Second Sight (Sequel to In Love We Trust)
By Marnie L. Pehrson
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Sable Graham, a successful criminal lawyer, is adrift. The life she's worked so hard to build for herself is now a shambles. What's more, she's all alone with secrets she dare not reveal. She certainly can't risk involvement with anyone new - especially not the handsome police officer her roommate's pushing her to date! 
      Officer Gerard McNally is a homicide detective working on a puzzling case, and he's not fully equipped for what he finds while investigating the victim's life. Against her better judgment, Sable uses her unique gift (or is it a curse?) to help Gerard catch a serial killer set loose in a small Georgia community.

Chapter 1

Dan Vanderhoff straightened his tie and then rose from his chair at the boardroom table, shook hands with his associates, retrieved his briefcase and exited the legal offices of Madison and Montague. It had been a long day, but a smile washed over his handsome face. He’d done some fancy footwork, but he believed he’d found a loophole for his client. Of course, the other lawyers on staff had been of service, but the fledgling partner was quite proud of himself for masterminding the project. He knew a win on this case would earn one more feather in his cap in the eyes of his senior partners.

Whistling a merry tune as he exited the building, he found his way to his Lexus in the parking garage and headed out of DC toward the Maryland suburbs, home to his beautiful wife and two-year-old son, Jamie. The gloomy drizzle on the January afternoon did little to dampen his spirits as he exited the expressway.

The traffic light at the end of the off ramp turned green and Dan turned right. Just as he did so, a Ford truck came barreling across the overpass, slammed on its brakes and skid across the slick oily pavement, slamming into Dan’s Lexus, crushing it like an accordion into the car in front of him.

The metallic twirling and clank of a stray hubcap falling to the pavement was the last sound the young lawyer heard before his eyes closed for the very last time.  

~*~

 Gerard McNally raked his fingers through his wavy blonde hair and placed his cap on his head. Staring in the mirror, he straightened his tie, clipped on his badge and gathered the contents of his pockets that he’d tossed on his dresser the night before and shoved them into his pocket. Another day on the force. With every day that had passed since his friend Bronson Reilly retired to start his own detective agency, Gerard grew less and less satisfied in his work.

Bronson urged him weekly to turn in his badge and come to work with him, but there was something that Gerard hated about quitting anything. Plus, Bronson’s agency was young yet, still in its infancy. Who was to say it would work out? Bronson had a wife and child to think about, but Gerard was on his own. Why toss aside a promising career on the force when there was no one to worry over his safety? Of course, that meant no one to come home to, no one to snuggle up by a fire with or fill a home with the wonderful smells of a home cooked meal upon his arrival. Then again, Gerard reminded himself that his apartment had no fireplace, and he could always inhale tantalizing aromas from Logan ’s Roadhouse down the street.

Gerard shoved an arm into his navy down jacket and started for the door. He locked up his apartment, zipped up his jacket and started for the stairwell.

The blonde cop nodded and his pale blue eyes smiled as she passed him in the stairwell. She shoved her fists deeper into her pockets, quirked a half smile at the officer and kept on ascending to the second floor. She pulled a crumpled paper from her pocket and unfolded it.

“ Apartment 254 ,” she mumbled under her breath as her eyes lifted to read the number on the door she passed and continued onward. When she stopped in front of the apartment designated on the paper, she lifted her sleeve, noting the time as seven twenty-three . She knocked soundly and waited.

The terraces between apartments were outdoors, and she could see her breath in the winter morning air. The petite brunette in her late twenties fidgeted, bouncing slightly to stay warm as she shoved her gloved fists deep into her pockets once more. After waiting a minute or two, she knocked again, a little louder.

“Just a minute…” she could hear a groggy female voice answer from inside the apartment.

When the door flung wide, it was to see her old college roommate, Ellerie Tash standing before her, her robe wrapped haphazardly about her waist, her auburn hair mussed and one eye closed with morning sleep.

Ellerie’s mouth dropped open, “Sable! Sable Graham! What on earth are you doing in Georgia ?” Ellerie’s arms went wide and hesitantly Sable stepped forward as Ellerie pulled her into a gigantic bear hug. Sable’s arms went rigid at her sides for Ellerie had grabbed her so suddenly that she hadn’t had a chance to pull her hands from her pockets.

Sable’s long silky black hair caught under Ellerie’s immense embrace and the only thing Sable could do was hope that Ellerie released her grip sometime soon, before her locks yanked from her head. Finally, Ellerie freed her friend and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her into the apartment and shut the door.

“What have you been up to all these years?” Ellerie led her friend over to the couch and fairly shoved her into the seat and flopped down beside her, tucking one long leg under the other.

“Working mostly,” Sable smiled at her jubilant friend.

“Aren’t we all!” Ellerie rolled her eyes, “Except for when I can escape to Daytona, that is!”

“You always did love the beach,” Sable chuckled. Never mind that Ellerie didn’t have the complexion for it, she’d have her freckled body donned in a bikini frolicking in the surf every chance she could.

“Gosh, sometimes it seems like yesterday that we were vying for the fraternity brothers at William and Mary!” Ellerie exclaimed in the thick Southern accent of a Georgia native.

“Seems like ages ago to me,” Sable sighed and Ellerie did not miss the beleaguered expression on her friend’s brow.

“What’s wrong, Sable?” Ellerie’s voice lowered and she took Sable’s gloved hands.

“Oh, nothing,” Sable shook her head negatively. “I’m just tired. It’s a long drive from DC to Chattanooga !”

“Why didn’t you fly?” Ellerie asked.

“I felt like driving,” Sable shrugged. “Plus, I plan to stay a while and this way I won’t have to rent a car.”

“Really? Then you simply must stay with me! I have a spare bedroom, and I’ve been looking for a roommate.”

Sable looked around the disorderly apartment. Ellerie hadn’t changed much since college. Talk about a clutter bug! But she was a likeable personality. She was the first person Sable thought of when she decided to escape Washington .

“I was kind of hoping you might say that,” Sable smiled.

“So what brings you to Fort Oglethorpe , Georgia , of all places?” Ellerie shoved a dramatic hand to her hip.

“I just had to get out of DC. I needed a sanity break and when I thought back to the last time I felt sane, it was at William and Mary, and then I thought of you,” Sable shrugged.

“Funny that the word sanity would evoke my name in your memory!” Ellerie chuckled, stood and crossed toward the kitchen. “Have you had breakfast? I was just fixin’ to make an omelet. You remember my omelets?”

“I certainly do,” Sable smiled and followed her friend, taking a seat at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.

“You were working at a law office there in DC last I spoke with you – right?” Ellerie asked as she cracked an egg into a ceramic bowl.

“Madison and Montague,” Sable replied.

“There was talk of you being made a partner, too,” Ellerie remembered as she cracked another egg.

“Yeah, but it didn’t work out,” Sable shrugged.

“Why not?” Ellerie pried as she tossed the egg shells toward the garbage disposal.

“Let’s just say, I never took Schmooze 101 in college.”

Ellerie nodded understandingly. It was true. Sable never was one for doing what it took to brownnose her way to success. You got what you got with Sable. She gave her best and if that wasn’t good enough, there would be no toady bootlicking to win you around.

“So who’s the lucky sycophant who got the position?” Ellerie whisked the eggs feverishly.

“Oh, just some guy you wouldn’t know,” Sable waved away the question.

“So you’re off on vacation?”

“Something like that,” Sable looked around the apartment. Piles of dirty dishes filled the sink, the dishwasher hung open and an assortment of dishtowels lay wadded on the counter, hanging on the oven door and one cowered in a corner by the refrigerator.

“How long you here for?” Ellerie asked as she drizzled chopped onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and peppers into the frying pan.

“As long as it takes,” Sable muttered.

“Takes to do what?” Ellerie’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Get the rest I need. I’m on a leave of absence until I feel up to returning,” Sable answered.

“Are you all right, Sable?” Ellerie’s head cocked to the side, studying her friend closely.

“I’m not sick or dying if that’s what you’re worried about. Just burnt out and need a break,” Sable closed her eyes wearily as she shook her head side-to-side.

“Then, you’ve come to the right place!” Ellerie smiled as she slid a colorful, mouth-watering omelet in front of her friend.  

~*~  

Officer Allan Reager covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief as he stepped out the front door of the small two-bedroom home. He turned his eyes toward the brown scraggly hickory tree, its limbs clutching and clawing skyward as if grasping heavenward with its last dying breath - much like the young woman whose body he and his partner had just found inside.  It was freezing, but Reager dabbed his handkerchief to his brow to absorb the perspiration, then reached for his radio to call for an investigative team.

“Reager, come back in here for a minute,” his partner, Gerard McNally, called from inside. Reager finished his call and took a deep breath, closed his eyes momentarily and stepped back into the house.

Blood pooled on the kitchen linoleum around the young woman’s torso. The license Gerard found in her purse said that twenty-four-year-old Jessica Honeycutt weighed 120 pounds, stood five-foot-seven and evidently lived at this residence. You couldn’t tell it from the bloodied gray corpse, but from the driver’s license photo, she had been an attractive brown-eyed brunette.

 Gerard handed Reager the license, “I think she knew the killer. Matter of fact, I think she could have been out on a date with him.”

“Really?” Reager asked as he looked at the license and handed it back to Gerard. “What makes you say that?”

“For one thing, there’s no forcible entry marks on the door. Whoever it was, she let him in. Then, look how she’s dressed.” Gerard squatted down before the body and motioned for Reager to do the same. The young woman lay on her side, her blouse opened down the front, the buttons popped off. With an unopened pen Gerard pointed to a brown stain on the woman’s blouse. “See that?”

“Yeah.”

“I bet if we analyze that, it’ll be soy sauce.” Gerard stood up and went to the table where he’d placed the contents of the woman’s purse. “See here,” he held up a strip of white paper in his gloved hand. “Fortune from a fortune cookie – It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to obtain permission.”

“That’s true, you know,” Reager shook his head positively.

“And look here,” Gerard pointed his pen to two tickets on the kitchen table. “Two tickets to the Chattanooga Symphony at eight o’clock last night.”

“Which she evidently didn’t use,” Reager noted.

“I think she went out to a Chinese restaurant with her killer – spilled some of her dinner on her blouse, came back here possibly to wash it off, but before she could do it …”

“Looks like a combination rape, manslaughter,” Reager finished.

‘The third one of these in the last month,” Gerard’s eyebrows furrowed.

“You think it’s the same guy? A serial killer here in No-where-ville , Georgia ?” Reager asked incredulously.

“Sure looks like it,” Gerard answered somberly.  

~*~  

“The laundry room is in the basement,” Ellerie motioned for Sable to follow her down the stairwell. The two women had spent the better half of the morning catching up with each other and getting Sable settled into Ellerie’s spare bedroom. Ellerie called into work and took a personal day. They’d taken a trip to the grocery store and now Ellerie showed Sable around the apartment complex.

“There’s a quarter machine here. Four washers, four dryers,” Ellerie thumped her hand on a dryer.

Sable nodded and turned toward the door where an elderly woman entered the washroom.

“Mrs. Higby! How are you today?” Ellerie greeted jovially. “Sable, this is Mrs. Higby in 312. Mrs. Higby, this is my old roommate from college, Sable Graham. Sable’s going to be staying with me for a while. She’s visiting from DC.”

The elderly woman set her basket on a nearby dryer and extended her hand toward Sable.

“What a pretty name! Nice to meet you, Sable,” Mrs. Higby extended her withered hand in Sable’s direction. Sable hesitated momentarily, staring at the woman’s appendage and then took it. A chill started at Sable’s palm, crept to her wrist, up her arm and sent an icy shiver throughout her body as a dark foreboding settled at the center of her being.

Sable leaned forward and whispered into the elderly woman’s ear, “Repair things with your daughter today. Do not delay.” As Sable stood erect once more, her somber green eyes met the woman’s astonished expression. Bewildered, the white-haired woman released Sable’s hand, glanced at Ellerie then to Sable and back, grabbed her laundry basket and waddled out of the room without another word.

“What on earth did you say to poor Mrs. Higby? She looked as if she’d seen a ghost!”

Sable stood there silent for a moment, almost trance-like. Ellerie took her by the shoulder and shook her. “Sable, what did you say to poor Mrs. Higby?”

“Huh?” Sable turned to Ellerie.

“What did you say to her?”

“I just told her it was nice to meet her,” Sable lied.

Ellerie’s expression narrowed suspiciously. “Looked like you said something besides that! Whatever you said sent her on her way fast enough!”

“Maybe she remembered she had something else to do,” Sable shrugged and started out of the laundry room and up the stairwell. Ellerie flipped off the light and followed her, still suspicious.

“I need to lie down for a while,” Sable said as she entered the apartment. “You don’t mind if I take a nap do you, El?”

“No, I don’t mind,” a worried frown owned Ellerie’s face as she watched her friend disappear into the bedroom and shut the door. Something wasn’t right with Sable. Sure, she hadn’t seen her in five years, so the conversation would naturally be sluggish, but Sable was withdrawn, private  - more so than Ellerie ever remembered her being. Then there was that whole incident with Mrs. Higby! Ellerie decided that the next time she got the chance she’d ask Mrs. Higby what Sable had said.  

Sable sat down on the bed, massaging her temples with her fingers. She felt so drained – sapped of all energy. The same way she felt every time it happened.  Why couldn’t she just be normal like everybody else? Normal like she used to be before the accident. She’d come here to get away from it all, but there was no escaping the curse. It followed her no matter where she went. The only thing she could do was hope that in this quieter location, there would be fewer encounters.

Sable kicked off her shoes, pulled down the bedspread and slipped under it, curled into a ball and let sleep envelop her.

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