“Anything else?”
“A few small palms... farther back.”
Harley Barnes squinted through the rain-dappled windshield. He was searching for a pair of magnolias.
Initially he had been skeptical. In fact, he’d been certain the Bergens were frauds. He played his role in the charade because the mayor was a believer. The mayor brought them to town and insisted the police cooperate with them.
Barnes had read about psychic detectives, of course, and most especially about that famous Dutch clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos. But using ESP to track down a psychopathic killer, to catch him in the act? He didn’t put much faith in that.
Or do I? he wondered. This woman was so lovely, charming, earnest, so convincing that perhaps she’d made a believer of him. If she hasn’t, he thought, why am I looking for magnolia trees?
She made a sound like an animal caught in a saw-toothed trap for a long time. Not a screech of agony, but a nearly inaudible mewl.
When an animal made that noise, it meant, “This still hurts, but I’m resigned to it now.”
Many years ago, as a boy in Minnesota, Barnes had hunted and trapped. It was that same pitiful, stifled moan of the wounded prey that caused him to give up his sport.
Until tonight, he had never heard precisely the same sound issue from a human being. Apparently, as she used her talent to zero in on the killer, she suffered from contact with his deranged mind.
Barnes shivered.
“Mary,” her husband said. “What’s the matter?”
“I see him... at the back door of the house. His hand on the door... and blood... his blood on a white door frame. He’s talking to himself.”
“What’s he saying?”
“I don’t...”
“Mary?”
“He’s saying filthy things about the woman.”
“The woman in the house—the one he’s after tonight?”
“Yes.”
“He knows her?”
“No. She’s a stranger... random target. But he’s been... watching her... watching her for several days... knows her habits and routines.”
With those last few words she slumped against the door. She took several deep breaths. She was forced to relax periodically to regroup her energies if she were to maintain the psychic thread. For some clairvoyants, Barnes knew, the visions came without strain, virtually without effort; but apparently not for this one.
Phantom voices whispered and crackled, came and went in staccato bursts on the police radio.
The wind carried fine sheets of rain across the roadway.
The wettest rainy season in years, Barnes thought. Twenty years ago it would have seemed normal. But California had steadily become a drought state. This much rain was unnatural now. Like everything else that’s happening tonight, he thought.
Waiting for Mary to speak, he slowed to less than five miles an hour.
Matched magnolia trees flanking a winding tile walk
...
He found it taxing to see what lay in the headlights directly in front of him, and extremely difficult to discern the landscaping on either side. They might already have passed the magnolias.
Brief as it was, Mary Bergen’s hesitation elicited Dan Goldman’s first words in more than an hour. “We haven’t much time left, Mrs. Bergen.”
Goldman was a reliable young officer, the chief’s most trusted subordinate. He was sitting beside Max Bergen, behind Barnes, his eyes fixed on the woman.
Goldman believed in psychic powers. He was impressionable. And as Barnes could see in the rearview mirror, the events of the evening had left a haunted look on his broad, plain face.
“We don’t have much time,” Goldman said again. “If this madman’s already at the woman’s back door—”
Abruptly, Mary turned to him. Her voice was freighted with concern. “Don’t get out of this car tonight—not until the man is caught.”
“What do you mean?” Goldman asked.
“If you try to help capture him, you’ll be hurt.”
“He’ll kill me?”
She shuddered convulsively. New beads of sweat popped out at her hairline.
Barnes felt perspiration trickle down his face, too.
She said to Goldman, “He’ll stab you... with the same knife he’s used on all the women... hurt you badly... but not kill you.” Closing her eyes, speaking between clenched teeth, she said,
“Stay in the car!”
“Harley?” Goldman asked worriedly.
“It’ll be all right,” Barnes assured him.
“You’d better listen to her,” Max told Goldman. “Don’t leave the car.”
“If I need you,” Barnes told Goldman, “you’ll come with me. No one will be hurt.” He was concerned that the woman was undermining his authority. He glanced at her. “We need a number for the house you’ve described, a street address.”
“Don’t press,” her husband said sharply. With everyone but Mary he had a voice like two rough steel bars scraped against each other. “It won’t do any good whatsoever to press her. It’ll only interfere.”
“It’s okay, Max,” she said.
“But I’ve told them before,” he said.
She faced front once more. “I see... the rear door of the house. It’s open.”
“Where’s the man, the killer?” Max asked.
“He’s standing in a dark room... small... the laundry room... that’s what it is ... the laundry room behind the kitchen.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s opening another door... to the kitchen... no one in there... a dim light on over the gas range... a few dirty dishes on the table... he’s standing... just standing there and listening... left hand in a fist to stop the thumb from bleeding... listening... Benny Goodman music on a stereo in the living room...” Touching Barnes’ arm, a new and urgent tone in her voice, she said, “Just two blocks from here. On the right. The second house... no, the third from the corner.”
“You’re positive?”
“For God’s sake,
hurry!”
Am I about to make a fool of myself? Barnes wondered. If I take her seriously and she’s wrong, I’ll be the punch line of bad jokes for the rest of my career.
Nevertheless, he switched on the siren and tramped the accelerator to the floor. The tires spun on the pavement. With a squeal of rubber, the car surged forward.
Breathlessly she said, “I still see... he’s crossing the kitchen... moving slowly...”
If she’s faking all this, Barnes thought, she’s a hell of a good actress.
The Ford raced along the poorly lit street. Rain snapped against the windshield. They swept through a four-way stop, then toward another.
“Listening ... listening between steps ... cautious... nervous... taking the knife out of his overcoat pocket... smiling at the sharp edge of the blade... such a big knife...”
In the block she had specified they fishtailed to a stop at the curb in front of the third house on the right: a pair of matched magnolias, a winding walk, a two-story stucco with lights on downstairs.
“Goddamn,” Goldman said, more reverently than not. “It fits her description perfectly.”
2
BARNES GOT OUT of the car as the siren moaned into silence.
The revolving red emergency lights cast frenetic shadows on the wet pavement. Another black-and-white had pulled in behind the first, adding its beacons to the cascade of bloody color.
Several men had already climbed out of the second car. Two uniformed officers, Malone and Gonzales, hurried toward Barnes. Mayor Henderson, round and shiny in his black vinyl rain slicker, looked like a balloon bouncing along the street. Close behind him was whip-thin little Harry Oberlander, Henderson’s most vocal critic on the city council.
The last man was Alan Tanner, Mary Tanner Bergen’s brother. Ordinarily, he would have been in the first car with his sister
;
but he and Max had argued earlier and were keeping away from each other.
“Malone, Gonzales... split up,” Barnes said. “Flank the house. Go around it and meet at the rear door. I’ll take the front. Now move it!”
“What about me?” Goldman asked.
Barnes sighed. “You better stay here.”
Goldman was relieved.
Taking the .357 Magnum from his holster, Barnes hurried up the tile walk. The name “Harrington” was printed on the mailbox. As he rang the doorbell, the rain suddenly lost most of its power. The downpour became a drizzle.
Alerted by the sirens, she had watched his approach from the window. She answered the door at once.
“Mrs. Harrington?”
“Miss
Harrington. After the divorce, I took my maiden name.”
She was a petite blonde in her early forties. She had a lush figure, but she wasn’t carrying any excess weight.
Apparently, her primary occupation was taking good care of herself. Although she wore jeans and a T-shirt and didn’t appear to be going out for the evening, her hair looked as if it had been styled minutes ago
;
her false eyelashes and makeup were perfectly applied
;
and her nails were freshly painted the color of orange sherbet.
“Are you alone?” Barnes asked.
Lasciviously, she said, “Why do you ask?”
“This is police business, Miss Harrington.”
“What a shame.” She had a drink in one hand. He knew it wasn’t her first of the night.
“Are you alone?” he asked again.
“I live by myself.”
“Is everything all right?”
“I don’t like living by myself.”
“That’s not what I meant. Are you all right? Is there any trouble here?”
She looked at the revolver that he held at his side. “Should there be?”
Exasperated with her and with having to talk above the loud swing music that boomed behind her, he said, “Maybe. We think your life’s in danger. ”
She laughed.
“I know it sounds melodramatic, but—”
“Who’s after me?”
“The newspapers call him ‘The Slasher.’”
She frowned, then instantly dropped the expression as if she had remembered that frowning caused wrinkles. “You’re kidding.”
“We have reason to believe you’re his target tonight.”
“What reason?”
“A clairvoyant.”
“A what?”
Malone entered the living room behind her and switched off the stereo.
She turned, surprised.
Malone said, “We found something, Chief.”
Barnes stepped into the house, uninvited. “Yeah?”
“The back door was open.”
“Did you leave it open?” Barnes asked the woman.
“On a night like this?”
“Was it locked?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’s blood on the door frame,” Malone said. “More of it on the door between the laundry room and the kitchen.”
“But he’s gone?”
“Must have run when he heard the sirens.”
Sweating, aware of his too-rapid heartbeat, wondering how to fit clairvoyance and the other psychic phenomena into his previously uncomplicated view of life, Barnes followed the younger officer through the kitchen and laundry room. The woman stayed close beside him, asking questions that he didn’t bother answering.
Hector Gonzales was waiting at the back door.
“There’s an alleyway behind that chain-link fence,” Barnes told him. “Get back there and search for our man, two blocks in each direction.”
The woman said, “I’m bewildered.”
So am I, Barnes thought.
To Malone he said, “Beat the shrubs around both sides of the house. And check out that line of bushes near the fence.”
“Right.”
“And both of you, keep your guns drawn.”
Waiting by the squad cars in front of the house, Harry Oberlander was baiting the mayor. He shook his head as if the very sight of Henderson amazed him. “What a mayor you are,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “Hiring a witch to do police work.”
Henderson responded like a weary giant spotting yet one more tiny challenger with delusions of grandeur. “She’s not a witch.”
“Don’t you know there’s no such thing as a witch?”
“Like I said, Councilman, she’s not a witch.”
“She’s a fake.”
“A clairvoyant.”
“Clairvoyant, shmairvoyant.”
“So clever with language.”
“It’s just a fancier name for a witch.”
Dan Goldman watched Oberlander, as weary of the argument as the mayor was. There are no worse enemies, he thought, than two men who used to be best friends. He would have to separate them if Harry became dissatisfied with words and started to throw a few fast but largely ineffective punches at the mayor’s well-padded belly. It had happened before.
“You know why I sold you my half of the furniture business?” Oberlander asked Henderson.
“You sold out because you didn’t have any vision,” Henderson said smugly.
“Vision, smision. I sold out because I knew a superstitious fool like you would run it into the ground sooner or later.”
“The store’s more profitable now than ever before,” Henderson said.
“Luck! Blind luck!”
Fortunately, before the first punch could be thrown, Harley Barnes came to the front door of the house and shouted, “It’s all right. Come on.”
“Now we’ll see who’s the fool,” Henderson said. “They must have caught him.” He ran across the sidewalk and the slippery wet lawn with that unexpected grace peculiar to certain very fat men.
Oberlander scurried after him, an angry mouse snapping at the heels of a behemoth.
Suppressing a laugh, Goldman followed.
Alan Tanner sat behind the steering wheel in order to be in the front seat with his sister. When he saw Harley Barnes at the door of the house, he said, “Did they get the killer, Mary?”
“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was hollow
;
she sounded drained.
“Wouldn’t there have been a shot?”
“I don’t know.”
“There would have been some commotion.”
“I guess so.”