Кей Хупер - Blood Ties

“Otherwise,” Hollis finished, “I doubt anybody would have stumbled onto this body. Recognize the vines?”

“Kudzu. This patch starts farther down the slope. The stuff covers and smothers everything in its path.”

Hollis nodded. “It dries up in winter but comes back stronger than ever in spring and summer. The vines can grow several feet in a single day.” She paused, forcing herself to look down at what was left of, she believed, a woman’s body. “It sure as hell would have hidden her from everything except some predators and small animals.”

“Which raises the question: Is she here by accident or design?”

“Yeah. If she wound up here accidentally, it probably won’t tell us much. But if she was left here deliberately…”

“Then this body, unlike the one by that popular hiking trail, was never meant to be found.”

“That would be my guess. Whether the same killer is responsible is another question entirely.”

Brows raised, Diana said, “I know I’m still pretty new to all this investigative stuff, but isn’t it stretching things a bit to assume there’s a second killer operating at the same time in such a remote area?”

“It’s stretching things a lot. But besides not knowing if both these victims were killed by the same person, we don’t even know if this victim was murdered at all. Natural deaths do occur in terrain like this on a regular basis.”

“Yeah. But you don’t believe there was anything natural about this.” It wasn’t a question.

Hollis shrugged. “I think we’re usually not that lucky. So we assume murder until evidence says otherwise.”

“Gotcha.”

Hollis looked around them with a slight frown and, thinking aloud, said, “The killer we’ve been tracking for more than two months has used dumping sites all over the Southeast, so there’s no way for us to be sure just where his home base is. Maybe near here, maybe not. According to the profile, he may not even have a base and could be completely transient.”

“Giving us precious little info to work with.”

“To say the least. But if both these people are his victims, it’s certainly a new wrinkle. He’s spread out his dumping sites before now over hundreds of miles—not hundreds of yards. And this is the first time we’ve found two victims who, I’m guessing, were killed within a week of each other. The guy on the trail was very recent, and this woman at least a few days and probably a week ago.”

Diana drew a short breath—through her mouth—and let it out slowly. “I’ll take your word for it, especially since I’m barely halfway through the crime-scene-investigation manual.” She was one of the newest members of the SCU team, having joined less than a year before. “And, I repeat, that was some hunch to draw you way out here. Except it wasn’t a hunch, was it?”

“No.”

“You saw her?”

“I caught a glimpse.” Hollis frowned again. “It was odd, though. They usually stick around long enough to at least try to communicate. She barely let me see her at all, and she wasn’t close.”

“But she led us here. Probably realized her body would never be found otherwise.”

Hollis looked at Diana. “You didn’t see anything? Anyone?”

“No. But I don’t often just see them here on our side, at least not without the help of a storm or some other external energy. For me, it’s usually a far more deliberate thing, you know that. I have to concentrate, pretty much go into a trancelike state. Or else it happens when I’m asleep.”

She hated that, more now than she had in years past, when she had been consciously unaware of her psychic forays due to the many medications her father and various doctors had used to control her “illness.” Neither Elliot Brisco nor any of those doctors had considered for even a moment that she might not, in fact, be ill but merely… gifted. Diana hadn’t considered it either. She had been utterly convinced she was mentally unstable at best and out of her mind at worst.

Until she met Quentin Hayes. And had been both educated and wholeheartedly accepted by him and the members of the SCU.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like a freak.

“Diana?”

She yanked her attention back to the present, saying parenthetically, “I hate it happening while I’m asleep. Very disconcerting.”

“I can imagine. Very well, in fact.”

“Yeah, you never really told me after our little experiment what you thought about that visit to the gray time.” It was the name she used for a place or time that seemed to be a sort of limbo between the spirit world and the world of the living.

“It was creepy as hell. I don’t envy you the ability to go there.” Despite being a medium herself, Hollis had been completely unfamiliar with that gray and lifeless limbo, which was just one more affirmation of Bishop’s belief that every psychic was unique.

“You never told Bishop or Miranda about it either, did you?”

Hollis offered her a twisted smile. “I don’t have to be telepathic to know they’re both… concerned about me. Seems I’m a bit of a freak as psychics go, and they aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen to me as time goes on. Neither one has said it in so many words, but I gather the most recent tests showed that the amount of electrical activity in my brain is excessive even for psychics. Whether that turns out to be a good thing or a bad one is apparently very much in question.”

“I wish you’d told me that before I took you into the gray time.”

“Don’t you start worrying. I’m fine. Just… exploring my abilities, that’s all. I’d rather have some idea of what I can do before yet another deadly situation opens up, without warning, yet another door in my psychic world. Less disconcerting that way.”

“If you say so.” Diana didn’t look especially convinced, but another glance down at the remains distracted her. “Do we flip a coin to decide who stays here with her?”

“No need; I’ll stay. She might pay me another visit if I’m alone. Besides, you seem to have a better feeling for direction in this kind of terrain, so you’re a hell of a lot less likely to get lost. Plus, there’s Quentin. You two are connected and you usually sense him, right?”

Diana’s expression went a bit guarded, but she said readily enough, “Usually. As a matter of fact, I’m reasonably sure he either heard the shots or felt something, because I think he’s heading this way.”

“Well, go meet him, then, will you, please? The less time I have to spend here waiting for a spirit or a bear, the better.”

“I hear that.” Diana turned away, adding, “Sit tight. I’ll be back with the others ASAP.”

“I’ll be here.” Hollis was left staring down at the remains of a woman who had, assuming that spirit was hers, died far too young.

There wasn’t a lot left of the body. Hollis knew enough to recognize that both maggots and small scavengers had consumed most of the soft tissue. There was some skin left, and quite a bit of long blond hair clung to a small patch of scalp that was still attached to the skull.

She had beautiful teeth, straight and gleaming white.

Must have cost a fortune at the orthodontist .

Hollis knelt gingerly, telling herself the smell wasn’t at all overpowering as she did her best to look for evidence, for clues to how this woman died. To study the scene as she had been taught.

The first clue surprised her, both because she had missed it until now and because it struck her as unexpectedly sloppy that the killer had left it behind: A loop of plastic bound fragile wrists together behind the victim’s back. It was the sort of binding that law-enforcement units often used these days in a big operation or when they otherwise ran out of metal handcuffs.