Cold Case--A Jeff Resnick Mystery by L.L. Bartlett Page B

him in for questioning five or six times
but haven’t been able to wring a confession out of him. How’d you
know?”
    “ From Paula—just now. She’s afraid he
took her kid.”
    Dr. Marsh frowned. She probably figured I was
just some shyster running a con. Can’t say I was sorry to
disappoint her.
    “ You got something else,” Richard said.
He knew me well.
    “ I saw something, but it doesn’t make
sense.” I told them about the vision.
    “ Close your eyes. Focus on it,” he
directed.
    I shot a look at Dr. Marsh, saw the contempt
in her gaze. Skepticism came with the territory.
    My eyes slid shut and I allowed myself to
relax, trying to relive that fleeting moment.
    “ What do you see?” Richard
said.
    “ A kid’s hand reached for a
glass.”
    “ Is it Eric?”
    “ I don’t know.”
    “ Describe the glass.”
    I squeezed my eyes tighter, trying to replay
the image. “A clear tumbler.”
    “ What’s inside?”
    “ Liquid. Brown. Chocolate
milk?”
    “ Look up the child’s arm,” Richard
directed. “Can you see his clothes?”
    The cuff of a sleeve came into focus.
“Yeah.”
    “ The color?”
    I exhaled a breath. Like a camera pulling
back, the vision expanded to include the child’s chest. “Blue...a
decal of—” The image winked out. “Damn!”
    “ Give it a couple of minutes and try
again,” Richard advised.
    Uncomfortable under Dr. Marsh’s stare, I
wandered into the kitchen again. I couldn’t shake the feeling
of...dread? Whatever it was surrounded me, squeezing my chest so I
couldn’t take a decent breath.
    Hands clenched at his side, Richard studied
me in silence. We’d been through this before, and his eyes mirrored
the concern he wouldn’t express for fear of embarrassing me. He
knew just what these little empathic forays cost me.
    Turning away from his scrutiny, I went back
into the boy’s gloomy bedroom. Though banished from the apartment,
Paula’s anguish was still palpable. How many times had she stood in
that doorway and cried for her child?
    I ran my hands along all the surfaces a kid
Eric’s age could’ve touched. After eight months there was so little
left of him. His clothes in the dresser drawers, neatly folded and
stacked, bore no trace of his aura. I pulled back the bedspread,
picked up the pillow, closed my eyes and pressed it against my
face. Tendrils of fear curled through me.
    Airless.
    Darkness.
    Nothingness.
    Death.
    A rustling noise at the open doorway broke
the spell. Dr. Marsh studied me as she must’ve once looked at rats
in a lab. Her appraising gaze was sharp, her irritation almost
palpable. Even so, she looked like she just walked off the set of
some TV drama instead of the University’s Medical Center campus.
I’d bet her brown eyes flashed when she smiled. Not that she
had.
    “ I understand you’ve done this before,”
she said.
    “ Define ‘this,’“ I said.
    “ Helping the police in murder
investigations.”
    “ Once or twice.”
    “ Are you always successful?”
    “ So far,” I answered honestly and
replaced the pillow, smoothing the spread back into
place.
    “ And what do you get out of
it?”
    Her scornful tone annoyed me.
    “ Usually a miserable headache. What is
this, an interrogation?”
    “ I’m merely curious,” she said. “My, we
are defensive, aren’t we?”
    “ I can’t answer for ‘we,’ but I’m
certainly not here to fence with you, doctor. If you’ll excuse
me.”
    Brushing past her, I headed back to the
kitchen. The smooth walls and ceiling were practically vibrating.
Eric’s childish laughter had once echoed in this room, though
nothing of him remained there. I frowned; I still didn’t have the
whole picture, and Dr. Marsh had rattled me.
    I opened all the cupboards. The remnants of
Eric’s babyhood—plastic formula bottles and Barney sippy cups—had
been stowed on the higher shelves.
    No Nestle’s Quik.
    “ Any conclusions?” Richard
asked.
    “ Whatever I’m getting seems strongest
in the