He held up one finger. She shut her mouth. Standing side by side, they both stared at the house.
She wouldn’t point out that he didn’t believe in coincidence. Witt would have been the first to say that was true. Cops simply didn’t accept coincidence as an answer. Then again, there was this coincidence. This wasn’t the first murder she’d witnessed in her visions—she was beginning to believe it wouldn’t be her last either—and this wasn’t the first time that number had popped up. First 452 was a flight number that tied in with a woman’s death. Then 452 was the number of a storage locker that led them to a witness in another killing. The number 452 was somehow cosmically important. God only knew why.
It was now the number of the house on Garden Street where murder had occurred.
She shrugged. Acceptance. No point in fighting the vision this time. “I guess there’s nothing left to do but find out why she was killed, and who did the deed.”
“Tall order for a skinny thing like you.”
She glanced at him sideways, but his focus was on the two-story house. She couldn’t read his expression. A definite cop expression, not giving a thing away. She should have told him 102 pounds wasn’t that skinny, but decided denial wasn’t worth the effort.
Witt raised his chin, nose forward, as if scenting a crime. “Did she live alone?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
He pointed. “Then aren’t you curious who that woman is crossing the lawn?”
Busy watching him, she’d forgotten to watch the house.
Woman? She looked more like a girl. A waif. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three and without a doubt weighing in on the underside of eighty pounds. Now that was skinny. She wore leggings, a loose-fitting sweater, and hi-top shoes. Her legs, encased in black Spandex, looked like twigs. She jangled a ring of keys, fingering for the right one, then climbed the two steps to the front porch. Despite the set of keys, she pushed the bell. Above her head, the porch light still shone.
“Where’d she come from?” Max whispered as if they’d be overheard.
“Next door. Duplex. Houses are attached”—he pointed—“at the garage.”
Like Siamese twins joined at the hip, the two houses were mirror images, identical right down to the white picket fence, clipped lawn, weeded flower bed, and clean windows. A brown Honda Civic sat on the shared drive. Oil stained the gravel where a second car would sit.
“Max, why’d you say you had to find out why she was killed and who did it?”
On the porch, the stick figure rang the bell a second time.
“Because that’s the only way I can get rid of the visions. Didn’t I tell you that the last time?” And the time before that, when he actually thought she might have committed the murder herself because she’d known way too much about it.
It wasn’t as if she understood much about the visions that had haunted her over the past few weeks. With this third occurrence, though, she simply had to accept that the phenomenon existed and it happened to her. She had a vision of foul play, then the spirit of the murdered woman—so far it had only been women—wouldn’t “go into the light,” or whatever it was they were supposed to do, until Max found the killer. Max didn’t know the why or how of it. She just knew it was.
“Why didn’t you say you had to find out who she was?” Witt said.
His voice snapped her out of her wandering thoughts. “Oh.”
For the first time he turned his head to look at her. Just a half turn and a shift of his eyes, but she felt his gaze like a knife.
Max glanced at the house, not that Witt made her nervous or anything. She knew that third ring would fail as well, but the stick woman seemed to have endless patience.
“Okay, okay. It sort of came to me who the murder victim was.” He opened his mouth. She held up a hand. “I’m not done. I was going to say that I don’t know her, but I’m pretty sure her name was Bethany.”
Man, that guy could skewer a girl with one look.
“Bethany Spring to be exact,” she finished.
Witt gave a dry and humorless smile. “Amazing how you reveal only what you want and keep the rest clenched in your fist.”
It wasn’t like she’d never given him a murder victim’s name before, so why the hell was he angry? She did not, however, ask him. Cameron, her late and ghostly husband, would say she was afraid of the answer. As usual, he’d be right. On the porch, having failed to get a response, Ms. Stick was finally unlocking the door. “Aren’t you going to stop her?”
“Exactly what should I say? That my girlfriend had a psychic vision about a dead woman lying in that house?”
Max didn’t know which part of the sentence to attack first. She certainly wasn’t his girlfriend, and as for that disparaging remark about her psychic abilities ... “She’s probably messing up fingerprints on the door and the knob and—”
“Someone’s gotta find the body. Better her than you.” He shook his head. “Don’t think I could keep you out of jail this time if that happened.”
It was then the screaming started.