Sense of Evil (7 page)

Hollis sighed, clearly impatient with the discussion. “Somehow I don’t think a lawyer finding out we’re psychics is going to be our major problem. I’m new at this whole thing, and you might as well have a bull’s-eye target on your back. In neon.” She stood up. “Since we have that early meeting in the morning, I think I’ll go back to my own room and get some sleep, if you don’t mind.”

Without protest, Isabel merely said, “I’ll be up and ready for breakfast at seven if you want to meet me here.” The small inn where they were staying didn’t provide room service, but there was a restaurant nearby.

“Okay. See you then.”

“Good night, Hollis.”

When she was alone in her room again, Isabel got ready for bed, brooding. Just as the night before, she barely noticed the uninspired, any-hotel-in-any-town-U.S.A. decor, and out of habit she filled the silence by having the air-conditioning on high and the TV tuned to an all-news network.

She hated silence when she was in an unfamiliar place.

She had put off calling Bishop, undecided despite what she’d told Rafe as to what she intended to report. So when her cell phone rang, she knew who it was even without the caller I.D. and answered by saying, “This is supposed to be one of those lessons you’re always saying we have to learn, right? A reminder from the universe that we don’t control anything except our own actions? When we’re able to control them, that is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bishop replied, calm and transparently unconvincing.

“Yeah, yeah. Why team me with Hollis? Answer that.”

“Because you’re the one most likely to help her through this first real test of her abilities.”

“I’m not a medium.”

“No, but you understand how it feels to be forced suddenly to cope with abilities you never even dreamed were possible.”

“I’m not the only other team member who wasn’t born a psychic.”

“You’re the best adjusted.”

“That’s an arguable statement. Just because this stuff no longer scares the hell out of me doesn’t necessarily mean I’m all that well adjusted.”

“I didn’t say well adjusted. I said best adjusted.”

“Which only proves my point. I would think you’d want somebody well adjusted to help Hollis.”

“You’re going to keep arguing about this, aren’t you?” Bishop said.

“I thought I might.”

“Are you asking me to recall Hollis?”

Isabel hesitated, then said, “No. Dammit.”

“You can help her. Just listen to your instincts.”

“Bishop, we both know mediums are fragile.”

“And we both know how difficult it’s been for us to find a medium for the unit. They’re rare, for one thing. And, yes, they’re emotionally fragile. Most can’t handle the job, and those who can tend to burn out quickly.”

“So far,” she reminded him, “we haven’t found a single one who was able to gain information for us by contacting murder victims. I mean an agent. Bonnie did it, but she wasn’t an agent. When she grows up, though—”

“She still has a lot of growing to do. Right now, she’s preoccupied with being a teenager. It’s not the easiest time of life, remember? Especially when you’re gifted.”

“Or cursed. Yeah, I remember. Bonnie aside, the few mediums we’ve found and tried to bring into murder investigations have either been terrified of opening that particular door or else didn’t have enough strength or control to do it in any way helpful to us.”

“Which is another reason you’re teamed with Hollis and why she’s in Hastings. She’s strong enough to handle the work, and her control has been steadily improving.”

“Maybe, but her field experience is zilch. And she’s not ready to open that door, not yet. Strong or not, she’s one of the scared ones. She doesn’t show it, unless you count the chip on her shoulder, but she’s terrified of facing death.”

“Can you blame her? She fought like hell to keep death at bay on her own account hardly more than six months ago. Willingly opening that door and confronting what’s on the other side is going to be the hardest thing she’ll ever have to do.”

“Yeah, which is one reason I don’t think she’s ready for this job, not yet. Look, I’m as sympathetic as anyone about what Hollis has been through, but—”

“She doesn’t need sympathy. She needs to work.”

“She isn’t ready to work, if my opinion counts for anything.”

“She believes she is ready.”

“And what do you believe?” Isabel challenged.

“I believe she needs to work.”

Isabel sighed. “This killer is vicious. The attacks have been vicious. If Hollis is even able to nerve herself to open the door, she’s going to find a hell of a lot of terror and pain barreling through at her.”

“I know.”

“I can’t push her, Bishop.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Just be here to catch her when she falls?”

“No. Don’t focus on that. It’s not what this is about. You investigate your case. Hollis is intelligent, curious, intuitive, and observant, and that plus the training we’ve given her means she’ll be an asset to the investigation. If she’s able to use her psychic abilities, we’ll find out in a hurry whether she can handle the fallout.”

“And whether I can. She could end up a basket case.”

“Possibly, but don’t count her out. She’s exceptionally strong.” Bishop paused, then added dryly, “The more imperative problem, I’d say, is that this killer you and I are both all too familiar with has noticed you this time around. For all we know, he may remember you. In any case, you’re on his hit list.”

“Damn,” Isabel said.

4

Friday, June 13, 6:15 AM

H
E WOKE UP with blood on his hands.

It wasn’t an instant realization. The alarm was droning on and on, and he had the vague notion that he had overslept. Again. He’d been doing that a lot lately. The bedclothes were tumbled, tangled around him, and it took a considerable amount of effort just to roll himself over and slap at the irritating alarm clock to stop the damned noise.

He froze, hand on the now-silent clock.

His hand was . . . there was blood.

He pushed himself slowly up on an elbow and looked at his hand, at both hands. Reddish stains covered the palms. Dried stains, not wet. But now that they were close to his face, he could smell the blood, sharp and metallic, so strong it made his stomach heave.

The blood.

Again.

He fought his way out of bed and hurried to the bathroom. He stood at the sink, washing his hands over and over until there was no sign of the red. He splashed water on his face, rinsed his mouth, trying to get rid of the sour taste of fear.

He raised his head and stared into the mirror, hands braced on the sink.

A white, haggard face stared back at him.

“Oh, Christ,” he whispered.

8:00 AM

Isabel wasted no time, at the first meeting of the four lead investigators of their combined police and FBI task force, in explaining to Detective Mallory Beck what made the SCU team “special.”

Mallory, like Rafe the previous day, took the news quite calmly, saying only, “I’d call that a pretty unusual sort of unit for the FBI.”

Isabel nodded. “Definitely. And we exist as a unit only as long as we’re successful.”

“Like that, is it? Politics?”

“More or less. Not only are we unconventional in too many ways to count, but the Bureau can’t use us and our success to improve their own image; what we do too often looks like magic or some kind of witchcraft rather than science, and that is
not
something the FBI wants to publicize no matter how high our success rate is. We’re becoming quietly well known within other law-enforcement organizations because of our successes, but there are still plenty of people inside the Bureau who’d love it if we failed.”

“So you haven’t yet?”

“Debatable point, I suppose.” Isabel pursed her lips. “A few got away. But the successes have far exceeded the failures. If you call them failures.”

“You don’t?”

“We don’t give up easily. Bishop doesn’t give up easily. So . . . just because a case goes cold doesn’t mean we forget about it or stop working on it. Which brings me back to this case.” She explained their belief that they were dealing with a killer who had terrorized two previous towns and had a dozen murders under his belt even before he came to Hastings.

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger task force,” Mallory said dryly.

Even though he smiled faintly, Rafe’s response was matter-of-fact. “Technically, we have one. Every officer and detective we have will be working on some aspect of the investigation. Overtime, more people to handle the phones, whatever it takes. But only you and I know about Hollis’s and Isabel’s psychic abilities. That’s the way it stays. The last thing I want is for the press to turn this thing into a carnival sideshow.”

“And they will, given the chance,” Isabel said. “We’ve seen it happen before.”

Great,
Mallory thought,
one more thing I have to hide from Alan.
Out loud, she said, “I don’t know much about ESP, unless you count commercials from those psychic hotlines, but I gather neither of you can just I.D. our perp for us like snapping your fingers?”

“Our abilities are just another tool,” Isabel told her. “We use standard investigative techniques like every other cop, at least as much as possible.”

Mallory was more resigned than scornful. “Yeah, I figured that would be the deal.”

“It can’t be too easy,” Hollis said. “The universe has to make us work for everything.”

“So how will your abilities help us, assuming they do?” Mallory asked. “I mean, what specifically is it that you’re able to do?”

“I’m clairvoyant,” Isabel said, explaining the SCU’s definition of the term.

“So you have to touch something or someone to pick up information about them?”

“Touching helps, usually, because it establishes the strongest connection. But I also get information randomly sometimes. That tends to be trivia.”

“For instance?” Mallory was clearly curious.

Without hesitation, Isabel said, “You had a cinnamon bun for breakfast at home this morning and you feel guilty about it.”

Mallory blinked, then looked at Rafe.

“Spooky, isn’t it?” he said.

Mallory cleared her throat and, without commenting on Isabel’s statement, looked at Hollis. “And you?”

“I talk to dead people,” she replied with a wry smile. “Technically, I’m a medium.”

“No shit? That must be . . . disconcerting.”

“I’m told you get used to it,” Hollis murmured.

“You’re told?”

“I’m new at this.”

Rafe frowned. “You weren’t born with it?”

“Not exactly.” Hollis looked at Isabel, who explained.

“Some people possess latent—inactive—paranormal abilities. For most of those people, the abilities remain unknown and unused their entire lives. They may get hunches, flashes of knowledge they can’t logically explain, but they generally ignore it or dismiss it as coincidence.”

“Until something changes,” Rafe guessed.

“Exactly. Every once in a while, something happens that causes latent psychics either consciously or subconsciously to tap into the previously dormant ability and actually begin using it.”

“What could do that?” Mallory asked warily.

“The most common, and most likely, scenario is that a latent becomes an adept—our term for a functional psychic—due to a physical, emotional, or psychological injury. A head injury is the most common, but almost any severe trauma can do it. Generally speaking, the greater the shock of the awakening, the stronger the abilities tend to be.”

“So Hollis—”

“Both of us. Both of us survived a traumatic event,” Isabel said matter-of-factly. “And became functional psychics because of it.”

9:00 AM

Officer Ginny McBrayer hung up the phone and frowned down at the message pad for a moment, debating. Then she got up and went around the corner to Travis’s desk. “Hey. Is the chief still in that meeting?”

On the phone himself, but obviously on hold judging by his propped-up feet, bored expression, and only semicontact between the receiver and his ear, Travis replied, “Yeah. Not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. Or ‘relevant,’ I think he said.”

“This might be.” Ginny handed over the message slip. “What do you think?”

Travis studied the slip, then searched his cluttered desk for a minute, finally producing a clipboard. “Here’s the list we already have going. Women of the right general age reported missing within a fifty-mile radius of Hastings. We’re up to ten in the last three weeks. It was twelve, but two of them came home.”

Ginny looked over the list, then picked up her message slip again and frowned. “Yeah, but the one I just got the call about is local, from that dairy farm just outside town. Her husband really sounded upset.”

“Okay, then tell the chief.” Travis shrugged. “I’m waiting for the clerk at the courthouse to get back to me about all that property Jamie Brower owned. She’s got me on hold. Remind me to tell them they need some new canned music, okay? This shit is giving me a headache.”

“I don’t want to interrupt the chief’s meeting,” Ginny said, ignoring the irrelevant information he’d offered. “What if this is nothing?”

“And what if it’s something? Go knock on the door and report the call. Better for him to be mad at an interruption than to be mad because he wasn’t told something he should have been.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ginny muttered. But she turned away from the other cop’s desk and headed for the conference room.

“Neither of you was born psychic?” Mallory said in surprise. “But—”

Isabel smiled, but said, “Understandably, neither one of us is all that eager to talk about what happened to us, so if you two don’t mind, we won’t. We’re both trained investigators, of course, and I’m a profiler. Plus we have the full backing of the SCU and the resources of Quantico. But anything Hollis and I are able to glean from our abilities or spider sense will have to be considered a bonus, not something we can count on.”

Rafe eyed her. “Spider sense?”

“It’s not as out there as it sounds.” She smiled. “Just our informal term for enhanced normal senses—the traditional five. Something Bishop discovered and has been able to teach most of us is how to concentrate and amplify our sight, hearing, and other senses. Like everything else, it varies from agent to agent in terms of strength, accuracy, and control. Even at its best it isn’t a huge edge, but it has been known to help us out from time to time.”