Whisper of Evil tbscus-5

by Кей Хупер

  "Was it my fault that you left?"

  "How could it have been? I didn't even see you that day."

  "Was it my fault?" he repeated steadily.

  "No."

  After a moment, Max settled more firmly into his chair, folding his arms over his chest in an attitude that was so clearly the picture of a man courteously and with inhuman patience waiting for explanations that she had to smile.

  "You're about as subtle as neon, Max, you know that?"

  "Something that hasn't changed. I don't believe in hiding things, remember?"

  She did remember. It had been part of what attracted her to him in the very beginning, that tendency of his to show his feelings openly and without apology, to proclaim with every word and gesture and even the posture of his body exactly what kind of man he was.

  Nothing hidden. Nothing deceptive. Nothing secret.

  She wondered, not for the first time, if it had been a case of opposites attracting, at least in the beginning. Because in that way she had certainly been as different from him as night was different from day, so much of her hidden beneath the surface or disguised as something else. So much of her unrevealed, contained in silence.

  The only friction that had ever occurred between them had been over her absolute insistence that their growing closeness remain private. And secret.

  Hoping for at least a slight delay, she said, "One thing seems to be different, at least according to the books in your library. You didn't believe in the paranormal once upon a time."

  His broad shoulders lifted and fell in a faint shrug. "Like I said, once you're touched by the paranormal, a lot of things change. A lot of…possibilities open up. Or not, as the case may be. I've had plenty of time to think, Nell. Twelve years."

  She wanted to apologize for that, or for some of it, but couldn't. Faced with the same situation, she knew she would act in exactly the same way.

  All she regretted was the necessity.

  Carefully, she said, "Neither of us can go back and alter the past, Max."

  "I know that."

  "Then why does it matter?"

  His mouth tightened. "It matters. What was bothering you so much that week, Nell? If it wasn't me or anything I'd done, then what?"

  Nell had made up her mind to tell him, but when it came to the point, she shied away yet again from talking about it. Even from facing it.

  Still, she wasn't changing the subject as thoroughly as he might have believed when she said evasively, "Aren't you going to ask me about what I saw in Randal Patterson's basement?"

  Max drew a breath and let it out slowly, that neon-obvious attitude of patience still clinging to him. "Okay. What did you see in Randal's basement?"

  Nell wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and gazed down at it, frowning. She hadn't been unduly embarrassed by what they'd found in that basement, but the unpleasant details of what she'd seen in her vision were something she had no intention of describing to him. "I saw Hailey again," she replied simply.

  "You mean she was… involved… with Randal?"

  With a slight grimace she couldn't help, Nell finally met his gaze. "Completely involved. Intimately involved. And it… looked to me as though they were very… familiar with each other. I think Hailey was, for at least a while, his regular Saturday night date."

  Max leaned back in his chair, staring at her with a frown. "Jesus. I guess you never really know people, do you?"

  "I guess not."

  "Then why do I get the feeling that although you were shocked by what you saw, you weren't really surprised? You expected to see her there, didn't you?"

  Nell barely hesitated. "Yes."

  "Why? Because of her connection to Luke Ferrier?"

  This time she did hesitate, but only for a moment. "When Bishop was so sure there was something more he was sensing, some elusive fact we didn't yet know tying the murder victims together, I wondered if he was picking something up from me, if it was a kind of…secondhand connection, and that was why he couldn't get a fix on it."

  "So part of his profile was developed by psychic means?"

  "Well, not his official profile. There may be psychic aspects to some of his profiles, but more usually they're based on pure police work, investigative experience, and the psychology of the criminal mind. But he sensed something about this killer right from the beginning, even before he sent anyone down here, and I can't think of any other way he could have done that unless he was picking it up through someone connected to this town."

  "Which would have had to be you?"

  "I think so."

  "Why not the mayor? She talked to him before he sent anyone down here."

  Nell shook her head. "Even the best telepath can only read a percentage of people he or she encounters. Bishop couldn't read Casey."

  "But he can read you?"

  "Partly. It's difficult to explain, but some psychics have a kind of natural shield just below the level of their conscious thoughts, especially those of us sensitive to some types of electrical energy. If he touches me, Bishop usually knows what I'm thinking, but he wouldn't necessarily be able to sense anything deeper than my own conscious thoughts. I didn't think about Hailey being a possible connection between the men, not then, but maybe something inside me deeper than thought wondered, and maybe that's what Bishop could sense but couldn't quite bring into focus."

  "If he touches you."

  "He's a touch telepath; physical contact is required for him to read most other people." Nell shrugged. "Like I said, he couldn't read Casey. So whatever he was picking up had to be through me. It was when I was on my way down here that I wondered if it might have anything to do with Hailey."

  For a moment, it seemed as though Max would continue to focus the conversation on her absent boss, but then he shook his head just barely as if in a silent negation to himself, and said, "So you believe we'll find Hailey somehow connected to the other two men as well?"

  "I think it's beginning to look like more of a probability than a possibility."

  "You're not saying she killed any of them herself? Your boss says he's sure the killer is a male cop."

  "Even the best profiler — and psychic — is wrong from time to time. Especially if he doesn't have all the information he needs or if…emotions cloud things. Maybe Bishop is wrong this time. Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe the killer isn't a man, isn't a cop. None of the murders required unusual strength, after all, so a woman could have committed them. It would even explain why Luke Ferrier was drugged before his car was driven into that bayou: because most women could never have overpowered him if he'd been conscious and able to struggle."

  "Answer the first question, Nell. You're not saying that Hailey killed any of them herself, are you?"

  Nell dropped her gaze to her coffee cup once again and frowned. "No, I'm not saying that. Not that. But I do believe she would be capable of killing — even four men — if she had a good enough reason."

  "And your father? Could she have killed him — with a good enough reason?"

  She watched her fingers tighten around the cup and tried consciously to relax them.

  The truth.

  "Nell?"

  Trying to sound matter-of-fact as though it were nothing important, she said, "Yes. With a good enough reason, Hailey could have killed him too."

  "Did she have it? Did she have a good enough reason?"

  The truth.

  "Yes," Nell replied finally. "She had a good enough reason."

  "I've already searched this place twice myself," Justin said as he and Shelby went into George Caldwell's apartment. It was a fairly typical second-floor apartment, conventionally and professionally decorated, the only anomaly being a conspicuously missing armchair and rug across from the television in the living room.

  It was something Shelby noticed. "Is that where… ?"

  "We have the chair and rug in the evidence room. They were both — well, they were evidence."

  Shelby grimaced. "Oh."

&n
bsp; "You did want to do this," he reminded her.

  "I know, I know. Look, didn't you say you concentrated mostly on some secret hiding place? Because of the blackmail thing?"

  "It seemed most likely."

  "And didn't find anything. So let's suppose there is no secret hiding place because there aren't any secrets. Given that, there has to be something here — probably in plain sight — to prove George wasn't a blackmailer."

  "You seem very sure of that."

  "I am. George was not a blackmailer."

  Justin was still astonished at himself that he had confided in Shelby about the little black notebook, but since her reaction had been instant and definite it had at least served to underline his own increasing doubts. Still, he said, "We have the copies of birth records from the courthouse to go through; maybe they'll tell us something."

  "I imagine they will," Shelby said absently as she stood gazing around the apartment with a frown. "There are some people who thought George was just nosy, but he was not a man to waste his time. If he was looking through those records with the intensity Ne — I believe I saw, then it was because he was after something definite."

  Justin's eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn't comment on what had sounded like a near slip of the tongue. Instead, he said, "You can take it from me there's nothing even remotely helpful in the bedroom. Unless you find old issues of Playboy suspicious."

  "How about in here? What's in the desk?" Not a large desk, it was the sort of piece some people used in the more public areas of their homes to contain the seemingly endless paperwork necessary in maintaining a household.

  "Mostly private financial information. Checkbook, bank statements, that sort of thing. The serious records he kept at the bank, but there's an investment ledger in the name of his ten-year-old son — Caldwell was building up a college fund, according to his widow — and paperwork concerning a few other personal financial deals. Nothing jumped out."

  "Maybe it'll jump out at me," Shelby said, sitting down at the desk and opening a drawer.

  Justin watched her for a moment. "This is just an excuse to snoop, right?"

  She smiled without looking at him. "Don't be ridiculous. There's a little box of receipts and stuff here; did you go through it?"

  "I think Matt Thorton went through that one." He recalled Kelly's warning and felt suddenly uneasy. "But that was early on, so I probably should go through it now just to make sure there's nothing helpful in it."

  Shelby handed over the small cardboard box, and Justin carried it to the couch and sat down. What he found when he opened it was, as she had noted, mostly odds and ends. There were several movie and raffle ticket stubs, a few coupons for free car washes and lunch specials, and numerous receipts for the current year that he might have been considering as possible tax deductions.

  There was also one small piece of paper obviously torn from a pocket notebook. A handwritten I.O.U. for a hundred dollars — signed by Luke Ferrier.

  Had Matt Thorton missed it by accident? Missed the significance of it?

  "Shelby?"

  "Yeah?" She was frowning down at the ledger open before her on the desk.

  "Did Caldwell play poker?"

  "Dunno. I'm sure I could find out. Why?"

  "If he did, would he have played with Luke Ferrier?"

  She looked at him, still frowning. "Well, remember that none of us knew Ferrier had a gambling problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. I doubt George would have made a habit of playing, though; he wasn't much into risking his money."

  "How sure are you of that?"

  "Pretty sure."

  "And if Ferrier had owed him a hundred bucks from some kind of gambling debt?"

  Shelby lifted an eyebrow. "You mean would George have tried to get his money back if Ferrier welshed? No, probably not. A hundred bucks wouldn't have meant much to George. But it would have convinced him not to take any more of Ferrier's markers, or probably just not play with him again. He was a fool-me-twice-shame-on-me kind of guy."

  It made sense to Justin. He stared at the little piece of paper in his hand, brooding.

  So Caldwell had, in all probability, played poker or otherwise gambled with Luke Ferrier at least once; both Peter Lynch and Randal Patterson had been clients at his bank. It wasn't enough of a connection between the four men, Justin thought, to explain the three earner murders — but what if it explained, at least in part, George Caldwell's murder?

  What if the man everyone called too inquisitive for his own good had gotten curious about the three murders, and through his own associations with the dead men either knew or suspected something else that had connected them? And what if his search for the information or verification of his suspicions was what had really gotten him killed?

  Lots of what-ifs. And no way for Justin to know if he was even on the right track, dammit.

  "Hey," Shelby said.

  "What?"

  "That unexplained income of George's. What were the dates of the deposits?"

  Justin got out the little black notebook he'd been carrying with him and read off the dates of the supposed blackmail payoffs listed there.

  "Matches," Shelby said. "Every one of them."

  "In the ledger? So how're they recorded?"

  "Wait a minute, he's got some kind of private code here___" Shelby frowned and rechecked several pages, then nodded. "Oh, I see. It looks like he had transferred some rental property into his son's name about three years ago, and ever since then he was depositing the income into that account as part of the college fund he was putting together."

  "Perfectly innocent," Justin said. "Told you. George was no blackmailer." Quietly, Justin said, "So why did he have to die?" Shelby leaned back in the desk chair and looked at him steadily. "If he wasn't a blackmailer, if he didn't have some other deep, dark secret — then he must have been a threat to the murderer. Knew something, maybe. So he had to die. That's the only possibility that makes sense."

  "And the murderer would then have been left with a killing he badly needed to connect to the others so we wouldn't start looking for a motive specific to that crime."

  Her voice as steady as her eyes, Shelby said, "By fabricating so-called evidence of blackmail. Which is a good argument for a cop being involved. It would have been fairly easy for a cop with at least some access to Caldwell's bank accounts to spot the regular deposits and put together that notebook to make Caldwell's murder fit the pattern."

  "Easy enough," Justin agreed. "And if you couldn't find information on others he might have blackmailed, it wouldn't be all that surprising. Most of the other cops probably wouldn't even have looked very hard to find evidence that George really was a blackmailer. I mean, after all, we're beginning to expect dark secrets to surface after one of these murders. That made it easier for the murderer."

  "Which brings us back to the big question," Justin said. "Why did George Caldwell have to die?"

  Nate McCurry felt increasingly uneasy as the day wore on, and he wasn't entirely sure why. He had the nagging idea that at some point during the long day he had seen or heard something he hadn't paid enough attention to at the time, something important.

  By the time darkness fell, he was literally pacing the floor, checking the security system on his doors and windows repeatedly, and wishing he didn't live alone. And when the phone rang, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

  He looked at the instrument for a moment as though it were a viper ready to strike him, then laughed shakily and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

  "You'll pay."

  It was a low voice, a whisper really, without identifying characteristics; there was even no sense that told him if he was speaking to a man or a woman.

  Nate felt a chill track up his spine with icy claws. "What? Who the hell is this?" he demanded, his voice so shaky it practically wobbled.

  "You'll pay."

  He drew a breath and tried not to sound terrified out of his mind. "Look, whoever you are — I didn't do anything wrong. I di
dn't hurt anyone. I swear."

  There was an odd, choked laugh, still without identity or gender but with something in it strangely both incredulous and horrified, and then the whisper again. "You'll pay."

  The connection was broken with a soft click, and the dial tone buzzed in Nate's ears.

  He hung up the receiver slowly and stared at it without seeing or feeling anything but his terror.

  "Oh, Jesus," he murmured.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "What reason did she have, Nell?" Max asked steadily. "Why would Hailey have wanted to kill your father?"

  "Because she loved him."

  Max frowned. "You're going to have to explain that to me."

  She knew that, hut she had to do it in her own way. "You asked me what happened the night of the prom. One thing that happened was that Hailey told our father I was planning to go with you. A friend of hers worked in the boutique in town where I'd bought my dress. So she knew, had known for days, that I was going. She'd seen you and me out riding one day, so she put two and two together. And, being Hailey, was saving the knowledge to use when it suited her purpose. She'd told me she knew about it a couple of days before the prom, mostly to watch me worry, I think. So that's why I was upset that last day or two, because I knew she'd tell him and ruin everything."

  Slowly, Max said, "I knew you two weren't close, but I didn't know there was so much tension between you."

  Matter-of-fact, Nell said, "She could never forgive me for being our father's favorite."

  "You hated him. Even then, you hated him."

  "Yes. I hated him as much as Hailey loved him. Or maybe I loved him as much as she hated him." She shook her head a little. "There are some questions not even… time and distance can answer."

  Max hesitated, then went on as if forcing himself to say things he'd kept locked inside for a long time. "You never would talk about it, but sometimes I got the feeling you were scared. Scared of him."

  "I was."

  "He hurt you."

  "Not physically. And he never molested us, if that's what you've been thinking." Watching Max steadily, she saw by the flicker in his dark eyes that he had at least suspected her father might have been sick in that way. She shook her head. "No, he never laid a hand on either of us, Hailey and me. We were never even spanked as children. But we were… his. Not just his children, his daughters, but his possessions. Like his land and his house and his car — like everything else that belonged to him."