Sense of Evil

by Kay Hooper

  When Rafe realized that Isabel's nails were literally digging into her own skin despite the gloves she wore, he stripped his own gloves off and reached up and grasped her wrists, ignoring the again visible and audible flash that was a hell of a lot stronger than any static shock he'd ever felt. He pulled her hands away from her neck.

  “Wow,” Hollis murmured. “Talk about sparks.”

  Rafe ignored her. “Isabel.”

  She blinked, those vivid green eyes still distant but seemingly focusing on him. “What?”

  “You've got to stop. Now.”

  “I can't.”

  “You have to. This is hurting you.” He wasn't entirely sure she knew who he was. She was looking at him, he thought, as though he were the only Technicolor object in a black-and-white universe. Puzzled and wondering.

  “It always hurts,” she said matter-of-factly. “What difference does that make?”

  “Isabel—”

  “Bad things happened here, you know. It's been going on for years. Years. But Jamie was always in control. She had to be. Always. At least until . . .”

  She frowned. “They sold insurance here, and before that—no, after that—somebody sold bootleg whiskey out of here for nearly a year. Moonshine, just like you said. How strange. And a preacher spent some time here, a few weeks. Except that he wasn't a preacher anymore, because he'd been caught in bed with a deacon's wife and it hadn't been the first time. He thought God had abandoned him, but it was the other way around . . .”

  Hollis said, “Take her outside. There are too many secrets in this place. Too much pain. Too much information for her to sort through all at once.”

  Rafe didn't wait for a more complete explanation; Isabel was pale, he could feel her shaking, and it didn't require anything more than common sense to know she was very close to some kind of collapse. So he took her outside.

  Isabel didn't really protest, although once they were outside she did mutter under her breath, “Shit. I hate it when this happens.”

  He put her in the passenger seat of his Jeep and got the engine and air conditioner running, then dug into his first-aid kit and pulled out a gauze pad.

  “What's that for?”

  He tore open the wrapping and reached over to place the pad against the nape of her neck, again ignoring a strong shock.

  “Ouch,” she said.

  “You drew blood,” Rafe told her. “Even with the gloves on. Jesus, does this happen often?”

  Isabel looked down at her hands with a faint frown, then stripped off the gloves. “Oh . . . from time to time. Bishop keeps telling me I should wear my nails short. Maybe I'd better start listening to him. Got any aspirin in that box?”

  “Ibuprofen.”

  “Even better. If I could have a couple? Or . . . a dozen?” She reached up to hold the pad in place herself while he got the pain reliever and then a bottle of water from the cooler he kept in the Jeep.

  By the time she had swallowed four capsules, the faint scratches had stopped bleeding, and Rafe used an antiseptic pad to wipe the nape of her neck while she sat with her head bowed and eyes closed.

  Every time he touched her, the shock was definite, but she didn't react or comment and Rafe thought he was getting used to it. In fact, it seemed to clear his head.

  Which was more than a little unnerving.

  Her pale gold hair felt even silkier than it looked and seemed to want to cling to the back of his hand as he worked on her neck. Static, of course. Had to be. He concentrated on treating the scratches she had inflicted on herself, though he admitted silently that it took him longer than was strictly necessary.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don't mention it. Are you going to be okay?”

  She nodded slightly, still without opening her eyes. “When the painkillers kick in. And as long as I don't go back in there right away.”

  “Isabel—”

  “Look, I know you have questions. Can we save them for a while, please?” She raised her head and opened her eyes finally, looking at him. The distant expression was gone, but she looked incredibly tired. “For now, your forensics team should be here any minute; why don't you go back inside and get everybody doing their thing? Hollis may be able to help. I felt something weird in there.”

  Rafe thought there had been a lot of weird in there, but all he said was, “Meaning?”

  “That increasing nervousness and fear Emily had been seeing in her sister. I don't think it was just because Jamie was afraid her secret life would be exposed. I think she had another secret, a far worse one. And a much greater fear. I think something went wrong in there. I think she went too far.”

  “What are you saying?” He asked the question, even though he knew what she would answer.

  “Have your team look for signs of blood. A lot of blood.”

  “No sign of that box,” Mallory said after both women had thoroughly searched the back room. “No sign of anything she wanted to keep hidden—outside that closet, I mean.”

  Hollis nodded. “There's an attic, but it's wide open and empty.”

  “Um . . . on another subject, I gather from your reaction that it isn't normal for somebody touching Isabel to literally strike sparks?”

  “I've never seen it happen before, though I've only known her a few months.” Hollis frowned. “I was given a pretty thorough knowledge of the other SCU members, and that definitely wasn't mentioned. Could be something new for her, caused by this particular situation.”

  “Or it could be Rafe.”

  “Or it could be Rafe, yeah. Don't quote me on this, because I'm certainly no expert, but I guess if the right two energy signatures came in contact, there could be something like those sparks.”

  “Don't tell me this is what all the poets wrote about,” Mallory begged.

  Hollis smiled in response, but said, “Who knows? Maybe it's as much an emotional connection as it is literal energy fields. In any case, those two are reacting to each other, and on a very basic level.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “I have no idea. But it might explain why Isabel seems to be having a rougher than usual time with this investigation.”

  “What might explain it?” Rafe asked, entering in time to hear the statement.

  “You.”

  “Come again?”

  “Hey, I'm just guessing,” Hollis told him. “And I'm a long way from being an expert on any of this stuff, as I just told Mallory. But I was taught at Quantico that sometimes electromagnetic fields—those of individual people or places—come together in a particular way that tends to change or enhance a psychic's natural abilities. Or at least alter the limitations of those abilities. I have never seen Isabel so wide open, and as far as I can tell it's all been hits. No misses. That is very unusual. I'm thinking that sparking thing between you two has something to do with it.”

  “We can't be sure everything she's picked up is factual, not yet,” Rafe said without commenting on the sparking thing.

  “I wouldn't bet against her.”

  “Well, I sure as hell hope she's wrong about one thing. She thinks one of Jamie's little games got out of hand. We're now looking for evidence of a death here.”

  “Shit.” Mallory stared at him. “You mean separate from our serial killer?”

  “God knows. Hollis, are you getting anything?”

  “I haven't tried.” From the slightly stubborn set of her jaw, it didn't appear she planned to anytime soon.

  After seeing what had happened to Isabel, Rafe wasn't about to push either psychic, but he was still curious. “Isabel never seems to try. I mean, it doesn't seem to be an effort for her.”

  “It isn't. For her.”

  He waited, brows raised.

  After a moment, Hollis said, “You know the bit about me not being able to hear what these victims have tried to tell me? So far, I mean.”

  Somewhat warily, Rafe said, “Yeah, I think I get that.”

  “There's a barrier, somethin
g virtually every psychic has. We call them shields. Think of it as a bubble of energy our minds create to protect us. Most psychics have to consciously make an opening in that shield in order to use our abilities. We have to reach out, open up, deliberately make ourselves vulnerable.”

  “You didn't seem to be doing it deliberately,” Rafe noted.

  “I'm new at this. My control isn't as strong as it should be yet, so sometimes I reach out—or at least open a door or window in my shields—without meaning or wanting to. Usually when I'm tired or distracted, something like that. Eventually, they tell me, I should be able to shut this stuff out unless and until I very specifically want it. Most psychics can do that. Isabel is the very rare one who can't.”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean she lacks the ability to shield her own mind. She's always wide open, always picking up information. Important stuff. Trivia. Everything in between. All that stuff always coming at her, crowding into her mind, like the voices of hundreds of people all talking at once. It's a miracle she can make sense of it at all. Hell, it's a miracle she isn't locked up in a padded room somewhere, screaming her guts out.”

  Hollis drew a breath. “When she told you she couldn't stop it, she meant it literally. She can't shut it off, ever.”

  Isabel sat in the cool Jeep and stared down at her hands. Watching them shake.

  “Okay,” she murmured, “so this one was bad. You've had bad ones before. You've heard all the ugly voices before. You can handle them. You can handle this.”

  She heard the ghost of a laugh escape her. “But not if you keep talking to yourself.”

  She laced her fingers together in her lap and raised her head, staring through the windshield at the building where Rafe and the others were.

  It was where she should be, dammit, and never mind the pain. In there trying to sort through all the impressions, listening to the voices still echoing too loudly in her head. Even the ugly ones. Maybe especially the ugly ones.

  Doing her job.

  Isabel drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to focus, to soothe raw nerves and regain control of her senses, all her senses. Control. She had to find control.

  Jamie had liked controlling people.

  And that preacher . . .

  God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

  Obey your mistress! Crawl!

  Just three quarts more, and—

  Bones bend before they break, you know. Bones bend—

  Blood . . . so much blood . . .

  Her shaking hands lifted to cover her face, fingertips massaging her forehead and temples hard, and Isabel drew another breath, fighting to close out the voices. Not that she could.

  Not that she'd ever been able to. Still, she tried.

  Concentrate.

  Focus.

  Don't listen to them.

  She tempted me, that's what it was. Tempted me down the road to damnation. I was weak. I was . . .

  I can make the rope tighter. I can make the rope much tighter. You want me to, don't you? You want me to hurt you. You want me to hurt you until you scream with the pain.

  Bones bend . . .

  And Bobby Grange, over to Horton Mill, he wants enough to fill a keg. Must be having a party, I guess. Guys like him keep me in business, that's for sure. And it ain't my business, what else they do. It just ain't any of my affair.

  It wasn't my fault! She tempted me!

  Do you know what happens when you feel all the pain you can feel? When your nerve endings are hot and raw, and your voice is gone from screaming? Do you know what it feels like to go beyond pain? Let's find out . . .

  Bones bend before they—

  Isabel.

  Iss . . . a . . . belll . . .

  Her hands jerked away from her face, and Isabel stared all around her, a bit wildly at first. There it was. A different voice. Male. Powerful. Crouching in the darkness . . .

  But . . . there was no one. No one. Her head was pounding, her heart pounding, and the voices were only whispers now. Only whispers, none of them calling her name.

  “Okay,” she said aloud, shakily, “that was new. That was different.”

  That was terrifying.

  8

  11:00 AM

  T.J. MCCURRY FINISHED SPRAYING an area of the floor about two feet from the bed platform and said, “Kill the lights.”

  They had already draped the high window, so when T.J.'s partner, Dustin Wall, turned off the lights in the room, they could all see the eerie greenish-white glow.

  “Bingo,” Dustin muttered, and began photographing the evidence.

  T.J. said, “Lotta blood here, Chief. There are some older spatters in other areas of the room, especially there around the bed, but here's the only place where somebody bled like a stuck pig.”

  “Bled enough to die?”

  In the glow of the Luminol, T.J.'s round face looked peculiarly gaunt. She shrugged and looked down at the old vinyl floor covering. “Somebody's done a fair job of cleaning, but you can see how strongly the Luminol is reacting. I'm betting that when we pull up this floor covering, we'll find even more soaked into the concrete underneath. This is the old style of vinyl that was put down in tiles, not in a solid sheet, so the blood would have found all the crevices.”

  “T.J., did somebody die here?”

  “You know I can't be absolutely certain about that, Chief. But if you want an educated guess, I'd say somebody did. Either that or a lot of somebodies bled a little bit here at different times—which, given the obvious purpose of the room, is entirely possible. We'll sort it out, get a blood type or types for you, DNA if you want.”

  “I want. Especially since I don't have a body.”

  Dustin said, “The state crime lab has cadaver dogs, if you want to start looking.”

  “Not yet. Not without more information. As edgy as this town is, the last thing we need is to have people and dogs out looking for another body, unless we're very sure one is actually out there.” Rafe didn't say anything about psychic help, and he didn't look at Hollis, who was standing only a couple of feet away from him. “T.J., can you tell me if there's a blood trail out of this place?”

  “I'll work on it. Dustin, do you have the shots? Then let's get the lights back on so we can see what we're doing.”

  Rafe left her to it, admitting silently that he was relieved when the lights came back on. He'd seen Luminol used before, and it always struck him as chilling. Invisible to the eye until the chemicals in the Luminol reacted with it, the blood was a silent, ghostly accusation.

  He joined Hollis, saying, “Would I be out of line in suggesting that Isabel go back to the inn and call it a day?”

  “Arguable point, I suppose, but she won't go, so it hardly matters.”

  He sighed. “You people are a very stubborn lot.”

  Hollis didn't ask whether he meant FBI agents or psychics; she knew the answer to that one. Instead, she said, “There are only a handful of team leaders in the SCU, agents Bishop trusts to head up investigations. Isabel is one of them, and has been from the beginning.”

  “You said it was a miracle she hadn't gone insane.” Rafe kept his voice low.

  “Yes. But she didn't go insane, that's the point. She is an exceptionally strong lady. She lives her life and she does her job, whatever the effort or the cost. What you saw happen in here is a rare thing, but similar things have happened before. It hasn't stopped her in the past, and this won't stop her now. If anything, the strong connection will probably make her even more determined to put all the puzzle pieces in place and get this killer.”

  “He's gotten away from her twice before,” Rafe said, more to himself than to Hollis.

  But she nodded. “Yeah, it's personal. How could it not be? It was her best friend he killed ten years ago, in case you didn't know that. She and Julie King grew up together, practically sisters. Isabel was only twenty-one when it happened, in college, trying to decide what to do with her life. Taking the most amazing variety o
f subjects, like classical Latin, and computer science, and botany. Nerdy stuff.”

  Hollis shrugged. “She was drifting, mostly. Getting by with good grades because of a good mind, not effort. Sort of . . . shut in herself, detached, uninvolved. From all I've been told, Julie's murder changed her completely.”

  “That isn't what . . . triggered her psychic ability?” It wasn't really a question.

  “No. That had already happened.” Hollis didn't offer to elaborate.

  Rafe wasn't surprised. “But her friend's murder more or less started her life as a cop.”

  “I'd say so. In the beginning, she just wanted to find out who had killed Julie. That's what motivated her, what began to shape her life and future. By the time he surfaced again in Alabama five years later, she had a degree in criminology under her belt and worked for the Florida State Police. She apparently did routine searches of law-enforcement databases on her own time, waiting for the killer to strike again. Just after he killed the second victim in Alabama, Isabel took a leave of absence and turned up there. That was when she met Bishop.”

  “And turned in her state badge for a federal one.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  Rafe drew a breath and let it out slowly. “So now she uses her knowledge, training, and psychic abilities to try and ferret out killers. Especially this one. Tell me something, Hollis. How many more times can she go through what she did in here before it breaks her?”

  “At least one more time.” Hollis grimaced at his expression. “I know it sounds harsh. But it's also the truth; we take this stuff one . . . experience . . . at a time, and none of us can be sure when the end will come. Or how.”

  “Wait a minute. You're telling me you guys know this stuff you do is going to kill you one day?”

  “I'd call that a radical interpretation of the text,” she murmured.

  “Hollis.”

  “We're not the only stubborn ones, I see.”

  “Answer my question.”

  “I can't.” She shrugged, more than a little impatient now. “Rafe, we don't know. Nobody really knows. We're all checked out medically after assignments, and the doctors have noted some changes in some agents. They don't know what that means, we don't know what it means. Maybe nothing.”