Double Take - Catherine Coulter [42]
“Yes, Wallace, I’m fine, really.”
He gave her a longer brooding look. “And this nonsense a few minutes ago, this man waving around a gun.”
“He’s here to protect me, as are the two police officers who came rushing in.”
Tammerlane said, “Let me get rid of Bevlin and this philistine agent fellow, unnecessary, both of them. I’m with you now. I can protect you. We can go over to Cecile’s for an espresso. I need to talk to you, take you away from all this. Perhaps August will have something to say.”
Cheney said, “If August Ransom is ready to check in, Mr. Tammerlane, perhaps he can tell you who killed him.”
Mr. Tammerlane raised dark intense eyes. “It isn’t like that, Agent Stone, isn’t like that at all. August doesn’t concern himself with the past, with what came before—”
“He doesn’t care that someone cut his life short? That the same person may be trying to kill his widow?”
Wallace said patiently, “Agent Stone, when a person has crossed over, all his past pains, past insults, all of it ceases to be important. Indeed, all of life’s difficulties cease to exist. However, the truth of it is that August doesn’t know who killed him. Whoever it was came at him from behind. He told me only that he heard movement behind him, but he didn’t have time to turn around. He’d been taking cocaine, a regrettable habit of his, but he said it helped him focus, made him understand things he couldn’t have otherwise, and it slowed his reflexes, flattened any fear he might have felt. August felt only a sudden awful sharpness in his throat, then immense cold. That was the end of it, and he crossed over and everything changed. He was in The After.
“But he is concerned about Julia. He loves her, has always loved her. He is here for her, not in this room with us, mind you, but close.”
“He doesn’t know who hired that man to kill me, Wallace?”
“No, my dear, he doesn’t know. Those who have crossed over do not become omniscient. They remain themselves.”
“But he was a psychic,” Cheney said. “Didn’t those abilities carry over to The After?”
“No, Agent Stone, they did not. He’s there, you see, no need for those abilities now.”
“Perhaps,” Cheney said, his eyebrow arched, “Dr. Ransom could put the word out, ask around with the other spirits, you know. Or maybe he could hang around a bit here, keep an eye on his wife, tell her when evil is closing in on her.”
“Evil, Agent Stone? I don’t know that I’d call it evil.”
“When someone wants to murder another person, what would you call it?”
Wallace shrugged. “Anger, rage, necessity, probably all those things, but not evil. Evil seems to me to be without motive, to exist for its own sake.”
Bevlin Wagner surged to his feet, the energy nearly crackling off him. “You said August isn’t here, Wallace. Well, I agree with you. He isn’t here now, but he was before. Then I sensed he had to leave.”
Julia jumped to her feet. “He was really here, Bevlin? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I felt him.”
“But why would he leave, Mr. Wagner?”
“Who knows, Agent Stone? There’s lots of things for him to do. It isn’t all lying around and singing ‘Kumbaya.’ No, I don’t sense Dr. Ransom at all now, and I would like to. I called to him with my mind voice, trying to call him back, but he said nothing at all.
“I do agree with you, though, Agent Stone. If I were August, I’d be here with Julia, not off somewhere counseling some departed soul.” He shrugged, stroked his chin with long thin fingers. “But August always went his own path, and dying wouldn’t change that.”
Cheney wanted to throw up his hands and tell the both of them to go away, but one of them might be Dr. August Ransom’s murderer. One of them might have hired the man who tried to kill Julia.
Cheney said, “Do you speak to many dead people, Mr. Tammerlane? ”
“Yes, of course. It is a gift, a responsibility, and obligation. I will admit that August fades in and out quickly, that it is difficult