Kay Hooper - Sense Of Evil

Every time Mallory moved the beam of her flashlight, it seemed to catch something metallic and glare back at her, like something springing out of the shadows.

Unsettling.

“Tell me about it. I’m guessing it didn’t start out life as a gas station.” Hollis pointed her flashlight into a dark corner and jumped when an unexpectedly shiny chrome bumper glinted brightly. “Jesus.”

Mallory jumped in the same instant, but in her case it was because something skittered across her foot. “Shit. I hate rats, but I hope that’s what just ran across my foot.”

Hollis didn’t care for rats herself, but she was standing before what looked like a solid steel door that held her interest at the moment. The door was padlocked. “Never mind the rats. Take a look at this.”

Mallory joined her. “I can’t never mind rats. I hate rats. And I’m going to throw these shoes away. Yuck.” Her flashlight beam joined Hollis’s. “Is that a new lock?”

“I’d say so. Hold on a minute.” She juggled her flashlight briefly before tucking it under her arm as she dug into the waist pack she was wearing. She put on a pair of latex gloves, then produced a small, zippered leather case.

Mallory watched with interest. “Burglar’s tools? You didn’t bring those out at Jamie’s playhouse.”

“I didn’t have to, you had the locksmith’s tools.” Hollis smiled suddenly. “I’ve been hoping there’d be an opportunity for me to try out my lock-picking skills. They haven’t been field-tested yet.” She selected a couple of tools and bent to begin working on the lock.

“You learned this at Quantico?”

“From Bishop. It’s sort of fascinating which skills he determines to be most important to a new agent. Handling a gun without shooting myself in the foot and with reasonable accuracy-check. Being able to use a form of autohypnosis and biofeedback to focus and concentrate-check. Ability to talk to the dead-a major plus. Being able to pick various and sundry locks-check. Or, at least, so I hope.”

Mallory laughed under her breath. “You know, I’d really like to meet this Bishop of yours. He sounds like a very interesting man.”

“He certainly is. Damn. Shine your light right here, will you?”

Mallory complied.

“Wait-I think-” There was a soft click, and Hollis opened the padlock with a flourish. “Ta-da. What do you know, I can do this. I wasn’t at all sure I could.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She put away the tools, then had to put her shoulder against the door to push it inward. And the moment it was open a few inches Hollis immediately stepped back. “Oh, shit.”

The two women looked at each other, and Mallory said, “I haven’t had the misfortune to stumble across a decomposing human corpse, but I’m guessing that’s what one would smell like. Please tell me I’m wrong.”

Breathing through her mouth, Hollis said, “I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Part of the training I got was a visit to the body farm-where students and forensics specialists study decomposition. It’s not an odor you easily forget.”

Mallory stared at the partially open door. “I’m not looking forward to seeing what’s inside there.”

“No, me either.” Hollis eyed her. “Want to wait and call in reinforcements?”

“No. No, dammit. With a padlocked door and that smell, there’s obviously nothing dangerous in there. Nothing alive, I mean. We have to open the door and look, make sure it’s not some dead animal in there. Then call it in.”

Hollis braced herself mentally and emotionally-and did her best to shore up her psychic shields. Then she and Mallory shouldered the door all the way open and stepped inside.

“Jesus,” Mallory whispered.

Hollis might have echoed her, if she could have forced words past the sick lump in her throat.

It was a bare room, for the most part, with only a few shelves along one wall to show it had been used at least once for storage. The high windows admitted just enough illumination, from the southwestern corner of the building and the hot sun low enough in the sky, to provide mote-filled beams of light focused on the center of the room.

On her.

One end of a thick, rusted chain was wrapped around a steel I-beam overhead, while at the other end of the chain a big hook jutted from between her rope-bound wrists. She dangled, literally, from the hook, her feet several inches above the floor. There was nothing beneath her except rusty stains on the concrete.

Thick, dark hair hung down to mostly obscure her face. The clothing she had worn, a once-demure blouse and skirt, had been shredded, but very neatly, methodically, almost artistically. The material provided a fringe that almost hid what had been done to her body.

Almost.

“Jamie didn’t do this,” Mallory whispered. “She couldn’t have done this.”

“Nothing human could have done this,” Hollis responded, her own voice thin. “It’s like he was curious to see what color her insides were.”

Mallory backed out of the room, gagging, and Hollis didn’t have to follow to know the other cop was throwing up everything she’d eaten today.

Her own stomach churning, Hollis reached for her cell phone, her gaze fixed on the dangling and decomposing body of a woman who’d been gutted like a fish.

6:00 PM

The medical examiner for the county, Dr. David James, was a normally dour man, and a scene like this one didn’t make him any more cheerful.

“She’s been dead at least a couple of months,” he told Rafe. “The fairly cool, dry conditions in here probably slowed decomp a bit, but not much. I can’t be positive, of course, but from the bruising on her neck I’m guessing strangulation, probably with a rope of some kind. Whoever cut her did it postmortem, probably days afterward; there was almost no bleeding from those wounds.”

“Anything missing?” Rafe kept his own voice as level as the doctor’s, but it required a tremendous effort.

“I’ll be able to tell you more when I get her on the table, but it does look like one kidney is gone, some of the intestines, part of her stomach.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah. I may be able to get you prints from her, and it looks like she’s had some dental work done, so we have a fair shot at an I.D. if she’s one of the missing women on your list. Get this guy, Rafe. What he did to the other women was bad enough, but this… He’s worse than a butcher.”

Rafe didn’t comment on the doctor’s assumption that the same killer was responsible for this woman’s death. “We’re doing our best.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Dr. James hunched his shoulders a little, weariness in the gesture. “My guys are standing by to bag her as soon as yours are finished.”

“Right.”

“I’ll get the report to you ASAP.”

Rafe watched the doctor make his way back toward the front of the former gas station, then returned his gaze to the activities in the back room. T.J. and Dustin were working methodically, their faces grim. Off to one side, Isabel stood with Hollis as they studied the dead woman.

If he’d been asked to guess, Rafe would have said that Hollis was feeling queasy and Isabel was exhausted. He was pretty sure both hunches were on the mark.

Mallory joined him in the doorway and nodded toward the federal agents, saying, “They still believe she was one of Jamie’s playmates, the one accidentally killed.”

“But they don’t believe Jamie did this,” Rafe said, a statement rather than a question.

“No.”

“Which begs the question…”

“Who did. Yeah. Didn’t Doc say she died two months ago at least?”

Rafe nodded. “Before the murders started. Isabel?”

She and Hollis immediately walked over to join them at the doorway.