Stealing Shadows

FIVE

FEBRUARY 21, 1999

When Cassie heard the scream, it was so loud in her head that she dropped the glass she'd been holding and clapped her hands over her ears.

"No," she whispered helplessly.

Without her volition her eyes closed, and behind the lids flashed whorls of vivid colors streaked with black. A second scream made her jerk. And hurt her throat.

"No, please… please don't hurt me…"

Abruptly Cassie was somewhere else, someone else. She felt the painful constriction of something around her wrists, felt a sharp edge at her back and cold hardness beneath her. She couldn't see, it was all black, but then the bag over her head was jerked off.

"Please don't hurt me… please, please don't hurt me… please don't – "

The mask he wore was horrible. The character might have been from some recent slasher movie, the face a human one but terribly distorted, and it made her shock intensify, her terror soar.

"Please don't hurt me! Oh, God, please don't! I won't tell anyone, I promise! I swear! Just let me go, please!"

For an eternal instant Cassie was paralyzed, completely trapped in the woman's spiraling emotions. Shock, wild terror, despair, and the cold, cold certainty that she was going to die soon and horribly clawed at her. Through the woman's tear-blurred eyes she saw that eerie mask loom above her, saw the butcher knife in his gloved hand, and her throat hurt with gasping breaths and whimpers and raw screams.

"You'll never laugh at me again," he rasped, and his arm lifted, the knife gleaming dully.

"No! Oh, Jesus – "

As his arm started downward in a vicious arc, Cassie desperately wrenched herself free of the doomed woman. But she wasn't fast enough to save herself completely. She felt the first hot agony of the knife piercing her breast, and everything went black.

"Ben."

"Matt? What is it?"

"Meet me in town. Ivy Jameson's place."

Ben switched the phone to his other hand and checked his watch. "Now? It's Sunday afternoon, she'll be – "

"She's dead, Ben."

Ben didn't even ask how. Matt's tone told him all he needed to know. "I'm on my way," he said.

Ten minutes later he parked the Jeep behind Matt's cruiser and one other in the driveway of the Jameson house on Rose Lane just two streets behind Main Street. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the big old houses sitting peacefully on manicured lawns, the older residents happy to be no more than a short, pleasant afternoon walk from downtown.

Ben noticed that several of those older residents were on their front porches, staring at him as he got out of his Jeep. Although they were too polite or too frightened to venture closer to Ivy's house, it was obvious that their interest was intense.

One of Matt's deputies was standing by the front door and opened it for Ben as he came up on the porch. "Judge. Sheriff's inside." He looked a bit green around the gills.

Ben went into the house. He was familiar with it, as he was most of the homes of the more politically active citizens of Ryan's Bluff; Ivy Jameson's vote had been one of the hardest to get.

From the spacious entrance hall the staircase rose to the second floor, the formal dining room opened to the right, an equally formal living room to the left, and straight ahead lay the rear of the house and the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed, fresh flowers in a lovely crystal vase decorated the entrance hall table, and there was an air of stuffy dignity about the place.

The two men sitting on the sofa in the formal living room spoiled the atmosphere of dignity; they were in their stocking feet, faces slack and pale with shock, and the younger one was breaking Ivy's most sacrosanct house rule by smoking a cigarette jerkily, flicking the ashes into an already full crystal candy dish on the coffee table before him.

Ben knew them both. One was Ivy's brother-in-law, and the other was her nephew. Neither looked toward him, and he made no attempt to speak to them.

Another deputy standing just outside the living room doorway silently gestured toward the rear of the house.

He, also, looked queasy, and when Ben passed him, murmured, "Sheriff said to watch your step, Judge. The floor back there is… slippery."

It was slippery all right.

The tile floor of the kitchen was covered in blood.

"Oh, Christ," Ben muttered as he stopped in the doorway. He had observed scenes of violence before, but not many, and nothing that had prepared him for this.

Matt stood a couple of feet inside on one of the few blood-free spots on the floor. "It looks like Ivy finally pissed off the wrong person."

It was unquestionably a scene of rage. Even the white appliances were spattered with blood, and the stab wounds in Ivy's thin body were almost too numerous to count. She'd been all dressed up, probably for church earlier in the day. Her dress might have been any light color once; now it was red.

She still had one shoe on.

"Notice the way he left her?" Matt asked.

"Yeah," Ben said, trying to breathe through his mouth because the smell was overpowering. "Sitting up with her back against the leg of the work island. Her hands in her lap. Posed. Is there a coin?"

"A nickel. In her left hand." If the smell bothered Matt, it wasn't apparent.

Ben gestured. "And footprints. The killer?"

"Among others. When she didn't show up for church or Sunday dinner afterward, and didn't answer the phone, Ivy's mother sent her son-in-law and grandson over to see if anything was wrong. They came in the back door, said they were sliding all over before they knew what was happening. If we're lucky, we might get one footprint we can't match to their shoes."

Matt pointed out a bloody butcher knife on the floor a foot or so away from Ivy's body. "No question about the murder weapon. He just grabbed a knife off the rack."

"Forced entry?"

"No sign of it. And her relatives say she always locked the back door, all the doors, that she was fanatical about it."

"So she must have let him in?"

"Looks that way."

Ben backed out of the doorway. "This smell. I can't – "

Matt followed him, avoiding the blood gingerly, and joined him in the small hallway outside the kitchen. "Doc Munro's on his way. So're my technical people. I took one look and called you first."

"Her position, the coin. It's the same killer, Matt."

"Yeah." Matt drew a breath, his face very grim. "And he barely waited three days between killings, Ben. Worse, Becky Smith and Ivy Jameson had only two things in common. They were both white and both female. Beyond that there are no similarities between them."

"I know."

"Did you notice the knife rack? We won't know for sure until her housekeeper inventories for us, but it looks like one of the big butcher knives is missing."

Ben stared at his friend in silence, unwilling to give voice to any of the disturbing possibilities in his mind.

Matt was less reluctant. "The bastard's probably taken his next weapon from this victim. Cute. Really cute."

"Jesus," Ben muttered, frustrated by the realization that the killer might have already chosen his next victim too.

"And one more thing." Matt's voice was level. "This time your psychic didn't see it coming."

By the time Ben got to Cassie's house, it was beginning to get dark. Even so, he saw her. She was sitting on the front porch, curled up in one of the two big wicker chairs placed to one side of the front door.

As Ben reached her he said, "The security system won't do much good if you're outside it, Cassie." His voice was sharper than he intended it to be.

Almost lost in a sweatshirt several sizes too big, her jean-clad legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, Cassie didn't glance at him. She merely said quietly, "I had to come out here. It was… all I could smell was blood. It wasn't so bad out here."

Ben moved the other chair so that it was facing hers and sat, literally placing himself in her line of vision. She still looked past him. No warm hand touched him. "So you knew he killed again."

"Yes." Her face was so pale, even her lips seemed drained of color.

"Why didn't you call me?"

"By the time I could, it was too late. There was nothing anyone could do for her. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Did you see anything this time? Anything that might help us catch this bastard?"

Cassie shook her head slowly. "No. He – he was wearing some kind of mask."

"How do you know that? Did he look in a mirror?"

"No. This time I… I didn't connect with him. I connected with her. She was… was crying, but I could see him. He had some kind of mask, a horrible mask. Like something a kid would wear on Halloween."

Ben frowned. "Why would he do that? He wasn't planning to leave a witness behind."

"I don't know. Except… the mask made her even more frightened. Maybe that was it. Maybe he wants them to be afraid."

"Or maybe he knows you're watching."

"No."

"How can you be sure of that? If you connected with her?"

"I'm sure."

Ben was silent for a moment, then said slowly, "Why did you connect with her?"

"Maybe because I had met her briefly." Cassie's voice was growing more distant, and her eyes had an odd, unfocused look to them.

"Do you connect with the victim very often?"

"Not if I can help it. As dark as the mind of a killer is, the mind of his victim is… almost worse. The terror and despair, the agony…" Cassie shook her head again slowly. "It pulls me in. They pull me in. They're so desperate, so frantic to find a way out."

He stopped himself from reaching out to her, bad as he wanted to. "I'm sorry."

She shivered visibly, and finally looked at him, saw him. But when her gaze touched him, it was cool rather than warm, and such a faint sensation, it was almost ghostly.

"I can't do it anymore." Her voice was low, hurried. "I know it's the right thing to do, I know the sight gives me a responsibility, and I've always tried… but I can't do it anymore. I thought I could. I thought there had been enough time… enough peace. I thought I was strong enough. But I'm not. I can't go through it again."

"Cassie – "

"I can't. I can't help you. I can't help myself."

"You came to me," he reminded her quietly.

"I know that. I wanted to help. But I can't. I'm sorry."

"What you saw today. Were you looking? Were you trying to tap into him – or her?"

"No."

"Then what choice do you have?"

"I can leave."

"You left L.A. What good did it do? Cassie, there are monsters everywhere."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the chair.

Ben watched her for several moments, unsettled by his intense desire to touch her, hold her. He had never been attracted to emotionally fragile women, to the opposite, if anything. If he admitted the truth, any woman who was not wholly focused on her own life and career and disinterested in anything more than a casual affair had very quickly found him to be elusive and emotionally remote. As Jill could testify.

So protective impulses and urges to comfort were alien to his nature when it came to women. He preferred to spend the night in a woman's bed so that he could leave long before dawn with a minimum of fuss, and that alone said a great deal about his avoidance of involvement on any level except the physical.

Needy women were definitely not his style. Not that Cassie clung in any way or, indeed, had even reached out to him. On the contrary, she was completely self-contained, and everything about her from the avoidance of touch and even eye contact to her body language said she was literally untouchable.

He thought she needed to be held worse than anyone he'd ever known. But he didn't touch her. Because she would not have welcomed the touch, and because he shied away from offering it.

Finally, her voice drained, Cassie said, "A few years ago, a cop friend of mine gave me a quotation from Nietzsche. He told me to put it where I could see it every day, to never forget. 'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.' " She lifted her head and looked at him with exhausted eyes. "I don't know how many more times I can do it and survive, Ben. Every time I've looked into that abyss, a piece of me stayed there."

"You could never become a monster."

"I could lose myself in one. What would be the difference?"

He leaned toward her, elbows on his knees, getting closer without actually touching her. "Cassie, you're the only one who can decide if the risks are worth taking. The risk of this madman finding out who you are before we find him. The risk of getting too deep in his head. The risk of losing something of yourself in the blackness of his soul. Only you can really know what it might cost you. And only you can decide if the price is too high."

She gazed at him almost curiously. "You pointed out one of the risks yourself. That no matter how careful I am, how skilled, the killer is more than likely to find out who I am in this small town of yours. Even so, you believe I should try to help you catch him."

Ben was silent for a moment, then said, "If you're leaving Ryan's Bluff, the discussion is over. I understand self-preservation; anyone would. I'll respect that decision, Cassie. But if you're staying here, then you have to help us catch him. Because as long as you're here, you're a potential threat to him. You can see inside his head. Sooner or later he'll find out you can do that. And he'll come after you."

"So I've convinced you, huh? That psychic ability is real?"

"Let's just say… I'm convinced you're real. I don't pretend to understand it, but I do believe you possess an extraordinary skill. And right now I need that skill to help me catch a monster. Before he kills anybody else in my town."

Cassie sighed. "All right." More than anything else, she sounded defeated. "What do you want me to do?"

Ben hesitated, almost wishing he had not been so persuasive. "After a lot of arguing, I finally got Matt to agree that you should go to the crime scene, see if you pick up anything." He paused, then added roughly, "But right now I think you should sleep about twelve hours. Tomorrow is soon enough."

A little laugh escaped Cassie. "Very nice of you to be concerned, but not very practical or wise. I'd say there's no time to waste. For him to kill again so soon is a very bad sign of worse things to come."

"Be that as it may, you're exhausted. If you push yourself too hard – "

"You don't have to worry. I won't collapse on you. I'm stronger than you think." She got to her feet.

Ben rose as well. "Cassie, a few more hours won't make any difference. She lived alone, and Matt has a couple of his officers standing guard, so the scene won't be disturbed. And it's not going to be a pleasant thing to see, whether you pick up anything or not. You should rest, recover some of your strength first. I'll take you there tomorrow – " He broke off when she lifted a hand to brush back her hair and he saw the bandage. "What the hell happened?"

She looked at her hand as if it belonged to a stranger, and answered absently, "I broke a glass."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"It wasn't a deep cut." She was obviously puzzled as her gaze returned to his face. "Her house. That's where you found her?"

"Yes. In the kitchen. Isn't that what you saw?"

Tension gathering in her voice, Cassie said, "The kitchen. No, that isn't right."

"He definitely killed her there, Cassie. There was blood everywhere, and the M.E. says that's where she died."

Cassie closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them and looked at him almost beseechingly. "Who died, Ben? Who was she?"

"Why – Ivy Jameson. Isn't that who – " Ben watched her sit down abruptly as though the strength had left her legs. He drew a deep breath. "You mean there's someone else?"

"Yes. There's someone else."

Ben called Matt from the Jeep once they were on their way to town, and the sheriff got there before them. He came out onto the sidewalk so quickly that Ben had barely gotten his door open. It was dark by then, but the streetlights made the sidewalk nearly as bright as day.

"Don't go in there," Matt said.

He hadn't really doubted Cassie this time, but Ben nonetheless felt a shock, and with it pangs of pain and regret. "Is she,.?"

Matt nodded. "The doc will have to tell us when, but I'm guessing she was killed while we were at Ivy's place. I'm sorry, Ben."

Ben gazed blindly toward the open front door of Jill Kirkwood's store for a moment. "I should have told her to be careful."

"It wouldn't have mattered, you know that. I warned her when she came to tell me about somebody following Becky. And I'm sure she thought she was being careful. But even if the town had been under curfew, she wouldn't have hesitated to come into her store on a peaceful Sunday afternoon to catch up on paperwork."

"I have to see her."

The sheriff caught his arm. "No. There's no reason for you to go in there, Ben. My team will be here any minute, and this time they're damned well going to get a completely undisturbed crime scene." He paused, then added steadily, "You don't need to see her. You don't want to see her."

"How did he kill her?"

"Knife, same as the others. But either he killed her someplace else or she hadn't pissed him off as badly as Ivy had. Virtually no blood at the scene. Only one wound, as far as I could tell. Left breast."

Ben half turned toward the Jeep, where the dome light showed Cassie's huddled posture and pale face. She hadn't said much at all since they had left her place. He returned his gaze to the sheriff. "Cassie said Jill was tied with her back to something with a sharp edge."

"Yeah, she's sitting up against a corner of her desk. He probably had her wrists tied behind her at some point but, like the others, he left her untied and with her hands in her lap."

"The coin?"

"A quarter." The sheriff paused. "Mind if I ask a few questions now?"

Ben knew whom those questions would be directed to, and it wasn't himself. But before he could reply, Cassie got out of the Jeep and came around it to join them.

Quietly she said, "Ask away, Sheriff."

"Where were you today?"

"At home. Alone, until Ben arrived a little while ago."

"You're saying you have no alibi." The sheriff's voice was mechanical.

"For Christ's sake, Matt," Ben snapped, "surely you don't believe Cassie killed three women!"

The sheriff looked at him briefly, then returned his gaze to Cassie. "And where is your car, Miss Neill?"

Matter-of-factly she said, "So you're having me watched. I thought you might be. My car is here in town, Sheriff, as you obviously know. I had it towed in yesterday morning when I discovered it wouldn't start. It's at that garage one block back from Main Street."

"And you refused a loaner."

"I didn't need one. There was nowhere I wanted or needed to go in the few days the car would be here."

As alibis went, it wasn't bad.

Ben said, "She couldn't have walked that far, Matt, not if – not if Jill was killed in the last few hours."

"Yeah, I know. Besides – " Matt glanced at Ben as he broke off, and it was Cassie who finished the sentence.

"It's not likely I'd have the physical strength to drive a butcher knife in someone's chest to the hilt," she said, still matter-of-fact.

"No," the sheriff said. "It isn't. Possible, but when I add that fact to others, it's very unlikely that you're our killer."

Ben felt sickened. "The knife. How do you know – "

"It's still in her, Ben. It looks like the missing knife from Ivy's kitchen."

"Christ."

The sheriff kept his gaze on Cassie. "So you saw Jill being killed, but Ivy Jameson's murder was a complete surprise to you."

"I never knew Miss Jameson, though I had heard of her. I met Jill once, briefly. It was enough for a connection, obviously, because I tapped into her mind, not his."

"Why not his? He killed twice today, leaving a bloody mess behind at Ivy's. Why weren't you aware he was doing that?"

Cassie shook her head. "I don't know."

Whatever the sheriff might have said to that was postponed as a squad car and a black paneled van arrived, blue lights flashing.

"Take her home, Ben, while I get my people working on the crime scene. Tomorrow is soon enough to find out if she can tell us anything helpful."

"She" went back around the Jeep and got in without another word.

Ben wanted to censure his friend for his chilly attitude toward Cassie but knew it wouldn't help matters. So all he said was "I'll be back when I've taken Cassie home."

"Don't rush. I said you didn't need to see this one, Ben, and I meant it."

"It's my job to view crime scenes, Matt."

"Not when you were personally involved with the victim. Bad idea."

"We were not personally involved, not anymore. It was months ago."

"Still."

"I can handle it," Ben said flatly.

"Will you, for once in our lives, take my advice and my professional opinion and stay the hell away from this crime scene?"

"And when I prosecute the bastard in court? You don't think I'll need details from this crime scene?"

"I think you can get what you need from photographs and reports. Ben, I am asking you, as sheriff and as your friend, to let us handle this." Without waiting for an answer, Matt turned away and went to meet his team.

Ben watched them go into the store, then got into the Jeep and started the engine.

"He's right," Cassie said.

"I can handle it," Ben repeated.

"Probably. But why should you have to? Why put yourself through that if there's a choice?"

"Maybe there isn't a choice. It's my job, Cassie."

She didn't respond until the lights of town faded into the night behind them. "Ask yourself if Jill would have wanted you to see her like that. And if you have any doubts, the answer is no."

She was right, and Ben knew it. "All right." He was silent for a few more miles, then said, "I'm sorry about the way Matt treats you. He's just pigheaded. And all this is a lot more than he bargained for."

"I know."

"Don't let him get to you."

"He isn't. I've run into the same kind of attitude before, believe me. It's perfectly natural for him to mistrust me."

"He just can't believe we have a monster here."

"It isn't an easy thing to believe."

Ben realized his shock was wearing off just enough to let horror creep in. "My God. Three women murdered in less than a week. We have no idea who killed them or why. And we have no idea how many more he'll kill before we catch him. You were right. A serial killer."

"I'm afraid so."

"Becky… Ivy… Jill. Aside from being female and white, they had virtually nothing in common."

"Did they go to the same church?"

Ben thought about it. "No. Becky and Jill did, the same Baptist church I belong to, but Ivy was a Methodist. Why?"

"I don't know. Something about the way he had those coins laid out, as though they were on an altar or something, made me think of church." Cassie shook her head. "At this point I'm just guessing."

"Keep going, you might hit on something."

"Something helpful, you mean? Probably not without more information. The mind of a serial killer is so… unique, so subjective, it's almost impossible to generalize beyond a few basic suppositions. And we already know those. White male, since he's killing white females. Young, possibly abused background. But apart from those facts, this man's motivations are bound to be completely unique to him and his experiences. Guessing about them is not going to be productive, not until we know a lot more than we do now."

"There must be a pattern."

"There is – to him. But whether we'll even recognize his reasoning is doubtful. There's no logic in madness."

"So to catch a madman, we have to think like a madman?"

"I wouldn't advise it," Cassie said very quietly. "That abyss is darker and colder than you can even imagine."