Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

He really believed that. So he kept pushing onward and kept studying the damned notebook.

Now that he'd had time to consider, he could name at least two possible matches for nearly every set of initials and sometimes three or four, but the only way to be certain who had been blackmailed — assuming anyone had — was to find the evidence Caldwell would have had to use against his victims.

And Justin had to search carefully, because he didn't dare risk Sheriff Cole finding out what he was looking for; so far, Ethan Cole was the only match Justin had been able to come up with for the initials E.C. Which meant he couldn't tell the sheriff about this little black book. Not yet, anyway, not until he was able to rule out Cole as a possible blackmail victim.

And a possible murderer.

He looked up again to study the apartment building where George Caldwell had lived, then flipped a mental coin, sighed, and got out of his car. If Caldwell had been a blackmailer, somewhere there would be evidence of it. There had to be.

If Justin could only find it.

"It was last September," Max reminded Nell as they stood some yards from one of the few bayous in the immediate area, studying very faint marks on a patch of sandy ground. "To their credit, the cops pulled the car out on the other side and tried to be careful not to disturb any possible evidence here, but I'm surprised you can still see anything after all this time."

She knelt down and traced the sharp edge of one tire track with her finger. "This is what's left of the tracks? No other vehicle has been here?"

"I doubt it, given how hard it is to get a vehicle in here, but there's no way to be absolutely positive. For what it's worth, I came out here the next day, and as far as I can tell these are the original tire tracks from Luke Ferrier's car."

"According to the report, the initial conclusion was suicide, right?"

"Right."

"Then later it was decided that Ferrier might have been drugged and the car deliberately pointed at the water."

"Yeah."

Nell half closed her eyes, trying to bring what she was feeling into focus. She expected it to be difficult with Max so near, and it was, but even so there was something… off. It felt strange, different from what she was accustomed to, from what it should have been. Almost as though she were trying to sense through a veil. Whatever lay on the other side was so dim and vague it was like the whisper of an echo, and groping toward it tentatively was frustrating.

"Nell?"

"Wait. There's something…" She concentrated for what felt like hours, then finally rose with a sigh. "Dammit."

"What?"

"It's too vague to get hold of. Whatever happened out here happened fast, too fast to leave much of an energy signature." She frowned down at the tire track. "But that track tells me he was probably trying to stop the car before it went into the water, otherwise the marks wouldn't have lasted this long or been this deep."

"Then it wasn't suicide — and he wasn't unconscious when the car went in."

"That idea always bothered me a bit, that the killer made sure Ferrier was out cold before he killed him," Nell confessed. "Doesn't really match up with the other three victims. In fact, if you assume Caldwell saw his killer and knew he was about to be shot, then you can argue that all four suffered either physically or emotionally just before they died."

"You're not including your father in the group?"

Nell shook her head. "For now, no. Whatever certainties I feel, the fact is that there's no evidence my father's death was anything but natural, much less that this killer was also his murderer. Unless and until I can find that evidence, I have to consider his death as separate from the others." She shrugged. "Maybe he just pissed somebody off and paid for that with his life. He was… very good at pissing people off."

Max's eyes narrowed, but he didn't question the comment about her father just then. "But the other four deaths were planned, and in detail. And all of them suffered. Part of the punishment?"

"It would make sense. It also might explain why the first of them, Peter Lynch, was the only one who probably wasn't in the killer's presence when he died. Killing by remote control, at a distance, might have been a kind of failed experiment. Maybe the killer thought it would be safer, I don't know. But despite the physical agony that Lynch went through being poisoned, it obviously wasn't enough for the killer. Wasn't a satisfying enough punishment. He wanted to be there. He wanted to watch."

"Christ." His mouth twisting slightly, Max added, "Like some kind of ghoul."

"He's killed at least four men, Max, and possibly five. I'd say death was unquestionably one of his… interests."

"And you still say he's a cop?"

"Bishop says it's likely. I agree." Without waiting for him to comment on that, Nell moved away and began to study the area with a critical eye. Remote: There wasn't a house or even a pasture fence to be seen. Nearly inaccessible: The car had been driven from the highway through what were basically a few clearings in the woods strung together to form the suggestion of a roadway, so horseback was indeed the best way to get to this side of the bayou.

This section of the bayou wasn't even visible from the highway, and in fact Ferrier's car had been discovered only because of a couple of teenagers riding by on horseback.

"What signs point to the killer being a cop?" Max demanded. He stood without moving, hands in his pockets, frowning very slightly as he watched her.

Nell could feel him watching her but tried to make her voice detached and impersonal when she answered him. "The biggest red flag is how careful he's been to vary his killings. There's been nothing impulsive about these four murders, nothing spur-of-the-moment, so it's clear he's planning every step. The fact that he's been careful not to establish any kind of pattern that might help the police I.D. him says he knows and understands police procedure. Even more, he's pitting his skills and intelligence against the adversary he knows best — other cops."

"Catch me if you can," Max said slowly. "Catch me if you're good enough."

"Exactly. He's testing their mettle. And there's a personal edge to that, a sense that part of his plan is to… humiliate the police. Make them look bad in their inability to catch him. I wouldn't be surprised if a future victim — assuming we don't stop him — turned out to be a cop. I think he has a personal grudge against someone in the sheriff's department."

"That your idea, or Bishop's?"

Nell thought there was a personal edge to that question, but all she said was, "It's a feeling I've had since I came back here. There's nothing concrete to base it on."

"Just a feeling you trust."

She nodded. "Just a feeling I trust. A lot of what I do is based on that sort of thing."

"Hunches. Intuition."

"You know it's more than that."

He nodded, but said, "Still, it sounds like you're doing a bit of profiling on your own. FBI training?"

"We've all spent a little time in Behavioral Sciences, and most of us have some kind of psychology training under our belts. It's like with any other kind of hunting; you have to understand your quarry if you intend to catch him." Nell shrugged, then moved back toward the woods where their horses were tied. "In any case, there's nothing here I can tap into. What about Ferrier's house? Isn't it still standing empty?"

"Yeah. It was a rental, but nobody's been interested in living there since he was killed." Max followed her to the horses. "The owners packed up his personal stuff and put it into storage, since no relative had shown up to claim anything. You think you might be able to pick up something there?"

"Won't know until I try." Nell mounted the pinto.