Sense Of Evil

7

Saturday, June 14, 6:30 AM

HE WOKE UP with blood on his hands.

Wet blood.

Fresh blood.

The pungent, coppery smell of it was thick and heavy in the room, and he gagged as he stumbled from the bed and into the bathroom. He didn’t bother to turn on the light even though the room was dim, just turned on the taps and fumbled for soap, washing his hands in the hottest water he could stand, soaping again and again.

The water, first bright red and then rusty-colored, swirled around the drain and slowly, so slowly, grew fainter and fainter. Like the smell.

When the water ran clear and he couldn’t smell the blood anymore, he turned off the taps. For a long moment he stood there, hands braced on the sink, staring at his shadowy reflection in the mirror. Finally, he went back into the bedroom and sat on the side of the tumbled bed, staring at nothing.

Again.

It had happened again.

He could still smell the blood, though there was no sign of any on the sheets. There hadn’t been before either. There never was, on anything he touched.

Just his hands.

He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at his hands. Strong hands. Clean hands. Now.

No blood. Now.

“What have I done?” he whispered. “Oh, Christ, what have I done?”

Travis Keech yawned widely as he sat up in bed and vigorously rubbed his head with both hands. “Jesus. It’s after eight.”

“It’s dawn,” Alyssa Taylor said sleepily. “And it’s Saturday, so who cares?”

“I care. I have to. I’m supposed to work. The chief said we could come in later if we’ve worked late-which I did last night-but we’re all working overtime.”

“I suppose it’s taking all of you to investigate these murders.”

“You can say that again.”

“And I suppose you’ve got leads to follow.”

Her voice still sounded sleepy, but Travis looked down at her with a tolerant smile. “You know, just because you’re convinced I’m a yokel with straw in my hair doesn’t mean you’re right.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sounding less sleepy now, she stretched like an elegant cat. The position showed him a nice expanse of bare skin already wearing a light summer tan, which really set off her gleaming dark hair and pale eyes.

“Oh, come on, Ally. I don’t normally end up in bed with gorgeous women just hours after meeting them in our one little excuse for a bar. Unless, of course, they happen to be TV reporters from the big city and I happen to be involved in a serial-killer investigation.”

“Don’t underrate yourself,” Alyssa told him. “And don’t measure my morals with your yardstick, if you don’t mind. I didn’t set out to sleep with a cop, and I don’t go after stories on my back.”

“A lot of reporters do, I hear.”

“I’m not one of them.”

The sheet had slipped to show him most of one generous breast, and Travis decided he didn’t want to offend her. “I never said you were,” he protested, lying back down beside her and reaching underneath the covers. “But you could have had any guy in that bar and you came home with me. What else was I supposed to think?”

“That I thought you were sexy?” She didn’t exactly pout, but her body was just the slightest bit stiff when he pulled her into his arms. “That I was bored and didn’t want to go back to my hotel room alone? That I like guys in uniform?”

“Which was it?” he asked, nuzzling her neck.

“All of the above.” She sighed and relaxed in his embrace, her arms slipping around his middle and her hands sliding downward. “And you’ve got a cute ass too.”

He made an urgent sound, his body responding instantly to her caress, and she thought with faint, fleeting amusement that there was a lot to be said for catching a guy in his early twenties and at the peak of his sexuality.

A lot to be said.

She murmured, “I thought you had to go in to work.”

“Later,” Travis said.

It was nearly half an hour later when he finally, reluctantly pulled himself out of the bed. “I’ve gotta get to work. Want to join me in the shower?”

Alyssa stretched languidly. “Are you kidding? That tiny stall isn’t even big enough for you. I’ll wait my turn, thanks. I can shower while you’re shaving.”

“Okay, suit yourself.”

Alyssa waited until she heard the water running, then slipped from the bed and gathered her scattered clothing from the floor. She had to follow a trail halfway to the front door to get it all, which amused her yet again. Her purse had been left carelessly on a chair near the front door, something that made her shake her head.

Not smart. Not at all smart.

Could be she was slipping.

“Nah,” she murmured in response to that idea.

Returning to the bedroom, she laid the clothing out on the bed and then got her cell phone from the purse. She turned it on and punched in a number, keeping her gaze fixed on the half-open bathroom door.

“Hey, it’s Ally.” She kept her voice low. “I’ve found that source we talked about. A pretty good one. He’s already told me more than he realizes. He must have had half a dozen strong drinks last night, and no hangover this morning. Oh, to be twenty-four again.”

She listened for a moment, then said, “Yes, my head hurts. Well, I had to at least seem to keep up with him, didn’t I? Never mind. He’s going in to work, and the plan is to get him to meet me for lunch.”

A question made her laugh under her breath. “No, I don’t think there’ll be any problem persuading him to meet me. And I have a… hunch… that he’ll be perfectly happy to have me sticking close for the duration. So I should have a fair idea of what’s going on inside the department. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll check in at least twice a day, as arranged.”

10:05 AM

The third property they checked turned out to be an old commercial building off what had once been a busy two-lane highway until the bypass opened years before. Several companies had lost most of their customers, and more than one derelict office building or small store now stood abandoned and slowly falling into ruin. But a few, like the one Jamie Brower had owned, had been converted to have some kind of a useful life not dependent on passing customers.

“She was ostensibly using it for storage,” Rafe noted as they stood just inside the front door. The early sunlight slanted through the dusty front windows so that the interior of the front part of the building was easily visible to them.

“Just barely ostensibly,” Isabel agreed, looking around at a half dozen or so large pieces of old furniture in obvious need of restoration or repair, and a few crates labeled STORAGE. “Only enough stuff so that anybody looking in the front window would assume that was what she was using it for.”

“The real story is in the back,” Mallory called from a doorway about thirty feet from the front door and roughly halfway down the length of the building, where a wall divided the space. “The tools the locksmith gave us worked on this door and the rear entrance-which is conveniently hidden from the road. Great place to park your car if you don’t want anybody to know you’re here. And there are signs quite a few cars have been parked back there in recent months.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Hollis wondered aloud.

“It’s about time we got lucky,” Rafe said as he, Isabel, and Hollis joined Mallory, all of them stepping into the half of the building that was quite obviously the reason Jamie had bought this place.

It was the room in the photographs.

“The submissive did know she was being photographed,” Rafe said, gesturing toward the camera set up on a tripod several yards from the bed platform. “There’s no place in here to hide that thing. The distance and angle look just right.”

Hollis, wearing latex gloves, as they all were, went to examine the camera. “Yeah, it’s set up to work on a timer. No cartridge or disk,” she said. “Whatever last photos she took weren’t left in the camera.”

“No, I’d expect her to be more cautious than that,” Isabel said, looking slowly around. “The really interesting thing is the question of whether the camera was part of the ritual. If she really does have a box full of photos, as Emily said, then it’s likely most if not all of her partners were photographed.”

Rafe kept watching her instead of studying the room, bothered by something he couldn’t quite put a finger on. He thought Isabel was somehow uncomfortable or uneasy here. Her posture seemed a bit stiffer than usual, and something about the very calm of her features was almost masklike.

So when he spoke, it was absently. “It’s all about control. And submission. Being photographed probably was part of the ritual, one of Jamie’s rules. Her partners had to submit completely to her and her rules, even to the extent of having their secret needs and desires, their humiliation, recorded on film-and left in the hands of the dominant.”

Mallory had located a large built-in closet or storage area on the right-hand wall and was working on the padlocked double doors with the ring of all-purpose tools provided by the locksmith. “Just for the record,” she said, “I don’t ever want to want anything that much.”

“I’ll second that,” Rafe said. He was still watching Isabel, and directed his question to her. “Picking up anything?”

“Lots,” she answered. “I don’t know yet how much of it will be important, though. Or even relevant.”

Her voice had been completely serene, but Rafe found himself frowning nevertheless. He glanced at Hollis and saw that she was also watching her partner intently, a crease between her brows indicating worry or unease.

Isabel walked over to the bed platform and bent slightly to place her gloved hand on the bare, stained mattress. Her face remained expressionless, though her mouth seemed to firm.

“I guess the latex doesn’t interfere with psychic contact,” Rafe said.

It was Hollis who replied, “No, it doesn’t seem to. Although some of the SCU psychics say it has a slight muffling quality. Like everything else, it varies from person to person.”

“Got it,” Mallory announced suddenly. She unfastened the padlock and opened the two doors. “Christ.”

“The toy box,” Hollis murmured.

Dana Earley would have been the first to admit that being in Hastings at this particular time was making her extremely nervous. It had always been easy in the past for her to blend in, become a part of the background until she was ready to step in front of the camera and report the news.

This time, she was afraid of becoming the news.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” one male citizen of the small town scolded her in front of the coffee shop when she attempted to interview him about his feelings.

“I’m not alone,” Dana said, gesturing toward Joey.

The man gave her cameraman the same scornful look Alan had offered the previous day. “Yeah, well, he might drop his camera on the killer’s toe before he cuts and runs, but I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”

“I resent that,” Joey said sullenly.

They both ignored him.

“You should at least protect yourself,” the man told Dana earnestly. “The police department is offering pepper spray to any woman who asks. I got some for my wife. You need to go get some for yourself.”

“What about you?” Dana asked, making a mental note about the pepper spray. “Aren’t you worried the killer might start going after men?”

He glanced from side to side warily, then opened his lightweight windbreaker to show her a pistol tucked into his belt. “I hope the bastard does come after me. I’m ready. A lot of us are ready.”

“Looks like,” she offered brightly, trying not to show him how much it frightened her to see guns in the hands of people other than the police. Especially angry and very nervous people. “Thank you very much, sir.”

“No problem. And you watch it, you hear? Stay off the streets as much as you can.”

“Yes. I will.” She watched him walk away, then stood gazing around at Main Street, where there was less than normal activity for a lovely Saturday morning in June. And where there were far too many men just like the one she’d interviewed, walking around with windbreakers half-zipped and wary, watchful expressions on their faces.

“Can we go now?” Joey whined.

“I wish we could,” Dana said, half-consciously reaching up to touch her hair. “I really wish we could. Hey-have you seen Cheryl?”

“Nah. Saw their van parked near the town hall this morning. Why?”

Dana bit her lip, hesitated, then said, “Let’s head back toward the town hall.”

“Ah, jeez.”

“You’re getting paid,” she reminded her cameraman.

“Not enough,” he muttered, following behind her.

“It could be a lot worse,” she told him irritably. “You could be a blond woman. The way I hear it, the surgeon wouldn’t have to cut off much to make that happen.”

“Bitch,” he grunted under his breath.

“I heard that.”

He gave her the finger silently, reasonably sure she didn’t have eyes in the back of her head.

“And I saw that,” she said.

“Shit.”

Inside the large storage closet of Jamie’s playroom was, neatly arranged on shelves and hanging on hooks, all the paraphernalia necessary for sadomasochistic games. Whips, masks, padded and unpadded handcuffs, an extremely varied selection of dildos and vibrators, ropes, chains, and a number of unidentifiable objects, some quite elaborate.

Also a tasteful selection of leather bustiers, garters, and stockings, including, seemingly, the outfits Jamie and her partner had worn in the photographs.

“I’m no expert,” Hollis said, “but I’m thinking at least a few of those gadgets are meant to be used on a man.”

Rafe could see the ones she meant. “I’d say so. And given that, it’s beginning to look more and more like Jamie was… an equal-opportunity mistress. She may not have enjoyed sex with men, but it looks like she enjoyed dominating them.”

“Men and women,” Hollis said. “She really did want to be boss, didn’t she? I wonder what would happen if she ran into somebody who wanted to be boss even more than she did?”

“A trigger, maybe,” Isabel said in an absentminded tone.

“His trigger?” Rafe asked. “He wanted to be the one on top-so to speak-and it wasn’t a position Jamie was willing to allow him to assume?”

“Maybe.” Isabel’s tone was still abstracted. “Especially if we find out the other two primary victims from the earlier murders were unusually strong women. Dominant women. That could be his trigger, his hot button. Finding himself interested in women literally too strong for him.”

“Some men just prefer their women to be sweet and submissive, I guess,” Hollis said dryly.

“Jerks,” Mallory said, then lifted a brow at Rafe. “Forensics?”

“Yeah, get them out here,” Rafe said. “But only T.J. and Dustin with their kits, not the van. I’d still like to keep this quiet as long as we’ve got a hope in hell of it.”

“Right.” She pulled out her cell phone.

Rafe walked over to Isabel, still uneasily sensing that something wasn’t right with her. She was no longer touching the mattress but was gazing off into space with that distant expression he was beginning to recognize in her eyes. But this time she seemed to be looking so far away that it sent a chill through him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“There is,” she said slowly, “a lot of pain in this room.”

“You don’t feel it, do you?”

“No. No, I’m not an empath. I feel during the visions, but not this. I just… I just know there’s a lot of pain in this room. Physical. Emotional. Psychological.” She reached both hands up and rubbed the nape of her neck. Her hair was in its accustomed neat, high ponytail, and Rafe could see how hard she was kneading the tense muscles of her neck. But before he could ask about that, she went on in the same level tone.

“Jamie was strong. Very strong. But she’d spent her life being the good girl. Pretending to be what everybody wanted her to be. Hiding inside that shell. But this part of her life… this is where she could be in control. Really in control. Where she could be herself and be respected-demand respect-for who she really was.”

Hollis stepped closer, her frown deepening. “Isabel-”

“This is where she called the shots. Her partners, male or female, were never her lovers, never close to her emotionally; they were… validation. That she was strong and certain. That she was the one in control. They did anything she told them to do. Everything. No matter what, no matter how wild she got. No matter how much she hurt them.”

When Rafe realized that Isabel’s nails were literally digging into her own skin despite the gloves she wore, he stripped his own gloves off and reached up and grasped her wrists, ignoring the again visible and audible flash that was a hell of a lot stronger than any static shock he’d ever felt. He pulled her hands away from her neck.

“Wow,” Hollis murmured. “Talk about sparks.”

Rafe ignored her. “Isabel.”

She blinked, those vivid green eyes still distant but seemingly focusing on him. “What?”

“You’ve got to stop. Now.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to. This is hurting you.” He wasn’t entirely sure she knew who he was. She was looking at him, he thought, as though he were the only Technicolor object in a black-and-white universe. Puzzled and wondering.

“It always hurts,” she said matter-of-factly. “What difference does that make?”

“Isabel-”

“Bad things happened here, you know. It’s been going on for years. Years. But Jamie was always in control. She had to be. Always. At least until…”

She frowned. “They sold insurance here, and before that-no, after that-somebody sold bootleg whiskey out of here for nearly a year. Moonshine, just like you said. How strange. And a preacher spent some time here, a few weeks. Except that he wasn’t a preacher anymore, because he’d been caught in bed with a deacon’s wife and it hadn’t been the first time. He thought God had abandoned him, but it was the other way around…”

Hollis said, “Take her outside. There are too many secrets in this place. Too much pain. Too much information for her to sort through all at once.”

Rafe didn’t wait for a more complete explanation; Isabel was pale, he could feel her shaking, and it didn’t require anything more than common sense to know she was very close to some kind of collapse. So he took her outside.

Isabel didn’t really protest, although once they were outside she did mutter under her breath, “Shit. I hate it when this happens.”

He put her in the passenger seat of his Jeep and got the engine and air conditioner running, then dug into his first-aid kit and pulled out a gauze pad.

“What’s that for?”

He tore open the wrapping and reached over to place the pad against the nape of her neck, again ignoring a strong shock.

“Ouch,” she said.

“You drew blood,” Rafe told her. “Even with the gloves on. Jesus, does this happen often?”

Isabel looked down at her hands with a faint frown, then stripped off the gloves. “Oh… from time to time. Bishop keeps telling me I should wear my nails short. Maybe I’d better start listening to him. Got any aspirin in that box?”

“Ibuprofen.”

“Even better. If I could have a couple? Or… a dozen?” She reached up to hold the pad in place herself while he got the pain reliever and then a bottle of water from the cooler he kept in the Jeep.

By the time she had swallowed four capsules, the faint scratches had stopped bleeding, and Rafe used an antiseptic pad to wipe the nape of her neck while she sat with her head bowed and eyes closed.

Every time he touched her, the shock was definite, but she didn’t react or comment and Rafe thought he was getting used to it. In fact, it seemed to clear his head.

Which was more than a little unnerving.

Her pale gold hair felt even silkier than it looked and seemed to want to cling to the back of his hand as he worked on her neck. Static, of course. Had to be. He concentrated on treating the scratches she had inflicted on herself, though he admitted silently that it took him longer than was strictly necessary.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded slightly, still without opening her eyes. “When the painkillers kick in. And as long as I don’t go back in there right away.”

“Isabel-”

“Look, I know you have questions. Can we save them for a while, please?” She raised her head and opened her eyes finally, looking at him. The distant expression was gone, but she looked incredibly tired. “For now, your forensics team should be here any minute; why don’t you go back inside and get everybody doing their thing? Hollis may be able to help. I felt something weird in there.”

Rafe thought there had been a lot of weird in there, but all he said was, “Meaning?”

“That increasing nervousness and fear Emily had been seeing in her sister. I don’t think it was just because Jamie was afraid her secret life would be exposed. I think she had another secret, a far worse one. And a much greater fear. I think something went wrong in there. I think she went too far.”

“What are you saying?” He asked the question, even though he knew what she would answer.

“Have your team look for signs of blood. A lot of blood.”

“No sign of that box,” Mallory said after both women had thoroughly searched the back room. “No sign of anything she wanted to keep hidden-outside that closet, I mean.”

Hollis nodded. “There’s an attic, but it’s wide open and empty.”

“Um… on another subject, I gather from your reaction that it isn’t normal for somebody touching Isabel to literally strike sparks?”

“I’ve never seen it happen before, though I’ve only known her a few months.” Hollis frowned. “I was given a pretty thorough knowledge of the other SCU members, and that definitely wasn’t mentioned. Could be something new for her, caused by this particular situation.”

“Or it could be Rafe.”

“Or it could be Rafe, yeah. Don’t quote me on this, because I’m certainly no expert, but I guess if the right two energy signatures came in contact, there could be something like those sparks.”

“Don’t tell me this is what all the poets wrote about,” Mallory begged.

Hollis smiled in response, but said, “Who knows? Maybe it’s as much an emotional connection as it is literal energy fields. In any case, those two are reacting to each other, and on a very basic level.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“I have no idea. But it might explain why Isabel seems to be having a rougher than usual time with this investigation.”

“What might explain it?” Rafe asked, entering in time to hear the statement.

“You.”

“Come again?”

“Hey, I’m just guessing,” Hollis told him. “And I’m a long way from being an expert on any of this stuff, as I just told Mallory. But I was taught at Quantico that sometimes electromagnetic fields-those of individual people or places-come together in a particular way that tends to change or enhance a psychic’s natural abilities. Or at least alter the limitations of those abilities. I have never seen Isabel so wide open, and as far as I can tell it’s all been hits. No misses. That is very unusual. I’m thinking that sparking thing between you two has something to do with it.”

“We can’t be sure everything she’s picked up is factual, not yet,” Rafe said without commenting on the sparking thing.

“I wouldn’t bet against her.”

“Well, I sure as hell hope she’s wrong about one thing. She thinks one of Jamie’s little games got out of hand. We’re now looking for evidence of a death here.”

“Shit.” Mallory stared at him. “You mean separate from our serial killer?”

“God knows. Hollis, are you getting anything?”

“I haven’t tried.” From the slightly stubborn set of her jaw, it didn’t appear she planned to anytime soon.

After seeing what had happened to Isabel, Rafe wasn’t about to push either psychic, but he was still curious. “Isabel never seems to try. I mean, it doesn’t seem to be an effort for her.”

“It isn’t. For her.”

He waited, brows raised.

After a moment, Hollis said, “You know the bit about me not being able to hear what these victims have tried to tell me? So far, I mean.”

Somewhat warily, Rafe said, “Yeah, I think I get that.”

“There’s a barrier, something virtually every psychic has. We call them shields. Think of it as a bubble of energy our minds create to protect us. Most psychics have to consciously make an opening in that shield in order to use our abilities. We have to reach out, open up, deliberately make ourselves vulnerable.”

“You didn’t seem to be doing it deliberately,” Rafe noted.

“I’m new at this. My control isn’t as strong as it should be yet, so sometimes I reach out-or at least open a door or window in my shields-without meaning or wanting to. Usually when I’m tired or distracted, something like that. Eventually, they tell me, I should be able to shut this stuff out unless and until I very specifically want it. Most psychics can do that. Isabel is the very rare one who can’t.”

“You mean-”

“I mean she lacks the ability to shield her own mind. She’s always wide open, always picking up information. Important stuff. Trivia. Everything in between. All that stuff always coming at her, crowding into her mind, like the voices of hundreds of people all talking at once. It’s a miracle she can make sense of it at all. Hell, it’s a miracle she isn’t locked up in a padded room somewhere, screaming her guts out.”

Hollis drew a breath. “When she told you she couldn’t stop it, she meant it literally. She can’t shut it off, ever.”

Isabel sat in the cool Jeep and stared down at her hands. Watching them shake.

“Okay,” she murmured, “so this one was bad. You’ve had bad ones before. You’ve heard all the ugly voices before. You can handle them. You can handle this.”

She heard the ghost of a laugh escape her. “But not if you keep talking to yourself.”

She laced her fingers together in her lap and raised her head, staring through the windshield at the building where Rafe and the others were.

It was where she should be, dammit, and never mind the pain. In there trying to sort through all the impressions, listening to the voices still echoing too loudly in her head. Even the ugly ones. Maybe especially the ugly ones.

Doing her job.

Isabel drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to focus, to soothe raw nerves and regain control of her senses, all her senses. Control. She had to find control.

Jamie had liked controlling people.

And that preacher…

God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Obey your mistress! Crawl!

Just three quarts more, and-

Bones bend before they break, you know. Bones bend-

Blood… so much blood…

Her shaking hands lifted to cover her face, fingertips massaging her forehead and temples hard, and Isabel drew another breath, fighting to close out the voices. Not that she could.

Not that she’d ever been able to. Still, she tried.

Concentrate.

Focus.

Don’t listen to them.

She tempted me, that’s what it was. Tempted me down the road to damnation. I was weak. I was…

I can make the rope tighter. I can make the rope much tighter. You want me to, don’t you? You want me to hurt you. You want me to hurt you until you scream with the pain.

Bones bend…

And Bobby Grange, over to Horton Mill, he wants enough to fill a keg. Must be having a party, I guess. Guys like him keep me in business, that’s for sure. And it ain’t my business, what else they do. It just ain’t any of my affair.

It wasn’t my fault! She tempted me!

Do you know what happens when you feel all the pain you can feel? When your nerve endings are hot and raw, and your voice is gone from screaming? Do you know what it feels like to go beyond pain? Let’s find out…

Bones bend before they-

Isabel.

Iss… a… belll…

Her hands jerked away from her face, and Isabel stared all around her, a bit wildly at first. There it was. A different voice. Male. Powerful. Crouching in the darkness…

But… there was no one. No one. Her head was pounding, her heart pounding, and the voices were only whispers now. Only whispers, none of them calling her name.

“Okay,” she said aloud, shakily, “that was new. That was different.”

That was terrifying.