She was brought back to the present when the DA handed her the phone.
"Your uncle wants to talk to you," he said and walked out of the office.
"Uncle John?" Her voice vibrated with uncertainty.
"Amy, I hear you got yourself in a bit of a bind?" he asked concerned.
"I don't know what to do!" She was near hysterical.
"Now listen, Amy, you have to tell him the truth."
"I can't. I don't want to. Do you know what this will do to my life?" She had the phone pressed tightly to her ear, and her other hand was waving frantically in the air.
"Amy, calm down. I am not saying you must scream it out to the whole world. I mean you must tell Ryan the truth about what you can do. You can trust him. I do!" Her uncle's voice was urgent. "I don't see any other way out of this. If the FBI finds out about you and you knowing about the other body, you will immediately become a suspect or an accomplice."
"I don't know if I can do this. What if the District Attorney doesn't believe me?"
She sat down in the chair again. With her elbow on her knee, she pressed her forehead against her fist.
"I promise you, Amy, it will be OK. I've known Ryan for many years. We've been friends since Dartmouth. You can trust him. You have to trust him to do the right thing for you here. I can't get involved more than what I already have."
"I know, I know!" Amy said knowing she was fighting a losing battle. "He shouldn't have called you in the first place."
"I am glad he did! You wouldn't have been able to handle this on your own. I know you don't want me to interfere in your life and specifically in your professional one. I know you don't like people to know I am your uncle. I understand why, and I take no offence to it."
She smirked to herself.
"I guess I have no other choice, do I?" she stated, shaking her head in defeat.
"Sorry, my dear! You are right. You have no other option. Take care; I will talk to you later or better yet, come over tonight. You can let me in on the details and tell me exactly how you got yourself into this mess."
"I would like to, but I've already made plans with Angela."
"Bring her; she is practically part of the family."
"We'll see. I will let you know later."
She hung up the phone and waited for the DA to come back. He took close to five minutes to return to his office; Amy felt like it was the longest five minutes of her life.
Shapiro walked over to the chair behind his desk and sat down.
"I take it your uncle talked some sense into you."
Amy just nodded trying to brace herself for what was coming.
Shapiro leant forward in his chair, waiting for her to speak. Amy looked down at her hands folded in a tight grip on her lap. She didn't know where to start. She inhaled deeply and perched herself on the edge of the chair and looked at the DA.
"Sir, to be honest, I don't know where to start or how to explain this." Her shoulders slumped forward.
"Just start from the beginning and tell me everything," he said.
"OK, very well," said Amy. "I was about six years old when it started."
Shapiro looked confused and leant in even closer, waiting in anticipation for Amy to continue.
"At first my parents didn't believe me. Then I started telling them about things that hadn't happened yet then those things would come true, and that's when they realised that I was telling the truth. My mother finally told me that my grandmother also had the gift, although she thought her mother was a bit mentally disturbed. When I started telling her about the things I was seeing and hearing, she realised that all those years her mother was telling her the truth. That she could see and hear the things she did. I don't use my gift very often. I try to avoid most situations where I can get readings from people and items. I rarely allow people to touch me and I try to avoid touching people as much as I can. I take the stairs rather than the elevator."
Ryan kept quiet and listened attentively to every word Amy was saying.
"I have dreams as well. Last night I dreamt that a man wearing a red scarf was chasing me down a tarred road with high buildings on either side. I am still not sure if I was the one being chased or if it was someone else. It is rather complicated. I am not certain if I am explaining this very well." Amy paused and waited for the DA to say something.
"No, go on," said Ryan.
"When I helped Michael with the files, I got a flash when I picked up the box. I saw all the women dead, posed in their beds as if they were sleeping soundly. Only, I saw nine bodies, not eight. But the ninth body was not staged in her bed. She was in a park, and it looked like she fell asleep on a park bench."
The DA sat up straight.
"Are you telling me that you saw this body yesterday morning?"
"Yes, Sir. Yesterday morning, when I carried the box of files to the boardroom."
"And you saw her, lying on a park bench?"
"Yes, it looked like she just fell asleep on the park bench."
"What can you remember about the dream? About the man, that was chasing you?"
"Nothing much, I never saw his face and the only thing that was standing out in the dream was the red scarf he was wearing," said Amy. Amy stood up and started walking up and down in front of the DA's desk.
"Of course! The red scarf!" she exclaimed. "I didn't make the connection. It never occurred to me!" She turned to the DA. "The red scarf! It all makes sense now."
"I don't understand," said Ryan.
"The red fibres found on the girls, it must have come from the red scarf the man was wearing. In the dream, he was chasing me, but he was in fact not chasing me. He was chasing the ninth girl. She was already dead when I dreamed about her. I only saw the last few minutes before she died. I was running in my pajamas – or rather she was running in her pajamas. She must have gotten away from him somehow, and he was chasing after her because she must have seen his face. He couldn't let her live after she saw his face. He had to improvise. That's why she was on a park bench."
"Backup, Miss Bishop." Ryan held up his hand. "Are you telling me that you saw all of this in a dream or a flash as you called it. That you saw him chasing this girl down the street, in her pajamas, and that he was wearing this red scarf?"
"Yes, that's what I am telling you. In the dream, the girl wasn't dead yet, and I didn't know who the man was chasing her. The dream I had last night. The flash, I got from the box yesterday morning. That's when I saw her on the park bench. But I didn't make the connection until now. I only now realised that the man wearing the red scarf is the one who must be killing all those girls."
"John told me to keep an open mind. I am not sure how to do that." Ryan shook his head. "He asked me to trust him, and that I must trust you. Everything you will be telling me, will be the truth and that I must do everything in my power to protect you. Who else knows about what you can do? This...this gift you have?"
"My parents knew, Uncle John knows and my best friend, Angela Miller."
"Give me your hand," said Amy and held out her hand towards him. "You don't believe me; I can see the confusion on your face."
"Why?"
"So, I can make you believe."
Ryan hesitated for a moment, and then stretchED out his hand. Amy took his hand, turned off her mental defences and let his energy flow into her. They sat like that for a few seconds. Ryan was studying her face. When she allowed it to happen, it was less intrusive. When the energy forced its way into her subconscious, it was extremely unpleasant, like an electric shock or a lightning bolt that shot straight into her brain. Everything would go black and then she would see a bright white light and then the flashes started.
Amy released his hand; her face showed every emotion and the sadness nearly overwhelmed her. She struggled to swallow down the lump in her throat, and she took a few minutes to compose herself.
"I am so sorry about your wife. It was hard for you. You loved her so much."
"The death of my wife is public knowledge, Miss Bishop."
"Yes, it is." Amy sighed. "But what the public didn't know was how you spent hours next to her bed in the hospital. You read to her, her favourite books - The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre and Gone with the Wind. You watched her as she slipped away a little bit more each day. The doctors told you there was nothing they could do for her. The cancer was eating her up from the inside. You didn't want to let her go, even though she had a living will stating that she didn't want to be kept alive with machines. You buried her with the necklace you gave her for your twentieth anniversary, and no one knows that except for the funeral home. It was a closed casket. Your wife didn't want people to remember her the way she looked in her final days."
"How the hell do you know all of this?" Shapiro wheezed.
"I saw it now when I took your hand. I felt all of it – your pain, the sorrow, the anger – everything. I felt everything."
"This is unbelievable." He stood up; his face was pale. He rolled his hands into tight fists. His breathing became laboured.
"Do you believe me now?" She probed. Her voice was trembling.
"My head tells me that this is impossible. I want to find some other explanation for all of this. Something more believable. Because this sounds all very supernatural."
"I don't know what more I can say."
"Miss Bishop, no one else can know about this. I will deal with Michael." Shapiro sat down. "I guess that's what John meant by protecting you. If this were to become public knowledge, your whole life would be turned upside down. I've heard of the FBI making use of mediums and others claiming to be psychic. Whether they are truly authentic or not, is to be debated."
"Thank you!" She was relieved.
"I would like for you to sit in on the meeting with the FBI. I want to see if you can get anything else from them. Get any – how did you call it – flashes. You speak to me and only me. I am sure we can trust Michael, but I think it is better if we keep the circle of people who know about your ability to the minimum."
"Don't know if I will get anything. It doesn't work on command. I usually have to come in contact with something, or I will dream about it later. It's not an exact science. I've never tried before to force a vision. When I held your hand, I took a chance. I wasn't sure if I was going to get anything from you. I don't always get something when someone touches me or I come in contact with an object. I prefer not to have people touch me because it is random and I can't tell beforehand who I will get something from and who I won't."
"Well, either way, I think its worth a shot." Ryan still looked uncertain. He wasn't sure whether he was doing the right thing. "This is a big bloody mess! The FBI has the wrong man in custody! They must have realised that by now."
"I am confident they will find the same red fibres on this body as well. I also don't think this last victim was sexually assaulted like the other girls. He didn't have time for that. He killed her out of anger, not for pleasure like with the other girls. He is going to kill again soon. He won't wait two or three weeks as he has between the previous killings. He is frustrated. He needs to get his fix and soon."
"How did you come up with that?" asked Ryan baffled.
"Common sense?" Amy smiled. "I am a member of the Dartmouth Murder Mystery Club too."
Like that makes a difference.
Amy continued in a more serious tone. "I could sense it in my dream. Of course, at the time I had the dream, I didn't know what all the feelings and sensations meant. The killer was desperate. He killed the last girl because he had to, she saw his face. He didn't do it because he wanted to like the other girls. His usual routine was disturbed, and that pissed him off."
She slapped her hand over her mouth. "Whoops, sorry."
"It's quite all right, Amy. I get what you are saying. I am going to call you Amy. This 'Miss Bishop' nonsense is getting tiresome."
Amy smiled, and the tension left her neck and shoulders and her limbs felt lighter. She threw her shoulders back and relaxed into the chair.
Ryan picked up the phone and pressed a button. "Miss Anderson, prepare the boardroom. The FBI will be here shortly."
"What do you want me to do now?" asked Amy.
"I want you to go back to your desk. Pretend as if nothing happened. If anybody asks, we chatted about your studies at the University. Make something up; I don't care. Nobody can know what we discussed in this office."
"I am sure I can think of something." She smiled.
"I am confident that you are quite capable of doing just that, Amy Bishop."