have heard a thing if, in the world outside, God had peeled back the sky
and announced the imminent destruction of the human race.
A COOL DRAFT circulated through the room from the broken window, but
growing frustration generated a compensate heat in Candy. He moved
slowly around the spacious handling various objects, touching the
furniture, trying to get a vision that would reveal the whereabouts of
Frank. Thus far he’d had no luck.
He could have pored through the contents of the desk drawers and filing
cabinets, but that would have taken hours,he didn’t know where they
might have filed the information he was seeking. He also realized he
might not recognize right stuff when he found it, for it might be in a
folder ore lope bearing a case name or code that was meaningless to And
though his mother had taught him to read and write, though he had been a
voracious reader just like her-until lost interest in books upon her
death-teaching himself subjects as well as any university could have
done, he never less trusted what his special gifts could reveal to him
more than anything he might find on paper, Besides, he had already
stepped into the lounge, obtain the Dakotas’ home address and phone
number, and called to see if they were there. An answering machine had
picked on the third ring, and he had left no message. He didn’t want to
know where the Dakotas lived, where they might up in time; he needed to
know where they were now, this minute, because he was in a fever to get
at them and wring ans from them.
He picked up a third Scotch-and-soda glass. They were over the room.
The psychic residue on the tumbler gave an instant, vivid image of a man
named Jackie Jaxx, and pitched it waside in anger. It bounced off the
sofa, onto the carpet, without shattering.
This Jaxx person left a colorful and noisy psychic impress everywhere in
his wake, the way a dog with poor bladder control would mark each step
on his route with a dribble of stiing urine. Candy sensed that Jaxx was
currently with a large number of people, at a party in Newport Beach,
and he sensed that trying to find Frank or the Dakotas through i would
be wasted effort. Even so, if Jaxx had been alone easily taken, Candy
would have gone straight to him slaughtered him, just because the guy’s
lingering aura was brassy and annoying.
Either he had not yet found an object that one of the Dakotas had
touched long enough to leave an imprint, or neither of them was the type
who left a rich, lingering psychic residue in his wake. For reasons
Candy could not fathom, some people were harder to trace than others.
He had always found tracing Frank to be of medium difficulty, but
tonight catching that scent was harder than usual. Repeatedly he sensed
that Frank had been in the room, but at first he could locate nothing in
which the aura of his brother was coagulated.
Next he turned to the four chairs, beginning with the largest. When he
skimmed his sensitive fingertips lightly over the upholstery, he
quivered with excitement, for he knew at once that Frank had sat there
recently. A small tear marred the vinyl on one arm, and when Candy put
his thumb upon the rent, particularly vivid visions of Frank assaulted
him.
Too many visions. He was rewarded with a whole series of place images,
where Frank had traveled after rising from the chair: the High Sierras;
the apartment in San Diego in which he had lived briefly four years ago;
the rusted front gate of their mother’s house on Pacific Hill Road; a
graveyard; a book-lined study in which he’d stayed such a short time
that Candy could get only the vaguest impression of it; Punaluu Beach,
where Candy had nearly caught him…. There were so many images, from
so many travels, layered one atop another, that he could not clearly see
the later stops.
Disgusted, he pushed the chair out of his way and turned to the coffee
table, where two more tumblers stood. Both contained melted ice and