Page 15 of Already Lost

She had managed to get a good look at theevidence locker, and she’d managed to persuade the cop on duty to leave heralone there. It wasn’t strictly protocol, but she figured that he saw an FBIbadge and thought she outranked him anyway. She wasn’t going to dissuade himotherwise.

Which meant that now she had access toevery item belonging to the victims that had been recovered from the scene –everything that hadn’t been taken into the lab for testing – and everythingrecovered from their homes that was deemed to be useful. The problem was, shecouldn’t touch all of them.

No matter what she touched, it was a risk.The evidence would be contaminated with her fingerprints, meaning that anytesting carried out on it later would show that she had touched it. That wouldget any evidentiary value it had reduced to nothing, as any good defense lawyerwould throw it out of the courtroom immediately. Not only that, but it couldopen the jury up to suggestions of evidence tampering and thus cast a shadow ofdoubt over any other evidence that she’d had access to. It could risk the wholecase if they couldn’t get a suspect to plead guilty.

Nevertheless, it was a risk she wanted totake. Because if she didn’t, she wasn’t going to get anywhere. She needed to dosomething to trigger a vision. She and Nate were stuck, completely lost, andthere was no visible way forward that didn’t include simply going over and overthings the locals had already examined in detail. If she had a vision of wherethe killer was going to go next, or who he would target, or even where he gotthe gramophones from – anything would help.

But the question was, which of theevidence items spread out on the desk in front of her was worth the risk to getit out of the plastic bag and contaminate it? Which would have the least impacton the case and yet the most likelihood of yielding a vision?

In some ways, it was lucky that the twovictims so far had both been women. They carried purses, which had been foundleft at the scene. There were so many different items in there that werepersonal – lipsticks, home and car keys, wallets, even phones. But then again,none of these necessarily had any connection to the killer, and that was whatLaura needed. The last thing she wanted was to end up getting a vision of thepast again and seeing something from when the victim was a child, which wouldbe no help to anyone.

There was one option, though. A coat whichone of the victims had been wearing. It had been left to the side of one of therooms, discarded because it didn’t fit into the killer’s vision. Laura was sureit had already been checked for fingerprints and fibers and found to be of novalue, or it wouldn’t be here – it would be at the lab with the other things.But if the killer had touched it, even with gloves on…

It would be a link to him that mighttrigger a vision.

She cast a glance over her shoulder andchecked that no one was anywhere near entering the room, then moved quick as aflash. She unzipped the plastic evidence bag and grabbed the coat, plunging herhand inside the bag instead of taking the coat all the way out.

Nothing.

She took a breath. She’d touched it now.There was no going back. Might as well go forward. She let go and tried anotherspot, then another – the lapel, the zipper, the pocket, the toggle – a headachestruck her temple, shooting around inside her skull, and she only had time to –

She was standing a short distance awayfrom Zach, who was laying on the ground. Zach, who was looking up in terror.Zach, with Chris crouching over him, kneeling on him, over his chest, pinninghim down.

No, Laura thought, but she waspowerless. She couldn’t move, breathe, speak, do anything to stop it fromhappening. She could only watch, unable to tear her eyes away, as Chris raisedhis right arm in the air. The edges of the vision were fuzzy and black, like somany of them had been lately. And then Chris plunged his arm down, his handgoing right into Zach’s chest, stabbing him…

Laura blinked and gasped for air,snatching her hand out of the evidence bag and zipping it back up before anyonecould come in and see her. She replaced the items back into the large box theyhad been stored in, one after the other, almost throwing them in her haste. Shewanted to be free and clear of them before she stopped.

Then she did stop, trying to catch herbreath, leaning on the edge of the table for support.

Why was she still seeing the same thing?

This wasn’t supposed to be how it worked.She was supposed to see something related to the case – to the killer. Not somethingrandom from her own life. She’dnevertriggered an unrelated visionbefore. It just didn’t happen.

But then neither did many of the otherthings she’d been experiencing lately. Foggy visions with black around theedges until she could barely make out what was going on. Visions of the past.Visions that misled her by appearing to be something else. It was all wrong,all of it – and one of the worst things was that the visions didn’t seem towant to come at all.

Laura took a long, heavy breath, stabilizingherself, trying to get her heartbeat and her breathing under control. She wasgoing to have to figure this thing out soon – very soon, because if the visionsshe was seeing were going to come true, she wouldn’t have Zach around for muchlonger at all.

***

Nate shifted restlessly in front of thecomputer screen, drumming his fingers on the desk. Part of him wanted to get upand follow Laura and see what she was doing, but he hadn’t been invited. Hedidn’t take offense at that. It was just something she had to do alone,whatever it was.

He thought he knew, anyway. She wasprobably trying to do something to trigger a vision. And if she hadn’t invitedhim along for that, it was probably because having him around was putting heroff. He’d noticed that she hadn’t had many visions at all since he found outabout them, and that had to be no coincidence.

But it did leave him twiddling his thumbs,as it were, and he needed to think of something to do that would be useful.

Research. He could always try and do a bitof research.

Nate hit the mouse to wake up the screen,then cracked his knuckles. He could do this. There had to be an angle here, away to attack the problem and figure out a solution. He just had to find theway in. And the most obvious thing, to him, had to be the gramophones.

Gramophones weren’t exactly a usualhousehold item these days. They’d gone out of style decades ago. You didn’t seethem just anywhere – they were more likely to be museum exhibits than anythingelse. But this guy had not one gramophone, but two. Identical ones, andhistorically dated. Not replicas. The original, real thing.

That had to be hard to get hold of.Surely, it would be possible to track down someone who had purchased two – andmaybe more.

At least, much more possible than findinga match for their prints when all they knew about the suspect so far was thathe wasn’t in the database.

“Alright,” Nate muttered to himself,typing the simplest starting point he could think of into his search engine:buyantique gramophone.

A few results came up. He wasn’tsurprised, really, by what he saw. The first few were various auction andonline sales sites, the kind that seemed to sell everything to everyone thesedays. So far, so predictable. But those sites, while a good resource forsomeone who was a casual collector, wouldn’t be enough for the more serioustype. They probably weren’t a good start for someone who wanted multipleidentical devices, either. For that, you’d want to go to a dealer.

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