“Sure,” she said. “Because he’s family. You can trust him.”
He breathed deep and exhaled slowly. “I trust you, Gwen.”
She looked startled. Then she positively glowed.
“Why, thank you,” she said. “I’m honored. As it happens, I trust you, too.”
“Good. That’s good.” He shifted slightly, searching for a path into the difficult conversation he wanted to have. “There’s something else I want to say. I respect what you do with your talent.”
Her eyes widened. “Really? I’m thrilled. I have to tell you there’s just not a lot of respect out there for those of us in the psychic counseling profession.”
“Okay, maybe I need to qualify my statement. I respect you. Not sure about the other psychic counselors. Lot of phonies out there.”
“Sadly, that is all too true.” She took a cautious sip of the tea. “Which is why I’m thinking of changing careers.”
“What?”
“I like this detecting business.”
“I can tell,” he growled.
“All modesty aside, I feel I have a certain flair for it.”
“You do,” he agreed. “But where, exactly, are you going with this?”
“I’ve been solving historical murder cases in a fictional sense for the past two years for Dead of Night. In the process, I’ve learned a lot about researching cold cases from Evelyn. I’ve learned a lot from you, too. In fact, I’ve picked up several very helpful pointers in the course of our partnership.”
“Gwen, if this is going where I think it’s going—”
“And then there’s my dream therapy work.” Gwen’s enthusiasm was growing stronger by the second. Her eyes sparkled. “When you think about it, that has a lot in common with what you do—searching for clues, understanding motives. It’s like I’ve been serving an apprenticeship all these years. Now I’m ready to come out of the shadows.”
He was getting a bad feeling, a real deer-in-the-headlights kind of feeling.
“What are you planning to do when this case is over?” he asked.
“I’m going to open a psychic detective agency,” Gwen announced.
She was damn near incandescent now, he thought.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” He set his cup down in the holder. “Gwen, listen to me, this business isn’t what you think it is.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t plan to compete with Coppersmith Consulting,” she said quickly. “I’m not interested in industrial espionage or secret agent work.”
“Okay, that’s a good thing because—”
“I’m thinking more along the lines of small, quiet murder cases and missing persons work.”
“There are no quiet cases of murder, and when people go missing it’s usually for a reason—often a dangerous reason.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”
“That’s supposed to reassure me? Gwen, you read auras for a living. You fix bad dreams, remember?”
“I just explained that background will be very helpful in my investigations.” Excitement and energy heated her eyes. “This feels right, Judson. It’s like I’ve been floundering around all my life trying to find myself and figure out what I ought to be doing.”
“You sound like my sister, Emma.”
“I’ve found my passion, Judson, just as you have. I’m sure your sister will find hers, too, eventually.”
For a nightmarish instant, he was back in the flooded caves, sucking up the last of the air in the tank. It took him a couple of seconds to breathe again.
He wanted her to feel passion for him, he realized, not for the investigation business. But she had a point. He did have a passion for the work that he did. How could he argue that she shouldn’t feel something similar? Because it could be dangerous. That was the reason. The thought of Gwen going off on her own to investigate small, quiet murder cases scared the living daylights out of him. But he also had to admit that he understood.
They sat quietly for a time, the rain drizzling steadily on the windshield. The surging energy of the falls was a palpable force that penetrated the SUV. Something deep inside Judson responded to the wild currents. The steady, unrelenting roar was muffled by the closed windows, but it was always there in the background. He wondered absently how many eons the water had been cascading over the cliff. You didn’t have to be psychic to know that there was such a thing as the paranormal. You only had to look at the forces of nature to realize that energy existed across a vast—perhaps an endless—spectrum that extended far beyond what people, with their limited senses and puny machines, could measure.
“Sometimes the hunt doesn’t end well,” he said after a while. “Sometimes I get the answer too late to do anyone any good. Sometimes people won’t accept the answers I come up with. Sometimes I don’t find any answers.”
“Sometimes I can’t fix a dreamscape,” Gwen said. “Sometimes my clients won’t accept the answers I come up with. Sometimes I can’t find the answers, either. But at least as a private investigator I’ll be able to find some of them.”
“The major drawback to investigation work is that you have to deal with the clients,” he said.
“They can’t be any more frustrating or difficult than my dream therapy clients.”
“Maybe not, but they can be more dangerous. My last client tried to kill me.”
“Good grief.” She swallowed hard. “Well, I promise I’ll be careful.”
“You keep saying that.”
“No offense, but given your career path, you aren’t in a position to lecture anyone else about the importance of not taking chances. Neither of us can ignore our talent, Judson.”
“This conversation isn’t going well, is it?” he said. “Maybe we should get back to the investigation that we’re trying to work on here.”
“Okay.”
He settled into the corner and rested one arm along the back of the seat. “It occurs to me that Zander Taylor may have given you more hard facts than you realize.”
Gwen’s brows elevated slightly. “What makes you say that?”
“A skilled liar is usually smart enough to mix in as much of the truth as possible. It makes for a more convincing story.”
“One thing I do know about Zander is that he was an excellent liar,” Gwen said.
“In which case, it’s possible that at least some of the information he gave Evelyn when he applied to the study was true,” Judson said.
“Even if you’re right, how do we sort the wheat from the chaff?”
Judson closed his eyes and summoned up a little energy, putting himself into the zone—into the head of the dead psychopath.
“Got a hunch that when we go looking, we’ll find out that Taylor really was adopted and that his adoptive parents were murdered—maybe by Taylor himself, given what I know of his para-psych profile—but that’s not our problem now.”
“Sometimes I wonder how many people he did kill, but I suppose we’ll never know,” Gwen said somberly. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”
Judson opened his eyes. “He was probably also telling the truth when he said he wound up in the foster care system. Those are all facts that could be verified. They are also facts that make him look somewhat sympathetic. That would be key to the impression he wanted to make.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you if only because when he talked about the system, it was clear that he had an intimate, working knowledge of it.”
“Like you?”
“Yes,” she said evenly. “But even if those particular facts are true, where does it get us?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he admitted. “Still asking questions. Turning over rocks. That’s how I work. But we need to move faster. I don’t have time to do the research. I’m going to put Sawyer on Zander Taylor’s backstory and see what he can find.” Judson reached for his phone. “Damn. It would be so useful to have those old files from Ballinger’s time as a counselor at Summerlight.”
“Wh
y?” Gwen asked,
He started to key in Sawyer’s phone number. “They might give us a better handle on Taylor, for one thing. The school must have had some data on his past.”
“But Zander didn’t attend Summerlight.”
Judson stilled just as he was about to punch in Sawyer’s number. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“I thought all of the subjects in the Ballinger Study were drawn from the Summerlight files.”
“Evelyn found most of us in her Summerlight records but not all of us,” Gwen said. “Back at the start, she also advertised briefly online. She gave up that approach after only a few days because she got flooded with replies from fantasy game players, fake psychics, and the alien-abduction and tinfoil-helmet crowd. She said there was no way to sort through all the wacky claims to try to find the one or two genuine talents who might have applied.”
“How did she find Taylor?”
“He told us that he saw one of those online ads that Evelyn ran at the start of the project. He contacted her online and charmed her by appealing to her academic pride. He posed as a serious researcher. Claimed he’d heard about her work in the field and that he had read some of the papers she had published in an online journal. When he offered to come to Wilby to meet with her at his own expense, she jumped at the chance. After she talked to him, she was convinced that he had some real talent.”
“That works.” Judson looked out at the thundering falls, the phone gripped in his hand. “It definitely works.”
“What are you talking about?” Gwen demanded. “Why is it important that Zander got involved in Evelyn’s study through an online ad?”
Judson turned back to her. “Think about it. Evelyn runs a short series of ads on the Internet and then cancels that recruitment approach in favor of relying on the Summerlight files. Yet in that brief span of time, she somehow attracts the attention of a psychic serial killer.”
Gwen nodded slowly. “There are a gazillion phony psychics advertising online. What are the odds that Taylor just happened to see Evelyn’s little ad? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re asking me, I have no idea what the odds are,” Gwen said. “I avoid math whenever possible.”
“This isn’t math—this is my intuition talking.”
Gwen smiled. “You mean your talent.”
“I think Zander Taylor found out about Evelyn and her study two years ago because he had a tripwire already in place.”
“Tripwire?”
“An alert system designed to make sure that any and all news out of Wilby, Oregon, popped up on his computer.”
“For heaven’s sake, why would he monitor news from this little dot on the map?”
“There’s only one reason that I can think of,” Judson said. “He kept track of Wilby because he had a personal connection here.”
“But no one here in town knew him—I’m sure of that. Someone would have said something at some point.”
“You told me that Louise Fuller wasn’t exactly the communicative type.”
“Louise.” Gwen’s eyes tightened a little at the corners. “Good heavens, you’re right. Nicole said that she tuned the crystal for him. That means he could have known about Louise before he came here to Wilby. Maybe he was using her all along to tune his camera. But none of his kills was in the vicinity of this town, at least none that we could identify.”
“A smart psychopath doesn’t foul his own nest, at least not unless he loses control or decides to get rid of witnesses. Why take the risk of killing locally?” Judson paused a beat. “Unless the challenge is downright irresistible.”
“Evelyn’s group of study subjects was an irresistible attraction,” Gwen whispered. “Zander’s addiction got the better of his control.”
“Taylor paid attention to events in Wilby because Louise Fuller, his tuner, was here. That leaves us with the question of how he found Louise in the first place.”
“And why no one in town knew him until he joined the study,” Gwen added.
Judson looked at the lab on the other side of the falls. “Just winging it here, but a couple of things I know for sure. Psychic talent seems to have a strong genetic component. If the Coppersmiths are any example, the ability to perceive and manipulate the paranormal can go down through the bloodline. The other thing I know is that family secrets are always the most tightly held.”
“Family secrets?” Gwen was dumbfounded.
“We need confirmation. I’ll call Sawyer.”
He keyed in the coded number.
Nick answered on the third ring. Judson could hear muffled voices in the background. One of them was his mother’s.
“This had better be important,” Nick said. “I’m a little busy at the moment, Coppersmith.”
“Doing what?” Judson asked.
“Getting fitted for my tux. By the way, your mother says that you had better show up for a fitting soon or you’re going to be in big trouble. You’re Sam’s best man, remember?”
“What I remember is that you’re supposed to be working on my case.”
“Some of us—those of us with true talent—are capable of multitasking. Your mother and me, for instance. By the way, Mrs. Coppersmith says to tell you that she hasn’t turned up any odd financial maneuvers on the part of anyone on the list of suspects you gave me.”
“I’ll add some more names to the list,” Judson said.
“Pink?” Outrage vibrated in Nick’s voice. “I’m walking the bride down the aisle. I can’t wear a pink shirt. This is a classic wedding. I wear a white shirt.”
“Damn it, Sawyer,” Judson said. “Pay attention.”
“Turns out that a couple of other heirs also spent some time in Sundew’s online chat room,” Nick said. “Neither had ever indicated any previous interest in psychic counseling. No, not pleats. Think Armani, not your high school prom rental.”
“Forget the damn fitting, Sawyer,” Judson said. “I’m pulling you off the psychic chat room project for now. Something more urgent has come up.”
Nick uttered a long-suffering sigh. “What do you want now?”
“Deep background on a woman named Louise Fuller.”
“What am I looking for?”
“Family history. I’m looking for a bloodline link between Louise and Zander Taylor.”
“The psycho who tried to murder Gwen? Shit. Think that son of a bitch is still alive after all?”
“You tell me.”
“Give me everything you’ve got on her,” Nick said.
Judson rattled off the few facts they had.
“I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve got something,” Nick promised, cold and serious now.
Judson ended the call.
“Now what?” Gwen asked.
“Now we wait,” Judson said. He hated this part. “I don’t think it’s going to take Sawyer long to find the answers, because I doubt if Louise knew how to bury her own past.”
Gwen watched him. “You already know the answer, don’t you?”
Judson hesitated. “I’ve learned the hard way not to leap to conclusions.”
“But you know, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only answer that fits.”
* * *
NICK CALLED BACK fifteen minutes later. Judson could hear the energy in his voice. We’re more alike than you think, Sawyer, he thought. We both thrive on the hunt.
He put the call on speakerphone so that Gwen could hear the conversation.
“I may have something and it’s not good,” Nick said. “Thirty-four years ago, Louise Fuller was living in L.A. Got caught up in a cult that was heavily into psychoactive drugs. The cult was really a cover for a well-organized criminal gang. The leader controlled his followers with drugs and sex. He used his male followers to sell the drugs, and he pimped out his female followers. Louise was one of the prostitutes. She got pregnant. Gave the baby up for adoption.”
“An
y leads on the father?”
“No. That’s a brick wall. Louise was living in a drug haze at the time. The cult leader was sending her out onto the streets every night to sleep with anyone who had the cash. According to the caseworker, Louise was delusional and incapable of handling motherhood due to addiction and mental health issues. The baby went to a childless couple who—”
“Were later murdered in the course of a home invasion,” Judson concluded.
“You’re thinking Louise’s baby was the future Zander Taylor, aren’t you?” Nick asked.
“It explains a lot. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who murdered his adoptive parents.”
“Yeah, struck me as a possibility, too,” Nick said. “At the time, young Zander was in therapy. Actually, he had been for years because he was exhibiting the usual warning signs—torturing small animals and setting fires—at an early age. He was thirteen when the so-called home invasion took place. He told police he came home from school and found the bodies. Afterward he went into foster care for a couple of years, bounced around in the system creating havoc wherever he landed and, eventually, to everyone’s great relief, disappeared.”
“What about Louise?”
“The cult eventually broke up,” Nick said. “The leader vanished. Louise moved to Wilby and started making her wind chimes for fun and profit.”
“Looks like Taylor tracked her down at some point. By then he had a handle on his own talent. By all accounts, he was an expert when it came to charming people. Louise would have been an especially easy target because she was psychologically fragile.”
Gwen spoke up from the other seat. “And because she was his mother, for heaven’s sake. Part of her would have wanted to be reunited with her only child.”
“You’re usually right when it comes to that kind of stuff, Gwen,” Nick said.
“I’m guessing that Louise gave the crystal that powered the camera to her son,” Gwen continued. “She was always worried about demons. Maybe she gave him the crystal as a sort of personal protection device.”
“Taylor came back to Wilby periodically to get his weapon refocused,” Judson said. “Louise probably never knew what he was doing with it.”