Touching Evil (3 page)

"If anybody can guide those women back through the hell they experienced without hurting them even more, it's Maggie. Whether she gets anything we can use is something else. We'll just have to wait and see." He watched John Garrett shift in his chair almost
unconsciously and for the first time felt a genuine pang of sympathy for the other man. He might be a pain in the ass at the moment, but his motives were certainly understandable, and Drummond could hardly blame him for muscling in on the investigation. In Garrett's place, Drummond thought he'd probably do the same.

Assuming, of course, that he had a billion or so dollars and a shitload of political influence to make both the chief and the mayor practically piss their pants in their eagerness to be cooperative.

Luke Drummond would have loved to have at least that political influence; he intended to sit in the governor's mansion one day. He hadn't made any secret of his political aspirations and, despite not being an elected official, tended to react to any situation as a politician rather than a cop, but to date that hadn't hurt either his present career or his ambitions. He was enough of a cop to be able to do his job and do it well.

At least until this damned psychopath had turned up.

At the moment, however, Drummond had neither Garrett's political juice nor his money, so it was in the cop's best interest to be at least courteous to the man.

"Maggie needs time to interview the two surviving victims," he said evenly. "We have to be patient."

"He attacked Hollis Templeton a little more than three weeks ago; how much longer do you think he'll wait before he acts again?" John heard the edgy tension in his own voice, but he was beyond being able to hide it.

Drummond sighed. "According to the shrinks, he could grab another woman tomorrow—or six months
from now. So far, he hasn't established any kind of time pattern we can identify. There were two months between the first two victims, but he grabbed the third only two weeks later. Then he waited nearly three months to strike a fourth time."

"No pattern," John echoed.

"And nothing else to hang our hats on. No blood evidence other than the victims', and he was smart enough to wear condoms, so there's been no semen found. Nothing under the fingernails of the victims, no hair or fibers found on them or anywhere near them, nothing to identify where he might have held them. They're always dumped someplace else afterward, a remote or at least unoccupied building. Ellen Randall remembers being transported inside something, the trunk of a car, she thinks, but since he stuck to pavement we didn't find any tire tracks."

"How was Hollis Templeton transported?"

"We don't know, not yet. I told you, she's not answering our questions. Her doctors say Maggie can try talking to her in a few days. That's if she's agreeable, and she probably won't be, since she hasn't been anxious to talk to us so far."

"What then?"

"I don't know." Drummond sighed again. "Look, Garrett, I'm sorry as hell, but there's nothing more I can tell you, at least not at the moment. We're doing the best we can. And that's all."

Andy was waiting for John around the corner from Drummond's office and offered a wry "Told you so."

"I can see I'm going to make myself real popular around here," John said.

"Oh, don't mind Drummond. He's a nice enough guy, for a politician."

"I'd rather he were just a cop."

"Yeah, so would most of us. But we comfort ourselves with the certainty that he won't be around long, just long enough to get a secure toehold to boost himself higher up the food chain. In the meantime, however, we're stuck with him."

Andy led the way to his own corner of the bullpen, snagging two cups of coffee as they passed the pot.

"Jeez, Andy, take it all, why don't you?" a nearby younger cop grumbled. "You could at least make another pot."

"I made the last one, Scott. Your turn."

John sat in Andy's visitor's chair and accepted one of the cardboard cups. He took a sip, grimaced, and said, "This is really lousy coffee, Andy."

"Usually is, no matter who makes it." Unoffended, Andy took a healthy swallow of his own and shrugged. "You going to wait around for Maggie?"

"Do you think she'll talk to me?"

Andy thought about it. "Well, you pissed her off, so it's hard to say. Just what is it you're hoping she'll tell you, John?"

There was no easy answer to that, and John let the silence build for a few moments before he finally replied with a question of his own. "Why are all of you so convinced she's your best chance of catching this bastard? What is it that's so special about Maggie Barnes?"

Andy leaned back in his chair until it creaked in protest, and took another swallow of coffee. He studied the man across from him, wondering how much to say. Wondering how much would be believed. John Garrett was a hardheaded, hard-nosed businessman who'd made a fortune by understanding the cold logic
of finance; Andy hadn't known him long, but common sense told him John wasn't the sort of man to easily accept anything he couldn't see with his own eyes or hold in his hands.

"Andy?"

"Maggie has ... a knack, John. You can call it exceptional skill, or talent amounting to genius, or amazing empathy, but whatever you call it, the result is that she talks to shattered victims of crimes and from the little they're able to tell her she manages to give us a face we can look for."

"I didn't think police even used sketch artists anymore. Isn't there a computer program just as good?"

"Not as good as Maggie."

"She's that talented?"

Andy hesitated, then sighed. "Talent's only part of it, though she has that in spades. She could make a fortune as a real artist, but instead she spends her days sitting in cramped interview rooms listening to horror stories I hope you never have to listen to. She listens, and she talks to those people, and somehow she helps them relive a nightmare without letting it destroy them. And then she comes out and starts drawing and nine times out of ten gives us a sketch so accurate the guy could use it on his driver's license."

"Sounds like magic," John said dryly.

"Yeah. It does, doesn't it? Looks like it sometimes too. I don't know how she does it. Nobody here knows how she does it. But we've learned to trust her, John."

"Okay. Then why doesn't she have a sketch of the rapist yet?"

"Because not even Maggie can work with nothing. The women haven't
seen
anything. And besides that—the first victim died before anybody could talk to her, the
most recent one is still in the hospital, and you saw what kind of shape Ellen Randall's in."

"You didn't mention Christina," John forced himself to say.

Andy gazed at him steadily. "I didn't think I had to. She did the best she could for us, but she didn't see anything either."

"Maggie Barnes talked to her, didn't she? That's what you told me, what the report said."

"Yeah, she talked to Christina."

"Without witnesses?"

Slowly, Andy frowned. "Without anybody in the observation room, if that's what you mean."

"Then maybe she can tell me something none of the rest of you can tell me."

"Like what?"

"Like why Christina killed herself."

CHAPTER
 
TWO

As she'd expected, Maggie quickly found that Ellen
Randall had withdrawn again into her frozen shell. Pushing her would only make matters worse. So Maggie didn't protest when Lindsay announced she was taking her sister home, and she didn't try to arrange another meeting.

Even though she could hear the clock ticking away in her head. Time was running out, she knew it. She felt it. And every day that passed with the police no closer to catching the animal the newspapers had begun calling the Blindfold Rapist brought them closer and closer to another victim.

Another life ruined.

Another soul marked.

Worse, Maggie knew that he would only become more violent as time passed. It would take more cruelty to satisfy whatever unnatural hunger drove him to
do what he did. Soon, very soon, he would begin killing his victims. And when that happened, when the police were denied even the shaky recollections of living victims, then they would have no chance at all of stopping him—unless and until he made a mistake.

So far, he hadn't made a single one.

Maggie glanced into the bullpen and saw John Garrett sitting at Andy's desk. She didn't want to talk to Garrett, not now. Not yet. She retreated to an unoccupied office near the interview rooms and sat down with her sketch pad open before her.

There was very little on the page. Just the vague shape of a face surrounded by hair so long that Maggie suspected he'd worn a wig. At their first meeting a few days before, Ellen Randall had given Maggie that much. Longish hair, she'd felt it brush her skin when he bent over her.

But no other useful details, nothing for her to build on. Maggie had no feeling for the shape of the face, whether his forehead was high or low, his jaw strong or weak, his chin jutting or receding. She didn't even know if his complexion was smooth or rough; both Ellen and one other victim thought they remembered the touch of cool, hard plastic covering his face, as though he'd worn a mask.

Just the possibility disturbed Maggie, on a level as much instinctive as it was analytical. What man would be so wary of discovery, of being identified, that he would wear a mask even after blinding his victims? Of course, criminals seldom wanted to be identified, but Maggie had talked to the cops working on the investigation, and all of them agreed that this particular criminal was going to unusual extremes to protect his identity.

Why?

Was there something about his face even a blinded victim could recognize when it touched her? Scars, perhaps, or some other kind of deformity?

"Maggie?"

She didn't look up and swore silently at him for disrupting a mental musing that had often, in the past, produced results for her. "Hey, Luke."

He came into the office and sat down in the visitor's chair across from hers. "Any luck?"

"No, unless you count bad luck." She closed the sketch pad with a sigh. "Ellen froze up again. We were . . . interrupted, and it broke the connection I was trying to establish. I'll have to wait a few days and then get her back in here."

"I just talked to Hollis Templeton's doctor," Drummond said. "She's doing even better than he'd hoped, physically at least. He's hopeful the surgery was a success. If it was, if she can see again, then maybe . . ."

"Maybe what?" Maggie looked at him steadily. "Maybe she'll be a little less traumatized and able to help us?"

"It's possible, Maggie."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know it is. It's also possible she noticed things the other victims wouldn't have. Since she was an artist, I mean."

"Would you go try to talk to her? She hasn't said shit to any of us, but she might talk to you."

"I'd rather wait until she leaves the hospital. The atmosphere there isn't exactly conducive to the kind of conversation I need."

"I know, but. . . there's a lot of pressure, more every day. The newspapers, citizens' groups, the mayor. There's
a panic building out there, Maggie, and I can't stop it. Get me something I can use to stop it."

"I can't work miracles, Luke."

"You have before."

She shook her head. "That was different. This guy is determined his victims will never testify against him. He's not letting them see him, he doesn't speak to them, he makes damned sure they don't get their hands on him. The only sense left is smell, and so far all I've got is that he smells like Ivory soap. Deliberately, of course. He's using the scent of the soap to block anything else they might smell."

"Yeah, I know he hasn't missed a trick so far. But, like you said, his most recent victim was an artist, and I'm told artists are trained to use their senses differently from most of the rest of us. Hollis Templeton might be able to give you more to go on. Try, Maggie. Please."

She had stopped wondering if he had any idea what he asked of her, of the victims. He didn't. Luke Drummond was a fair cop, an able administrator, and a good politician, but he didn't have much in the way of imagination or empathy, not when it came to victims.

Did he even guess she was as much a victim as the women she talked to? No, probably not.

"I'll go over there tomorrow," she said. "But if she won't talk to me, I can't press her, Luke. You know that."

"Just try, that's all I ask." He got to his feet, visibly relieved. She could almost see him silently deciding what he was going to tell the chief of police and the mayor. He wouldn't mention her by name, of course, just say that they were "pursuing a good lead in the investigation."

It wasn't that Luke Drummond didn't want to share the credit, it was just that he mistrusted what he didn't understand, and he didn't understand how she did what she did. He wouldn't have understood even if she had explained it to him—and she had no intention of doing that.