Sense of Evil (36 page)

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 split 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.”

“And not even helpful,” he told her as he handed the notes to Rafe, then leaned his hands on the back of an unoccupied chair. “Nobody recognized the name or photograph of Jamie Brower—except to say they’d seen her picture in the newspapers and on TV.”

Isabel waited out another rumble of thunder, then said, “We need a fresh mind. Travis, if you wanted to bury a secret someplace you could be sure it wouldn’t be found, where would you put it?”

“In a grave.” He realized he was being stared at, and straightened self-consciously. “Well, I would. Once somebody’s buried, they’re not often dug back up. So why not? It’d be easy enough to strip the turf off a grave, bury whatever it was I was trying to hide between the surface and the casket—assuming it was the right size—then cover it back up and re-lay the grass. As long as I was careful, nobody’d even notice.”

“Son of a bitch,” Rafe said.

Isabel was shaking her head. “Why isn’t he a detective?”

Travis brightened. “I was right?”

“God knows,” Hollis said, “but you’re sending us in a new direction, so I say good for you.”

“Hey, cool.” Then his smile faded. “We got lots of cemeteries in Hastings. Where do we start looking? And what’re we looking for, by the way?”

“We’re looking for a box of photos,” Rafe said, feeling the younger cop had earned the knowledge.

Isabel added, “And it has to be connected with Jamie Brower. We need to know where any deceased family or friends are buried.”

“I’ll go back to my phone,” Travis said with a sigh. “Start calling all the local clergy and asking them. I do
not
want to have to call the Browers directly, not today. Or tomorrow, or next week.”

“Yeah, let’s avoid that if possible,” Rafe told him.

When he’d gone, Isabel said, “You really should promote him.”

“He was on my short list,” Rafe said. “The only reason I’ve hesitated is because he’s currently sleeping with a reporter who isn’t quite what she appears to be.”

Hollis asked, “What is she?”

“According to my sources, she works for the governor’s office, and is sent in quietly during tricky investigations to keep an eye on local law enforcement. So we don’t do anything to embarrass ourselves. Or the state attorney general. They’re keeping a very close eye on this investigation.”

“That shows a distressing lack of faith,” Isabel said, but without surprise.

Mallory was looking at Rafe with lifted brows. “You know that for a fact.”

“Yes,” he replied with a faint smile. “I keep a fairly close eye on my people.”

Mallory stared at him, then said, “Oh, don’t tell me.”

“You and Isabel have something in common. Neither one of you is as subtle as you think you are.”

“I resent that,” Isabel said.

“Besides,” Hollis said, “Alan Moore is the one who isn’t subtle. Even I picked up on it.”

Mallory got to her feet with great dignity. “Being outnumbered by psychics is hardly fair. I’m going to use the computer in the other room. Excuse me.”

“I think we pissed her off,” Hollis said absently as she opened the local phone book to begin making a list of churches and cemeteries.

“She’ll get over it.” Rafe shook his head. “Although I don’t know if Alan will. Never seen him fall so hard before.”

Isabel pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Mallory doesn’t strike me as the settling-down type.”

“I don’t think she is. I also don’t think Alan has realized that yet.”

“It’s always about relationships,” Hollis murmured, with a sidelong glance at Isabel.

Ignoring the glance, Isabel said, “We need to go back through every piece of paper associated in any way with Jamie’s life and death and check out the names of all family and friends.”

“Chicken,” Hollis said.

“We have more imperative things to think about,” Isabel told her. “Like finding that grave.”

Rafe said, “You think it’s there, don’t you? You think Jamie buried that box in somebody’s grave?”

“I think it makes sense. She was burying a part of her life, so why not put it in a grave? And I’m betting it won’t be a family grave, but the grave of someone else who was important to her. A teacher, a mentor, a friend. Maybe her first lover.”

“Male or female?”

“At a guess, female.”

“That does help narrow the field.”

“Let’s hope it narrows it enough.”

Of all the family and friends who had died during Jamie’s life, Isabel considered three women the most likely candidates for Jamie’s burial of her secrets. One was a former teacher that friends reported Jamie had seemed especially close to, one was a close friend from high school who had been killed in a highway accident, and the third was a woman who had worked in Jamie’s office, dying young of cancer.

Three women, three cemeteries.

“I think we should check these out before the storm breaks,” Isabel told Rafe.

Rafe wanted to argue, but he was reluctant to put off doing anything that could help them catch the killer before he took aim at his next target. Isabel.

And before the press took aim at her.

“It’ll be faster if we split up,” she was saying. Since she had already told him privately that she wanted to stick close to Hollis because her partner seemed to be so affected by the tension of the storm, Rafe didn’t object when she added, “Hollis and I will take Rosemont.”

“You’ll also take Dean Emery,” he added. “There’s only one entrance to Rosemont, and it’s fenced; he can stand by at the entrance while you two find the grave. Mallory can take Travis along to Sunset.”

“And who will you take to Grogan’s Creek?” Isabel asked politely.

“I might take the mayor,” he answered wryly. “I need to stop and see him before he blows a fuse.”

Mallory said, “We’re doing all this on the way home, right? Because I’m beat.”

Rafe nodded. “Check out the cemeteries, phone in reports—once you’re out of the storm, that is—and then head home.”

“Got my vote,” Isabel said.

Twenty minutes later, Hollis was saying, “You had to pick the largest cemetery, didn’t you? The one with all the tall monuments and acres of graves.”

“And don’t forget the pretty little chapel with the stained-glass windows,” Isabel reminded, raising her voice a bit as the wind tended to snatch at it.

“I just wish the place had a caretaker on duty to point out Susan Andrews’s grave,” Hollis said, pausing to squint at a headstone. “Because unless . . .”

“Unless what?” Isabel asked, half turning to look at her partner.

Hollis would have answered, but she was hardly aware of Isabel in that moment. The sounds of the wind and the thunder had retreated into that peculiar hollow almost-silence. Her skin was tingling. The fine hairs on her body were stirring. And in the strobe flashes of the lightning, she could see Jamie Brower several yards away, beckoning.

“This way,” Hollis said.

Isabel followed her. “How do you know?” she demanded, raising her voice again to be heard over the rising wind.

“It’s Jamie.” Hollis nearly stopped, then hurried forward. “Dammit, it
was
her. But I don’t see her now.”

“Where was she?”

“Somewhere in this area.” Hollis jumped as thunder crashed, feeling her skin literally crawl. “Have I mentioned how much I hate storms?”

“You might have, yeah. This area? We’ll find it.” Isabel paused as thunder boomed, and added, “Unless we get struck by lightning, that is. I just think we need to do this now. And if you saw Jamie, that makes it even more imperative, I’d say.”

Hollis didn’t argue, just began checking the headstones in the area, flinching with every crack of thunder and flash of lightning. “I hate this,” she called to her partner. “I really hate—”

“Here.” Isabel knelt by a simple headstone with the name
Susan Andrews
engraved on it.

“It doesn’t look disturbed,” Hollis said, then swore under her breath as Isabel dug her fingernails into the turf and neatly lifted a perfectly square section.

“You’d think it would have rooted by now,” Isabel said, folding back the turf. “It’s tight, but not that difficult to pull up.”

Hollis knelt on the other side of the grave to help. “A very neat section just at the headstone. Now I’m glad we brought the shovel Dean had in the cruiser’s trunk.”

“I’m an optimist,” Isabel said, unfolding the small emergency shovel.

Hollis sat back on her heels suddenly. “You knew we’d find it, didn’t you?”

“I had a hunch.”

“You heard a voice.”

“A whisper. Help me dig.”

“We should call Dean,” Hollis said, but it was only a minute or two before the shovel scraped across something metallic and they were able to drag a small box about twelve inches square and five or six inches deep from its resting place at Susan Andrews’s headstone.

“I think we’d better take this back to the station to open it,” Isabel said, the reluctance in her tone clear despite the gusty wind and rumbles of thunder.

“You just forgot to bring your lock-pick tools,” Hollis said, a little amused. “Need help carrying that?”

“No, I’ve got it. You get the shovel, will you, please?”

As they started back across the cemetery, Isabel carrying the box and Hollis the shovel, the latter stopped suddenly.

“Shit.”