by Kay Hooper
“That’s exactly what I mean. So I’d rather keep her close for now. So far, every one of these dump sites has been just that, with no evidence that the killer remained behind in the area. At every site so far, we’ve collected evidence, asked a few questions, and explored what turned out to be a few dead ends, then moved on.”
“So… less intensity to trigger something new in Hollis?”
“That,” Miranda said, “would be the theory, yes. It isn’t something we can keep up indefinitely, for obvious reasons, and you and I both know any given situation can change in a heartbeat. And usually does in our investigations. But short of ordering her to take a sabbatical, which would not go over well at all and could do more harm than good, it’s the best temporary solution we’ve been able to come up with.”
“You and Bishop?”
Miranda nodded. “It doesn’t fix the problem—assuming the pace of Hollis’s development as a psychic is a problem rather than her own natural evolution—but we’re hoping it will at least offer her a little breathing space to really come to terms with how much her life has changed. More time to adjust to what’s been happening to her, to work on her investigative skills as well as her psychic ones. Hell, just time to move through her life without feeling there’s a target painted on her forehead.”
“Which she pretty much had during the whole complicated investigation of Samuel and his church.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Quentin looked around, suddenly and obviously uneasy. “Great theory, and I really hope it works out. For her sake and for ours. But I’m beginning to think this creepy but calm investigation might be turning into something else. Like one of the more intense ones. Because they should be back by now, shouldn’t they?”
“Nobody said there’d be bears,” Special Agent Hollis Templeton whispered somewhat fiercely.
Special Investigator Diana Brisco kept her gaze fixed on the rather large specimen of black bear foraging in the brush not twenty yards from their present location and whispered back, “It’s the right time of year for them. I think. Spring. They come out of hibernation and start looking for food.”
“Oh, lovely.”
“They usually run from people.”
“You think or you know?”
“I’ve been reading a lot the last year. Catching up. I remember reading that. Also that they can climb trees, and if they do attack it’s useless to fake being dead the way you can with a grizzly bear.”
“I wouldn’t have to fake being dead if a grizzly attacked. Hell, I won’t have to fake being dead if this bear attacks.” Hollis smothered a sigh. “Okay, so what do we do? Wait him out?”
“Might be a while. Looks like he’s found something to eat.”
Hollis watched the bear’s movements for a few moments, then squinted her eyes in an effort to see more clearly through the thicket they were crouched behind and whispered, “Oh, shit.”
Diana had seen it as well. Her weapon, like Hollis’s, was at the ready, and though her experience with the Glock was limited to training and practice, she was somewhat surprised to realize it felt comfortable in her hand. Or, at the very least, familiar. “I say we both aim at that tree about three feet to his left. If that doesn’t spook him into running…”
“It better. Because I don’t want to shoot a bear, Diana.”
“Neither do I. Got a better idea?”
“No. Dammit.” Hollis leveled her own weapon and aimed carefully through the tangle of newly greening brush that was all the cover they had. “On three. One… two… three.”
The two gunshots were virtually simultaneous, sharp and loud in the relative stillness of the forest, and both bullets struck the tree near the bear with dull thuds, sending splinters of bark flying.
The bear, either no stranger to guns or wary enough to take no chances, ran, thankfully away from them, taking the easiest path to lumber with bulky grace down the mountainside.
The two women got to their feet slowly, weapons still held ready, tense until they could no longer see the bear or hear its crashing progress through the underbrush.
Diana finally relaxed and slid her gun into the holster she wore on her hip. With no need to whisper now, she said, “First time I fire my weapon in the field and it’s because of a damn bear. Quentin will never let me hear the end of it.”
“Probably not,” Hollis agreed, holstering her own gun. “Think they heard the shots? Or the echoes?” There had been many of the latter.
“In this kind of terrain? God knows, especially since all of us searching went in different directions. But even if it does feel like we’ve hiked miles, we can’t be more than a few hundred yards from the original site. The others have probably gotten back there by now.”
Hollis checked her cell phone for a signal, even though they had previously discovered no joy in that. Still no joy. She sighed and replaced the cell in the special case worn on the opposite side of her hip from her weapon. “Well, even if some of the others heard the shots, we have no way of verifying that they did, so one of us is going to have to trek back there.”
“While the other stays here and makes sure the bear doesn’t come back and remove… evidence?”
“That would be the correct procedure, under the circumstances.”
“Great.”
Hollis noticed that neither of them had taken a step in the necessary direction to verify that the bear had indeed discovered what they thought it had. Reminding herself that she was a more experienced agent than Diana and therefore the de facto lead investigator between the two of them, she moved around the brush that had sheltered them and made her way carefully to the spot yards away.
Diana silently accompanied her, both of them wary, both keeping one hand on their weapon until they had to pull aside a tangle of brown vines in order to see what they suspected.
The bear had discovered human remains.
The women took a step back and looked at each other. Hollis had no idea whether her own face was as pale as Diana’s but thought it very likely. No matter how many times she’d been forced to view human remains after a violent end, it didn’t get any easier.
Probably a good thing, that.
And she didn’t know which was worse—finding fresh remains or those that had lain out in the elements long enough to have gone through several stages of decomposition, as this one had.
The smell made her stomach churn.
Diana said, “That was some hunch you had. To leave the trail and head in this direction. To come this far. Because otherwise…”
“Otherwise,” Hollis finished, “I doubt anybody would have stumbled onto this body. Recognize the vines?”
“Kudzu. This patch starts farther down the slope. The stuff covers and smothers everything in its path.”
Hollis nodded. “It dries up in winter but comes back stronger than ever in spring and summer. The vines can grow several feet in a single day.” She paused, forcing herself to look down at what was left of, she believed, a woman’s body. “It sure as hell would have hidden her from everything except some predators and small animals.”
“Which raises the question: Is she here by accident or design?”
“Yeah. If she wound up here accidentally, it probably won’t tell us much. But if she was left here deliberately…”
“Then this body, unlike the one by that popular hiking trail, was never meant to be found.”
“That would be my guess. Whether the same killer is responsible is another question entirely.”
Brows raised, Diana said, “I know I’m still pretty new to all this investigative stuff, but isn’t it stretching things a bit to assume there’s a second killer operating at the same time in such a remote area?”
“It’s stretching things a lot. But besides not knowing if both these victims were killed by the same person, we don’t even know if this victim was murdered at all. Natural deaths do occur in terrain like this on a regular basis.”
“Yeah. But you don’t be
lieve there was anything natural about this.” It wasn’t a question.
Hollis shrugged. “I think we’re usually not that lucky. So we assume murder until evidence says otherwise.”
“Gotcha.”
Hollis looked around them with a slight frown and, thinking aloud, said, “The killer we’ve been tracking for more than two months has used dumping sites all over the Southeast, so there’s no way for us to be sure just where his home base is. Maybe near here, maybe not. According to the profile, he may not even have a base and could be completely transient.”
“Giving us precious little info to work with.”
“To say the least. But if both these people are his victims, it’s certainly a new wrinkle. He’s spread out his dumping sites before now over hundreds of miles—not hundreds of yards. And this is the first time we’ve found two victims who, I’m guessing, were killed within a week of each other. The guy on the trail was very recent, and this woman at least a few days and probably a week ago.”
Diana drew a short breath—through her mouth—and let it out slowly. “I’ll take your word for it, especially since I’m barely halfway through the crime-scene-investigation manual.” She was one of the newest members of the SCU team, having joined less than a year before. “And, I repeat, that was some hunch to draw you way out here. Except it wasn’t a hunch, was it?”
“No.”
“You saw her?”
“I caught a glimpse.” Hollis frowned again. “It was odd, though. They usually stick around long enough to at least try to communicate. She barely let me see her at all, and she wasn’t close.”
“But she led us here. Probably realized her body would never be found otherwise.”
Hollis looked at Diana. “You didn’t see anything? Anyone?”
“No. But I don’t often just see them here on our side, at least not without the help of a storm or some other external energy. For me, it’s usually a far more deliberate thing, you know that. I have to concentrate, pretty much go into a trancelike state. Or else it happens when I’m asleep.”
She hated that, more now than she had in years past, when she had been consciously unaware of her psychic forays due to the many medications her father and various doctors had used to control her “illness.” Neither Elliot Brisco nor any of those doctors had considered for even a moment that she might not, in fact, be ill but merely… gifted. Diana hadn’t considered it either. She had been utterly convinced she was mentally unstable at best and out of her mind at worst.
Until she met Quentin Hayes. And had been both educated and wholeheartedly accepted by him and the members of the SCU.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel like a freak.
“Diana?”
She yanked her attention back to the present, saying parenthetically, “I hate it happening while I’m asleep. Very disconcerting.”
“I can imagine. Very well, in fact.”
“Yeah, you never really told me after our little experiment what you thought about that visit to the gray time.” It was the name she used for a place or time that seemed to be a sort of limbo between the spirit world and the world of the living.
“It was creepy as hell. I don’t envy you the ability to go there.” Despite being a medium herself, Hollis had been completely unfamiliar with that gray and lifeless limbo, which was just one more affirmation of Bishop’s belief that every psychic was unique.
“You never told Bishop or Miranda about it either, did you?”
Hollis offered her a twisted smile. “I don’t have to be telepathic to know they’re both… concerned about me. Seems I’m a bit of a freak as psychics go, and they aren’t quite sure what’s going to happen to me as time goes on. Neither one has said it in so many words, but I gather the most recent tests showed that the amount of electrical activity in my brain is excessive even for psychics. Whether that turns out to be a good thing or a bad one is apparently very much in question.”
“I wish you’d told me that before I took you into the gray time.”
“Don’t you start worrying. I’m fine. Just… exploring my abilities, that’s all. I’d rather have some idea of what I can do before yet another deadly situation opens up, without warning, yet another door in my psychic world. Less disconcerting that way.”
“If you say so.” Diana didn’t look especially convinced, but another glance down at the remains distracted her. “Do we flip a coin to decide who stays here with her?”
“No need; I’ll stay. She might pay me another visit if I’m alone. Besides, you seem to have a better feeling for direction in this kind of terrain, so you’re a hell of a lot less likely to get lost. Plus, there’s Quentin. You two are connected and you usually sense him, right?”
Diana’s expression went a bit guarded, but she said readily enough, “Usually. As a matter of fact, I’m reasonably sure he either heard the shots or felt something, because I think he’s heading this way.”
“Well, go meet him, then, will you, please? The less time I have to spend here waiting for a spirit or a bear, the better.”
“I hear that.” Diana turned away, adding, “Sit tight. I’ll be back with the others ASAP.”
“I’ll be here.” Hollis was left staring down at the remains of a woman who had, assuming that spirit was hers, died far too young.
There wasn’t a lot left of the body. Hollis knew enough to recognize that both maggots and small scavengers had consumed most of the soft tissue. There was some skin left, and quite a bit of long blond hair clung to a small patch of scalp that was still attached to the skull.
She had beautiful teeth, straight and gleaming white.
Must have cost a fortune at the orthodontist.
Hollis knelt gingerly, telling herself the smell wasn’t at all overpowering as she did her best to look for evidence, for clues to how this woman died. To study the scene as she had been taught.
The first clue surprised her, both because she had missed it until now and because it struck her as unexpectedly sloppy that the killer had left it behind: A loop of plastic bound fragile wrists together behind the victim’s back. It was the sort of binding that law-enforcement units often used these days in a big operation or when they otherwise ran out of metal handcuffs.
It was also quite possibly the sort of plastic tie found commonly in boxes of garbage bags and in the gardening and home-improvement sections of most DIY stores.
Hollis pushed aside that wry realization and continued to study the remains. The bear, she decided, had… pawed… a bit, so it was difficult to even guess in what position she had been when she’d been dumped here. Right now she was more or less faceup, forearms, wrists, and hands mostly beneath her and legs twisted, splayed apart at the thigh area but tangled together around the ankles and feet.
There was no sign of another plastic tie, but Hollis wondered if the ankles had been bound as the wrists were. Possibly.
There was also, she realized suddenly, absolutely no sign of any clothing whatsoever. It made her throat tighten to think of a young woman, perhaps already dead or perhaps still alive, in agony and terrified, dumped here in a wilderness of dirt and vines, bound and naked. So unspeakably vulnerable. So very alone.
It stirred memories Hollis would have given much to forget.
“Hey.”
Hollis nearly jumped out of her skin. She looked up and was angrily aware of the crack in her voice when she demanded, “Where the hell did you come from?”
* Chill of Fear
* Touching Evil
Two
WEST,” REESE DEMARCO REPLIED matter-of-factly. “I’d finished searching my grid and was heading back when I heard the shots.”
Of course it would have to be him. Hollis abruptly remembered that DeMarco was, among other things, telepathic, and she made rather a production of rising to her feet and brushing off the knee of her jeans.
“There was a bear,” she explained briefly. “We scared it off. Diana went to report while I waited here.”
“Ah.” He looked down at the remains, his coldly handsome face as usual utterly without expression. He was dressed as casually as the rest of the SCU team was today, in jeans and a white shirt underneath a lightweight windbreaker, but the informal attire did nothing to soften the almost military crispness of his stance and movements, that truly visible sense of considerable strength and the training and ability to know how best to use it.
Hollis had seen that in other ex-military types, but in DeMarco there was something just a little bit… excessive… in his straight posture and almost hypersensitivity to his surroundings. He seemed to her too alert, too ready to explode into action. He made her think of a cocked gun, and she had no idea whether a dangerous hair trigger lurked inside him.
She couldn’t see his aura unless he allowed her to.
He wasn’t allowing her to.
“I gather the bear discovered these remains?”
She shoved the oddly disjointed thoughts aside. He’s a telepath, remember? Don’t let him into your head. Not that she had any kind of a shield she could use to keep him out if he wanted in. Dammit. “Yeah.”
“Is that what brought you two so far off the trails?”
“Not exactly.”
His gaze shifted, pale blue eyes fixed intently on her face. “You know, we are on the same side, Hollis. You don’t have to be so guarded with me. I’m not trying to read you.”
She wondered if that meant he wasn’t reading her—or simply didn’t have to try in order to read her. She didn’t have the nerve to ask. “Was I being evasive? Sorry. Diana and I weren’t following the bear, we were following a spirit who led us to this area. Then we found the bear. Which had just found what was left of this body.”
“That must have been an interesting encounter.”
“You could say.”
DeMarco returned his dispassionate attention to the remains. “Probably female, probably on the young side. Blond. Great teeth. Her hands were bound behind her back and there’s no sign of clothing, so highly unlikely this was an accidental death. Most likely a sexual assault, though whether that was the intent from the beginning is impossible to say. That’s as far as my crime-scene and forensic knowledge can take me.”
