Kay Hooper - Stealing Shadows

Cassie shook her head irritably. There was some damned song in her head, a tune she couldn't identify that kept playing over and over again, fading into silence, only to return. It was one of those maddening tricks of the mind that tended to come when there was too much to think about.

Sharon returned with coffee and the offer of sending out for a late lunch if and when it was wanted. Cassie thanked her, and the deputy returned to her desk a couple of minutes before Ben came back into Matt's office.

Cassie indicated the cup Sharon had left for him, then said, "It looked pretty ugly out there for a while."

Ben sat down behind Matt's desk. "It'll be a lot worse if we ever get a suspect in custody. That's as close as I ever want to come to facing a lynch mob."

"They listened to you. They left."

"This time," Ben said, unknowingly echoing Deputy Watkins. "But if we don't catch this bastard, and soon…"

"He's still blocking me."

"Dammit, Cassie, stop trying to contact him without a lifeline."

"I told you it isn't dangerous." She shook her head,avoiding his gaze. "And I have to keep trying. What else am I here for, Ben? So far, all I've been able to do is tell Matt where to look for the bodies. I've been a lot of help."

"You've done everything you could."

"Have I?" Cassie stared down at her coffee. "I'm not so sure."

"You seem very tense. What's bothering you?" he asked.

"I don't know. Just a feeling."

He waited, watching her.

Slowly Cassie said, "He had to be in a frenzy this time, you know. To do what he did to that poor girl."

Ben hadn't viewed the murder scene, but he had seen Matt's sickened face and Bishop's stony one as well as Cassie's haunted eyes; he could only imagine the carnage that must have lain waiting for them in that barn.

"Don't think about it," he said.

"I don't have a choice. It isn't something I can put out of my mind. Eventually maybe, but not yet." She shrugged jerkily. "If I can just make sense of it…"

"How can any of this make sense?"

"Even madmen have their own mad logic." She looked at him, frowning. "Maybe that's what's bothering me."

"What?"

"Well… it's like he's blowing hot and cold. One victim is found far from where she was killed, the crime scene neat, her body virtually unmarked except for the wound that killed her, no murder weapon anywhere to be seen. The next is found in the room where she was killed, blood everywhere, the weapon a knife he found and left right there. Then he picks up another knife and takes it to use on his third victim, who is found where she was killed, but again the scene is neat and calm. And now this. He made the weapon that killed her and took it with him after he was done with her – but killing her wasn't enough. Raping her wasn't enough. He had to cut her into pieces…"

Ben drew a breath. "It takes more than a kitchen knife to hack a body into pieces."

"He used an ax," Cassie said. "And left it at the scene. He took the garrote with him, but left the ax in that barn."

Ben didn't ask her how she knew that. Instead, keeping his voice as composed as hers was, he said, "Seemingly calm and controlled when he kills one victim, then frenzied when he kills the next. As if he needs those violent outbursts?"

"I don't know. But it bothers me. I'd say he was trying to disguise some of his kills, but leaving the coins at the scene is as good as a signature, and he has to know that."

Matt had told them tonelessly that the killer had left his usual coin after killing Deanna Ramsay. It was a penny, placed on her forehead between gouged-out eyes.

Cassie rubbed her own forehead fretfully as she considered the mad logic of a madman, and Ben felt a little chill as he imagined a coin lying coldly against her skin.

He didn't want to let her out of his sight. It wasn't just because the killer knew who she was now; it was also because Cassie seemed hell-bent on contacting the bastard again and was far too willing to do so without a lifeline.

At least, without him as her lifeline. He was afraid that was it. Cassie had withdrawn so completely from him, she would not accept any kind of contact with him even to save her life. If it could save her life.

"There's something I'm missing," she said almost to herself. "Something… I just don't know what it is."

"As much as I hate the very possibility, have you considered that there might be two killers?"

Cassie nodded immediately. "Sure. But I'm positive the same man killed these women, all of them."

Ben knew that Matt had reached the same conclusion thanks to what little forensic evidence they'd managed to gather added to the presence of the coins and the identical way in which the first three bodies had been found posed. And they'd found a bloody footprint at this latest scene that Matt was certain would match one of those found in Ivy Jameson's bloody kitchen. To Matt the facts added up to one killer.

"I just wish I knew what was bothering me," Cassie murmured.

"You're still tired," Ben said.

"I slept more than twelve hours."

"Maybe it wasn't enough."

Cassie's smile was slight and fleeting. "It's never enough. I'm fine, Ben. I told you I wouldn't collapse, and I won't. I'm stronger than I seem."

"I just – "

"I know. You're worried about me. Don't be."

Lightly he said, "For somebody with walls, I don't hide some things too well."

Cassie said nothing, just stared at her coffee.

Was he being too watchful, too protective? Ben didn't know. It was the first time in his life he had found himself coping with an almost overpowering urge to shield a woman; he suspected he was neither hiding it nor handling it too well.

Especially given Cassie's prickly and independent nature.

He had told himself that morning to back off and give her the time and room she obviously needed, but gazing at her now, he was very conscious of minutes ticking away. Something told him that even if backing off and giving her time was the smart thing to do, it was not the right thing to do, because time was something they simply did not have.

"We've never had a chance, have we?" he heard himself say.

She looked at him, those eyes touching him as though with a warm hand, and the wariness he saw there hurt him. She didn't ask, but her brows rose in an almost indifferent question.

"We've never had a chance to… be ordinary. Just two people drawn to each other. We can't even seem to talk about ordinary things. All we talk about are killers."

Cassie smiled just a little, sadly, and he wanted badly to go put his arms around her. "I tried to warn you," she said.

"Cassie – "

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Catching a killer matters to you, Ben." Her voice was suddenly remote. "Making your town safe again matters to you. And maybe… maybe I matter to you."

"There's no maybe about it," he said roughly.

She accepted that without any visible reaction. "All right. But it's a question of priorities, isn't it? Nothing can be… can be settled until this killer is caught. All your energy, and all of mine, has to focus on that."

"And afterward? When the killer is caught? What then, Cassie?"

"I don't know." There was something painfully honest in the apprehension in her gaze. "I don't know how you'll feel. How I'll feel. I don't even know if either of us will have the energy left to give a damn."

"This is not going to just go away, if that's what you think. Is that what you think? That I want you because we're both involved in this investigation, that it's propinquity?"

"Stranger things have happened," she murmured.

Ben shook his head. "You're wrong. For one thing, I'm not in the habit of coming on to the nearest available woman. Cassie, why are you looking for excuses?"