canisters. “I mean, is there something that can be done?”
While she was eating, Ben and Deckert had brought her up to date on the days events, from the latest murder to the discovery of the connection with Seattle. We had now moved to the dining room table where she could do some work while we talked.
“It took some doin’ since we don’t have any hard evidence,” Ben answered, “but I managed to convince the chief of the possibility of a child abduction. We’ve got coppers stationed at all of the area schools, but the truth is, we really don’t know what we’re lookin’ for. This asshole hasn’t established any kind of pattern or anything.
“And what with school just starting in some districts, the effort has been hard to coordinate.”
“Not to mention that it’s quite a bit of ground to cover,” Deckert added. “He could try to grab a kid outside of the metro area for all we know.”
“What about the police in those areas?” she posed. “Can’t they help out?”
“They are,” Deckert explained, “but you’re talking about some real small departments. They can only spread themselves so thin, and like Ben said, he hasn’t exactly been sticking to a particular stereotype…and now we’re guessing that he’ll go after a kid…”
I had been listening quietly, pondering the facts as they were reiterated for my wife’s benefit and trying each of them out on the mental jigsaw puzzle I had created. Each of my nightmares provided another piece, and I felt that my recent revelations had begun putting them together. The border was completed, I was certain of that, and something told me that I had most of the pieces necessary to fill in the center but for some reason, still lacked the dexterity to do it.
I was troubled as much as the rest of them by the paradox the killer had created. It was obvious that he was practicing, preparing himself for the rite of invocation I believed he intended to perform. With each victim, he had grown progressively more intense, displaying increasingly greater skill at his grotesque art. Each of his steps seemed carefully planned out, but at the same time, the selection of his victims appeared random.
Ariel Tanner, Karen Barnes, Ellen Gray, and now Darla Radcliffe. Other than the fact that three of them knew R.J., they had little in common. There was nothing to indicate that they knew one another. The fact that R.J. was still in custody at the time of the fourth murder tended to rule him out as a suspect and in my mind, as the common thread I was searching for. The women lived in different parts of the city and county. They had different professions, different hair colors, different eye colors, sizes, weights, shapes, birth dates, this, that, and the other thing. They appeared to have nothing more in common than being adult, mid-to-late twenties, and female. Now I believed that the killer’s next victim would be a child, so even that pattern, minute as it was, instantly began to unravel.
“Rowan?”
I plunged back toward reality at the sound of Felicity’s voice sharply prodding me. “Wha…What?”
“You were starin’ off into space for a minute there,” Ben interjected. “Somethin’ we should know? You weren’t goin’ all Twilight Zone on us were you?”
“No. Nothing like that,” I answered, still dragging myself out of my introspective trance. “I was just thinking about the victims. There’s got to be some kind of connection that we’re missing. He had to pick them for a reason. There has to be a common thread.”
“I’ll buy that, but I got no idea what it is,” he returned. “We talked to friends, relatives, and neighbors of all four of ‘em. We’ve been over the crime scenes dozens of times. Personal effects as well. Nothin’.”
“Why does it matter?” Deckert interjected. “If you think he’s gonna go for a kid this time then all bets are off.”
“I don’t know.” I stood up and began slowly pacing about the room. “Maybe it would give us a better idea of who we’re looking for. Maybe it’s something the four of them could have in common with a child…I don’t know.” I began to mutter, “It just bothers me…”
“You’re thinking that if we knew the connection,” Felicity ventured, “that we might have a better idea of the type of child he might abduct?”
“In general, yes. That is, of course, assuming that he hasn’t grabbed a child already.”
“We thought of that,” Deckert expressed. “There haven’t been any unresolved child abductions in the area within the past two years.”
“What about Seattle?”
“Nothing,” Ben added. “If he already grabbed a kid, either it hasn’t been reported, or it happened somewhere in between here and Seattle. I’ve got a coupl’a guys workin’ on compilin’ a list right now, but that’s gonna take some time.”
“Dammit! There has to be something.” My pace was quickening as my patience began showing wear. “There’s something there, and I’m too blind to see it.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Rowan,” Felicity chimed.
“Why not?” I shot back as I came to a halt and motioned to Ben and Deckert. “They’re taking me at my word on all of this. They’ve got cops all over the place watching schools all day. What if I’m wrong? What if this bastard doesn’t try to grab a kid after all? What if he kills a waitress from the local pancake house? Or a secretary? Or anyone else for that matter…Then it’s MY fault because I was wrong.”
The room fell hushed as my diatribe ended, and the three of them watched me in concerned silence. After a long moment, the quiet was ushered from the room by the raspy sound of Detective Deckert clearing his throat.
“Do you think you’re wrong?” he asked simply.
I allowed his words to fade softly away before bringing my gaze up to meet their faces. “No. No, I don’t.”
“Then stop kickin’ yourself in the ass,” Ben ordered. “It’s not gonna help us figure out who this sicko is.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if anything is,” I whispered.
“If it weren’t for you, we’d have never made the Seattle connection,” he continued. “It’s not like this asshole has been leavin’ behind a lot of clues. Trust me, even I don’t believe I’m about to say this, but right now your dreams or nightmares, or whatever the hell you call ‘em, are the best leads we’ve got. So far, you’re two for two, and that’s a damned good average in my book.”
“But the dreams aren’t just ‘Bam, here’s the answer’, Ben,” I objected. “The clues are obscure and symbolic. Like the Seattle thing. I had that dream days ago, and it was about rain. I didn’t make the connection until I got a package from a client that’s based in Seattle, and it triggered the thought. I still don’t know what the other ones mean.”
“So maybe you just need to relax,” Deckert volunteered.
“Could be.” I leaned against the doorframe and let out a long sigh. “That would probably help.”
“I don’t mean to push, especially on that note, but you mentioned somethin’ about money on the phone earlier,” Ben queried. “Any idea what it means yet?”
“No, not yet… And there’s a perfect example of what I mean about the clues being obscure. What I saw in the dream wasn’t actually money, it was a tarot card.”
“You mean like those fortune teller cards,” Deckert intoned.
“Exactly.” I pushed away from the doorway and retrieved a tarot deck from the top drawer of the buffet then seated myself back at the table. “This deck belonged to my mother,” I told them as I unwrapped the square of white silk that encompassed them. “Neither Felicity nor I have ever been really into tarot, so I had to look some of this up. Ariel, on the other hand, was fascinated with it. In my dream, we were sitting at a table, and she was reading the cards for me…but not really FOR me, more like TO me.”
“I don’t believe I’m asking this,” Ben spoke this time, “but what did she tell you?”
“Nothing really.” I fanned the deck of seventy-two oversized cards before us and began carefully choosing those that had appeared in the dream. “I think this one represents the killer.”
As they watched, I placed the Knight of Cups face up in the center of the table.
“Why’s that?” Deckert asked.
“Whenever Ariel read tarot,” I explained, “she used a method know as the Celtic Cross. The variation of the style she followed requires that the reader choose a card called a significator to represent the person being read for. This was the card she chose in the dream.”
“So what does that tell us?”
“If you follow the assigned, or divinatory as it’s called, meaning of the card, then it would represent a young
