“Laura, I don’t think it’s him,” he said. “I didn’t want to say it earlier when he was right behind the door and would be able to hear us, just in case. But I think it’s too tenuous.”
“Tenuous?” Laura repeated incredulously. “He was literally stalking a woman with a knife! That’s the exact M.O .we’re looking for!”
“But his explanation, however stupid, actually works,” Nate reasoned. “And there are lots of things that don’t fit.”
“Like what?” Laura demanded, shaking her head.
“The woman was just a fellow actress, not a coach. That’s what you said in your message, right?”
“Right, I just got a chance to speak to her while I was waiting for you,” Laura said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe he’s run out of coaches and moved on.”
?
??Which would make sense if he’d even been coached by Gypsy or Lucile, but he’s saying he wasn’t,” Nate said. “And, I know, he could be lying. That’s why I wanted him to stay under arrest and continue interrogation. But his height, Laura. You can’t ignore that.”
“His height?” Laura said, frowning.
“He’s too tall for the angle of the knife to make sense.” Nate hunched his shoulders forward, making a stabbing motion with one of his hands. “See, for the height difference he has with Lucile Maddison and Gypsy Sparks, he should have found it much more difficult to get that straight stabbing angle with the knife. It would have twisted his wrist. Someone shorter than him, shorter than me, would have been able to do it much easier.”
Laura watched his demonstration, shaking her head again. “You think my explanation is tenuous?” she said, gesturing at his hands. “You’re telling me you think he’s innocent because a killer wouldn’t bother to turn his wrist?”
Nate sighed. “I just think we should continue investigating until we get some proof that this is definitely our guy,” he said. “I don’t want to miss another opportunity to stop all of this because we made a mistake. Why were you here, anyway? You didn’t tell me what lead brought you here.”
But Laura had proof. She had seen it. She had seen that very woman being stalked by a killer with hair on his arms and a knife in his hand, and she knew he was going to do it. Maybe he had chosen a different entrance, not struck immediately, because she had changed the future herself by inserting Caleb into it. But it didn’t matter. She’d seen it.
She just couldn’t tell Nate that.
“It was something Caleb thought of. It’s him, okay? Abel is our killer. You have to trust me,” she said, turning away from him heavily. She adjusted her jacket as she did so, her hands straying over the empty spot on her belt where her handcuffs had been, over her gun…
A flash of pain hit her in the temple, so hard she almost cried out, and Laura knew the vision was going to be a tough one.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
She was in the auditorium of the Divisionary Town Hall. The floor stretched out far ahead, and there were seats around her, all pointing towards a large open area of the floor.
There was a woman in front of her, a woman with long dark hair who stood with her back to Laura, looking at something in her own hands.
The edges of the vision faded to gray and then black, telling her nothing beyond what she could see right in front of her. The woman moved, walking across the stage, heels clicking impressively as the sound was picked up and carried. She walked straight backstage, without looking behind her, as if she was familiar with this place and exactly where she needed to go. Laura's vision began to move as well, drawing her closer over the stage, following exactly where the woman had walked.
Laura's eyes looked down, and she saw a male body below herself. Hands that were larger than her own, a wristwatch in a masculine style, light-colored hair on her arms. Yes. She was him. She was the killer. She was seeing what he could see.
The vision turned up again, the killer hurrying towards the spot where the woman had vanished. He slipped inside, after her, into the backstage area, and raised his hand…
Laura surfaced from the vision into a reality that seemed far worse. She covered her mouth, trying not to make any kind of audible reaction. She’d been wrong. The vision was still the same. Nothing she had done had changed it, which meant it was still going to happen – and by the throbbing in her head, she knew it was going to happen soon.
She remembered chasing Scott Darnell around his neighborhood, seeing him dashing down an alleyway and trying to get there to stop him. She remembered the feeling of confusion when he wasn’t there. The way she had been too early, had tried to intervene too soon. That had turned out right in the end, but it easily might not have done.
The location was right. She knew that. She was more familiar with this place now, knew exactly what it looked like and could recognize it easily.
But the timing was wrong.
She’d moved too soon. The killer was still out there, and now she had not only to convince Nate that she had changed her mind about the suspect, but also find a reason to hang around and investigate the same place for what could be hours before the killer returned. A place that was locked to the public, no less.
“Okay, Nate,” she said, trying to think on her feet. “Maybe you’re right.”
“I am?” Nate said. She turned to see him looking utterly confused. He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re giving up? Just like that?”
“I was asking you to trust me,” she said, and sighed. “But I have to trust you, too. If your gut tells you that he’s not the guy, then I guess he isn’t.” She was skirting close to the truth. She did trust Nate. She would always trust him, so long as what he said didn’t directly contradict a vision. It was just hard to figure out what to do when that was the case. And this time, he’d turned out to be right.