He would have loved to have known the man in life; Alfie Parker was a good guy, the kind of man you’d always want on your team. None of them—at least, none of the small percentage of people who could communicate with the dead—understood why some souls remained, while some did not. It was assumed that souls lingered because something had been left undone, because justice needed to prevail, or because an event had been so traumatizing that too many remnants of history remained in the air.
Patrick didn’t have answers. But he’d been lucky. It was an odd thing, growing up as a triplet. He and his sisters were close. As the only boy, he was a bit of an odd man out, but in other ways, Megan had been. She loved words. She would help in any situation that she could, but she preferred a life in which most days were dedicated to working in a day-to-day rational world rather than dealing with guns and crime and prison. She believed stories influenced lives, whether they entertained, taught, or did both. In her time as an editor, she’d seen how stories could change people’s lives.
And that was great.
But for him, it had always been the mind—and law enforcement. He’d known at a very early age he had a skill for “seeing” inside the human mind. And while their strange talents had become evident to each of them when they were young, their parents had merely thought they were playing with imaginary friends. As a threesome, they had realized other people might think they were crazy, but after Colleen had “heard” an unconscious woman calling for help from the trunk of a car, their parents had become involved.
Jordan was watching him, he realized. They’d reached his car and were sitting in it; he needed to start the engine.
“You were deep in thought,” she said.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Were you reading someone’s mind?” she asked. She sounded a bit dubious—more puzzled than anything else.
He shook his head. “I guess I was just thinking about Alfie and this...strange sixth sense that brings us all together.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “Hmm. Deeper than that.”
“No, seriously. I mean, my sisters—”
“I know your sisters. I met Megan on the day I was bait, and I’ve met Colleen in meetings. Both your sisters are great. You’re lucky to have each other. The three of you are close, right?”
“We are.”
“And your folks?”
“My folks are good people. They always warned us about not sharing certain things with others so they wouldn’t think us crazy, but they believed in us themselves.”
“Sounds like your folks handled it well. My folks told me I’d be locked up in a loony bin.”
He laughed and saw she was smiling. It wasn’t a fake smile anymore.
“All the Krewe agents I’ve gotten to know so far are wonderful,” Jordan continued. “Adam and Jackson have a talent for hiring good people. And Colleen, I guess she wanted to get into this kind of thing from the beginning, right?”
“Colleen’s call to law enforcement came early—her bizarre ‘hearing’ saved a life. Of course, she went to my dad for help and—thankfully—he believed her and checked out the trunk, called the cops, and saved the would-be victim.”
“And you?” she asked.
He looked at her and shrugged. The question was honest.
“My decision to do what I do came a little bit later. And I was lucky that day. You know what it’s like to be young, to believe something, and to know if you try to explain it, most people will just ignore you. But the young woman who had almost become a victim of a serial killer believed me. And in this instance, the intended victim’s brother was a cop. I’m not so sure he would have trusted me, but she did, and he wasn’t just any cop—he was one of several detectives assigned to the case. He was getting desperate because, for almost a year, we had a serial killer working in Florida. I happened to be in line behind the killer at a coffee shop. I never know how to explain this, but I was really thrown by what he was...emitting? His thoughts seemed to be pounding in my head. He was watching the young woman in front of him in line and he was...in whatever sick kind of obsession a killer feels before he takes a woman. I knew he intended for her to be his next victim. Like many killers who preceded him, this guy was intelligent, articulate, and charming. He teased the woman playfully, joked with her. Just light stuff—polite. Nothing harassing or sexual in any way. But I knew he meant to follow her.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen—old enough and way too young. I was afraid to tell her the man behind her meant to follow her, see where she went, and find her alone at night. I was also afraid not to. At sixteen, I was already tall, and I looked older than my age. I was afraid she’d think I was hitting on her in a weird way. Obviously, I never did tell her I saw something calculating in the man’s eyes, almost heard his excitement at the prospect of having her and thinking about all he might do to her. I never did say I knew what was going on in the man’s mind.”
“So, how did you convince her and her cop brother?”
“I told her I heard the man whispering strangely. Of course, he didn’t know I heard him, but it had sounded real enough. And I had followed the guy as he followed her to her place, saw she lived in a duplex, and scoped it out.”
“I can see your dilemma there. Were you afraid you might have looked suspicious yourself?”
“I’m sure I must have been. Like I said, I was a big kid. Until the coffee shop, I’d had nothing on my mind but the football game I’d be playing that night. Anyway, she must have believed something I said because she called her brother, and I told him what I’d ‘heard.’ The guy had given a few specifics, and, though it was awkward, I told her brother everything. He, of course, checked me out, but I was a high school junior. I had alibis for every night there had been a murder. Anyway, too late to make a long story short, but I went to the football game. The young woman’s detective brother and his partner staked out her place; and sure enough, around midnight, the killer picked the lock and headed into the bedroom...and the detectives took the man down.”
“Wow. You caught a killer at sixteen. A serial killer at that.”
“No, the detectives caught the killer. My parents begged them to keep my name out of the papers. So it was explained they brought him down on an anonymous tip. And that was fine with me—I was grateful. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. Except for my sisters; it was nice that we were all...weird.”
“Weird—and wonderful,” Jordan added.
“Yeah. Thanks. Of course, I did spend some time at the police station. And that was when I determined what I should do. When one of the detectives told me they’d been seeking the man for weeks, he added, ‘Hey, kid, you must be a mind reader or something.’” He grimaced. “Anyway, psychology and psychiatry it was. Both professions have a great deal to do with learning to read the human mind. But I should be getting you home. I need an address,” he said lightly.