Havelock sisters in Boston? That was very interesting too. Tell us
about that.'
Graham shifted uneasily in his chair. He still sensed trouble coming,
but he couldn't imagine what it might be or how he might avoid it.
'The Havelock sisters.. - ' -two-year-old Nineteen-year-old Paula and
twenty-two year old paige Havelock had lived together in a cozy Boston
apartment near the university where Paula was an undergraduate student
and where Paige was working for her master's degree in sociology. On
the morning of last November second, Michael Shute had stopped by the
apartment to take Paige to lunch. The date had been made by telephone
the previous evening. Shute and the elder Havelock sister were lovers,
and he had a key to the apartment. When no one responded to the bell,
he decided to let himself in and wait for them.
Inside, however, he discovered that they were at home. Paula and Paige
had been awakened in the night by one or more intruders who had stripped
them naked; pajamas and robes were strewn on the floor. The women had
been tied with a heavy cord, sexually molested and finally shot to death
in their own living room Because the proper authorities were unable to
come up with a single major lead in the case, the parents of the dead
girls got in touch with Graham on the tenth of November and asked for
his assistance. He arrived in Boston two days later. Although the
police were skeptical of his talents-a number of them were downright
hostile toward him-they were anxious to placate the Havelocks, who had
some political influence in the city. He was taken to the sealed
apartment and permitted to examine the scene of the crime. But he got
absolutely nothing from that: no emanations, no psychic visionjust a
chill that slithered down his spine and coiled in his stomach. Later,
under the suspicious gaze of a police property officer, he was allowed
to handle the pillow that the killer had used to muffle the gunshots-and
then the pajamas and the robes that had been found next to the bodies.
As he caressed the blood-stiffened fabric, his paranormal talent
abruptly blossomed; his mind was inundated with clairvoyant images like
a series of choppy, frothing waves breaking on a beach.
Anthony Prine interrupted Graham. 'Wait a minute. I think we need some
elaboration on this point. We need to make it much clearer.
Do you mean that the simple act of touching the bloodstained pajamas
caused your clairvoyant visions?'
'No. It didn't cause them. it freed them. The pajamas were like a key
that unlocked the clairvoyant part of my mind. That's a quality common
to nearly all murder weapons and to the last garments worn by the
victims.'
'Why do you think that is?'
'I don't know,' Graham said.
'You've never thought about it?'
'I've thought about it endlessly,' Graham said. 'But I've never reached
any conclusions.'
Although Prine's voice held not even the slightest note of hostility,
Graham was almost certain that the man was searching for an opening to
launch one of his famous attacks.
For a moment he thought that might be the oncoming trouble which he had
