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"Check around, see if anything catches youreye."
"What should I lookfor?"
"Forensics hasn't swept the scene yet so whatever looks out of place. Most Adepts I've worked with before just feel around, hoping something they touch grabs theirmind."
"What about myprints?"
"Forget about it. We have jurisdiction and your work is more valuable than their pitifultests."
I take a flashlight from Ed and walk along the shore, hoping something draws my attention. I look for something the killer might have dropped or touched but nothing pulls me closer. Pebbles and seaweed litter the mud between the stumps of wood that used to be part of a dock – nothing more. I bend down and run my hands over the dirt bordering the area where the body was found. A piece of green beach glass glints in the flashlight's beam and so I pick itup.
For an instant, my world collapses away and I'm him. The killer -- whoever he is -- sat here. A strange sense of being out of time washes over me as I slip into his perspective and I feel an incredible dread. I try to focus, opening myself to the experience. I don't get much from it at first, except the knowledge that the killer touched thepebble.
Then, I sense him. The killer was here scoping the place out a few nights earlier, staring out across the river, deciding where he'd dump the body. He picked up the glass and rubbed it between his thumb and fingers the way I do now, turning it over, admiring it. Then he dropped it. He had more important things to occupy him than an old bit of beach glass. Like when Evan . . . . I try to focus, squeezing my eyes shut. When Evan Cooper woulddie.
"Evan Cooper," I say, clearing my throat, struggling to resurface long enough to communicate. For an instant, I see the victim as the killer saw him, stepping out the back door of a dry cleaners into the alley for a quick smoke break. In the vision, I look down from a window across the street. "He saw Cooper from a building across from the alley behind the dry cleaners." My voice is gravely. "Second floorwindow."
Ed nods and gets on his cell, speaking into it in a softvoice.
I return to the pebble. The killer has an emotional distance from the victim, a studied sense of purpose rather than one filled with passion and bloodlust Michel had when I was in his mind and he drained the woman. The killer doesn't hate Cooper, either the man himself or what he represents. The killer feels more like an executioner than a vampire searching for a blood feed. The killer has a sense of mission. Even a sense of religiousfervor.
I drop the glass as quickly as possible, for the longer I spend in his perspective, the dizzier I become. While Ed and the detective speak in quiet voices, I take in several deep breaths, trying to combat thisvertigo.
A light rain starts to fall, just a mist at first, the air cool on my cheeks. Michel comes to my side as I lean against the remains of thedock.
"Are you allright?"
I nod, embarrassed to show weakness. I'll have to get used to being in the mind of a killer and so I go back to the glass and touch it once more. Maybe if I fight the vertigo, something else will come to me – some detail that will lead us to thekiller.
I search through the sensations and impressions of the killer as he surveys his victim. Nothing comes to me at first. Then, a hint, just a fleeting image of a river in the middle of a desert. Tall reeds line the riverbank. A sense that he's protecting someone fills me, but who that someone is remains hidden. As I turn the shard over, I know that the manner of death is important. Decapitation is significant in someway.
"He killed in this way and dumped him here to send a message." I swallow hard, fighting the nausea that rises in me at the continued connection to thekiller.
O'Neil nods. "What does decapitation and dumping the body along the shoremean?"
I shake my head. "No idea. I saw a river at nighttime," I say, remembering a momentary image of a river. "With tall reeds along the shore. But it was only verybrief."
"Nothingelse?"
I shake my head, getting nothing more from the glass. It's as silent as the now non-existentbreeze.
* * *
Once we're finishedat the dump site, we walk back to the sedan and Julien joinsus.
"So, Eve, why don't you and I have a cup of coffee, talk about things," Julien says to me. "I'm sure you have morequestions."
"What things?" I say, but I think I know what hemeans.
"Oh, your mother, being a blood witness," he says, smiling as if everything amuses him, as if he takes nothing seriously. "Training. The whole killing all vampires thing my brother'son."
I look at Michel and he shakes his headquickly.
I take in a breath. "I'd likethat."
Julien smiles broadly, glancing briefly at Michel as if he's scored some kind ofpoint.
"Great," he says. "How about tomorrow night? The coffeeshop?"
