Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Because of the lucid dreaming thing?”

  “And because you’re not even a typical lucid dreamer. You’re unique. I’m not sure how you’ll respond in a true hypnotic trance.”

  He looked amused. “What could possibly go wrong?”

  She glared at him. “I think there’s a very real possibility that you’ll take control of the trance, just as you do when you go into a lucid dream.”

  “Will that be a problem?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” she said. “If I sense that the situation is going sideways, I’ll try to bring you out of the trance.”

  “You’ll try to bring me out of it?”

  “I might not be able to do that if you take control and convert the trance into a lucid dream,” she explained. “And you might be in too deep to realize what is going on.”

  “What’s the worst-case scenario here?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m sure that eventually you would wake up or something would shatter the trance.”

  “Good to know,” he said.

  She realized he was not taking the danger seriously.

  “I think it’s also possible that you might be stuck in it for a while,” she said.

  “Stuck?”

  “Maybe in a form of sleep paralysis. That’s the sensation some people get when they wake up but discover they can’t move or speak. The condition doesn’t last more than a minute or two but it can be terrifying.”

  “I’ve heard of that but I don’t have any history of suffering from it, just the sleepwalking.”

  “And that’s another possibility,” she said. “You might start sleepwalking again. What I’m trying to say is that you are not a normal subject. We need to be prepared for the unexpected. I want you to be sure you have your escape word with you when you go into the trance in case I can’t bring you out of it.”

  He folded his arms on the table and fixed her with eyes that burned.

  “I promise you that I will never forget my escape word, Winter,” he said.

  It was a vow.

  She swallowed hard. “Okay. Good. That’s great.”

  “Let’s get started. I need answers and I need them as fast as possible.”

  She took a slow, centering breath. Here we go.

  “Focus on the obsidian key,” she said, automatically slipping into the voice she used for inducing a trance.

  Jack looked down at the stone.

  “Unlock the gates and walk into Ice Town. This is your world. You have created it. You know it well. You can go down any street or alley. Nothing can stop you. Nothing can hide from you in this place. All is calm, cold and still. Your destination is the ice garden in the center of town. From there you can observe what is going on around you.”

  Jack did not move. He kept his attention on the obsidian. He was not making any attempt to fight the trance.

  “You have reached the garden,” she continued. “I will ask you questions. You will answer them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack’s voice was entirely neutral.

  She reached out to his computer and tapped a few keys to open his notes and observations on the first case in the Recent Suspicious Fires file. She wasn’t sure where to start, but he had instructed her to ask her own questions, so she decided to go for it.

  “We are looking at the file you created for the Talcott case,” she said. “There is a list of items that were found at the scene. The first thing is the victim’s wallet. Why did you put it on the list?”

  “Because there was a piece of paper with a series of numbers on it.”

  “What did the numbers mean?”

  “They were the combination to the victim’s floor safe.”

  “What was inside the safe?” she asked.

  “The safe was empty. Ninety-eight percent probability that the killer took the contents.”

  “The next item on the list is a metal bracelet. Why is that on the list?”

  “It was an emblem of membership in a BDSM club.”

  “Oh.” She wasn’t sure where to go with that. “Did you, uh, visit the club?”

  “I interviewed the dominatrix.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She told me that the victim had been engaged in an affair with one of the other club members.”

  “Did you pursue that aspect of the investigation?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you learn anything useful?”

  “No.”

  She worked her way through the remaining items on the list. When she got to the end she started to open another file. But something made her hesitate.

  “You kept this case in your hot file,” she said. “Why?”

  Jack touched the obsidian stone and looked at the computer screen.

  “There is something missing from the list,” he said.

  “What is missing?”

  “The key.”

  Winter took a closer look at the file notes. “The victim’s keys were found near the body.”

  “One was missing when the body was recovered. It turned up later in a drawer in the victim’s desk at his office.”

  “Which key was missing?” she asked.

  “A safe-deposit box key.”

  “Who took it?”

  “The killer.”

  “Why did the killer put it into the drawer of the victim’s desk?”

  “She had no way to return the key to the dead man’s house. She left it in his desk drawer instead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Ninety-seven percent,” Jack repeated in the same eerily uninflected voice.

  “Do you know the identity of the killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who murdered Talcott?”

  “His administrative assistant.”

  “Was she arrested?”

  “No. Eighty-five percent probability that she won’t be arrested.”

  “Why not?”

  “No evidence.”

  “But you’re sure she did it?”

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “Shall I leave this case in your hot file?”

  “No. It doesn’t belong in the file. The probability of a connection to Zane is very low.”

  “Why are you certain of that?”

  “Because the administrative assistant is still alive,” Jack said in a flat tone of voice.

  “Why does that fact make you sure this case is not linked to Zane?”

  “If Zane had used the assistant to get the key, he would have gotten rid of her as well as Talcott.”

  “Why?”

  “She would have been a loose end. Zane does not leave loose ends. Next case.”

  Startled by what amounted to a command, Winter shot Jack a quick, searching look. She wondered uneasily if he was starting to take over the trance and convert it into a lucid dream. And what should she do if that was, indeed, what was happening? They were both in uncharted territory.

  She turned back to the computer, tapped a couple of keys and opened the next case file. “The Barnsville fire. Took place in a warehouse. An employee died. It was ruled arson but no one was ever arrested. Why is it in your hot file?”

  “I left it open because there was no clear motive. No one tried to collect on the insurance. It was the work of a pyro but now I’m ninety percent sure it wasn’t Zane.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too sloppy.”

  They worked their way quickly through three more cases of suspicious fires involving a death. One by one Jack instructed her to remove each from the hot file.

  In the end there was only one case left.

  “The car fire on the empty desert road outside of Las Vegas,” Jack said finally. “A woman named Je
ssica Pitt was killed. Investigators believed that she may have been smoking and fallen asleep at the wheel. Eighty-six percent probability that’s the one.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too clean,” he said. “No loose ends. Winter.”

  And just like that he was out of the trance. It was as if he had flipped a switch. His voice was once again normal. His eyes lost the otherworldly look. A new intensity charged the atmosphere around him.

  “You’re awake,” she said.

  “Yeah. Thanks. You helped me clarify my thoughts.”

  “You’re sure that car fire was caused by Zane?”

  “Eighty-six percent sure,” Jack said. “I need a little more data.”

  “If there are no loose ends in the car fire case, how will you pursue the investigation?”

  “I said it was too clean and that there are no obvious loose ends but there are two very big unanswered questions.”

  “What are they?”

  “What was Jessica Pitt, a woman who had been married and divorced three times, doing on that empty road outside of Vegas at two in the morning?”

  Winter raised her brows. “Driving to or from Las Vegas?”

  “Obviously, but that leads me to the second question: why was she alone?”

  “There are probably a lot of reasons why a woman would find herself alone in a car late at night. I’ve driven alone at night countless times.”

  “Not out there on that road in the desert, though,” Jack said.

  “Well, no, but—”

  “It feels like Pitt was either on her way to meet a man or else returning after having met him.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because Jessica Pitt always had a man in her life,” Jack said. “She was beautiful, glamorous and financially ambitious. She married for money and when she was between marriages she was actively hunting for another rich husband. She was between men at the time of her death. It had been several months since she and her last husband had separated. I researched her life when the case first landed in my hot file. I found no indication that there was another man in the picture. There should have been someone.”

  Winter gestured toward the glowing computer screen. “It says that the car fire was ruled accidental. Why did you put this case in your file?”

  “In addition to a rather spectacular fire in a deserted location, Jessica Pitt is a partial match to the standard profile of Zane’s favorite target,” Jack said. “She’s a single woman with no close family. In addition, she lived on the West Coast, in an expensive little boutique town about a hundred miles north of Los Angeles. Burning Cove.”

  “You said she’s a partial match to a Zane victim profile. What’s missing?”

  “Desperation. Desire. Fear. A need so powerful that when Zane offered to give it to her, she fell for the con. Once we know what’s missing from Jessica Pitt’s profile, all the answers will fall into place.”

  “Assuming she really was one of his victims.”

  “Assuming that,” Jack agreed.

  “But you really think there’s a connection between them, don’t you?”

  “I told you, there’s an eighty-six percent probability that there is a link. With a little more data I should be able to increase that probability or rule her out altogether.”

  Winter sighed. “Okay, you said she had a pattern of marrying for money. Did she have a lot of it at the time of her death?”

  “Yes, but not enough to tempt Zane.” Jack got to his feet and began to pace the room. “I told you, if he’s back, it’s not because he needs money. And if he murdered Jessica Pitt, it’s because he got what he needed from her and no longer had any use for her.”

  “I don’t know, Jack. Seems like a stretch. There must be some other reason why you’re so sure Pitt was connected to Zane.”

  Jack stopped at the far end of the room. “The location of the fire.”

  “You mean the desert road? Why is that important?”

  “That fire occurred in a place that would have made it easy for Zane to watch.”

  Winter shivered. “He likes to watch his fires?”

  “Make no mistake. Zane is smart and sophisticated, but at his core he’s still a classic pyro. Pyros always like to watch their work. Out there, alone in the desert, he could have watched for as long as he wanted.”

  It seemed to Winter that there was a new chill in the atmosphere.

  “You’re really in his head, aren’t you?” she asked quietly.

  “It’s what I do, Winter.”

  She got the feeling that he was waiting for her to render judgment on him.

  “I understand,” she said gently. “It’s why you’re good at what you do. It’s your gift.”

  Jack watched her in silence for a long moment.

  “Are you okay with that?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s all you can say?”

  She smiled. “Yep.”

  He nodded once, evidently satisfied, and resumed prowling the room.

  “That car fire occurred a couple of months after Cutler, Sutter and Salinas closed the Night Watch case in Seattle,” he said. “So the timing works. I had a feeling that the fallout from what happened in that case would eat at Zane; maybe enrage him. Rage leads to obsession. That’s the point of no return.”

  “Do you think he would let rage and obsession push him into taking risks?”

  “Yes.” Jack looked as if he were gazing into another dimension. “Damn it, I need to know more about Jessica Pitt.”

  He returned to the table, sat down and pulled his laptop close. His fingers began to move over the keys as if he were playing music. The blue-green radiance of the computer screen sparked on the lenses of his glasses.

  “Looks like we’re going to be up for a while,” Winter said. She got to her feet. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Good idea.”

  She went to the console that held the in-room coffeemaker and picked up the small pot. She started to move into the bathroom to fill the pot with water from the sink but she paused and looked at Jack.

  “I do have one question before you start digging into Jessica Pitt’s past,” she said.

  Jack did not look up from the screen. “What?”

  “When you interviewed the professional dominatrix in the Talcott case, did she, by any chance, try to convince you to become a client?”

  “She’s a businesswoman.” Jack did not take his gaze off the computer screen. “She offered me a fifty percent discount on a starter package of six sessions.”

  “Please tell me you declined.”

  “I declined. Not my style.”

  “How would you describe your style?”

  Jack stopped playing the laptop keys long enough to turn his head and fix her with a look that made her catch her breath.

  “Anything involving you would definitely qualify as my style,” he said.

  She suddenly got a little light-headed.

  “Good to know,” she said. “I’ll get the coffee going.” She hesitated on the threshold. “But if you ever decide you want to experiment with little whips and fuzzy handcuffs, be sure to let me know. They say you can buy anything online these days.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  An hour later Jack sat back from the computer, took off his glasses, massaged his eyes and stretched. Winter looked up from the notes she had been making for him and took a beat to admire the view. Jack reminded her of a large hunting cat when he stretched.

  Evidently unaware of her interest, Jack put on his glasses and got to his feet. He headed toward the in-room coffeemaker.

  “The question I keep coming back to,” he said, “is where was the man in Jessica Pitt’s life following her third divorce? He ought t
o be there.”

  Winter glanced at her notes. “Because according to your theory she always had a man around.”

  “Not just any man—a wealthy man.” Jack disappeared into the bath to fill the coffeepot. “She had a long, unblemished record of successful marriages followed by even more successful divorces that left her in what people used to call very comfortable financial circumstances. If she had followed her pattern, she should have been well on her way to marriage number four.”

  Winter tapped her pen against the sheet of hotel room paper. “Yet there was no husband in sight after marriage number three ended.”

  Jack reappeared from the bath and dumped the water into the top of the coffeemaker, added a pod of coffee and hit the On switch.

  “People don’t change their patterns,” he said.

  Winter tapped the pen against the paper. “One thing to keep in mind here is that the career path Jessica Pitt followed probably gets more complicated as a woman ages.”

  Jack lounged against the console and folded his arms, waiting for the coffee to brew.

  “She still had her looks,” he said. “She spent a fortune keeping herself in marketable shape.”

  “You think there was a man in the picture, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if she was seeing someone in secret, she must have had a really good reason for keeping the relationship under wraps. Maybe the guy was married.”

  “Or maybe Zane insisted on her silence,” Jack said.

  “What would make her agree to keep the affair secret?”

  “That’s easy,” Jack said. “Zane promised her something she wanted very, very badly.”

  “So the real question here is, what did Jessica Pitt want that she didn’t get from her three ex-husbands?” Winter said.

  “Exactly.” Jack glanced at the laptop. “I’ve hit a wall with the online research. I couldn’t find much beyond her three marriages. And that, by the way, is another indicator that Zane was involved. Jessica Pitt’s past is very neat and tidy. You’d think she had never heard of social media.”

  “What does that tell you?”