Kay Hooper - Sense Of Evil

Doing her job.

Isabel drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to focus, to soothe raw nerves and regain control of her senses, all her senses. Control. She had to find control.

Jamie had liked controlling people.

And that preacher…

God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

Obey your mistress! Crawl!

Just three quarts more, and-

Bones bend before they break, you know. Bones bend-

Blood… so much blood…

Her shaking hands lifted to cover her face, fingertips massaging her forehead and temples hard, and Isabel drew another breath, fighting to close out the voices. Not that she could.

Not that she’d ever been able to. Still, she tried.

Concentrate.

Focus.

Don’t listen to them.

She tempted me, that’s what it was. Tempted me down the road to damnation. I was weak. I was…

I can make the rope tighter. I can make the rope much tighter. You want me to, don’t you? You want me to hurt you. You want me to hurt you until you scream with the pain.

Bones bend…

And Bobby Grange, over to Horton Mill, he wants enough to fill a keg. Must be having a party, I guess. Guys like him keep me in business, that’s for sure. And it ain’t my business, what else they do. It just ain’t any of my affair.

It wasn’t my fault! She tempted me!

Do you know what happens when you feel all the pain you can feel? When your nerve endings are hot and raw, and your voice is gone from screaming? Do you know what it feels like to go beyond pain? Let’s find out…

Bones bend before they-

Isabel.

Iss … a… belll…

Her hands jerked away from her face, and Isabel stared all around her, a bit wildly at first. There it was. A different voice. Male. Powerful. Crouching in the darkness…

But… there was no one. No one. Her head was pounding, her heart pounding, and the voices were only whispers now. Only whispers, none of them calling her name.

“Okay,” she said aloud, shakily, “that was new. That was different.”

That was terrifying.

11:00 AM

T.J. MCCURRY FINISHED SPRAYING an area of the floor about two feet from the bed platform and said, “Kill the lights.”

They had already draped the high window, so when T.J.’s partner, Dustin Wall, turned off the lights in the room, they could all see the eerie greenish-white glow.

“Bingo,” Dustin muttered, and began photographing the evidence.

T.J. said, “Lotta blood here, Chief. There are some older spatters in other areas of the room, especially there around the bed, but here’s the only place where somebody bled like a stuck pig.”

“Bled enough to die?”

In the glow of the Luminol, T.J.’s round face looked peculiarly gaunt. She shrugged and looked down at the old vinyl floor covering. “Somebody’s done a fair job of cleaning, but you can see how strongly the Luminol is reacting. I’m betting that when we pull up this floor covering, we’ll find even more soaked into the concrete underneath. This is the old style of vinyl that was put down in tiles, not in a solid sheet, so the blood would have found all the crevices.”

“T.J., did somebody die here?”

“You know I can’t be absolutely certain about that, Chief. But if you want an educated guess, I’d say somebody did. Either that or a lot of somebodies bled a little bit here at different times-which, given the obvious purpose of the room, is entirely possible. We’ll sort it out, get a blood type or types for you, DNA if you want.”

“I want. Especially since I don’t have a body.”

Dustin said, “The state crime lab has cadaver dogs, if you want to start looking.”

“Not yet. Not without more information. As edgy as this town is, the last thing we need is to have people and dogs out looking for another body, unless we’re very sure one is actually out there.” Rafe didn’t say anything about psychic help, and he didn’t look at Hollis, who was standing only a couple of feet away from him. “T.J., can you tell me if there’s a blood trail out of this place?”

“I’ll work on it. Dustin, do you have the shots? Then let’s get the lights back on so we can see what we’re doing.”

Rafe left her to it, admitting silently that he was relieved when the lights came back on. He’d seen Luminol used before, and it always struck him as chilling. Invisible to the eye until the chemicals in the Luminol reacted with it, the blood was a silent, ghostly accusation.

He joined Hollis, saying, “Would I be out of line in suggesting that Isabel go back to the inn and call it a day?”

“Arguable point, I suppose, but she won’t go, so it hardly matters.”

He sighed. “You people are a very stubborn lot.”

Hollis didn’t ask whether he meant FBI agents or psychics; she knew the answer to that one. Instead, she said, “There are only a handful of team leaders in the SCU, agents Bishop trusts to head up investigations. Isabel is one of them, and has been from the beginning.”

“You said it was a miracle she hadn’t gone insane.” Rafe kept his voice low.

“Yes. But she didn’t go insane, that’s the point. She is an exceptionally strong lady. She lives her life and she does her job, whatever the effort or the cost. What you saw happen in here is a rare thing, but similar things have happened before. It hasn’t stopped her in the past, and this won’t stop her now. If anything, the strong connection will probably make her even more determined to put all the puzzle pieces in place and get this killer.”

“He’s gotten away from her twice before,” Rafe said, more to himself than to Hollis.

But she nodded. “Yeah, it’s personal. How could it not be? It was her best friend he killed ten years ago, in case you didn’t know that. She and Julie King grew up together, practically sisters. Isabel was only twenty-one when it happened, in college, trying to decide what to do with her life. Taking the most amazing variety of subjects, like classical Latin, and computer science, and botany. Nerdy stuff.”

Hollis shrugged. “She was drifting, mostly. Getting by with good grades because of a good mind, not effort. Sort of… shut in herself, detached, uninvolved. From all I’ve been told, Julie’s murder changed her completely.”

“That isn’t what… triggered her psychic ability?” It wasn’t really a question.

“No. That had already happened.” Hollis didn’t offer to elaborate.

Rafe wasn’t surprised. “But her friend’s murder more or less started her life as a cop.”

“I’d say so. In the beginning, she just wanted to find out who had killed Julie. That’s what motivated her, what began to shape her life and future. By the time he surfaced again in Alabama five years later, she had a degree in criminology under her belt and worked for the Florida State Police. She apparently did routine searches of law-enforcement databases on her own time, waiting for the killer to strike again. Just after he killed the second victim in Alabama, Isabel took a leave of absence and turned up there. That was when she met Bishop.”

“And turned in her state badge for a federal one.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

Rafe drew a breath and let it out slowly. “So now she uses her knowledge, training, and psychic abilities to try and ferret out killers. Especially this one. Tell me something, Hollis. How many more times can she go through what she did in here before it breaks her?”

“At least one more time.” Hollis grimaced at his expression. “I know it sounds harsh. But it’s also the truth; we take this stuff one… experience… at a time, and none of us can be sure when the end will come. Or how.”