Danger Signals

Chapter 6

"You're sure about this? No mistake?"

Tierney gave Wade a quick glance and said jerkily, "I know what I felt." She was out of breath from walking rapidly, trying to keep up with him as they'd scoured every inch of the rose garden.

She'd long ago taken off her shoes and was carrying them in one hand, dangling by the heel straps. As she lifted the shoes in order to wipe the back of her hand against a trickle of sweat creeping down her forehead. Wade eyed the shoes and frowned.

"Look, there's no point in running all over the place. He's gone by now anyway."

She halted and let her shoulders slump. "Wade, I'm sorry. I should have-"

"Not your fault." It was the same thing he'd said the first eight or so times she'd apologized. And she still didn't believe it.

"I picked it up when he shook your hand. I could have said something then, but there was that family wanting me to take their pictures. I should have just told them no, or I didn't understand, or something."

"Forget it. We've got his name, anyway-assuming he gave us the right one. Cory Pearson-jeez, a journalist? And you're sure he's the one. You didn't just pick up somebody else's emotions that happened to be floating around? You did say they have weddings here. The whole place is probably lousy with love."

She lifted her hand-and the shoes-again, this time in an unsuccessful attempt to catch the bubble of laughter that burst from her lips.

Wade threw her a look and said. "What's funny?"

She shook her head, still smiling, knowing it would be pointless to say. "Nothing." Knowing she couldn't possibly tell him how ridiculously happy it made her feel that he believed in her gift.

Although…it was a happiness so fragile that even recognizing its existence was enough to destroy it. What was she thinking? To let anyone's opinion of her matter so much was unwise. To allow any man's belief or disbelief to have the power to affect her happiness was just stupidity. To let this man's acceptance mean so much was both of those things to the nth degree. It was lunacy. Dangerous. Sheer insanity.

"It's just funny to hear you say that," she said as her smile grew wry, "as if you actually believe me. A couple days ago you felt quite a bit differently about me, I think." It was a compromise, of sorts.

He seemed to accept it, gave his own short bark of laughter, then frowned as he thought about it. "I'm still not sure about the psychic stuff, frankly." he said in a gruff, half-embarrassed tone. "You've got something, though- good instincts, people smarts-I don't know what it is, but I'd be a fool not to use it."

Which was a load of bull…whatever. He did believe. He believed in her. It was that simple.

Or that complicated.

"And speaking of that…have you got a few minutes?" He barely waited for her nod and murmured assent before putting his hand on her elbow and steering her toward the rose garden's exit. He glanced at the shoes in her hand and his frown deepened as he experienced an insane desire to pick her up and carry her. "Would you mind stopping by my place…see if you can pick up anything from the guy that was watching my apartment this morning? I don't live too far from here. Just take a minute."

"Okay, sure. Shall I follow you in my car or…"

"No sense in taking separate vehicles. I can drop you off here on my way back to the shop."

It was the most logistically sensible solution, he told himself, and had nothing to do with any reluctance he may or may not have felt about parting company with her.

He was careful to keep his vague sense of guilt blocked, but it accounted for the edge in his voice when he spoke to her, and the silence in the car on the way to his place.

It's police business, he told himself. He needed her in the car with him so he could get her impressions on the spot. But as he pulled up to the curb across the street from the Hofmeyers' 1930's style bungalow and parked in the approximate spot where the watcher's car had been this morning, he looked up at the windows of his apartment and his mind insisted on putting Tierney Doyle in the room behind those windows. In his bedroom. More precisely, in his bed. Naked. With her hair tousled on his pillow and her cheeks flushed and rosy and a very satisfied smile on her kiss-swollen lips. And her body…

He swore silently and earnestly. Shifted in his seat and twitched his suit jacket around to hide his growing discomfort as he looked over at Tierney. "Well? You getting anything?"

Damned if her cheeks weren't flushed and rosy, exactly like his daydream version, except she wasn't smiling. Her hands were knotted together in her lap and the shine in her eyes looked more like embarrassment than sexual fulfillment. Lord help me, he thought. I tried to block it, I really did.

"Um…I'm picking up some really strong emotions." Tierney said, "but I don't think they're from The Watcher." She cleared her throat and flashed him a small, tenuous smile. "I think somebody must be-" She put a hand over her eyes and muttered. "Lord, this is embarrassing…um, making love-really close by. Because all I can pick up is-"

"Yeah, yeah," Wade growled, "I get the picture." He did, too-all too well. Evidently some emotions were just too powerful to block.

"Wade, I'm sorry. I'm not getting anything else. That one-it's just that it's one of the most powerful emotions-"

"Yeah, right up there with killing." he said dryly as he reached for the ignition key.

He felt her eyes on him. "It's true. I hadn't thought about it, but yes…two of the most powerful human emotions involve the creating of life, and the taking of it. But I do wish-"

"Forget it." Please! "It's not your fault."

Which was putting it mildly. He was pretty sure the idea of cavorting naked in his bedsheets would be the furthest thing from her mind.

And if he wasn't careful, thoughts like that could get him in a load of trouble. Charges of sexual harassment, at least. He'd have to watch himself from now on. He'd let himself get too damn comfortable with her today.

Picnicking with her, for God's sake. Couldn't let that happen again.

He drove her back to the Rose Garden to pick up her car with his elbow on the windowsill and his hand covering his mouth, angry with himself. And even though he remembered to block it, he knew from her troubled silence that Tierney still felt the anger and believed it was directed at her.

What the hell-it's better this way.

So why did he feel sick, sorry and sad, as if he'd just been involved in a lover's quarrel?

Wade had just draped his jacket over the back of his chair and was in the process of taking his cell phone and weapon out of their holsters when Ochoa and Washburn, the Robbery-Homicide twins, surrounded him. Ochoa dropped a short stack of papers on his desk, then hitched one hip onto a corner while Washburn took the visitor's chair beside it.

"What the hell's this?" Wade was in no mood for cryptic.

"Officer Williams's traffic citations that fit the 'profile.' And that's just for the last month." Washburn said.

Ochoa chimed in, "Evidently, the majority of traffic miscreants tend to fall into the category of young single males. Go figure."

Wade cut the stack of citations like a deck of cards and handed one to each of the detectives. "Okay, start running 'em down. See who's in the system for something worse than a traffic ticket. Check out the addresses. Check everything. See if anything jumps out. We're looking at somebody who's probably been in trouble as a juvenile. Maybe foster care."

Ochoa and Washburn looked at each other. Washburn, the comedian, said. "Job would go a lot faster if we split the pile three ways, boss."

Wade, who was already turning to his computer, swiveled back to glower at the pair, then gave an impatient "gimme" wave. "Okay, divvy up. I got something else to take care of first, though. Might take me a while…"

Wade waited until the two detectives had each slapped down a wad of citations and had gone off looking pleased with themselves, then brought up the Google screen, typed in "Cory Pearson journalist" and hit Search.

"Oh, Cory-you actually met him?" His wife's voice on the phone sounded choked-up, which naturally made his throat do the same.

"Yep," he said, grinning like an idiot. "I introduced myself and everything. Didn't mention the part about us being brothers, though."

There was a pause, and then. "You told him your name? Was that wise?"

"Well, I guess we'll see. I wanted-I don't know, I guess I was hoping it might jog a memory loose."

"Yes, but like you said, he's a cop. They're suspicious by nature. What if he decides to check you out?"

"Good-let him. Maybe that will bring something back. Although I'm not sure he's going to have a lot of time to devote to looking into my background, with this serial murder investigation they've got going here."

"I heard about that," Sam said. "It's made the national news."

"Yes," Cory said sadly. "Serial killings always do."

"Speaking of killing…" Sam's voice sounded sorrowful. "Your office called. Seems Beirut's exploded again. They want you there-yesterday."

He swore inventively, raked fingers through his hair and closed his eyes.

"He's not going anywhere, Pearse," his wife said gently. You know who he is and where he is. He'll still be there when you get back."

"Yeah, okay, you're right," he said on a long exhalation.

But he was a journalist who'd seen more of sudden death and young lives cut short than most people would in several lifetimes. Enough to know that what his wife had said wasn't always true.

The rest of the week passed the way Tierney's days always did. She tended the gallery, painted when she could, spent time picking up after Jeannette. And something new: tried not to think of Wade.

She thought about Wade a lot. There had been no more torture killings, and so no word from him. for which she was grateful on several counts-besides the obvious. She needed all the time she could squeeze out of every day to paint, getting ready for the Rose Festival. Or so she told herself. And she didn't like to leave Jeannette alone so much-she told herself that, too. Both of those things were true, but her biggest and best reason for being glad Wade hadn't called her-other than natural relief that no more women had suffered hideous deaths at the hands of a monster-was because she so badly wanted him to.

Although, why she should want to see him ever again was a mystery to her, after the way their picnic lunch at the Rose Gardens had ended.

She'd known immediately the erotic impressions she'd picked up were his-of course she had. And that she was the object of them-she'd known that, too. The feelings had been strong, clear and explicit, and as feelings like that did sometimes, they'd actually formed images in her mind. It wasn't the first time she'd picked up sexual fantasies involving her from men, and even, on a couple of occasions, from women. What was different about this time, and so unsettling to her, was the way she'd responded to them.

To him.

Usually when she picked up something blatantly sexual, she would throw up a mental block, remind herself it was normal and human to have such feelings, and ignore them. But this time… How had she let it happen? Had her guard been down? Or was it because she was attracted to him already? She tried not to ask herself those questions because every time she did it all came back-the way her heart had picked up his slow, heavy, sultry beat. The way the heat had spread through her body like lava, sizzling beneath her skin and settling in the lowest parts of her so that she felt both weighted and restless at the same time. The way she'd longed…ached…needed to be touched.

It had been a long time since she'd been touched that way.

Once in a while, she'd let Why not? cross her mind like a mouse making a daring dash over open floor.

But…no. The time wasn't right, and neither was he. A cop? Bad enough, as terrible at relationships as they were known to be. And this one with those missing pieces, missing memories, and skeletons in his closet even he didn't know about? No.

And besides that, there was Jeannette, who needed her more and more every day. These days Tierney had to help her grandmother with nearly everything, from getting dressed in the morning to going to bed at night. And in between there was the constant vigilance necessary to keep Jeannette from wandering off. hurting herself or setting the apartment on fire. Tierney had learned, sometimes the hard way, to keep anything that might cut, stab, poison, ignite, kindle, break, fall or tip over hidden or put away out of her grandmother's reach. Electrical outlets were covered by furniture that couldn't be easily moved, or taped over with duct tape. The knobs for the stove burners were hidden in a high cupboard, and all cupboard doors and drawers containing objects that might be dangerous or broken were locked with childproof fasteners. Windows and doors were kept locked, and the water heater was turned down to low.

But far, far worse than all that was losing the essential person that was Jeannette. Every day the shining light that had been her personality grew dimmer. Every day Tierney could feel the special link that had always been there between them becoming thinner, like a rubberband stretching…stretching. One day, she knew-probably soon-that bond would snap, and nothing would ever be able to put it back together. Her grandmother would be gone. Forever.

Sometimes, Tierney just had to go somewhere-the bathroom, or her workroom, or maybe the car-so she could cry.

No, this wasn't the time to be thinking about love, or even sex. And certainly not Wade.

As the days continued to roll by with no new victims. Wade and the other members of the TK-Torture Killer- Task Force grew more and more edgy. On the one hand, of course, everyone was relieved not to have to deal with another woman's brutalized body. But no new victims meant no new leads, no chance for new evidence or even, please Lord, a witness. And worse than that was the growing fear that the killer might have slipped through their fingers.

Since the news conference, the media had been all over what they'd delighted in calling the department's "crystal ball." So far Wade had managed to keep Tierney's home address secret, but there'd been plenty of attention paid by both newspapers and television to cases she'd been involved with in the past, and law enforcement's use of psychics in general. It was his greatest fear that the killer might have gotten the wind up, gotten scared, gone to ground, or-worst case scenario-moved on, not to be heard from again until someday, in another part of the country, in another city, another town, women began dying.

Wade didn't know how he'd be able to live with himself if he let the sonofabitch get away.

On the other hand, there'd been some progress in the case. The DNA evidence still hadn't come back, which didn't matter much since they didn't yet have a suspect's DNA to compare it to. The canvass of traffic citations was being cross-referenced with juvenile, military and medical records and so far had come up with seven possible suspects. Four of those, known sex offenders, had been brought in for questioning and tentatively ruled out. Three hadn't been located-yet.

Absent some sort of break in the case, the task force was reduced to going back over ground already covered, talking to friends, family, neighbors and coworkers of the victims, sifting through files, culling through databases of similar cases in other cities. There was progress, but it was too slow and too little to suit Wade.

To keep himself from going nuts, he spent some after-hours time-well, okay, some on-the-clock time, as well- looking into the background of one Cory Pearson, journalist.

One thing he had to say. He was who he said he was. There was no dearth of information on him available on the Internet. Wade had been too young at the time to have paid much attention to what was happening on the far side of the world, but it seemed the guy had been a well-known war correspondent in his day-had even been captured and taken prisoner during the Second Gulf War. While a captive in Iraq, he'd met an airman named Tristan Bauer, who had been shot down during the First Gulf War, and at the time had been missing and presumed dead for eight years. They'd both been rescued together-there'd been a big to-do over that, all sorts of medals and honors and receptions at the White House-and in the process, Cory Pearson had met the airman's daughter, Samantha. They hadn't gotten together until years later, though, after the two of them wound up in the same Philippine jungle. Evidently, Pearson had written a book about some of his adventures. That, and a whole bunch of articles for every major news outlet from Time magazine to CNN.

Wade was about ready to conclude Tierney must have been mistaken about the source of the emotions she'd picked up that day in the Portland Rose Gardens. He'd probably have chalked the whole thing up to coincidence, except for one thing. With all that information, gazillions of words written by and about the man, there wasn't a thing, not word one about him between his birth-his birth certificate listed his mother as Susan Louise Pearson and his father as Christopher George Pearson and his birthplace as Indianapolis-and when he'd become a journalist. Okay, college. But before that-nada. Which could mean nothing. But could mean something. Sealed juvenile records, maybe? Which he'd need a warrant to access, and he had no cause whatsoever to justify a warrant.

Maybe someday he'd find a way to dig into it a little deeper, but for now…he supposed he could always ask Tierney to try again to pick up something. If he could keep his prurient imagination under control. Which he was having a lot of trouble doing lately.

No, unless another victim turned up, calling Tierney Doyle was simply too damn dangerous.

He thought about her. though. Thought about her a lot.

She popped into his head at odd times and in peculiar ways. Driving home from work, seeing a little girl with red-gold curls skipping across the street hanging on to her mother's hand, it occurred to him Tierney would have looked like that when she was little, and if she had a daughter…

Catching a glimpse of a rose, or the scent of one-and roses were everywhere in Portland, in May-always brought her vividly to mind, looking the way she did that day in the gardens, with her shoulders bare and the wind playing with her hair and skirt, and her shoes dangling by their straps from one finger.

He couldn't bite into a hamburger without seeing the blissful smile on her lips as she'd crunched on that veggie sandwich of hers…and remembering the way watching her eat had made hungry juices gather at the back of his throat.

He couldn't look at Officer Williams's crime scene photos without his chest contracting at the vivid recall of Tierney's face when she'd looked at the body, her eyes gone stark with grief and self-blame. And that would lead inevitably to the memory-not so much mental as sensory-of the way she'd felt up against him with his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed against her hair. The sweet, clean smell of her hair, reminiscent of country roads and moist green gardens in the midst of the ugliness of that day.

Then, of course, there were all the usual ways a beautiful woman occupies a man's mind. Sitting at his desk, looking at the phone and thinking how much he wanted to pick it up and call her. Walking up the stairs to his apartment in the evening, his imagination seeing her nice round bottom swaying back and forth as she mounted the stairs to her place just ahead of him. Waking up in the morning in a sweaty tangle of sheets with the imagined image of her naked body entwined with his fading rapidly from his consciousness, and having to dive into a cold shower to clear his mind so he could get on with his day.

Between Tierney Doyle, Cory Pearson and a stalled murder investigation, Wade wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep. He figured if something didn't break somewhere soon, he might be tempted to do something drastic. Get drunk, or look up an old girlfriend, maybe. Except both of those options had about as much appeal as, say, sharing a lumpy sofa with Bruno the basset hound.

The break finally came on Friday night, though not quite the way he'd expected.

It had been a frustrating week, and as the members of the TK Task Force packed it in. one by one they stopped by Wade's desk to ask if he was planning on joining them for beer and pool at Friendly's, the department's watering hole a couple of blocks up the street. Last to go was Ed Francks, and Wade told him what he'd told the others: he might be along later. He wanted to check something out first.

"Come on. man, give your brain a rest," Ed said as he twirled his jacket off the back of his chair and onto his broad shoulders. "We all need it. This case has us chasin' our tails. Even Superman needs a little R and R now and then, and you ain't no superman."

'This isn't the case." Wade frowned at the screen as he brought up the Google search he'd saved. "Some personal stuff."

He and Francks had been friends for a long time, and partners before that, but the big man wasn't the type to presume. He stood for a moment looking down at Wade, then said quietly. "Anything I can do?"

Wade threw him half a smile and said, "Nah-no biggie. You go on. I might stop by later. Save me a cold one."

"I might, and then again…" Francks grinned, pointed a finger at him to say goodbye, and went off.

As the quiet of the off-hours squad room settled around him. Wade hitched his chair closer to the computer and began a search through his old cases, looking for somebody who might be looking for him.

The next time he looked at his watch it was after ten. His head was swimming and he had a cramp between his shoulder blades, and he didn't have any more of an idea who was stalking him-assuming it wasn't Cory Pearson-than when he'd started.

He powered down his computer screen, shoved his chair back and indulged in a good stretch and head scratch. Then he got up. put on his jacket, fished his car keys out of his pocket and turned on his cell phone, tucked his weapon in its holster and headed for the parking garage.

He wasn't sure why, but his nerves were on edge. Maybe looking at all those old cases, thinking about the crimes and the perps he'd helped put away. Thinking even more about the few he hadn't been able to catch, or who had managed to slip through the system's fingers. Grim thoughts, some of them, and plenty of reasons why somebody might feel gleeful about tracking him down. But then again, why would they have to? He was still right here in Portland. Oregon, where the crimes had gone down and the perps were put away. Didn't make sense.

Dark thoughts, perplexing puzzles, flashed through his mind to the rhythm of the echoing scrape of his footsteps on the concrete floor of the parking garage. Not many cars this time of night-night-duty cops, dispatchers. 9-1-1 operators, cleaning crew vans and a few others, like him, working late. He wasn't the jumpy sort; normally, he wouldn't give a thought to the fact that he made a nice clear target walking alone through a deserted garage in the dead of night. Tonight he was conscious of the weight of his weapon nestled against the steady thump of his heartbeat, and his eyes scanned the shadows for suspicious shapes.

He had his car keys in his hand and was about to put them to use when one of those shadows became a flurry of movement on the outer edges of his vision.

In the space of time between two heartbeats he'd whirled and pinned the potential assailant belly-first against the side of his car. He had his weapon in one hand and the assailant's wrist in the other, pulled up and pressed hard between the shoulder blades.

With an adrenaline surge like the crashing of surf inside his head, he barely heard the whimper of pain and the airless, "Wade-please-it's me, Tierney…"