Jasmine wiped her eyes with a harsh swipe of her hand. “I’m fine. I’m coming.”
“What do you think, Tony?” Uncle Victor asked.
The doctor examined Jasmine’s face carefully. “Are you up for it, Jazz?”
She nodded curtly. “Yes. I want to go.”
“Are you up for it? You know there’s a difference.”
Jasmine sighed and rubbed her temples, abandoning her determined resolve. “I can take it.”
Anthony nodded. “All right, then. Hurry back.”
“One stumble, one slurred word, and I’m bringing you home,” I said, helping her rise. “Understand?”
Jasmine made a face at me. “Yes, Mom.”
◆◆◆
The vacant building had yellow caution tape over the door and the gate before it. It was scheduled to be demolished next week. Still supporting Jasmine and closely followed by my uncle, I pushed the gate open. My sister cringed when the rusty hinges creaked.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
She tried to smile. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
We approached the office structure warily. The four other police officers, who had been chosen to accompany us, set up a perimeter before entering. They kicked the door down, hurrying in single file with their guns raised. I pulled Jasmine within the old walls when we’d been given the all clear. She let go of me to approach the dead woman lying on the chipped floor.
My uncle let out a small sound of sympathy.
“She’s so young, and she has such a pretty face. No wonder Death was so happy.” Jasmine knelt with an outstretched hand as if to touch the body. She didn’t; she just left it extended there, a few inches away from the corpse. “How did it happen, Charlie?”
I felt the faint pulses of Death’s presence when I concentrated, like cold drafts in the room. When I mentally reached out to those echoes of cold, I was thrown back in time. Shadows and screams of agony surrounded me. There was a loud snapping of bones before a rope was tied around the woman’s neck and yanked. Fortunately, I couldn’t feel anything. That was Jasmine’s part of the curse. I was just the observer, peeking into this terrible scene through the perspective of the murderer.
When I opened my eyes again, I sat cross-legged beside the corpse; Jasmine crouched next to me like a spiritual totem keeping me grounded in reality. An officer took pictures of the victim and the surrounding area.
“Cause of death was strangulation,” I said. “But she was tortured first. Either we’re dealing with a sadistic bastard”—My uncle grunted as if discouraged at the prospect—“or the killer needed information from the victim and killed her once he’d gotten what he wanted.”
“So the killer was male?” Uncle Victor asked, scribbling away in his notebook.
I nodded. “The hands I saw doing all the damage were definitely male, but he wore gloves. I doubt forensics will find any fingerprints.”
“Anything else?”
I cast my eyes around the room. “There should be some rope lying around here somewhere. It was the murder weapon.”
My uncle called out to the other officers, telling them to search the building for rope.
“Is that all, Mr. Campbell?” Dr. Ochoa timidly asked.
I turned with a start. The medical examiner and her team must’ve arrived while I was in my trance. I nodded at the doctor and she began to examine the body.
The people working with my uncle didn’t know the real reason why he brought his nineteen-year-old niece and nephew to crime scenes. They were told we had psychic powers. Those who doubted stopped doubting when all of our weird predictions started coming true.
“Cause of death does appear to be strangulation, but I’ll know more once I’ve gotten her to the lab,” Dr. Ochoa murmured, gently handling the corpse’s neck. She tugged on a lanyard hidden among the folds of the victim’s blouse. “I think I’ve just found a name for your victim, Detective.”
Uncle Victor squatted down next to me. “What do you have, Doc?”
Dr. Ochoa pulled the section of the gray lanyard up and over the body’s head. Uncle Victor put some synthetic gloves on before he took the lanyard.
Jasmine leaned over to take a look.
“Her name was Ida Mavity. She was David Ward’s press secretary,” my uncle said.
“So someone wanted sensitive information about the mayor,” I said. “Or soon-to-be senator. Or whatever.”
“Charlie,” Jasmine said. “Do you remember the death of the last person you saw? The one who got mugged, shot, and dumped in a garbage truck?”
I nodded. “Yeah, what about him?”
“Do you remember where he worked?”
Uncle Victor answered that one. “According to the report, he had been…Mr. Ward’s political director.” He frowned. “He had been fired just hours before you two sensed his passing.”
I stood. “Whatever information the killer wants, he can’t have gotten it from the first victim. That must be why he came after Ms. Mavity.”
“It’s too early to jump to that conclusion.” My uncle gave the lanyard back to the kneeling medical examiner and straightened out of his crouch. “Let’s head back to the station, kids. We’ll find out the truth soon enough.”
◆◆◆
Uncle Victor parked the car before the North Precinct.
The whole building looked like a giant baby had been playing with blocks and had stacked them haphazardly; one long cement rectangle on the bottom, a thinner glass rectangle up front on its side, and a third wooden rectangle laid horizontally on top. It wasn’t just a symbol of justice and peace, but a work of art. It was one of my favorite buildings in the city.
A pretty little garden had been set up by the front doors with stone walkways weaving in between the plants. A lot of employees took their lunch breaks there, in the shade of the trees. When it wasn’t raining, of course.
Jasmine turned to me almost desperately. “Can’t we go window shopping or something?”
No matter how nice the place looked, it was still her prison. The thought made me sad and mad at the same time.
I opened the door and climbed out. “Anthony will want to see you right away.”
“He won’t mind if I stay
