Paranormal II: The Summit Part 29

Laura Purcell looked at her husband. "I-I can't be sure. There's really nothing about him that stands out, but..."

Autumn leaned forward. "But what, Mrs. Purcell?"

"But I think this might be the man who helped us chase a bear away from our campground up at the lake. It was a Girl Scout overnight trip-Brownies. It was two weekends before Ginny disappeared." Her eyes welled with tears. "He seemed like such a nice man."

"Let's talk about that day," Ben said, trying to keep Laura focused. "Who else was there?"

She inhaled a shaky breath. "Well, there were two adult troop leaders and six girls. We were just about to have breakfast when a black bear wandered into camp. The girls were yelling, throwing things, trying to scare the bear away. The man ran over from the camp next to ours waving his shirt and shouting at the bear. When the animal saw him, it turned and ran away."

"Did this man talk to you or any of the girls?"

"Not really. He just said that from now on we should be sure to bundle up any food and haul it up in the trees, but we told him we were leaving right after breakfast. He said that he was just glad he could help." She frowned.

"What is it?" Autumn asked.

"I just...I remember he pointed at Ginny and asked if she was my daughter and I said yes. He said he could tell because both of us were so pretty." She started crying then and her husband settled an arm across her shoulders.

"I hope you understand...my wife has been through a great deal in the last two months. Both of us have."

"Believe me, I understand."

"Is there anything else you need?" Jack asked.

"I just need to know if there is anything more you can tell me about this man or where we might find him."

Laura looked up, blew her nose on a tissue her husband handed her. "He was just a camper, you know? Someone enjoying the outdoors, just like we were. I think he was there by himself. I-I do remember seeing him earlier that morning. I remember thinking he must be extremely athletic. He was jogging, you see, running up and down these very steep hills. I remember he had his shirt off and there wasn't an ounce of fat on his body. He looked extremely fit."

Ben glanced over at Autumn. "Anything else?" he asked.

"No, I...that's all I recall."

"Thank you, Mrs. Purcell," Autumn said, rising from her chair. "You've been extremely helpful."

To Jack, Ben said, "I need the names and addresses of the people on the camping trip, the other leader and the girls."

"You really think this might be the guy who took Ginny?" Jack asked.

"I think there's a chance. So far we don't have enough evidence to prove it. We need to see if the rest of the people who saw him think he's the man in the sketch."

Purcell disappeared and came back with a list of the members of the local Brownie troop and their addresses. He put a check in front of the people who went on the overnight trip.

"Thank you," Ben said, accepting the list as Jack Purcell walked them to the door.

Laura Purcell came up beside her husband. "Please...if you find out anything, anything at all..."

Ben nodded. "I'll let you know, I promise."

The door closed behind them. Autumn took a deep breath. "You really think he was the guy at the campground?"

"I'll have Rossi get up here and interview the rest of the people on Jack Purcell's list. We'll see what the others have to say. Personally, I think it was him. I think he spots a certain little girl and his predatory urge kicks in. Maybe it doesn't happen for years, but then something triggers it. Or maybe now that Molly's older, he was on the prowl. All of the girls are blond and blue-eyed. All of them pretty. He spots his victim, carefully makes a plan to abduct her and so far he hasn't come close to getting caught."

"He's smart and athletic. That fits with his interest in the outdoors."

"I'd say so."

"Smart people still make mistakes."

Ben's jaw clenched. "Let's hope he's made one this time."

They started the long drive back to Seattle. Autumn tried to relax and enjoy the scenery, but it wasn't that easy to do. Ben was as tense as she was. During a pit stop, he called Pete Rossi on his cell.

"How's the search going?" Ben asked.

Pete must not have found anything because Ben said, "That's too bad. Listen, I've got a job for you. I need you to head up to Sandpoint." He went on to explain what they had found out when they talked to the Purcells and that he wanted Pete to try to verify Laura Purcell's ID of the man in the sketch.

"We get it confirmed, we'll have something to take to the police besides the face of a man in a dream."

Ben hung up and leaned his head back against the headrest. "Rossi thinks we should pursue the Missing TV angle. I told him to go ahead and call this guy, Grayson, and set things in motion."

"Even if the producers go for it, it'll take a while to do the show."

"Which will give me time to handle my family." He kept his eyes on the road, and didn't seem to notice the pine-covered mountains that lined the highway leading south, back to the turnoff onto the 90 Freeway.

"I feel sorry for the Purcells," he said. "I know what they're going through. I wish I could have given them at least a little hope."

"There's no way you could, not yet. It might just make things worse for them in the long run."

That was the truth. If they never found the girls, false hope only made the pain more severe. Autumn gazed out the window as the car moved along the highway, pulled around a slow-moving truck on an uphill grade, then settled back into the spa.r.s.e traffic.

In the mirror, Ben's gaze met hers. "What does she look like...Molly, I mean? Now that she's so much older."

Autumn's heart twisted. She knew how terrible this was for Ben, searching for his daughter all over again, terrified he wouldn't find her.

"Well, she's twelve now, no longer a little girl, so her features are more grown up."

"Not quite twelve," Ben corrected. "Not till August first."

"That's right, I forgot." She closed her eyes and tried to conjure the image she had seen so many times in her dreams.

"She still looks a lot like Katie. Her lips are a little fuller, her cheekbones a little more p.r.o.nounced. She's on her way to becoming a teenager, so she's lost the babyish appearance of a child. I think you would recognize her as your daughter, though. You wouldn't have any doubt."

The muscles in Ben's throat moved up and down. "G.o.d, I want to bring her home."

"We're getting closer, Ben. Closer all the time."

But they still had no more idea where to look for her than they'd had before.

Autumn knew it and so did Ben.

Twenty-Four.

Autumn was sleeping in Ben's big bed. It was amazingly comfortable: the mattress deep and luxurious, the expensive cotton sheets as smooth as silk. Still, as roomy as it was, they both slept on the same side, Ben's muscular body pressing against her, one of his hair-roughened legs thrown over hers. She caught the faint scent of cologne and man, turned her head toward him and burrowed a little deeper into the pillow.

She wasn't sure how he had managed to convince her to stay at his condo when they got back to the city instead of going back to her place, but she was there, content from his lovemaking, drowsy and on the edge of sleep.

She shouldn't have stayed, she knew. It was just plain stupid to get so deeply involved with a man like Ben. He was a wealthy playboy who attracted the most glamorous women. For now, he needed her. She was crucial to finding his daughter. For the moment their lives were entwined, but eventually-one way or another-that would end. She told herself when the time came she could handle it. She was a survivor. She always had been.

She listened to the rhythm of Ben's deep breathing and her eyelids grew heavy. She drifted into a bottomless, trance-like sleep. Sometime in the late hours of the night, she started to dream.

In her sleep, she frowned as the images took shape in her mind, different than any she had seen before. Even the house was different, though she could still see mountains somewhere in the distance. She was in the living room. There was an overstuffed sofa and chair, both covered with fringed, brown-flowered throws, a cross-st.i.tched sampler hung on the wall and an antique armoire set in the corner. She could see the dining room. A Duncan Fyfe mahogany table was covered with a lacy white crocheted tablecloth. There were six matching chairs.

Sounds began to reach her, voices, though she couldn't make out what they were saying. Furniture moved upstairs, sc.r.a.ped across the floor. A lamp smashed into an upstairs wall. Then a woman screamed, her tone high-pitched and frightened, nearly hysterical.

A shiver ran through Autumn's body as the screams grew louder, more intense. Then somehow she was there in the upstairs bedroom. Two men wearing ski masks stood over the terrified woman who lay sprawled on the bed. She was injured, clutching her chest, oozing bright red blood onto the sheets. Autumn could see drops of scarlet on the butcher knife in one of the hooded men's hands.

Autumn twisted on the mattress, biting back a scream herself, suddenly thinking of Molly, terrified that she was the young woman on the bed, that she was the one being attacked. Then she saw the woman's face. She had blond hair but her eyes were dark.

Not Molly. Not Molly. Not any of the women in the house of her dreams. Autumn wanted to weep with relief. She felt the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes, but there was still the terrified woman facing her attackers and Autumn did not awaken. The man with the knife moved toward the bed and the woman let out another piercing scream. He lunged toward her, drove the knife into her a final time, dragged it upward. And then all went still.

No...! Autumn whimpered in horror as the men backed away from the bed. In her mind she saw a young woman in her early twenties in a short, blue nightgown, her eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling, her mouth agape, frozen in a final soundless scream.

Autumn twisted on the bed, fighting to wake up, moving her head from side to side. "No...No..." Her heart was pounding, her body clammy with sweat. As the men turned and started for the door, she couldn't see their faces, but in the holes exposing their mouths, she saw them smile.

Autumn's eyes flew open and she started to scream.

"Autumn! Autumn for G.o.d's sake wake up!" Ben caught her shoulders, roughly shook her. "It's a dream, Autumn! That's all! It's just another dream!"

She turned toward him, looked up at him with glazed, tear-filled eyes and threw her arms around his neck. "Oh G.o.d, Ben, oh, G.o.d, oh G.o.d."

His chest constricted. She'd been dreaming and she was terrified. His hands started shaking. He didn't want to know what she had seen. "Was it...was it Molly? Did...did something happen to Molly?"

Autumn hurriedly shook her head. "No, no, not Molly. Oh, G.o.d, Ben, they killed her. I saw it. I saw them kill her with a butcher knife."

"Take it easy." He took a breath himself, drew on his control. "You said it wasn't Molly. If it wasn't her, who was it? Who did you see get killed?"

"I don't know. I've never seen her before."

"Was it the blond man who did it?"

"I couldn't tell. There were two of them and they were wearing ski masks. They were...they were in a different house, not the house where Molly lives...somewhere else."

"All right, just calm down." Advice he was trying to take himself. "Take a deep breath and let it out slowly." She did as he instructed. "Better?"

She nodded.

"All right...now tell me exactly what happened in the dream." He wished he had the tape recorder but the one he'd bought sat on the bedside table at Autumn's.

"They stabbed her." She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, but tears leaked from beneath her lashes. "Twice, I think." She looked up at him and teardrops rolled down her cheeks. "They were...they were smiling, Ben. They murdered her and left her there and they were smiling."

Ben drew her closer, held her till her trembling body finally stopped shaking.

He smoothed back strands of her hair. "Maybe it was just a dream. You didn't know the people. You said nothing was the same. Maybe this wasn't anything to do with Molly or the rest of your dreams."

"I saw mountains...through the window in the living room. It wasn't where Molly lives but I think it was somewhere near."

He eased her a little away, then reached down and grabbed his robe off the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her naked shoulders. "Start at the beginning. Take it very, very slow."

For the next few minutes, he listened patiently as Autumn described the brutal murder of a helpless young woman and the two men who had committed the crime. The woman was blonde and there were mountains in the distance.

Coincidence? He prayed that it was, prayed that this had nothing to do with their search for Molly, but it was impossible to convince himself.

They were both too wide-awake to sleep. He needed to make notes, to get everything down on paper, so they went into the kitchen. Autumn was still wearing his robe, which dragged along on the floor and completely engulfed her small frame.

Ben tried to clear his head and keep his thoughts focused. Autumn's dreams seemed to involve both the past and present-and in the case of the teenagers fifteen years ago, the future. If there had been a murder the story would be in the newspapers or eventually would be.

Sitting at the table in the kitchen, he made careful notes of what she said, wrote down the date and time the dream had occurred and the other information she gave him. There wasn't all that much. It occurred to him that in the past she had dreamed the same dream over and over and prayed this time it wouldn't happen, that she wouldn't have to suffer the brutal murder again and again.

They went back to bed just as the sun was beginning to crest the mountains east of the city. Both of them were exhausted. There was no way to know if the dream was real and nothing they could do about it, even if it was.

It was Sunday morning. He was scheduled to pick up Katie that afternoon. They were going to the movies. He intended to keep his plans and hoped he could convince Autumn to go with them. He would choose a romantic comedy, something as far from the horrors she had witnessed in the night as he could possibly find.

He held her until she finally fell asleep, then closed his eyes and tried to follow her into slumber. He tried not to let his mind stray to dark thoughts of murder and young blond women and what it could mean to his lost little girl.

They slept until nearly noon. Autumn showered while Ben made coffee. He carried a cup in to her when she was drying off. She still had the overnight bag she had taken to Sandpoint so she slipped into her jeans and a clean, light blue, short-sleeved blouse.

She felt sluggish and tired even though she'd slept far later than usual. She tried not to think of the nightmare she'd had but it haunted her. As soon as Ben brought in the newspaper, she searched it front to back, looking for any mention of a young woman who had been murdered.

"There's nothing in there," she told him. "Maybe it hasn't happened yet."

"Maybe it isn't going to. Maybe the dream was a result of being under so much stress. That's one of the reasons people dream, you know. To help deal with the problems in their lives."

"Yeah, like watching someone murdered is going to relieve my stress."

His mouth edged up. "That's not exactly what I meant."

She sighed. "I know. Maybe it was just my imagination. If I don't have the dream again, I'll be more inclined to believe it."

"Let's hope you don't." He dragged part of the paper away from her, across the kitchen table where they sat drinking coffee and looking out at the view. He flipped to the theater section and began searching for a movie. "I'm taking Katie to the show this afternoon. I want you to come with us."

"Not today, Ben."

He caught her hand. "You had a rough night, baby. You need something to do besides sit around and worry. We'll pick a comedy, something fun to watch that will take your mind off last night."