Кей Хупер - Chill Of Fear

"You don't have to remind me of that."

"What I mean is... if you've been looking for a paranormal explanation all this time—"

"That's why I was never able to solve her murder?" He shook his head. "I'm a cop, Diana. Psychic or not, the first thing we're taught to look for is the reasonable, rational, likely explanation. Because, more often than not, that's what we're going to find."

"It wasn't there, in this case?"

"The cops who investigated the case twenty-five years ago never even had a decent suspect. I've gone over all the reports on their investigation, and conducted my own investigation for years, however unofficially. Even interviewed dozens of people who were here or in the area at the time. And I have nothing new to show for it."

He drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Missy was strangled with a piece of twine from a bale of hay that had come from a field just yards away from where her body was found. A field filled with freshly baled hay. All that tells me as a cop, all it would tell any cop, is that the murder weapon was near to hand and convenient, which most likely means the murder itself was impulsive or opportunistic rather than planned. Something triggered his rage or his need, and he used the first weapon he could reach to kill her."

"He?"

"Odds are, the killer was — is — male. Women virtually never kill children unrelated to them, and Missy's only relation here, her mother, was helping in the kitchen for hours that day, reportedly under observation by a dozen other people the whole time. Beyond that, nothing at the scene offered any indication of who killed Missy or why."

Diana frowned and, not even sure where the question came from, asked, "Why did he even need the twine? I mean... she was just a little girl. Wouldn't it have made more sense if he had used his hands?"

Quentin nodded slightly. "An educated guess is that she was probably strangled from behind with that twine because he didn't want her to see him, or else didn't want to look into her face as she died."

"Why?"

"Maybe because watching her die would have meant he'd have to admit to himself that he was a killer."

"How could he delude himself that he wasn't?"

"Easily. People do it all the time, you know that. Delude ourselves. Mostly in minor things. We delude ourselves into believing that we won't be one of the ones let go when our company starts layoffs. That our favorite sports team has a shot at a championship. That we really can afford that shiny new car calling out to us from the lot."

"All of which is a long way from denying you're a killer when you're choking the life out of someone," Diana pointed out.

"Yeah, it's a leap. But I believe by the time he picked up that twine and wrapped it around her neck, this killer had gradually reached that point. It may have taken him years to get there, but he had. Possibly for the first time. By then, by that day, he could kill, but didn't view himself as a killer."

Quentin had seemingly been cool and clinical up to that point, but the detachment left when he continued, his voice going quiet and a little rough. "Whatever happened out there, whatever triggered it, he killed Missy. She was left in that stream, her body wedged in among the rocks, the twine still wrapped around her neck."

He paused, then added softly, "Her eyes were open. When I first saw her, she seemed to be looking right at me. Pleading with me. As if I could help her. As if I should have."

"Quentin—"

"By then, she'd become the little sister I'd never had. Someone I couldn't imagine my life without. And I stood there, frozen, staring into her eyes, knowing that I had failed her. As a brother. As a friend. I hadn't listened to her. I hadn't protected her. I hadn't helped her. I hadn't saved her. It was... it felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. Everything around me faded, grew dark, until all I could see was her. Her eyes. That pale, pale face. And the twine wrapped around her neck, cutting into her skin. Such a strangely small, ordinary thing to have snuffed out a life. To have stopped a smile and silenced a laugh forever. Just twine. Just twine from a bale of hay."

Diana wasn't entirely sure she wanted to hear any of this, yet at the same time she couldn't remember ever feeling so focused, so clear-minded. There were no scattered thoughts, no random flashes of information, no whispers in her head. There wasn't even the earlier shock and fear at the certain knowledge that she had on this day spoken casually with a ghost.

There was only this man and his low, hurting voice, painting for her a horrific, tragic image she could see so clearly it was as though she had stood there herself and seen that murdered little girl.

Her long, dark hair moving in the water as though it and she were still alive, big dark eyes open, staring up...

"It wasn't a...sexual crime," Quentin continued, obviously with difficulty. "At least, that was the official conclusion, and I haven't found any evidence to believe otherwise. She was fully dressed, and no bodily fluids were found on or near her, though being submerged in water means we can't be certain there wasn't something on her clothing or body that was washed away. There were no bruises, no signs of trauma other than what had killed her. No defensive injuries. They scraped under her fingernails, took clippings. But there was nothing, no evidence to help identify her killer.

"She probably died there in the stream or nearby; there was nothing to indicate it might have happened somewhere else. Nothing to indicate that she fought her attacker, or even that she struggled at all. The last person to see her alive, as far as they could determine, was me."

That surprised Diana. "You?"

"Yeah. Late that afternoon. I was coming back up from the stables, and met her near what's now the entrance to the Zen Garden. That's when she tried one more time to tell me that she was afraid, that there was something... wrong here. But I was hot and tired and just wanted to go to our cottage and take a shower. I thought she'd had a nightmare, or maybe was just making up a story, for whatever reason."

"Could there have been a reason?"

He shrugged. "Because the other kids and I had been spending more time riding the horses, and she never went along since she was afraid of them. Because the summer was winding down and we were all getting a little bored, a little tired of one another's company. Whatever. So I brushed her off." He paused, then added steadily, "They fixed the time of death as just under two hours later."

"And nobody saw her in all that time?"

"Nobody admitted to it. In all fairness, they probably wouldn't have noticed her. She was — she had the knack of slipping past people without really being seen."

"Like a ghost?"

"Like a ghost."

In the privacy of her office, Stephanie Boyd grimaced as she held the phone to her ear. She was pretty good at keeping her thoughts and feelings to herself, but it was a relief now to relax physically as she couldn't allow herself to verbally. With this man, at any rate.

Her boss had, not surprisingly, reacted badly to the news of the remains of a child being found on the grounds of The Lodge. His reaction was even worse once he grasped the probable ramifications of the police investigation already under way.

"You couldn't stop them, Stephanie?"

"How?" she asked, repressing the urge toward sarcasm. "The police are bound by law to investigate something like this, and I have no authority to stop them. Offhand, I can't imagine any local judge or politician trying it, either, not when it concerns the death of a child."

She drew a breath. "Setting aside, of course, the fact that it could only further damage the reputation of The Lodge if we seemed in any way reluctant to find the truth of this tragedy, we are morally compelled to do whatever we can."