherries?”
Petra was still holding the box out toward me, but her hand had drooped. If she got tired enough of holding it, she’d probably give up and put it away.
“What?” she said.
I was staring over her head at a boisterous group of high school students coming our way. I’d been an outcast in high school. My empathic psychic abilities made me only too aware of the contempt and, sometimes, the pity my classmates felt for me—that gangly, weird girl who looked at people as if she knew things about them. Fortunately, these days, I found high schoolers pleasant and mostly amusing.
I watched the kids coming toward us. They were laughing and shoving each other around like they owned the world, the girls every bit as rowdy and physical as the boys. Two girls pushed a third right into Petra. She let out a yelp and tumbled from her chair, hitting the ground butt first with a loud smack. I grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her back up. And then, not thinking about what I was doing, I picked up the silver box, which Petra had dropped.
An overwhelming sorrow engulfed me. Tears ran down my face.
“Jeez, lady,” one of the boys said. “We’re sorry. Didn’t mean to make you cry.”
I slammed the box onto the tabletop and yanked my hand away as if the thing was on fire. The sorrow dissipated.
I wiped my eyes. “No worries,” I told the kid.
They’d seemed genuinely sorry for a moment, but that was gone in a flash and their devil-may-care nonchalance carried them giggling inside the coffee store.
Petra leaned close and dropped her voice low. “What happened to you there?”
I sat a moment, processing the emotion that had flared through me.
“Whoever sent that box to you is very unhappy,” I said. “Or someone who’d owned the box is or was unhappy. The timelines aren’t always clear.”
I stood up. Petra reached for me and I drew back. No psychic impressions had hit me when I’d helped Petra up, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
“Please,” she said. “It could be my aunt who’s unhappy. You said she was in danger. You have to keep looking for her.”
She reached into her purse again. This time she did pull out an envelope and offered it to me. When I didn’t take it, she laid it on the table.
“I’ll try, but honestly, I think you should call the police again, tell them about the box. Or at least try a detective agency, one with more resources than I can marshal.”
Petra stood up, making us eye-to-eye. There was something about her posture that moved me, something desperate and yet determined.
“What’s your aunt’s last name,” I said, knowing I was getting into territory I really didn’t want travel through.
“Dinsmore,” Petra said. “Michelle Dinsmore.”
“I’ll try,” I said again. “I’ll call you if I turn up anything.”
Petra nodded and looked at me a long moment. Then she turned and walked away without a “Thank you” or any words at all.
I watched her go to her car, a newish white Dodge Camero. Sometimes you can tell a lot about someone by the car they drive, sometimes not so much. This was a ‘not so much.’
I picked up the envelope from the table and stowed it in my purse without opening it. Frankly, Petra confused me. Her concern for her aunt was genuine, her desire to find Mich fierce, but there was something else going on too—something I couldn’t get hold of.
I could have done a read on her, checked her out psychically, but I’d taken her money which made Petra a client. One thing that had been drummed into my head at Danyon and Peet was that we didn’t invade a client’s privacy unless absolutely necessary. We took them at face value and believed what they told us until there was good reason not to.
I wanted to talk to Dee about Petra and Aunt Mitch. Maybe I could turn the case over to Danyon and Peet but remain Petra’s contact. She’d never know the difference, but I could get some expert help. Sounded like a plan to me, but maybe there were ethical issues or something that would stop D&P from taking on the job. There was only one way to find out.
4
&nbs
p; The text read simply: Are you in?
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath. I had a game tonight and I’d totally forgotten about it with Petra and Aunt Mich on my mind.
IN! I texted back.
I may not be the most sociable person in California, but I did love my hockey. Point me toward a rink and I’d happily lace up my skates and jump on with friends and strangers alike. I’d have to call Dee after I got home from my game, talk to him about D&P taking on Petra as a client. I packed my hockey bag with my skates and gear, threw in a cold bottle of water, and drove to the rink.
Three of my teammates were already in the locker room and getting their gear on when I arrived. There were greetings all around and then the three resumed the conversation they’d been having when I walked in. I’m plenty chatty after a game but never before. My teammates know my silence as I changed out of street clothes and into hockey gear was personal to me and nothing about them, so no one took offense or tried to get me to talk. I liked quiet time before a game to enjoy the almost meditative processes of dressing. Whatever else was going on in my life got left at the door, forgotten—or at least set aside—for the time I was at the rink.
When I’d finished dressing and looked up my entire team was in the locker room and ready to go. The game before ours finished and we filed out and onto the ice for warm up.
I stepped out of the bench area—where players sit during the game when it isn’t their turn to play—and onto the ice. I bent my knees and pushed off with my right foot and then my left. The kish-kish of the metal skate blade cutting through the thin, uppermost crust of the ice was one of the world’s great sounds as far as I was concerned. My stick felt good in my hand—the perfect length and balance for me, almost a part of my body. I snagged a puck lying on the ice with the curved blade of my stick and skated toward the net, rotating my wrists to make little corrections with the stick to keep the puck from sliding away down the ice.
Barbed Wire Heart Page 3
