Sense Of Evil

1

Hastings, South Carolina

Monday, June 9

RAFE SULLIVAN ROSE from his crouched position, absently stretching muscles that had begun to cramp, and muttered, “Well, shit,” under his breath.

It was already hot and humid even just before noon, the sun burning almost directly overhead in a clear blue sky, and he absently wished he’d had his people put up a tarp to provide some shade. The effort wouldn’t be worthwhile now; another half hour, and the coroner’s wagon would be here.

The body sprawled at his feet was a bloody mess. She lay on her back, arms wide, legs apart, spread-eagled in a pathetically exposed, vulnerable position that made him want to cover her up-even though she was more or less dressed. Her once-white blouse was dull red, soaked with blood and still mostly wet despite the heat, so that the coppery smell was strong. The thin, springlike floral skirt was eerily undamaged but blood-soaked, spread out around her hips, the hem almost daintily raised to just above her knees.

She had been pretty once. Now, even though her face was virtually untouched, she wasn’t pretty anymore. Her delicate features were contorted, eyes wide and staring, mouth open in a scream she probably never had the chance or the breath to utter. From the corners of her parted lips, trails of blood ran down her cheeks, some of it mixing with the golden strands of her long blond hair and a lot of it soaking into the ground around her.

She had been pretty once.

“Looks like he was really pissed this time, Chief. Bit like the first victim, I’d say.” Detective Mallory Beck made the observation dryly, seemingly unmoved by the gory scene before them.

Rafe looked at her, reading the truth in her tightened lips and grim eyes. But all he said was, “Am I wrong, or did this one fight him?”

Mallory consulted her notebook. “Doc just did the preliminary, of course, but he says she tried. Defensive injuries on the victim’s hands, and one stab wound in her back-which the doc says was probably the first injury.”

Shifting his gaze to the body, Rafe said, “In the back? So she was trying to turn-or run-away from him when he stabbed her the first time. And either he turned her around so he could finish her face-to-face or she turned herself trying to fight him.”

“Looks like it. And only a few hours ago; we got the call on this one earlier than the others. The doc estimates the time of death as around five-thirty this morning.”

“Awfully early to be up and out,” Rafe commented. “Caleb opens his office between nine-thirty and ten as a rule. She was still his paralegal, right?”

“Right. Normally went to the office around nine. So she was out very early. What I don’t get is how he was able to lure her this far away from the road. You can see there are no drag marks, and two sets of footprints-we have good casts, by the way-so she walked out here with him. I’m no Daniel Boone, but I’d say from her tracks that she was walking calm and easy, not struggling or hesitating at all.”

Rafe had to admit that the ground here looked remarkably calm and undisturbed, for the most part, especially considering the violence of what had been done to the victim. And after last night’s rain all the tracks were easily visible. So this murder scene, like the last one, clearly illustrated what had happened here.

From all appearances, twenty-six-year-old Tricia Kane had gotten out of her own car around dawn at an unofficial rest spot off a normally busy two-lane highway and then walked with a companion-male, according to all likelihood as well as an FBI profile-about fifty yards into the woods to this clearing. And then the companion had killed her.

Brutally.

“Maybe he had a gun,” Rafe suggested, thinking aloud. “Or maybe the knife was enough to keep her docile until they got this far.”

Mallory frowned. “You want my hunch, I say she didn’t see that knife until they reached this clearing. The instant she saw it, she tried to run. That’s when he got her.”

Rafe didn’t know why, but that was his hunch too. “And it’s the same way he got the other two. Somehow he persuaded these women to leave their cars and walk calmly into the woods with him. Smart, savvy women who, from all accounts, were way too careful to let any stranger get that close.”

“Which means they probably knew him.”

“Even if, would you leave your car and just stroll into the woods with some guy? Especially if you knew two other women had recently died under similar circumstances?”

“No. But I’m a suspicious cop.” Mallory shook her head. “Still, it doesn’t make sense. And what about the cars? All three women just left their cars on pull-off rest areas beside fairly busy highways and walked away from them. Keys in the ignition, for Christ’s sake, and not many do that even in small towns these days. And we don’t know whether he was with them when they stopped or somehow flagged them down and then persuaded them to come with him. No tracks out at the rest stop to speak of with all that hard dirt and packed gravel.”

“Maybe he pulled a Bundy and claimed to need their help.”

“Could be. Although I still say that would have worked loads better if they knew who was asking. This guy isn’t killing strangers. I think the profilers got that one right, Chief.”

With a sigh, Rafe said, “Yeah, me too. I hate like hell the idea that this bastard is local rather than some insane stranger passing through town, but I don’t see any other way to explain how he’s getting these women to go with him.”

“Unless he’s some kind of authority figure they’d be inclined to trust and obey on sight. Like a cop.”

“Oh, hell, don’t even suggest that,” Rafe responded so instantly that Mallory knew the possibility had already been in his mind.

She studied him unobtrusively as he scowled down at the body of Tricia Kane. At thirty-six, he was the youngest chief of police ever in Hastings, but with a solid background in law enforcement both in training and experience, nobody doubted Rafe Sullivan’s qualifications for the job.

Except maybe Rafe himself, who was a lot smarter than he realized.

Mallory had wondered more than once if his tendency to doubt himself and his hunches had anything to do with his looks. He wasn’t exactly ugly-but she had to admit that his self-described label of “thug” pretty much fit. He had a harsh face, with very sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes so dark they tended to make people uncomfortable. His nose had been broken at least twice, he had a sharp jaw with a stubborn jut to it, and his high cheekbones marked him indelibly with his Celtic ancestry.

He was also a very big man, several inches over six feet tall and unmistakably powerful. The kind of guy you wanted on your side no matter what the fight was about. So he definitely looked the part of a cop, in or out of uniform-and it was mostly out, since he disliked uniforms as a rule and seldom wore his. But anyone, Mallory had long ago discovered, who had him pegged as all brawn and no brain or who expected the stereotypical dense, cud-chewing Southern cop was in for a surprise, sooner or later.

Probably sooner. He didn’t suffer fools gladly.

“That’s three murders in barely three weeks,” he was saying, dark eyes still fixed on the body at their feet. “And we’re no closer to catching the bastard. Worse, we’ve now officially got a serial killer on our hands.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m thinking it’s time we yelled for help.”

Mallory sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”

Quantico

Isabel Adams made her voice as persuasive as she possibly could, and her well-rehearsed arguments sounded damned impressive if she did say so herself, but when she finally fell silent she wasn’t surprised that Bishop didn’t respond right away.

He stood at the window gazing out, only his profile visible to Isabel. In deference to the fact that he was actually on FBI territory, he was dressed more formally than was usual, and the dark suit set off his dark good looks and powerful build admirably. Isabel looked at Miranda, who was sitting on Bishop’s desk, idly swinging one foot. Even more of a maverick than her husband and far less deferential to the FBI in any sense, she was wearing her usual jeans and sweater, the casual outfit doing nothing to disguise startling beauty and a centerfold body that turned heads wherever she went.

She gazed at Bishop now, seemingly waiting as Isabel waited for his answer, but her electric-blue eyes were very intent, and Isabel knew there was communication between the two of them on a level that didn’t require speaking aloud. Whatever Bishop’s decision turned out to be, he would arrive at it only after Miranda’s views and recommendations were added to his own; although Bishop had far greater seniority in the Bureau and in the unit he had created and led, no one doubted that his partnership with Miranda was equal in every possible sense of the word.

“It’s not a good idea,” he said finally.

Isabel said, “I know all the arguments against my going.”

“Do you?”

“I’ve gone over all the material that police chief sent when he requested a profile after the second murder. I even got on-line and read the local newspaper articles. I think I’ve got a very good feel for the town, for what’s happening down there.”

Miranda said, “Your basic powder keg, just waiting for a match.”

Isabel nodded. “Small town on the teetering edge of panic. They seem to have a lot of faith in their police, especially the chief, and pretty fair medical and forensics facilities for a small town, but this latest murder has everybody jumping at shadows and investing in security systems. And guns.”

She paused, then added, “Three murders makes this a serial killer in Hastings. And he’s showing no signs of stopping now. Chief Sullivan just officially requested the FBI’s help, and he’s asking for more than an updated profile. Bishop, I want to go down there.”

Bishop turned at last to face them, though instead of returning to his desk he leaned back against the high windowsill. The scar on his left cheek was visible now, and Isabel had been with the unit long enough to recognize, in its whitened appearance, that he was disturbed.

“I know what I’m asking,” she said, more quietly than she might otherwise have spoken.

Bishop glanced at Miranda, who immediately looked at Isabel and said, “From all indications, this is the sort of killer that local law enforcement can handle with very little outside help. Maybe a bit more manpower to ask questions, but it’ll be inside knowledge that catches this animal, not an outsider’s expertise. The profile marks him as nothing out of the ordinary. He’s local, he’s killing local women he knows, and he’s bound to make a mistake sooner rather than later.”

“But it wasn’t an SCU profile,” Isabel pointed out. “None of us developed it.”

“Special Crimes Unit can’t develop all the requested profiles,” Bishop reminded her patiently. “We barely have the manpower to handle the cases we do get.”

“We didn’t get the call on this one because this killer is so seemingly ordinary, I know that. Around a hundred serial killers active in this country on average at any time, and he’s one of them. Nothing raised a red flag to indicate that our special abilities are needed in the investigation. But I’m telling you-there’s more to the case than the official profile picked up on. A lot more.” She paused, then added, “All I’m asking is that you take a look at the material for yourselves, both of you. Then tell me I’m wrong.”

Bishop exchanged another glance with Miranda, then said, “And if you’re right? Isabel, even if the SCU took on this investigation, given the circumstances in Hastings you’re the last agent I’d want to send down there.”

Isabel smiled. “Which is why I have to be the agent you send. I’ll go get the file.”

She left without waiting for a reply, and as Bishop returned to his desk and sat down, he muttered, “Goddammit.”

“She’s right,” Miranda said. “At least about being the one who has to go.”

“Yeah. I know.”

We can’t protect her.

No. But if this is what I think it is… she’ll need help.

“Then,” Miranda said calmly, “we’ll make sure she has help. Whether she likes it or not.”

Thursday, June 12, 2:00 PM

“Chief, are you saying we don’t have a serial killer?” Alan Moore, reporter for the Hastings Chronicle, had plenty of practice in making his voice carry without shouting, and his question cut through the noise in the crowded room, silencing everyone else. More than thirty pairs of expectant eyes fixed on Rafe.

Who could cheerfully have strangled his boyhood chum. With no particular inflection in his voice, Rafe answered simply, “We don’t know what we have as yet, except for three murdered women. Which is why I’m asking you ladies and gentlemen of the press not to add unnecessarily to the natural anxiety of our citizens.”

“In this situation, don’t you think they should be anxious?” Alan glanced around to make certain all attention was on him, then added, “Hey, I’m blond, and even I’m nervous. If I were a twenty-something blond woman, I’d be totally freaked out.”

“If you were a twenty-something blond woman we’d all be freaked out,” Rafe said dryly. He waited for the laughter to subside, fully aware of the fact that it was as much nervous as amused. He was good at taking the pulse of his town, but it didn’t take any particular skill to feel the tension in this room. In the town.

Everybody was scared.

“Look,” he said, “I know very well that the women here in Hastings are worried-whether they’re blond, brunette, redhead, or any shade in between-and I don’t blame them a bit. I know the men in their lives are worried. But I also know that uncontrolled speculation in the newspaper and on the radio and other media will only feed the panic.”

“Uncontrolled?”

“Don’t start yelling censorship, Alan. I’m not telling you what to print. Or what not to print. I’m asking you to be responsible, because there is a very fine line between warning people to be concerned and take precautions, and yelling fire in a crowded theater.”

“Do we have a serial killer?” Alan demanded.

Rafe didn’t hesitate. “We have three murders we believe were committed by the same person, fitting the established criteria for a serial killer.”

“In other words, we have a lunatic in Hastings,” somebody he didn’t recognize muttered just loud enough to be heard.

Rafe responded to that as well, still calm. “By definition a serial killer is judged conventionally if not clinically to be insane, yes. That doesn’t mean he’ll be visibly any different from you or me. And they seldom wear horns or a tail.”

The reporter who’d made the lunatic comment grimaced. “Okay, point taken. Nobody is above suspicion and let’s all freak out.” She was blond.

“Let’s all take care, not freak out,” Rafe corrected. “Obviously, we would advise blond women in their mid to late twenties to take special care, but we have no way of knowing for certain if age and hair color are factors or merely a coincidence.”

“I say err on the side of factor,” she offered wryly.

“And I can’t say I’d blame you for that. Just keep in mind that at this point there is very little we can be sure of-except that we have a serious problem in Hastings. Now, since a small-town police department is hardly trained or equipped to deal with this type of crime, we have requested the involvement of the FBI.”

“Have they provided a profile?” This question came from Paige Gilbert, a reporter with one of the local radio stations. She was more brisk and matter-of-fact than some of the other women in the room had been, less visibly uneasy, possibly because she was brunette.

“Preliminary. And before you ask, Alan, we won’t be sharing the details of that profile unless and until the knowledge can help our citizens. At this stage of the investigation, all we can realistically do is advise them to take sensible precautions.”

“That’s not much, Rafe,” Alan complained.

“It’s all we’ve got. For now.”

“So what’s the FBI bringing to the table?”

“Expertise: the Special Crimes Unit is sending agents trained and experienced in tracking and capturing serial killers. Information: we will have access to FBI databases. Technical support: medical and forensics experts will study and evaluate evidence we gather.”

“Who’ll be in charge of the investigation?” Alan asked. “Doesn’t the FBI usually take over?”

“I’ll continue to head the investigation. The FBI’s role is assistance and support, no more. So I don’t want to read or hear any BS about federal officials superceding states’ rights, Alan. Clear?”

Alan grimaced slightly. He was a good reporter and tended to be both fair and even-handed, but he was close to phobic about governmental “interference,” especially from the federal level, and was always loud in protest whenever he suspected it.

Rafe took a few more questions from the assembled reporters, resigned rather than surprised to find that several of the people were from TV stations in nearby Columbia. If the investigation was getting major state coverage now, it was only a matter of time before it went national.

Great. That was just great. The last thing he wanted was to have the national press looking over his shoulder and second-guessing every decision he made.

Bad enough he had Alan.

“Chief, do you believe this killer is local?”

“Chief, has anything else turned up linking the victims?”

“Chief…”

He answered the questions almost automatically, using variations of “no comment” or “we have no reliable information on that” whenever possible. Even though he had called the press conference himself, it was only because he’d gotten wind of some pretty wild speculation going on and hoped to head off the worst of it before it was in print or other media, not because he had any real progress to report.

He was concentrating on the crowd in front of him as he answered their questions, but even as he did, he felt an odd change in the room, as if the very air had somehow sharpened, freshened. Cleared. It was a weird feeling, like waking suddenly from a dream thinking, Oh, that wasn’t real. This is real.

Something had changed, and he had no idea if it was for better or worse.

From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of movement and was able to turn his head just a bit, casually, so that none of the reporters picked up on his suddenly diverted attention.

Still, he was surprised that no one else seemed to have observed her entrance, even though she came into the room from the hallway, behind the flock of reporters. Rafe doubted she went unnoticed very often. He saw her pause to speak briefly to one of his officers, producing what appeared to be an I.D. folder, saw Travis’s visible surprise and undoubtedly stuttering response, then saw her move past him and take up a position near the door. She scanned the crowd of reporters and their tangle of cameras, a small half smile that was not so much amused as it was rueful playing around her mouth. She was dressed casually and for the weather in jeans and a sleeveless top, her hair pulled up into a neat ponytail. She could easily have been one of the reporters.

She wasn’t.

When her gaze met his fleetingly across the crowded room, Rafe was conscious of an instant certainty that made him go cold to his bones.

No. The universe couldn’t hate him that much.

“Chief, could you-”

He cut off the question abruptly. “Thank you all very much for coming today. When there are further developments, you’ll be notified. Good afternoon.”

He stepped away from the podium and went straight through the crowd to the other side of the room, ignoring the questions flung after him. When he reached her, his statement was brief and to the point.

“My office is across the street.”

“Lead the way, Chief.” Her voice was as extraordinary as the rest of her, one of those smoky, husky bedroom voices a man would expect to hear if he called a 900 sex-talk line.

Rafe wasted no time in leading the way past his still-goggling officer, saying merely, “Travis, make sure nobody bothers the mayor on their way out.”

“Yeah. Okay. Right, Chief.”

Rafe started to ask him if he’d never seen a woman before, but since that would have resulted in either stuttering incoherence or else a lengthy explanation that would have boiled down to “Not a woman like this one,” he didn’t bother.

He also didn’t say a word as they left the town-hall building and walked across Main Street to the police department, although he did notice that she was a tall woman; wearing flat sandals she was only a few inches shorter than he was, which would put her at about five-ten.

And her toenails were polished red.

With most of his people out on patrol, the station wasn’t very busy; Mallory was the only detective at her desk in the bullpen, and though she looked up with interest as they passed, she was on the phone, and Rafe didn’t pause or greet her except with a nod.

His office looked out onto Main Street, and as he went around behind his desk he couldn’t help a quick glance to see whether the reporters had left the town hall. Most were still clustered out in front, some obviously recording spots for today’s evening news and others speaking to each other-speculating, he knew. It didn’t bode well for his hopes of keeping things calm in Hastings.

An I.D. folder dropped onto his blotter as he sat down, his visitor taking one of the chairs in front of his desk.

“Isabel Adams,” she said. “Call me Isabel, please. We’re pretty informal. Nice to meet you, Chief Sullivan.”

He picked up the folder, studied the I.D. and federal badge inside, then closed it and pushed it across the desk toward her. “Rafe. Your boss saw the profile, right?” was his terse response.

“My boss,” she answered, “wrote the profile. The updated one, that is, the one I brought with me. Why?”

“You know goddamned well why. Is he out of his mind, sending you down here?”

“Bishop has been called crazy on occasion,” she said in the same pleasant, almost careless tone, not visibly disturbed by his anger. “But only by those who don’t know him. He’s the sanest man I’ve ever met.”

Rafe leaned back in his chair and stared across the desk at the special agent sent by the FBI to help him track and capture a serial killer. She was beautiful. Breath-catching, jaw-dropping gorgeous. Flawless skin, delicate features, stunning green eyes, and the kind of voluptuous body most men could expect to encounter only in their dreams.

Or in their nightmares.

In Rafe’s nightmares.

Because Isabel Adams was also something else.

She was blond.

The voices were giving him a pounding headache. It was something else he was getting used to. He managed to unobtrusively swallow a handful of aspirin but knew from experience it would only take the worst edge off the pain.

It would have to be enough.

Have to.

Still exhausted from the morning’s activities, he managed to do his work as usual, speak to people as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Nobody guessed, he was certain of that. He’d gotten very good at making sure nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary.

You think they don’t all see? Don’t all know?

That was the sneering voice, the dominant one, the one he hated most and heard most often. He ignored it. It was easier to do that now, when he was drained and oddly distant from himself, when the only thing for him to do, really, was wait for his next opportunity.

They know who you are. They know what you did.

That was more difficult to ignore, but he managed. He went about his business, listening whenever possible to the nervous gossip. Everybody was talking about the same thing, of course. The murders.

Nobody talked of anything else these days.

He didn’t hear much he hadn’t already known, although the speculation was amusing. Theories, most of them absurd, abounded as to why the killer was targeting blondes.

A hatred of his mother, for Christ’s sake.

Rejection by a blond girlfriend.

Idiots.

The pharmacist downtown told him there’d been a run on hair color, that those women trying blond as an option were going back to their natural colors.

He wondered if the natural blondes were considering changing, but thought probably not. They liked the effect, liked knowing men were watching them. It gave them a sense of power, of… superiority.

None of them could imagine dying because of it.

He thought that was funny.

He thought that was funny as hell.