Sense of Evil

by Kay Hooper

  “So,” Rafe said, “she would have wanted to remove any possible evidence of their relationship.”

  “Of all her secret relationships. If we found one, we'd find them all; that's what she would have thought. So she started to move, and fast. Listed her properties for sale, maybe started shifting money she wasn't supposed to have, between accounts we weren't supposed to know about.”

  “We've got people checking area banks today.”

  “Maybe they'll at least find evidence of those secret accounts. But I don't think they'll find the box. I think Jamie was planning to leave this place, or at least go on a long vacation somewhere until Hope's body turned up and she could determine whether she was going to be suspected of murder.”

  “And spent the final days of her life trying to erase or hide all the secrets,” Rafe said.

  “Exactly. I think she found or created a place to bury the Mistress for Hire. The box of photos went there right away, especially since she must have suspected Emily of snooping. The stuff in her playhouse would have followed, but the killer got to her first.”

  “Okay,” Rafe said. “I'll buy the theory. But how do we find out where this hiding place is? We've tapped every source we have, short of going door to door and asking every soul in Hastings. What else can we do?”

  Isabel drew a deep breath. “We ask the one soul who knows.”

  The heavens took their own time in opening up. By three that afternoon, it was twilight, with a hot wind blowing gustily and thunder rolling as though it had miles and miles to go. Flashes of lightning provided eerie strobelike images of very little traffic on Main Street, and clusters of media camped all around the town hall across from the police station. Print media, at any rate; most of those with electronics to consider had, as Isabel predicted, wisely chosen to remain indoors.

  “You can feel the nerves,” Mallory said, gazing out the window of the conference room. “Even the reporters. I don't have any extra senses, and I can feel it.”

  “Extra senses make it worse,” Hollis told her. She was sitting at the conference table, both elbows propped on it and her hands cupping her face. “My head is throbbing in the weirdest way.” She yawned as if to clear her ears. “And I feel like I'm going up in a plane.”

  “Not the best time to try a séance, I guess.”

  “God, don't call it that.”

  “Isn't that what it is? Technically, I mean.”

  “I don't know, but I can't help feeling a stormy afternoon spent summoning the dead just can't be a good plan.”

  “We're not doing it in a haunted house.”

  “Oh, goodie, one for the plus column.” Hollis sighed.

  Mallory turned her back on the window and half sat on the sill, smiling faintly. “You two are unconventional investigators, I'll give you that much. But, then, this hasn't exactly been a conventional series of murders. If there is such a thing.”

  Before Hollis could respond, Travis rapped on the open door and said, “Hey, Mallory, Alan Moore is here. He says it's important, and since the chief and Agent Adams are out in the garage with T.J.—”

  “Send him in. Thanks, Travis.”

  Since the bulletin boards were already covered, neither woman had to move, and Mallory remained at the window as Alan came in. She said, “The chief of police has no comment for the media. Didn't you hear him on the front steps a couple of hours ago, Alan?”

  “I did,” he replied imperturbably. “Which is why I went back to my office. Where I received two bits of news I thought I'd be gracious enough to share with the police.”

  “I think he rehearsed that,” Hollis said to Mallory.

  “Probably.” Mallory frowned at him. “The news?”

  “First, Kate Murphy called a friend who happens to work at the paper. Seems she left town in a hurry—and on a bus—because she got a threatening call from an ex-lover and panicked. Especially with blondes getting killed in Hastings.”

  Mallory said, “We haven't found a sign of a lover in her past, and we've looked.”

  “Yeah, but this is about ten years ex. Even she admits the panic was somewhat extreme.”

  “Sounds like it,” Hollis murmured. “Not that I can really blame her.”

  “Anyway, she's safe,” Alan said. “She claims she left a note for her store's assistant manager but hadn't had a chance to call until today. I think she's about four states away, but she refused to say where.”

  Mallory shook her head. “One less on the list, thank God. And thank you for sharing. What's your other bit of news?”

  “This.” He produced a folded paper from his pocket and unfolded it on the conference table. “Probably no prints other than mine, since there weren't any on the last one.”

  “Envelope?” Mallory asked.

  He pulled that out of a different pocket. “I figured it'd be worthless for prints, too, considering how many people handled it. The postmark is Hastings. Mailed Saturday.”

  Hollis leaned a bit sideways to read the note, brows lifting. “Well, well.”

  Mallory joined them at the table to study the message. Like the previous note to Alan, it was block-printed yet virtually scrawled in a bold, dark hand on the unlined paper.

  THEY WERE GOING TO TELL.

  HE KNEW THEY WERE GOING TO TELL.

  THEY WEREN'T WORTHY OF OUR TRUST.

  NEITHER IS SHE.

  NEITHER IS ISABEL.

  18

  “DUSTIN FOUND IT,” T.J. reported. “He knows cars better than I do. Since it's a guy thing and all.”

  Rafe said, “So the cruise control was engaged. McBrayer was drunk; he could have done it accidentally.”

  “Dustin says he couldn't have. Something about the way the cruise button is on the wheel. Of course, the wheel is mangled as hell right now, but he swears it's a safety issue or something.”

  Isabel straightened after looking into what was left of Hank McBrayer's car, and said, “Dustin thinks somebody else set the cruise control?”

  T.J. shrugged. “I admit I thought it was pretty far out. But we checked the rear end of the car, which is mostly intact, and found signs of a jack. Lift the rear wheels off the ground, put it in gear and push the accelerate button on the wheel, set the cruise control, and, when you're ready, shove the car off the jack. The marks on the car are consistent.”

  “There would have been tread marks on the road at the point it came off the jack,” Rafe said.

  “Dustin's out now, backtracking from the scene of the so-called accident. We also found a bit of rope on the front floorboard. I'm thinking it was used to tie off the steering wheel to keep the car going in a straight line. And if that's not enough, I'm pretty sure the headlights were off.” She shook her head. “A nice, neat little way to kill somebody. With McBrayer reeking of alcohol and enough in his blood to knock out a squad of marines, who would suspect it was anything but an accident?”

  “Good work,” Rafe told her. “You and Dustin.”

  “Thanks. I'll tell him you said so. And I'll send up the report when he gets back and I finish up with the car.”

  As they left the basement garage of the police station and headed upstairs to the offices, Isabel said, “A diversion. That accident happened only a couple of miles from the Brower house; the patrol on watch outside would have been the closest squad car.”

  “I wonder if he aimed McBrayer's car at one he could see coming or just trusted to luck he'd hit something or someone eventually?”

  “I don't think our boy trusts much to luck,” she said. “Finds a dark, straight stretch of road in a little-frequented area, sets up the car with McBrayer passed out inside. And waits until he sees headlights. By the time the other driver even saw the car coming at her, it was too late.”

  “The pay phone he called Emily from was only a few blocks from the scene of the—accident. He probably waited for the patrol car to pass him, then called her.”

  “I have the feeling that killing two more people just so he could lure Emily out was
another of his taunts: Look at me, look how clever I am.”

  “You don't think it was a personal grudge against McBrayer?”

  “No, I think he was convenient. From what I got talking to Ginny last night, her father's Sunday-night binges were hardly a secret around here. The killer found McBrayer, maybe even followed him to one of those basement bars you talked about. Then all he had to do was wait for his mark to pass out or be thrown out.”

  “And use him as a tool to get what he wanted. Emily.” Rafe grasped her arm to stop her as they entered the hallway leading to the conference room. “Tell me something. Truthfully.”

  “Sure, if I can.”

  “He'll come after you next.”

  “Maybe. Probably. Especially if the news breaks that I'm psychic. He'd view that as an increased threat, I think.”

  “Will he wait a week?”

  Isabel hesitated, then shook her head. “I'd be surprised if he did. Emily was damage control; she knew something he didn't want her to tell. Or at least he believed she did. I'm guessing something about that box of photographs.”

  “But you he wants.”

  “Even without the psychic nudge, yeah. Me and the last blonde on his list, whoever she is. And he's moving faster, getting sloppy. We shouldn't have found jack marks on that car, far less a bit of rope that didn't belong in it. He's feeling pressure, a lot of it. Whatever is driving him is driving him hard.”

  Rafe hesitated, but they were alone, and he finally said, “Whatever happened earlier did open up the shield for you, didn't it?”

  “A bit. But the voices are still distant.” She looked at him steadily. “There's still a part of you I can't get at.”

  “I trust you,” he said.

  “I know. You just don't trust you.”

  He shook his head. “I don't get it.”

  Isabel had to smile. “I'm not surprised. See, I think I figured out something. We both have control issues and we both know it. The difference is, I don't trust someone else to run the show, and you don't trust yourself to.”

  “That's a control issue?”

  “Yes. I have to learn to let go, to trust someone else without giving up who I am. And you have to learn to trust yourself in order to be who you need to be.”

  Somewhat cautiously, Rafe said, “Are you channeling this Bishop of yours?”

  “I know how it sounds, believe me. Why do you think I've been fighting this so hard? But the truth is, neither one of us has enough faith in ourselves.”

  “Isabel, that sounds to me like something that will take time to get itself resolved. We don't have time.”

  Isabel began moving down the hallway toward the conference room. “No, we don't. Which is why we'll have to take care of our issues on the fly.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “Don't worry. If there's anything I've learned in the last few years it's that we can make giant leaps when we have to.”

  “That's the part that worries me,” Rafe said. “Why we might have to.”

  “Alan, I don't have time for this,” Mallory told him as they stood just inside the foyer of the police department.

  “Make time,” he insisted. “Look, Mal, I know you don't want us publicly linked, but I've been doing some digging, and there's something you need to know.”

  Warily, she said, “About the case? Then why tell just me?”

  “Call it a good-faith gesture. I could have put it in today's paper, but I didn't.”

  After a moment, she said, “I'm listening.”

  “I know there were two other sets of murders, one five and one ten years ago, in two other states.”

  “How did you—”

  “I have sources. Never mind that. I also know that the FBI has sent investigators back to those towns to ask more questions.”

  Mallory hesitated, then said grudgingly, “We don't have the reports yet.”

  “There hasn't been time, I know. But one of my sources had occasion to talk to an investigator from the second series of murders.”

  “‘Had occasion'? Alan—”

  “Just listen. The investigator said there was something about the first murder that bugged him. It was just a little thing, so minor he didn't even put it in any of his reports. It was an earring.”

  “What?”

  “They'd found her body out in the open, of course, the way all the others would be found. But the investigator checked out her apartment. And when he searched her bedroom, he found an earring on her dresser. Never found a match for it.”

  “So? Women lose earrings all the time, Alan.”

  “Yeah, I know. But what bugged the investigator was that the victim didn't wear earrings. She didn't have pierced ears.”

  Mallory shrugged. “Then a friend must have lost it.”

  “None of her friends claimed it. Not one. A valuable diamond earring, and nobody claimed it. It was an unanswered question, and it bugged him, has ever since.”

  Patiently, she said, “Okay, he found an earring he could never explain. How do you expect that to help us?”

  “It's a hunch, Mal, and I wanted to let you know I was following it up. I've already talked to a friend of the second victim in Florida, and she claims to have found a single earring among her friend's things. I have somebody checking out the Alabama murders too. I think it has something to do with how he got the women to meet him.”

  “Alan—”

  “I'm going to check it out. I'll let you know if I find anything.”

  Mallory thought he said something else, but a crash of thunder made it impossible to hear whatever it was, and a moment later he was gone.

  She stared after him.

  4:00 PM

  “It's no use,” Hollis said finally. “I don't know if it's the storm or me, but I just can't concentrate. And the energy of you two is not helping. If anything, it's hurting.”

  “We were with you the first time you saw Jamie,” Isabel reminded her. “Right here in this room.”

  “Yeah, but it was before you two started seriously sparking,” Hollis reminded her.

  “Just tell me we don't have to hold hands or light candles,” Mallory begged, pulling another folder toward her and looking through it with a frown.

  Hollis shook her head. “What I'm telling you is that if Jamie is hovering anywhere around a doorway, it isn't mine. Or I can't open the door. Either way, it's not going to happen today.”

  Rafe leaned back in his chair, saying, “Look, there has to be another way to do this. Plain, old-fashioned police work. If Jamie had a secret place, there has to be a way for us to find it.”

  Hollis said, “And we need to do it before the six o'clock news. But no pressure.”

  Mallory said, “Reports coming in from all area banks have been negative. Nobody has recognized Jamie's photo or her name, and there's no way for us to guess what alias she might have used. If she's been socking away money for years with her little S&M sideline, she's had plenty of time to construct a really solid one we may never find. And I can't find anything about stray or missing jewelry, so I think Alan's off track with that one.”

  “It's that note I don't like,” Rafe said.

  “It doesn't change anything,” Isabel said. “We knew I was on his list.”

  She pulled the note toward her and frowned down at it. “Our trust. They weren't worthy of our trust.”

  “Maybe he really is schizophrenic,” Mallory said.

  “Yeah, but even so, the first note made a clear distinction. He wasn't killing them because they were blondes. This note links the one who wrote the note and the killer. They weren't worthy of our trust. If he's schizophrenic, then I'd say he's on the edge of a major identity crisis.”

  “He didn't have one before?” Hollis murmured.

  “I don't think he knew he had one. I mean, I think there was a part of him listening to whatever it was urging him to kill, and another part of him that had no idea that was happening.”

  “A spli
t personality?” Hollis asked.

  “Maybe. They're a lot more rare than people realize, but it is possible that's what we have in this case. One part of his mind, the sane part, may have been in control most of the time.”

  “And now?” Rafe asked.

  “Now,” Isabel said, “I think the sane part of his mind is getting lost, submerged. I think he's losing control.”

  “It's all about control.”

  “No, it's all about relationships. It's still all about relationships. Look at this note. He believes these women have violated—or, in my case, will violate—his trust. There's a secret he's protecting, and he's convinced the women he kills threaten to expose that secret.”

  “So they know him.”

  “He thinks they do.”

  Rafe looked at Isabel steadily. “Then he thinks you know him.”

  “I think I do too.”

  The looming storm only fed their sense of urgency, at least in part because it seemed to surround them all day long without actually hitting Hastings. Tree limbs were blown around, power crews were kept busy repairing downed electrical lines, and thunder boomed and rolled while lightning flashed in the weird twilight.

  It was as if the whole world was on the verge of something, hesitating, waiting.

  By five o'clock that afternoon, they had paperwork scattered across the conference table, pinned to the bulletin boards, and stacked on two of the chairs. Forensics reports, background checks on the victims, statements from everyone involved, and postmortems complete with photographs.

  And still they didn't have the answers they needed.

  When Travis came in with the last batch of reports from area banks, Mallory groaned. “Christ, not more paper.”