Dream Man (Page 91)

“Marilyn Elrod didn’t need to die, either,” she replied. “Neither did Nadine Vinick or Jackie Sheets, or any of the other women he killed before moving here.” She gave him a wintry smile and tugged her arm free. “Besides, I’ve already been in there, remember? I was there when it happened.”

Four quick steps carried her into the room. She stopped. She couldn’t go any farther without stepping on dark brown bloodstains. There was no way to avoid them; the blood was spattered all over the carpet, the walls, the bed, though the largest stain by far was the huge one beside the bed, where Marilyn Elrod’s life had finally ended. But she had fought him all over this room, and left her own blood as her witness. About ten incense candles in their tiny glass pots still sat on the dresser; it was in that mirror that Marlie had seen the killer, looking at him through his own eyes.

She had to open that mental door again, to perhaps glean some other snippet of information. Marilyn deserved that she at least try.

“Don’t talk to me for a minute, okay?” she said to Dane, her voice soft, almost soundless, “I want to think.”

Maybe the energy was in layers, with the most recent on top. She closed her eyes, picturing the layers, giving them different colors so she could more easily tell them apart. She had to block out that top layer, the one peopled with detectives, uniformed officers, photographers, forensic squads, the multitude who had swarmed the house after Marilyn’s death. They had been trying to help, but they got in the way. Mr. Elrod had been here, too, adding another level of energy.

She assigned blue to the policemen and related others, and red to Mr. Elrod. The killer’s color was black, the density evil and thick, resisting any penetration of light. Marilyn… Marilyn’s color would be a pure, translucent white.

She formed the picture in her mind, seeing the layers, concentrating on them so all else was forgotten. She existed only inside herself, pulling inward so her ability wouldn’t be diluted. Very delicately she peeled off the blue layer and put it to the side. Next came the red layer, very thin because Mr. Elrod hadn’t contributed much, harder to handle. It, too, went to the side.

Only black and white were left, but the layers were so entwined that she didn’t know if she could separate them. Killer and victim, locked together in a life-and-death struggle. Marilyn had lost that fight.

Very clearly she saw that if she tried to pull the layers apart, she might damage them, damage the information they held. She would have to leave them as they were.

Now was the time to open the door. She mentally stepped into the layers, like stepping into a mist, wrapping the energies around her. She let them surround her, soak into her pores. And then she opened the door.

The blast of evil was suffocating, but nothing she hadn’t felt before. She forced herself not to retreat from it, to examine it, while fighting to keep it from overwhelming her as it had the first time. She couldn’t let herself be sucked into reliving the murder, or the effects would be so debilitating, she wouldn’t be able to continue.

The evil layer writhed around her, but bits of white kept touching her, distracting her. She pushed the contact away, intent on reading every black energy wave.

There was nothing new, no mental clue about how he had selected Marilyn as his victim. A touch of white jolted her again. There was something compelling about it, an insistence on gaining her attention.

Marlie held back. She couldn’t experience Marilyn’s death. She simply couldn’t.

But the white layer pressed more strongly. The evil of the killer was pushed aside. Marlie saw it clearly in her mind, and was astonished, for she hadn’t done it. She looked back to the whiteness, and that break in concentration was enough to let the white energy in.

Panic squeezed her heart as sheer terror seized her. And then a sense of calm seeped in, a quiet soothing.

She stood bathed in the translucent whiteness. This wasn’t the energy of Marilyn’s last moments, of her terrified, pain-filled struggle for life. This was the energy of afterward, and it wasn’t in the past. It was here. It was now.

There were no spoken sentences, no actual words. Marilyn wasn’t suffering anymore. She seemed peaceful. But there was a sense of inconclusiveness; she was reluctant to leave. Justice had not been done, the scale was still unbalanced, and Marilyn couldn’t leave until her killer no longer stalked innocent women in the night.

Don’t worry, Marlie whispered in her mind. He made a mistake. Dane will catch him now.

Though the reassurance was welcome, it made no difference. Marilyn would linger until a resolution.

A noise tugged at Marlie’s consciousness. It was irritating, but insistent. Instinctively she recognized its source, and her automatic response.

I have to go now. He’s calling.

Still she was reluctant to leave that serenity. She hesitated, and felt one last touch of the white energy.

“—Marlie! Goddamn it, answer me!”

She opened her eyes to Dane’s furious, worried face. He was shaking her, and her head wobbled back and forth. She squeezed her eyes shut against the dizziness. “Stop,” she gasped.

He did, and hauled her into his arms. She could feel his heart pounding against his ribs like thunder, hard and frantic. He held her head pressed to his chest, and his grip was so tight that it compressed her rib cage.

“What were you doing?” he raged. “What happened? You’ve been standing there like a damn doll for half an hour. You wouldn’t answer me, wouldn’t even open your eyes!”

She put her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t hear you. I was concentrating.”