Better Read Than Dead (18 page)

My feelings of disquiet refused to subside, even through Milo’s reassurances. “Uh-huh,” I said.

“Listen, if it makes you feel any better, why don’t you come on down to the station and hang out with us tonight? That way you’ll be the second person to know if something happens—which it won’t—and that way I won’t jump the fifteen times you call me tonight to see if anything’s happened.”

I smiled, relieved. Milo had actually read my mind. “You like Thai food?”

“Only from Pi’s,” he said, humoring me. I’d once gone on and on about my favorite Thai restaurant, and how I was convinced that once you tried Pi’s you never went anywhere else.

“An order of pad thai coming right up,” I said, and hung up, then immediately redialed Pi’s and doubled my order, changing the delivery to pickup.

 

I was at the station a half hour later, two steaming portions of sweet rice noodles topped with chicken, peanuts and bean sprouts in hand. I found Milo sitting at his desk with his feet up and the receiver pressed to his ear.

“Uh-huh,” he said into the phone. “Okay, well, if you come across anything you can reach me at that number day or night. We got the suspect in custody, but there was a lead I was tracking down that may connect this guy to your area.”

What?
I mouthed when I caught his eye while I set out his dinner.

Milo shook his head and held up a finger as he finished his call with an, “Okay, thanks again, Jack. I hope I hear from you.” He hung up the phone and clapped his hands together over the scent of peanuts and lime curling up from the Styrofoam container. “This looks awesome!” he said, beaming me a smile.

“That’s because it
is
awesome.” I said, taking my seat and folding the paper napkin onto my lap. “Was that about your suspect?” I asked, pointing to the phone with my plastic fork.

“Yeah, that was Detective Jack Stevens out in Vegas. I was double-checking on your advice to see if they had any rapes in the area with a similar MO.”

“And . . . ?” I said through a mouthful of noodles.

“ ‘And’ we don’t know yet. Stevens is going to check through their database, but nothing comes to his mind right off the bat. I did a little background search on our guy Zimmer, and it turns out he goes to Vegas at least twice a year, so there’s your connection.”

Left side, heavy feeling. Even though my intuition was saying no, I was quiet, letting Milo continue.

“We still haven’t found the mask or the tire iron, but this guy could have thrown them away somewhere after the last rape.”

I pondered that awhile, my brow furrowed. It didn’t make sense that Zimmer would use the same tools for three successive rapes and then all of a sudden get spooked on the last one and toss them someplace no one could find them. To change the subject I asked, “So how’s Cathy?”

“I talked to her this morning. She’s doing better. She’s going to start her new job in a couple of weeks, which is good because it gives her something to look forward to. She’s feeling better, and she’s been seeing the hospital shrink. And, like so many other women before her, she will find a way to deal with it.”

That last sentence made me sad. It sucked that we lived in a world where so many centuries after man had become “civilized,” women still had to learn to deal with rape.

Milo and I continued to eat our dinner in companionable silence, each pretending to ignore the other’s frequent glances at the phone. After we’d finished eating, Milo gathered up the Styrofoam containers and threw them away, then opened his desk drawer, pulled out a deck of cards and began to shuffle them on his desk. Briefly they reminded me of the tarot deck I’d used at the wedding the week before, but I quickly shoved that thought aside. I had enough on my plate at the moment.

“Penny poker?” Milo asked with a sly grin in my direction.

I smiled knowingly; my inboard lie detector was going to make mincemeat out of him. “I’m game,” I said easily, flashing him a Bo-Peep smile.

 

Milo and I played penny poker with five other detectives in the unit until about ten thirty, when it was clear we could all probably relax. Only two calls had come in on Milo’s line, and both were from his wife, Noelle, checking to see when he’d be home. Otherwise there had been nothing unusual going on in the local neighborhoods, as the presence of so much police power out on the streets had settled the community down early for the night.

Around that time the atmosphere in the Detective’s Unit switched noticeably from tense to celebratory; we’d done it. We had the right man in custody, and Royal Oak could rest easily—its serial rapist, Jeffrey Zimmer, was behind bars. Then somebody in the group suggested switching from penny poker to strip poker. Everyone looked expectantly at me to see if I’d agree, and since I’d thumped them all well and good at penny poker, I felt pretty cocky going for the gusto.

Within a short period of time I had every detective in the department stripped down to his skivvies, and a load of laundry littered the floor around my chair. I hadn’t lost a single hand.

Technically Milo should have been buck-naked twice over, but for the sake of modesty I’d counted his cuff links, watch and gold necklace as separate pieces of clothing. All that was left between his showing us his “hello, Dolly” were his underwear and his wedding ring . . . which I’d spotted him twisting nervously.

I’d love to be a fly on the wall when he got home and had to explain to his wife either why he was naked, or why he was in his underwear with no wedding ring.

The clock on the wall now read close to midnight, and I leaned back tiredly in my chair, stretching and yawning as the latest poker victim gave up his undershirt. If we played one more hand someone at this table was going home in his birthday suit, and as I looked around at all the out-of-shape bodies on display, I decided that wasn’t an image I particularly wanted to carry home with me to bed.

Thinking this game wasn’t going to end until I ended it, I stood up and said, “Well, fellas, it’s been swell, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to call this a night.”

Closely guarded relief swept through the five detectives gathered around Milo’s desk, and they all gave halfhearted calls for one more game. I laughed as I gathered up my winnings, fully intending to carry every article of clothing home and teach these men a valuable lesson about trying to outsmart a psychic.

As I bent over to retrieve someone’s pants Milo’s phone rang, and we all looked sharply at it in surprise. Milo hesitated only a moment, then answered it in one smooth motion. “Johnson.”

We watched Milo’s face closely, looking for clues as he listened to the caller. In my heart I knew even before I saw his face grow taut and heard him utter, “Goddamned son of a bitch,” that it was terrible news. “I’ll be there in five,” he said, and hung up the phone. Then he looked at me with an odd mixture of intense anger and regret.

“Someone else has been raped,” I said breathlessly.

“Yes,” was all Milo could muster at the moment, his furious breathing taking all other effort.

“But how?” I protested, my mind trying to make sense of it. “I mean, you had all those men staking out the grocery stores. . . .” The caller had gotten it wrong somehow; this couldn’t have happened. We’d taken precautions; we’d done our homework.

Milo shook his head, staring at the ground for a moment, then looked up and met my wide, horrified eyes as he said, “She wasn’t attacked at the grocery store. One of the patrolmen coming off duty just found her.”

“Where?” I asked.

“Behind the post office.”

I sank heavily down in my chair, the clothes still heaped in my arms. “Oh, God . . .” I said. “Oh, my God . . .”

As the news sank in the men were all moved to action. One of the detectives next to me gently eased his shirt from across my shoulders, and taking the hint I quickly set the large pile of clothing in the middle of Milo’s desk as each man began to sift through, looking for his belongings. Our festive mood had instantly evaporated with the news, and everyone but me was moving about quickly. I sat there mutely in the chair as the group rushed to get dressed, wondering how, with all the patrolmen we had out there, this could still happen.

I watched Milo as he snapped his pants out of the pile of clothing and furiously pulled them on. He was shaking with rage. I continued to stare at him as he shrugged into his shirt, not bothering with his cuff links, and noticed there was something tragic about the way his face was set. Something he was holding back made me ask, “Milo? She’ll be okay, right?”

Everyone stopped dressing suddenly and fixed their attention on Milo, waiting for his reply. Perhaps it was lingering in the air. Perhaps it was the way he was so angry. Perhaps it was because I knew the answer even before I asked the question that made everyone stop and look at Milo, forcing him to face me, which was hard for him to do, I could tell.

“No, Abby,” he said softly as he cinched his belt more tightly than he should have. “She’ll never be okay again, because she’s dead. This time that fuck killed her.”

It was Sunday evening and I was sitting in my favorite chair, Eggy curled in my lap and a glass of red wine perched on the small table to my right.

Somehow I had made it through the week, and if I’d had the energy I would have patted myself on the shoulder, but as it was I was nearly too tired to lift the glass of wine.

I hadn’t slept well in days; between the persistent nightmare of the postman and thoughts of remorse over the latest victim, I’d been unable to get a restful night’s sleep; hence the vino on my right to coax me into a relaxed state of mind.

I’d gone home the night of the murder haunted by Milo’s words: “She’ll never be okay again, because she’s dead. This time that fuck killed her.” And I’d been haunted by them ever since.

I couldn’t reconcile it, the nagging questions that wouldn’t leave my mind alone. How had I not seen the obvious? How had I been so obtuse as to lead Milo down the wrong path, having him check out mailmen instead of the post office itself? It was so obvious when I thought about it, such a gigantic clue from my intuition, and I’d misdirected it. The guilt of it was pounding me like a sledgehammer.

Milo had called and left several messages for me on Friday, Saturday and this morning, but I had yet to return any of them. From the moment I’d heard the news that a woman had been killed, I was out. Done. Finito. I wanted no part in this scenario anymore—because the culpability of getting it wrong was killing me.

Oh, sure, it had been fun and exciting to get involved in solving a real criminal mystery; that was until someone was murdered. It had dawned on me like a bucket of cold water that this wasn’t a game, or my next big adventure. This was for keeps, and people were dying.

The news had carried the story of the thirty-year-old mother of three who was brutally attacked, raped and bludgeoned to death, then left partially naked behind a Dumpster at the Royal Oak Post Office. Karen Millstone had been young, talented, pretty, and had everything to live for. Now she was dead, and I’d decided to shoulder the blame.

The television drummed on as I drank my wine and felt my mind slowly wind down after a day of spinning. This morning I’d woken with an idea that I couldn’t shake. It had been like a little fly in my head, buzzing around and interrupting all other thoughts, and the fact that I was even considering it scared the stuffing right out of me. I was thinking about quitting.

Before becoming a psychic I’d been an assistant manager at a local bank, and I was thinking, with melancholy, that I could return to that life if I wanted to. I even had a degree in finance to back up a career change. I could go back to school and get a master’s, or I could apply to a few banks and see what happened. I’d make far less money, but the house was almost finished, so I didn’t need as much income to support myself now as I did when I’d first bought my home.

More important, a career change would put an end to the misfires. No more ambiguous clues that I tried to make sense of and couldn’t. No more clients who were attacked or murdered. No more responsibility for the health and well-being of all my clientele, which was really what was bothering me here. As a professional psychic I’m supposed to keep my patrons out of mischief. That’s why they come to me in the first place, and so far I didn’t have a very good track record.

That, coupled with my recent disaster on the Royal Oak serial rapist, I reasoned, was enough to put me on the bench . . . permanently.

I reached for the glass of wine again and sipped the smoky liquid. I had a nice buzz going now, and the trick was to keep the buzz, but not let it get more intense to invite a night with one foot planted on the floor to stop the world from spinning. I’m a real lightweight, so this scenario was probably going to happen anyway.

Just then there was a soft knock on my front door. I looked at the clock on the wall—nine fifteen.

Eggy jumped into action at the sound and raced to the front foyer, barking and digging at the hardwood floor. Lazily, I got up and went to check the peephole. Milo stood with one hand on his hip and his head slightly cocked, listening for movement behind the door.

“Shit,” I whispered as Eggy looked anxiously from me to the door and offered one more loud bark.

“Abby?” Milo called from my front porch. “You in there?”

“It’s late, Milo; can we do this another time?” I asked, leaning my head against the wood frame.

“Abby,” Milo said sternly, “come on; let me in. I need to talk to you. . . .”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to let him in. I didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, or work with him . . . I just wanted to be left alone.

“Hey,” he called, and knocked again. “You might as well open the door because I’m not going away.”

“Fine!” I sighed, and undid the lock, letting him in.