“Yes, but only because one of the triplets did time,” Harmony said. “My predecessor in this job was good. She made a copy of the mug shot and stuck it in the file.”
Harmony brought an envelope out from under her cloak.
Slater opened the envelope. Catalina hurried across the room to see the photo. The image of a young man of about twenty gazed back at them with soulless eyes.
“Add about a decade and he looks exactly like one of the guys who tried to grab Catalina in Seattle,” Slater said. “What did he do time for?”
“Drugs,” Harmony said. “According to the file he was selling some kind of designer crap.”
“Thanks,” Catalina said. “This is very helpful.”
Slater looked at Harmony. “Why didn’t you call?”
Harmony shrugged. “Phones are down. Even with landlines it’s tough to keep them working in this town. Euclid and the others will take care of things in the morning. Well, if that’s all you need, I’ll be on my way.”
“I’ll walk you back to your place,” Slater said.
“No, you won’t,” Harmony said. “You need to get to work. Don’t worry about me. I live at the other end of the street.”
She strode to the door and opened it before Slater could reach it. She switched on a flashlight and went down the front steps.
Slater moved out onto the front porch. Catalina followed. Together they watched the beam of Harmony’s flashlight move through the fog-bound street until it disappeared into a building at the far end. A short time later a light glowed in an upstairs window.
“That’s the library,” Catalina said.
“She lives in the town library?” Slater asked.
“The Oracle always lives in the rooms above the library,” Catalina said. “There aren’t a lot of perks for someone in that position. It’s often a rather depressing job. So for as long as anyone can remember the town has provided the free apartment.”
They went back inside, then closed and locked the door.
“Triplets,” Slater said. “Damn. That means there are two more of those blanks out there.”
“The third one may not be a blank,” Catalina pointed out.
“Are you kidding? With the way our luck has been running lately?”
“Those of us with a strong psychic vibe do not believe in luck, remember?”
“Speak for yourself,” Slater said.
He went into the bedroom and returned with his pack. He put the gun on the counter, within easy reach, and took a notebook and a pen out of the pack.
“Got a sheet of paper?” he asked. “Or, better yet, a map of the Fogg Lake area?”
“There are no maps of Fogg Lake,” Catalina said. “It’s against the town council’s rules.”
“Why?”
“A, because no one around here needs one. B, there is a prevailing belief that maps might fall into the wrong hands and encourage tourism. The lake. The caves. The woods. It’s all stuff that campers and hikers love.”
“No maps,” Slater said. “All right, we’ll have to draw our own. That means we’ll need the sheet of paper.”
“My mom always keeps a sketchbook here. She likes to draw. I’ll see what I can find.”
Catalina went down the hall and opened a closet door. When she returned to the kitchen a moment later she held out a sketchbook.
“Will this do?” she asked.
Slater flipped through a few of the pages. A frisson of certainty flashed across his senses.
“These are all scenes of the Fogg Lake area?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“This is better than a map. The drawings are superior to photographs in many ways. Your mother has a great eye for detail.”
“Why do you need a map or those sketches?” Catalina asked.
“Because I’ve had what we in the psychic investigation business like to call a blinding flash of the obvious.”
“And?”
“I should have seen it earlier,” Slater said. “In fact, I think I did see it earlier, in a dream that I had on the way here. But I was too exhausted to pay attention to what my intuition was trying to tell me.”
“What are you talking about?”
He looked at her. The whispers got louder.
“Drugs,” he said.
“What about them?”
“They keep showing up in this case. Specifically high-tech drugs, the kind that come out of a sophisticated lab. We need to focus on them. They are the key to identifying the person who is behind everything that has happened.”
CHAPTER 29
Catalina sat down on the stool next to him and watched him page through the sketchbook. She could feel the hot energy in the atmosphere around him and recognized the sensation. She had experienced it herself on a few occasions. Slater was a hunter closing in on prey.
“Tell me where you’re going with this new theory of yours,” she said.
“Exotic drugs have been involved from the start,” he said. “Someone supplied the killer with whatever was in that syringe that was used to murder Morrissey.”
“Right. But so what? There are any number of drugs that can kill a person.”
“Yes, but it’s not a typical method of committing murder. Most killers go with the tried-and-true options: A gun. A knife. A blunt object. Why fool around with some exotic drug unless you’re afraid the body might be found? But in this case whoever murdered Morrissey didn’t seem to be worried about that. He planned all along to dump the body in the river.”
“Maybe the killer had a medical background and felt comfortable using some toxic drug.”
“Or else he had connections to the illicit drug– dealing business. Needles are often used to inject dangerous substances.”
“Huh,” Catalina said. “Now fifteen years later it looks like Ingram and Royston were murdered with drugs, and Olivia is kidnapped and also injected with some unknown drug—presumably not a lethal one, because whoever grabbed her wanted her alive.”
“Then you and I start to investigate and we are attacked with a gas that causes violent hallucinations. But it isn’t lethal, either.”
“Because they didn’t want to kill me. They wanted to take me alive.”
“Tonight we find out that one of the triplets from hell did time for selling drugs,” Slater continued. “Not just the standard street shit. Designer drugs.”
A feverish chill crackled across Catalina’s senses. It came straight from her nightmares. You don’t want to go back there. That way lies madness. You will throw yourself into the lake and drown.
She met Slater’s eyes. “You’re going with the theory that the many drug connections in this case are not a coincidence.”
“I’m not big on coincidences, but even if I was okay with that possibility, there is another factor that has to be taken into account.”
“I’m listening.”
“Whatever was in that fog the kidnappers used on us in Royston’s cellar did not simply knock us out,” Slater said. “It played havoc with our paranormal senses.”
“There are a lot of drugs that can produce hallucinations. LSD, for example. There must be dozens more.”