Sense Of Evil

4

Friday, June 13, 6:15 AM

HE WOKE UP with blood on his hands.

It wasn’t an instant realization. The alarm was droning on and on, and he had the vague notion that he had overslept. Again. He’d been doing that a lot lately. The bedclothes were tumbled, tangled around him, and it took a considerable amount of effort just to roll himself over and slap at the irritating alarm clock to stop the damned noise.

He froze, hand on the now-silent clock.

His hand was… there was blood.

He pushed himself slowly up on an elbow and looked at his hand, at both hands. Reddish stains covered the palms. Dried stains, not wet. But now that they were close to his face, he could smell the blood, sharp and metallic, so strong it made his stomach heave.

The blood.

Again.

He fought his way out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. He stood at the sink, washing his hands over and over until there was no sign of the red. He splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth, trying to get rid of the sour taste of fear.

He raised his head and stared into the mirror, hands braced on the sink.

A white, haggard face stared back at him.

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered.

8:00 AM

Isabel wasted no time, at the first meeting of the four lead investigators of their combined police and FBI task force, in explaining to Detective Mallory Beck what made the SCU team “special.”

Mallory, like Rafe the previous day, took the news quite calmly, saying only, “I’d call that a pretty unusual sort of unit for the FBI.”

Isabel nodded. “Definitely. And we exist as a unit only as long as we’re successful.”

“Like that, is it? Politics?”

“More or less. Not only are we unconventional in too many ways to count, but the Bureau can’t use us and our success to improve their own image; what we do too often looks like magic or some kind of witchcraft rather than science, and that is not something the FBI wants to publicize no matter how high our success rate is. We’re becoming quietly well known within other law-enforcement organizations because of our successes, but there are still plenty of people inside the Bureau who’d love it if we failed.”

“So you haven’t yet?”

“Debatable point, I suppose.” Isabel pursed her lips. “A few got away. But the successes have far exceeded the failures. If you call them failures.”

“You don’t?”

“We don’t give up easily. Bishop doesn’t give up easily. So… just because a case goes cold doesn’t mean we forget about it or stop working on it. Which brings me back to this case.” She explained their belief that they were dealing with a killer who had terrorized two previous towns and had a dozen murders under his belt even before he came to Hastings.

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger task force,” Mallory said dryly.

Even though he smiled faintly, Rafe’s response was matter-of-fact. “Technically, we have one. Every officer and detective we have will be working on some aspect of the investigation. Overtime, more people to handle the phones, whatever it takes. But only you and I know about Hollis’s and Isabel’s psychic abilities. That’s the way it stays. The last thing I want is for the press to turn this thing into a carnival sideshow.”

“And they will, given the chance,” Isabel said. “We’ve seen it happen before.”

Great, Mallory thought, one more thing I have to hide from Alan. Out loud, she said, “I don’t know much about ESP, unless you count commercials from those psychic hotlines, but I gather neither of you can just I.D. our perp for us like snapping your fingers?”

“Our abilities are just another tool,” Isabel told her. “We use standard investigative techniques like every other cop, at least as much as possible.”

Mallory was more resigned than scornful. “Yeah, I figured that would be the deal.”

“It can’t be too easy,” Hollis said. “The universe has to make us work for everything.”

“So how will your abilities help us, assuming they do?” Mallory asked. “I mean, what specifically is it that you’re able to do?”

“I’m clairvoyant,” Isabel said, explaining the SCU’s definition of the term.

“So you have to touch something or someone to pick up information about them?”

“Touching helps, usually, because it establishes the strongest connection. But I also get information randomly sometimes. That tends to be trivia.”

“For instance?” Mallory was clearly curious.

Without hesitation, Isabel said, “You had a cinnamon bun for breakfast at home this morning and you feel guilty about it.”

Mallory blinked, then looked at Rafe.

“Spooky, isn’t it?” he said.

Mallory cleared her throat and, without commenting on Isabel’s statement, looked at Hollis. “And you?”

“I talk to dead people,” she replied with a wry smile. “Technically, I’m a medium.”

“No shit? That must be… disconcerting.”

“I’m told you get used to it,” Hollis murmured.

“You’re told?”

“I’m new at this.”

Rafe frowned. “You weren’t born with it?”

“Not exactly.” Hollis looked at Isabel, who explained.

“Some people possess latent-inactive-paranormal abilities. For most of those people, the abilities remain unknown and unused their entire lives. They may get hunches, flashes of knowledge they can’t logically explain, but they generally ignore it or dismiss it as coincidence.”

“Until something changes,” Rafe guessed.

“Exactly. Every once in a while, something happens that causes latent psychics either consciously or subconsciously to tap into the previously dormant ability and actually begin using it.”

“What could do that?” Mallory asked warily.

“The most common, and most likely, scenario is that a latent becomes an adept-our term for a functional psychic-due to a physical, emotional, or psychological injury. A head injury is the most common, but almost any severe trauma can do it. Generally speaking, the greater the shock of the awakening, the stronger the abilities tend to be.”

“So Hollis-”

“Both of us. Both of us survived a traumatic event,” Isabel said matter-of-factly. “And became functional psychics because of it.”

9:00 AM

Officer Ginny McBrayer hung up the phone and frowned down at the message pad for a moment, debating. Then she got up and went around the corner to Travis’s desk. “Hey. Is the chief still in that meeting?”

On the phone himself, but obviously on hold judging by his propped-up feet, bored expression, and only semicontact between the receiver and his ear, Travis replied, “Yeah. Not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. Or ‘relevant,’ I think he said.”

“This might be.” Ginny handed over the message slip. “What do you think?”

Travis studied the slip, then searched his cluttered desk for a minute, finally producing a clipboard. “Here’s the list we already have going. Women of the right general age reported missing within a fifty-mile radius of Hastings. We’re up to ten in the last three weeks. It was twelve, but two of them came home.”

Ginny looked over the list, then picked up her message slip again and frowned. “Yeah, but the one I just got the call about is local, from that dairy farm just outside town. Her husband really sounded upset.”

“Okay, then tell the chief.” Travis shrugged. “I’m waiting for the clerk at the courthouse to get back to me about all that property Jamie Brower owned. She’s got me on hold. Remind me to tell them they need some new canned music, okay? This shit is giving me a headache.”

“I don’t want to interrupt the chief’s meeting,” Ginny said, ignoring the irrelevant information he’d offered. “What if this is nothing?”

“And what if it’s something? Go knock on the door and report the call. Better for him to be mad at an interruption than to be mad because he wasn’t told something he should have been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ginny muttered. But she turned away from the other cop’s desk and headed for the conference room.

“Neither of you was born psychic?” Mallory said in surprise. “But-”

Isabel smiled, but said, “Understandably, neither one of us is all that eager to talk about what happened to us, so if you two don’t mind, we won’t. We’re both trained investigators, of course, and I’m a profiler. Plus we have the full backing of the SCU and the resources of Quantico. But anything Hollis and I are able to glean from our abilities or spider sense will have to be considered a bonus, not something we can count on.”

Rafe eyed her. “Spider sense?”

“It’s not as out there as it sounds.” She smiled. “Just our informal term for enhanced normal senses-the traditional five. Something Bishop discovered and has been able to teach most of us is how to concentrate and amplify our sight, hearing, and other senses. Like everything else, it varies from agent to agent in terms of strength, accuracy, and control. Even at its best it isn’t a huge edge, but it has been known to help us out from time to time.”

“I have a question,” Mallory said.

“Only one?” Rafe murmured.

“Shoot,” Isabel invited.

“Why you? I mean, why did this Bishop of yours pick you to come down here? You fit the victim profile to a T, unless there’s been a change I don’t know about.”

“It gets worse,” Rafe told his detective, his voice grim. “Isabel believes our killer has already spotted her. And added her to his list of must-kill blondes.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m all that surprised.” Mallory lifted a brow at the blond agent. “So why’re you still here? Bait?”

“No,” Rafe said immediately.

Isabel said, “We have some time before it becomes an issue. This bastard gets to know his victims before he kills them, or at least has to feel that he knows them, and he doesn’t know me. In any case, the reason why I’m here is much more compelling than any risk I face as a possible target.”

“And that reason is?”

“As I told Rafe yesterday, patterns and connections are everywhere, if we only know how to look for them.” Isabel spoke slowly. “I have a connection with this killer. He killed a friend of mine ten years ago, and five years ago I was involved in the investigation in Alabama of the second series of murders.”

Mallory was frowning, intent. “Are you saying you know him? But if you know him, doesn’t that mean he knows you? Knows you the way he has to know his victims? That thing that’s rapidly becoming an issue?”

“No. I wasn’t in law enforcement when my friend was killed, I was just another shocked and grieving part of her life-and her death. And I was on the fringes of the official investigation in Alabama; by the time I was officially involved, he’d already murdered his sixth victim and moved on. So it’s at least as likely as not that he won’t even know I was involved in the previous investigations.”

“But you’re on his hit list.”

“On it, but I’m not next in line. I’m not local, so it won’t be easy for him to find information about me, especially since I don’t plan to become too chatty with anyone outside our investigation.”

“What about inside?” Mallory asked. “We’ve had at least the suspicion that the perp could be a cop. Has that been ruled out?”

“Unfortunately, no. Our feeling is that we’re not dealing with a cop, but there are some elements of the M.O. that make it at least possible.”

“For instance?” Rafe was frowning slightly. “We haven’t seen the updated profile,” he reminded her.

“I have copies here for both of you,” Isabel replied. “Not a lot has changed from the first profile as far as the description of our unknown subject is concerned. We have revised his probable age range upward a bit, given the time frame of at least ten years as an active killer. So, he’s a white male, thirty to forty-five years old, above-average intelligence. He has a steady job and possibly a family or significant other, and he copes well with day-to-day life. In other words, this is not a man who’s obviously stressed or appears in any way at odds with himself.

“Blondes are only his latest targets; in the earlier murders, he killed first redheads in Florida ten years ago, and then, five years ago, brunettes in Alabama. Which, by the way, is another reason he wouldn’t have noticed me then even if he’d seen me; he’s always very focused on his targets and potential targets, and I had the wrong hair color for him both times before.”

“What about the elements that could indicate he’s a cop?” Rafe asked.

“The central question of this investigation-and the two before this one-is how he’s been able to persuade these women to calmly and quietly accompany him to lonely spots. These are highly intelligent, very savvy women, in several cases trained in self-defense. None of them was stupid. So how did he get them to go with him?”

“Authority figure,” Rafe said. “Has to be.”

“That’s what we’re thinking. So we can’t rule out cops. We also can’t rule out someone who appears to be a member of the clergy, or any other trustworthy authority figure. Someone in politics, someone well known within the community. Whoever he is, these women trusted him, at least for the five or ten minutes it took him to get them alone and vulnerable. He looks safe to them. He looks unthreatening.”

Mallory said, “You said earlier that he’d killed a dozen women before coming to Hastings. Exactly twelve?”

“Six women in six weeks, both times.”

“So it is just women,” Mallory said. “Bottom line, he hates women.”

“Hates, loves, wants, needs-it’s probably a tangle. He hates them for what they are, either because they represent what he wants and can’t have or because he feels somehow emasculated by them. Killing them gives him power over them, gives him control. He needs that, needs to feel he’s stronger than they are, that he can master them.”

“A manly man,” Hollis said, her mockery both obvious and hollow.

Isabel nodded. “Or, at least, so he wants to believe. And wants us to believe.”

Alan Moore had always thought that calling the central work area of the Chronicle offices “the newsroom” must have been someone’s idea of irony. Because nothing newsworthy ever happened in Hastings.

Or hadn’t, until the first murder.

Not that there hadn’t been killings in Hastings before, of course; when a town had been in existence for nearly two hundred years, there were bound to be killings every now and then. People had died out of greed, out of jealousy, out of spite, out of rage.

But until the murder of Jamie Brower, no one had been killed by pure evil.

Alan hadn’t hesitated to point that out in his coverage of the murders and their investigation. And not even Rafe had accused him-publicly or privately-of sensationalizing the tragedies of those murders.

Some things damned well couldn’t be denied.

There was something evil in Hastings, and the fact that it was walking around on two legs passing itself off as human didn’t change that fact.

“How many times have I told you to pick up your own damned mail, Alan?” Callie Rosier, the Chronicle’s only full-time photographer, dumped several envelopes on his already cluttered desk. “It’s in a little box with your name on it right on the other side of that wall. You can’t miss it.”

“I just said you could pick up mine while you were getting yours, what’s wrong with that?” Alan retorted.

“What is this ‘while you’re up’ thing with you men?” She continued to her own desk, shaking her head as she sat down. “You sweat your brains out running miles every morning and lifting weights in the gym so you’ll look good in your jeans but pester other people to get stuff for you when it’s in the same damned room. Jesus.”

“Don’t you have film to develop?” The question was more habit than curiosity, and absentminded to boot since he was leafing through his mail.

“No. Why are all these places offering me credit cards?”

“The same reason they’re offering them to me,” Alan replied, tossing several into his overflowing trash can. “Because they haven’t checked our credit records.” He eyed his final bit of mail, a large manila envelope with no return address, and hesitated only an instant before tearing it open.

“I think these telemarketers are morons,” Callie said, studying the contents of one envelope marked URGENT! “They don’t even bother to be accurate in who they’re sending this stuff to anymore. I ask you, does the name Callie sound like it belongs to a man? This one should have been addressed to you. Take a little blue pill and get another inch or two. I’m sure you’d like another inch or two. And more staying power, says here.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Alan said.

“Aren’t you usually?”

He looked at her, saw that she was focused on her own mail and not even paying attention to the conversation. With only an instant’s pause, Alan said casually, “Oh, yeah, always.” Then he looked back down at his mail and, this time under his breath, repeated, “I’ll be a son of a bitch.”

Rafe accepted the message slip, absently introduced Officer McBrayer to the federal agents, then read the information she had offered. “Her husband says she’s been gone since Monday?”

“He thinks since Monday.” Ginny made an effort to sound as brisk and professional as she could, even though she was nervous and knew it showed. “He didn’t see her that afternoon, and with two cows calving he was out in his barns all night. He says it could have been Tuesday; that’s when he realized she wasn’t in the house. He thought she’d gone to visit a friend in town, since it’s something she often does, but when she didn’t come home, he checked. She wasn’t there. Isn’t anywhere he could think to check. I think it only slowly dawned on him that maybe he should be worried.”

“Yeah,” Rafe muttered, “Tim Helton isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box.”

“Understatement,” Mallory offered. “The way I heard it, he once decided that moonshine would work just as well as fuel in his tractor. Dunno if he got a bad batch or what, but it blew the sucker all to hell and nearly took him with it.”

“Moonshine?” Isabel asked curiously. “They still make that stuff?”

“Believe it or not. We’ve had the ATF out here a few times over the years because of illegal brew. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, if you ask me, but the bootleggers seem to feel it’s worth it. Either that or they just don’t want to pay The Government a cent more than they have to.”

Rafe said, “And there’s at least one survivalist group in the area. They consider it the norm to make everything they need themselves. Including booze.” He made a note on the pad before him, then handed the message slip back to his officer. “Okay, standard procedure, Ginny. I want a detective out there to talk to Tim, and let’s get a list of places she might possibly be. Friends, relatives, anybody she might be visiting. From now on, we treat every missing person, man or woman, as if he or she could be a murder victim.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the young officer had hurried from the room, Isabel said, “Is this people starting to panic? I mean, is this an unusual increase in women reported missing?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. In the past three weeks, we’ve seen the reports jump tenfold. Most come home within twenty-four hours or are discovered visiting relatives or talking to divorce attorneys, or just at the grocery store.”

“Most. But not all.”

“We still have a few missing in the general area, but we haven’t yet been able to rule out a voluntary absence in any of the cases.”

“We’ll probably see even more of this,” Isabel commented.

“Problem is,” Mallory said, “we have to treat every report seriously, just as Rafe said. So we’ll waste a lot of manpower searching for women who aren’t really missing or who ran off and don’t want to be found. Lady last week cussed me out good for finding her.”

“Motel?” Isabel inquired sapiently.

“Uh-huh. Not alone, needless to say.”

“Still, we have to look for them,” Hollis said.

Rafe nodded. “No question. I’m just hoping it won’t muddy the water too much. Or deplete resources needed elsewhere.”

“In the meantime,” Isabel said, “those of us in this room at least have to focus on what we know we’ve got. Three murdered women.”

Rafe said, “You told me there’s always a trigger. Always something specific that sets him off.”

“There has to be,” Isabel responded. “You said yourself that five years is a hell of a long cooling-off period for a serial killer; it is, especially after a fairly frenzied six-week killing spree. A gap that long usually means either that murders in another location have gone unnoticed or at least weren’t connected to him, or that he’s in prison somewhere or otherwise unable to keep killing.”

“I gather you’re certain that isn’t the case here.”

“When he hit in Alabama five years ago, we combed through police files of unsolved murders from coast to coast. Nothing matched his M.O. except for the series of murders five years before that. We were convinced he had been inactive during that five-year gap, yet there was also no even remotely likely suspect we could find who had been in prison for exactly that length of time. And according to all the information gleaned from databases we had Quantico double-check yesterday, he’s also been inactive in the five years since Alabama. Until he started killing in Hastings a little over three weeks ago.”

Mallory rubbed her temple, scowling. “So something sets him off and he kills six women in six weeks. Then, apparently sated for the time being, vanishes before the cops can even get close to catching him. Why six women?”

“We don’t know,” Isabel replied. “The number has to be important, since it’s been exactly the same twice before, but we don’t know how or why. We can’t even be absolutely positive he’ll stop at six this time. He could be escalating. Most killers of this sort do sooner or later kill more or get more viciously creative in the killing itself.”

Mallory shook her head. “Great. Because we didn’t have enough to look forward to. So he kills at least six women. Moves on to a new location. Then waits five years-it’s not exact, is it?” she interrupted herself to ask.

Isabel shook her head. “Not to the day, no. The gap between the first and second set of murders was actually four years and ten months. The gap between the last set and this one was five years and one month. Give or take a few days.”

“Okay. But he moves somewhere new after his six-week killing spree, settles down, settles in. Which has to mean we’re looking for someone who’s been in Hastings no more than five years, right?”

“Or someone who used to live in the area and has moved back. Or someone who works in Hastings but lives outside the town-or the other way around. Or someone who takes long vacations every few years; that’s at least possible.”

“Goes on vacation to kill people?”

“We’ve encountered stranger things. He could scout out his hunting grounds in advance, maybe start picking his victims, and return later for the actual kill.” Isabel shook her head. “Honestly, if you look at a map, the two previous hunting grounds and Hastings are all within a day’s drive, despite being in three different states. So we can’t even rule out the idea that he lives in an area central to his hunting grounds and has just somehow managed to spend enough time in each to get to know his victims.”

“Oh, hell, I was hoping we could narrow down the possibles at least a little bit.”

Hollis said, “The universe never makes it easy, remember? Probably the only people we can even begin to rule out are those who have lived continuously in Hastings during the last fifteen years at least. And I mean continuously: no vacations longer than, say, two weeks; no going away to college; no out-of-town visits, no day trips fitting the right time periods.”

Mallory grimaced. “Which is just not possible. Even those of us who’ve lived here our whole lives tend to go away to school or travel or something. And day trips? Lots of good shopping in Columbia, Atlanta, other places within a day’s drive.”

“I was afraid of that,” Isabel said with a sigh.

With a nod, Mallory said, “That sort of thing is so common I doubt we could find anybody who was absent or took weekly day trips out of town during those six-week stretches specifically, not without questioning every soul in town and probably not then. Who remembers specific dates from years ago? And like I said, people travel on vacations or for business, go away to school. I was away in Georgia three years finishing college. It was four for you, wasn’t it, Rafe?”

“Yeah. And I went to Duke, in North Carolina.” He sighed. “It’s like Mal said, we’ve all traveled, been away from Hastings, most of us more than once. And people do take regular day trips, even out of state, for shopping or business. I get the feeling this isn’t going to help us narrow the list all that much.”

“Probably not,” Isabel agreed. “Although if we get lucky enough to find a suspect or two, we have some concrete questions to ask…”

Hollis didn’t intentionally tune out the discussion. She didn’t want to; despite the repetition of details she already knew, she was still new enough to the investigative process itself to find it interesting, even fascinating.

She wasn’t even aware at first that Isabel’s voice had faded into a peculiar hollow silence. But then she realized the discussion around her had gone distant, deadened. She felt the fine hairs on her body rise, her flesh tingle.

It was not a pleasant sensation.

She looked around the table at the others, watching their mouths move and hearing only a word now and then, muffled and indistinct. And they themselves appeared different to her. Dim, almost faded. They seemed to be growing ever more distant moment by moment, and that frightened her.

Hell, it terrified her.

She opened her mouth to say something, or try to, but even as she did, a new and unfamiliar instinct urged her to turn her head toward the doorway. Again without meaning to, without wanting to, she looked.

Standing near the doorway was a woman.

A blond woman.

She was clearer than the people around Hollis, brighter somehow, and more distinct. She was beautiful, with perfect, delicate features. Her hair was burnished gold, her eyes a clear, piercing blue.

Eyes fixed on Hollis.

Her lips parted, and she started to speak.

A chill swept through Hollis and she quickly looked away, instinctively trying to close the door, to disconnect herself from the place from which this woman had emerged.

It was a cold, dark place, and it terrified Hollis.

Because it was death.

Mallory rubbed her temple again. “Okay, back to what sets him off. What sets him off?”

Isabel answered readily, if not too informatively. “Something specific, but we don’t know what that is, at least not yet. The gaps between his killing sprees can and might be explained by his need to get to know these women.”

“Might,” Rafe said. “But you aren’t sure?”

“I’m sure he has to feel he knows them. For whatever reason, they can’t be total strangers to him. Maybe in getting to know them, he discovers something about them-at least the initial victim-that sets him off, something that pushes his button. Or maybe he has to win their trust; that could be part of his ritual, especially since these women appear to be leaving their cars and going willingly with him.”

“He doesn’t pick out all six women before he starts killing, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t have made his list.”

“Good point.” Isabel nodded. “It’s also a point that he is able to look beyond the woman he’s currently stalking in order to take note of, and even choose as a future victim, another woman. Even though this guy’s actual killings are frenzied, it’s becoming clear that he’s quite able to think coolly and calmly right up until the moment he kills them.”

“We have to find her.”

They all looked at Hollis. Her voice had been tight, and her face showed visible tension. She was chewing on a thumbnail, which, Rafe noticed, was already bitten short.

“He’s stalking her even now. Watching her. Thinking about what he’s going to do to her. We have to-”

“Hollis.” Isabel spoke quietly. “We’ll do all we can to find her before he gets to her. But the only way we have of doing that is by starting with the women he’s already killed. We have to find out what they all have in common besides the color of their hair. What connects them to each other. And to him.”

Hollis looked at her partner almost blindly. “How can you be so calm about it? You know what’s going to happen to her. We both know. We both know how it feels. The helpless terror, the agony-”

“Hollis.” Isabel’s voice was still quiet, but something in it caused her partner to blink and stiffen in her chair.

“I’m sorry,” Hollis said. She pressed her fingertips briefly to her closed eyes, then looked at them again. “It’s just that-” This time, no one interrupted her.

But something did.

She turned her head abruptly as if someone had called her name, staring toward the closed door of the room. Her eyes dilated until only a thin rim of blue circled the enormous pupils.

Rafe sent a quick glance toward Isabel and found her watching her partner intently, eyes narrowed. When he looked back at Hollis, he saw that she was even more pale than she had been before, and trembling visibly.

“Why are you here?” she whispered, looking at nothing the others could see. “Wait, I can’t hear you. I want to. I want to help you. But-”

Softly, Isabel said, “Who is it, Hollis? Who do you see?”

“I can’t hear her. She’s trying to tell me something, but I can’t hear her.”

“Listen. Concentrate.”

“I’m trying. I see her, but… She’s shaking her head. She’s giving up. No, wait-”

Rafe was a bit startled to feel his ears pop just an instant before Hollis slumped in her chair. He told himself it was his imagination, even as he heard himself ask, “Who was it? Who did you see?”

Hollis looked at him blankly for a moment, then past him at the bulletin board where they had posted photos and other information about the victims.

“Her. The first victim. Jamie Brower.”