“Karma.”

“If it makes more sense to you to put it that way. Fate. Destiny. We’re connected, he and I. Tied together by a mistake. If there’s anything I know, anything I’m absolutely certain of, it’s that once you’ve touched evil-I mean really touched it-you’re forever changed. In a way, you are bound to it, tied to it, so that it becomes a part of you.”

“There’s nothing evil in you,” he said immediately.

“Oh, but there is. It’s not my evil, but I carry it inside me. That painting proves it. His evil. I carry his evil in my own soul… and I have for a long, long time.”

Suddenly, John understood. “That’s why you do it. That’s why you surround yourself with victims, suffer right along with them. It’s atonement, isn’t it, Maggie?”

For the first time, she avoided his steady gaze. “Consciously? No. Not at first. But I’ve always been drawn to people in pain. Always felt a kind of relief if I could help them in some way. Gradually, over the years, I realized there was… something I was trying to fix, some mistake I wanted to correct. I didn’t know what it was, not then. It wasn’t until Laura Hughes was attacked that I began to understand the truth.”

“Truth?” Unable to be still any longer, John rose and began wandering around the room, not quite pacing. “Christ.”

“I know it all sounds unbelievable.”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“It is the truth, John. I wish it wasn’t. I wish this was all about one evil man doing evil things in a single lifetime, something we could both accept, even if not understand. But that isn’t what it’s about. That’s never been what it’s about.”

“Jesus, Maggie.”

“I’m sorry. But you had to know the truth about it.”

He swung around to stare at her. “So is this where you also tell me the truth about Christina?”

Maggie was honestly startled. “How did you-”

“I don’t have to be psychic to know there’s more to her death than what you’ve told me. Why do you think I kept after you about it? What do you know about her death, Maggie?”

His cell phone rang before she could formulate an answer, but Maggie didn’t feel much of a sense of reprieve; from the determination on his face, she doubted he would accept anything less than the truth this time.

“Yeah, hello.” He listened for a moment, then went to a notepad Maggie kept by her living-room phone and quickly jotted something down. “Okay. Yeah, I’ve got it. I’ll call Andy and tell him. You won’t do anything stupid, will you?” He listened a minute longer, then said, “Well, listen to Kendra and stay put, okay? Let Andy and his people take care of it. Yeah, I will.”

When he ended the call, Maggie said, “I take it Quentin and Kendra found whoever sent that ransom note?”

“They have a name and an address.” He called Andy’s cell phone and repeated the information, adding, “Quentin says the information is solid, and he’s pretty sure this Brady Oliver either knows where Samantha Mitchell is or knows someone who does.

No information on whether she’s alive or dead. Yeah. No, I’m at Maggie’s. For a while probably; call me on my cell in case I’m in transit, okay?” He listened a moment longer, then said, “Yeah, I’ll tell her.” He closed the phone.

“Tell me what?”

“He said he just called in to check for messages and found one from Hollis Templeton. She wants to see you as soon as possible.”

“He doesn’t know why?”

“No, just that she needs to talk to you.”

Maggie looked at her watch. “Visiting hours will be over for the night by the time I can get there.”

“Andy said he’s cleared it with the hospital if you want to go tonight. But if you’re too tired, tomorrow is probably soon enough.”

Maggie wasn’t so sure. “Hollis wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important. I’d better go now.”

“I’ll drive,” he said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

It didn’t take Scott and Jennifer more than half an hour to find Brady Oliver at the address provided and bring him in for questioning. He turned out to be a small-time crook with delusions of grandeur and crumbled almost before Andy could even begin to get hard-nosed about the probable legal consequences of passing oneself off as a kidnapper.

“I never took her, I swear! I just found her is all, and why shouldn’t I try to make a few bucks on a lucky chance? Her old man would never miss it, and she don’t care no more, right?”

Andy stared at him, thinking once again that it was a helluva world they lived in. And feeling a chill. From the sound of it, Samantha Mitchell was already dead. “Where is she, Brady?”

Bloodshot eyes shifted nervously. “First, we gotta talk about this kidnapping rap. ‘Cause I never took her, I just found her.”

Andy leaned toward him and said gently, “Well, I’ll tell you what, Brady. What say I invite Samantha Mitchell’s husband in here to meet you? And you can explain it all to him.”

“Oh, hell, no, don’t do that!”

“Where is she?”

“I just wanted to-”

“Where is she?”

“Alls I’m asking is-”

Andy rose to his feet.

“Okay, okay! There’s a dump not too far from my place, an old abandoned building. City wants to tear it down, but there’s no money to rebuild, something like that. I go there sometimes and look for stuff I can sell.” He rattled off the address, looking acutely unhappy. “First floor, back room.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she, Brady?”

“I didn’t do her, I swear!”

Andy felt very tired. He said, “My people are going to go check out the address. You’ll wait right here.”

“I want a lawyer,” Brady whined.

“You haven’t been charged with anything. Yet.”

“Oh. Well, then, I want a Coke.”

Andy left the interview room without responding and before he gave in to the temptation to rid the human gene pool of one extremely stupid and vicious little possible breeder.

As soon as he shut the door behind him, Jennifer came out of the observation room and said, “We heard, Andy. Scott’s rounding up the rest and putting forensics on alert. Do you think that piece of scum in there really just found her?”

Nodding, Andy said, “If Brady had killed her, he would have been hiding in the deepest hole he could find and wouldn’t have opened his trap, except to ask for a lawyer. Since he just found her, he figures he’s safe. Stupid bastard.”

“So she’s dead?”

“Yeah, she’s dead. Come on-let’s go. You and Scott can ride with me.”

They collected the others from the bullpen and went out to their cars. On the point of getting into his own car, Andy noticed Jennifer still on the sidewalk; she was looking around with a frown, obviously disturbed.

“What?” he asked.

“Did you hear something?”

“I heard a lot. Traffic, voices, a horn blowing a couple of blocks away.”

She shook her head, moving toward the passenger side finally but still frowning. “No, something else.”

Scott said, “I didn’t hear anything weird, Jenn. What’d it sound like?”

“Just… I could have sworn somebody said my name, that’s all. My imagination, I guess.” She shivered visibly and got into the car.

Andy paused a moment to look around carefully, but he didn’t see or hear anything unusual. Even so, he didn’t dismiss Jennifer’s uneasiness, especially added to the fact that someone had apparently gotten into her locked car not so long ago.

He looked around a final time, then got into the car, making a mental note to do something about security around the station. But that resolution was pushed to the back of his mind by the time they reached the address Brady Oliver had given them.

Loath to disturb any evidence, Andy stationed most of his people around the building with instructions to tape off the entire thing for forensics, while he went in with only Scott and Jennifer as backup.

Their flashlights showed them a dirty, ramshackle place that had long ago been stripped to its bare bones. The floor creaked underfoot, and as they entered they could all hear faint scratchy whisperings and scurryings.