The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(10)

“You wanted to know if Ingram was murdered because someone was after an artifact in his collection,” Slater said. He did not make it a question.

“I knew something of Ms. Lark’s talent and I was aware that she had a Fogg Lake connection. I asked her to consult on the case.” Victor grunted. “Paid her very well for her time, I might add. It’s not as if I stiffed her when it came to the bill for her services.”

Victor sounded defensive now. A sure sign that he had really screwed up.

“What kind of assistance did you request, and what went wrong?” Slater asked.

Victor had a computer for a brain. He could leapfrog over a dozen scraps of data and reach the logical conclusion. But sometimes you had to take things step-by-step. He tended to skip right past pesky little details that indicated he might have miscalculated.

“It was just a routine analysis job,” Victor muttered. “Nothing to it. All she had to do was take a close look at the scene of Ingram’s death.”

Take a close look was one of Victor’s favorite sayings.

“What’s her talent?” Slater asked.

“She … senses things.”

“A lot of people from Fogg Lake sense things,” Slater said. “Be more specific.”

Victor switched his brooding gaze to one of the paintings of the Oracle of Delphi. He contemplated it as though it contained some secret that he needed to know, as if people’s lives depended on acquiring that knowledge.

“Miss Lark sees visions,” he said quietly.

“Hallucinations?”

“No, the real thing,” Victor snapped. “There’s a difference between hallucinating and seeing visions, and you damn well know it.”

“Speaking from experience, I can tell you that there are times when it can be tough to tell the difference.”

Within the paranormal community, the ability to control hallucinations was the working definition of sanity. It was what made it possible to pass for normal.

“Miss Lark’s visions are a manifestation of her strong intuition,” Victor said. “She can read someone’s aura and pick up on the vibe of what the individual is likely to do next.”

Slater glanced at the nearest Oracle painting and shook his head. “You’re not going to tell me that she can see the future, are you? That kind of nonsense is for the Freak crowd.”

Over the years, a number of those who had been affected by the vapors released on the night of the Fogg Lake Incident had found themselves unable to cope with their new senses. Those who failed to gain control of the psychic side of their natures lost the ability to use logic and reason and old-fashioned common sense. All too often they fell into cults or obsessed over conspiracy theories. Some ended up in the locked wards of psychiatric hospitals.

The Freaks had appeared online a couple of years ago. The group had popped up on the Foundation’s alert file almost immediately, because several people with links to Fogg Lake had found their way into the secretive group.

Until recently Victor had not been particularly concerned, because the Freaks had appeared to be just another relatively harmless bunch of conspiracy theorists.

Recently, however, the Freaks had begun to work their way up Victor’s long to-do list. There was some indication that one individual in particular was trying to gain control over what had, until now, been a loosely linked crowd of whack-jobs.

Victor shook his head. “Catalina Lark isn’t one of the crazies. She has full control of her talent. The reason she will be a valuable asset is that not only can she pick up on an individual’s future intentions, she can read the energy prints that a perp or a victim leaves behind at the scene of a crime.”

Slater got a ping. Curiosity sparked across his senses. “She can analyze crime scene heat?”

“The same way you can pick up the energy infused into artifacts,” Victor said. “To be clear, I’m as certain as I can be that this is not a Freak case. There’s something else going down in Seattle.”

“What, exactly?”

“Another collector died three days ago. Jeremy Royston. His body was found in his vault. The death was attributed to natural causes. Heart attack.”

“Anything missing from the collection?”

Victor snorted. “By now I’m sure the place has been cleaned out. Somehow the raider crews always seem to get to the scene before the Foundation people arrive.”

“But you think that Royston was murdered for a particular artifact?”

“I think there is a possibility that is the case, yes. I want you to investigate and confirm my theory.”

“Why?”

Victor was silent for a moment. Then he heaved another sigh.

“Because I think that someone or some group is trying to find the old Vortex lab,” he said.

“People have been looking for that facility for decades. There’s no record that it ever existed.”

“There’s no official record that any of the lost labs existed,” Victor said. “But we know that they did.”

A case focused on a possible Vortex link was most likely a waste of time, Slater thought. But any job was better than returning to his office in the Foundation museum. Victor wasn’t the only one who had become the subject of rumors and speculation in the halls of the archives, museum and research labs.