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“I don’t care,” he whispered. He ran his free hand over his scruffy face, then rubbed one of his eyes with his fist. “I need to talk to her, and he told me that you could make that happen, but I want proof.”
Cass closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. The white room started to take shape in her mind, and as soon as it did, the door flew open, slamming back against the white wall. A stinging sensation lanced her brain as the rush of energy hit her. When she opened her eyes, a woman stood on the other side of the door. She was younger. Dark and pretty and dressed in a silk purple teddy. She cried as she spoke.
Cass focused her attention on the desperate man in front of her as she listened to the voice in her head.
“She bought a purple teddy,” Cass relayed. “Your birthday was last month, wasn’t it? The tenth?”
His hand clenched more tightly around the gun and he wet his lips. He nodded. “Yes. It was a Monday.”
“She wanted to surprise you. Shock you a little, I think. But every time she put it on, she always took it off right after. She thought it made her hips look fat. She was very self-conscious.”
His lips wobbled into a distracted smile. “She hated her hips.”
“I know,” Cass said gently. “She wants you to put the gun down, Jess.”
“How do you know my name?”
“She told me.”
“She can’t,” he whimpered. “She can’t talk anymore.”
“Yes, she can,” Cass countered softly as she moved a step closer toward him. The gun practically touched her nose. “And she wants you to give me the gun. She says it’s for the best.”
“Don’t…” Jess muttered.
The man in the chair started to move again, and his actions startled Jess. Predictably, Jess panicked at the sudden movement and in retaliation pushed the end of the revolver against the center of Cass’s forehead.
“Don’t move, man—I’ll kill her. You don’t know. I’ll do it. I have nothing to live for. Nothing.”
Cass shuddered at the feel of the cold steel pressed between her eyes. Trembling slightly, she still managed to lift her hand to signal to Large Latte Light Foam to stay back.
“It’s okay. Sit down.” She turned her head and felt the tip of the gun graze her brow as she made eye contact with the wannabe hero. He was shaking, and she could see that he wanted to act. Not that it would have been an easy task considering he still held a book in one hand and a coffee mug in the other.
Mentally, she commended him for the effort. However, if he moved, she had no doubt she would be dead before he overtook Jess. Cass wasn’t overly concerned about the prospect, but she knew it didn’t have to end this way.
“You’re not going to kill me, Jess,” she told him, turning back slowly so that she once again made eye contact. “You’re going to give me the gun. She wants me to remind you about what you said on your wedding day. You said you would never hurt her. You said you wouldn’t hurt a bug if that’s what she wanted. That’s how much you loved her. She doesn’t want you to hurt me.”
With that, he dropped his head and wept deep, gut-wrenching sobs. His arms fell to his side, and the .38 revolver hung loosely in his hand. She reached out and took it. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I need to talk to her,” he gasped. “I have to let her know I’m sorry.”
“She knows.”
“I thought the purple teddy was for…”
“It wasn’t, Jess. It was for you.”
“I know that now,” he snapped. “I read it in her diary.”
Once again she met his wide, wild eyes, and her body tightened in reaction. She placed the gun on the counter behind her, then slowly reached inside the useful pocket in the front of her apron where she typically kept squeeze bottles filled with caramel.
Before she could get her hand free of the pocket, he grabbed her. His fingers wrapped around her upper arms, squeezing them painfully. “You have to tell her something for me. You have to tell her I didn’t mean it.”
“You can tell her yourself,” she replied calmly, tugging gently to extract her hand from the apron. “You’ve always had the ability. Now, I have to make some calls. I’m very sorry. This isn’t going to hurt. Much.”
His body jerked abruptly and for a second the grip on her arms tightened even more, causing her to wince. Then he fell lifelessly to the ground.
Large Latte Light Foam moved to stand over the prostrate man. “What did you do to him?”
Cass held up a strange-looking weapon. “It’s a stun gun. It gave him a jolt, that’s all. Susie, call 911.”
“You’re hurt,” the man said, raising his hand with the book in it, probably for the first time realizing he still held it, and pointing at her nose.
Cass reached for her face, and when she pulled her hand back she saw the blood on her fingers. Inwardly, she cursed. A result of the connection. Jess’s wife had been more intense than Susie’s mom. She dug out a tissue from her apron pocket and held it against her nostrils to stem the flow.
“It’s just a bloody nose. I get them.”
Susie was still staring at the body. “Oh, my God, that was so scary and weird and…”
“911, now!” Cass barked. She didn’t have time for hysterics. There was no way of knowing how long the man would stay down.
“And tell the dispatcher he’ll need to call Homicide,” she instructed. “There’s been a murder.”
The couple from the back had joined the group. The girl clung to her boyfriend as they both stared down at Jess, whose right leg twitched uncontrollably.
“I don’t get it,” the boyfriend said. “What was that all about? What did he want? Who are you?
“I work here,” Cass said.
Large Latte Light Foam snorted. “Why did you want her to tell the cops that we needed a homicide detective if he’s not dead?”
“Because he killed his wife.”
“You can’t know that,” the girlfriend said, muffled against her boyfriend’s chest. “Right? She’s freaking me out, Ted.”
“Sorry,” Cass apologized to the girl. But it wasn’t as if she could help it, and she wasn’t one to hold back the truth, no matter how bizarre it was.
“How?” Large Latte Light Foam wanted to know, his tone clipped, his face a picture of suspicion. It was an expression Cass was used to. “How do you know he did it? He didn’t say he did it.”
“No, he didn’t,” Cass agreed calmly. “But she did.”
Chapter 2
“Cass!”
Cass glanced up at the sound of her name and scowled.
“Dougie, you better have a really good reason for this,” she warned.
She’d been summoned down to police headquarters, located in Center City, Philadelphia, about a half hour ago. It was past one in the morning, and after the night she’d already had she was beyond exhausted.
And the lobby’s hardwood bench was killing her ass.
But Dougie never called unless it was important. When she’d walked into her apartment, the phone in the kitchen had been ringing. Despite the strangeness of the hour, and the likelihood that the call was important, she’d let the machine pick it up. When she’d heard Dougie’s plaintive voice calling to her from the machine, she’d groaned, knowing she wouldn’t be able to resist him.
Once, she’d thought it was his big brown eyes that were irresistible, but now she knew it was his voice. Half man’s, half boy’s, his voice compelled every woman within earshot to want to either save him or cook for him.
Since she’d been pumped up from the adrenaline rush of almost being shot, and since the possibility of falling asleep had seemed remote, Cass had buckled and returned his call.
Now her butt was numb, the adrenaline high was completely over, and all she could think about was how she would have absolutely no problem getting to sleep. Instead, she was at police headquarters, a place, she had learned from experience, where nothing good ever happened.
Detective Doug Brody stopped and checked over his shoulder for any other cops who might be lingering in the area, then shook his finger at her, accompanied by a stern look. “How many times have I told you not to call me Dougie?”
“I can’t help it. It’s your name.”
“Doug. Doug is my name. Dougie is what my mother calls me.”
Cass smiled, knowing he truly didn’t mind because Dougie was also what his wife used to call him. Then she turned her smile into a grimace.
“Don’t mess with me tonight, Detective. I’m crabby and tired. Did you hear about what happened at the coffeehouse?”
“Yep.”
“Then you know we were all stuck there for almost two hours giving our statements.”
“Yep.”
“I had just gotten home when the phone rang,” she elaborated. Dougie should understand the nuances of a guilt trip when it was being given. His mother was a professional at it.
“I know that, too,” he said.
“What are you? Psychic?”
“Cute.” He smirked. “Real cute. No, I heard about the husband and what happened, which was what made me think of you for this in the first place. I called one of the officers, hoping he would bring you here directly, but you had already left.”
“Did he make a statement?” Cass wanted to know. “Jess. Did he tell you where he…put her?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t in the room, but I got it from Steve. He broke down and confessed to the whole thing before Steve even started questioning him. They sent a team out to the house. Turns out he buried her in the basement.”
Cass wrapped her hands around either arm. How sad for both of them. Maggie—that had been her name—had loved her husband. But he’d been too wrapped up in jealousy, pride and ego. He claimed he’d come to Cass for help, but she believed he wanted to be caught. Maggie’s message had been very clear about stopping him, and the dead didn’t lie in her room.
The room itself was nothing more than a mental image she constructed and projected to help her deal with her gift.
As a child Cass had been assaulted by images and voices that accompanied a strange burst of pain that she couldn’t predict. The inability at first to understand what was happening to her, then to control it, had nearly driven her mad.
Over time, with the help of others who understood her mental anguish, she learned to recognize the precursors of contact: the tingling sensation on the back of her neck, sometimes a subtle change in the feel of the air around her. Once Cass was able to determine when contact was about to happen, she could set the imaginary room as a stage for the dead, with them on one side of the door and her on the other as a way to keep herself separate. When the door opened, she knew to brace herself for the searing burst of energy that always followed.
Crossing the barrier between the living and the dead was never a gentle moment.
For her the gift wasn’t like what was described in movies or on TV talk shows. It wasn’t letters of the alphabet, dates and different-colored flowers and serene images of a heavenly place. It was real images and actual voices. It didn’t mean those TV people were frauds: only that for her the gift was different.
Cass likened it to talent. Some people had musical talent or athletic talent or artistic talent. And even within a type of talent there were different strengths. Some artists used watercolors, others oil, still others used metal.
A gift, like a talent, was unique to the individual.
Hers just happened to hurt, which is why she did everything she could to prepare herself for the impact. Conjuring the door to ready her body and mind for what was coming was one way of dealing with it, and using yoga and Pilates to strengthen her body physically so that she was better able to handle the impact was another.
“Are you okay?” He had covered her hands with his and was rubbing strongly to warm her up as well as offer support. “You look a little pale.”
She glanced up into his narrow face and brown eyes. He was smiling gently, caringly. She might have wondered how he managed to stay untouched by the ugliness and despair that surrounded murder and in turn surrounded him. The answer was obvious.
Because he was a good man. Just not her man.
Deliberately, Cass backed away from his touch. “I’m good now.”
He sighed but took a step back as well. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. “Apparently, he was saying a lot of stuff in the conference room.” Conference room being a euphemism for interrogation room.
“You said it was Steve interrogating him?”
He nodded. “We both switched to the late shift.”
“Steve thinks I’m a wacko,” Cass said. “I can’t do anything about that.”
“Fortunately, with the confession, you shouldn’t need to get involved. Once the uniforms dig up the body, it will be a slam dunk.”
Cass turned to reach for her purse, which she’d set on the evil wooden bench. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you guys to spruce up the waiting area a little. Some cushions. Maybe a chair pillow or two.”
“Police stations aren’t designed for making people comfortable,” he returned. “I know it’s been a long night for you, and I wouldn’t have called you down here after all that, but I need your help with something.”
“What is it?”
“A case. A girl, about twenty, stabbed yesterday, not too far from where you live. I’ve got her brother, a man named Malcolm McDonough, in for questioning. The name ring a bell?”
“Should it?”
Dougie shrugged. “I guess not.”
“You think he did it?”
“I don’t know. This guy is a city bigwig. Construction, money, politics and all that shit. He’s got the mayor in his back pocket, and if I push too hard and he’s innocent, it’s going to be my neck on the line. I’ve been pressing him for hours, but I can’t get a read on him. He’s ice. Some people, that’s how they react when someone close to them dies. But it’s also how someone acts if he’s a sociopath. I need a feel one way or the other.”
She knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t the first time she’d worked with the police. After she and Dougie had met, he’d come to respect her in ways that few people ever had. He saw her talent as something that could be helpful, not hurtful, and periodically, usually over the grumbles and jests of his colleagues and superiors, he was given the authority to hire her as a consultant. While she didn’t possess the more common psychic gifts used by other law enforcement agencies, in certain circumstances she could be useful.
Like in determining a suspect’s innocence or guilt.
“We can’t hold him much longer. He’s been in since this afternoon. He hasn’t lawyered up yet, but he’s getting impatient. It’s just a matter of time.”
“Your captain knows I’m here?”
