“She did.”
Then it really was Sara? Cole felt torn between relief she was alive and worry over her possible involvement in his death.
Hamada called, “Are you talking to me?”
Razor grimaced. “Just myself,” he called back. “There’s no sign of a gun or ammunition so far.” He opening another box, whispering, “Dennis called Hamada about it a few minutes ago.”
A thought struck Cole. “Did we check to see if she went all the way to Key West?”
“She missed the connecting flight in Chicago.”
Relief evaporated. Shit. “Then it could be Irah. She went as far as Chicago and flew back on another airline.”
Razor cocked a brow at him. “You realize Chicago’s only a few hours from Bloomington by bus or car.”
That was a thought, too. If Sara gave her family a convincing story about needing her whereabouts kept secret, they might lie about here being there. “Is Hamada having the Bloomington PD check for her?”
Razor nodded.
But Cole’s gut feeling doubted they would find her. The mother had not sounded like someone lying. “I think it was Irah on the plane.” His stomach knotted around lead and ice. “I’m afraid she killed Sara. We need to check flights from Chicago to SFO.”
“We’re not going to talk Hamada into that without probable cause.”
The perpetual problem in dealing with the Flaxx clan. “Maybe I can find out if Irah was at the office on Thursday.” He turned toward the door. “Catch you later.”
“Where and when?”
Cole stopped. “Where will you be in, say…” He checked the clock on bed table. “…two hours?”
“Oh…” Razor opened another box. “…I thought I might talk to Sherrie and tell her what that nurse, Brewer, really saw.”
Cole felt his chest tighten. “Thanks, amigo.” He hoped she listened. Without Sara, Razor was all he had to speak for him. “You’re the best. I’ll try to catch you there.”
He left through the front windows again, trying not to think about Sherrie. Right now he had other business. The easiest way to find out where Irah was on Thursday might be to ask. But for that he needed to be visible. The sensations at the fire remained vivid…energy pouring into him, his fear for the trapped woman, the driving urgency to make the firefighters see him. What baffled him was how, exactly, that made him materialize.
To work it out, first he needed heat. If he wanted that to come from internal combustion, he also needed a busy intersection. Letting cars run through him last night had been exhilarating, but collecting heat from groups of stationary vehicles seemed more efficient.
After climbing high enough to go line-of-sight to a street of choice, Cole chose O’Farrell. It not only had busy intersections, its proximity to the Tenderloin gave him test subjects…hotel and store clerks who had seen too much weirdness there to freak out if his first tries were only partially successful.
After checking out several hotels and stores around O’Farrell, Cole found the perfect subject…a clerk in an adult book and video store, whose purple hair and implants under the skin on her forehead and bridge of her nose made her look like one of Star Trek’s aliens. Stepping into the intersection near the store, he reflected that she would probably be thrilled if someone seemed to beam down in front of her.
Beam down! The words echoed in Cole’s head. He listened, stunned. Yes! That explained ziptripping! It was like beaming. Beaming needed coordinates. He must, too…knowing not only what his destination looked like, but
The truck’s engine coughed. Cole hurriedly moved to the car in the next lane.
Location also accounted for the Coit Tower and Bay Bridge helping ziptrip to Razor’s and Homicide.
The car’s engine missed. Cole moved on, zig-zagging between lanes. He shoved aside the excitement over ziptripping, and the urge to check right now whether he finally had it nailed, to think about materialization. Trolling traffic seemed to be working. While not the blast of energy the fire gave him, the little blasts, each more intense than the fire, added up. When he had enough heat energy, though, he better have some idea how to go about materializing.
Cole replayed memories of the fire while continuing to work his way through the idling vehicles. To his frustration, he remembered nothing except sucking in heat and desperately wanting the firefighters to see him. Maybe he just needed to will himself visible once he soaked up enough energy. Which felt about now.
He trotted down the block to the porno shop. As he approached the clerk, who stood reading a magazine spread open on the counter, Cole willed himself visible, driving it with a sense of urgency. Visibility had been a life or death situation for the old woman. This time he pictured Irah running away, a distant figure on a vast plain, dragging Sara with her. Whether Sara was alive or dead, he could not tell…just that they were disappearing, and with them, the chance of catching Irah. He needed the clerk to see him. She
The sense of weight he felt at the fire never came.
Shit. He had the energy…dissipating rapidly as he stood here…and he certainly had the desire to be visible. What the hell else did he need for materializing. Some extra mental trick, no doubt…like everything else in this damn ghost business!
Cole thought about that. Maybe it did take a mental trick. For ziptrips he had to picture himself at his destination. Materializing might need something like that, too. Not just the desire to be visible but imagining himself being seen. At the fire, he might have done that, imagining himself seen through the firefighters’ eyes.
Much of the collected energy had gone but he might as well try again with the little left. He built a mental image of himself, feeling almost as if he molded it from the energy in him, and saw the clerk seeing him.
And…yes! He felt heavier. Not as weighty as before but little beefed-up. “Excuse me.”
The clerk looked up from her magazine. “Yeah?” She blinked. It became a puzzled stare. She reached a hand toward him.
However he looked…she
He relaxed, letting the last bit of weight drain away. The clerk’s jaw dropped. Grinning, Cole left the store. Not bad. He almost had it on the first try. The next try…
No, he decided…forget another practice run. Go for broke. If Sara were still alive, every minute counted.
Back at the intersection, he waded impatiently through the stopped vehicles, sucking in as much heat as possible by lingering in each engine to the point of stalling it. He did stall a four-cylinder Toyota…yet he kept pushing, trying to stoke up as fast as possible. As he did, he also mentally reviewed his semi-successful materialization for the clerk…and went over the new plan for ziptripping.
Finally he felt charged up and ready to roll the dice. Ziptripping to the Flaxx offices failed before. Then he had been thinking just how the reception area looked, not the office location. If he had this figured out, now the jump ought to work, right? He unrolled a mental map, pinpointed 2EC on it and visualized the Flaxx offices in the tower, including elevation…saw himself there. “Scotty, beam me over.”
The intersection blurred…and became Gina Galechas’ desk. Cole blew her a kiss. Never had her legs looked better.
He backed out the front door. Now came the roll for all the marbles. He concentrated on the energy in him, in feeling shaped into himself…visualized Gina seeing him. Yes, he needed to be careful about letting people he knew see him walking around apparently alive. That would screw up the investigation. No one was likely to ask Gina when she last saw him. The sense of weight filled him. Quickly, still picturing Gina seeing him…hoping the magazine in her lap engrossed her enough that she failed to notice the door did not open…he walked back into the reception area.
Moments too late he thought of the security camera. Would he show up on tape? Rear vision spotted some
