The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(41)

Slater dropped the gadget into one of the many pockets of his cargo trousers and opened the door. He aimed the beam of a flashlight down a shadowed hallway.

Catalina got a flicker of curiosity.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“Don’t worry, we’re not in danger of getting arrested for burglary. Royston left his collection to the Foundation. I’m here as a representative of the Foundation’s museum.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

“According to the report, Royston’s gallery and vault are downstairs in the basement.”

“Like Swan’s salesroom? Oh, joy. Another basement full of heavy energy.”

“Collectors like basements because they offer an extra level of security. The surrounding ground absorbs a lot of the paranormal radiation, which means freelancers and raiders are less likely to detect a cache of hot objects.”

“Is that why the lost labs were set up in places like the Fogg Lake caves?”

“Probably.” Slater led the way down a wide corridor. “The caves there would have been a naturally secure location. The Foundation experts think that in other cases vast underground tunnel complexes had to be constructed to house the labs.”

Catalina followed him along the hallway, aware of whispers of energy lifting the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

Slater stopped in front of a metal door and used the lock-picking device to open it. Stairs stretched down into the darkness. Currents of energy wafted upward.

Slater found a bank of switches on the wall. The lights came up, revealing a large belowground display room. Many of the shelves and glass cabinets were empty. There was a lot of residual heat radiating from the walls, floor and ceiling, but not much from the handful of artifacts scattered around the chamber.

Catalina followed Slater downstairs. When she reached the bottom of the steps, she paused to look around.

“You were right, this gallery has been cleaned out,” she said. “There’s some serious energy from whatever used to be in here, though.”

“Royston was eccentric, and so was his collection,” Slater said. “But as I told Gwendolyn Swan, the good stuff, most of which would have been stored in the vault, is long gone. The raider crews always seem to be the first to hear about the death of a major collector. It’s uncanny. But in this case I think someone else was here even before the raiders.”

“The killer?”

“Or killers,” Slater said. He gestured toward a heavy steel door at the far end of the room. “There’s the vault. The body was found inside. No signs of foul play. It looked like a straight-up heart attack.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“No.”

Catalina moved a little deeper into the room and cautiously opened her senses. Sure enough, the whispers of fresh death shivered in the atmosphere.

“I hate crime scene work,” she said.

She did not realize she had spoken aloud until Slater responded. “Uncle Victor told me that in the past you’ve done it only when asked and only because you felt you had a responsibility to do it,” he said.

“It’s hard to say no, not when you know there’s a murderer on the loose and you might be able to pick up some information that will help law enforcement catch him.”

Slater watched her as she paused near a glass-and-steel case. “You know, there are some talents who actually get a thrill out of the work.”

“Well, hey, good news for Victor, right? In the future he can dig up someone who gets a kick out of murder scenes to read crime heat for him.”

“The problem with consultants who derive a thrill from this sort of work is not only that they are creepy but that you can’t be sure they’re not embellishing their results.”

She had been about to move on to another row of shelving but she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder.

“What do you mean by ‘embellish’?” she asked.

“They lie.”

“Ah. Frauds.”

“Not always,” Slater said. “They might have a little talent, maybe even enough to pick up a hint of violence or death, but that’s all they can detect, so they use their imaginations to enhance their reports. They inevitably end up giving law enforcement a lot of false leads or leads that are so vague they are meaningless. ‘The body is buried near water.’ ‘The killer is obsessed with mirrors.’”

“So when the body is found or the killer is apprehended it’s impossible to say that the psychic was wrong, because there usually is some water in the vicinity and almost every house or building has a couple of mirrors.”

“Right. The really good crime scene people are like you—they hate the work but they do it because they feel they have a responsibility to help law enforcement. And when they can’t offer anything helpful, they’re up-front about it.”

“I saw the way you responded to some of the artifacts in Swan’s gallery. What’s that like for you?”

“Depends on the provenance of the object,” Slater said. “Some whisper to my senses. Others shout. I tend to resonate most strongly with the dark stuff.”

“Same with me.”

“You see visions. I hear voices. In another time and place people would have either revered us as seers and prophets or hunted us down with pitchforks and knives.”