“She has problems. I don’t mean she’s crazy. Nothing like that. I’ll bet she pretty much told you she was a fraud, am I right?”
“Yeah, but she didn’t have to tell me. I knew it before she got here. I heard about that deal in California, about how she stepped in and took credit for finding that little girl.”
“That deal in California,” Tyler said. “You wanna know about that deal in California? Cleo didn’t want anybody to know about her involvement. The cops were happy to take credit, but then the press stepped in and sensationalized the whole thing. She sees things, Sinclair. She’s been lying to me about it, but I’m her brother and I can see through her, no matter how good the act.”
“If she’s psychic, why pretend she isn’t? How does that make sense?”
“It’s something to do with an accident she was in. It’s personal, and I can’t tell you any more. I’ve told you too much already. Cleo’s a private person. I just want you to find her.”
“I’m not even sure she’s missing.”
“Something’s happened,” Tyler said with conviction. “She knows how I worry, and she never goes anywhere without giving me a telephone number where she can be reached. I know her. And I know this isn’t like her. Not like her at all.”
Daniel didn’t know what to think. Maybe the whole damn family was nuts. But he couldn’t deny that he’d had an uncomfortable feeling about this from the beginning.
With the cell phone to his ear, Daniel went back into the motel room and picked up the paper Cleo had left behind. “I’m in her room right now,” Daniel said. “I found a collage she made, a bunch of pictures cut from a magazine. What’s that all about?”
At first the man was silent. Then he began to speak-a little reluctantly, Daniel thought.
“Her therapist used to have her do stuff like that.” Tyler ’s voice sounded sad. Tired. “Whenever she was having a problem handling something, she’d cut pictures out of magazines.”
“What about orange? Why doesn’t she like the color orange?”
Another silence, as if Tyler was wondering how much he should tell a stranger about his sister. “It has something to do with the car wreck and her boyfriend’s death. Listen, man. Even though I’m her brother, Cleo never spilled her guts to me. I can’t fill in the blanks for you. You just need to get off your butt and do something.”
There was more to know about Cleo. A lot more, but Daniel didn’t think he was going to get anything else out of the brother, at least not right now.
He stared at the collage in his hand. He thought back to the day of the seance, or whatever the hell it was. She’d spewed that stuff about a road and a barn. He hadn’t believed her…until he’d gone into the bathroom, until he’d seen the naked fear in her face. In that encapsulated moment, he’d believed her. In that moment, he would have believed anything she said. But then she’d gotten mad. She’d pushed him. And he’d come to his senses. Or had he? Had he really?
Had he seen the real Cleo for one unguarded moment? And when she realized how open and vulnerable she’d left herself, she’d lashed out, distracting him, bringing him back to his original impression of her- Cleo the con artist, Cleo the fraud.
“Premonition.”
Daniel’s thoughts were pulled back to the man on the other end of the line. Premonition? How had Tyler known? Was he a mind reader? Was this sixth sense a family trait? A genetic thing?
“Where’s Premonition?” Tyler asked. “Cleo never goes anywhere without him. She loves that dog.”
Daniel didn’t handle guilt well. At the moment it was eating at his stomach. “My brother’s got the dog. She gave him to my brother.”
“She never goes anywhere without that dog,” Tyler said. “She loves that dog.” His voice rose. “That dog is like her kid.”
Daniel thought about that first evening, the way she’d watched Beau and Premonition playing, her expression appearing calm. Maybe if they hadn’t just met, he would have recognized emotions hidden to a stranger.
“I’ll call you if I hear anything,” Daniel said, sweat running down his spine.
After hanging up, he continued to stare at the collage in his hand.
Groping blindly in the darkness, Cleo found the bottled water Campbell had dropped. She unscrewed the cap and drank thirstily. Before she was finished, warmth seeped into her arms and legs. She tried to replace the cap, but couldn’t match the threads. The bottle slipped from her numb fingers, cold liquid splashing on her legs. She wilted against the straw.
The sound of the dental drill rang in Dr. Burton Campbell’s ears.
His patient flinched and tried to pull away.
“Almost done, Mrs. Cabot.”
He pressed harder, his mind drifting to the woman in the barn. He’d thought it over and decided he was going to have to kill her. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t some psycho, killing people for the sake of killing them. But he had a reputation to protect, and the only way to be certain nobody ever found out about the prostitutes was to kill Cleo Tyler. It was that simple.
Beneath the sound of the drill, Mrs. Cabot, a woman in her mid-fifties, a woman with very little tolerance for pain, was making noises in her throat, a kind of panicky hum, the sounds getting louder and more desperate by the second. With an internal sigh, Burton pulled the drill away, impatient and irritated at her for making this take twice as long as it should.
“Are you feeling some discomfort?” he asked in a concerned, soothing voice.
She nodded, her brows drawn tightly together, eyes watering.
“I’m almost done,” he said. “Just one more minute and we’ll have it.”
She shook her head and said something too garbled to understand.
“More Novocaine?” he asked. He picked up a syringe from the stainless-steel dental tray. “I’ll just deaden that a little more for you.” He patted her arm. “We don’t want anyone in pain.” He stuck the needle into the fleshy part of her mouth, just under her tongue, pushing the plunger too fast, novocaine spilling down her throat.
He hadn’t meant to kill either of the prostitutes. Both had been accidents. The last one had told him she liked rough, kinky stuff-that was why he’d picked her-but at the first sign of blood, she’d freaked. She’d acted like
With hindsight, he saw that he should have just shot her full of dope, making it look like she’d overdosed. But she was bruised and bloody, and he’d panicked.
Maybe he could have told a slanted version of the truth and gotten off with a couple of years, but his reputation would have been ruined.
But the drug thing might work with the Tyler woman. Oh, yeah. He’d load her up with morphine. When she was too drugged to fight him, he’d find a vein in her arm and finish her. She wouldn’t know a thing. It would actually be a pleasant experience for her.
His daydream moved on. He could even be the one to find the body.
He almost laughed out loud at the idea. How perfect. He imagined himself on the front page of the paper, looking distraught and concerned.
He smiled. “How does that feel, Mrs. Cabot?” He poked a metal instrument against the woman’s cheek. “Numb yet?”
She closed her eyes in relief, nodding, letting him know he could proceed, that everything would be all right. She was in capable hands.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Three days dragged by with no sign of Cleo. Daniel had searched every barn within a ten-mile radius of Egypt. Nothing.
