Kay Hooper - Sleeping With Fear

"You sure about that, babe? I mean, no disrespect, but, fact is, your memory is shaky and the spooky senses are AWOL, so-"

"They aren't AWOL anymore, thanks to Ash. Not a hundred percent yet, but getting there." She sent Ash a quick smile when he reached over and took her hand.

"So what're they telling you?" Gordon asked.

"That I'm part of the puzzle. Maybe even the reason all this is happening. That somebody has been getting inside my head."

"And using black-occult energy to do it?"

"At least partly." Riley frowned. "I've been trying to think of a possible enemy with that sort of knowledge, because it really is specialized and not something you read about in a textbook. But I've only encountered two black-occult practitioners during investigations, and both of them are dead."

Ash said, "You only mentioned one when we talked at lunch. The last time you investigated supposed occult activity, a few months back, and found a serial killer operating."

She nodded. "He wasn't psychic but had learned how to channel dark energy pretty damn effectively nevertheless. At least to the extent of being able to…oh, cloud my senses, for want of a better phrase."

"Which is what this enemy seems able to do," Ash pointed out.

"Yeah, but aside from the fact that I was present when the guy was autopsied, his effect on my senses was very different from what I'm going through now."

"Maybe because he didn't Taser you first," Gordon suggested.

That possibility gave Riley pause. "Well…could be. If you start out with an artificial disruption of the electrical activity of the brain, any additional sort of attack is bound to have a more extreme result. On the other hand…"

"What?" Ash was watching her intently.

"I'm just wondering if the Taser was the initial attack. If whoever this is has the ability to channel dark energy, then maybe he was having an effect on me from the very beginning. Blocking me somehow, distracting me. Slowing my reaction time, even clouding my judgment. Maybe that was why I had the sense there was something wrong here, despite the lack of any real evidence of occult activity-before we found Tate's body, at least."

Gordon shook his head slightly, and said, "I've seen your spooky senses at work long enough not to easily doubt them, babe, but I got to wonder this time. If you've got an enemy deadly enough to set all this up as a lure to get you here and then spend weeks messing with your head and your life, how can you not know who he is?"

"I thought I did know," Riley admitted. "Especially when I found out about the serial the police are after in Charleston. But it can't be him, that's why I didn't mention him. He's dead." Bishop said so, and I can trust that.

"Who did you suspect?" Ash asked.

"The only other serial I've ever encountered who had an interest in the occult," Riley said. "John Henry Price."

She thought for an instant it was only her hand that had gone cold suddenly, but then she realized it was Ash, his hand, and when she looked at his face, the coldness went all the way to her bones.

"You knew him," she said.

"Still no luck?"

Leah looked up from her desk, surprised that the sheriff had come to her rather than summon her to his office. "The background checks? No, nothing new. We do have confirmation of Jenny Cole's marriage to Wesley Tate-and their divorce. Just as she said."

"Shit." Jake scowled. "There's gotta be something more."

"Sorry, but so far nada. None of the group was anywhere in the area when the arson took place, so we can't connect any of them to those crimes. So far, all the background checks are coming up clean, just like the preliminary ones did. A couple of watch groups that keep an eye on occult activities have these people on their lists, but nothing violent has ever been reported, much less proved."

Still scowling, Jake said, "What about the background check on Tate? Any reason somebody'd want to kill him?"

"Nothing's come up so far."

"Nothing nothing , or just nothing you consider motive enough?"

Leah blinked. "Sheriff, as far as we've been able to determine, Wesley Tate was respected in the business community of Charleston and well-liked. He didn't date much, there was no special woman in his life, and the women he had seen in the last year or so were available and without obvious jealous boyfriends, past or present. Everybody liked the guy. Everybody we've talked to seems genuinely shocked he's been killed-especially like that."

"No interest in the occult-despite his ex-wife's lifestyle ?"

"He was a Baptist. A deacon of his church, and in the family pew every Sunday."

"Including the years they were married?"

"Yes. According to friends and family, he just said she ‘wasn't religious' whenever anyone asked. Didn't seem to be a big deal to him, as far as anybody could tell."

"And his will?"

"Bequests to friends and family, most to charity."

"You're kidding."

"No. A half-dozen charities he gave to while he was alive pretty much split his estate now. And, before you ask, his ex-wife was not mentioned. At all. So it looks like Jenny Cole was wrong in believing he was still hoping for a reconciliation."

"Then why'd he invite them here? Come to think of it, why here ? He didn't live in Castle, on Opal Island. Not a single realtor has him on the books as a previous tenant, right?"

"Right."

"So why here? Why invite them to a place he'd never been to himself?"

"He may have come here before as part of a group," Leah pointed out. "Just never had a previous rental in his name, is all."

Jake grunted. "Or maybe he used his version of your famous pin-in-a-map way of deciding his future."

Leah cleared her throat. "You weren't supposed to hear about that."

"I hear everything. What about Tate's phone records?"

"They back up what Steve Blanton told us. Tate called the house where the group was living outside Columbia."

"Did he call anybody here in Castle? On the island?"

"Not as far as we've been able to determine."

Jake swore, not exactly under his breath.

"Sorry, Sheriff, but it's a dead end. Pardon the pun."

He turned without another word and stalked back toward his office.

Not exactly beneath her own breath, Leah muttered, "Thanks so much, Deputy Wells, nice job. I'm sure talking to all those shocked people wasn't much fun but, hey, them's the breaks."

"I heard that!"

She winced and reached hastily for her phone, rolling her eyes when one of the other deputies in the bullpen grinned at her.

Riley drew her hand away from Ash's, repeating slowly, "You knew him."

"No. And yes."

She waited.

Ash glanced at Gordon, then returned his intent gaze to Riley's face. "I told you I left the Atlanta DA's office because I got tired of the politics."

A memory, wispy and incomplete, flitted through her mind, but Riley made no effort to catch it. She simply waited.

"That was only part of the truth. I also left because I lost a case I should have won. Before he started his multistate crime spree, John Henry Price was indicted for one count of murder in Atlanta. He was guilty. I couldn't convince a jury."

This time, the memory surfaced clearly in Riley's mind. "I never saw your name. In the case file. Just the notation that Price was only caught once, in Atlanta, more than five years ago. That he stood trial and was acquitted."

His mouth twisting, Ash said, "Circumstantial evidence, not so unusual in a murder trial. But it was enough, I thought. It needed to be. Because I looked that man in the eye…and it was like looking into hell itself."

"I know," Riley said. "I tracked him for months. I stood over the hacked-up bodies of his victims. I even got inside his head. Or-he got inside mine. Whichever. By the time I caught up to him, I'm not sure I would have taken him alive even if I'd had the chance."