“The major drawback to investigation work is that you have to deal with the clients,” he said.
“They can’t be any more frustrating or difficult than my dream therapy clients.”
“Maybe not, but they can be more dangerous. My last client tried to kill me.”
“Good grief.” She swallowed hard. “Well, I promise I’ll be careful.”
“You keep saying that.”
“No offense, but given your career path, you aren’t in a position to lecture anyone else about the importance of not taking chances. Neither of us can ignore our talent, Judson.”
“This conversation isn’t going well, is it?” he said. “Maybe we should get back to the investigation that we’re trying to work on here.”
“Okay.”
He settled into the corner and rested one arm along the back of the seat. “It occurs to me that Zander Taylor may have given you more hard facts than you realize.”
Gwen’s brows elevated slightly. “What makes you say that?”
“A skilled liar is usually smart enough to mix in as much of the truth as possible. It makes for a more convincing story.”
“One thing I do know about Zander is that he was an excellent liar,” Gwen said.
“In which case, it’s possible that at least some of the information he gave Evelyn when he applied to the study was true,” Judson said.
“Even if you’re right, how do we sort the wheat from the chaff?”
Judson closed his eyes and summoned up a little energy, putting himself into the zone—into the head of the dead psychopath.
“Got a hunch that when we go looking, we’ll find out that Taylor really was adopted and that his adoptive parents were murdered—maybe by Taylor himself, given what I know of his para-psych profile—but that’s not our problem now.”
“Sometimes I wonder how many people he did kill, but I suppose we’ll never know,” Gwen said somberly. “Maybe I don’t want to know.”
Judson opened his eyes. “He was probably also telling the truth when he said he wound up in the foster care system. Those are all facts that could be verified. They are also facts that make him look somewhat sympathetic. That would be key to the impression he wanted to make.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you if only because when he talked about the system, it was clear that he had an intimate, working knowledge of it.”
“Like you?”
“Yes,” she said evenly. “But even if those particular facts are true, where does it get us?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he admitted. “Still asking questions. Turning over rocks. That’s how I work. But we need to move faster. I don’t have time to do the research. I’m going to put Sawyer on Zander Taylor’s backstory and see what he can find.” Judson reached for his phone. “Damn. It would be so useful to have those old files from Ballinger’s time as a counselor at Summerlight.”
“Why?” Gwen asked,
He started to key in Sawyer’s phone number. “They might give us a better handle on Taylor, for one thing. The school must have had some data on his past.”
“But Zander didn’t attend Summerlight.”
Judson stilled just as he was about to punch in Sawyer’s number. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“I thought all of the subjects in the Ballinger Study were drawn from the Summerlight files.”
“Evelyn found most of us in her Summerlight records but not all of us,” Gwen said. “Back at the start, she also advertised briefly online. She gave up that approach after only a few days because she got flooded with replies from fantasy game players, fake psychics, and the alien-abduction and tinfoil-helmet crowd. She said there was no way to sort through all the wacky claims to try to find the one or two genuine talents who might have applied.”
“How did she find Taylor?”
“He told us that he saw one of those online ads that Evelyn ran at the start of the project. He contacted her online and charmed her by appealing to her academic pride. He posed as a serious researcher. Claimed he’d heard about her work in the field and that he had read some of the papers she had published in an online journal. When he offered to come to Wilby to meet with her at his own expense, she jumped at the chance. After she talked to him, she was convinced that he had some real talent.”
“That works.” Judson looked out at the thundering falls, the phone gripped in his hand. “It definitely works.”
“What are you talking about?” Gwen demanded. “Why is it important that Zander got involved in Evelyn’s study through an online ad?”
Judson turned back to her. “Think about it. Evelyn runs a short series of ads on the Internet and then cancels that recruitment approach in favor of relying on the Summerlight files. Yet in that brief span of time, she somehow attracts the attention of a psychic serial killer.”
Gwen nodded slowly. “There are a gazillion phony psychics advertising online. What are the odds that Taylor just happened to see Evelyn’s little ad? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re asking me, I have no idea what the odds are,” Gwen said. “I avoid math whenever possible.”
“This isn’t math—this is my intuition talking.”
Gwen smiled. “You mean your talent.”
“I think Zander Taylor found out about Evelyn and her study two years ago because he had a tripwire already in place.”
“Tripwire?”
“An alert system designed to make sure that any and all news out of Wilby, Oregon, popped up on his computer.”
“For heaven’s sake, why would he monitor news from this little dot on the map?”
“There’s only one reason that I can think of,” Judson said. “He kept track of Wilby because he had a personal connection here.”
“But no one here in town knew him—I’m sure of that. Someone would have said something at some point.”
“You told me that Louise Fuller wasn’t exactly the communicative type.”
“Louise.” Gwen’s eyes tightened a little at the corners. “Good heavens, you’re right. Nicole said that she tuned the crystal for him. That means he could have known about Louise before he came here to Wilby. Maybe he was using her all along to tune his camera. But none of his kills was in the vicinity of this town, at least none that we could identify.”
“A smart psychopath doesn’t foul his own nest, at least not unless he loses control or decides to get rid of witnesses. Why take the risk of killing locally?” Judson paused a beat. “Unless the challenge is downright irresistible.”
“Evelyn’s group of study subjects was an irresistible attraction,” Gwen whispered. “Zander’s addiction got the better of his control.”
“Taylor paid attention to events in Wilby because Louise Fuller, his tuner, was here. That leaves us with the question of how he found Louise in the first place.”
“And why no one in town knew him until he joined the study,” Gwen added.
Judson looked at the lab on the other side of the falls. “Just winging it here, but a couple of things I know for sure. Psychic talent seems to have a strong genetic component. If the Coppersmiths are any example, the ability to perceive and manipulate the paranormal can go down through the bloodline. The other thing I know is that family secrets are always the most tightly held.”
“Family secrets?” Gwen was dumbfounded.
“We need confirmation. I’ll call Sawyer.”
He keyed in the coded number.
Nick answered on the third ring. Judson could hear muffled voices in the background. One of them was his
