Deja Blue (33 page)

He still had Amos Kunati’s number on speed dial. He rang him.

Kunati cursed into the phone before asking, “Carl, what in hell is it can’t wait at this hour? You drunk or something?”

“I’m putting a stop to the psychic thing, Amos,” he confided. “Gave that woman forty eight hours yesterday, and her time is soon up.”

“Why’re you telling me this, Carl?” “Thought you’d like to know, and Amos, there’s no reason we can’t remain amiable, is there?”

“Good for you, Carl, getting rid of that female shaman, but at this hour, what can I do for you? Have you been drinking?” Kunati repeated, half expecting the man to begin to blubber and beg for him to return to the CPD.

Instead, Orvison calmly said, “Meet me back out at the Cottrill trailer.”

“Why?”

“I have a feeling that Hiyakawa somehow convinced Roland Hatfield to go out there with her.”

“So what?” Orvison could imagine the young black man’s shrug.

“She’s drawing at straws, Amos, but now she’s dragged Roland in on it with her, and I may need your help to bring this thing to a close, now, tonight.”

“Whataya mean, dragged Roland in on it? In on what? Another séance?”

“He’s taken the murder weapon out there with him.”

Amos’s silence said he had to think this over. “She’s doing a reading from the hammer and the nails?”

“My guess, yes.”

“Roland’s staying with the evidence in possession,” replied Amos, sniffling as if needing to blow his nose. “Smartest thing he could do.”

“Not so smart. Allowing Hiyakawa to talk him into this.”

“What do you propose to do about it?”

“Raid the damn trailer and see to it that evidence is placed back in custody, and this time a proper lock up— mine, not Roland’s. Can I count on you for help?”

“You’ve got a squad room full of guys to help you if all you need is muscle.”

“I need you for this, Amos, you.”

After a slight hesitation, Kunati relented. “I’ll meet you there, damn.”

“Good…good, Amos, and thanks. I know you don’t take orders from me anymore, so thanks. Consider this a request from a friend.”

“A request, got it.”

TWENTY SEVEN

3AM, Inside the Haunted Trailer

Inside the trailer and inside Aurelia’s head, Rae had seen the same images as those floated via satellite to Quantico, and a curious dread had come over her, something she was not prepared to acknowledge as imminent danger, but damned close to it. Roland had stood nearby, watching as she took hammer and nails in hand from his reluctant fingers. She reclined on the exact same kill sight as before, on Marci’s deathbed with these items clenched in her hands, ostensibly ‘reading’ the hard wood handle, the claw and anvil, and each nail in turn—six in all.

She saw a replay of that night with but a few added details, helped along by her clenching the murder weapon, holding it against her chest while in trance. She saw a hand reach out to her, a watch and a ring—both expensivelooking items. Then she had an overwhelming sense that Marci did indeed know her killer. She knew his presence, his essence, and then she screamed out a strange phrase— Rolly-polly, no!”

Roland Hatfield stood with his mouth agape now as she came out of trance, and once he realized she was back, he asked questions as if the dyke had broken, one spilling out over the other. She’d never known him to speak so loudly or long on any subject.

“Where did you go? What’d you see? Did the evidence reveal anything to you? Tell me, what did you see? Did the hammer help? The nails? What, what, what? Tell me now.”

Rae thought she heard footfalls, a rustling at the door, someone on the outside trying to get in but the wind was pushing hard against the trailer, and she chalked up the noises to branches of trees leaning in and scratching at the roof and exterior walls. Maybe. All the same, she checked to be sure her 9mm was where it belonged. She’d have it at the ready when she needed it. But it was gone, removed from her shoulder holster. Who but Hatfield had taken it? Or had she, while in trance, removed it? Either way, she saw that it lay on a the cracked-mirror bureau.

“Tell me! What did you see?” insisted Hatfield who now held the hammer at his side, obviously a believer after all.

“Not much,” she lied. “Disappointing reading, really.”

“You saw something! Your features, your body language said so.”

“Like before…I saw the killing.”

“And the killer? Was it Cottrill? Describe the bastard! Tell me!”

“I didn’t get a clear look at his features, and neither did Marci the night she died, but she knew him. I just know it.”

“How do you know?” “She recognized him the way we all subtly know who is in our presence.”

“How’s that, Dr. Hiyakawa? That you know that Marci knew him, but you can’t yourself identify the Sleepwalker?”

“Through the senses, his odor, his voice. She…she gave me the impression she knew her killer, recognized him seconds before death.”

“He spoke to her?”

“Screamed, shouted at her. Called her a bitch.”

“I see.” Hatfield looked confused. “I took the precaution, while you were under, to removed the firearm. The way you were flailing…you see? The hammer looked dangerous as well.” He held it up. “At one point, I thought you’d hurt yourself, so I pried it from you.”

“Dr. Hatfield, your sister, she saw his watch, his ring…called out something odd.”

“Something odd?”

“I thought it a name, but unsure. I got the sense Marci recognized his voice, and she called out this odd name.”

“George! She called out George Cottrill’s name!”

“No, she called out someone’s name. Couldn’t make it out; can’t be sure precisely.”

His eyes widened, and he nodded successively. “I understand.” He paced the room where his sister had been horribly disfigured. “I quite, quite understand. You can’t possibly know everything you see or feel in a trance state to be accurate or clear.” He kept pacing, one hand rubbing into the other when she saw the watch and the ring he wore—identical to those she’d seen in trance while reading the murder weapon. But had she seen these items in a moment of lucidity, when Hatfield had interfered, wrenching the hammer or the gun or both from her?

He kept pacing, hammer yet in hand. Catlike nervousness told her he was stressed to the edge. She inched away and off the bed, her fingers going for the gun. He kept talking, saying, “No one can expect perfect clarity in a…a comatose state.” He suddenly brought the hammer down at her hand as she reached for the gun, the claw digging into the bureau top, missing her fingers by an inch at best.

It all came clear in an insane instant.

Dr. Roland Hatfield had, for whatever reason, murdered his sister that night. The additional murders of the innocent had been a clumsy effort to cover up the first killing.

Hatfield wrapped his enraged hand around the hilt of the hammer even more tightly, his knuckles white, eyes red, bloodshot, angry. In a metamorphic moment, his features had changed into those of a madman.

“Rolly-polly,” she muttered the phrase that’d come out of her telekinetic reading of the murder weapon. “You were fat as a child, heh, Doctor?”

The childish rhyming nickname that his sister called him throughout their years together. She had indeed called out her killer’s name, and it was her brother’s play name. Rolly polly, wholly moley!

“Why? Why’d you kill her, Rolly?”

He wasn’t in a talking mood; in fact, his mood was for murder again, Rae’s murder. He lunged at her with the hammer. Rae feinted to one side and tripped him up with a move she’d learned in first year FBI academy, and it sent him into the bureau where he struck his head a sharp blow, the crash sending her gun to the floor, skittering not toward her but away from her.

When he regained his feet, blood trickled down his forehead to his eyes, now wide with rage. She lifted a small bedside table and threw it at him, sending him to the rustic floor with his deadly weapon still in hand. She tried to get to her gun, but it meant clamoring over him, and she feared he’d trip her and overpower her and bring the deadly hammer down and into her skull.

Still, she scanned the floor for the gun’s location. Seeing it the other side of the killer, who’d regained his feet, didn’t bode well.

“I’m going to kill you now,” Hatfield said in an even, calm voice as if saying he’d like the next dance.

“With the dead in here looking on?” she asked. “With your sister still watching you?”

“That slut! She got what she deserved! One man after another, always looking for the next hit—damned drug addict. Ruining my name, our mother’s good name!”

He came at Rae again, and she kicked out at his private parts, but he pulled back, and as her kick missed its mark, slamming into his thigh instead, he slammed the hammer into her shin, causing excruciating pain along with Rae’s scream.

She wheeled away in the cramped space, the pain shooting through her as she attempted to get past him by going over the mattress. She grabbed up one of the nails just as he grabbed an ankle, dropping her on the bed. She rolled over and down, stabbing his hand with one of the loose 3-penny nails—driving it home and making him squeal in pain. The shock of it made him lose his hold on her ankle.

The nail proved her only weapon against his hammer. It felt like she was in a fixed fight like some gladiator given a toothpick against a sword. Still, she held tight to her metal toothpick, her only weapon other than her training at this point.

She made it to the living room area and to the door, tearing it open and fleeing out onto the porch and the pitchblack night. The murderer in hot pursuit made it known he was on her heels.

# # #

No moon in the sky helped greatly to hide Rae’s escape. She used the black woods to cloak herself. Behind her, she heard his slow, deliberate approach, when she realized he was singing, a low, creepy, guttural rendition of the Gordon Lightfoot song, My Troubles and I. He was at the chorus, “Float through the sky…” repeating it like an old phonograph record with its stylus stuck on one groove.

Why in hell didn’t I see this coming, she inwardly pleaded with her so-called gift.

She dare not move or breathe for fear the medical examiner turned madman would hear and come directly for her. In the darkness all she saw was the glint of steel nails and the hammer in his hand. She clutched the one nail in her balled fist. God how she wished she had her gun. A nail was hardly enough in this situation.

In the blackness all around, Rae watched the brutal Dr. Hatfield, who’d become a predator, like some primeval werewolf, inch closer. He kept softly singing the same chorus. “Float through the sky…”

She recalled her early visions of the floating woman; God, how long ago had it been that she’d seen this vague omen?

She wondered if she dared attempt to turn the tables here and attack him before he could attack her. She felt around the leaves at her toes for anything smacking of a boulder, but she’d settle for a rock or a good, stiff branch. Rae’s toes reported back: Nothing doing.

The skimpy nail was all she had, but if she could force it deep into the chest at the heart, or if she could sink it deep into his gullet—direct into a major artery—he might be stopped with a single blow. But suppose he deflected her attempt, and it wound up, say in his shoulder or arm?

Better part of valor, she decided, was to keep absolutely still and pray that he went on by and out of sight in his search for her in the wooded acres here, in which case she might slip back toward the road and another house, find sanctuary, call for help, backup—as she didn’t dare create the noise of a call from here, now. One hand deep in her pocket held onto her cell, the other held tight to the nail. Once she got some distance between them, she’d make a 9-1-1 call. She thank God that Hatfield hadn’t thought to get hold of her cell phone when he’d taken her Glock.

Hatfield had at least a hundred pounds on her.

“Float…float…float through the sky,” Hatfield sang on as he relentless came toward her.

She decided to remain as still and as inert as the tree she hugged and inched around as he came ever closer.

Still not breathing, or at least not so she noticed, Rae felt confident that her plan of survival had a good chance of working. She mentally steeled herself for anything now.

For the moment, it appeared her plan to blend with the night and the landscape was working, as she watched Roland Thomas Hatfield move past her. The black she’d decided on with her black leather jacket proved perfect.

“My troubles and I,” he continued singing.