his dog off the leash among the ladies who came and went, and whose pets intermingled with his own? The lynchpin holding all these victims together might well lead to a killer.
No one had told Rae that the victims’ pets had also been dispatched—via a large raw steak laced with arsenic—a sure sign of premeditation. Measuring out amounts of arsenic for the family dog. Coward apparently didn’t dare take on a dog with his hammer and nails.
She imagined a frustrated pharmacists or bag boy that each victim had interacted with, perhaps someone who felt slighted by the victims? The needle lay in the haystack, but the haystack could be reduced if patterns and relationships were pitch-forked away in the process of elimination. But the method was slow and time was the enemy here. In fact, time might be the most precious commodity they had, and they couldn’t afford to waste a minute.
The game of twenty questions continued to plague her. How many things did the victims have in common, aside from the geography? The local grocery store, WalMart, Taylor’s bookstore, the local Drug Emporium as it was called, sounding like a ‘palace of painkillers’, the local doctors and dentists, restaurants, theaters, civic centers, and local museums? The crisscrossing of their lives may’ve intersected with their common killer far sooner and in far more ways than in their bedrooms on the night he killed his vulnerable, slumbering victims.
It was to this discordant symphony of concerns that Rae finally found sleep, but when her alarm rang the next morning, she felt as if she’d had no sleep at all. And in her morning stupor, she stumbled toward the shower. Under the hot spray, her mind picked up where it’d left off, racing anew with the question of entwining, intersecting lives. What did all these victims have in common, what had led to their demise? Their lives had been cut short, gone out prematurely under horrid, traumatic conditions, snuffed out like so many precious candles but in a shower of pain.
Nothing in this world, in Rae Hiyakawa’s opinion, meant more than life itself—and taking a life was the worst sin of all the sins of all the religions of the earth. The only thing Rae Hiyakawa would willingly, voluntarily give up her own life for was her daughter. For Nia she’d take a bullet. For the U.S. President, no.
She toweled off, grinning at the conclusion to her thoughts, saying, “Good thing I’m not Secret Service.”
Behind her, unseen, in the fog and condensation against her shower door, her Irish Wiccan mother, Alice Murphy, materialized, blowing a kiss and a wish in Rae’s direction. At her side, shouldering her, Rae’s father, Hiro, smiled.
SIX
Charleston, WV, Same Night
A deadly hammer rose overhead, huge and ugly, in the hand of someone intent on murdering another victim. Over X’s head it hung. Hung in the air as if giving a final thought to not falling. Halting as if it wanted nothing to do with this killer’s intent.
# # #
Quantico, Virginia Headquarters, PSI Unit next day
Rae sat beneath the restraining coils of the CRAWL again, the electrodes attached to her temples. Trying anew. A fresh start to a new day. But already, her mind began to wander off the case at hand.
The woman at peace image had returned and threatened to blot out all else. Rae would be showering, shopping, or gardening, totally relaxed, her mind off herself and what she did for a living—psychically chasing killers—when Rae would get a sense of déjà vu involving a lone female figure in a pure white dress and veil floating overhead, moving toward the heavens. Floating on air, an angelic thing indeed.
Symbolic no doubt.
Symbolic of what precisely? Room for plenty of question and answer and doubt.
A victim of pain and suffering not buried in some cave or sepulcher known only to her torturer, but floating over a busy street in
No one had told Rae that the victims’ pets had also been dispatched—via a large raw steak laced with arsenic—a sure sign of premeditation. Measuring out amounts of arsenic for the family dog. Coward apparently didn’t dare take on a dog with his hammer and nails.
She imagined a frustrated pharmacists or bag boy that each victim had interacted with, perhaps someone who felt slighted by the victims? The needle lay in the haystack, but the haystack could be reduced if patterns and relationships were pitch-forked away in the process of elimination. But the method was slow and time was the enemy here. In fact, time might be the most precious commodity they had, and they couldn’t afford to waste a minute.
The game of twenty questions continued to plague her. How many things did the victims have in common, aside from the geography? The local grocery store, WalMart, Taylor’s bookstore, the local Drug Emporium as it was called, sounding like a ‘palace of painkillers’, the local doctors and dentists, restaurants, theaters, civic centers, and local museums? The crisscrossing of their lives may’ve intersected with their common killer far sooner and in far more ways than in their bedrooms on the night he killed his vulnerable, slumbering victims.
It was to this discordant symphony of concerns that Rae finally found sleep, but when her alarm rang the next morning, she felt as if she’d had no sleep at all. And in her morning stupor, she stumbled toward the shower. Under the hot spray, her mind picked up where it’d left off, racing anew with the question of entwining, intersecting lives. What did all these victims have in common, what had led to their demise? Their lives had been cut short, gone out prematurely under horrid, traumatic conditions, snuffed out like so many precious candles but in a shower of pain.
Nothing in this world, in Rae Hiyakawa’s opinion, meant more than life itself—and taking a life was the worst sin of all the sins of all the religions of the earth. The only thing Rae Hiyakawa would willingly, voluntarily give up her own life for was her daughter. For Nia she’d take a bullet. For the U.S. President, no.
She toweled off, grinning at the conclusion to her thoughts, saying, “Good thing I’m not Secret Service.”
Behind her, unseen, in the fog and condensation against her shower door, her Irish Wiccan mother, Alice Murphy, materialized, blowing a kiss and a wish in Rae’s direction. At her side, shouldering her, Rae’s father, Hiro, smiled.
SIX
Charleston, WV, Same Night
A deadly hammer rose overhead, huge and ugly, in the hand of someone intent on murdering another victim. Over X’s head it hung. Hung in the air as if giving a final thought to not falling. Halting as if it wanted nothing to do with this killer’s intent.
# # #
Quantico, Virginia Headquarters, PSI Unit next day
Rae sat beneath the restraining coils of the CRAWL again, the electrodes attached to her temples. Trying anew. A fresh start to a new day. But already, her mind began to wander off the case at hand.
The woman at peace image had returned and threatened to blot out all else. Rae would be showering, shopping, or gardening, totally relaxed, her mind off herself and what she did for a living—psychically chasing killers—when Rae would get a sense of déjà vu involving a lone female figure in a pure white dress and veil floating overhead, moving toward the heavens. Floating on air, an angelic thing indeed.
Symbolic no doubt.
Symbolic of what precisely? Room for plenty of question and answer and doubt.
A victim of pain and suffering not buried in some cave or sepulcher known only to her torturer, but floating over a busy street in
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