Savage Art (A Chilling Suspense Novel) (12 page)

But it had to be the inspector's visit that was setting off her imagination: the reminder of the fact that Leonardo was still out there. She'd spent a year having panic attacks like this one. She should be used to them. Instead, her lungs still burned and the fresh air only partially subdued her racing heart.

As she rounded the corner, she saw Billy's car parked out front. She frowned, wondering why he was there so early. She wasn't expecting him until ten. Hurrying home, she let herself in and called his name.

"Oh, thank God." He grabbed her by the shoulders and nearly hugged her, his face flushed with worry.

She glanced over his shoulder for signs of a fire or burglary. "Thank God, what? Why are you here so early?"

"I called you."

She shook her head. "I wasn't here. Has something happened?"

He rolled his eyes and sighed, still gripping her shoulders. "No. Nothing's happened, but when I didn't get an answer, I was worried. Plus, there's no power. What's going on with the electricity?"

Detaching herself from his grasp, she dropped the paper nonchalantly on the chair. "Why did you call? You see me every day."

"I'll explain in a minute. Why isn't there power?"

She rubbed her shoulders. "I don't know. It's been off since I got up. I don't think anyone else has power, either. I'll call again."

He eyed the paper then turned back to her, his brow furrowed. "You were out this morning?"

She nodded.

"Where did you go?"

"For a walk," she replied curtly. Her husband had been like that when she was first out of the hospital, wanting to know every single thing she did. It made her marriage feel more like a cage than the hospital bed had. She thought of Michael now, sensing an emptiness that was different from the one she had felt since her attack. Michael's smile, his touch. She pushed them away, unprepared to confront all that was gone.

Billy stared. "A walk?"

She understood his surprise. She hadn't been out on her own since he'd known her.

"Why?"

She shrugged. "For air. Why did you call?"

Billy dropped his question about her walk, but she knew he would bring it up again later. "Kevin called me this morning."

Casey rolled her eyes. "The palm reader?"

"He has psychic powers, Casey."

"Is that why you're here? Because of Kevin?"

He nodded. "Listen, he—"

"Billy, please," she interjected. "I'm fine. I just went for a walk. Tell Kevin his signals are crossed or something. Now, since you're here, would you mind making a call about the electricity? I want to take a shower."

Billy propped his hands on his hips. "Are we going to discuss this?"

"The power outage?" She turned and started toward the bedroom, feeling the stiffness in her bad knee from the walk. Exercising was supposed to be good for her. Well, it didn't feel good.

"Not the electricity, Casey. Kevin says you're in danger."

Casey waved him off. "He's about a year late."

"It's not a joke. You should listen to him. I've invited him here. He has an appointment this morning, but he agreed to come by afterward. He knew you'd be skeptical."

"Wow, he really is psychic."

He glared at her. "It was generous of him to offer to come over. He lives all the way in the Haight."

"Yeah, great," Casey mumbled, though she was curious to meet this Kevin person. Billy was clearly smitten, and Casey was protective of Billy, especially when it came to Kevin and his "powers." It always seemed to her that Billy was naive about people's manipulations, too trusting.

"He's a wonderful person and very gifted. I want you to promise to listen to what he has to say."

Casey didn't answer. But she'd listen all right.

"Did you hear me?"

"I promise," she muttered back, turning toward where she thought the bedroom door was. It was so dark in the house. Damn power outage. There had to be a few candles around someplace. Clumsily, she opened and closed drawers. Before the attack, she had loved candles. The biggest treat in the world was George Winston, a roomful of candles, and a hot bubble bath.

Michael had proposed in the bathtub. They were barely twenty-five at the time, just kids. She had just graduated as a mechanical engineer from Cornell and was getting her master's in Criminology from the University of New Haven, and Michael was in law school at Yale. It hadn't even been fifteen years ago, but it felt like fifty.

As she gathered candles from around the house, she could hear Billy talking to the PG&E people.

"They're going to send someone," he said as he hung up.

She turned back, holding all the candles she could find. "How long will that take?"

"Who knows."

Billy followed her into the bathroom and helped her set up candles. With every candle lit, there was just enough light to see around the room. It reminded her of Michael.

Casey frowned, wishing she could push thoughts of him aside. But, today, he seemed to be everywhere. Michael and Casey had spent their honeymoon in San Francisco, and since then they'd both dreamt of a sabbatical here. Michael even went so far as to take the California bar six months after the Virginia one. After Casey's accident, Michael had convinced her that the San Francisco-Bay Area would be the perfect place to heal. Instead, the move had managed to put a two-thousand-mile distance between Michael and Amy, and Casey.

"It would help if there were some sunshine in this place. I thought this was supposed to be the sunshine state."

"Weather's been weird ever since that El Nino thing. That's probably what happened to the power, too." He looked around. "You don't have many candles."

"I haven't done a lot of entertaining."

Billy pursed his lips. "We'll have to get some more." He disappeared, returning with a giant flashlight. He propped it up and turned it on, shining the light to the ceiling. Spreading his arms victoriously, he said, "I'll leave you to your shower."

"You'll be here if the PG&E guy arrives?"

He nodded. "I'll stay."

"Thanks."

Casey stepped into the steaming water, letting the heat run over her sore muscles. It had been nearly a year since she'd walked even as short a distance as the mile to the bottom of the hill.

Since the attack, she'd had no exercise at all, save what it took to go from the bathroom to the bedroom to the kitchen and back, or to walk down the aisles in the grocery store. She was weak and easily winded.

But this morning's walk rekindled a feeling from beneath the dust and ashes of her past. She felt good—alive and invigorated. The fresh air, the wind, the thin mist had reminded her of what she used to love—the outdoors, the exhilaration of exercise, the excitement of her heart pumping blood to her lungs and muscles. She used to run marathons. Now she could barely walk a single mile.

Pulling her hands to her face, she opened and closed her fists, feeling the muscles fight against their own weakness. Her left was much better. He had been careful to damage the right one first. Had he intended to kill her? She thought so. But he had taken so much time breaking every bone in her right hand, it seemed a waste if his intent was death.

The pain had been his main motivation, she knew. But during the attack, even the pain had faded eventually. She had found a small compartment in her own mind, and she had hidden in there, closing everything else out. Even though the torture continued, she had felt it as though from a distance.

She was sure he had sensed her withdrawal and had started in on her knee, perhaps thinking he could reawaken her pain receptors with an untouched portion of her nerves. He had been unsuccessful there, too, at least in arousing a response, though he had managed to sever the cruciate tendons from her patella.

After six days in surgery and more than thirty hours under the knife, she had only a fraction of her original dexterity. Destruction was always so much easier than repair. Leonardo hadn't been her first experience with the ease of destruction. As a profiler, Casey's home life had been an easy target.

Despite the warnings to keep her personal life separate from her cases, Casey had been unable to forget the violence when she came home. It became as routine as coffee and toast each morning. Her sympathy and patience for the aches and pains of an aging parent and a clumsy child had waned. Didn't they know people were being tortured and chopped into pieces while they were complaining about arthritis and skinned knees?

She shook her head at her own thoughts. When had it started? Certainly by the time her mother was dying. And even before that, when Amy sliced open her finger. While Amy stood in the kitchen bleeding and screaming, Casey had found herself analyzing the pattern of the blood spatter as Amy swung her hand in terror. It hadn't been a dangerous wound. But from the look in her child's eyes when Casey made light of the bleeding, it had been fatal in other ways. Now months had passed since Casey had seen her only child.

Struggling with the awkwardness of her fingers, Casey shaved her legs and massaged shampoo into her hair. Then she stood beneath the hot water until her skin wrinkled and the room around her completely filled with steam. She closed her eyes and completed her daily hand exercises. Noting the slightest improvements, she worked harder than usual.

As she reached to turn the water off, a breeze swept across her, arousing goose bumps on her skin. The flames on the candles danced. "Billy?" she called, unable to see the door from inside the shower stall.

No one answered. Casey turned the water off and stood in silence, listening for signs that she was not alone. In her early years with the Bureau, she'd perfected the ability to stand completely still. Water ran over her eyes now as rain had at other times. Like then, she blinked but did not move. The candles formed patterns of light and dark across her walls, creating a fantasy of movement. She was imagining things. The only sound she heard was the drip, drip of the water off her skin.

Wrapping herself in her towel, she stepped out of the shower and surveyed the room. In her robe, she ran the towel through her wet hair and opened the door to the bedroom. "Billy?"

He appeared at the door.

"Any word from PG&E?"

"The guy was already here. He took a quick look around and then went to check something outside."

She dropped the towel on the bed where Billy quickly grabbed it and hung it up. Tightening the belt on her thick, terry-cloth robe, she put her feet in her slippers and moved into the living room. The morning's walk had changed her. For the first time in almost a year, she wanted to read the newspaper. But she wasn't sure how Billy would react. She didn't want someone gauging her every expression as she read. And she wasn't sure she was prepared to explain herself just yet.

"You want me to brush your hair?"

She looked up at Billy and nodded.

"Is your brush in the bathroom?"

"I think so."

Closing her eyes, Casey pulled a blanket up around her waist and sank back against the cushions. Several minutes passed and she sensed Billy's presence in the room before he spoke. She turned back and saw a strange expression on his face.

Billy held up a triangular patch of hot pink satin. "I found this in the bathroom."

Starting, Casey moved off the couch. Images flashed through her mind like snippets from a horror film—the prostitute's mutilated body, her cutoff breasts. The bloodstained panties, a triangular piece cut from the front. This was the missing piece, the piece Leonardo had taken for a macabre souvenir. She stood and stumbled on her bad knee, catching herself on the table and falling backward. Frantic, she surveyed the room. He was here.

She looked back at Billy, her legs quaking beneath her in terror. Billy still held up the fabric, his eyes widening as though he sensed what was happening. She stared at the pink satin, the words focusing as her vision blurred. "Gray needs your help, Mac. Come out and play," the black letters read against the pink fabric.

Casey tightened the muscles in her legs and grabbed the back of the couch. She thought momentarily of calling the Bureau, but decided against it. "Call the police." She paused and shook her head. "No, not the police. Call Inspector Gray."

"What is it?"

Pointing to the phone, she glared at him. "Don't ask questions. Do it."

Billy dropped the cloth and picked up the phone.

Casey crouched by the table and reached beneath it. Her fingers found the familiar small wooden box, and she dragged it into view. Opening the lid, she pulled out the subsonic RWS pistol and checked to make sure it was loaded. She hadn't held the gun since the attack.

Her hands were weak and shaky. The gun required only two pounds of pressure, she reminded herself. Surely she could manage that. She was out of practice and knew with her worthless hands, she would be a bad shot. Even without her injuries, she couldn't imagine hitting a target after so long without practice. She only hoped her aim would be at least close enough to scare him off.

If he was armed, she'd be dead before she could pull the trigger. "Think positive," she whispered to herself.