Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

The instant she crossed the threshold, she got a flash of something — movement, color, the faint echo of a breathless laugh, the scent of perfume — and she stopped just two paces inside the room, closing her eyes and concentrating. Behind her, Max stood in the doorway and watched her, silent.

The jumble of impressions was all noise and colors in her mind for a moment or two, and then the energy of the most intense activity this room had contained surged to the surface of her awareness, and Nell opened her eyes with a start to find the bare little space drastically changed.

Instead of stark sunlight streaming through the uncurtained windows, it was nighttime, and candles burned all around the room, casting a golden glow over the tumbled covers of the old brass bed.

And the two people in it.

Nell recognized the man from the photos she had seen, a dark, heavy-shouldered man with a handsome, cruel face. He lay on his back on the bed, grinning up at the naked woman crouched astride his naked body.

The woman, dark hair streaming down her back, rode him with a fierce, greedy insistence, her throaty moans and cries erupting at last into a wild sound of release that was a laugh of pure triumph. Her head turned, bright, mocking eyes seeming to fix on Nell as she laughed again.

Victory. Conquest.

I win. I win again.

"Jesus." Her own voice brought Nell out of it, and she stared, shaken, at the bare, stained mattress on the ancient bed. There was no one there. No tumbled covers. No candles scattered around the room providing an intimate glow. No mocking laughter. "Jesus," she repeated softly.

"Nell?"

She turned slowly to face Max.

"What did you see?"

"Hailey. I saw Hailey."

Shelby paused before leaving her house to take one more look at her copy of the photograph of Nell leaving the courthouse, and frowned as she considered it. Nothing new occurred to her, except that she was probably going to regret what she was about to do. Probably.

She gathered up her cameras and headed toward town. This had to look casual, and as Shelby well knew, there was a trick to looking casual when you were anything but.

The first step was for her to wander around with her cameras taking pictures of whatever caught her fancy. She did that most days anyway, so nobody'd be surprised by it.

And she wasn't terribly surprised to find virtually everyone she encountered over the next half hour or so eager to discuss the murders. She was even less surprised to find there was another topic of conversation.

Nell.

At least four people stopped Shelby as she made her way casually through the downtown area, and all of them wanted to talk about Nell.

"Did you hear? Nell Gallagher's been around all this time, just not in town, and you know all this killing started back after her father died..."

"I heard she came back because she knows who the killer is, just the way those Gallaghers always knew things..."

"Did you hear? Nell Gallagher didn't come home just to settle her father's estate, it was because she's afraid Hailey will show up and fight her for it___"

"I heard the sheriff asked her to come back, that's what I heard, so she can give him a reading and tell him who the murderer is…"

Shelby offered no theories of her own but merely listened and smiled and nodded and wondered how people managed to build around the grain of truth that was Nell's homecoming such a range of possibilities. It was fascinating, in a horrifying sort of way.

You didn't have to be psychic to pick up on the feelings of the townspeople. Everybody was scared. They were scared and they were searching for answers. Unfortunately, all too soon, they'd forgo answers and just look for somebody — anybody — to blame for disrupting the town. And with a faceless murderer roaming about apparently beyond the reach of the law and retribution, Nell looked like the odds-on favorite to be that target.

Which made Shelby more determined than ever to find the truth.

"Shelby, you know Nell Gallagher, don't you?"

Shelby snapped a picture to prove she had a reason for loitering around the courthouse and then turned to smile at Sheriff Cole. "Sure, Ethan, I know her. Why?"

He grimaced slightly. "Know where she's been the last dozen years? What she's been doing?"

"Not really. I've heard things, of course, just like you must have, mostly from Hailey before she left, but nothing directly from Nell." This time, her question was more insistent. "Why?"

"I was just curious." He smiled. "Character flaw, you know that."

"I would have thought all your curiosity would be wrapped up in this murder investigation."

Ethan's smile turned wry. "Hell, I'm only human. Nell comes back to town, still gorgeous, apparently still single — and still an enigma. At least, I always thought so. Natural enough for me to be curious."

Shelby raised her eyebrows. "Then why don't you ask her what she's been doing these last years?"

"And feed the gossip?" His voice was as wry as his smile. "People are already talking about Max following her around like a besotted idiot; all I have to do is appear to be even a little interested, and everybody'll have us in some kind of love triangle before you can say soap opera."

"And that would be a wrong impression. Of course."

His eyes narrowed. "Of course."

Shelby decided it was time to change the subject. "I heard you guys haven't made much headway investigating George Caldwell's murder."

"We don't publicize all our findings, Shelby."

"I didn't say I read it, Ethan, I said I heard it. Gossip, you know. Which, in Silence, we have a lot of. I always thought whoever named our town had a real sense of humor."

Frowning, the sheriff said, "Are you saying my people have been talking out of turn?"

Shelby shrugged. "They're frustrated, I suppose. Bound to be. And probably defensive whenever somebody demands to know what the sheriff's department is doing to catch this killer, so it's natural they'd talk at least a bit. But if it makes you feel better, I haven't heard any specifics about the investigation. Just a general sense of failure."

"Great. That's just great."

"Well, it's pretty obvious, you know. It's not like somebody's sitting in your jail charged with four murders."

Flatly, Ethan said, "We have no hard evidence that Luke Ferrier's drowning was anything other than accidental or suicide."

"Accidental? Ethan, everybody knows which side of the bayou that car went into, and from what I hear there's no way a car could have gone that far off the road unless it had been driven carefully and deliberately."

"That doesn't rule out suicide, Shelby."

"Except that a healthy bank account and tickets out of the country came to light after he died, I hear. Sounds more like he meant to take a plane when he left. And isn't it a bit coincidental for a man with secrets like that to die by his own hand when other men are being murdered apparently because of their secrets?"

Ethan's frown deepened. "So that's common knowledge, huh?"

"You mean has anyone else been connecting the secrets to the killings? Oh, yeah. These are pretty damned big secrets, Ethan. They sort of stick out in this quiet little town. And judging by what I've been hearing, every man in Silence between the ages of eighteen and sixty is examining his past and his conscience, wondering if he's done anything to paint a big bull's-eye target on his back."

"Shit."

"No open panic yet. But it's coming." Shelby hesitated, then said slowly, "Have you considered asking for help?"

"I'm not caning in outsiders," he said emphatically. "This is our problem, and we'll handle it."

"Not outsiders. Nell."

"You mean because she's supposed to be psychic? I don't believe in that shit."