by Kay Hooper
Praise for Kay Hooper
HAUNTING RACHEL
“A stirring and evocative thriller.”
—Palo Alto Daily News
“The pace flies, the suspense never lets up. It's great reading.”
—The Advocate, Baton Rouge
“An intriguing book with plenty of strange twists that will please the reader.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“It passed the ‘stay up late to finish it in one night’ test.”
—The Denver Post
FINDING LAURA
“You always know you are in for an outstanding read when you pick up a Kay Hooper novel, but in Finding Laura, she has created something really special! Simply superb!”
—Romantic Times (gold medal review)
“Hooper keeps the intrigue pleasurably complicated, with gothic touches of suspense and a satisfying resolution.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A first-class reading experience.”
—Affaire de Coeur
“Ms. Hooper throws in one surprise after another…. Spellbinding.”
—Rendezvous
AFTER CAROLINE
“Harrowing good fun. Readers will shiver and shudder.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Kay Hooper comes through with thrills, chills, and plenty of romance, this time with an energetic murder mystery with a clever twist. The suspense is sustained admirably right up to the very end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Peopled with interesting characters and intricately plotted, the novel is both a compelling mystery and a satisfying romance.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Kay Hooper has crafted another solid story to keep readers enthralled until the last page is turned.”
—Booklist
“Joanna Flynn is appealing, plucky and true to her mission as she probes the mystery that was Caroline.”
—Variety
AMANDA
“Amanda seethes and sizzles. A fast-paced, atmospheric tale that vibrates with tension, passion, and mystery. Readers will devour it.”
—Jayne Ann Krentz
“Kay Hooper's dialogue rings true; her characters are more three-dimensional than those usually found in this genre. You may think you've guessed the outcome, unraveled all the lies. Then again, you could be as mistaken as I was.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Will delight fans of Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt.”
—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
“Kay Hooper knows how to serve up a latter-day gothic that will hold readers in its brooding grip.”
—Publishers Weekly
“I lapped it right up. There aren't enough good books in this genre, so this stands out!”
—Booknews from The Poisoned Pen
“Kay Hooper has given you a darn good ride, and there are far too few of those these days.”
—Dayton Daily News
Bantam Books by Kay Hooper
ALWAYS A THIEF
ONCE A THIEF
SENSE OF EVIL
WHISPER OF EVIL
TOUCHING EVIL
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
HIDING IN THE SHADOWS
STEALING SHADOWS
HAUNTING RACHEL
FINDING LAURA
AFTER CAROLINE
AMANDA
ON WINGS OF MAGIC
THE WIZARD OF SEATTLE
MY GUARDIAN ANGEL
For my sister Linda
and her brave new ventures
both personal and professional
PROLOGUE
Wednesday, January 5, 2000
Lynet Grainger had no real reason to feel afraid. Gladstone was a safe town, had always been a safe town. The rest of the world might be going nuts, with students shooting up their schools and disgruntled employees shooting up their workplaces, with cars being jacked and children being stolen, but in Gladstone none of that stuff ever happened.
Ever.
Of course, nothing much else happened either, at least not until recently.
Even before they'd built the new highway bypass last year—which had quite effectively bypassed Gladstone—the little town had been no more than a place where people stopped for gas and an occasional weary night at the Bluebird Lodge out on Main Street, pausing as briefly as possible in their journey through to Nashville. Otherwise, it was just a wide place in the road, not high enough in the mountains to offer skiing as a tourist attraction—though the Bluebird Lodge defiantly had as its logo a pair of crossed skis—and not far enough out of the mountains to boast much decent farming or pastureland.
It was just a little valley. The bedrock core of the local economy was a smelly paper mill out on the river where a healthy majority of the town's blue-collar workers toiled. And in town, there were a few small businesses, the sort of car dealerships and real estate offices and stores that dotted all small towns.
Thankfully, Gladstone wasn't so small that absolutely everybody knew the business of their neighbors—but nearly so. Gossip was second only to the video store downtown as a source of entertainment.
So when Kerry Ingram, barely fourteen, seemingly ran away from home a couple of months ago, it was big news. Lots of people were heard to say they'd expected as much, since Kerry's older brother had done the same thing several years before to try his luck as a singer in Nashville (and ended up trying to support a wife and two little kids on a mechanic's pay). It was that sort of family, the gossips said, not the kind to raise up kids loyal to the town.
But there had been uneasiness beneath the confidence even then, even before they found out what had really happened to Kerry, because at about the same time she disappeared there had been something creepy going on hardly more than a hundred miles away, in Concord. Lynet wasn't entirely sure of the details, but it was whispered that a horrible man had been stalking and raping women, and it had only been when a special FBI task force had been called in that he was caught.
Lynet would like to have seen a special FBI task force in action. She was interested in law enforcement, and since the sheriff had patiently answered her questions on Career Day back last spring, that interest had only grown. At least until Kerry Ingram's body had been found, and some of the details had gotten around.
Lynet had felt more than a little sick upon hearing those details. She'd told herself it was only because she had actually known Kerry that the whole thing had upset her, not because she had a weak stomach unsuited for the work of a police officer or, better yet, an FBI agent just like Scully.
No, it was only because she'd known Kerry, been just a year ahead of her in school and ridden on the same school bus. Because she remembered so vividly how Kerry had worn a bright ribbon in her hair every day, and smiled shyly whenever one of the boys tried to talk to her, and had been so proud of making the honor roll because math was difficult for her and she had to try really, really hard in that class….
Lynet shook off the memories and glanced around warily as she walked briskly along the sidewalk. Just about all the stores downtown had closed early as usual on this Wednesday, and now at nine o'clock at night there was almost no traffic and virtually no one about.
Still, Lynet had no real reason to be afraid. The sheriff had said it was likely poor Kerry had slipped and fallen into that nasty ravine where people used to dump their trash and where her bruised body had been found. But Lynet had heard a few whispers about what might have been done to Kerry before she'd died, and even if it was just speculation, it was the kind to make a girl worried about being alone on the streets after dark.
She paused on the corner of Main and Trade streets and briefly considered taking the usual shortcut through the park. Very brie
fly. Much better, she thought, to stay on the sidewalk under the streetlights, even if it would take an extra fifteen minutes to get home.
So she walked on, wishing she hadn't lingered at the library so late, wishing her sixteenth birthday would come so she could drive her mom's battered Honda instead of having to hoof it everywhere.
“Lynet, what on earth are you doing out so late?”
She nearly jumped out of her skin, and actually put a hand to her breast in an unconsciously dramatic gesture of near heart failure. “Oh, it's you! God, don't scare me like that!”
“I'm sorry—but you shouldn't be out here so late. Why aren't you at home?”
“I had to use the computer at the library—you know I don't have one of my own yet.”
“Well, next time have somebody drive you.”
“I will.” Lynet smiled winningly. “We can walk together as far as the next corner. You're going that way, aren't you?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Nobody would bother the two of us.”
“No, nobody would bother the two of us.”
“I'm surprised you're out here,” Lynet said chattily. “Are you just walking? I know some people do, around town to get exercise, but I thought that was just in the summer.”
“It's not cold tonight.”
“You aren't cold? Oh, I am. Walking fast helps, though. If we hurry—” Lynet took another step, then stopped as she recognized what was being held out toward her. “Oh,” she said numbly. “Oh, no. You—”
“You know what this is. And what it can do.”
“Yes,” Lynet whispered.
“Then you'll come along with me and not make trouble, won't you, Lynet?”
“Don't hurt me. Please, don't—”
“I'm sorry, Lynet. I really am.”
ONE
Thursday, January 6
The body had been exposed to the elements for at least two or three days. And before last night's heavy rain had washed them away, the tracks of dozens of paws and claws must have crisscrossed the clearing.
It was shaping up to be a long, cold winter, and the animals were hungry.
Deputy Alex Mayse shivered as he picked his way gingerly past the town's single forensics “expert,” a young doctor who'd been elected coroner because nobody else had wanted the job. The doctor was crawling around the clearing on his hands and knees, his nose inches from the wet ground as he found and flagged the scattered bones and other bits the animals had left.
“You don't have to hum to yourself, Doc,” Alex muttered sourly. “We all know how happy you are.”
Remaining in his crouched position, Dr. Peter Shepherd said cheerfully, “If a murdered teenager made me happy, Alex, I'd be worse than a ghoul. I'm just fascinated by the puzzle, that's all.”
Waiting patiently just a few steps behind the doctor, camera in hand as he waited to take pictures of each flagged spot, Deputy Brady Shaw rolled his eyes at Alex.
Alex grimaced in sympathy, but all he said to Shepherd was, “Yeah, yeah. Just find something helpful this time, will you?”
“Do my best,” the doctor replied, studying what appeared to be a bleached twig.
Alex walked to the area where most of the body had been found, noticing with a certain amount of sympathy that Sandy Lynch was over behind a tree puking her guts out. She was having a lousy introduction to the job, poor kid. Not that the old hands were handling it any better, really. Carl Tierney had had the misfortune to find Adam Ramsay's mortal remains, and the ten-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department had promptly lost his morning Egg McMuffin.
Alex himself had suffered through a few teethgrittingly queasy moments during the last couple of hours.
In fact, the only member of the Cox County Sheriff's Department who had shown no signs of being sickened by the gory sight was the sheriff.
There was an irony there somewhere, Alex thought as he joined the sheriff, who was hunkered down several feet from what was left of Adam Ramsay, elbows on knees and fingers steepled. In its entire history, the small town of Gladstone had seldom been troubled by murder. A long line of sheriffs had grown old in their jobs, dealing with petty crime and little else of consequence, needing no more police training than how to to load a gun, which would in all likelihood never be fired except at targets or the occasional unlucky rabbit. It was a local saying that all the Cox County sheriff had to be good at was filling out the Santa suit for the annual Christmas parade down Main Street.
Until last year, anyway. The town finally elected a sheriff with an actual law degree and a minor in criminology —and what happened? Damned if they didn't start having real crimes.
But they were blessed in that this particular sheriff had very quickly displayed an almost uncanny ability to get to the bottom of things with a minimum of time wasted.
At least until recently.
“This makes two,” Alex said, judging that the silence had gone on long enough.
“Yeah.”
“Same killer, d'you think?”
Startling blue eyes slanted him a look. “Hard to tell from the bones.”
Alex started to reply that there was a bit of rotting flesh here and there, but kept his mouth shut. There was little remaining on the skeleton of Adam Ramsay, that was true enough, and what was there didn't immediately offer up any evidence as to who had killed him and how. Impossible to tell if the boy's body had borne the same bruises and cuts as they had found on Kerry Ingram. Still, it was a fair guess that two bodies turning up in less than a month had to be connected in some way.
With a sigh, Alex said, “We won't be able to quiet the gossip by suggesting this death was an accident. We might not know how he died yet, but it's a cinch a victim of an accident wouldn't have buried his own body. And you can bet that little fact won't stay out of circulation for long.”
“I know.”
“So we have a problem. A big problem.”
“Shit,” the sheriff said quietly after a moment.
Alex wondered if that was guilt he heard. “Announcing that Kerry Ingram had been murdered wouldn't have saved this one,” he reminded. “I may not be an expert, but my guess is that Adam died more than a couple of weeks ago.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“And his own mother didn't report him missing until just before Halloween, even though he'd already been gone for weeks by then.”
“Because they'd had a big fight and he'd run off to live with his father in Florida just like he'd done at least twice before—or so she thought.”
“My point,” Alex said, “is that there's nothing we could have done to save Adam Ramsay.”
“Maybe,” the sheriff said, still quiet. “But maybe we could have saved Kerry Ingram.”
Breaking the ensuing silence, Alex said, “Good thing he was wearing his class ring. And that he had that gold tooth. Otherwise we'd never have been able to identify him. But what kid his age has a gold tooth? I meant to ask before now, but—”
“Not a tooth, just a cap. He had a ring of his father's melted down, and a dentist in the city did the work.”
“Why, for God's sake?”
“His mother didn't know or wouldn't say. And we can't ask him now.” Still hunkered down, the sheriff added, “I doubt it's important, at least to the question of who killed him and why.”
“Yeah, I guess. You have any ideas about that, by the way?”
“No.”
Alex sighed. “Me either. The mayor isn't going to like this, Randy.”
“Nobody's going to like it, Alex. Especially not Adam Ramsay's mother.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I know.” Sheriff Miranda Knight sighed and rose from the crouched position, absently stretching cramped muscles. “Shit,” she said again, softly.
Deputy Sandy Lynch, still very pale, ventured a step toward them but kept her gaze studiously away from the remains. “I'm sorry, Sheriff,” she said nervously, new enough at the job that she feared losing it.
Miranda looked at her. “Don't worry about it, Sandy. There's nothing you can do here anyway. Go on back to the office and help Grace deal with all the phone calls.”
“Okay, Sheriff.” She paused. “What should we tell people?”
“Tell them we have no information at this time.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
As the young deputy retreated to her car in visible relief, Alex said, “That won't hold 'em for long.”
“Long enough, with a little luck. I'd like a few more answers before I have to face John with a recommendation.”
“Since that flap over in Concord spooked him, you know he'll overreact and declare we have a serial killer on our hands.”
“Two murders don't make a serial killer.”
“You know that and I know that. His Honor will prefer to err on the side of caution. He likes his job and he wants to keep it. Concord's mayor was practically run out of town for not insisting that task force be called in sooner. John MacBride is not going to make the same mistake.”
Miranda nodded, frowning. “I know, I know.”
“So get the jump on him. Tell him your recommendation is to call in the task force now.”
Her frown deepened. “You read the bulletin, same as I did. The task force was set up to handle unusual crimes with inexplicable elements, crimes ordinary police work can't solve. For all we know, what we have here are two teenage victims of grudges or impulsive violence. Both of them were probably killed by someone they knew, and for depressingly mundane reasons. We don't know there's anything unusual.”
“Randy, nobody'd blame you for calling in the feds whether these murders are unusual or not. We're a small-town sheriff's department with little manpower and almost no high-tech toys. Before we found the Ingram girl, the last murder any Cox County sheriff had to investigate was twenty years ago—when a cuckolded husband shot his wife's lover while the man was trying to escape out the bedroom window. Hardly a tricky investigation. The cases you've handled so far were demanding, and God knows you dealt with them well, but what they required was skill, intelligence, and instinct, all of which you certainly have. What you don't have are state-of-the-art crime scene investigation tools, a computer system that isn't five years out of date, enough deputies to effectively cover the county you're responsible for, and a medical examiner whose specialty—not his hobby—is forensics.”