Face Off (7 page)

Clark's eyes moved lazily in her direction, looking her up and down. The bright blue of his eyes startled her. Brown eyes would have fit his face better. Somehow the blueness unnerved her, making her look away.

“You may sit there across from him if you like, Sister,” Officer Karnitz said. “We'll give you ten minutes, that's all.”

Suzanne bowed her head slightly at the officer. “Thank you.” She began walking toward Clark, trying to avoid his eyes. She pulled out a chair and sat down, then reached across the table and put her hand on his arm. “Bless you, my child.”

The minute Suzanne's hand touched Clark a shock wave went through her body. Cold, hard fear clutched at her, as she felt the room spinning. Quickly she drew back her hand.

“So, Sister. What do you want with me?” Clark spoke. He laughed, a deep, throaty laugh which sent chills down Suzanne's spine. “Are you here to save my soul?”

Suzanne steeled herself and again reached across the table, placing her hand on Clark's arm. The images came rapidly, like a child in charge of the clicker at a slide presentation. Too fast to see the picture clearly. With her free hand, Suzanne grabbed the edge of her chair, squeezing hard, trying to gain control and slow the images.

Click.
A young girl on the ground, Clark standing over her.
Click.
Clark brings an ax or meat cleaver down on the girl.
Click.
A close-up of the young woman's face, which seems to be covered with thick makeup.
Click.
Another girl, more heavy makeup.

Click.
Suzanne saw a road—a winding, gravel road, which turned into a river of blood as she watched. The blood flowed down, covering tall brush and large sunflowers.

“Hey, what's the matter with you, Sister?” Clark's voice jolted Suzanne back to the present. “You some kind of nut or what?”

Suzanne watched as Clark unpried her fingers from his arm. “You trying to break my arm, Sister?”

Suzanne knew she had to go for broke. She stood and reached across the table, placing her thumb on Clark's forehead. “Will you receive the blessing, my son?”

Clark looked up at her, nodded and started to speak. Suzanne whispered in a rush. “Where is Amy Matthews? What have you done with her?”

An enormous black cloud descended around Suzanne. Cold icy fingers of fear jabbed at her from the darkness.
No! What is happening?
She could feel another presence. An evil entity. Besides Clark. She could feel herself trembling, gasping for air.
Let me through! I need to know!
But she couldn't penetrate the darkness.

Then all at once she was struggling. Trying to escape, trying to reach the air. She could see shovels of dirt coming down on her, choking her. Then it was Amy. The dirt was coming down on Amy, covering her. She realized her thumb was burning white-hot and she pulled it down from Clark's forehead. Immediately, the spell was broken, and she sat down heavily in the chair.

Jena Karnitz came running over. “What's the matter? What happened? Are you all right?” Her eyes took in Suzanne's white face and shaking hands. “Maybe you had better come lie down for a few minutes.”

“Get her away from me!” Clark screamed. “What are you guys trying to pull on me, anyway?”

Suzanne stood, grabbing on to Jena for support. “Maybe I had better lie down for a few minutes. I do feel rather faint.”

“There's a small couch in the coffee room,” Jena said. “Will that be all right? Can you make it?”

“Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. You're very kind.”

Officer Karnitz guided Suzanne into the coffee room and indicated the couch. “Is there anything you need?”

“Well, yes, actually. I have some pills in my purse, but I left it in that other office where you had me wait. Would you mind getting it for me?”

“Not at all,” Jena answered. “I'll be right back.”

The minute the door closed, Suzanne headed for the open window she had noticed when they entered the room. She cranked it farther open, then hoisted herself up and fell not so gracefully through it to the ground outside.

She stood up and ran for the parking lot then jerked open the door to her car. “Come on, come on!” she said as the motor sputtered and refused to kick in.

“What is it? What's the matter?” Jessie yelled. “What did you find out?”

“Just a minute, Jessie. They know I'm not a nun and they are going to be after me any minute.”

“You mean we're busting out?” Jessie asked in astonishment, with just a mixture of glee.

The engine finally turned over. Suzanne sped quickly out of the parking lot, entering the traffic on Locust Street. She cranked her head around to see if anyone was following. No. They had made it.

*   *   *

Jena Karnitz searched once more for the missing purse. She didn't like the way the nun's face had gone from beet red to white, nor had she ever seen anyone tremble like the nun had done. There was no question in her mind but that the nun needed her pills.

Where the hell was that purse?

Suddenly, the picture of how the nun looked when she entered the police station leaped into Jena's mind. Damn it all to hell! She hadn't been carrying a purse!

Jena rushed to the coffee room and wasn't even surprised when it was empty.

Chapter Seven

Suzanne began taking off the veil and band, tossing them into the backseat. Just in case a bulletin had gone out to stop a nun, she thought it wise to at least get the headwork off. She pulled off the coif and shook out her damp hair.

“Will you please tell me what you found out now?” Jessie pleaded. “And then I have something to tell you.”

“I'm sorry!” Suzanne said in exasperation. “I've just never been
running from the law
before. I can only think of one thing at a time, and right now all I want to do is get as far away from here as possible.”

“You don't look so hot to me,” Jessie said. “Why don't you pull into that parking lot so you can finish taking off that nun's outfit, and maybe get some water or something.”

Suzanne didn't argue. She quickly crossed two lanes of traffic and pulled into a discount store's parking lot, bringing her car to a stop between two vans. With shaking hands she finished pulling off the heavy black habit, stripping down to damp shorts and shirt.

“Wait right here,” Jessie said as she jumped from the car. “There's a pop stand over there. You look like you need something to drink.”

Suzanne watched as Jessie ran over and purchased two drinks.
How am I going to tell her?
she thought as she watched Jessie running back to the car, spilling pop as she ran.
How can I tell her that Amy is dead? Dead and buried?

“No, she isn't!” Jessie said as soon as she got back to the car. “Amy isn't dead. She called to me. I heard her as plain as day.”

Again Suzanne was surprised by the degree of psychic ability the young girl had. “I wish you would quit reading my thoughts. It's rather unnerving you know!”

“Okay, if you want me to stop, I'll try. I'm not certain I can, though. This is the first time I've ever been able to read another person's mind. Sometimes your thoughts just zoom into my head without my really even thinking about it. I wonder why?”

“I suppose because we both have a great deal of psychic ability. From everything I've read, when both lines are open, the transmission is better. But then, I'm much like you. When I touch someone the images just slam into my head and by then it's too late to stop them.”

“What did you find out? What makes you think Amy is dead? She isn't, you know.”

Suzanne stared out the windshield of her car, remembering every detail of her encounter with Clark. “I don't know exactly what happened, Jessie. Something new. Something strange. It always unnerves me to read a killer, but this was different. I couldn't get completely into his mind. I was terrified. It was like I knew I would die if I went any further.”

“Well, what
did
you find out? What makes you think Amy is dead?”

In halting words, Suzanne told Jessie everything she could remember that had happened. When she finally came to the part where she had seen Amy lying down, with her eyes closed, and dirt being piled on top of her, Jessie interrupted.

“How are you sure it was Amy you saw? Couldn't it have been one of the other girls?”

Suzanne's hand reached across the seat and found Jessie's. “This girl looked exactly like the picture you showed me of Amy—porcelain complexion, long blond hair, almost angelic looking. Besides, I knew it was Amy. I would have known it was Amy even if you had not shown me the picture.” Suzanne remembered something else. “And she was wearing a gold chain with a tiny white, maybe ivory, cross attached to it.”

Jessie's hands flew to her neck and she pulled out a chain from under her clothing. She pushed the ivory cross up to Suzanne. “It
was
Amy, then. Aunt Vera bought us each one of these when she visited Alaska.”

Suzanne looked at the identical cross she had seen in her vision. “I'm sorry, Jessie. So sorry!”

“For what? I'll agree that you saw Amy, but you must have misinterpreted what you saw. That happens all the time with people like us. You know that.”

Suzanne wondered how she was ever going to be able to explain to Jessie that her abilities were not the same as most psychics. What she saw unfolding in her visions had already happened in most cases. And she was never wrong.

“Jessie, the reason my psychic impulses are so much greater than other psychics', is that I receive some sort of an electrical current when I touch a person. Any person. If that person has been involved in a crime, then the images are always clear and accurate. I have been brought in by dozens of different police forces to help in really bad crimes, especially where there is someone missing. And, sweetie, I've never, ever been wrong. Not once. I don't have to try to interpret my visions, as most psychics do. It's like I go into the mind of the killer and see everything through his eyes. I know
how
he killed, I know
where
he killed and where he hid the body, and I can even sometimes tell
why
he killed. If I spend enough time with the killer, I can almost retrace his steps, right down to where he ate lunch or went to the bathroom.”

“Is that what got you in trouble with Underwood?”

“To be perfectly honest about it, I didn't do anything with Underwood that I hadn't done a hundred times before. Only Underwood happened to have a seemingly endless supply of money. He had a team of attorneys working for him who zeroed in on everything they could possibly find to get him off. When they discovered me, and my part in helping to find the bodies, they researched every case I had ever been involved in—every word I had ever spoken in interviews—every word that had ever been written about me. When they learned I
get into the mind
of the killer, they used that to say it was, in effect, forcing a defendant to testify against himself.”

Although it had been almost a year ago, Suzanne vividly remembered her first encounter with Underwood as though it were yesterday. She was living in Omaha, the city that had been home to her and Miss Emily. She was still living in Miss Emily's house, which she had inherited from the old woman at her death.

She was on her way to the funeral of one of the victims. She was going to work the crowd, moving from person to person, brushing up against them, shaking their hands, touching them in some manner. It was something the police had her routinely do, in case the killer attended the funeral of his victim. It was a fact that killers, especially serial killers, enjoyed going to the graves of their victims, and often attended their funerals. It was the perfect opportunity for Suzanne to try to do a reading.

On this morning, she was riding to the church in the backseat of a police car. In the front were detectives Sands and Botello, two of the officers who had grilled her mercilessly about the death of Peggy Ann years before. Over the ensuing years, she had become good friends with the officers, attending David Sands's wedding, where it was obvious any enmity between father and son had long since been forgotten, and becoming godmother to Charles and Barbara Botello's baby girl, where it was also obvious a waitress named Millie had been long forgotten.

They had just turned the corner at First and Broadway, when a long white Cadillac shot out from an alley, forcing them to slam on their brakes. Neither Sands nor Botello wanted to take the time to issue a traffic ticket, and would have ignored the incident, except that Underwood, unaware that the unmarked car in back of him contained police officers, proceeded to run two lights.

Sands and Botello exchanged glances. “Shall we nail him?” Sands asked.

“Hell, yes!” Botello answered as he rolled down the window and attached the cherry top. “We still have plenty of time.”

To this day, Suzanne didn't know what had made her get out of the police car. She watched as the short, stocky man behind the wheel of the Cadillac got out of his car and spoke to the officers. It looked like a routine traffic stop, nothing that should even interest her. Yet she sat in the car watching the man, getting more and more uneasy. Finally, she had exited the car and walked over to where the three stood. Sands and Botello were surprised, but had worked with her enough not to question anything she did. Suzanne reached over and extended her hand for the man to shake. She had found over the years that most people readily accepted a handshake. It was the quickest, easiest way to do a reading. Baxter Underwood was no exception. He shook her hand.

The gruesome images of young bodies crashed into her head with the force of a jackhammer. Suzanne heard herself gasping as the scenes flashed through her mind. Underwood pulled his hand from her tight grasp, realizing too late who she was.