Whisper of Evil tbscus-5

by Кей Хупер

  She turned on the white lights and stood back to stare at the eight-by-ten hanging over the trays.

  Every detail of the shot was clear. The building, Max, Nell. Everything just as it should be, with the light falling just so and shadows where they should have been.

  But behind Nell, beginning several inches above the steps and stretching upward maybe six feet, was a shadow that had no right to be there. It was vaguely man-shaped and, though it appeared more dense than smoke, was certainly not solid.

  "What the hell is that?" Shelby wondered aloud. No matter how carefully she studied the shot, she could find absolutely nothing solid to account for the shadow.

  But that shadow was definitely there. Even more, with hardly any imagination at all it could be argued that the shadow loomed over Nell, even seemed to reach out for her.

  Grasping. Threatening.

  It was some time before Shelby realized that she was absently rubbing the nape of her neck because of an odd, tingly sensation, and it took a minute or so more for her to recognize what was happening.

  The hair on the back of her neck was standing up.

  Maybe it was nothing. Probably it was nothing. But Shelby had always listened to her instincts, and they were whispering an urgent warning now.

  "Jeez." Shelby glanced at her watch, then made up her mind and left the darkroom. Too late for a visit, maybe, but not too late for a phone call.

  "You don't have to do this," Nell said as Max followed her into the foyer of the Gallagher house.

  "Humor me," he requested.

  Nell looked at him a moment, then shrugged. "Suit yourself. But maybe I'd better remind you that I'm the one with the gun."

  "I'm not likely to forget that." But he didn't bother to argue when he knew only too well he wasn't being particularly logical about this. He just went through the downstairs, turning on lights and checking windows and doors. When he was satisfied the first floor was clear, he went upstairs and checked every room up there as well.

  When he came back downstairs, he found Nell in the kitchen waiting for coffee to brew.

  "Happy now?" she asked dryly.

  Instead of answering, Max asked a sharp question of his own. "Will you at least admit that your presence here could be a threat to this killer?"

  She leaned back against the counter and gazed at him steadily for a moment, then sighed. "If he knows about the Gallagher curse, if he believes in psychic ability, and if he knows any specifics about my ability — maybe."

  "Jesus, you're stubborn."

  "I'm a cop, Max, remember? Risk comes with the territory."

  "Not undue risk."

  "In this situation, how do you define undue? I can take care of myself, you know. I'm armed. I'm trained in self-defense. And I'm here to look for a killer. It's my job."

  "Is that all it is? Your job?"

  "What else could it be?'

  "You also came home to settle your father's estate."

  Nell turned away to get out cups and silverware. "Do you take milk or sugar? I don't think I ever knew that."

  "Both." He watched as she put what was needed on the counter near the coffeemaker. "Are you going to answer my question?"

  "Yes, I also came home to settle my father's estate."

  "Would you have come home if it hadn't also been your job?"

  "I think you know the answer to that."

  "You hated him, didn't you?"

  Nell poured the coffee and pushed his cup across the counter to him so he could fix it the way he liked. Matter-of-factly, she said, "Yes, I hated him. And I think it's a cosmic joke that I ended up with all his property."

  There were plenty of questions Max wanted to ask, but he was conscious of feeling an overwhelming caution. He was walking an emotional minefield with Nell, with a single unwary step promising destruction, and every instinct warned him not to push too hard. Not now. Not yet.

  So all he said was, "Did he know you'd joined the FBI?"

  "No. I didn't write to him either."

  Max didn't rise to the bait. "What about Hailey? She talked as if she knew where you were, what you were doing."

  "She didn't. I hadn't seen or spoken to Hailey since I left Silence."

  He frowned. "Then she made that stuff up?"

  Nell sipped her coffee, then smiled. "She always made stuff up, Max. Didn't you know?"

  "You're saying she was a liar?"

  "Sweet, friendly Hailey. So charming, so good-tempered. And she had a way about her, didn't she? A way of… getting people behind her. A way of making people believe her. Not exactly my strong suit, huh?"

  "Nell — "

  Abruptly, she said, "I wonder what she did to so alienate our father that he disinherited her. Do you know?"

  "Supposedly… she ran off with Glen Sabella. He was a mechanic, and he was married. Gossip had it that your father was furious, especially since —"

  "Since both his wife and his other daughter had also run off without a word."

  "That was the general consensus, yes. I don't think anybody ever had the nerve to ask Adam directly, but it was common knowledge he changed his will just a couple of weeks after she left."

  "Wade Keever does like to talk," Nell murmured.

  "He isn't the most discreet lawyer in town. But the general feeling was also that Adam didn't give a damn who knew."

  "No, he usually didn't."

  "He could be mysterious about some things. The Gallagher curse, for instance."

  Nell gazed at him a moment, then said, "He was mysterious about it because he didn't understand it. Any more than the rest of us did. Worse for him, though. He didn't have it."

  "What? I just assumed —"

  "Yeah, everybody did. Because it was the Gallagher curse, everybody figured we all had it. And he didn't do anything to discourage people from thinking that. His mother had it, and his daughter — and I think his father had it as well. Maybe he felt left out."

  "Daughter. Just you? Not Hailey?"

  "Not Hailey."

  "She used to joke about it. Even manned the fortuneteller's tent at the school carnivals. From what I heard, she was pretty good at it."

  "That sort of thing isn't hard, given a fair amount of knowledge about your neighbors and a certain… theatrical flair. Hailey always had both."

  "But no genuine ability?"

  "Not psychic ability, no."

  Max thought about that for a moment. "But your psychic ability is genuine. And it's what got you into the FBI?"

  "It's what got me into the Special Crimes Unit. I had to pass all the usual tests to get into the FBI."

  "Wait a minute — you didn't graduate from high school."

  "Yes, I did. Just not here. Went to college, too."

  "On your own?"

  Nell shrugged. "It took me five years instead of four, since I was working my way through, but I made it. I majored in computer science. Minored in psychology."

  Max had spent so much time these last hours readjusting what had clearly been his faulty mental image of Nell that he was beginning to feel a little dizzy. "And then you joined the FBI?"

  She hesitated, then shook her head. "No, then I tried to help a friend whose little sister had been abducted. There was an open-minded cop who listened to me, and they found the little girl before she could be killed."

  "You'd had a vision?"

  "Yes. I was living in a small town on the West Coast. The cop began coming to me from time to time with some of his more puzzling cases. Sometimes I was able to help. He's the one who introduced me to an FBI agent who was part of a new unit being put together. The Special Crimes Unit. They thought I'd fit into that unit nicely. As it turns out, I did."

  "Something useful to do with the Gallagher curse?"

  "Exactly. They don't treat me like a freak. They don't whisper about me or look at me nervously. They don't even think I'm the slightest bit odd. Because I'm not. I'm just one of them, another investigator with a unique tool or two to help me do my job."


  "Hunting down killers?"

  "Killers. Rapists. Kidnappers. Pedophiles. We usually get the real animals, because they're usually harder to catch."

  After a moment, he said, "It sounds like difficult work. Emotionally difficult, I mean."

  "Bishop says finding genuine psychics is never the problem. Finding genuine psychics who can handle the work consistently is. I can handle it."

  "So far, you mean."

  "Yeah. So far."

  "So… you use your visions as tools? Use them to try and solve crimes?"

  "To answer questions. To give me pieces of the puzzle. That's all, usually. Just a little extra help for the more conventional investigative methods."

  "What about your blackouts?"

  "What about them?"

  "You know what I'm asking you, Nell. How do you cope with them? Prepare for them? What happens if you black out during an investigation?"

  "I try to find something soft to fall on."

  He set his cup down on the counter with a rather emphatic sound. "Very funny."

  She was smiling faintly, but her green eyes were watchful. "It's the truth. The blackouts never come without warning. When my head starts to hurt that way, I make sure I can be alone somewhere I won't be disturbed. If I'm working with a partner, I make sure he or she is notified that I'll be… incapacitated for an hour or so. It's all I can do."

  "And your fellow agents understand that?"

  "My fellow agents tend to have baggage of their own. Our sort of abilities often come with… side effects. Sometimes difficult ones. We've all learned to adapt, to work within our limitations." Nell kept her voice even, casual.

  "Have you?"

  "Yes." The word was barely out of her mouth when the scene around her changed with stunning abruptness. It was still the kitchen, still night, but Max was no longer standing there looking at her with brooding dark eyes.

  Instead, she saw her father stride in through the back door, his dark hair damp, his face like a thundercloud. She wanted to draw back, to run.

  To escape.

  But she could only stand there and watch numbly, listen when a dead man muttered something under his breath as he stalked through the kitchen.

  "She should have told me. Goddammit, she should have told me…"

  He vanished through the doorway leading to the rest of the house, and Nell stared after him. As always, she was completely aware of having a vision, conscious of that peculiar time-out-of-sync sensation that always accompanied them.

  What she saw always meant something, always. What did this mean?

  She turned her head to look toward the wall across from the back door, where a calendar had always hung. It was there, showing her a date of May, the previous year.

  The month Adam Gallagher had died.

  "Nell!"

  With a start, she was back in the here and now, the dizzying out-of-sync sensation gone as abruptly as a soap bubble popping. She looked up at Max. She was only vaguely aware of his hands gripping her shoulders, but something in his face made her voice her thoughts aloud.

  "He was killed too. My father was murdered."

  It was raining in Chicago.

  Special Agent Tony Harte stood at the window gazing out at the dreary night, sipping his coffee. He hated rainy nights as a rule. And most especially in the middle of a difficult case with nothing going right. And he wasn't the only one. The tension in the room behind him was just about thick enough to cut with a knife.

  A real knife, not a metaphorical one.

  On top of everything else, Bishop was always restless and uneasy whenever Miranda was out in the field without him. There was probably nobody in the world who respected Miranda's strengths and abilities more than Bishop did, but that didn't stop him from worrying about her.

  Turning from the window, Tony raised a subject he hoped would occupy his boss's mind, at least for the moment. "Have you revised that profile of the killer in Silence? I mean, since we got the latest information?"

  Special Agent Noah Bishop looked up from his study of photographs of bits and pieces of physical evidence and frowned slightly as he shook his head. "Nothing we've learned recently changes the profile."

  "Still a cop?"

  "Still probably a cop."

  "How sure are you of that?"

  Bishop leaned back in his chair and gazed around the sitting room of the hotel suite as if it might provide answers, his pale gray sentry eyes as sharp as always. His reply was slow. "Unofficially? Pretty damned sure. But there's always room for doubt, Tony, you know that."

  "Yeah. But you tend to be awfully accurate, for all that. If you say you're pretty sure, then he's probably a cop. Tough for our people, having to keep their heads down, look for a killer, and police the police."

  Bishop nodded, still frowning. The scar on his left cheek stood out more clearly than normal, as it always did when he was tense or upset. A useful and accurate barometer of his mood during those times when even another psychic found it difficult or impossible to read him any other way.

  Not that this was one of those times.

  Tony watched him. "You're still bothered by something else, aren't you? In Silence."

  Since he had long ago learned the uselessness of denying thoughts or feelings another member of his team was picking up on, Bishop merely said, "There's an undercurrent I can't quite get a fix on."

  "What kind of undercurrent? Emotional or psychological?"

  "Both."

  "With Nell? Or with the killer?"

  Bishop grimaced. "Plenty of undercurrents with Nell, but we knew that going in. No, it's something about the killer I can't bring into focus. I think he has another reason for picking his victims. Not just because they have secrets he wants to expose. There's something else."

  "His own history with them, maybe?"

  Bishop shrugged. "Maybe. It almost feels as if… it's more personal for him. That maybe the sins he's punishing them for aren't just the ones exposed by their murders or the investigations. That there's something else there, if we could dig deeply enough to find it."

  "So he tells himself he's killing them, punishing them, to get justice for the innocent people in their lives, but all the time it's revenge for himself?"

  "At least partly for himself. But he still thinks of himself as a judge and jury. He still believes he's performing a service for society, he's convinced himself of that, by sentencing and executing these men for their secret sins."

  "But also for injuring him."

  Bishop ran restless fingers through his black hair, slightly disarranging the vivid white streak above the left temple. "I get the sense he despises them, all of them, and all for the same reason."

  "Because they hurt him? Lied to him?"

  "Maybe. Dammit, I need to be down there. I'd have a better shot at figuring this bastard out if I was there, on the scene."

  Tony said, "Well, aside from the fact that your face was plastered all over the national papers a few months ago after we cracked that kidnapping case, which would make it a little hard for you to blend into the background down there, we also have this small matter of an active serial killer here in the Windy City."

  "You don't have to remind me of that, Tony."

  "No, I didn't think I did," Tony murmured. "Look, maybe we can wrap things up here quickly enough that we'll be able to get down to Silence and help out."

  "Yeah."

  Tony watched him a moment longer, then said, "I know what you're really worried about. But Miranda's okay, you know that."

  "Yes. For the moment."

  It wasn't the first time Tony had wondered whether the psychic bond between Bishop and his wife was a blessing or a curse. When they were working together, concentrating on the same investigation, it was undoubtedly a blessing; together they were far more powerful and accurate, both as psychics and investigators, than either was alone. But when they were separated by necessity, as they were now, each working on a different case, then the bond o
ften proved to be something of a problem — or at the very least a distraction.

  Bishop knew Miranda was currently safe and unhurt because, even though they had closed the "doors" connecting their minds in order to keep from distracting each other, they each maintained a constant sense of the other's physical and emotional state no matter what the distance was between them. Bishop knew Miranda was safe for the moment, just as she knew he was — and also knew he was worried about her.

  Tony didn't pretend to understand it, but like the other members of the unit, he was more than a little awed by it. Even among psychics accustomed to various, often extraordinary paranormal abilities, some things were still remarkable.

  What must it be like to be so bonded to another person that their thoughts and feelings flowed through you as easily as your own did? To be so connected that if one was cut, the other would also bleed?

  It was Tony's opinion that such incredible intimacy would require both a great deal of trust in and understanding of one's partner and an equally great degree of security and honesty in oneself. He seriously doubted that any pair of psychics who were not mates or blood siblings could have formed such a bond.

  But it wasn't all good, as this situation illustrated. Bishop and Miranda had been together long enough by now that they had learned to function extraordinarily well both as a team and when separated by circumstances, but their unusual closeness literally made each in many ways incomplete without the other.

  Tony had absolutely no qualms about serving with either one of them alone; even when lacking their vital other half, both Bishop and Miranda were formidable psychics and investigators, skilled and tough cops, and more than a match for most situations in which they found themselves. But he would also be the first to admit that it was far more comfortable to serve with them both, the partnership intact and the two of them functioning smoothly as if with a single mind and heart.

  A hell of a lot less tension that way.