Stealing Shadows

by Kay Hooper

  “I hope that’s a good sign rather than a bad one.”

  Cassie was saved from having to reply when he kissed her, and her response was even more passionate, because this talk of baggage and walls had reminded her that fate would seldom be denied.

  When the phone rang again, she could have sworn aloud, and Ben did. And he was the one who answered it—with considerable annoyance that was heightened by his suspicion that it was another crank call.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Matt asked, and then went on immediately. “Never mind. Sorry to intrude on your love life, but we have this killer running around. You may remember.”

  “I do,” Ben told him. “What’s up?”

  “A couple of maybe interesting developments. I think we should have a council of war. Can you and Cassie come to the office?”

  Ben resisted the impulse to say no. With Cassie in his arms, her slender body pressed fully against his, it was more than a little difficult to think about anything else.

  “Ben?”

  Recalling that the killer knew who Cassie was and posed a huge threat to her safety made him answer, “We’re on our way.”

  “Be careful on the roads. Slippery as hell out there.”

  “Right.”

  As he hung up the phone, Cassie said dryly, “I gather we’re leaving?”

  “Yes, dammit.” Ben held her against him for a moment longer, then eased away. And it didn’t take a psychic to see his reluctance. “Matt wants to talk to us. And he’d better have something important to say.”

  Cassie sighed. “I’ll get my jacket.”

  “Abby?” Hannah Payne stood in the doorway of one of the classrooms and looked in to see Abby collecting the lesson books left behind by her Sunday school class.

  “Hi, Hannah. What’s up?”

  “Kate and Donna are handling the nursery during preaching, so I’m free. Do you need me to do anything?”

  “There’s nothing I can think of—unless you want to finish up in here while I go upstairs and make sure the music is in place.”

  “Sure, happy to.”

  “Okay, thanks. See you upstairs.”

  Alone in the basement room, Hannah gathered the lesson books and put them away in a cabinet, then straightened the chairs and picked up a pair of gloves somebody had dropped. Men’s gloves, black leather, and very nice. She turned one in her hands, studying it, wondering if Joe would like a pair for his birthday the following month. He didn’t usually wear gloves, but…

  The wetness she felt on two of the fingers stained her own hand pink. Staring, Hannah felt a chill of unease. Just paint, probably, or… something like that.

  A sound from the doorway spun her around with her heart in her throat.

  “What have you got there?” he asked.

  “No luck, huh?” Matt asked.

  “No, sorry.” This time Cassie and Ben were on the leather sofa while Bishop occupied one of the visitors’ chairs in the sheriff’s office. Cassie had just attempted once more to contact the killer’s mind, without success.

  Matt shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  “I’ll try again later,” Cassie said.

  He nodded. “Well, like I told you two, we have a bit more on the killer—we think. He’s collecting trophies. And maybe he killed Ivy Jameson out of spite. We’ve got a growing list of people Ivy pissed off in the weeks before she was killed, so it looks like the trick there is going to be narrowing the list to something manageable.”

  The music in Cassie’s head was beginning to madden her, but she said, “Matt, remember what I told you yesterday, what Lucy Shaw said to me?”

  “I remember. That somebody was the devil.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Not much, I have to say. She’s on the shady side of crazy, Cassie, and has been for more than ten years.”

  “What about her son?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is there—does he have any connection to any of the victims?” She rubbed her forehead irritably.

  “Russell? Not that I know of.”

  Almost to herself she muttered, “He had a jacket on yesterday, so I didn’t see his wrists… but the hands could have been right. I think.”

  Ben was watching her closely. “But you said you didn’t see anything in Lucy’s mind you could identify except kittens.”

  “No, I didn’t. It’s just a feeling.” She returned his gaze, frowning. “I’ve missed something, I know I have. And there was something about meeting Lucy and her son that’s really bothering me. Something I saw—or didn’t see. Or just didn’t understand.”

  Ben looked at the sheriff. “Who’s their doctor, Matt, do you know?”

  “Munro, I think. Why?”

  “Will he be in church?”

  Matt shook his head. “After doing that autopsy first thing this morning, I figure he’ll be at his desk drinking straight scotch. What do you want me to ask him?”

  “If Russell Shaw ever tried to commit suicide.”

  Matt pursed his lips, then reached for the phone.

  Bishop, who had heard Lucy Shaw’s story the previous day, said to Cassie, “Serial killers are rarely insane in any clinical sense, so it’s highly unlikely he could have inherited a mental illness from his mother.”

  “That isn’t what I’m thinking.”

  “What, then?”

  “Ever since Ben told me about her, I’ve wondered what it was that triggered Lucy’s illness. And after meeting her, I don’t think she has Alzheimer’s, or senility, or anything like that. I think something happened to her, some kind of shock that shattered her mind.”

  Ben said, “Such as discovering that she might have spawned a psychopath in the shape of her son?”

  “Could be.” Cassie rubbed her forehead again.

  “The music again?”

  “Yes, dammit.”

  “Music?” Bishop was still watching her. “You’re hearing music in your mind?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t gone crazy, so don’t get your hopes up.”

  Matt hung up the phone and said, “Doc’s going to check his records. He made noises about confidentiality, but if he finds what we’re looking for, he’ll call back.”

  Bishop said to Cassie, “How long have you been hearing the music?”

  “Off and on since yesterday morning.”

  “Since you woke up after the last contact with the killer’s mind? After he caught you there?”

  Cassie nodded slowly. “Yes. Since then.”

  Her head hurt. There was something over her head, her face, some dark material. For an instant the fear of smothering was uppermost in her mind, but then she realized that her wrists were bound behind her back. She was sitting on something cold and hard, and behind her was… She made her fingers explore hesitantly, and identified what felt like exposed pipe, cold and impossible to budge. Her wrists were bound together on the other side of the pipe, with a belt she thought. That wouldn’t budge either, though she tried. And—

  She heard the music first. Muffled by the bag over her head, the tinkling sound nevertheless identified it as coming from a music box. And it was playing… Swan Lake. Behind it, beyond it, was another sound, a muffled roaring sound that she knew she ought to be able to identify but couldn’t.

  That realization had barely registered in her mind, when she heard another sound, the faint scuffling of shoes against a rough floor, and she understood with a jolt of terror that she was not alone. He was there.

  Instinctively, in total panic, she wrenched against the belt binding her wrists, succeeding in doing nothing except hurting herself. And drawing his attention.

  “Oh, so you’re awake, are you?”

  “Please,” she heard herself say shakily. “Please don’t hurt me. Don’t—”

  The bag was jerked off her head, and she blinked in the sudden wash of light. At first all she saw were bare bulbs hanging down and, across the room, some hulking machinery
with a small glass window that showed a fire inside.

  Afire?

  “I’m so glad you’re awake.” His voice was incongruously cheerful.

  She looked up at him, focused on his face, and felt nothing but uncomprehending surprise. “You?”

  “I just love the first moment of astonishment,” he said, then bent down and slapped her across the face brutally with the flat of his big hand. “And the first moment of fear.”

  “Could the music be coming from him?” Bishop asked.

  “He isn’t psychic, not yet,” Cassie objected, “so how could he be sending me anything?”

  “Maybe he isn’t sending it. Maybe he’s put it in his mind—the way any person might recite a rhyme or count or calculate—in order to block out something. You. Maybe you’ve been touching his mind all along, and he’s fighting to keep you out.”

  “Is that possible?” Ben asked her.

  “I don’t know. I suppose so. It might be a clever way to keep me out without expending much effort, distracting me with the music.”

  Matt said, “Does that mean you might be able to get through now?”

  “I can try.”

  She did try, but knowledge that the killer could be using that endless tune to distract her was no help at all. “He has solid walls,” she said, opening her eyes with a sigh. “And I don’t understand that. There’s no way he could have built them so quickly, not to protect himself from a recently perceived threat. And he didn’t have them earlier, or I wouldn’t have connected to him the way I did.”

  The phone rang then, and Matt answered it quickly. He said hello, then “yeah” a couple of times, his eyes narrowing. It was a short conversation, and when he hung up after a brief thanks, he was grim.

  “What?” Ben demanded.

  “Russell Shaw never tried to commit suicide as far as Doc Munro knows.”

  “But?” Ben asked, hearing the word in his friend’s voice.

  “But his son did. Mike Shaw apparently slit his wrists about twelve years ago, when he was only fourteen.”

  “His son?” Cassie echoed. “Lucy’s grandson?”

  “Yeah. The mother died in childbirth with Mike; Russell and Lucy raised him. He lived with them until about a year ago, then moved into one of those shacks out by the old mill about a mile from town.”

  “Is there any chance I could have met him?” Cassie asked Ben.

  Grimly he said, “A good chance, though you probably wouldn’t have paid much attention. Mike Shaw is the first-shift counterman at the drugstore.”

  “I’ve met him,” Bishop said. “He struck me as having a ghoulish interest in the murders.”

  “He’d be off on Sundays,” Cassie mused, recalling that the drugstore was closed then.

  “And one other day.” Ben looked at Matt. “Can we find out if he was off on Friday at the time the Ramsay girl was taken?”

  “Yeah, easy enough once church lets out and his boss is back home, but…” Matt hunted through the file folders on his desk and opened one of them. “I seem to recall… oh, shit. Bingo.”

  “What?” Ben asked quickly.

  “Mike Shaw is one of the people her mother mentioned had a disagreement with Ivy Jameson a few days before she was killed. Seems she ate at the drugstore and wasn’t at all pleased with Mike’s cooking. Ripped him to shreds—as only Ivy could—in front of his boss and half a dozen customers.”

  Bishop said, “I would say that probably upset him quite a bit.”

  “He’s the right age,” Ben noted. “And plenty strong enough physically.”

  Matt frowned. “Say we find out he was off on Friday. Does that give us enough to search his place? Will Judge Hayes sign a warrant, Ben?”

  “In this case? Yes,” Ben said. “He’ll sign a warrant.”

  “Mike, why are you doing this?” She kept her voice as steady as possible, even though she had never been so terrified in her life.

  He made a “tsk” sound and shook his head. “Because I can, of course. Because I want to.” His attention was caught by the slowing of the music box, and he walked quickly across the concrete floor to a heavy old table where the box was sitting. He picked it up and wound it, then set it back on the table. “There,” he murmured to himself.

  There was an old iron cot a few feet away from her against one cinder-block wall, and she glanced toward it, fear spiraling. Surely he didn’t mean to… “Mike—”

  “I want you to shut up now.” His tone was pleasant. “Just shut up and watch.” He opened a battered leather duffel bag that was also on the table and began removing things from it.

  A butcher knife.

  A hatchet.

  A power drill.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  “I wonder if there’s a receptacle down here,” he muttered, staring around with a scowl. “Dammit. Should have checked that.”

  “Mike—”

  “Oh, look—there’s a receptacle.” He turned his head and smiled at her. “Right behind you.”

  • • •

  His intercom buzzed, and Matt reached for the button impatiently. “Yeah?”

  “Sheriff, a lady named Hannah Payne is on the line for you,” Sharon Watkins said. “She says it’s important and—I think you’d better talk to her.”

  Sharon had more experience in the department than he did, so Matt tended to respect her judgment. “All right.”

  “Line four.”

  “Thanks, Sharon.” He punched the correct line and then turned on the speaker. “Sheriff Dunbar. You wanted to speak to me, Miss Payne?”

  “Oh—yes, Sheriff, I did.” Hers was a young voice, and uncertain, and also very frightened.

  Matt consciously gentled his own voice. “What about, Miss Payne?”

  “Well, it’s… Joe came into the classroom when I found them, and he says I probably shouldn’t bother you, and on a Sunday and all, but I’m just so worried, Sheriff! They were just there, in the classroom like he forgot them, and I think there’s blood on them and—and now she’s gone!”

  Patient, Matt said, “Start at the beginning, Miss Payne. Where are you, and what did you find?”

  “Oh, I’m at the church, Sheriff—Oak Creek Baptist. And I found a pair of black gloves in one of the Sunday school classrooms. A man’s gloves, and I think they have blood on them, because they’re all wet and it’s coming off pink on my hands.”

  Tension crept into Matt’s voice. “I see. Is there a label in the gloves, Miss Payne? Do you have any idea who they might belong to?”

  “Well, that’s why I’m worried. Because the initials inside say MS, all nicely embroidered the way Miss Lucy can do, and he’s in her Sunday school class, so it must be Mike. But he isn’t upstairs in preaching, because I checked. And she’s gone too, when she was supposed to play the organ, and I know she wouldn’t have left without getting somebody else to play, not when she told me she was going to check on the music—”

  “Hannah.” Matt’s voice was insistent. “Who’s gone? Who are you talking about?”

  “Abby. Mrs. Montgomery.”

  NINETEEN

  “See, you really shouldn’t have been mean to me, Abby,” Mike said gently.

  “Mean to you? Mike, when was I ever mean to you?” The only clear thought Abby had was to keep him talking, to stall, delay the inevitable. She had no idea what time it was, how long before Matt came to pick her up and found her missing from church. How would he find her in this place—wherever it was? A basement, she thought, but where was it? There was nothing familiar that she could see, no sight or sound to tell her what building loomed above this dim and musty-smelling room.

  “That loan.” He picked up the butcher knife and held it point up to study the shiny blade. “The loan I needed to get that cool ’ninety-five Mustang back before Christmas. You really should have given me the money, Abby.”

  She didn’t bother to explain income versus debt to him. Instead, she said strongly, “I’m sorry, Mike.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, sure you are. Now.”

  She swallowed hard, almost hypnotized by the way he kept turning the blade of the butcher knife. Keep talking. Just keep talking. “What about Jill Kirkwood? How was she mean to you, Mike?”

  “She laughed at me. Her and Becky, they both laughed at me. I saw them.” He put the knife down for a moment to once more wind the music box, then picked up the knife and frowned at it.

  “How do you know they were talking about you, Mike?”

  His head snapped around with the speed of a striking cobra, and his young, pleasant face was twisted into an ugly mask of bitter hate. “Can’t you hear good? I saw them. Heads together, giggling. Of course they were talking about me. Laughing at me. But they’re not laughing now, are they, Abby? And I bet you wish you’d loaned me that money now, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Mike, I do.”

  Matt’s fear was a palpable force in the room, and it was almost impossible for Cassie to close out his emotions, but she tried.

  “Music,” she murmured, her eyes closed. “I keep getting flashes of a music box. I think he’s playing it, but—Damn. Damn. I can’t get through.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Matt said hollowly.

  “Can you reach Abby?” Ben asked quietly.

  “Not with her walls.”

  “Even now?”

  “Especially now. They’ve been built up over years, over a lifetime, designed to protect the mind and spirit, so the habit is to withdraw even more thoroughly inside them when there’s trouble. Damn. If I can just find a way past the music…”

  It was Bishop who said, “Don’t try to get past it. Let it carry you in. Concentrate on the music box.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at him a moment, then shut them and concentrated fiercely. “The music… the music… the box… I can see it. There are two dancers twirling around each other, bobbing….”

  Abby looked at the music box because it terrified her so much to look at the knife he held. It was one of those cheap little music boxes that tended to be gifts early in a little girl’s life, cardboard covered with ribbed pink paper that was stained and faded. The lid was mirrored on the inside, and the mirror was cracked in at least three places. In the box between two removable velvet-covered trays two tiny dancer figurines bobbed and twirled around each other in jerky accompaniment to the tinkling music.