by Kay Hooper
“See, what I don’t get is why you’d want to spend most of a day and night following me all over the place.” Nell moved around where he could see her but kept the gun pointed at him. It was a big gun, and she held it with expert ease.
All he could think to say was, “How’d you get out here? I’ve been watching the door.”
“Window in back.” Nell took another step, then gestured with the gun toward the unit’s door. “Shall we?”
Max went ahead of her, half afraid of what might await them in the room. What met his searching gaze inside was merely a cheap motel room, the one bed sagging in the middle beside a scarred nightstand, small TV bolted to the shabby dresser on the other side of the room, and the open bathroom door showing him that the tiny room was bare of any threat.
Nell shut the door behind them, then went to lean against the dresser. She still held the gun, though no longer pointed it at him. “Let’s hear it, Max. Why’ve you been following me around all day today?”
“You going to explain that gun?”
She shrugged, smiling just a little. “A woman alone has to be careful. Your turn.”
“Maybe I don’t have anything better to do than follow you around.”
“I remember enough about ranching to know that’s a lie. You’ve got more than enough to do. Try again, Max.”
He really didn’t want to confess the truth, but something about her eyes and that little smile she wore warned him to take both her and that gun she was holding with such seeming negligence very seriously. “I was worried,” he said finally. “I thought somebody should keep an eye on you.”
“Why?”
“People are dying, remember?”
“Not good enough. Men are dying, four in eight months. And even if women became targets, what makes you so sure I’d be one of them? I’ve been gone for twelve years, only back here a few days, and only to take care of a little business before leaving again. I’m just passing through. So why would anyone want to kill me?”
“You said yourself someone had questioned your fitness to inherit the estate.”
“Yeah, but nobody’s challenged me legally, and the will’s through probate. I inherit. And I have a will, which now takes precedence. So if anybody’s after any of the property, killing me won’t get it for them.”
“The killer doesn’t necessarily know that,” Max pointed out.
“I’d think he’d make sure before getting rid of me. And since I told Wade Keever about my will today, I imagine most of Silence will know by, say, tomorrow afternoon. Sooner, if somebody buys him drinks tonight.”
She paused a moment, her green eyes steady on his face, then said, “Besides, this killer doesn’t seem to be acting for personal gain. No, whatever your reasons for following me around, they don’t include concern about the disposition of my father’s estate. So I’d like to know what those reasons are, Max. And the truth would be nice.”
“I told you the truth. I was worried about you.”
“Then tell me why.”
He hesitated, then drew in a breath and let it out roughly. “Because you’re a threat to the killer, Nell. And I’m not sure how many people know that.”
Anyone who had ever lived in a small town— especially a small Southern town—would probably be quick to admit that skulking around at night for any reason wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. There were lots of streetlights, for one thing, and people tended to leave their porch lights on as well.
Welcome, neighbor. Come on in and kill me.
She shook her head as she stood back from a too-lighted area at the edge of downtown Silence and warily watched the passing traffic. For a nervous town, there were sure as hell a lot of people out doing things on a weeknight.
Human nature, of course. No matter how nervous they might feel, most people simply never expected the really bad things to happen to them.
Until they did.
Hearing footsteps, she immediately withdrew deeper into the shadows and watched a young couple as they walked past her, holding hands. Oblivious to any possible threat.
Conscious of the gun tucked at the small of her back, she shifted her weight and breathed a sigh. Just because only men had been victims so far didn’t mean the women of this town were safe, but none of them seemed to realize that. There needed to be a curfew at the very least—
All her senses flared suddenly, and she went perfectly still. Waiting. The traffic noises faded, and she no longer smelled exhaust fumes on the damp breeze. The harsh brightness of the streetlights seemed to dim everywhere—except a block away, where a lone man walked, shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets. As he passed beneath each streetlight, it seemed to brighten, almost as if a spotlight followed him.
She smiled unconsciously, her gaze intent on him. The damp breeze brought her now the scent of his cologne. He was wearing Polo. She could almost feel the faint tremors of the earth beneath her feet as he walked.
Or maybe that was her own heartbeat.
She watched him walk toward her. His head was bent, and he was obviously deep in thought. Oblivious. She unconsciously shook her head. Bad to be so wrapped up in thought that you left yourself vulnerable. Worse to do that when living in a town where nice, seemingly respectable men were ending up in the morgue.
She glanced around warily to make certain there was no one else in the area, and then waited until he had nearly reached her before stepping out of the shadows.
“Hey,” she said.
He jumped a foot. “Jesus! You scared the hell out of me.”
“Oh, sorry,” she said mildly, her fingers closing around the grip of her gun as she began to draw it from the waistband of her jeans. “I certainly didn’t mean to do that.”
Nell didn’t appear to be alarmed by Max’s warning. “Why would I be a threat to anyone?”
“Tell me something. What did you see in the woods yesterday? What did your vision show you?”
She didn’t blink or look away, but it was a long moment before she finally answered. “I saw a stormy night. A man in a slicker carrying a woman over his shoulder. I don’t know who he was. I don’t know who she was. I don’t know if she was dead or alive.”
“So it could have been the killer you saw.”
“Could have. Or someone else, maybe even doing something entirely innocent.”
“Do you think so?”
Still without looking away from his face, Nell shook her head slowly. “Not really. Whatever he was doing . . . there was nothing innocent about it.”
“Now for the big question. Did you see the past? Or the future?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“You still can’t tell?”
“Usually, no. Not unless there’s something in the vision to place it in time.”
“What about other kinds of control? Can you ... trigger ... one of these things if you want to?”
“Not really. I can put myself in a place where one is more likely, a place where something violent happened, but it doesn’t always work. There’s no button I can push, Max, no switch to flip when I want to see something.”
“Which makes you vulnerable as hell, whether you’ll admit it or not. If you could see the killer, identify him, point the cops to him, then maybe you’d be safe. Safer, anyway. But you can’t do that. And the thing is, other people don’t understand your abilities, Nell. They don’t understand—and yet they’re talking. Speculating. Wondering just what the Gallagher curse really is. I’ve heard at least three people wondering out loud if this elusive killer has a chance of hiding now that our very own local witch has come home.”
Quietly, she said, “So maybe he’s wondering too.”
“Maybe he is.”
“Or maybe,” she suggested, “he doesn’t know a damned thing about the Gallagher curse.”
“He knows about secrets, Nell, remember? Every man he’s killed has had secrets, and those secrets are out or coming out. I don’t know much about killers, but this one see
ms to have his game plan all worked out, and that plan includes exposing the dark sides of people’s private lives. So if you ask me, you’ve got a double chance of becoming a target. Because you’ve got a secret, and because that secret—that ability—is a threat to him.”
“It’s no secret if people are talking about it.”
“It’s something you try to hide, and that makes it a secretive thing.”
“A ... dark and secretive thing?”
“Some people would call it that. This town hasn’t changed all that much, Nell, and your family never did anything to make this curse of yours something to understand and not fear. People fear what they don’t understand, and some people still call psychic abilities dark. Even evil.”
“Which is why they call me a witch.”
“Which is why some do, yes.”
She drew a breath. “And that’s why you’ve been following me? Because you believe what I can do makes me a target?”
“That’s why.” He smiled faintly. “Of course, I didn’t know you had a gun. I suppose you know how to use it?”
“Yeah, I know how.” She turned her head slightly, looking toward the door with a faint frown. “They teach us how to do that.”
“They? Who are they?”
Before Nell could answer, the door opened quietly and Casey Lattimore stepped into the room. Closing the door behind her, the mayor of Silence said dryly to Max, “They are the FBI. The training academy for agents is at Quantico. Right, Nell?”
“Right.”
“Last year,” Mayor Lattimore said from her position in the room’s one armchair, “weeks after Peter Lynch died, I was feeling frustrated. Not that anybody could have been sure it was murder, not then, but nothing seemed to be happening in the investigation. Worse, I didn’t really understand police procedure. I thought it was something I needed to understand.”
“So you went up to Quantico,” Max finished slowly. “Took that course for civilian authorities.” He was sitting on the bed, rather gingerly.
She nodded. “And that’s where I ran into Nell.”
Nell, still leaning back against the dresser, said, “My unit operates out of Quantico, and sometimes we’re tapped to help teach some of the courses offered. I was between assignments and ended up helping the instructor speaking to Casey’s group that week. We recognized each other.”
“After twelve years?” Max asked.
Casey said, “Don’t forget, I taught both of you in high school. Not to swell your head, Max, but some students really are more memorable than others. You and Nell, I remembered.”
Max decided not to ask why. “Okay, so you recognized Nell. And then?”
“Well, nothing much happened then. We had lunch a couple of times. Talked, briefly, about Silence. I told Nell about my concerns, about this recent death that seemed so difficult for our sheriff and his people to resolve.”
“But there wasn’t much to go on,” Nell continued, “especially not at a distance. So there really wasn’t anything I could do, even offer anything helpful in the way of advice. Casey finished her course, and we said good-bye. Then, a couple of months ago, she called me. By then, three men were dead, and the odd little twist about their sins coming to light afterward seemed to pretty strongly indicate there was one killer. A very unusual sort of killer.”
“Which attracted the interest of the Bureau?” Max lifted a brow at her.
“Which attracted the interest of my boss, the leader of the unit I belong to. He’s a profiler, instinctive as well as trained. When I gave him all the information Casey had passed along to me, he was able to develop a tentative profile of the sort of person likely to be the killer.”
“And?”
Nell looked at the mayor, who said, “And we immediately had a problem. According to Agent Bishop’s profile, the killer was likely to be a cop.”
Max whistled softly. “Which might explain why the murders are going unsolved.”
“Which might explain why.” Casey sighed. “Worse, what it meant was that I couldn’t trust the local police—any of the police. They were all suspect, from Sheriff Cole down to his deputies, and even those not directly suspected are likely to have loyalties that could color their thinking. So I could hardly go to any of them with the information that our killer might well be a cop.” She shook her head. “We needed help from investigators outside the town, outside the parish, and we had to keep it quiet because we certainly couldn’t let it be known that our own sheriff’s department was under suspicion.”
“But the Bureau is very picky about sending in agents if the local authorities haven’t asked for our help,” Nell continued. “States’ rights, various jurisdictions—it can get tangled and ugly in a hurry if we aren’t very, very careful how we handle things. Still, Casey was in a position to ask for our help in a unique situation and to authorize us to begin investigating, so the decision was made.”
“To send you in?” Max was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Nell—the half-wild, fey girl he remembered so vividly—was now a federal cop.
“To launch an undercover investigation,” she corrected. “No agents wandering around in town flashing their badges or muscling in on the local cops. Since we knew we’d have to investigate those local cops while also working to solve this series of murders, we could hardly operate openly.
“Something much quieter and a lot more subtle was needed. Obviously. And an agent who wouldn’t stand out like a sore thumb. I was chosen partly because I have a nice, innocent—and authentic—reason to be here. Settling my father’s estate.” She spoke without emotion. “Even the most suspicious person would be unlikely to figure me for anything other than a reluctant daughter returning home because there were things I had to take care of here. So I was perfect for the job.”
Max shook his head. “They didn’t send you down here alone, surely?”
“No.”
He stared at her for a moment, then looked at Casey.
“Nell is my contact,” she said. “I don’t know the other agent—or agents—involved.”
“Which is the way it stays,” Nell said, looking steadily at Max. “Undercover means under cover. The safety of an agent often depends on how secure the cover is; what you don’t know, you can’t betray, consciously or unconsciously. If you hadn’t presented a potential problem by—rather obviously—following me around today, there wouldn’t have been any need to tell you this much.”
“Thanks a lot,” he muttered.
“Don’t mention it.”
Casey smiled slightly, but said, “If anybody else noticed you following Nell, Max, they’ll probably chalk it up to ... renewed interest, shall we say? Old gossip can have its uses. Since there was always a . . . mystery ... concerning you two, people will tend to focus on that.”
“Great,” Max said without looking at Nell. “It’s always been my ambition to look like a lovelorn jerk.”
“Better than looking like a stalker or a murderer,” Casey reminded him matter-of-factly.
“We all know I’m already suspected of the latter.” He kept his gaze on her. “Which makes me wonder why you two decided to bring me in on this. It can’t be only because I was following Nell all day. Aren’t you taking quite a chance? I could be the killer, you know.”
“You aren’t a cop,” Casey reminded him.
“No, but that profile could be wrong.”
“It isn’t,” Nell said. “Certainly not on the major points. Bishop is very good at what he does.”
Max shrugged. “Okay, but even the best make mistakes sometimes. I could still be the killer.”
“You aren’t,” Nell said.
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can.” She waited until he reluctantly met her gaze, and added evenly, “And you know how I can.”
Max was far too conscious of Casey’s silent attention to say any of the things he wanted to say to Nell. He didn’t know how much Casey knew but, even more, he wasn’t about to
open up old wounds and take the distinct risk of having Nell rub salt into them.
So all he said was, “So I’m off your suspect list. Who’s on it?”
Casey said, “Just about everybody else, if you want the truth. Virtually all the men, anyway.”
“You’re sure the killer is male?”
Nell nodded. “Pretty sure. According to Bishop’s profile, he’s probably white, likely in his mid-thirties to mid-forties, and almost certainly a cop, though he could also be someone to whom cops are a hobby and his interest in them an obsession. Whichever it is, he knows police procedure, understands forensics, and has no intention of making a mistake that might get him caught.”
“He doesn’t want to get caught? I thought most serial killers did, at least on some level.”
“This isn’t a serial killer, at least not in the accepted sense. This killer isn’t choosing victims at random or because he has no connection to them. This is personal to him, very personal. He’s picking his victims in order to expose their secret crimes, their secret lives. Which means he knows them, and probably quite well. He doesn’t like secrets; somewhere in his life, maybe his childhood, a secret damaged him and somehow changed his world or his perception of himself forever.”
Max frowned. “So he wants the truth to come out, no matter the cost.”
“That seems to be his motivation, at least in part. We also believe that in killing these men, he’s attempting to punish them for their secrets. Whoever is responsible for the secret in his own life was probably out of his reach and somehow escaped punishment for that sin or crime. Because he couldn’t get justice for himself, he’s trying to get it for the innocents in these men’s lives—or at least that’s what he believes.”
Nell hesitated, frowned. “Bishop thinks there’s something else too, some other piece of this guy’s reasoning that would help explain either what he’s doing or his choice of victims.”
“That’s wonderfully vague,” Max noted.
Casey said, “As I understand it, profiling is mostly educated and intuitive guesswork. More of an art than a science. Bound to be some vagueness there.”