“Oh, I wish I could say yes.”
“But you can’t.”
“The nightmares,” she said, “and the headaches. If he were all right, the way the Turlock girl was all right—”
“There’d be no dreams.”
“That’s my fear, yes.”
“So you think the boy is...”
“Dead,” she said.
He looked at her for a long moment before he nodded. “I suppose you’d like some article connected with the boy,” he said. “A piece of clothing, say.”
“If you had something.”
“How’s this?” he said, and opened a drawer and brought out a teddy bear, its plush fur badly worn, the stitches showing where it had been ripped and mended. Her heart broke at the sight of it and she put her hand to her chest.
“We ought to have a record of this,” he said, propping a tape recorder on the desk top, pressing a button to start it recording. “So that I don’t miss any of the impressions you pick up. Because you can probably imagine how frantic the boy’s parents are.”
“Yes, of course.”
“So do you want to state your name for the record?”
“My name?”
“Yes, for the record.”
“My name is Sylvia Belgrave.”
“And you’re a psychic counselor?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re here voluntarily.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why don’t you take the teddy bear, then. And see what you can pick up from it.”
She thought she’d braced herself, but she was unprepared for the flood of images that came when she took the little stuffed bear in her hands. They were more vivid than anything she’d experienced before. Perhaps she should have expected as much; the dreams, and the headaches, too, were worse than they’d been after Melissa Sporran’s death, worse than years ago, when Gordon Sawyer drowned.
“Smothered,” she managed to say. “A pillow or something like it over his face. He was struggling to breathe and... and he couldn’t.”
“And he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“And would you happen to know where, Ms. Belgrave?”
Her hands tightened on the teddy bear. The muscles in her arms and shoulders went rigid, bracing to keep the images at bay.
“A hole in the ground,” she said.
“A hole in the ground?”
“A basement!” Her eyes were closed, her heart pounding. “A house, but they haven’t finished building it yet. The outer walls are up but that’s all.”
“A building site.”
“Yes.”
“And the body’s in the basement.”
“Under a pile of rags,” she said.
“Under a pile of rags. Any sense of where, Ms. Belgrave? There are a lot of houses under construction. It would help if we knew what part of town to search.”
She tried to get her bearings, then realized she didn’t need them. Her hand, of its own accord, found the direction and pointed.
“North and west,” he said. “Let’s see, where’s there a house under construction, ideally one they stopped work on? Seems to me there’s one just off Radbourne Road about a quarter of a mile past Six Mile Road. You think that might be the house, Ms. Belgrave?”
She opened her eyes. He was reaching across to take the teddy bear from her. She had to will her fingers to open to release it.
“We’ve got some witnesses,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “A teenager mowing a lawn who saw Eric Ackerman getting into a blue Taurus just like the one you’ve got parked across the street. He even noticed the license plate, but then it’s the kind you notice, isn’t it? 2ND SITE. Second sight, eh? Perfect for your line of work.”
God, her head was throbbing.
“A woman in a passing car saw you carrying the boy to the house. She didn’t spot the vanity plate, but she furnished a good description of the car, and of you, Ms. Belgrave. She thought it was odd, you see. The way you were carrying him, as if he was unconscious, or even dead. Was he dead by then?”
“Yes.”
“You killed him first thing? Smothered him?”
“With a pillow,” she said. “I wanted to do it right away, before he became afraid. And I didn’t want him to suffer.”
“Real considerate.”
“He struggled,” she said, “and then he was still. But I didn’t realize just how much he suffered. It was over so quickly, you see, that I told myself he didn’t really suffer a great deal at all.”
“And?”
“And I was wrong,” she said. “I found that out in the dreams. And just now, holding the bear...”
He was saying something but she couldn’t hear it. She was trembling, and the headache was too much to be borne, and she couldn’t follow his words. He brought her a glass of water and she drank it, and that helped a little.
“There were other witnesses, too,” he said, “once we found the body, and knew about the car and the license plate. People who saw your car going to and from the construction site. The chief wanted to have you picked up right away, but I talked him into waiting. I figured you’d come in and tell us all about it yourself.”
“And here I am,” she heard herself say.
“And here you are. You want to tell me about it from the beginning?”
She told it all simply and directly, how she’d selected the boy, how she got him to come into the car with her, how she’d killed him and dumped the body in the spot she’d selected in advance. How she’d gone home, and washed her hands, and waited through three days and nights of headaches and bad dreams.
“Ever kill anybody before, Ms. Belgrave?”
“No,” she said. “No, of course not.”
“Ever have anything to do with Eric Ackerman or his parents?”
“No.”
“Why, then?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Second sight,” she said.
“Second...”
“Second sight. Vanity plates. Vanity.”
“Vanity?”
“All is vanity,” she said, and closed her eyes for a moment. “I never made more than a hundred fifty dollars a week,” she said, “and nobody knew me or paid me a moment’s attention, but that was all right. And then Melissa Sporran was killed, and I was afraid to come in but I came in anyway. And everything changed.”
“You got famous.”
“For a little while,” she said. “And my phone started ringing, and I raised my rates, and my phone rang even more. And I was able to help people, more people than I’d ever helped before, and they were making use of what I gave them, they were taking it seriously.”
“And you bought a new car.”
“I bought a new car,” she said, “and I bought some other things, and I stopped being famous, and the ones who only came because they were curious stopped coming when they stopped being curious, and old customers came less often because they couldn’t afford it, and...”
“And business dropped off.”
“And I thought, I could help so many more people if, if it happened again.”
“If a child died.”
“Yes.”
“And if you helped.”
“Yes. And I waited, you know, for something to happen. And there were crimes, there are always crimes. There were even murders, but there was nothing that gave me the dreams and the headaches.”
“So you decided to do it yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Because you’d be able to help so many more people.”
“That’s what I told myself,” she said. “But I was just fooling myself. I did it because I’m having trouble making the payments on my new car, a car I didn’t need in the first place. But I need the car now, and I need the phone ringing, and I need—” She frowned, put her head in her hands. “I need aspirin,” she said. “That first time, when I told you about Melissa Sporran, the headache went away. But I’ve told you everything about Eric Ackerman, more than I ever planned to tell you, and the headache hasn’t gone away. It’s worse than ever.”