Deja Who (Insighter #1)(59)

No, of course not.

No, except for Cat.

Cat!

Oh holy hell. Leah clutched damp tissues in her fist and thought hard. Her killer wasn’t content to murder Leah and be done with it once the purpose of both their lives was fulfilled. Sometimes he was arrested and sometimes he lived to a ripe old age and sometimes he was killed while killing her, but one way or the other, they both ended up dead.

This time around he went for Leah’s mother first, doubtless assuming that their parent-child dynamic would dictate a bond. Next time, he could beat someone to death she did care about: Archer. Or Cat. Archer was safe, she hoped.

“Can you please go faster?” she begged. “Please please go faster. I’ll tip you one hundred percent.”

“You won’t,” the cabbie said with an envious air of serenity as she took the second-to-last turn to Leah’s apartment. “I’m not letting you do that when you’re obviously not yourself.”

“You have no way of knowing what ‘myself’ is; you don’t have a baseline,” Leah argued, annoyed out of her tears. “This could be daily behavior for me. I might often weep in cabs and tip one hundred percent. Two hundred percent!”

“Somehow I doubt it,” came the dry reply. After a pause, the older woman continued. “I’m not charging you for the ride, either.”

Leah sat up straight and bit off the words. “That. Is. Just. Ridiculous! How do you expect to make a living if you don’t charge?”

“My husband works, too.”

“But that doesn’t—”

“You helped my niece. Years ago.”

Blowing her nose, she looked up in mid-honk and caught the cabbie’s gaze in the mirror. “I did?”

“If you’re Leah Nazir, yeah. You were on TV a couple years ago, you helped the cops figure out who that Cereal Rapist scumbag was.”

She vaguely remembered the Cereal Serial Rapist. A local reporter, one more insensitive than the rest of the herd, hung the nickname on Marcus Farrady, who, after he raped his victims, hung around long enough to have a bowl of cereal (his first preference) or toast. Something breakfast-y, at any rate. He took the bowl and utensils he used with him. When the cops caught up with him, a full quarter of his unfinished basement was shelf after shelf of mismatched cereal bowls, small plates, bread knives, and spoons.

Leah had been called in to consult, and reasoned that he could have been the reincarnation of three deceased serial rapists (deceased number 1: electric chair, 1990; deceased number two: succumbed to cancer in prison, 1991; deceased number three: shot and killed by last victim, 1992). She backtracked birthdays to their dates of death and was able to come up with a list for the cops. It helped that the Cereal Serial Rapist actually looked and acted like a rapist: shifty eyes, blocky hands like bowling balls, murderous temper, bull-like shoulders, crippling misogyny, juvenile record of peeping, adult record of assault. Leah found it refreshing; bad as their crimes were, it was always much more horrible when the monsters looked like they could be your next-door neighbor.

It also helped that he obsessively ate bowl after bowl of cereal while being interrogated. Obtaining a warrant was not difficult. And though he’d had ample time to ditch the evidence in his basement, Farrady hadn’t bothered. That behavior was not at all refreshing. She had ceased wondering why so many serial anythings wanted to be caught years ago.

“Yes,” she said, remembering, “just a couple of years ago. They stuck a microphone in my face and asked me why I hadn’t figured it out sooner, preventing the last two rapes.”

“Oh, dear.”

“I invited them to fuck the fuck off.”

“I sure hope so!”

“Sorry about the language.”

“It seems appropriate in that instance.”

“That was the part of the interview that didn’t make it past their editors.” Not to mention one of the last interviews she’d had to endure. She should have tried the “fuck the fuck off” method earlier. She should have tried it on . . .

No. She couldn’t think of Archer now.

The cabbie snorted. “No doubt. Anyway, that’s how I knew what you looked like. I never met you when you treated my niece for her chronophobia. Five years ago?”

Leah thought about lying, but couldn’t stomach the thought. “I . . . I apologize, I don’t—”

“It’s fine. I wouldn’t expect a doctor to remember every single patient she saw.”

“But chronophobia isn’t that common, you’d think I—”

“Stealing clocks?”

That socked the memory home. “My God, yes! I can’t believe I forgot.” Leah giggled in spite of herself. “Your niece, Maya. She was . . . well, kind of a treasure.”

The old-fashioned endearment perfectly fit Maya Ryan, who feared time and the passing of time. She was Leah’s second client with chronophobia, and by far the most interesting. Maya believed the best way to prevent time from passing was to break every watch or clock in her home, and steal and hide/bury/destroy every watch or clock outside of her home. The police, of course, eventually got involved.

“My niece couldn’t sit in a classroom, she couldn’t go to a movie theater or the grocery store or a school play without being obsessed with the clocks, with the watches people around her were wearing . . . she was a wreck. So was my sister. But you were pretty nice about the whole thing.”