Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery by Victoria Laurie Read Free Book Online Page A

anything?”
    “We have a witness who was walking by at the time who saw a woman cut through a row
     of houses, run through the parking lot and into the front door of the salon. He says
     she had what he thought was a backpack strapped to the front of her torso, and he
     says that she was moving erratically. He stopped to watch her because he thought she
     was high on drugs and he might need to call the cops. He says the door barely closed
     behind the woman when the front of the shop exploded.”
    “Did he give a description of her?” Candice asked.
    “He said he thought she was young, maybe mid- to late twenties, but he’s not sure
     on the hair, height, or anything else.”
    “So, this is a similar profile to the College Station bomber,” I said, remembering
     the bomber at the mall had also been a young female.
    Brice shrugged. “Possibly. I’ve learned not to rely on eyewitness testimony too much.
     Anyway, we won’t know anything for sure until the coroner gives us a report, but,
     so far, yes, her MO fits with the other bombing in College Station.”
    “Which doesn’t fit at all with normal psychology,” Candice said. I looked at her and
     she explained, “Men are far more likely to choose a violent means of suicide than
     women. Guys will use a gun, or jump off a building, or crash their car into a wall.
     Women typically choose self-poisoning—pills or arsenic and the like.”
    “Unless they’ve been brainwashed,” Brice said.
    Candice turned to him. “You guys really think this is the work of some sort of terrorist
     group?”
    He shrugged. “Two suicide bombings in the space of a coupleweeks? Yeah, we’re entertaining that theory pretty hard. So is Homeland Security,
     by the way.”
    Brice then nodded through the large hole and I saw a bunch of men in dark blue jackets
     standing just to the side of the building.
    But I wasn’t buying the terrorist theory. “Where was the witness standing when he
     saw the girl?” I asked.
    “He was on the sidewalk right in front of the shop,” Brice said.
    “Is he okay?” Candice asked. The sidewalk was on the other side of the parking lot—maybe
     twenty-five feet away.
    Brice flipped the lid closed on his notebook. “He’s got a couple of small scratches
     from flying glass, but he was far enough away not to get hit with the blast.”
    “Lucky,” I muttered.
    “Yeah, except for witnessing something he’ll never forget, he’s a lucky bastard.”
    Brice wasn’t trying to be sarcastic; it was just his manner.
    We fell silent after that and I could feel the weight of Brice waiting for me to give
     him my intuitive impressions, but the truth was that I was working up the courage
     to open my intuition to the scene.
    Crime scenes are always an assault on the senses, and this was one of the worst I’d
     ever been to. My nose was filled with the acrid smell of charred plastic, wood, and
     other unmentionable things, not to mention that everywhere I looked I could see the
     destructive violence of the bomb, and my ears couldn’t drown out the sound of dozens
     of first responders still covering the scene. I could only imagine what my sixth sense
     would encounter when I clicked on my radar.
    “You okay?” Candice whispered.
    I realized I was breathing a little hard and maybe I was starting to feel a touch
     cold and clammy too. “It’s the smell,” I said, bringing my arm up to cover my nose.
    Candice wrapped her arm around my waist and guided me out of the shop to a spot in
     the parking lot about ten feet from what had been the entrance. “Better?” she asked.
    I swallowed hard. “A little.”
    “You don’t have to do this,” she reminded me, which won her a sharp look from Brice,
     who had followed us.
    Truth be told, I very nearly backed out, but then that feeling of knowing with absolute
     certainty that Dutch would then be left unprotected and vulnerable settled into the
     pit of my stomach and it gave me the resolve I needed.