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Trammell shook his head. Dane rapped once on the glass, and Lieuten-ant Bonness gestured them inside. “Come on in, and close the door,” he said. As soon as they were inside he said, “Marlie Keen, this is Detective Hollister and Detective Trammell. They’re in charge of the Vinick case. Miss Keen has some interesting information.”
    Trammell took a seat on the other side of the lieutenant’s desk, away from Miss Keen. Dane leaned against the wall on her other side, out of her direct line of vision but where he could still see her face. She had barely glanced at either him or Trammell; nor was she looking at the lieutenant. Instead she seemed to be concentrating on the blinds that shaded the outside windows.
    A short silence fell as she seemed to be bracing herself. Dane eyed her curiously. She was so tense, he could almost see her muscles tighten. There was something vaguely intriguing about her, something that kept him looking at her. She wasn’t a beauty, though she was even-featured and certainly not hard on the eyes, but she sure didn’t do anything to attract attention. She wore plain black flats, a narrow black denim skirt that came down to midcalf, and a sleeveless white blouse. She had nice, clean-looking dark hair, but it had been pulled back into one of those severe French twists. About thirty years old, he guessed, his policeman’s eye making an automatic assessment. Hard to tell with her sitting down, but probably average height, maybe a little less. A little slimmer than he liked, about a hundred and twenty pounds; he preferred a woman to be soft rather than bony.
    Her hands were tightly clenched in her lap. He found himself watching them: slim, fine-boned hands, free of any jewelry, and a dead giveaway to her tension even if he hadn’t already noticed that her posture was stiff rather than still.
    “I’m psychic,” she said baldly. He barely kept himself from snorting in derision. His eyes met Trammell’s in a lightning-quick glance of shared thought: Another one of the lieutenant’s weird California ideas!
    “Last Friday night I was driving home from a late movie,” she continued in a flat little monotone that didn’t diminish the low, raspy quality of her voice. A smoker’s voice, he thought, except he’d bet the farm that she didn’t smoke. Uptight types like her seldom went in for the easy vices. “It was about eleven-thirty when I left the theater. I had just left the expressway when I began to have a vision of a murder that was taking place. The… visions are overwhelming. I managed to pull off the street.”
    She paused, as if reluctant to continue, and Dane watched her hands twist together until they were bloodless. She took a deep breath.
    “I see it through his eyes,” she said tonelessly. “He climbed in through a window.”
    Dane stiffened, his attention shifting to her face. He didn’t have to look at Trammell to know that his partner’s attention had sharpened, too.
    The recitation continued in a slow, evenly spaced cadence that felt oddly hypnotic. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, as if she were looking inward. “It’s dark in the room. He waits there until she’s alone. He can hear her in the kitchen, talking to her husband. The husband leaves. He waits until the husband’s car has pulled out of the driveway, then he opens the door and starts the stalk. He feels like a hunter after game.
    “But she’s easy prey. She’s in the kitchen, just pouring a cup of coffee. He pulls a knife from the set that’s sitting there, waiting for him. She hears him and turns. She says, ‘Ansel?’ but then she sees him and opens her mouth to scream.
    “He’s too close. He’s already on her, his hand over her mouth, the knife at her throat.”
    Marlie Keen stopped talking. Dane kept his concentra-tion on her face. She was pale now, he noticed, colorless except for the full bloom of her lips. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck lifting in response to that eerie