The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(65)

He went out into the front room, twitched the curtains aside and checked the front porch. Harmony must have sensed him, because she pushed back the hood of her cloak so he could see her face in the porch light. She looked straight at him. Her gaze was unnerving, as if she saw things no one else could see. Oracle.

He dropped the curtain and opened the front door. Harmony swept into the room, the long cloak whipping around her high boots. She glanced pointedly at the gun.

“You won’t be needing that,” she said coldly. “Didn’t Catalina tell you Fogg Lake is a crime-free zone?”

“Except for the occasional vanishing act,” Slater said.

“About that,” Harmony said. “I may have found something interesting.”

“The twins?” Catalina hurried out of the bedroom, tying the sash of her robe. “Were you able to identify them?”

“I found some interesting descendants of a man named Harkins who was living here in Fogg Lake at the time of the Incident. He moved away a few years later and died decades ago. But according to the ancestry charts, one of his offspring gave birth to identical triplets about thirty years ago.”

“Triplets?” Slater said.

“Did not see that coming,” Catalina said.

“Got a photo?” Slater said.

“Yes, but only because one of the triplets did time,” Harmony said. “My predecessor in this job was good. She made a copy of the mug shot and stuck it in the file.”

Harmony brought an envelope out from under her cloak.

Slater opened the envelope. Catalina hurried across the room to see the photo. The image of a young man of about twenty gazed back at them with soulless eyes.

“Add about a decade and he looks exactly like one of the guys who tried to grab Catalina in Seattle,” Slater said. “What did he do time for?”

“Drugs,” Harmony said. “According to the file he was selling some kind of designer crap.”

“Thanks,” Catalina said. “This is very helpful.”

Slater looked at Harmony. “Why didn’t you call?”

Harmony shrugged. “Phones are down. Even with landlines it’s tough to keep them working in this town. Euclid and the others will take care of things in the morning. Well, if that’s all you need, I’ll be on my way.”

“I’ll walk you back to your place,” Slater said.

“No, you won’t,” Harmony said. “You need to get to work. Don’t worry about me. I live at the other end of the street.”

She strode to the door and opened it before Slater could reach it. She switched on a flashlight and went down the front steps.

Slater moved out onto the front porch. Catalina followed. Together they watched the beam of Harmony’s flashlight move through the fog-bound street until it disappeared into a building at the far end. A short time later a light glowed in an upstairs window.

“That’s the library,” Catalina said.

“She lives in the town library?” Slater asked.

“The Oracle always lives in the rooms above the library,” Catalina said. “There aren’t a lot of perks for someone in that position. It’s often a rather depressing job. So for as long as anyone can remember the town has provided the free apartment.”

They went back inside, then closed and locked the door.

“Triplets,” Slater said. “Damn. That means there are two more of those blanks out there.”

“The third one may not be a blank,” Catalina pointed out.

“Are you kidding? With the way our luck has been running lately?”

“Those of us with a strong psychic vibe do not believe in luck, remember?”

“Speak for yourself,” Slater said.

He went into the bedroom and returned with his pack. He put the gun on the counter, within easy reach, and took a notebook and a pen out of the pack.

“Got a sheet of paper?” he asked. “Or, better yet, a map of the Fogg Lake area?”

“There are no maps of Fogg Lake,” Catalina said. “It’s against the town council’s rules.”

“Why?”

“A, because no one around here needs one. B, there is a prevailing belief that maps might fall into the wrong hands and encourage tourism. The lake. The caves. The woods. It’s all stuff that campers and hikers love.”

“No maps,” Slater said. “All right, we’ll have to draw our own. That means we’ll need the sheet of paper.”

“My mom always keeps a sketchbook here. She likes to draw. I’ll see what I can find.”

Catalina went down the hall and opened a closet door. When she returned to the kitchen a moment later she held out a sketchbook.

“Will this do?” she asked.

Slater flipped through a few of the pages. A frisson of certainty flashed across his senses.

“These are all scenes of the Fogg Lake area?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“This is better than a map. The drawings are superior to photographs in many ways. Your mother has a great eye for detail.”

“Why do you need a map or those sketches?” Catalina asked.

“Because I’ve had what we in the psychic investigation business like to call a blinding flash of the obvious.”