Кей Хупер - Whisper of Evil

"You never asked her about the scars. Why?"

"How the hell did you know that?"

"Because I saw it, Ethan. I saw the fight you had with Hailey more than a year ago. Was it January? February? In a living room, I'm guessing your apartment. You had obviously just found out about her relationship with Lynch, and you were upset. Hailey was… pretty brutal in what she said to you. But she made a point of saying you'd never questioned her about the scars. She obviously thought she knew the reason why, but I'm guessing she was wrong. Wasn't she?"

For the first time, Ethan was clearly shaken. "Jesus. You talk like you were there."

"I was. Just now, I was. Answer the question, Ethan. Why did you never ask Hailey about the scars?"

"Because I thought I knew how she got them."

"You thought it was our father."

He nodded, the movement as jerky as his voice was. "It made sense, at least to me. Both your mother and you running off like that, so obviously scared of him, Hailey's scars… even the way she talked about Adam, as if she worshiped him — and hated his guts at the same time. It was all just so goddamned extreme. None of the scars was recent as far as I could tell, and I thought — I believed — she had been abused as a child. I tried to get her to talk about her childhood, but she wouldn't. Got touchy as hell. She wouldn't talk about her life at all to me and made it plain that if I pushed I'd be pushing her right out the door. So I stopped trying."

Max stirred slightly but said nothing, and when Nell glanced at him she realized that since he knew neither of the Gallagher girls had been sexually abused by their father, he was wondering about the visit to the Patterson basement and what Nell had seen there.

She looked back at Ethan, hesitated, then abruptly made up her mind about him. Every instinct and every sense she could lay claim to told her that Ethan Cole was not a murderer, and if she couldn't trust those instincts and senses then she needed to find a new line of work. Quietly, she said, "Our father never abused us that way. Hailey got the scars from Patterson. She was — very young when she was first involved with him."

"How young?" Max asked, obviously still recalling Nell's shock in that basement.

Reluctantly, she said, "It looked like — twelve or thirteen. No older than that. Just about the time we lost our mother."

Ethan looked a little sick, but he was enough of a cop to catch the significance of what Nell said. "Looked like? You saw that too?"

"Yeah. I… paid a quiet little visit to the Patterson house."

"And saw the basement."

Nell nodded. "What I tapped into there showed me their… relationship."

After a moment and with no conviction in his voice, Ethan said, "It's all bullshit. You couldn't possibly have seen that any more than you could have seen Hailey with me."

"I couldn't possibly. Except that I did."

"It doesn't even make sense," he protested, his voice rising. "You told me yourself that what you see are the memories of a place. I was never with Hailey here, so how could you — what the hell did you call it? — tap into any scene between her and me?"

"It's a good question," Max noted quietly.

"And I wish I had a good answer." Nell sighed. "I don't know how I was able to do that, Ethan. Maybe because I was concentrating on Peter Lynch and you were here — and I followed that link to a scene between you and Hailey when you were discussing Lynch."

"Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense," Ethan snapped.

"Look, I'm sorry I can't tie it all up nice and neat for you. But the truth is that we're only just beginning to understand how psychic ability works, and there are still a hell of a lot more questions than answers. I can't explain how I was able to see what I saw — I only know that I saw it. That I was there, in the past, a witness to that scene between you and Hailey."

"Which," Max pointed out, still quiet, "is something new for you. Right? That the memory you tapped into belonged to a different place?"

She nodded. "It felt different right from the beginning. I had to… push harder, use my energy in a different way. Maybe I pushed myself too far somehow."

"And right into Ethan's memories?" Max offered.

Ethan swore. "Well, if that isn't creepy as hell, I don't know what is. Even if it were possible. Which it isn't ."

Remembering her sister's shocked gaze, Nell was tempted to explain to them both just how different this "vision" had been. But her head was pounding and she was tired — and there was still one more thing she had to do today.

She got to her feet, not protesting Max's help or objecting to the grasp he maintained on her arm. And when the wave of dizziness passed, she said, "Ethan, you'll have to lose the deputy. There's something I have to show you." She looked up at Max. "Something I have to show both of you."

The house that had belonged to Pearl Gallagher was never much to shout about, just a little four-room, tin-roofed shack the old lady had insisted on not updating because she liked things simple. The only modern amenity it had ever boasted was indoor plumbing, and that was only because Adam Gallagher had insisted anything less just wasn't sanitary.

Still, it had served Pearl well as a sanctuary, and it perhaps wasn't surprising that the house had not long survived her.

There wasn't much left. The cinder-block foundation was really the only thing left standing, surrounding the charred remains of wooden studs and beams that had collapsed inward, and twisted tin, and the bits and pieces that had survived oddly intact — like a kitchen sink that sat perfectly level and surprisingly clean within a mostly burned-out butcher-block counter. And the old brass headboard that reared up in what had been the bedroom, surrounded now by the incinerated remains of the roof that had fallen in.

"Why am I here?" Ethan demanded, hands on his hips as he surveyed the ruins. Neither he nor Max appeared to notice that the place had been somewhat disturbed recently, and if either had, they doubtless would have assumed vandalism.

"So I only have to tell this once." Nell forced a smile, small though it was. She gently pulled her arm free of Max's grasp and moved to face both men. "The night of the prom, I came out here to Gran's house to show her my dress. She didn't answer when I knocked, so I let myself in. I could hear the shower, and I decided to wait a few minutes, until she came out. I really wanted her to see my dress."

Nell fell silent, and even though she thought she was expressionless, there must have been something in her face, because Max stepped toward her.

"Nell?" His voice was low, worried.

She forced herself to go on, to speak as calmly as she knew how. "I'd had visions before, but they'd been quick, fleeting things mostly. Scenes I could easily recognize and had learned to accept as part of my life. Part of the Gallagher curse. Nothing especially dramatic or tragic, just unsettling. But that night… I saw something unlike anything I'd ever seen before."

"What?" Ethan demanded, fascinated despite himself.

"I saw the scene of a murder." In a voice steady with hard-won detachment, she described what she'd seen, the blood and signs of a violent struggle, the body lying so twisted she wasn't able to see the face.

"So you don't know who it was?" Ethan said.

"Yes. Yes, I know. I knew then."

"How, if you couldn't see the face?" Max asked.

"There was a locket. A silver locket I recognized." Nell turned and led the way around to the rear of the ruins, where many years before, an old-fashioned root cellar had been dug out of the ground just a few yards from the back door. "I knew the body must have been buried or hidden nearby. I wasn't sure where to start looking, especially after all these years — and after that vision I had out in the woods." She glanced at Max, and he nodded.