Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

"Okay. And so?"

"And so energy can be absorbed and retained by an object or a place. By walls and a floor, by trees, even by the ground itself. Maybe certain places are more likely than others to retain energy because of factors we don't yet understand, because their physical composition lends itself to storing energy, or there are magnetic fields — or even that the energy itself is particularly powerful at a given moment and we ourselves stamp that into a place with our own strength and intensity.

"However it happens, some places remember some things. Some emotions. Some events. The energy remains trapped in a place, unseen and unheard until someone with an inborn sensitivity to that particular kind of energy is able to tap into it."

"Someone like you."

"Exactly. There's nothing magical about what I do, nothing dark or evil — or inhuman. It's just an ability, as natural to me as your instincts about horses are to you. A perfectly normal talent, if you will, that not everyone has. Maybe it's genetic, like the color of our eyes or whether we're right- or left-handed; in my family it certainly seems to be, at least partly. On the other hand, there's every possibility that every human being has the capacity for some form of psychic ability, that everyone has an unused area of the brain that could perform seemingly amazing things if we only knew how to… turn it on."

Nell shook her head and frowned slightly as she looked down at her coffee. "We're pretty sure that some people are born with the potential to develop some kind of psychic ability, that in them the area of the brain controlling that function is at least partly or intermittently active, even if it's entirely on an unconscious level; we call them latents. They usually aren't aware of it, though another psychic often is."

Max frowned, but all he said was, "But latent abilities do sometimes become active on a conscious level?"

"They have been known to. As far as we can tell, turning a latent into a conscious, functioning psychic requires some sort of trigger. A physical or emotional trauma, usually. Like a shock to the brain, literally or figuratively. Something happens to them, an accident or an emotional jolt — and they find themselves coping with strange new abilities. Which would explain why people with head injuries or who develop certain kinds of seizures often report psychic experiences afterward."

"I had no idea," Max said.

"Not many people do. I didn't, until I joined the unit and began to learn." She shook her head again. "Anyway, in my particular case, my brain is hardwired for a sensitivity to the sort of electrical energy produced by… emotional or psychologically intense events. Those events leave electrical impressions behind, energy that's absorbed by the place where the events occur, and I have the knack of sensing and interpreting that electrical energy."

Max spoke carefully. "Isn't sensing electrical energy a long way from envisioning an image of a dead man?"

"Is it? The mind interprets the information it's given and translates that into some form we recognize and understand. What happened in this room had a form, a face, a voice — and all that survived as energy. As a memory. Just the way you recall a memory of your own, I can recall the memory of a place. Sometimes quite vividly, and sometimes only bits and pieces, images, feelings, scattered and unclear."

"Okay. Assuming I can accept all that, explain to me why that particular scene — your father walking through a kitchen he must have walked through a million times — is what this room retained. Why that? Out of everything that must have happened here in decades, all the emotional scenes and crises so common in every kitchen everywhere, why was that very normal scene important enough to retain?"

"Because it wasn't normal. What my father was feeling when he walked through this kitchen then was… incredibly intense. He was emotionally devastated."

Max frowned. "You felt that?"

"Sensed it — some of it, at least. It was difficult to get a fix on his emotions, simply because he was overwhelmed by them himself. But I know he was distraught, in shock, that he'd just discovered something he could hardly believe was true."

"Something she should have told him, isn't that what you heard him say?"

"Yes. Given the calendar I saw, that must have been when he found out whatever it was that made him disinherit Hailey. He died in late May, and he'd changed his will just a few weeks before that, not long after she left."

Still frowning, Max said, "So why do you believe he was murdered? No one suspected it was anything other than a heart attack."

"Yes, but there was no one here to suspect, no one to question. All the rest of the family was gone, not on the scene to wonder. He had no close friends. It looked like a heart attack; he was the right age for one and had been warned by his doctor that his habits and temperament put him into the high-risk category. And with no other unexplained deaths before then to put anyone on guard…"

"I understand why no one here would have suspected a murder, but how can you be so sure he was killed? Did he think he was going to be, fearing for his life in that scene you envisioned?"

For the first time, realizing, Nell felt a chill. "No, he had no idea," she said slowly. "No fear or worry. His mind was entirely focused on the shock he'd had, but he wasn't in the least afraid or concerned for himself. It was… I must have picked up on something else. Sensed something else."

"Like maybe the killer?"

She drew a breath. "Like maybe the killer."

Nate McCJurry was scared.

He hadn't been at first. Hell, he'd barely paid attention when Peter Lynch had died, and as for Luke Ferrier, well, Nate had always expected something bad to happen to him.

But when Randal Patterson's death had exposed his S&M leanings, Nate had started to get nervous. Because he had something in common with Randal. And, he was beginning to think, with the others as well.

Not that Nate had any big secret , not like those other guys. He hadn't broken the law, and he didn't have any whips or chains in his basement or skeletons in his closet. But sometimes a man had things he wanted to keep to himself; that was perfectly natural. Perfectly normal.

Unless there was a madman running around punishing men for their sins, that is.

He was nervous enough to install a security system in his house, paying double to have it done quickly when, the installation guy had told him, the company was backed up on work because so many orders had come in.

So he wasn't the only nervous man in Silence.

And at least he could claim it was just good business to protect oneself. After all, he sold insurance. And everybody knew insurance companies were very big on reducing risk.

That's what Nate was doing, reducing risk.

But he was still scared.

It didn't help that he lived alone. Creepy to be alone when you were scared. He kept the television on for background noise, because every rattle of a tree branch or sudden hoot of an owl out there made him jump. But even with the background noise, he found himself going from window to window and door to door, checking the locks. Making sure.

Watching the night creep slowly along.

He didn't sleep.

He had stopped sleeping days ago.

"Nell, are we talking about the same killer? Are you saying your father was his first victim?"

She hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe that was the start of his little execution plan."

"And he was here in this house."

Again, she hesitated. "There's no way for me to be sure, Max. But it makes sense. My father was found here in the house, right?"

"Yeah."

"Nobody suspected the body had been moved."