Sense of Evil (32 page)

“No bump on the head?” Hollis asked. “Concussion?”

“No,” he said. “Never, in fact.”

Mallory eyed him somewhat warily. “So what can you do?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot. Yet, anyway. The consensus seems to be I am—or will be—clairvoyant.”

“Like Isabel? Just knowing stuff?”

“More or less.”

“And that doesn’t scare the shit out of you?”

“Did you hear me say it didn’t?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

Mallory leaned back in her chair, tipped her head back, and addressed the ceiling—and whatever lay beyond. “A few weeks ago, I led a perfectly ordinary existence. No killers. No spooky psychic abilities. Nothing on my mind more weighty than which kind of takeout I wanted for my supper. Those were the days. I’m sorry now I didn’t appreciate them.” She sighed and looked at the others. “I must be paying off karma for a really, really bad decision in a former life.”

“
You
must be?” Rafe shook his head.

Isabel returned to the room before the discussion could continue, saying, “We have a slight change of plan. Hollis, we’re going to swing by Ginny’s on the way back to the inn and pick up her mother; both of them will be staying there tonight.”

“Hank’s out on the town?” Rafe guessed.

“Yeah. Seems he often spends Sunday afternoons and evenings drinking in an undisclosed location with others of . . . like temperament.”

Rafe sighed. “Yeah, we have a few basement bars in the county. Unlicensed, unregulated, and highly mobile. They tend to change location more often than they wash the glasses.”

“Well, apparently Mr. McBrayer has a semiregular habit of drinking all evening and passing out somewhere between the bar and home. Or at the bar, sometimes. In any case, he seldom makes it home on Sunday nights. But on the off chance that tonight would be one of those nights, I’ve persuaded Ginny to get her mother and come stay at the inn.”

“I’ll have all the patrols keep an eye out for him tonight,” Rafe said. “If they don’t spot him, we’ll catch up with him tomorrow.”

“Good, thanks.” Isabel frowned slightly.

“I’ve also arranged to have all single female officers escorted home and their places checked out before they lock up for the night,” Rafe said. “And each is under orders to wait for two male officers to meet them tomorrow morning, if they’re on duty, to be escorted back here.”

“You’re reaching through again,” Isabel said.

“I am?”

“I was just thinking about Mallory’s report that some of the female officers feel they’ve been watched or followed and wondering what we should do to help protect those most likely to be at risk if it’s our killer—the single ones in the right age range. Don’t tell me you read that on my face. I may not be subtle, but I’m not a damned billboard.”

Mallory looked at Hollis, who shrugged.

“They’ve got me, too, this time.”

Rafe hesitated, then shrugged. “You looked worried; I wondered why; I knew.”

Isabel frowned again. “Okay. Now I’m worried about something else.”

Peculiarly enough, Rafe found this answer coming as easily as the one before had, just knowledge in his mind. “Sorry. Since neither one of us knows who the killer is, I don’t have a solution for your worry.”

“It was,” Isabel said, “more fun being the clairvoyant one.”

“Yeah, I can see how it would have been.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

“Not all of it. Just . . . some of it.”

“I know gloating when I see it. I don’t need extra senses for that.”

“Good thing too. Since yours are all boxed up, I mean.”

Straightening her shoulders, Isabel said, “I’m leaving now. We’re going to borrow a patrol to go with us just in case Hank McBrayer shows up unexpectedly while Ginny and her mother are packing overnight bags. If that’s okay with you, of course.”

“Fine,” Rafe said, his tone as polite as hers.

“Great. We’ll see you guys bright and early in the morning. Hollis?”

Her partner rose obediently and followed her from the room. As she passed Rafe, Hollis murmured, “You’re a lot smarter than you look.”

“Christ, I hope so,” he responded, equally low.

When the two agents had gone, Mallory looked at Rafe. “Do you know what I’m worried about?”

He frowned at her. “No. Not a clue.”

“So it only works with Isabel?”

“Apparently. So far, anyway.”

“Um, then I’m worried about two things.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“We’ve now got an awful lot of people watching an awful lot of women while we try to anticipate this killer’s next move; what worries me is that he may have changed the rules.”

It was nearly midnight when Emily Brower’s bedside phone rang, and she was more than half asleep when she fumbled hastily to answer it before it could wake her parents.

“Yeah. Hello?” She listened for several minutes, then said sleepily, “Okay, but—now? Why now? Yeah, I understand that, but— Right. Right, okay. Give me ten minutes.”

She cradled the receiver, then pushed back her covers and sat up, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit.”

It didn’t take her more than a couple of minutes to exchange her sleep shirt for jeans and a T-shirt and slide her feet into a worn and comfortable pair of clogs.

Her parents slept like the dead, especially these days with the aid of various sedatives, so she didn’t hesitate to leave her bedroom and walk down the lamplit hall, down the stairs, and out the front door, snagging her car keys from the foyer table.

She wasn’t surprised not to see the customary patrol car parked across the street, since she’d heard it fire up its sirens and speed away sometime before her phone had rung. An accident somewhere, she assumed.

And, anyway, the reporters always left by dark or shortly after, so there was no good reason for the patrol car to stay out there all night. She’d meant to call the police station and ask the chief or one of the agents about it but kept forgetting.

Shrugging off the question, Emily got in her car and backed it out of the driveway. She knew the way, of course, and hadn’t thought much about it until she was almost there. But by the time she parked her car off the side of the road and got out, she was beginning to feel more than a little uneasy.

She got a flashlight from the glove box and carried it to light her way, feeling a surge of relief when she reached the clearing and the light turned the shadowy outline of a person into someone she knew.

“I don’t understand what I can show you out here,” she said immediately. “And this is creepy, in case you hadn’t realized it. We might not have been close, but still—this is where my sister was murdered.”

“I know, Emily. She was quite a woman. Very intelligent. It’s a pity you aren’t.”

“What?” Emily moved her hand, the flashlight’s beam cutting through the hot, humid night. And that was when she saw the knife.

She tried to scream, but only her killer heard the bloody gurgle that emerged as she was nearly decapitated.

Monday, June 16, 7:00 AM

When the phone rang, he rolled over in bed and had the cordless receiver in his hand even before his eyes opened.

And even before his eyes opened, he smelled it.

“Yeah?”

“We’ve got another one, Chief.” It was Mallory, her voice bleak.

Still holding the receiver to his ear with his left hand, he held out the right one and stared at it in the early-morning light streaming into his bedroom.

His hand was stained with blood.

“Where?” he asked.

“Isabel was right when she said he’d probably start taunting us. He used the same place. As far as I can tell from the report that came in, the victim is exactly where Jamie Brower died. I’m on my way there now.”

“Who is it? Who’s the victim?”

“It’s Emily. Jamie’s sister.”

“Goddammit, where was the patrol watching her?” Rafe demanded, sitting up in bed.

“They were pulled away from her house last night at about eleven-thirty and were only away a couple of hours. A traffic accident with fatalities.”

Rafe drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Which takes precedence over watchdog duty.”

“Yeah. As per standing orders.”

He shoved the covers away and got out of bed, heading for the bathroom. “Have you called Isabel?”

“Not yet. I only took the report instead of you because I went into the office a bit earlier than usual. I couldn’t sleep past six, so I just came in.”

“I thought I ordered you to accept an escort.”

“You suggested, just like you suggested it for Stacy, the only other female detective in the department. We both passed. She’s a black belt, and I can take care of myself. And neither one of us is a blonde. You want me to call Isabel?”

“Yeah. Have them meet us at the scene. I’m on my way.”

“Right.”

He turned off the phone and literally dropped it on the bathroom rug, immediately turning on the water and washing his hands in the hottest water he could stand.

Again.

Jesus Christ, again.

The gnawing fear that had been with him for so long was less acute this time, and he understood why. Because this morning he knew something he hadn’t known all the other mornings.

This morning, he knew there was something new and unfamiliar going on in his brain, and it wasn’t homicidal madness.

It was psychic ability.

You could be calling me rude names in your head or worrying about some deep dark secret you don’t want anybody to know, and I wouldn’t necessarily read that either.

Deep, dark secret. That’s what it had been all this time, a secret fear buried so deep he had almost been able to forget about it during the bright, sane light of day. Almost.

He was no killer. He knew that. He
had
known that all along, even with the fear that something inside him might have been capable of such acts.

But if he was no killer, then why had he been waking up with blood on his hands for nearly three weeks?

Yesterday morning, he hadn’t had a clue. This morning . . .

Rafe thought he was beginning to understand what was going on—though he only had a hunch as to why. And he thought he understood why his shield was so strong that it not only enclosed Isabel but also blocked her.

Gripping the sides of the sink, he stared into the mirror at his unshaven face and haunted eyes. “I have to be able to control this,” he murmured.

Because he couldn’t keep blocking Isabel, not even to keep her from knowing his secret fears, his self-doubts and uncertainties, all the demons a man carried inside him if he lived long enough and saw too much. In shutting that away from her, he had both shut her out and imprisoned her.

Imprisoned her abilities, the extra senses that could be all that was standing between her and a killer.

Isabel stood just inside the area blocked off with yellow crime-scene tape, her hands on her hips, grimly studying the clearing.

“Jesus, I don’t know where to start,” T.J. said as she and Dustin arrived with their crime-scene kits.

“Follow procedure,” Isabel advised.

Eyeing the ME, who was examining the body, Dustin said, “Even Doc looks queasy. And he was a state medical examiner, until he got tired of the parade of bodies.”

T.J. murmured, “Bet he’s sorry he chose Hastings to finish out his professional life.”

“I’m having second thoughts myself,” Dustin told her.

“I know what you mean. Come on, let’s get to work.”

Hollis joined Isabel as the two technicians moved away, saying, “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. I lost my breakfast the first three times I was called to an early murder scene.”

“I’ll remember that. Next time. I thought I could handle something like this, especially after a couple of weeks of classes at the body farm. But, Christ . . .”

“Yeah, he made a real mess this time.” Isabel half turned as Mallory joined them. “I’m betting her car’s clean, though.”

Mallory nodded. “Looks like it. It’ll be towed back to the station so T.J. and Dustin can go over it thoroughly, but the only difference I noticed is that she didn’t leave her purse in it.”

Isabel said, “If the doctor confirms that she died around midnight, then she’d have had to leave her house just after the patrol was called away for that accident. Maybe she left in a hurry and didn’t even bring a purse.”

“Had to be to meet someone,” Hollis said. “You’re a twenty-something blonde in a town where twenty-something blondes are being killed, including your own sister, and you go out alone near midnight? She was either very stupid or really trusted whoever she went to meet. Or both, if you ask me.”

Isabel looked at Mallory. “When we were in her home, I didn’t get any sense of a steady boyfriend.”

“Far as I know, she didn’t have one. Dated, but never anybody serious.”

Hollis shook her head. “Who could she possibly trust enough to meet, around midnight, at the scene of her sister’s murder?”

“And why?” Isabel mused, frowning. “The only reason I can think of is that someone must have told her she could help by coming out here so late. That there was something out here she needed to see, and after dark. If that’s true, I can’t see any possible answer as to who called her out here except—”

“—a cop,” Mallory said. “Has to be.”

Hollis looked around at the police technicians and the dozen or so uniformed officers searching the area surrounding the crime scene and in various positions between this clearing and the rest stop at the highway, which had also been roped off, and sighed. “Great. That’s just great.”

“We still can’t rule out some other authority figure,” Isabel reminded them. “For that matter, we can’t rule out a member of the media. Who’s to say some reporter didn’t offer Emily a nice big chunk of cash to meet out here where her sister was killed? And being here well after dark was the only real guarantee a passing patrol wouldn’t see them, since we’ve had all these areas under watch. Her car was well off the road and behind that thicket, so either the killer moved it there afterward or told Emily to park there to avoid being seen by a passing patrol.”

“But a reporter? For a story?” Hollis said. “That’s sick. Would Emily have gone for something like that?”