The Death Dealer

“See?” Genevieve said.

“Oh, please!” Joe said.

“Joe, I’m telling you, it makes sense. That’s why I’m afraid,” Genevieve pressed.

“She is convincing,” Kathryn admitted. “She says that in a few days, someone else will die.”

“A Raven?” Genevieve breathed.

“She didn’t say. Just go watch. All she said was that the Poe Killer will murder someone else.”

Genevieve slipped out of the booth first, but she was quickly followed by Joe.

The woman, who was at the accident scene talking to the well-known anchor, was attractive enough. She just seemed to be slightly…rough around the edges. Her voice was clear, though, and her grammar was good. She didn’t have an identifiable accent.

She also seemed to know how to play to the camera. She was direct and dramatic, without overplaying her cards. “It’s true,” she whispered to the camera, wide-eyed.

“Most people would say that’s impossible,” the anchor told her. There was slight scoffing in his voice. Nothing direct. He was too professional for that.

“It was as if I were there,” the woman said. “As if I were driving.”

“And you said that you felt heat and anger?”

“Yes. It was as if I were someone else, and I could feel that person’s feelings.”

“Were you a man or a woman?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But as I said before, I do know this. It was the Poe Killer. And I know this, as well. He, or she, intends to kill again—soon.”

“Thank you, Miss Star.” The anchor turned his full attention to the cameras. “Truth or fiction? What’s in store for New York? Well, first things first. The police are busy cleaning up the FDR, and it’s going to be a long ride home for anyone on that highway tonight.”

Another anchor picked up from the studio, and Genevieve turned to look at Joe, but he was already turning away.

“Kathryn, I’ll take another beer, please,” he called.

CHAPTER 3

Before he even opened his eyes, Joe winced.

His head was pounding.

What in the hell had made him drink so damned much beer? He hadn’t even gone for the hard stuff, which he should have. No, he had just started inhaling the beer because of…

The accident.

It was ridiculous. He’d seen lots of accidents. He should have felt good; a little girl had been saved because of him.

But he didn’t feel good.

He felt unnerved.

Because a dead man had spoken to him.

And things hadn’t gotten any better after that.

A psychic. A self-proclaimed psychic solving the whole damned thing while somehow not solving anything at all.

Lori Star? Like hell. She might as well have called herself Moonbeam.

He went ahead and groaned, thinking that voicing his pain might make him feel a little better. It didn’t.

Hell, no. Because he’d awakened thinking.

And all he could think about was the fact that a dead man had spoken to him, and then, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, the news had dragged a damned psychic out of the woodwork. She knew, she just knew, that the driver of the car had been after Sam Latham.

No, they hadn’t dragged her out of anywhere. She’d come forward, claiming to be eager to help the police.

She couldn’t identify the car, of course. Because it was as if she had been the one driving it. She had been in his would-be head as he—or she—went after Sam Latham’s car. And then she’d finished up with the dramatic revelation someone else would be murdered within days.

Later newscasts had delved into the truth about the woman, but too late for him. Genevieve had looked at him with her huge blue imploring eyes. And he’d known right then that he was on the case.

Though he dreaded it. Dreaded it. And he didn’t know why, other than that it had something to do with that freakin’ psychic.

It had turned out that Lori Star was an aspiring actress, as well as a supposed psychic. No wonder she’d been so good in front of the camera. But there would be those out there convinced that it was no act, that she was right, that the accident had been no accident.

Even if she was right—and he sure as hell didn’t see how she could be—he was sure that all she had done was look at a few facts and take a lucky guess. She was definitely not a psychic. She just wanted her fifteen minutes of television fame.

And he was so angry because…

Because he had known Leslie. And he hadn’t believed in her at first, when she claimed to talk to the dead. But she had been legit.

And this girl sure as hell wasn’t.

He opened his eyes. He wasn’t at home, but he already knew that. He was at Genevieve’s. She hadn’t let him take a cab; she’d insisted he stay on her couch. Lacking both the will and the physical coordination to find a cab willing to go to Brooklyn at that hour, he had shrugged and agreed. And fallen asleep. Or passed out. One or the other.

He’d been doing all right last night, considering what he’d gone through with Leslie and her ability to commune with the dead, until that damned psychic had shown up on television. And then he’d started calling for the beers hard and fast.

Now, of course, he was ashamed of himself. Only cowards drank because they’d been spooked. And what a fool he’d been, besides. As far as talking to a dead man went, there was surely a logical explanation for what had happened. One, maybe the EMT had simply been wrong and Brookfield hadn’t died on impact. Or maybe, as Freud might have suggested, Joe had created the man’s voice as a tool to tell him to look for survivors in the car. There. That made sense—so long as he didn’t think about the fact that his inner voice had known the girl’s name.

And the fact that Lori Star was an annoying fraud seeking the spotlight. Well, hell, that made sense, too. She was just trying to get work.

So here he was, having had way too much to drink, sleeping on Gen’s sofa. It was a nice one, too. Antique, but restuffed and reupholstered. She loved things that were old and had a story. She and Leslie would have been great friends.

The thought made him wince and shut his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, his face lined with tension, she was there.

Gen, not Leslie.