Edgewise by Graham Masterton Page A

or four days, I shouldn’t imagine.”
    â€œIf you’re such a genius at finding people, how come you’re not more famous? How come the FBI doesn’t use you?”
    â€œBecause what I do, Mrs. Blake—it comes at a very high price. Not always financially. Sometimes, in terms of money, it comes extremely cheap. But all the same, some people can’t afford it; some people can afford it but don’t want to pay it.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œYou would, if you were to retain me.”
    â€œGive us a ballpark figure,” said Ned.
    Shooks said, “I’m sorry. I’d have to consult my resources first, find out what they were looking for.”
    â€œA thousand? Two thousand? Ten thousand? What?”
    â€œYou can name your price,” put in Bennie. “Concord Realty will pay. We just want to see Lily get her kids back.”
    â€œHow much did your brother pay?” asked Shooks.
    Bennie thought about it, and then frowned. “I don’t know, to tell you the truth. He never told me.”
    â€œExactly,” said Shooks. He turned again to leave, but Lily knew that she couldn’t let him go. If he could really find Tasha and Sammy for her in three or four days, she didn’t mind what it cost. She didn’t even mind if she had to sell the house and live in some low-rent apartment in Cedar-Riverside.
    â€œMr. Shooks . . .” she said, and he stopped where he was, patiently waiting for what she was going to say next.
    He met her the next morning at eleven A.M . at Sibley’s Barn. It had stopped snowing and an orange sun was suspended in a pale-gray sky. She wore a shaggy fox-fur coat and a shaggy fox-fur hat and thick shaggy boots. When she crossed the Brer Rabbit field Shooks was already waiting for her, in his long black coat and his wide-brimmed hat, and a very long black scarf, his breath smoking.
    â€œHow did you sleep?” he asked her as she approached. She was taken aback. It seemed an incongruous question from a man who barely knew her. Yet somehow it made sense. He wanted to know how excited she was.
    â€œNot very much, as a matter of fact,” she told him. “But then you must have known that.”
    â€œI’ve looked inside the barn already,” he said. “No physical, evidence, just as the FBI told you. No footprints, no fingerprints, no fibers.”
    â€œSo now what?”
    â€œWe find out what happened here first.”
    â€œHow can we do that, if there’s no evidence?”
    Shooks smiled. “I said no
physical
evidence. But people leave more than physical evidence. They leave a resonance, an echo. A smell of themselves.”
    â€œThe FBI tried manhunting dogs. They couldn’t pick up any scent at all.”
    â€œI’m not talking about that kind of a smell. Here—come into the barn and I’ll show you what I mean.”
    Lily hesitated for a moment, but then she stepped through the access door into the barn and Shooks followed her. She stood among the straw while he circled around and around her, trailing his fingers against the walls.
    â€œWhat are you looking for?” she asked him.
    He stopped circling. “They were here all right. I can hear them.”
    â€œYou can
hear
them? What do you mean?”
    He approached her with his hands held up to the sides of his face. He stopped only two or three feet away from her, and it was then that she saw that his eyes had rolled up into his head, so that only the whites were exposed. She took a step away from him, and then another. He looked grotesque, like a death mask.
    â€œ
Where are we going?
” he suddenly said. But he didn’t speak in his own voice at all. He sounded high and childish. In fact, he sounded exactly like Sammy.
    Lily felt her scalp crawl with fright. This wasn’t ventriloquism, or mimicry. Somehow, this was Sammy talking through Shooks’s lips.
    â€œHow are you doing