I sat up quickly and grabbed my wrist, but there was no pain, not like there had been in the hammer vision. I felt confused and frustrated. Why couldn't I see who was shattering the watch? In the chase visions my pursuer was cloaked in black and had struck from behind, so I couldn't see the face. But why couldn't I now, when the person was bent over Liza?
I had thought I was inside Liza's mind reliving the events-l knew I had felt the murderer's blow as she would have felt it. Then it occurred to me: when the watch was strapped to my sister's wrist she was already dead. People who have near-death experiences talk about the spirit leaving the body, hovering above it. That was why I hovered in this part of my vision, looking down on the body and the watch face just as Liza's spirit had.
I stood up, my skin feeling clammy and chill despite the warm night. Slowly I walked toward the gazebo, running my hands through my matted hair, brushing the gritty mud from my arms.
At the gazebo I sat on the steps to think. I wondered if this was the place by the creek where Mike had met Liza. Here or the pavilion, I thought. In the pale moonlight, the pavilion, sitting high on its pilings and surrounded by tall grass, seemed its own little romantic island.
I blinked. Tall grass, grass high as com. I had assumed the pilings of my visions were the supports beneath the bridge, but there were pilings beneath the pavilion, too, and the creek washed through the grass and under the wooden structure just as it did under the bridge. I jumped up and ran toward the pavilion, stopping at the grass jungle encircling it. It grew thick as bamboo. I thrust my arms into it, parted the long stalks, and stepped in, then continued to push aside swordlike leaves, gradually working my way through the dense vegetation. It stopped abruptly at the edge of the pavilion floor, where sunlight would end.
The moonlight ended there, too. Step by step I moved into the darkness beneath the pavilion. The ground turned soggy under my feet. I could hear the light lap of water against the pilings and small rustlings in the surrounding grass. As I moved farther beneath the structure, the water began to pool around my ankles. Mosquitoes whined in my ears. I thought I heard something and paused for a moment to listen, resting against a piling. My head buzzed and grew light. The darkness around me glinted blue.
Behind me, twenty feet back, there was a soft thud, a sound light as a cat landing on leaves, then quiet footsteps. The person had found me.
My heart pounded in my chest. I could hardly breathe, my throat raw, my side aching from running. I slipped behind a piling hoping to see something-if not the face, the size or gait of the person-some clue as to who it was, but I couldn't. I heard the person coming closer and closer. I debated what to do.
Instinct took over. I bolted, then felt the sudden movement, the rush from behind. I wanted to pull out of the vision. I wanted it to stop now. But I had to turn around, had to reach for the face of my pursuer, to feel the shape I couldn't see.
I tried to and tripped, falling facedown in the water. Scrambling to my feet, I was too terrified to stop now. I raced forward. A hand grasped me and clamped down hard on my shoulder, fingers biting into me. I screamed and screamed. Another hand clapped over my mouth. The person pulled me back against him so violently the breath was knocked out of me. The blue light faded. The person laughed close to my ear, his moist lips touching my cheek.
Paul.
'Going somewhere?'
I struggled against him, but he held me all the tighter. 'Let me go!' I shouted, 'Let me go!'
'Not yet.'
I kicked backward, striking him in the shin.
'Don't make me get rough,' he said.
'Let go, Paul. Now!'
'Not till you tell me what you were doing.'
I continued to struggle.
'Tell me!' Paul jerked me around, lifting my whole body, making it clear who was in control.
'I was taking a walk.'
'In a swamp?' he replied. 'I don't think so.'
I stopped struggling, deciding to save my energy for the instant he relaxed.
'I was walking through the park,' Paul said, 'and saw you duck under here. What a surprise'-his voice mocked me-'our best little camper, sneaking around after curfew! It's not like you, Jenny, being out late like this-it's not like the dear little Jenny we all know and love.'
I didn't respond.
'Come on, talk! Are you making a pickup? Did someone leave something down here for you?'
'Nothing much,' I said. 'And I couldn't find it any-way.
He looked around, loosening his grip. I seized the chance to pull away from him, racing forward, then glimpsing lights through the grass, lights on poles as they were in an earlier vision-dock lights. I crashed through the grass and into a clear area, running toward the college boathouse. From a distance behind me I heard his laughter. Paul wasn't bothering with the chase. Still, I didn't stop until I reached the racks of sculls. Crouching in the shadows, I gazed back toward the pavilion.
Paul emerged from the grass surrounding it and walked toward the street. I didn't know whether he was leaving me alone or setting a trap. He knew the route I'd take back. But if he had wanted to hurt me, he would have done things differently, I reasoned; he would have kept himself hidden so I couldn't accuse him later. And if he had wanted to kill me, he would have done it under the pavilion. I could have lain there for days before anyone found me.
It was an ideal place to murder and dump a body. And I was sure from my visions that my sister had been struck down beneath the pavilion. But that wasn't where the serial murderer liked to do his killing. If the police had discovered her body beneath the pavilion, they would have searched for a different killer, someone from the town or campus. And if they had known about the hammer I found in the theater, they would have focused on the people connected to the camp. I could no longer deny the probability that Liza's killer had known her.
If that person wanted the police to think the serial killer was responsible, then Liza's body had to be transported to the bridge without leaving a trail.
Given that her death was bloody, the job seemed more than one person could handle. If so, there could be two people in Wisteria who knew the truth about Liza's death.
I intended to find them.
So what do you think, Jen?' Tomas asked me the next morning as we waited for rehearsal to begin. 'You don't like it,' he guessed, fingering a bolt of filmy blue fabric.
'Tell me again. I wasn't quite listening.'
He patiently explained a second time how he was going to create a sky for the set by stretching his semi- transparent fabric between the thirty-foot-high catwalk that ran across the front of the stage and the eighteen-foot ridge and waterfall that formed the set's back wall.
I struggled to follow what he was saying, uneasily aware of Mike and Paul standing nearby, as if they were waiting to speak to me. I wondered if Paul had told Mike about last night's incident. It annoyed me that I had let Paul see how afraid I was, though I would have been an idiot not to have feared him in that situation. 'So what do you think?' Tomas asked again. I glanced down at the fabric. 'It's beautiful. When the lights shine through, it will shimmer like a summer sky. '
Tomas beamed.
'Just one question. Who's attaching it to the cat-walk-besides me?'
'Arthur's getting an extension ladder,' he said. 'Someone will volunteer. I don't think I'd better-you saw me on the boat.'
Mike stepped forward. 'I'll help.'
'Terrific,' Tomas replied. 'Ill see if I can find one more person.'
He headed off quickly, perhaps wanting to sidestep an offer from Paul.
Gazing upward, Paul surveyed the the length of the high, metal walkway. His face warped into a smile, as if something amusing had occurred to him.
Then he turned to me. 'Need some coffee this morning, Jenny?'
