Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

"Yeah, but I was hoping I'd find something this time."

"Any luck?"

"Not unless you count the bad kind." He shrugged again.

Kelly nodded. "I keep thinking we've missed something. You too?"

"Hell, I don't know. We must have, right? Otherwise we'd be closer to solving this thing."

"Maybe. Or maybe not, that's what I tell myself. Some crimes never get solved, you know."

Justin took a last look around and then joined her out in the hallway. Closing and locking the apartment door behind them, he said, "And I thought I was feeling down."

"Not down exactly. Just discouraged. We're just spinning our wheels, not getting anywhere. People are beginning to look at us like we're the Keystone Kops or something."

"It's not that bad. We're not making fools of ourselves."

"We're not making our boss very happy either. I don't know if you noticed, but the sheriff is sort of losing his cool about all this."

"He does seem a mite testy."

She grinned at him as they walked down the stairs to leave the building. "Stop trying to sound Southern. It isn't your best voice."

"Yeah, I was afraid of that. But I have noticed that

Sheriff Cole has been more than a little tense. Not surprising, you know. Until this series of murders, he had a nice, quiet little town on his hands. No fuss, no bother."

"Being a detective was pretty boring, I hear. Before you and I were hired, they just had the one, Matthew, and he was mostly used as the sheriff's spy."

Justin gave her a look and she grimaced. "You know it's true. Cole keeps tabs on just about everybody in his town, and Matthew came in handy for that. Probably one reason Matthew doesn't seem to have a clue how to investigate one murder, let alone four of them."

"He's doing his share," Justin protested.

"He's doing what he's told, period. Hardly any initiative there. And not much more from any of the deputies either. You and I are the ones out all hours sifting through every bit of info we have and digging for more."

"Well, since we haven't so far dug up much that's proved helpful…"

Kelly shrugged. "Still. Look, Justin, we're both outsiders, new to this town and these people, so maybe we can be a bit more objective than they can. Maybe we can see things a little clearer. All I'm saying is that we should keep our eyes open and maybe not take anything at face value. And watch our backs."

They were standing in the foyer of the apartment building by then, and Justin frowned slightly as he looked at her. "You think the perp is a cop."

"I think too many members of the Lacombe Parish sheriff's department haven't been as… helpful as they might have been. Nothing more than that." She didn't wait for his response, but added, "I'm parked out back. See you later, Justin."

He stood there gazing after her, still frowning. It didn't really surprise him that Kelly had noticed something odd about the investigation, because he was reasonably sure any good cop would have — and she was a good cop. What surprised him was that she had chosen to share that concern.

With him.

Was it only because they were the most recent hires in the department, the least likely to be involved in either the murders themselves or any cover-up in the investigation? Or did Kelly somehow know — or guess — that Justin wasn't quite what he appeared to be?

"Shit," he muttered.

He wasted a minute or two thinking about it, then shrugged and headed out the front door. No good worrying, he supposed. No matter what, Kelly's advice was good — keep his eyes open, and watch his back.

But it wasn't guarding his back he was focused on when he reached his car. It was the stunning redhead sitting on the hood who greeted him with a smile that made him, at least for the moment, forget his unrequited love for Lauren Champagne.

"Hey, Justin. Remember me?"

He cleared his throat. "Hey, Shelby. What's up?"

"Funny you should ask."

It was a little before three o'clock when Max approached the Gallagher house, this time much more quietly than he had hours before. He didn't want to admit to himself that he hoped to catch Nell's partner lurking about, but that would have been at least partially true.

The rest of the truth was simply that he was feeling more than a little unsettled, worried about what Nell was risking by being here and doing what she was doing, and angry with himself for the earlier leave-taking that had demonstrated another truth all too clearly.

If he really had gotten over her, he wouldn't have felt the need to convince her that he had.

He never had been able to pretend disinterest with Nell. From that first summer, his awareness of her had been immediate and absolute, an intense tangle of complex needs and emotions that had bordered on obsession. He had been able to hide his feelings from others, if only because she had been so insistent that their growing closeness remain as private as possible. But between the two of them, there had been no uncertainty, no hesitation.

They had belonged together, and both of them knew it as surely as though that truth had been stamped in the very molecules of their bodies.

Max had no way of really knowing what Nell's life might have been like since she left Silence and him, and he didn't know why she had run away all those years ago without so much as a note left behind to explain her reasons. But he knew what he still felt, and even trying to pretend he didn't feel it was going to be next to impossible.

So, naturally, he was mad as hell about it.

He dismounted and tied the horses at the edge of the woods, then walked across the small backyard to the kitchen door. It was open, only the flimsy screen door providing any kind of barrier against whoever or whatever might want in, and he swore under his breath as he stepped into the tiny mudroom directly off the kitchen.

He could see her through the doorway, sitting at the kitchen table talking on a cell phone, and she watched, unsurprised, as he stepped into the room.

"Yeah, I know that," she was saying in her half of the phone conversation. "Maybe it'll be a wild-goose chase. Probably will, as a matter of fact. But we should at least get started and see if anything turns up."

She fell silent, and even though he couldn't make out the words, Max could hear the distinctive rumble of a strong male voice on the other end of the connection. It was something he had noticed with some cell phones and some voices.

"No, we're going to check out the Patterson house next," she said. "Yeah. I will." A frown crossed her face as the man on the other end spoke at length, and then she said, "Well, we knew he would sooner or later, right? I'll just have to be careful what I tell him. So when — if — he shows up, I guess I'll play it by ear. Right."

She broke the connection and then slid the little phone into the pocket of the jacket hanging over the back of her chair.

Immediately Max said, "Precautions, huh? The door's standing wide open, Nell."

"I just opened it a few minutes ago," she said. "I knew you were coming. The coffee's still hot, if you want some."

Since she was obviously not going to refer to anything he had said earlier in the day, he was more than willing to follow suit. At least for now. He nodded and went to fix himself a cup of coffee, saying, "Was that your boss?"

"Yeah."

"What might be a wild-goose chase?"

"Looking for Hailey. Bishop will have somebody back at Quantico try to track her down."

A bit surprised, he said, "Because she was involved with Luke Ferrier?"

"Reason enough to try to find her. Ask what she knows."

"You really haven't been in touch with her at all?"

Nell shook her head. "Keever said my father had received some kind of message from her a week or so after she left, saying she was never coming back and telling him not to bother looking for her. That's when he wrote her out of the will, so maybe it said something else that made him even madder, I don't know. I