“Something wrong?” the scummy-looking man asked, picking up his vibe.
“There was a woman standing behind me,” Peter explained.
“She left.”
“I’m finished,” the desk sergeant said loudly.
“Nice meeting you,” Peter said.
“Right.”
Peter turned back around. The man’s crime was running through his head like a trailer to a movie. Friday night, a rough bar in Hell’s Kitchen, the man and a drinking buddy left the bar together, walked into a dark alley, where the scummy-looking man robbed his friend and shot him for good measure. He was a stone-cold killer.
“So tell me what I drew,” the desk sergeant said.
Peter had absolutely no idea what the desk sergeant had drawn while his back was turned. But he was about to find out without his subject being the wiser. “Please tear off what you drew, and hide the drawing,” he replied.
The desk sergeant tore off the drawing and hid it under her desk. Peter wondered how was he going to tell her about the killer without tipping her off that he was a psychic. He decided to finish the trick, hoping a solution would come to him.
“May I please have the pad and your pencil,” he said.
“So polite. I like that in a man.”
She winked at him while handing over the items. Peter held the pad up close to his chest. Using the edge of the pencil, he lightly shaded the page, and the impression of what she’d just drawn popped to life. There were only ten objects that people ever drew. Peter pegged the desk sergeant for a house, and glanced down at the page. Sure enough, she’d drawn a house. But not just any house. This one had a winding driveway, a mailbox at the road, and a front lawn. Had she drawn the house out in the suburbs where she lived?
“You drew something very dear to you, a special place.”
The desk sergeant lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Boy, you’re good,” she said.
“It’s a house in the suburbs.”
“Right again.”
“Is it the house where you live?”
“I’ll be damned. You’re amazing.”
Behind the desk appeared an attractive brunette wearing a sidearm strapped to her side. Detective Colleen Schoch, the very person he’d come to the precinct to see.
“Hello, Peter. How have you been?” she asked.
“I’m okay. I need to speak with you. In private.”
“May I ask what this is about? I’m kind of busy right now.”
“The night my parents were killed.”
Schoch did not know what to say. She’d been the first officer on the scene the night his parents had died, and had taken Peter to the station house and taken care of him. Schoch was a friend, and one of the few people outside of his Friday night group who knew of his powers.
Schoch motioned him to come around the desk, and they walked to a bank of elevators and waited for a car to come. She brought her face up close to his. Their eyes locked.
“What’s going on?” Schoch asked.
First things first, Peter thought. “The creepy guy behind me on line is a killer.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I read his mind. He shot a guy in Hell’s Kitchen Friday night. His victim was left lying in an alley. If you don’t grab him now, he’s going to escape.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Positive. I saw the whole thing clearly.”
“How do I prove this?”
“He stole his victim’s wallet. He’s still carrying it.”
“Wait here. I’m going to go arrest the son of a bitch.”
Most criminals were stupid. The man in line was no exception. His victim’s ID was still in his wallet when Schoch arrested him.
Schoch was beaming as they sat in her tiny cubicle in Homicide. Her desk was as neat as a pin, which could not be said of the desks around her. She offered him a soft drink.
“No, thanks. Let me tell you why I’m here,” Peter said. “I’ve been having some problems lately, and I think they stem from the night my parents were murdered. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind. It will help me sort things out.”
Schoch leaned back in her chair. “What kind of problems?”
“Anger issues.”
“That’s not uncommon for victims of violent crimes.”
“These are extreme.”
“You’re becoming violent?”
“Close enough. Will you help me? Please?”
Her face softened, if just a little bit. “All right, fire away. What do you want to know?”
“Did I become violent the night my parents died?”
“No. You cried a lot at the station house, but that was it.”
He thought back to what he knew about his demon. It came out right at the moment he became angry, like a spark turning to a flame. “I mean at the scene of the crime. Did I do anything out of the ordinary?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Schoch replied.
“But you were the first responder. You would have seen how I was acting. Try to remember. It’s very important to me.”
“I don’t know if I ever told you this, but when I first got to the scene, you weren’t there,” Schoch said. “I was a foot cop working Times Square with my partner. A call came in that a man and his wife had been abducted in an alley beside the Shubert Theatre. We got to the scene as fast as we could, and discovered there were plenty of eyewitnesses. We took their statements, and every single one of them said there had been a little boy. Well, there was no little boy.”
“I wasn’t there?”
“No, and we looked high and low for you. You vanished.”
“Then how did I show up at the station house?”
“A man brought you. I remember him quite clearly. He had snow-white hair and was theatrical looking. I pegged him for an actor. He said he’d found you wandering the streets.”
“Did you get his name?”
“No. It was weird. He came into the lobby and handed you off to me. You were in a state of shock and not communicating. While I was watching you, he disappeared.”
He disappeared? Peter felt the invisible stab to his heart. The physical description matched that of Max, his teacher. He took a deep breath before continuing. “How long I was gone?”
Schoch had to think. “The call came in at ten o’clock at night, and you showed up at the station house at around three A.M.”
Five whole hours. That was a long time. Yet it made sense, the pieces of the puzzle falling together, the empty holes filling in. Right as his parents were abducted, he’d looked into his mother’s eyes, and had known that he was never going to see her or his beloved father again. He’d known his parents were about to die, just as they’d known. A shared truth had never been more painful. And with that terrible knowledge had come an anger so great that the little boy in pajamas who’d maimed a burglar had gone on a rampage that had lasted into the small hours of the night. Once the rampage was over, he’d somehow ended up with Max, his parents’ dearest friend.
There was no doubt in his mind this is what had happened that awful night. The only question was, how much damage had he caused?
37
Peter sat on the edge of the detective’s desk and tried to act calm, even though his heart was racing out of control. “I have another question. I know this is going to sound strange.”
“I’m sure it isn’t anything I haven’t heard before,” Schoch replied.
“The night my parents died, were there other deaths in the city that you didn’t solve?”
“Deaths? Do you mean murders?”
He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded.
“That’s a strange question,” she conceded. “Why do you want to know that?”
The detective wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told her, so he said instead, “I’ve been having some weird dreams lately that concern that night. I’ve been wondering if the things I’m seeing in my dreams might have actually happened.”