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.