Whisper of Evil

CHAPTER NINE

It was easy to see why the house hadn't roused any interest in would-be renters in the months since Ferrier's death. No doubt originally constructed to house a tenant farmer or migrant workers who would toil in the nearby fields, it was a small place at the end of a long dirt road that would be unbearably dusty in summer, and though it looked in decent repair there was nothing in the least inviting in its drab appearance.

They tied their horses at the edge of the woods out of sight of the road and walked across the weed-infested backyard.

"I doubt anyone would see us if we went to the front," Max said, "but there are a couple of neighbors down the road who might notice if we make ourselves too obvious."

"Were the neighbors questioned?" Nell asked as they stepped up onto the rear porch. She reached into the pocket of her jacket and produced a small, zippered leather case.

"I think Ethan sent a couple of his people out here — belatedly. Far as I know, nobody reported seeing or hearing anything suspicious, though you'd know more about the police report than I would." He eyed the small case she was opening, and added, "Is that what I think it is?"

"Probably." She selected one of the small tools and bent to begin working on the door lock.

"Burglar's tools?"

"Let's call them tools to unlock doors and leave it at that, shall we?"

"Did my tax dollars pay for those?" he wondered dryly.

"No. Do you happen to know how long it's been since anybody was in this house?"

"Not offhand, no. Did the Bureau send you to burglar's school?"

"Bishop taught us. He thought the skill might come in handy. He was right."

"He was a burglar before he joined the FBI?"

"Actually, I think he was studying criminal psychology and law when the FBI came calling. I have no idea where he picked up his more… esoteric skills."

"He has a lot of those?"

"A few."

Max frowned down at her as a soft click announced her success with the lock. "This is breaking and entering, isn't it?"

"Do you care?" Nell retorted, straightening and pushing open the door.

"Not really." Max followed her inside the house. "But if Ethan or any of his people catch us out here, my ass is in serious trouble."

"Umm. He's convinced you killed Ferrier, isn't he?"

"Wants to be convinced. There's a difference."

"So you two are still at odds?"

With mock surprise, Max said, "Didn't Wade Keever fill you in on that?"

She smiled slightly. "As a matter of fact, he did."

"Yeah, I thought so. Telephone, telegraph, tell Wade. Fastest way short of a billboard to make anything public." Max shrugged. "Ethan and I haven't been close for a long time, you know that. And you know why."

Nell sent him a look, then turned her gaze to their rather musty surroundings. The small house was furnished, though there was certainly nothing to shout about in its worn and threadbare offerings. The tiny kitchen held the bare essentials in the way of appliances, the small living room boasted only a sagging couch and one faded chair, and through the doorway to the bedroom she could see an ancient brass bed.

"Ferrier certainly didn't live beyond his means, did he?" she said.

"Apparently he was stashing all his ill-gotten gains away to finance his planned move to the south of France. At least, so I heard."

Nell frowned slightly and went toward the bedroom, choosing that room automatically because it tended to be the most personal in a house.

The instant she crossed the threshold, she got a flash of something — movement, color, the faint echo of a breathless laugh, the scent of perfume — and she stopped just two paces inside the room, closing her eyes and concentrating. Behind her, Max stood in the doorway and watched her, silent.

The jumble of impressions was all noise and colors in her mind for a moment or two, and then the energy of the most intense activity this room had contained surged to the surface of her awareness, and Nell opened her eyes with a start to find the bare little space drastically changed.

Instead of stark sunlight streaming through the uncurtained windows, it was nighttime, and candles burned all around the room, casting a golden glow over the tumbled covers of the old brass bed.

And the two people in it.

Nell recognized the man from the photos she had seen, a dark, heavy-shouldered man with a handsome, cruel face. He lay on his back on the bed, grinning up at the naked woman crouched astride his naked body.

The woman, dark hair streaming down her back, rode him with a fierce, greedy insistence, her throaty moans and cries erupting at last into a wild sound of release that was a laugh of pure triumph. Her head turned, bright, mocking eyes seeming to fix on Nell as she laughed again.

Victory. Conquest.

I win. I win again.

"Jesus." Her own voice brought Nell out of it, and she stared, shaken, at the bare, stained mattress on the ancient bed. There was no one there. No tumbled covers. No candles scattered around the room providing an intimate glow. No mocking laughter. "Jesus," she repeated softly.

"Nell?"

She turned slowly to face Max.

"What did you see?"

"Hailey. I saw Hailey."

Shelby paused before leaving her house to take one more look at her copy of the photograph of Nell leaving the courthouse, and frowned as she considered it. Nothing new occurred to her, except that she was probably going to regret what she was about to do. Probably.

She gathered up her cameras and headed toward town. This had to look casual, and as Shelby well knew, there was a trick to looking casual when you were anything but.

The first step was for her to wander around with her cameras taking pictures of whatever caught her fancy. She did that most days anyway, so nobody'd be surprised by it.

And she wasn't terribly surprised to find virtually everyone she encountered over the next half hour or so eager to discuss the murders. She was even less surprised to find there was another topic of conversation.

Nell.

At least four people stopped Shelby as she made her way casually through the downtown area, and all of them wanted to talk about Nell.

"Did you hear? Nell Gallagher's been around all this time, just not in town, and you know all this killing started back after her father died..."

"I heard she came back because she knows who the killer is, just the way those Gallaghers always knew things..."

"Did you hear? Nell Gallagher didn't come home just to settle her father's estate, it was because she's afraid Hailey will show up and fight her for it___"

"I heard the sheriff asked her to come back, that's what I heard, so she can give him a reading and tell him who the murderer is…"

Shelby offered no theories of her own but merely listened and smiled and nodded and wondered how people managed to build around the grain of truth that was Nell's homecoming such a range of possibilities. It was fascinating, in a horrifying sort of way.

You didn't have to be psychic to pick up on the feelings of the townspeople. Everybody was scared. They were scared and they were searching for answers. Unfortunately, all too soon, they'd forgo answers and just look for somebody — anybody — to blame for disrupting the town. And with a faceless murderer roaming about apparently beyond the reach of the law and retribution, Nell looked like the odds-on favorite to be that target.

Which made Shelby more determined than ever to find the truth.

"Shelby, you know Nell Gallagher, don't you?"

Shelby snapped a picture to prove she had a reason for loitering around the courthouse and then turned to smile at Sheriff Cole. "Sure, Ethan, I know her. Why?"

He grimaced slightly. "Know where she's been the last dozen years? What she's been doing?"

"Not really. I've heard things, of course, just like you must have, mostly from Hailey before she left, but nothing directly from Nell." This time, her question was more insistent. "Why?"

"I was just curious." He smiled. "Character flaw, you know that."

"I would have thought all your curiosity would be wrapped up in this murder investigation."

Ethan's smile turned wry. "Hell, I'm only human. Nell comes back to town, still gorgeous, apparently still single — and still an enigma. At least, I always thought so. Natural enough for me to be curious."

Shelby raised her eyebrows. "Then why don't you ask her what she's been doing these last years?"

"And feed the gossip?" His voice was as wry as his smile. "People are already talking about Max following her around like a besotted idiot; all I have to do is appear to be even a little interested, and everybody'll have us in some kind of love triangle before you can say soap opera."

"And that would be a wrong impression. Of course."

His eyes narrowed. "Of course."

Shelby decided it was time to change the subject. "I heard you guys haven't made much headway investigating George Caldwell's murder."

"We don't publicize all our findings, Shelby."

"I didn't say I read it, Ethan, I said I heard it. Gossip, you know. Which, in Silence, we have a lot of. I always thought whoever named our town had a real sense of humor."

Frowning, the sheriff said, "Are you saying my people have been talking out of turn?"

Shelby shrugged. "They're frustrated, I suppose. Bound to be. And probably defensive whenever somebody demands to know what the sheriff's department is doing to catch this killer, so it's natural they'd talk at least a bit. But if it makes you feel better, I haven't heard any specifics about the investigation. Just a general sense of failure."

"Great. That's just great."

"Well, it's pretty obvious, you know. It's not like somebody's sitting in your jail charged with four murders."

Flatly, Ethan said, "We have no hard evidence that Luke Ferrier's drowning was anything other than accidental or suicide."

"Accidental? Ethan, everybody knows which side of the bayou that car went into, and from what I hear there's no way a car could have gone that far off the road unless it had been driven carefully and deliberately."

"That doesn't rule out suicide, Shelby."

"Except that a healthy bank account and tickets out of the country came to light after he died, I hear. Sounds more like he meant to take a plane when he left. And isn't it a bit coincidental for a man with secrets like that to die by his own hand when other men are being murdered apparently because of their secrets?"

Ethan's frown deepened. "So that's common knowledge, huh?"

"You mean has anyone else been connecting the secrets to the killings? Oh, yeah. These are pretty damned big secrets, Ethan. They sort of stick out in this quiet little town. And judging by what I've been hearing, every man in Silence between the ages of eighteen and sixty is examining his past and his conscience, wondering if he's done anything to paint a big bull's-eye target on his back."

"Shit."

"No open panic yet. But it's coming." Shelby hesitated, then said slowly, "Have you considered asking for help?"

"I'm not caning in outsiders," he said emphatically. "This is our problem, and we'll handle it."

"Not outsiders. Nell."

"You mean because she's supposed to be psychic? I don't believe in that shit."

"You don't necessarily have to believe in it to use any tool that might possibly help, do you? Cops have been known to use psychics, even if they don't want to admit it publicly. What harm could it do to ask her? Ethan, people are already talking about her."

"Yeah, I know."

"What if the killer hears that and gets worried?"

"You think he'd be less worried if I call her into the station to talk to her?"

"Don't call her in. Make it more casual than that."

"I don't think so."

Deliberately, Shelby said, "So you're so unwilling to have people think you're chasing after her like Max that you won't even ask her if she can help? My mama used to call that cutting off your nose to spite your face."

His mouth tightened. "And did she ever warn you about poking your nose in where it wasn't wanted?"

"Frequently."

"You should have listened to her, Shelby." The sheriff turned and walked away, the stiff set of his shoulders belying his casual air.

Shelby absently took a picture of him when he paused at the curb, making sure her own face remained pleasantly unrevealing. Or at least she hoped that was how she looked.

Tricky, this business of not letting on that she knew more than she was saying. And she had a hunch it was going to get even more tricky as time passed.

She had a feeling she was going to enjoy herself very much.

Not that this wasn't a serious matter, she knew that. Even a deadly matter. But that reminder did nothing to dim Shelby's lively interest.

She watched Ethan Cole stalk away, then turned her own footsteps in a different direction.

Anyway, the first task had been easy. She doubted the next task would be.

Max drew his horse to a stop and sat there for a moment gazing silently toward the Gallagher family home. Then he turned his head and looked at Nell. "I never heard a whisper about Hailey being involved with Luke Ferrier. He was single, so was she. Why keep it quiet?"

Since she knew that answer, Nell merely said, "What I want to find out is whether she had been involved with any of the other men."

"You think she was the connection between them?"

"I don't know what to think. But these men were being punished for their secrets, and Luke Ferrier at least had an apparently secret affair with my sister."

Max frowned. "Everybody knows — now — that Peter Lynch kept a mistress in New Orleans and collected porn of a particularly sick nature, but if he was involved with anybody local, I never heard about it."

Nell turned her gaze toward the house and frowned herself. "I'd say he was most likely, though, given that his secret was of a sexual nature. And maybe Randal Patterson; he was the one with all the sadomasochistic gear in his basement, right?"

"Right. Far as I know, nobody's been able to find out who he played his little games with." He shook his head slightly. "You seriously believe it might have been Hailey?"

It was a question Nell wasn't eager to answer, but she knew there was little choice in the matter. So she merely drew a breath and said, "Let's find out. Isn't Patterson's place within riding distance?"

"Yeah. But are you sure you're up to it?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't have to be psychic myself to see what it takes out of you to… tap into one of these visions of yours. Maybe we should wait, Nell. Give you some time."

"Time's probably the one thing we don't have a lot of," she said soberly. "This sort of killer tends to escalate his activities sooner or later, and the longer he goes without being caught, the more likely he is to do that. He could kill again in two months — or tomorrow." She hesitated. "But if you need to get back to the ranch —"

"No, that isn't a problem. I have a good foreman and a good crew, so the work'll get done whether I'm there or not. But I still think you should rest for a while before we head out to Patterson's place."

Nell was about to argue when she felt the telltale twinge in her left temple that warned of an approaching blackout. Damn… damn… damn… She knew only too well that Max would insist on staying and watching over her if he knew, and that was something she wasn't prepared for. Not here. Not now.

So all she said, mildly, was, "I guess this afternoon will be soon enough. There are things I need to do here anyway, and no matter what you say I'm sure you should probably at least check in at the ranch. Can you come back around three or so?"

"Yeah, but —"

Before he could finish that, she added, "And you don't have to come in and check all the windows and doors. What you said about the killer possibly seeing me as a threat made sense, so I'm taking precautions. My partner's sticking close."

"I haven't seen anybody."

"You weren't supposed to." She smiled slightly to remove the sting, then dismounted and handed him the pinto's reins. "But he's close, believe me."

Max glanced toward the house as if to try and spot someone lurking about, then looked down at her, his mouth twisting. "And I'm still not supposed to ask who he is?"

"You can ask. I won't answer. I told you, Max — undercover is under cover."

"I could say something nasty, but I won't."

"I appreciate that."

He lifted the reins and began to turn the horses, but paused. He looked away from her and then, as if he couldn't help himself, said roughly, "I got over you."

Nell forced herself to speak steadily, to act as if it didn't matter. "I never expected anything else."

"Didn't you?"

"No."

Still looking away from her, his voice still rough, he said, "I'll be back here about three." He turned the horses and rode off through the woods.

She watched until he was out of sight, then walked slowly to the house. Even before she opened the back door, she knew she wasn't alone so wasn't surprised to find her partner in the kitchen drinking her coffee.

"So you aren't the only one who knows which emotional buttons to push," he observed. And when she stared at him, he added apologetically, "The window is open. Voices carry out here, you know."

"And your hearing is too damned good."

"Sorry about that. In this work it's usually considered a plus."

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sipped, then frowned as another twinge in her temple reminded her she would soon have to find something soft to fall on. "Never mind that now. I have some stuff to tell you and a photograph to show you. And I don't have much time."

"Blackout coming?"

"Yeah."

"A little close to the last one, isn't it?"

"A little."

"Because the visions are more intense than usual? Or because you're home?"

"Christ, who knows." Nell flexed her shoulders, but more in an attempt to ease tension than anything else. "Maybe both. Home isn't exactly a relaxing place to be right now. Anyway, I only have a few minutes."

"And if Tanner gets back here before you come out of it?"

"They never last more than an hour."

"You mean they haven't so far."

Nell got the manila envelope holding Shelby's photo and negative, then joined her partner at the table. "You and Max have a lot in common. You should sit down and talk someday."

"I'll make a note." He accepted the envelope and opened it. "What's this?"

"This may be a problem."

He slid the photo out and stared at it for a moment, then looked at Nell grimly. "There's no may be about it. This is one hell of a problem."

"Yeah. I was afraid of that."

Justin searched George Caldwell's apartment twice from top to bottom. He checked out the closets, tapped walls, tried to pull up the corners of the carpet — all in an effort to find a secret hiding place, which, if it existed, insisted on remaining secret.

"Shit."

"We've already done this, you know."

He looked up with a start to find one of his fellow CID detectives, Kelly Rankin, standing in the open doorway with a quizzical smile on her face. Very conscious of the black notebook in his pocket, he managed a rueful shrug.

"Yeah, but I was hoping I'd find something this time."

"Any luck?"

"Not unless you count the bad kind." He shrugged again.

Kelly nodded. "I keep thinking we've missed something. You too?"

"Hell, I don't know. We must have, right? Otherwise we'd be closer to solving this thing."

"Maybe. Or maybe not, that's what I tell myself. Some crimes never get solved, you know."

Justin took a last look around and then joined her out in the hallway. Closing and locking the apartment door behind them, he said, "And I thought I was feeling down."

"Not down exactly. Just discouraged. We're just spinning our wheels, not getting anywhere. People are beginning to look at us like we're the Keystone Kops or something."

"It's not that bad. We're not making fools of ourselves."

"We're not making our boss very happy either. I don't know if you noticed, but the sheriff is sort of losing his cool about all this."

"He does seem a mite testy."

She grinned at him as they walked down the stairs to leave the building. "Stop trying to sound Southern. It isn't your best voice."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. But I have noticed that

Sheriff Cole has been more than a little tense. Not surprising, you know. Until this series of murders, he had a nice, quiet little town on his hands. No fuss, no bother."

"Being a detective was pretty boring, I hear. Before you and I were hired, they just had the one, Matthew, and he was mostly used as the sheriff's spy."

Justin gave her a look and she grimaced. "You know it's true. Cole keeps tabs on just about everybody in his town, and Matthew came in handy for that. Probably one reason Matthew doesn't seem to have a clue how to investigate one murder, let alone four of them."

"He's doing his share," Justin protested.

"He's doing what he's told, period. Hardly any initiative there. And not much more from any of the deputies either. You and I are the ones out all hours sifting through every bit of info we have and digging for more."

"Well, since we haven't so far dug up much that's proved helpful…"

Kelly shrugged. "Still. Look, Justin, we're both outsiders, new to this town and these people, so maybe we can be a bit more objective than they can. Maybe we can see things a little clearer. All I'm saying is that we should keep our eyes open and maybe not take anything at face value. And watch our backs."

They were standing in the foyer of the apartment building by then, and Justin frowned slightly as he looked at her. "You think the perp is a cop."

"I think too many members of the Lacombe Parish sheriff's department haven't been as… helpful as they might have been. Nothing more than that." She didn't wait for his response, but added, "I'm parked out back. See you later, Justin."

He stood there gazing after her, still frowning. It didn't really surprise him that Kelly had noticed something odd about the investigation, because he was reasonably sure any good cop would have — and she was a good cop. What surprised him was that she had chosen to share that concern.

With him.

Was it only because they were the most recent hires in the department, the least likely to be involved in either the murders themselves or any cover-up in the investigation? Or did Kelly somehow know — or guess — that Justin wasn't quite what he appeared to be?

"Shit," he muttered.

He wasted a minute or two thinking about it, then shrugged and headed out the front door. No good worrying, he supposed. No matter what, Kelly's advice was good — keep his eyes open, and watch his back.

But it wasn't guarding his back he was focused on when he reached his car. It was the stunning redhead sitting on the hood who greeted him with a smile that made him, at least for the moment, forget his unrequited love for Lauren Champagne.

"Hey, Justin. Remember me?"

He cleared his throat. "Hey, Shelby. What's up?"

"Funny you should ask."