Possessed

Because he was a good man. Just not her man.

Deliberately, Cass backed away from his touch. “I’m good now.”

He sighed but took a step back as well. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. “Apparently, he was saying a lot of stuff in the conference room.” Conference room being a euphemism for interrogation room.

“You said it was Steve interrogating him?”

He nodded. “We both switched to the late shift.”

“Steve thinks I’m a wacko,” Cass said. “I can’t do anything about that.”

“Fortunately, with the confession, you shouldn’t need to get involved. Once the uniforms dig up the body, it will be a slam dunk.”

Cass turned to reach for her purse, which she’d set on the evil wooden bench. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you guys to spruce up the waiting area a little. Some cushions. Maybe a chair pillow or two.”

“Police stations aren’t designed for making people comfortable,” he returned. “I know it’s been a long night for you, and I wouldn’t have called you down here after all that, but I need your help with something.”

“What is it?”

“A case. A girl, about twenty, stabbed yesterday, not too far from where you live. I’ve got her brother, a man named Malcolm McDonough, in for questioning. The name ring a bell?”

“Should it?”

Dougie shrugged. “I guess not.”

“You think he did it?”

“I don’t know. This guy is a city bigwig. Construction, money, politics and all that shit. He’s got the mayor in his back pocket, and if I push too hard and he’s innocent, it’s going to be my neck on the line. I’ve been pressing him for hours, but I can’t get a read on him. He’s ice. Some people, that’s how they react when someone close to them dies. But it’s also how someone acts if he’s a sociopath. I need a feel one way or the other.”

She knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t the first time she’d worked with the police. After she and Dougie had met, he’d come to respect her in ways that few people ever had. He saw her talent as something that could be helpful, not hurtful, and periodically, usually over the grumbles and jests of his colleagues and superiors, he was given the authority to hire her as a consultant. While she didn’t possess the more common psychic gifts used by other law enforcement agencies, in certain circumstances she could be useful.

Like in determining a suspect’s innocence or guilt.

“We can’t hold him much longer. He’s been in since this afternoon. He hasn’t lawyered up yet, but he’s getting impatient. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Your captain knows I’m here?”

“He knows that a friend of mine might be stopping by this evening.”

“A friend?”

“Whose consulting services will be well compensated for.”

Cass smiled. Unlike Steve, the captain didn’t believe she was a wacko. However, he also couldn’t reconcile the fact that she was what she was. His skepticism had been obvious the second they’d met. But a wise man didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and the captain was a pretty smart guy. The fact that in all the time she’d been doing this she’d never once been wrong didn’t hurt, either. And the extra cash always came in handy.

“Ten minutes,” Dougie said, urging her along. “Talk to him. Do your thing and then I’ll take you home.”

“I have my bike.”

“You mean your scooter?”

“Scooter, motorcycle, whatever.”

“Calling a scooter a motorcycle is like calling a go-cart a car,” he pointed out. “I’m not letting you go home on your own at two in the morning. The damn thing will fit in the back of my Cherokee.”

She was about to point out that she managed to make her way home every other night on her own, but she knew it was useless to resist. Still, pride had her making an effort. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“Please. Let me be chivalrous.”

She smiled indulgently. Chivalrous was the only way he knew how to be. Plus, he was looking at her with his warm, puppy dog eyes. Between them and the voice, she knew she wouldn’t be able to deny him anything.

“Have you ever not gotten what you wanted?”

Suddenly, the intentional puppy dog expression was gone, replaced by something much more sorrowful. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Dougie. I didn’t mean to bring up Claire…”

“I know. Forget it. Just come and talk to this guy, okay?”

“Okay.”

She tried to brush her short, dark hair into place over what she was sure was an unnaturally wide forehead. The rest of it she just made sure was flat. It was so short it didn’t really have anywhere to go, but if she was consulting on a case, she imagined she should look somewhat respectable.

Although that probably wasn’t going to happen tonight, neat hair or not. She’d removed the work apron, but she was still dressed in her all-black uniform. An old but serviceable green trench coat covered the simple ensemble and kept her warm on the trip over. Added to that she’d tossed a purple wool scarf around her neck for more warmth and at least a pretense of fashion. Her practical sneakers squeaked against the linoleum as she and Doug made their way through a series of hallways.

She didn’t need a mirror to know she didn’t look like a cop or a lawyer. Which left either victim or criminal as a reasonable guess. Pride had her wishing it were the latter, but a hunch told her it was the former, and once more she tried to straighten her hair. Then she removed the green coat and slung it over her arm, hoping that the bulk of it would cover the milk stains on her clothes.

A few right turns past some doors into different hallways and she found herself in the homicide wing. Precincts with detectives assigned to them were scattered about the city, but all the homicide cops worked out of central. Dougie had started as a beat cop, earned his shield and worked the south division for a while, before moving to Homicide.

The move hadn’t been a promotion, though, so much as it was a calling. Death had touched him, and because it had, he needed to touch it back. Cass had been one of his few friends at the time to actually support the switch. Despite the ugliness of it, contrasting with his inherently good nature, he was a great champion for the dead and for the living who suffered as a result of death.

“Over there.”

The room was open and broken up into two sides with several desks making up each row. There was a smattering of detectives sitting around, some on the phone, others standing together talking about the Eagles’ shot at the Super Bowl this year. The mood was casual, as the graveyard shift sometimes could be, depending on what the night brought.

Cass was convinced it took a certain kind of person to work the hours from midnight to eight when everything was dark and quiet and most people slept. Sure, the night could be peaceful. But it could also be a time when even the most innocuous things turned sinister. When a bush outside a window transforms itself into a monster in front of a scared child’s eyes.

Or when a man who loves his wife suddenly becomes her murderer.

The night shift, like Homicide, didn’t really fit Dougie’s personality. He was an optimist. Nights at a police station rarely fostered optimism. But she imagined there was some reason he had made the switch.

A tingle at the back of her neck intercepted her thoughts. The room in her mind formed quickly, and the face beyond the door was familiar to her.

“Ow,” she blurted as she reached for her ribs.

“You okay?” Dougie asked, his hand at her back guiding her forward.

“Yes, just a hitch in my side,” she told him. She turned to study him and noticed the dark circles under his eyes that hadn’t registered before the visitor in her head pointed them out. “You’re looking tired, Dougie. Are you getting any sleep?”

“I sleep,” he replied enigmatically.

“Enough?”

“I sleep,” he snapped. “Jeez, you sound like my mother.”

“I’ve met your mother. She’s a smart woman and she worries about her son.” He stopped walking, so she did, too. “I take it that’s him?”

There was only one man in the room who appeared to be a civilian. Dressed in a dark gray suit that screamed quality from a hundred feet away, he sat stiffly in a hard-backed chair. His eyes stared out the window to his right as if he were in a trance, but Cass could see even from this distance that his jaw was tightly clenched.

“Mr. McDonough,” Dougie called to him as they approached the desk.

The man turned, and his steel-blue gaze landed first on Dougie, then switched to her and he came to his feet. Once more, she reached up to brush her bangs down over her forehead.

“This is Cass Allen,” Dougie introduced her. “She works for us from time to time on a consulting basis. I wondered if you wouldn’t mind taking a few minutes to speak with her.”

“I do mind.” His words were clipped. Although his tone was seemingly neutral, Cass could feel the heat of anger in the air. “Am I under suspicion? I came here after hearing about…after seeing what he did to her…to answer any questions that might help you in your investigation. That was over ten hours ago. I wanted to avoid calling my lawyer, but if this is going to go on…”

“I told you we just wanted to talk to you,” Dougie assured him. “There is no reason to call your lawyer. Unless of course you think you need counsel, then by all means…”

The muscles around his jaw flexed. “I don’t.”

“A few more minutes,” Dougie said.

“A few more minutes,” he repeated softly. “That’s a few more minutes that you’re not out there looking for my sister’s murderer.”

“Looking for someone, until we know everything there is to know about Lauren, her habits, her friends, her routine, would be a waste of time. Let us do our job. Talk to Cass. She’s going to ask you some questions.”

Cass’s eyebrow shot up, but she resisted the urge to shoot Dougie an uncertain glance. She didn’t have any questions. She just needed to spend time with McDonough to see if anything happened. Dougie was counting on the fact that something would, but nothing was ever certain. There was never any way of controlling it. Some people she connected with and others she didn’t. She used to question it, but it became pointless when she learned she was never going to find an answer.

As the tingle started she acknowledged this was one she connected with, and she focused on forming the room in her mind. The familiar door opened slowly, almost cautiously, and Cass waited for impact.

A powerful blow shot to her midsection, causing a whoosh of air to escape. She could sense both men looking at her, but she straightened slowly and ignored their curiosity. Instead she smiled and concentrated on breathing.

A serene face greeted her on the other side of the door. Beautiful. Blond.

Lauren.

“So, you’re Malcolm McDonough? And your sister was Lauren,” Cass stated.

He merely stared at her, his eyes moving up and down, taking in first her sneakers, then the rest of her apparel, with a slight sneer.

“You don’t look like a consultant.”

“I got her out of bed,” Dougie told him. “Can’t really expect her to be at her best at this hour.”

“I suppose.”

“I think I need some coffee,” she said.

Dougie hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. He walked off, his agile gait eating up the distance between the desk and the coffee machine.

Carefully, the man in front of her took his seat again.

You have to help him. He won’t know what to do. How to handle this.

Cass felt the words inside her head and tried to make sense of them even as she focused on the seated man. It was sort of like trying to have a conversation with someone while listening to someone else speak into her ear. Like people tried to do with their hands-free cell phone units and usually failed. However, for Cass, keeping the two conversations distinct while acting normally had become an art form. While dramatic pauses made for great television for TV psychics, in real life they tended to make people uncomfortable.

The space between the desks was tight, and she found herself having to step over McDonough’s feet in order to get to the chair that was across from Dougie’s desk. Turning the chair a little, so she could face him, Cass struggled with what to ask him.

“Long day?”

His face hardened noticeably. “Yes.”

He’s so hurt. I can’t leave until I know he’s going to be all right. Make him talk to you.

“What’s the matter with your eye?”

“I’m sorry?” Cass looked up and met his gaze.

“It’s bruised. Did someone hit you?”

“Uh…no…uh, I’m clumsy and I bent down and you know…bang.”

He said nothing.

“I know that Lauren lived on Addison. I live on Addison. It’s a nice neighborhood, but it’s going downhill a little. I just moved a couple of blocks down the street to avoid the danger zone.”

He continued to say nothing.

“Did she have any friends that lived nearby?”

“Of course she had friends. She was a very sweet girl.”

“Anyone you know?” When he remained silent, she pushed. “Were you two close?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She waited for him to say something else, but she was getting the impression that he wasn’t the type to volunteer information, so she had to ask the obvious. “Why not?”

His jaw clenched. “There were several reasons. She is…was…my half sister. There were many years between us. And we were very different.”

We were close. As close as he would let anyone. He loved me. He wouldn’t hurt me. Remind him…about the nurse.

“I think you loved her. I think you’re putting on a pretty good facade right now, but inside you’re hurting.” Cass gulped when his face remained impassive. “You strike me as someone who needs to be in control. I hear you’re somewhat of a big shot. You have your own business. Something like this happens, and all of a sudden nothing is in your power. Nothing that you can change. I imagine it’s extremely difficult to accept that. But you have to know that Dougie, Doug, will find whoever did this.”

“Who are you?”

Cass avoided the question and instead turned her head, searching for Dougie. He was still on the other side of the room with two cups of coffee in his hands, waylaid by one of the other detectives.

“I’m…a consultant,” she answered pathetically.

“I see. What kind?”

“I’m not sure that matters.”

“Oh it absolutely matters,” he told her, his voice colder than it had been when speaking to Dougie. “You suggested that this was difficult for me? This afternoon at my office two police officers came to inform me that my sister was dead. That she was slain in her apartment, murdered in cold blood, stabbed several times and, for the final injustice, had her tongue removed with a knife. The blood that poured out of her mouth seeped into the floor so that eventually it could be seen by the people who lived in the apartment below her. That’s how they discovered she was dead. I demanded to be taken to her apartment to see what had happened, and now that image will forever be burned into my memory.

“Since then I’ve been made to sit here for hours while I’ve been asked and have answered the same questions over and over again, including those about my whereabouts during the time in which she was murdered. All this while my sister’s killer continues to walk free. And then the detective gives me you. You with a coat that I wouldn’t give to the Salvation Army. You, who, if I had to guess, is barely over the legal age limit. You, who has absolutely no idea what you’re doing. So I’ll ask again. Who are you?”

Tell him about the nurse.

The door to her room closed, and Cass now focused all her attention on Lauren’s brother. Who was innocent of his sister’s murder.

“My name is Cassandra Allen, and Dougie wanted me to talk to you.”

“Detective Brody wanted you to talk to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Cass shrugged. There was no point in lying to the man. She’d stopped hiding who and what she was years ago. But somehow she suspected that what she had to tell him was not going to go over all that well.

“He’s hoping I’ll be able to determine if you killed your sister.”

He breathed audibly. “And how exactly will you be able to determine that?”

“Actually, he was hoping Lauren would tell me.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“No, sir. You see, sometimes…the dead…they speak to me.”

His jaw dropped slightly, then his eyes narrowed. “You’re a psychic.”

Although the way he said the word, it sounded more like “fake.”

“I have a gift.”

“You see things?”

“No. I’m not clairvoyant.”

“Feel things then. Isn’t that how it’s done?”

“That’s clairsentience. And I don’t have that gift either. I can’t read your mind or see the future. I’m a medium, Mr. McDonough. I make contact with those who have passed through their loved ones. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” he repeated, his voice calm and moderated but as sharp as glass. “You disgust me. People like you who prey on the innocent and trusting. The grieving. A gift? More like a sham. You are the worst sort of con artist. How do you live with yourself?”

“I’m sorry you don’t believe me.”

“Don’t apologize. Detective!” He stood then and raised his voice enough so that Dougie turned and came rushing back to the desk. “Are you part of this ridiculous scam?”

Dougie looked at Cass, and she merely shrugged in defense. “Mr. McDonough, Miss Allen has been a consultant for the PPD now for some time and…”

“I don’t give a damn what label you stick on her. I am done with this pretense of an investigation. Psychics! That’s who you bring in to help. No wonder you haven’t found Lauren’s killer. Is the mayor aware of your current police procedures?” He shook his head. “I’m leaving. If you insist I stay, you’ll be insisting to my lawyer.”

“It’s okay, Dougie.” Cass squeezed through the two men, who were facing off and looked pretty close to coming to blows. At the slightest brush of her shoulder against his chest, she felt Malcolm shrink away from the contact, his revulsion evident.

The physical slight didn’t stop her from revealing the truth. “You can let him go. He’s innocent.”

McDonough quickly turned his angry gaze on her, pinning her in place with his fury.

“You sure, Cass?” Dougie asked, not giving an inch of ground. “The guy sort of looks to me like he has a bad temper.”

Instantly, Malcolm pulled his eyes away from Cass to meet Dougie’s hardened cop face.

“I’m sure. You see, Mr. McDonough hates blood. Can’t stand the stuff. He gets physically queasy any time he sees it. Something he’s worked his whole life to hide, especially when he’s on a construction site. When Lauren was young, she had to have her tonsils out. A nurse came into her hospital room to draw some blood while he was there. Malcolm saw the needle, went after the nurse, pushed her off his sister and then stuck the needle in the nurse’s…well, in her bottom.”

“How could you…” McDonough cut off his words, his incredulity proof enough that the story was true.

“What’s that got do with what happened to Lauren?” Dougie wanted to know.

Cass shook her head. “Don’t you get it? He didn’t stab his sister. He certainly didn’t watch her bleed to death or cut out her tongue. He couldn’t have. He wasn’t her killer, Dougie. He was her hero.”

Chapter 3

“I’m really sorry. I had no idea he was going to go off on you like that,” Dougie said.

He had won the battle and was driving Cass home, her motor scooter tucked safely in the back of the Cherokee. After everything that had happened that night, she hadn’t put up much of a fight. It was late. At midnight, the neighborhood was sketchy, so she couldn’t imagine things improving at 3:00 a.m. It made sense. It just didn’t sit well with her to have to rely on anyone, even Dougie.

“He was definitely pissed,” Cass agreed. Although the word pissed barely scratched the surface of the man’s outrage.

“I didn’t think you would actually tell him about…you know.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t planning to, but he kept pushing. And you know I don’t lie about that stuff anymore. Anyway, he never really even yelled. Just spoke to me in that kind of tone that makes you feel like you’re ten years old. I had this irrational urge to show him my ID and prove I was almost thirty.”

Dougie glanced over at her quickly, then focused again on the road in front of him as he navigated the narrow city streets around Logan Square. “He wouldn’t have believed it. When you’re fifty you’re not going to look thirty.”

She pointed to the thin, elfin nose that tipped up ever so slightly at the end. “It’s the nose.”

He laughed and made a right turn then slowed to a stop in front of her apartment building.

“You should move closer to Old City.”

“Ugh. I just moved to this place because you were on my case. It’s fine. I’m not saying I’m going out jogging on my own after midnight, but I haven’t had any problems,” she said.

He double-parked in front of her building. She hopped out and made her way to the trunk to get her scooter, but Dougie had beat her to it and was already lifting it to the ground.

“I can take it from here.”

He merely scowled at her and rolled the thing toward the building. It was only three stories tall, each apartment having its own entrance off of a series of cement steps. Hers was the basement apartment. Walking in front of him, she made her way down the steps and used her key to let herself in.

“Seriously, Dougie. I could have carried it,” she said as she stood back and let him set the scooter inside what she called the foyer but what was really part of the kitchen. “I do it every day. I’m not as weak as I look.”

“You look like you’re barely five foot and a hundred pounds wet.”

“Ah, ha! See how wrong you are. I’m five foot two and a hundred and four pounds wet.”

He chuckled and set the scooter aside, using the kickstand to stabilize it. He proceeded to check the place out, looking for bogeymen in the closets, she imagined.

“Where are the creatures?” His affectionate term for her cats.

“They’re probably on my bed sleeping.”

“Good,” he muttered.

“You really need to get over this paranoia.”

“They don’t like me.”

“Maybe that’s because you look at them and wonder why they’re not dogs.”

“All pets should be dogs,” he insisted.

“Spoken like a dog lover. What I don’t get is, if you love them so much, why you don’t just get one?”

He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. “My schedule is too…whatever. Hey, check that out. Is that furniture?”

He was pointing to the futon she’d recently purchased that sat in the corner of her sparse apartment. The foyer off the door opened up to a small kitchen that was no more than a space with a stove/oven, a counter with a sink that held most of her dishes and a refrigerator. Beyond that was the living room, although living room seemed too fancy a name for the compact square area beyond the kitchen.

Dougie’s joke about the futon wasn’t completely off base. Cass liked to call herself a minimalist because it sounded as if there was a reason for the lack of furniture. Mostly, she just didn’t like clutter. She was a lousy housekeeper and the less she had, the less she needed to keep clean. Plus there were fewer places to leave dirty clothes.

She had a low Japanese-style table where she knelt to take her meals, a small TV to catch the evening news, a yoga mat that spread almost the length of the living room and some Pilates bands that she was incorporating into her workout. And now the futon. The cushion covering the oak frame was bright red and amazingly comfortable for napping.

Down a narrow hallway there was a bathroom on one side and a large closet that she liked to call her bedroom on the other. As a home, it wasn’t much, but the economic apartment and everything in it suited her needs. Which, in her mind, was all space and furniture were supposed to do.