Better Read Than Dead Read online

  “You okay?” Milo asked.

  I nodded and reached for more water. I hated this, and wanted to stop. Milo gave me an apprising look and put his pen down. “Had enough?”

  “More than enough,” I said quietly.

  “Okay, we’ll stop. I will tell you, however, that you’re right on the money here. There have been two other rapes in the Royal Oak area, each occurring on a Thursday night at roughly the same time. The other two victims looked enough like Cathy to be sisters, and all were beaten unconscious and found right next to or behind a Dumpster. I’ll check with the Vegas PD and see if they can give us any insights.”

  “Have the other two victims been able to tell you anything?” I asked.

  “No. One is still in a coma, and we’re not sure if she’ll come out anytime soon. She wasn’t found for quite some time after she was attacked, and she almost died. The other woman was unconscious for three days and doesn’t remember a thing about her attacker. She’s still pretty traumatized by the whole event, so we’re waiting to see if she remembers something on her own that can help us.”

  “You should take this to the media, Milo,” I said seriously. “Women in the area need to be warned.”

  Milo nodded and sighed heavily. “The tough part about taking it to the press is that it’s a double-edged sword. You’re right in that we do need to alert the public, but you know how the news stations can be. They’re going to blow this whole thing out of proportion, and with the exposure comes every kind of suspicious behavior being called in as the rapist. Our department will be flooded with information that will take up all our resources and lead us nowhere. So before I play that card, I want to make sure we’ve done everything we can on our end to find this guy.”

  “And what does that include?” I asked, curious about how the police would proceed.

  “We’ve been canvassing the neighborhoods to see if anyone’s seen anything, and maybe we’ll get lucky. If we don’t catch a break by next Wednesday I’ll call the media myself and put the public on notice.”

  I nodded tiredly; my earlier adrenaline rush had completely worn off and been replaced with a sluggish exhaustion. Milo must have noticed, because he reached for the phone and paged the officer who had picked me up. Then he came over from around his desk and offered a hand to help me up. “Come on, girl; let’s get you back home to bed. You look whipped.”

  “I’m beyond whipped,” I said, taking his hand. “Say, do you think I could visit Cathy tomorrow? You know, maybe I could pick up something intuitively from her energy.”

  “I doubt her doctor’s going to let anyone but family around her for a couple of days, but I’ll check with him and let you know.” Just then my chauffeur arrived and Milo nodded to him as he walked me to the door. “Thanks again for all your help. I appreciate it.”

  “Absolutely. I don’t know how helpful I was, but call on me anytime,” I said, and I gave his arm a quick squeeze before exiting through the double doors.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Milo called after me as the officer and I descended the staircase.

  A little while later I was back home and curling back up in bed as I noticed with a groan that the clock now read almost two a.m. I was asleep within seconds.

  The next morning the phone again woke me up. I snatched up the receiver and growled, “This had better be good.”

  “Hey, Abby. Milo here. Sorry about waking you up again, but I just came from the hospital. Cathy’s awake and she’s asking to talk to you.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Six thirty.”

  I groaned audibly.

  “I’ve got a piping-hot cup of coffee waiting for you . . .” Milo sang into the phone, static buzzing at the end of his sentence.

  “Are you on your cell?” I asked, sitting up a little and peeling my eyelids open slightly.

  “Yes, I’m in the car.”

  “Where’s your car?” I asked, wondering how long I had before he arrived.

  “In your driveway.”

  Milo had always struck me as the enthusiastic half of the partnership between him and Dutch. I suddenly had a whole new appreciation for Dutch’s patience. “So there’s no way I can ask for another hour of sleep before we go see her?”

  “Mmmm,” Milo said by way of answering me, “this coffee sure is good, and oh! What’s this? A delicious blueberry muffin! It’s warm too. Yummy, and it’s got your name written all over it. Better hurry though; I’m starting to get really hungry.”

  Milo’s good humor only provoked my irritation. What can I say? I’m definitely not a morning person. “Knock yourself out. I’ll call you when I wake up.” And with that I hung up the phone and burrowed back under the covers.

  Mere moments later there was a barrage of hard knocks on my front door. Eggy, asleep through most of my late-night comings and goings, bolted out of bed at the sound, running down the stairs and over to the front door, barking like a banshee all the way.

  I groaned and pulled a pillow over my head, squeezing my eyes shut, but the pounding on the front door only grew louder, and Eggy’s frantic barking was teetering on the verge of howls, so finally I got up and stomped down the staircase. Pushing Eggy gently to the side with my foot I opened the front door and bellowed, “What are you, some kind of sadist?!”

  Milo responded by pushing a small bag in my face and brushing past me into my living room. “Wow!” he said, noting my living room, “I love what you’ve done with the place. Great improvement.” The last time Milo had seen my home was before it had flooring and furniture and it had looked far less appealing.

  I scowled moodily at him; I wasn’t going to be so easily appeased, “Milo! This is nuts. If she’s awake now, then one more hour won’t hurt! I’m freaking exhausted here, no thanks to you, and I’ve got a big day today!”

  For the first time since I’d met him, Milo turned to look at me with a face that very clearly put me in my place. “I get it,” he said with dead calm. “You’re tired. But you know what? There’s a young woman lying in a hospital bed who’s just discovered she’s been beaten, raped and traumatized, and the only person she’s asking for is you. So I’m really sorry this is such an inconvenience, but to be honest, Scarlett, frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

  I sucked in a breath at the force of his words, my cheeks turning red in shame. Then, turning toward the stairs, I said, “I’ll be just a moment.”

  As promised I was back downstairs four minutes later, and without a word we walked out to Milo’s waiting car.

  I came up short as I spotted the auto in the driveway—a brand-new black BMW 745i sedan waited in shiny magnificence for us.

  “You like?” Milo beamed as he rounded to the driver’s door.

  “Are you kidding?” I gushed. “This is gorgeous!”

  “Get in; the seats are heated and I’ve already warmed up your side.”

  As we drove to the hospital I swished back and forth in the leather seat, reveling in the feeling of my bum getting warm as I carefully ate my muffin and sipped at the coffee, conscious of not spreading crumbs all over the immaculate interior.

  We arrived at Royal Oak’s Beaumont Hospital a short time later and found a good parking space, then walked briskly in the cold morning air to the visitors’ entrance. Visiting hours weren’t officially open for another two hours, but Milo simply flashed his badge at the security camera and we were allowed to enter.

  I followed behind him through the lobby to the elevators, then up to the sixth floor, down two corridors, and inside a small, darkened room that smelled like antiseptic.

  A thin curtain divided the room, and we quietly crept past a figure lying prone in the first bed, around the curtain to the second bed. There I came up short and caught my breath, my hand quickly moving to cover my heart as I laid eyes on the same woman I’d made casual conversation with only the day before.

  Cathy was propped up on several pillows, an IV snaking its way over the rails of the bed and up her forearm. Th
ere was a thick bandage on her head, her hair matted and disheveled. Her face was puffy and bruised, and one of her eyes was swollen shut. Around her throat was a large scratch; her lip sported a deep red cut that still oozed a little, while a trickle of water leaked a steady stream out of her good eye, and a wad of used tissue lay twisted and torn in her right hand. She looked up as we rounded the curtain, and seeing me seemed to undo her.

  She looked at me for the briefest moment, her eyes pleading with an unspoken request; then a great sob escaped her and she lowered her face into her hands. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so ashamed in all my life, and I swore I would never be so insensitive about getting out of bed when I was needed again. I went to her side, barred from hugging her by the IV pole, the bed railing and my own fear of hurting her. Instead, I pulled up a chair and sat next to her, stroking the side of her head that wasn’t bandaged and making shhhh sounds.

  After a few minutes she seemed to collect herself and, gulping a little, she looked up at Milo and said, “Thank you for bringing her.”

  “The least I could do, Cathy.” I realized by their familiarity that Milo had already been here, and that he’d probably had a chance to talk to her. I wondered for a brief moment if he’d ever gone to bed last night.

  Cathy turned to me and said, “Thank you for coming, Abby. I really needed to see you.”

  “Of course,” I said, whispering, not wanting to jar her with the full volume of my voice.

  “I wanted to ask you if you knew?” she said to me.

  “If I knew?” I repeated, perplexed by the question.

  “Yeah, I mean yesterday, when I came to see you. I wanted to know if you knew I was going to be attacked, but just didn’t tell me.”

  As preposterous as that sounds, you can’t do my work professionally without understanding the motivation behind asking such a question. One of the main reasons people are afraid of psychics is that they’re scared to death we will tell them something bad. The truth is that very few of my clientele ever hear bad news but still the perception prevails. The flip side to this coin is the belief that we won’t tell a client about something awful when we see it. Instead we’ll filter it out and tell our clients only the good news. This, I reasoned, was where Cathy was coming from. She must have believed that I’d seen her imminent attack, and that I’d simply chosen to edit it out.

  I was quick to reassure her. “Absolutely not, Cathy. I swear to you, my guides didn’t tell me you were in danger of being harmed.”

  Cathy looked at me for a moment, assessing the sincerity of my face; then, with eyes full of accusation, she asked, “But why not? I mean, if you’re such a good psychic and all, why didn’t you pick up on this and warn me?”

  I took a moment to tramp down the defensive feelings burbling beneath my surface. It irked me to no end when people blamed me for the bad things that happened to them. It wasn’t my fault, and it truly wasn’t my responsibility to make sure that all my clients lived happily ever after.

  My personal feeling is that information comes to me only in a way that the client can handle. Like, if I’d told Cathy, “Don’t go to the grocery store because a psycho is going to rape you,” she probably would never go grocery shopping again for the rest of her life. How would that serve her?

  I went over in my mind what I had told her in the reading the day before. In hindsight, the message had been there, but she hadn’t taken the responsibility of listening and getting her shopping done before her job interview, when it was still light out. Instead she’d blown off the message and done the opposite of what I’d advised and was now paying the price.

  I couldn’t very well point that out to her in her present condition, however; she’d been through enough, and I guess if she wanted to transfer blame to me then I had big shoulders and I could carry it for a while.

  I finally looked at her and said, “Cathy, I think information comes to me so that it’s easy for me to interpret and pass on to my clients in a way that won’t shock them. It’s no good to live your life in fear of something terrible happening, so I think that most of my messages are given to me in a way that makes them palpable to the client. I think we had some of the clues yesterday, but without the context to put them all together. I’m so sorry you went through this, and I’m working with Detective Johnson here to help find the guy who did this to you as soon as possible.”

  Cathy dissolved into tears again, and I really felt for her. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, and felt more powerless than I ever had in my life. After a few moments she nodded at me and struggled to regain some control, while carefully wiping her good eye with her crumpled tissue. Then she glanced up at Milo and said, “I remembered something else, Detective.”

  Milo quickly reached into his coat pocket and extracted a small spiral notebook. Flipping quickly to a blank page he nodded at her, and she said, “The last thing I can remember after he grabbed me from behind, right before he pulled me around the back of the building, was that he was wearing a mask.”

  “A mask?” Milo repeated.

  “Yeah, I had a really brief glance at it from the corner of my eye.”

  “Like a Halloween mask?” Milo asked.

  “No, not a Halloween mask. It was a ski mask, one of those Gore-Tex ones.”

  “The skier . . .” I said breathlessly, a little startled by the revelation.

  Cathy looked sharply at me, her mouth dropping open at the connection. “Oh, my God . . . yesterday you told me to be careful of the skier. After I left your office I remember thinking that you must have been talking about my next-door neighbor. I think he skis, and he’s always trying to hit on me.”

  “Could he have been your attacker?” Milo asked.

  “I . . . I don’t know. Maybe? I have no idea; that’s just who came to mind when I was wondering who Abby was talking about.”

  “He’s your next-door neighbor?”

  “Yeah, he lives in the redbrick ranch right next to ours. He’s always trying to talk to me when Kenny isn’t home. He’s creepy too. Last summer I caught him spying through the fence between our properties when I was sunbathing.”

  “You know his name?”

  “I think it’s Jeff, or John . . . something with a J . . .”

  “It’s Jeff. Jeff Zimmer,” said a voice from behind us. We all looked up quickly, and around the curtain stepped a young man with sandy-blond hair and eyes full of pain. Cathy’s boyfriend, no doubt.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” Cathy said with longing in her voice. Quickly the young man moved to the opposite side of the bed from me and took his girlfriend’s hand protectively. Cathy began to melt again with emotion, and I sent Milo a look as I got up and stepped away. These two people needed some alone time. Milo nodded at me and closed his notebook after jotting down the name Cathy’s boyfriend had given him. “Thanks, Ken,” he said. “We’ll check it out. Cathy, why don’t you rest, and if you remember anything more just call my cell phone. You have the card, right?”

  Cathy nodded as tears made tracks down her face. Milo and I waved a small good-bye, exiting the room.

  On the way back to my house, Milo filled me in on what else Cathy had remembered, which was very little. She’d gotten to the market just before closing, and the staff was already locking up as she left. She was halfway to her car when she was grabbed from behind, dragged backward behind the building, beaten and hit over the head into unconsciousness. Luckily she had no recollection of her rape—a small blessing, in my opinion.

  Milo pulled his car into my driveway, and after shifting into park he reached over and squeezed my hand. “Thanks for coming. I’m sorry I was a little hard on you this morning.”

  “No, you were absolutely right,” I said, looking at him, still feeling chagrined. “Mornings have never been good for my personality, and I’m sorry I was so insensitive.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t,” Milo replied with a mischievous grin.

  “Deal.” I laughed as I got out of the car
. Right before closing the door I asked, “Call me if anything new develops, okay?”

  “You got it,” Milo answered, giving me a small salute.

  I walked up my walkway and into the house, where an impatient Eggy pestered me until I’d cooked his morning egg. Then, glancing at the clock, which now read eight, I ran upstairs for a quick shower. While I was shampooing I heard the phone ring, and being one of those impulsive types who can’t let a phone ring without answering it, I got out of the shower and grabbed the cordless before the call went to voice mail.

  “Morning,” came my favorite baritone.

  “Hey, there, Dutch,” I said, feeling relieved that he seemed to be in a better mood this morning. “Listen, I’m in the shower. Can I call you back in a couple of minutes?”

  “Need someone to scrub your back?”

  The flirtatiousness of the question caught me off guard, and I dissolved into a fit of nervous giggles. Sometimes I’m so sophisticated. “Uh, ha-ha, no, actually, I’m just rinsing off . . . I mean I’m almost done . . . I mean, hee-hee, not that I would normally turn down your offer . . . ha-ha, I’m just running late this morning and—”

  “Just call me when you’re through, okay, babe? I’m at home,” Dutch said, obviously recognizing that I needed help putting an end to my embarrassment.

  “Deal,” I said hanging up the phone and rushing back into the shower. Quickly I rinsed off and folded myself into my favorite flannel robe; then, with my hair bound up into a giant turban I called Dutch back. “Morning, sailor,” I sang when he picked up.

  “Hey, there. I wanted to catch you before you headed off to work and see if you were still intent on working tonight.”