Leda crouched down beside the exposed hand with the tasteful nude polish on the nails.
His throat was dry.
Leda’s knees wobbled as she leaned forward and touched the dead woman’s fingertips with the back of her own hand. She jerked back quickly and almost fell—but caught herself. Steadying herself, she tried again, and this time, she let the touch linger. She didn’t close her eyes or touch her temple with her free hand, like the psychics on TV, but she did stare thoughtfully into space.
No performative woo-woo stuff with that one—just pure, random, minimally predictable and marginally helpful talent.
He’d take it. It was all he could get.
Then she rose to her feet and clapped her hands together. “All right,” she said. “I’ve seen enough.”
He all but leaped to her side. What did that mean? Had she seen anything useful, or nothing at all? He couldn’t ask her yet. Not with so many people around. “Are you good? Everything okay? Are you ready to go?”
She only answered that last one. “I’m ready to go.”
Grady ushered her back the way they’d come, out of the mezzanine area, down the stationary escalator, past the guys from the medical examiner’s office who’d finally gotten their gurney situation sorted out, and back down the street to his car. Neither one of them spoke until the doors were shut and the engine was running.
With his hands on the wheel, and Leda’s hands rubbing together in front of the heating vents, he stared through the windshield and asked, “I hope that wasn’t too bad.”
“It… wasn’t that bad. I mean, it was bad—she’s dead, and I’ve never touched a dead person before. But we’re all going to be dead eventually, right? I don’t think I’d be upset if people touched me when I’m dead, so I figured she wouldn’t care if I gave her a little tap. That’s what I told myself, and it worked.”
He looked at her, with his eyebrows wrinkled in a frown. “That’s what you were worried about? Offending the dead woman?”
“Kind of? It’s like I told you a long time ago, I don’t see ghosts or talk to dead people, but sometimes I get a sense of them, hanging about. I have enough crappy luck as it is; I don’t need to run around peeving any phantoms. For all I know, the dead are petty.”
He laughed, even though it felt rude. “No, I get it. It’s bad karma. But did you learn anything, or was this a bust?”
She nodded and slid down in her seat, pulling up her knees until they were resting on the dash. “It was disjointed, yeah. At first it almost knocked me over, it was so vivid, but then I got a handle on it. Janette was getting ready to leave. She took her coat off the back of her office chair.” Leda stopped rubbing her hands together in order to mime the act. “She locked up behind herself and left. She was down at the bottom landing of the mezzanine when she realized she’d forgotten something. I don’t know what, but I think it was her purse. You’ll have to ask if they found it.”
“I’ll do that.”
“The escalator was out—as you saw—so she had to hike up that real tall one to get back to the office. Or… or she chose to? Unless the elevators weren’t working, either. I thought they were stopped because of the investigation, but maybe they turn them off at night.”
“That’s not typical, but you never know. Good to check.”
“My point is, she used the escalator stairs. It took her a minute to get back up there, and when she did, someone was in her office. The door was jimmied, and someone was moving around in there. That’s where it gets fuzzy. It might be because… look, I’m not saying I talk to ghosts.”
“As you’ve made quite clear.”
“But what if some bit of her essence was hanging around, helping me? Feeding me information? For the first time, honestly, it felt like I was getting directions from somebody else.”
“You think you were talking to a ghost.”
“No,” she said. “But I think there’s a chance that a ghost was talking to me. And the last thing she really remembered clearly was how annoyed she was with herself, when she realized she’d left her purse behind. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was,” she said, more to herself than to Grady. “She surprised the guy in her office. They fought, and he pushed past her. I think he just wanted to get away, but she followed him. She grabbed him,” she said, miming that, too.
“You’re sure it was a man, not a woman?”
“He was wearing a ski mask, but yes.”
Grady grunted, amused. “A ski mask? That’s so… 1985, isn’t it?”
“Fashion is slow to catch on in the criminal world, or something.”
“Can you tell me anything about him?” he asked. “Tall, short, fat, thin?”
She shook her head. “He’s a dark-colored streak, moving jerkily around. Trying to get away. He wrestled free… he made a run for the escalator, and she caught him there. They struggled, and that’s it. That’s all I see.”
“Hm.” Grady wasn’t exactly disappointed, but he wished she had something more concrete to offer. “You don’t think this was a premeditated murder.”
“No, it was more like manslaughter. For all the good it does Janette.”
“It did Sheila Beckmeyer some good, since hers was only attempted. If the guy intended to kill her outright, he probably would have.” He was starting to get a picture of the perpetrator. Not a physical picture, but the guy’s type. “We’re dealing with a guy who’s bad at murder and not very committed to it. His first killing might have been an accident. But once you’ve killed one person… in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.”
It was Leda’s turn to frown. “I don’t get it.”
“Our perp is bad at murder,” he told her. “That’s the point. He’s backtracking, trying to clean up any evidence he might’ve left behind connecting him to the Gilman murders, or any other murders he may have committed. But he’s willing to defend himself with violence if he needs to.”
“You’re making him sound like a serial killer.”
He shook his head. “No, he’s not a serial killer. He’s just a regular killer, caught in a loop of his own devising. He’s killing now to cover his tracks—even though he’s obviously making himself a bigger target. But something triggered him. Something tipped him off, and he feels cornered. He’s swinging at shadows.”
For a few seconds, neither one of them said what they both were surely thinking.
Leda was staring up at the rearview mirror, pretending she was looking for an opening in traffic to pull into. She wasn’t making eye contact, and it was just as well. “We did it. We tipped him off,” she said.
“Nobody knows that for certain.” Grady put the car into gear and took the next opening, sliding back into the downtown, early-morning-rush traffic so he had something else to pretend to pay attention to also.
“It’d been more than a year since he’d hurt anybody, and then we showed up. We started asking questions, talking to the old witnesses…”
“Could be a coincidence.”