girls got in touch with Graham on the tenth of November and asked for
his assistance. He arrived in Boston two days later. Although the
police were skeptical of his talents-a number of them were downright
hostile toward him-they were anxious to placate the Havelocks, who had
some political influence in the city. He was taken to the sealed
apartment and permitted to examine the scene of the crime. But he got
absolutely nothing from that: no emanations, no psychic visionjust a
chill that slithered down his spine and coiled in his stomach. Later,
under the suspicious gaze of a police property officer, he was allowed
to handle the pillow that the killer had used to muffle the gunshots-and
then the pajamas and the robes that had been found next to the bodies.
As he caressed the blood-stiffened fabric, his paranormal talent
abruptly blossomed; his mind was inundated with clairvoyant images like
a series of choppy, frothing waves breaking on a beach.
Anthony Prine interrupted Graham. “Wait a minute. I think we need some
elaboration on this point. We need to make it much clearer.
Do you mean that the simple act of touching the bloodstained pajamas
caused your clairvoyant visions?”
“No. It didn’t cause them. it freed them. The pajamas were like a key
that unlocked the clairvoyant part of my mind. That’s a quality common
to nearly all murder weapons and to the last garments worn by the
victims.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know,” Graham said.
“You’ve never thought about it?”
“I’ve thought about it endlessly,” Graham said. “But I’ve never reached
any conclusions.”
Although Prine’s voice held not even the slightest note of hostility,
Graham was almost certain that the man was searching for an opening to
launch one of his famous attacks.
For a moment he thought that might be the oncoming trouble which he had
known about, in a somewhat psychic fashion, for the past quarter of an
hour. Then he suddenly understood, through the powers of his sixth
sense, that the trouble would happen to someone else, beyond the walls
of this studio.
‘When you touched the pajamas,” Prine said, ,did you see the murders as
if they were actually taking place in front of you at that very moment?”
“Not exactly. I saw it all take place-well, behind my eyes.”
‘What do you mean by that? Are your visions sort of like daydreams?”
“In a way. But much more vivid than daydreams full of color and sound
and texture.”
F “Did you see the Havelocks’ killer in this vision?”
“Yes. Quite clearly.”
“Did you also intuit his name?”
“No,” Graham said. “But I was able to give the police a thorough
description of him – He was in his early thirties, not shorter than
five-ten or taller than six feet. Slightly heavy. Receding hairline.
Blue eyes. A thin nose, generally sharp features. A small strawberry
birthmark on his chin…. As it turned out, that was a perfect
description of the building superintendent.”
“And you’d never seen him?”
“My first glimpse of him was in the vision.”
“You’d never seen a photograph of him?”
“No.”
“Had he been a suspect before you gave the police this description?”
Prine asked.
“Yes. But the murders took place in the early morning hours of his day
off – He swore that he had gone to his sister’s house to spend the
night, hours before the Havelock girls were killed; and his sister
supported his story. Since she lived over eighty miles away, he seemed
out of the running.”
“Was his sister lying?”
“Yes.
“How did you prove it?”
While handling the dead girls’ clothing, Graham sensed that the killer
had gone to his sister’s house a full two hours after the murder had
taken place-not early the previous evening as she insisted. He also
sensed that the weapon-a Smith & Wesson Terrier .-was hidden in the
sister’s house, in the bottom drawer of a china closet.
He accompanied a Boston city detective and two state troopers to the
sister’s place. Arriving unannounced and uninvited, they told her they
wanted to question her on some new evidence in the case. Ten seconds
after he stepped into her house, while the woman was still surprised at