by Kay Hooper
“Yes. And then talked him into surrendering his guns once he’d sobered up. I don’t think he would have done anything crazy sober, but drunk is another thing entirely. Drunk makes all kinds of crazy possible.” She paused, then added, “Other gun owners who know him, especially his friends, have been warned against allowing him to borrow one of theirs, no matter how sympathetic they might feel. We have a lot of hunters in the area.”
“He’s the only one with . . . notions?”
“So far he’s the only one who’s voiced them, at least within my hearing. But I can feel people getting edgy. This needs to be over and the killer behind bars before others start eyeing their guns. And having notions.”
Deacon noted her very emotionless voice, and wondered what would happen when Trinity Nichols finally let go of the pressure undoubtedly building inside her. She was clearly a strong woman, and when strong people held their feelings in check too long . . .
He couldn’t decide if he wanted a ringside seat for that or not.
—
THE SHERIFF’S JEEP was easy enough to spot parked in front of a coffee shop, especially since there weren’t a lot of vehicles parked on Main Street, and by mutual consent that’s where DeMarco parked their SUV.
“Because we don’t know how official she wants us to be,” Hollis had remarked. “Bishop said it’s up to her whether we’re just consulting, here to offer a profile or Bureau assets, or to be truly active in the investigation. She might prefer to meet up casually rather than at the sheriff’s office. And besides, I could use some coffee.”
They got out and stretched cramped muscles; even though they had been less than a hundred miles away as the crow flew, they weren’t crows, and the winding mountain roads had taken a toll. Stretching felt good.
A nice, hot bath would feel better, Hollis thought, hoping the downtown hotel where they’d booked rooms would provide an opportunity for that. Later, of course.
They had barely reached the wide sidewalk when the coffee shop’s door opened and the sheriff emerged. Along with a dog—and a familiar man.
“Hey, Deacon,” DeMarco greeted him, calm.
“Reese. Hollis. So it’s you two Bishop sent.”
Before the other two could wonder, Deacon added, “My sister Melanie lives here and called me when Scott Abernathy was murdered. He was . . . a friend. And Melanie was spooked, like most of the town. I didn’t think of it as a case, just supporting family. So it’s only annual leave time for me. But Sheriff Nichols has been kind enough to bring me in . . . unofficially.”
“I still don’t know how official we’re supposed to be,” Hollis complained mildly. “Up to you, Sheriff.”
“Trinity, please. I think we’ll play the question of your status by ear, if you don’t mind. I gather you’re the team Bishop told me to expect today?”
They introduced themselves, and it wasn’t until then that Hollis said. “Beautiful dog. Why is he staring at me?”
He was, Deacon noted with some surprise.
“He’s Braden, my dog.” Trinity frowned down at him. “And the staring is a bit . . . unusual. He usually just focuses on whoever is speaking.” She glanced around to make sure they were pretty much alone on the chilly sidewalk, then said, “You aren’t a telepath, are you?”
“Medium,” Hollis replied without a blink. “With a few bells and whistles.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m assuming you know about the SCU? Hence the question about telepathy?” Hollis’s voice wasn’t low so much as it was utterly casual.
Trinity nodded.
“Well, very few of us do . . . just one thing. One primary thing, which tends to be our strongest ability, but sometimes other things as well.”
“For instance?”
It wasn’t a challenge so much as genuine curiosity, so Hollis responded more openly than she might otherwise have done. “One of my other things is the ability to see auras. The electromagnetic field common to all living things, but as unique as a fingerprint.”
“Unique?”
“Yeah. To the person, but also changing with mood and . . . circumstance. You have a troubled aura, Sheriff—I mean, Trinity. A lot of energy close to you, very positive reds and yellows and some bright blue, which I’m thinking is your natural state, but right now all the colors are brighter than they should be, more intense, and the whole aura is mostly enclosed, tamped down closer to your body than it should be, with heavy, dark blues, almost navy, forming a thin sort of barrier along the outer edges, probably a hell of a lot stronger than it looks. Which in my experience tends to mean either unusual stress or a high degree of natural energy. Which also tells me you have a pretty dandy shield, not so uncommon in small towns, and also that you’re holding in way too much for your future mental or emotional health.” She paused, adding, “I can also heal a bit if you start having headaches. Which you will, holding in that much energy.”
Trinity stared at her for a moment, then drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Well, I asked.”
DeMarco murmured, “She’s nothing if not honest.”
Hollis gave him a look, then shivered and zipped up her fairly light jacket. “What I am right now is cold. I want coffee, and it’s clear we have things to talk about before we see the crime scene. Can we do it inside?”
“I’d suggest the conference room at the station, at least to get things going,” Trinity said, nodding down the block at the building only about four doors away. “More privacy there, which is what I’d prefer. But I’d advise you to get your coffee here. Cop-shop coffee is lousy no matter who makes it. I went through three expensive electric coffeemakers and one very expensive cappuccino machine before I figured that out.”
So it was about fifteen minutes later that the sheriff and her three Special Crimes Unit federal agents—two of them official and one not so much—settled into very comfortable chairs around an oval conference table in the smallish private conference room, all with files and/or tablets before them and coffee from the local coffee shop.
Except for Braden, who had neither files nor coffee, but nevertheless occupied one of the chairs. A nimble feat he managed despite the chair’s tendency to want to swivel.
Intercepting a look from Deacon, Trinity said, “A mind of his own.”
DeMarco was looking at the dog with interest. “Does he usually join you for meetings?”
“Not like this. Usually on his bed over there or the matching one in my office if that’s where I happen to be.” She nodded toward a thick and obviously comfortable dog bed in a corner by some filing cabinets.
“He’s still staring at me,” Hollis noted, curious rather than uncomfortable. She liked dogs, animals in general, really, and they tended to instantly like and trust her—a trait she had in common with Bishop, oddly enough.
Trinity said more than asked, “I don’t suppose you’re picking up anything from him?”
“No. Should I be?”
“I have no idea,” Trinity said frankly.
“Well, he’s alive. There’s that. So I wouldn’t be seeing his spirit. Like all living creatures, he does have an aura.” She studied the pit bull thoughtfully, obviously concentrating as she had when she’d described Trinity’s aura. “Calm. Bluish-green. Huh. Silvery streaks. I don’t see that very often even in people.”
“It means something?”
“Well, bearing in mind that all this is a learn-as-you-go sort of thing, in my experience so far, it seems to indicate positive power—and a kind of primal sensing ability.”
“He is a dog,” DeMarco pointed out.
Hollis looked at her partner, seemed about to say something, but then just nodded.
DeMarco smiled faintly, then looked at the sheriff and said, “One of my extra bells and whistles is something Bishop calls a primal sense, the ability to feel it if a gun or another weapon is pointed at me. Maybe from years in the military at a fairly young age, from being under threat for long stretches of time. Wherever it was born, Holl
is has seen it as a series of silvery streaks in my aura.”
Rather apologetically to the sheriff, Hollis said, “In a unit full of psychics, privacy is sort of at a premium. So we try to respect each other’s boundaries, at least as much as we can. It was up to Reese whether to tell you about his primal sense, at least in part because it’s one of his extra and unique abilities, just like it was up to me to tell you I’m a bit more than just a medium.”
Trinity nodded. “I get that.”
Mildly, DeMarco said, “So is the interest in Braden because he sits up in a chair like people?”
Deacon briskly explained the dog’s role in the investigation so far, including his somewhat mysterious arrival in Sociable.
Neither DeMarco nor Hollis looked much surprised by the information; Trinity had the feeling that very little would ever surprise these people, both because they’d seen too much and because they knew only too well that the world was filled with the inexplicable, much of which they were called on to investigate.
Hell, they lived with the inexplicable every day, apparently.
And at the very least, that made her more grateful that she had elected to call in specialized help. But also more wary.
DeMarco said to his partner, “So no anonymous tips. You should feel better about that.” He glanced at the sheriff, adding, “Too often anonymous tips mean people who quite likely have more information they aren’t willing to share.”
“It was bugging me,” Hollis confessed. “Why not come forward if one of your own neighbors or friends is horribly murdered?”
“Unless you’re somehow involved?” Trinity offered.
“Sometimes. Though more often it’s only protecting personal secrets that have nothing to do with the crime. But it’s something to weed out, and that just gets in the way.”
“True enough,” Trinity agreed. “I’ve run into that sort of thing more than once.”
Getting back to the subject that had sparked the brief discussion about anonymous tips, Hollis looked at DeMarco, her brows rising. “Are you picking up anything from Braden? He’s the telepath, it’s his primary thing,” she explained in an aside to the sheriff.
DeMarco looked at Braden and shrugged. “I’ve never connected to an animal. At least . . . not individually.”
“Then how?” Trinity asked, curious.
When her partner remained silent, Hollis hesitated, obviously thinking about those boundaries and whether this was a good enough reason to cross them, then said, “There was a case a while back during which a number of animals died all at once. Unnaturally.”
“I sensed that,” DeMarco said, somewhat remotely.
Trinity frowned. “You sensed—”
“In my mind I heard them scream.”
Melanie had rapidly talked herself out of believing that she had really seen Scott’s spirit, so she told herself that wasn’t the reason she didn’t want to stay in her apartment.
Alone.
Instead, she went to her usual spot at the Downtown Café for lunch, head high and rather prickly in her determination to face down anyone who so much as gave her a suspicious look or even hinted that she might have either driven a man to kill himself or somehow managed to break his neck herself.
But gossip had other things on its mind that day, and not even Melanie’s uncertain status as Lead Suspect of Something could prevent Lynne Dunbar, the young, most gossipy waitress in town, from spilling all the news even as she poured Melanie’s coffee.
“I heard two, but then somebody said one got here sooner, by himself. Three FBI agents! In Sociable. Everybody’s saying the sheriff called them in, not because she couldn’t’ve solved the murder herself but because it’s just so strange and awful, and maybe even part of something bigger going on that the FBI would know more about. Like those murders up in the mountains, those poor girls? Maybe it’s the same killer, that’s what people are saying. And that’d make sense, wouldn’t it, calling them in because of that?”
Melanie made no attempt to respond or interrupt in any way; she knew too well it would be virtually impossible until Lynne had said everything she wanted to say.
At least for the moment.
“I heard the guy agent who came with his partner is really big and powerful, and drop-dead gorgeous, seriously, seriously hot, like blond-Greek-god hot, and no wedding ring, but a gun. Big gun.”
For just an instant, Melanie forgot all the horror and had to fight her instincts to burst out laughing.
Unaware, Lynne was going on in her single-minded determination to share and speculate. “His partner is a woman, doesn’t look like any kind of cop, even less than the sheriff—taller but really slender, sort of pretty, but with odd eyes, like she’s wearing tinted lenses that stare back at you, and with a funny shine, like they aren’t really a normal, human color, you know?”
She paused, presumably to take a breath.
Melanie merely nodded, wondering if the colorful descriptions in any way resembled reality.
“Not one of them wearing suits or even sunglasses.” Lynne sounded distinctly disappointed by that. “Very casual, all of them. The one that came alone, and not in a black SUV, they say he sat in the coffee shop for a while before the sheriff joined him, just drinking coffee and watching people before anybody knew who he was. Then the sheriff just walked up to his table and sat down, and they were there for a long time. Talking like they knew each other, maybe a cop thing, I dunno.” She frowned. “Nobody’s sure what they were talking about, though, ’cause nobody was close enough. Probably the murders, though.”
“Probably,” Melanie said dryly, even as her mind raced. Dammit, is he here officially? That’s not what I wanted. But maybe inevitable . . . Did Trinity call in the SCU? Why? Why that unit? Because there was more odd about Scott’s murder than even gossip knows about? Did I see Scott’s spirit? Could I have?
She forced her attention back to Lynne.
“Yeah, probably the murders. Anyway, they’re all at the station now. Jeff came in a bit ago on his break, and he said they’re in the conference room with the door shut. And said the sheriff didn’t introduce them to anybody at all, just took them straight back to the conference room. What do you suppose that means, Melanie?”
“That they have a case to investigate, which means they have work to do,” Melanie said, taking advantage of the break. “Which can also be said for you and me. Could I have my usual, please, Lynne? I don’t like to be away from the bank more than an hour.” She lied without a blink.
“Oh, right, sure. Sure.” For just an instant, it was written large on the waitress’s young face her sudden memory that she’d been standing here talking to a Potential Murder Suspect, possibly even the Prime Suspect, but then she pasted on a totally fake pleasant smile, gave the immaculate table a quick wipe, then bustled off to place the order.
And undoubtedly to spread more gossip.
Melanie didn’t have to look around to know that other members of the late lunchtime crowd were watching her now, if they hadn’t been before. Not openly, of course. Only with sidelong glances, curious, speculative. Adding up the few pieces of information they had and coming up with a much more damning total.
That a man was dead, horribly dead.
Mysteriously dead.
That Melanie had known him—and in the biblical sense.
That she had been overheard having an icy “discussion” with him shortly before he had been murdered.
And suddenly, Melanie didn’t feel so brave anymore.
—
EVEN THOUGH HOLLIS had been present—and very actively involved—in that final confrontation at Samuel’s “church” just over a year before,3 she hadn’t talked much to her partner about his much more lengthy and deeper involvement in the investigation and in the church. He hadn’t seemed to want to talk about it, for one thing. And for another, Hollis herself had shied away from what was bound to be a discussion that would undoubtedly open painful memories he really didn’t need to
relive.
Like the mental screams of hundreds of dying animals.
She had been telling the truth when she’d explained to the sheriff about boundaries. SCU team members were careful as a rule not to cross them, because everyone did deserve at least some privacy, and that was hard to come by in their unit.
So Hollis kept her tone calm and steady when she spoke into the rather shocked silence to say, “Obviously, that was an extreme case. To my knowledge, there’s only one telepath in the unit who’s been able to establish a telepathic connection with a dog—”
“I told her about Callie,” Deacon said.
“Did you? Good. Wish she was here. Has anybody thought about inviting her?”
“She’s at Haven,” Deacon told her. “Working with a few of the dogs there. Official status is inactive.”
With a sigh, Hollis said, “Only Bishop would have the nerve to put an agent on the inactive list and still expect that agent to work.”
“In fairness, I gather he’s calling it administrative leave, so she’s still getting paid.” He frowned. “Though how anyone could call working with three dogs administrative beats me.”
Trinity asked, “What’s Haven?”
It was DeMarco who answered. “A kind of civilian sister organization to the SCU, headquartered in New Mexico.”
“I’m surprised the government allows that,” Trinity said.
Deacon grinned faintly. “I sort of doubt anybody asked permission.”
“Bishop’s like that,” Hollis added. “In the course of an investigation he met a billionaire who, sort of like Alexander, had at a fairly young age already conquered the known world—in his case the business world—and wasn’t finding many challenges left. By the end of the investigation, the billionaire had a very psychic wife, a fascination with all things paranormal, and had been challenged to build the civilian sister organization that came to be known as Haven.”
Trinity blinked. “I would imagine it comes in handy.”
“Oh, yeah. Licensed private investigators, which all Haven operatives are, can go places and do things we federal cops can’t. They work independently of the FBI, though we’ve had occasion to team up with one or more of their operatives from time to time.