Lucas returned the sheriff's stare, saying merely, "You're wrong."
"Am I?" Wyatt straightened. "Let's find out. I'm going to go put my people on checking out the yearly schedule of the Carnival After Dark. I want to know about every town they visited, every fairground and parking lot where they set up shop. I want to know where they were in relation to every kidnapping you've been tracking. I'm going to find out exactly where they've been every day of the last eighteen months."
Lucas didn't try to stop him.
He was, after all, a man who understood obsession.
"Do you like having your abilities?" Caitlin Graham asked as she sipped her coffee.
Samantha wrapped both cold hands around her own mug of hot tea and smiled wryly. "That's a loaded question. Sometimes. Sometimes not."
"Not when you see bad things?"
"Bad, unsettling, frightening. It can feel like I'm trapped in a horror movie, only without the popcorn-or the ability to get up and leave the theater."
"You don't have any control?"
With a shrug, Samantha said, "Again, it depends. At a time like this, with emotions running so high, the visions tend to be very… intense."
"As in, so cold they burn your hands?"
"That was a first. I usually just come out of them so tired I want:o sleep for a few days."
"But you saw Lindsay. When she was being held."
Samantha nodded. She knew Caitlin needed to talk about this, so she did, matter-of-factly. "Like most good cops, she was working the problem. Trying to find an angle, a weakness she could use to her advantage."
Caitlin chewed her bottom lip, then said, "You're so sure there's something after death. Is it because you've-you've contacted somebody from the other side?"
Without commenting on the terminology, Samantha merely said, "I'm not a medium."
"Oh. So-you don't do that?"
"No. Technically, I'm what they call a seer. In carnival language, I see what is and what will be."
Caitlin smiled slightly at the other woman's deliberately theatrical tone. "Just like on the sign outside your booth."
"Exactly. As I understand it, my primary ability is precogni-tion, seeing the future. When I'm seeing the present but something going on beyond my own sight or hearing, that's a kind of clairvoyance. But unlike most clairvoyants, who tend to pick up information all around them, randomly, what I see is very focused, tuned in to a specific event."
"Like seeing Lindsay."
Samantha nodded again. "It's a secondary ability, much less common to me. I've also been told that I'm a 'touch seer' rather than an 'open seer.' The difference, I gather, is that I have to touch an object to pick up anything."
"Always?"
Samantha thought of her dream, but nodded and said firmly, "Always. Happily, though, I don't go through life picking up visions every time I pick up a can of tuna or a hairbrush."
Very intent, Caitlin asked, "Then what triggers the visions? Why one object and not another, I mean."
Samantha sipped her cooling tea, giving herself a moment, then said slowly, "People with more scientific knowledge than I have said it's all a matter of energy. Emotions and actions have energy. The more intense the feelings or events, or the longer they last, the more likely they are to… leave some of their energy on an area or an object. Sort of imprinting a memory on it. Since my brain is apparently hardwired to tune in to that kind of energy, when I touch the right thing, I do."
"That doesn't really explain Lindsay's ring. She hadn't worn it for years, and she never came close to drowning as a child."
"If it was easy to explain, it wouldn't seem like magic, now, would it?" Samantha smiled, but also shrugged. "Maybe every individual has his or her own energy signature, as unique as a fingerprint. I've heard that; maybe it's true. They leave their own energy on an object, I touch the object, and-sometimes-my brain homes in on that energy signature. Picks up what's happening or will happen with that person, especially if strong emotions are involved."
"So you picked up her future when you touched her ring because… because she wore it so much in her past. Her childhood."
"Maybe. I don't really know, Caitlin. I generally don't think about it a whole lot. It's just something I can do. I can also juggle, I'm a fair shot-at least at pop-up targets-and I'm the carnival champ at poker."
Caitlin smiled, but said, "Less-troublesome abilities, I imagine."
"You've never beaten Leo at poker. He can be mean."
Her smile remained, but Caitlin's eyes were serious. "If I asked you to do something for me, would you?"
"I'd have to hear what it was first," Samantha replied warily.
"I want you to touch something."
Not very surprised, and still wary, Samantha lifted her brows and waited.
"I had to go to Lindsay's apartment. To… pick out what she'd wear today."
Samantha nodded, still waiting.
"I knew she'd been seeing Wyatt Metcalf, so I expected to find some of his things there. And I did see a few things I assume are his. But I also found this." She reached into her purse and produced a small object wrapped in a handkerchief. Placing it on the table between them, she unfolded the clean white cotton. "There really isn't room anywhere on it for a fingerprint, but I picked it up with my handkerchief anyway. It isn't-wasn't Lindsay's."
Lying in the center was a small piece of costume jewelry, a charm or pendant meant to be worn on a chain. A novelty probably intended for Halloween, it was a small black spider in the center of a silvery web.
Staring down at it, Samantha heard herself ask, "How do you know it didn't belong to Lindsay?"
"Because she was terrified of spiders." Caitlin grimaced. "Dumb for a cop, she said, but she'd been that way since we were kids. The last time we talked, she told me she had her apartment exterminated once a month just to make damned sure none of them got in. It was a real phobia, believe me."
"Still," Samantha said, "this isn't a real spider."
"Doesn't matter. Lindsay couldn't bear even a picture of one, and she would never-ever-own a piece of jewelry with a spider on it."
"Could have been a gift."
"She wouldn't have kept it. Samantha, I'm absolutely positive this didn't belong to Lindsay."
"Where did you find it?"
"On her nightstand, of all places. She really wouldn't have had anything like this near her bed. That would have totally freaked her out. When she was just a toddler, a spider got into her crib. Our mom was downstairs, and it took her a few minutes to get up there; Lindsay always said it was the longest few minutes of her life and that she could remember every second vividly, how she was so terrified she couldn't even move. The spider wasn't poisonous or anything, but she's had nightmares about it ever since."
"So you think… somebody put this in her apartment?"
"Lindsay wouldn't have touched it, I know that much."
"If the sheriff gave it to her-"
Caitlin was shaking her head. "From what I gather, they'd been lovers for months and worked together much longer than that. He's not the sort of man to consider something like this a joke, especially since he'd know what she was genuinely afraid of. Lindsay would have told him. Hell, it was practically the first thing she told anybody she met, especially socially. 'Hi, I'm Lindsay and I hate spiders with a vengeance.' Didn't she tell you?"
"As a matter of fact, she did," Samantha admitted slowly. "When I was staying at the sheriff's department, she came down and had coffee with me a couple of times. Sort of jokingly asked if I could look into the future and promise she wouldn't-"
"Wouldn't be bitten by a spider and die," Caitlin finished steadily. "When we were kids, Lindsay was afraid of two things, and only two things: spiders and water over her head. She overcame her fear of water by learning to swim. In fact, she was on a champion swim team in college. But she was never able to conquer her fear of spiders."