“Jimmy, she shouldn’t be involved.”

“Kyle, I am involved.” She looked at Jimmy. “I can see the woman right before she died. She got into a car with someone.”

“Whose car?” Jimmy asked.

“Her own—I think. She was driving. Someone was in the passenger seat. She was smiling and laughing, ready for a longish drive. She was excited, as if she was getting ready to go away for the weekend with someone she was comfortable with, with…”

“A friend?” Kyle suggested.

She shook her head, looking at him, wondering why she felt such a flush creeping to her cheeks.

“A lover. A new lover. She was excited, breathless, happy. Maybe she thought she was heading out for her first real time with this man.”

“Can you see the man?” Jimmy asked.

“Is it definitely a man?” Kyle inquired.

Madison shook her head, then stared at Kyle for a moment. “I thought you knew it was a man?”

“My mind is always open.”

Like hell, she thought. She turned back to Jimmy. “I’m really sorry, Jimmy. I assume it was a man. But I really can’t say. All I saw was her….” She paused, then drew a deep, shaky breath. “She was very pretty, so vivacious, full of life. She smiled, she got in with someone, and she started to drive. To the Keys. I’m certain.”

“Why are you so certain?”

“I saw a few cormorant nests up high in the telephone poles. And then I saw the sign for Lake Surprise.”

Kyle and Jimmy glanced at one another.

“Where from there?”

Madison shook her head.

“Okay, where did she wind up?” Jimmy asked.

“In the sea,” Kyle said wearily. “I’m willing to bet that head goes with the severed arm.”

Jimmy shot Kyle a quick glance, frowning. “Monroe hasn’t gotten us the arm yet. But that isn’t what I meant. Where did they go when they got to the Keys?”

“I don’t know, Jimmy.”

“Do you feel that you know for sure that the man in the car with her was the one who murdered her?” Kyle asked, his green eyes sharp on her.

“No, I…I don’t know,” Madison said, feeling somewhat confused herself.

“Madison, come on, can you give me anything else?”

Once again she paused and looked at Kyle. “You think that the arm and the head are from the same person? Why do you think that?”

“No real reason. A hunch.” He shrugged. “Okay, so it’s Miami. We still don’t usually come up with too many body parts that aren’t somehow related.”

He was watching her intently as she spoke. Thinking what a witch she was?

She looked back to Jimmy. “When I was in the water, off Dad’s boat, diving down toward the arm…I had a flash of something. Something very similar. A girl. A very pretty young redhead. Lots of energy—and faith in her fellow man and woman. Open, trusting. She knew the person she was with. She was excited. She expected to be having a lot of fun. I saw a room, a typical hotel room. Not grungy, not luxurious. Bed, Bible, black phone, TV remote changer. Same pretty red hair, same smile, same emotion. It could easily be the same girl. I saw her happy as a lark, and then…then the flash of a knife. She was killed in that room.”

“Does it coincide with your other dream?” Jimmy asked Madison.

“What dream?” Kyle demanded harshly.

“Friday—Madison had one of her strange dreams and called me. I didn’t involve her in this because I like to make her miserable, Kyle,” Jimmy said.

Kyle looked at Madison. “Anything else you haven’t told me?”

“I had a dream,” she murmured. “You don’t like to hear about my dreams.”

“Well, I’d damned well better hear about them now!” he snapped.

Jimmy cleared his throat. “You are helpful, Madison. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

“Has there been an identification on the head yet?” Madison asked.

“Not yet. It’s only Monday morning. Preliminary investigations suggest that she was killed sometime Friday—” He broke off, flushing as both Madison and Kyle realized that she had probably been killed at a time corresponding to Madison’s dream. “But,” Jimmy continued uncomfortably, “the head was thrown in the water. Two kids fishing in a canal found it. We’re waiting on a match-up with a missing-persons report.”

Madison nodded.

“We’re also waiting to get the arm in. The Monroe authorities said they’d be glad to turn it over—other counties like it best when we keep the grisly murders here in Dade,” he said with a wince.

“But if she was killed in a hotel room in the Keys—”

“The head came from Dade.”

“The woman had lots of other body parts,” Kyle murmured.

“We’ll have to see where they turn up,” Jimmy responded. He shook his head, looking at Kyle. “Jeez, we’ve got to catch this guy.

“Is Jassy here? Has she been assigned to this case?” Madison asked.

“Jassy’s in the lab right now. I’m sure the head man will give her a crack at it. I mean, I’m sure the chief medical examiner will let her have a look and…Oh, jeez…”

A lab tech stuck his head into the lounge area. “Lieutenant Gates? Dr. Sibley has a report for you on the drifter who came in last week. Says he knows you’re here on other business, but if you’ve got a few minutes…?”

“Sure, sure,” Jimmy said absently. “Madison, can you give me a few minutes? I hate to keep you at the morgue—”

“I’ll get her home,” Kyle said.

“Hey, guys, I can just grab a cab,” Madison said. “Kyle, you might want to hear whatever Dr. Sibley—”

“No, that’s all right, he doesn’t need to be here for this,” Jimmy said. “This one’s totally unrelated. This guy had no ID, he’s almost as old as Moses, and I think he got bumped over the head for the ten bucks he had just panhandled. Kyle can get you home, no problem.”

“Thanks,” Madison murmured.

Kyle escorted her out.

It was a spectacular day. Brilliant sunlight, incredibly blue sky.

“How about some lunch?” Kyle asked, once he had her seated in his rental car and was jockeying out of his parking space.

“I thought you were mad at me?”

“I am. Lunch?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Lunch?”

He shrugged, a half smile curving his lip. “All right. How about a drink?”

“Can you drink on duty?”

“I could probably manage a beer.”

“Sure you want to take a chance giving a drink to someone as susceptible to the intoxicating properties of alcohol as me?”

His smile deepened. “Yeah, I’m willing.”

She looked forward, at the traffic ahead. “Sorry, it’s too early for me.”

“Be daring.”

“I have to pick up my daughter.”

“I’ll pick her up.”

“It’s your first day on assignment.”

“What time does Carrie Anne get out of kindergarten?”

“Two o’clock.”

“I’ll be back on the job by two-thirty. I started this morning at six, and I’m my own boss on this one.”

Madison still hesitated. He thought of her as an intrusive witch—when he wasn’t trying to pretend that she was a complete quack. Being near him was pure torture.

When she was near him…

She simply wanted him. Sex. Only sex, of course.

But there was a possibility that he was carrying on an affair with her sister.

She shrugged. They would talk, have a drink. She could surely manage to be courteous for that long. “One drink.”

“And by then, you may be hungry.”

She thought about the head.

“I may never be hungry.”

He drove out the causeway to Key Biscayne, stopping at a place that sat directly on the water. They had their drinks, two microbrews, outside at a wrought-iron table and watched as pelicans swooped hopefully around the pleasure craft out on the bay.

Madison was looking out over the water when she felt the intensity of his eyes.

Behind dark glasses.

He was a “suit” today, wearing a stereotypical pinstripe shirt, rep tie and a deep navy suit cut handsomely to the proportions of his body. It was very sunny; she was wearing shades, too. Still, it felt as if he were staring right through her.