Whisper of Evil

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Nell wasn't sure she would be able to tap into anything at all with both Ethan and Max so near, the tension between them unexpressed but obvious. And even without that, given her druthers she would have avoided trying to use her abilities again so soon after the trauma of this morning's vision. But she was more conscious than ever of time ticking away, and she knew she couldn't afford to wait.

"So how does this work?" Ethan asked when they had reached the airy, light-filled master bedroom.

Nell stood in the center near the foot of the bed, looking around, and answered absently, "I concentrate and try to tap into whatever energies and memories this room might hold."

"And we stand very still and don't bother you?" She looked at him and smiled. "Something like that." Max said, "Are you sure you're up to this, Nell?"

"I'm fine." She didn't give him a chance to question further or protest, but simply closed her eyes and began to concentrate, forcing herself to drop her shields and open herself up, to begin to reach out.

Since Peter Lynch had died in this room more than eight months before, and since his death had been sudden and apparently without warning, Nell really didn't expect to pick up much from that event. She had discovered that she seldom saw anything of an actual death scene, a fact that both relieved and puzzled her.

But she often got something of the minutes before or after, depending on the violence or intensity of emotion involved, and since she was concentrating as specifically as she could on Peter Lynch and his death, she expected to see something of that.

Instead…

It was initially difficult to reach out, as if she had to push her way through something, and she was dimly aware of using more energy or energy of a different kind to do that. Finally, she felt that distinctive time-out-of-sync sensation, but veiled again, oddly distant, and she was uneasy about that even before she opened her eyes and found herself in a different room entirely, a living room.

A completely unfamiliar room.

Nell looked around, trying to figure out where she was as well as find something to mark time, something to tell her when this was. An open magazine lay facedown on the coffee table, and when she stepped closer, she saw that it was dated January of the previous year. Most people read magazines the month they arrived, didn't they?

She stood looking around, uneasy. Where was she? And why was she here? What she saw was definitely a vision: The edges were blurred, softened, her attention as always directed to the center. But there was something peculiar about it, about the sensations of it, so much so that Nell felt a chill of real fear. Her first instinct was to try and fight her way out of the vision, but both an innate curiosity and an even deeper need to understand the limits of her own abilities made her hesitate. And in that moment of hesitation, she saw Hailey stalk into the room, obviously upset.

Ethan was right behind her.

"What, I'm not supposed to be pissed about it?" he demanded, grabbing her arm and swinging her around to face him just as they came abreast of Nell.

"No, you're not. You have no right, Ethan, and we both know it."

"No right? I've been in your bed for two months — that doesn't give me the right to get just a mite upset when I find out you've also been sleeping with Peter Lynch?"

"I told you, it's none of your business. We don't have a relationship, Ethan, we fuck." She pronounced the harsh word with complete deliberation, even enjoyment. "Period. You have fun, I have fun, that's it. No strings, expectations, or obligations on either side."

Ethan didn't seem to be buying that; his face was tight, eyes grim. "Not even respect, huh?"

Hailey laughed, and the smile she gave him was incredulous. "Respect? What does respect have to do with anything we do together? If we did it outside in the dirt instead of in a bed, we wouldn't be the slightest bit different from two stray dogs meeting up when one of them's in heat."

"So which one of us was in heat?" he asked roughly. "Which one just had an itch that needed scratching?"

Hailey laughed and jerked her arm free of his grasp.

"Me, of course. I'm always in heat, didn't you know? Hadn't you heard? Jesus, Ethan, don't try to pretend you weren't convinced I was a whore long before you came on to me. And what about the scars left by a whip on my back? The cigarette burns? You never even asked about those, did you? Because it's just what you expected to find when you got my clothes off, isn't it?"

"Hailey —"

"Whores are always marked, aren't they, Ethan? Not with a scarlet A, maybe, but we're always marked. So men like you won't feel guilty kicking us out of your beds before dawn."

"Goddammit, I never asked you to leave. Never."

"You didn't have to ask. I knew what you wanted. I always know what men want." She began to turn away from him abruptly, obviously on the point of storming out of the apartment — but then froze.

Nell found herself staring into the widening eyes of her sister and had the sudden, terrifying knowledge that Hailey saw her. That she was actually, physically there, in the past.

No longer just a witness.

"Some detective I am," Justin muttered. "I don't even have a clue what I'm supposed to be looking for."

However reluctantly, Shelby had to agree with him, at least about their fruitless search. "Lots of births in this parish in the last forty years. Listen, are you sure there was nothing in George's desk at the bank to explain why he was so interested in these old records?"

Justin leaned forward to drop several pages of birth listings onto the stack on the coffee table, then stretched absently. "There was nothing I could see. Christ, look at the time. Didn't we just have breakfast?"

Shelby heard her stomach rumble and grinned at him. "My stomach says the donuts were hours ago. Why don't we really give the gossips something to talk about and go to the cafe for lunch?"

"Aren't you tired? We've been poring over these damned records for more hours than I want to think about."

"I'm a natural night owl, and it's not so unusual for me to skip a night's sleep if I get involved in something." She shrugged. "Anyway, since tomorrow's Sunday, we can both sleep as late as we want, so what the hell. You did say this is your weekend off, right?"

"Officially. Sheriff Cole has us all working overtime, but he's insisted everybody gets at least one weekend a month off the clock, and this one's mine. So unless another body turns up, nobody'll expect to see me at the office."

"Do you want to go home and crash? Or lunch at the cafe? Maybe we can figure out a way to find some clue as to what George was looking for in these birth records."

Justin had his doubts, but he was also enjoying Shelby's company and was far too wired to even think about sleep, so agreed that lunch sounded like a good idea.

It was fairly busy in town on this Saturday afternoon, but the lunch crowd at the cafe was already thinning out and they had no difficulty getting a somewhat secluded booth near the back.

Shelby, perfectly aware of several covert glances, managed not to laugh, but did say to Justin when the waitress had left with their order, "Life in a fishbowl, that's Silence."

Casual, Justin said, "Is it the fact that you're with me they're interested in, or the fact that I'm with you?"

"Both, I'd guess. You're a very visible part of the investigation, so everybody's naturally interested in what you do. As for me, well, let's just say I seldom have lunch with handsome men."

"That's a surprise. And thank you."

She laughed half under her breath. "Since I'm usually wandering around town with my cameras and probably see a lot of stuff I wouldn't otherwise see, I know most of the men in Silence very well. Too well, I guess. Makes it difficult for me to think of any of them as boyfriends or bed partners."

"Because your candid camera caught them being themselves?" Justin guessed shrewdly.

"Something like that. It's amazing how many people seem to imagine themselves in a bubble of privacy even when they're out in public."

Justin didn't ask for any of the details of what she'd seen, but he did wonder if even one of the hopeful suitors Shelby had undoubtedly turned away had the slightest idea why she found them unacceptable. But before he could say anything, she was cheerfully supplying some of the details he would just as soon not have had.

"I mean, it's hard to blame anybody for scratching an itch even in public, or dealing with a wedgie — because you really have to, after all — but nose-picking and cleaning out one's ears really crosses the line, you know? And I actually watched one guy clipping his nose hairs with one of those little battery-powered clippers. I found it extremely unsettling. And not at all attractive."

Justin laughed. "Obviously you're going to have to lower your standards."

"Or put away my cameras," she agreed ruefully. "Not that I'm prepared to do either. Which makes it a good thing that I don't at all mind being alone most of the time."

"Well, for God's sake, tell me if I do anything disgusting, okay?"

Shelby grinned at him. "I don't think you will."

He eyed her uncertainly for a moment while Emily poured coffee for them, and when the waitress had gone again he said, "You have pictures of me, don't you? Candid shots?"

"Just a few."

"Jesus." He tried to remember if he had done anything that he, if not she, would consider embarrassing, but found it all but impossible to recall movements or gestures that probably were unconscious anyway.

In a more serious tone, Shelby said, "One of the reasons I decided to approach you about the investigation was that I had watched you on and off these last weeks. It's obvious you're committed to your job and that you do it well. You've always been very intent, very focused on what you're doing at any given moment, and yet you always pay attention to the people around you."

"I didn't see you and your cameras," he pointed out wryly.

"That's because I didn't want you to see me. Not that I was spying on you or anything like that, it's just that I've developed the knack of watching people without their awareness."

"The way you watched Sheriff Cole," Justin said, deciding to turn the conversation in a less personal direction.

Shelby followed agreeably. "Exactly. Remember, I've been watching Ethan Cole for years, so when I paid closer attention to him after the first murder, I could see he was behaving differently. For a long time, there was nothing I could put my ringer on, but when I grouped all the photographs of him together, that's when I found what I showed you. These."

In her enthusiasm, Shelby reached into the big canvas tote bag she always carried and pulled out the manila envelope she had showed Justin the day before.

"These pictures mean something, Justin, and we both know it."

Alarmed, he glanced quickly around the cafe and found, as he expected to, that several people had noted Shelby's actions. To make matters worse, before he could stop her she opened the envelope and drew out the photos, handing them across the table to him.

"Take another look at them," she invited him.

Justin knew that making a big fuss would only draw more attention to them, but as he bent his head and looked at the pictures, he said under his breath, "I really wish you hadn't pulled these out, Shelby. Not here and now."

"Why not? Everybody in this town has seen me showing off my pictures, so there's nothing odd about it. They'll probably assume I'm just showing you pictures I took of you."

"Yeah, but if the wrong person is watching — or even hears about it — it could make him suspicious. Might make him think your candid camera caught him doing something he really, really doesn't want the law to know about."

After a moment, Shelby said, "Okay, dumb of me. But the damage, if there is any, is done, so you might as well look at them."

Unwilling to betray any undue interest to those watching eyes, Justin leafed through the photos quickly and then handed them back to her with a faint smile for the benefit of the observers. "I agree they could be important. But the sheriff talks to lots of people in this town every day; odds are he would have talked to each of the murdered men as well."

Shelby put the photographs away once again in her bag and tried to keep her expression neutral. She wasn't really afraid, but Nell had warned her to be very, very careful, and she was pretty sure Justin was right about this being a mistake. Still, since it was done, there was nothing to do but push on. "Yeah, but if you'd checked out the back of each of the photos, you would have found a date penciled in. I pulled all the negatives and checked each shot."

"And?"

"And Ethan talked to each of the murdered men the day before that man was murdered. What are the odds of that happening, Justin?"

"Long," he said slowly. "Very long."

"Oh, my God," Hailey whispered, for once clearly shocked. Seeing the image of her sister — and Nell had no idea how she appeared but guessed she looked ghostly — watching what was an intimate and disturbing argument between Hailey and a lover had to be a deeply unsettling experience, especially since Nell had been gone more than ten years at that time.

What could Hailey have thought then? That she was experiencing something fairly common in the annals of the paranormal, a visitation from a recently deceased family member? Had she thought Nell had come to her at the moment of her death, to say good-bye?

Part of Nell wanted to try to say something to Hailey, to assure her that she was not dead, merely — what? Merely visiting from the future?

It lasted only a moment, because even in her hesitation Nell was too shocked not to instinctively draw back, to fight to get herself out of the vision and back to the present. What she saw dimmed almost immediately, Hailey's shocked face vanishing in a darkening haze that grew darker and darker, and for a scary, seemingly infinite period of time Nell felt herself swallowed up by something black and immense.

Something that wasn't as empty as it should have been, because she wasn't alone there. Someone… something… was nearby, watching, nearly touching her… reaching for her…

Desperate, driven by an overwhelming certainty that if it touched her she would die, Nell fought to wrench herself free of the smothering darkness. It seemed to take every ounce of will and energy she possessed, the way an extreme physical effort demanded that the very fibers of muscles tear themselves apart in the struggle to do what was demanded of them.

And then she was free of the darkness, the past, back in the present with a suddenness that was almost as frightening as the vision itself had been. A blinding pain exploded in her head and she heard herself cry out.

She had never in her life had a headache like this one. The pain was incredible, as if something was trying to bore its way into her brain or out of it, something hot and ominous —

"Nell."

"Evil," she murmured as she opened her eyes. At first, all she saw was darkness, but it lightened rapidly until she was staring at a dark blue shirt and black leather jacket.

"Nell, for Christ's sake —"

She could dimly feel Max's hands gripping her upper arms, and when she looked up at him she saw that he was pale and grim-eyed. It wasn't until he reached to grasp her wrists that she realized both her own hands were pressed to either side of her face, hard, almost as if she were trying to… keep something in.

"It's not a blackout this time, is it?" Max asked, gently pulling her hands away from her face.

"Umm… no," she said finally, her voice hardly more than a whisper, because anything louder hurt. "Dizzy. I think… I think I'd better sit down for a minute."

Max guided her a few steps to a bench at the foot of the Lynches' bed. It was only then that she saw Ethan, leaning back against the dresser with his arms crossed over his chest- He was expressionless, but he was also a bit pale, just as Max was.

Nell managed a shaky laugh. "I guess I put on quite a show, huh?" She kept her voice quiet.

"Well, you could use some glitter or neon lights to jazz things up, but the dead silence and thousand-yard stare were pretty goddamned effective." Ethan looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes you were a zombie."

"What?"

Max sat down beside her. "I've been trying for the last ten to bring you out of it."

"I suggested a slap," Ethan offered, "but Max said no."

"Why were you in so deep?" Max asked Neil, ignoring the other man's comment.

The dizziness had passed, but Nell's head still hurt and it was difficult to think clearly. "It… I… I wasn't here."

"Funny, it looked like you were."

"Ethan, shut the hell up, will you please? Nell, what are you talking about? If you weren't here, then where?"

"Yeah, tell us where," Ethan invited.

If she had been granted a few minutes of peace and quiet in which to think, Nell might have made a different choice. But with Max's insistence and Ethan's rather mocking attitude added to the throbbing pain in her head, she acted on impulse.

"I'll be happy to tell you where," she said, staring straight at the sheriff. "As soon as you tell us how long your affair with Hailey lasted."

The silence was acute and went on for several beats, with Ethan staring back at her without a blink. Then finally, slowly, he said, "She told you."

"I haven't communicated in any way with my sister for nearly twelve years, Ethan. And nobody else knew, did they? Hailey insisted on secrecy."

"I sure as hell didn't know," Max murmured.

Ethan glanced at him, then returned his gaze to Nell. "Yeah, she insisted on secrecy. Never would tell me why. No reason for us to hide it, after all. We were both over twenty-one and free. My marriage was over by then, and she wasn't seeing anybody else. At least not publicly. And it only lasted a couple of months."

"So how did you find out about her and Peter Lynch?" Nell asked. At first, she didn't think he was going to answer, but finally he did.

"I think she wanted me to find out. We were at my place and she needed something from her purse, I forget what. Asked me to get it for her. The purse had a zippered inner pocket that was open, with a photograph sticking up out of it. It was a shot of her and Peter." His face twisted slightly. "They were playing some kind of sex game. She was dressed up to look like — a schoolgirl. I guess because he liked them young."

Nell had seen too much of Hailey's sexual exploits by now to be much shocked, but she did feel a jab of pain for her sister. Something about the way Ethan spoke of her said it could have been a serious relationship with him, maybe even a lasting relationship. Nell wondered if Hailey had known that, if she had deliberately destroyed what might have been.

And if so, why? Because she felt undeserving? Because by that point there had already been far too many scars on her body and soul from the games of sadistic men? Or because she had known that any real relationship was impossible while Adam Gallagher lived?

Steadily, Nell said to Ethan, "How long have you known that Hailey is the common factor in these murders?"

"I don't know it's true even now," he said immediately. "As far as I know, she was never involved with George Caldwell."

"But the others? Lynch, Ferrier, Patterson. You knew she had been involved with each of them."

He hesitated. "Like I said, I found out about Lynch long before he was killed. Long before Hailey left. As for the other two… Ferrier got drunk and bragged to me once that he'd had a few enjoyable nights with Hailey over the years. Not an affair, apparently, just sex now and then, whenever neither of them was involved with anybody else."

"And Patterson?"

Ethan shrugged. "Once I saw all that shit in his basement, I knew Hailey had probably been involved with him."

"Because of her scars? The whip marks, the cigarette burns?"

He flinched. "Yeah."

Even with her head pounding, Nell was focused very intently on the sheriff, trying to get a sense of him that would tell her, once and for all, if she could trust him, could eliminate him as a suspect. His involvement with Hailey made him even more of a suspect, at least on the face of it and assuming Hailey was indeed the common factor in the murders, but Nell had a hunch it was a lot more complicated than that.

She didn't like exposing his private life to others, even to Max — who, for all his anger and the longstanding bitterness between him and Ethan, would never pass judgment on his stepbrother's life or choices — but she didn't feel she could back off, not now. She had to know.

"You never asked her about the scars. Why?"

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Because I saw it, Ethan. I saw the fight you had with Hailey more than a year ago. Was it January? February? In a living room, I'm guessing your apartment. You had obviously just found out about her relationship with Lynch, and you were upset. Hailey was… pretty brutal in what she said to you. But she made a point of saying you'd never questioned her about the scars. She obviously thought she knew the reason why, but I'm guessing she was wrong. Wasn't she?"

For the first time, Ethan was clearly shaken. "Jesus. You talk like you were there."

"I was. Just now, I was. Answer the question, Ethan. Why did you never ask Hailey about the scars?"

"Because I thought I knew how she got them."

"You thought it was our father."

He nodded, the movement as jerky as his voice was. "It made sense, at least to me. Both your mother and you running off like that, so obviously scared of him, Hailey's scars… even the way she talked about Adam, as if she worshiped him — and hated his guts at the same time. It was all just so goddamned extreme. None of the scars was recent as far as I could tell, and I thought — I believed — she had been abused as a child. I tried to get her to talk about her childhood, but she wouldn't. Got touchy as hell. She wouldn't talk about her life at all to me and made it plain that if I pushed I'd be pushing her right out the door. So I stopped trying."

Max stirred slightly but said nothing, and when Nell glanced at him she realized that since he knew neither of the Gallagher girls had been sexually abused by their father, he was wondering about the visit to the Patterson basement and what Nell had seen there.

She looked back at Ethan, hesitated, then abruptly made up her mind about him. Every instinct and every sense she could lay claim to told her that Ethan Cole was not a murderer, and if she couldn't trust those instincts and senses then she needed to find a new line of work. Quietly, she said, "Our father never abused us that way. Hailey got the scars from Patterson. She was — very young when she was first involved with him."

"How young?" Max asked, obviously still recalling Nell's shock in that basement.

Reluctantly, she said, "It looked like — twelve or thirteen. No older than that. Just about the time we lost our mother."

Ethan looked a little sick, but he was enough of a cop to catch the significance of what Nell said. "Looked like? You saw that too?"

"Yeah. I… paid a quiet little visit to the Patterson house."

"And saw the basement."

Nell nodded. "What I tapped into there showed me their… relationship."

After a moment and with no conviction in his voice, Ethan said, "It's all bullshit. You couldn't possibly have seen that any more than you could have seen Hailey with me."

"I couldn't possibly. Except that I did."

"It doesn't even make sense," he protested, his voice rising. "You told me yourself that what you see are the memories of a place. I was never with Hailey here, so how could you — what the hell did you call it? — tap into any scene between her and me?"

"It's a good question," Max noted quietly.

"And I wish I had a good answer." Nell sighed. "I don't know how I was able to do that, Ethan. Maybe because I was concentrating on Peter Lynch and you were here — and I followed that link to a scene between you and Hailey when you were discussing Lynch."

"Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense," Ethan snapped.

"Look, I'm sorry I can't tie it all up nice and neat for you. But the truth is that we're only just beginning to understand how psychic ability works, and there are still a hell of a lot more questions than answers. I can't explain how I was able to see what I saw — I only know that I saw it. That I was there, in the past, a witness to that scene between you and Hailey."

"Which," Max pointed out, still quiet, "is something new for you. Right? That the memory you tapped into belonged to a different place?"

She nodded. "It felt different right from the beginning. I had to… push harder, use my energy in a different way. Maybe I pushed myself too far somehow."

"And right into Ethan's memories?" Max offered.

Ethan swore. "Well, if that isn't creepy as hell, I don't know what is. Even if it were possible. Which it isn't."

Remembering her sister's shocked gaze, Nell was tempted to explain to them both just how different this "vision" had been. But her head was pounding and she was tired — and there was still one more thing she had to do today.

She got to her feet, not protesting Max's help or objecting to the grasp he maintained on her arm. And when the wave of dizziness passed, she said, "Ethan, you'll have to lose the deputy. There's something I have to show you." She looked up at Max. "Something I have to show both of you."