Sense of Evil

by Kay Hooper

  “Not tricky enough. Apparently.”

  “Here's the place.”

  Rafe smiled slightly but didn't say anything else as she pulled the car into the motel's secondary drive and around to the back of the building.

  It was a somewhat seedy motel, an L-shaped single floor, and the neon VACANCY sign was flickering on the point of going dark. Only two cars were parked at the front; around the back there were half a dozen more scattered vehicles.

  Isabel parked the unobtrusive rental beside a small Ford with a dented rear bumper, and they both got out. She went immediately to the room in front of the Ford and knocked quietly.

  The door opened. “What, no pizza?”

  “I forgot,” Isabel said apologetically, stepping into the room.

  “You owe me one. Hey, Chief,” Paige Gilbert said. “Come on in.”

  “We're just concerned,” Hollis told Ginny quietly.

  The younger woman shifted a bit in her chair at the conference table, then said, “I appreciate that. I really do. But I'm fine. In a few more months, I'll have enough saved to move out on my own.”

  “And until then?”

  “Until then I'll just stay out of his way.”

  “Like you did last night?” Hollis shook her head. “You've had enough training to know better, Ginny. He's mad at the world and you're his punching bag. He won't stop until somebody makes him.”

  “When I move out—”

  “He'll go back to beating your mother.”

  “I didn't tell you that.”

  “You didn't have to.”

  Ginny slumped in her chair. “No. It's textbook, isn't it? He's a bully who beat her up until I got old enough to intervene, and now he hits me. When I'm not fast enough to stay out of his reach, that is. Usually, he's so drunk he passes out or knocks himself out trashing the house, at least now that he's older.”

  “Your mother?”

  “I haven't been able to talk her into leaving him. But once I'm out, I think she'll go live with her sister in Columbia.”

  “And what will he do?”

  “Go down the drain, probably. He hasn't had a regular job in years because of his temper. He's stupid and sullen and—like you said—mad at the world. Because, of course, it's not his fault that his life sucks. It's never his fault.”

  “It isn't your fault,” Hollis said. “But when he goes too far and assaults someone else, or drives drunk and causes an accident, or does something else stupid and destructive, you'll blame yourself. Won't you?”

  Ginny was silent.

  “You're a cop, Ginny. You know what you have to do. Press charges, see that he's locked up or forced into some kind of treatment program, or whatever it takes to defuse the situation.”

  “I know. I know that. But it's hard to . . .”

  “To take it all public. Yes, it is. Maybe one of the hardest things you'll ever do. But doing it will take away his power. It's his shame you'll be showing the world, not yours. Not your mother's. His.”

  Biting her bottom lip, Ginny said, “It's mostly the guys here that I think about. I mean, I took the training, I know self-defense, and still he hits me. So what're they going to think? That I'm some weak little girly-girl who needs them to protect me all the time? I wouldn't be able to take that.”

  “You might get that reaction at first,” Hollis admitted. “Not because they think you aren't capable, but because they wouldn't have become cops if they didn't want to help people. Protect people. Especially one of their own. But you'll show them, in time. Earn another marksman's medal or another belt in your karate classes, and they'll notice.”

  “How did you know—”

  “A little birdie told me.” Hollis smiled. “Look, the point is that you have friends. And they'll be supportive. But this is not the time to back off, to avoid taking action against your father. With this killer on the loose, everybody's on edge and in full defensive mode. If your father pushes anybody the wrong way, he's likely to provoke a situation with a tragic outcome.”

  “You're right.” Ginny got to her feet and managed a smile. “Thank you, Hollis. And thank Isabel for me, will you? If you hadn't said something, I probably would have let this go on, and God knows what might have happened.”

  “You have friends,” Hollis repeated. “Including us. Don't forget that.”

  “No. No, I won't. Thanks.” She went quietly from the conference room.

  Hollis sat there frowning in silence for a moment, her gaze fixed on the bulletin boards covered with photographs and reports, then reached for her cell phone and punched in a number.

  “Yeah.”

  “I know this isn't a good time,” Hollis said, “but when you've finished up there, ask Rafe about the McBrayer household, will you? He might know just how volatile Hank McBrayer is, how dangerous.”

  “She's going to press charges?”

  “I think so. And I have a very bad feeling about how he might react.”

  “Okay. Keep her busy there, if you can; she might feel the need to go confront him before she takes official action.”

  “Shit. Okay, I will. Oh—and we've got a small lead on Kate Murphy; after the latest round of radio announcements asking for help, a witness came forward to report he thinks he might have seen her getting on a bus the day she disappeared. We're checking it out.”

  “Good. It'd be nice to know we aren't looking for another body. Yet.”

  “I'll say. How's it going there?”

  “I'll fill you in when I get back.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Tense is the word I'd use. Talk to you later.”

  “Is who going to press charges?” Rafe asked as Isabel ended the call.

  “Tell you later.”

  He frowned at her. “I am not tense.”

  Isabel lifted both brows at Paige.

  “He's tense,” Paige said.

  Rafe, sitting on one of the two rather unsteady chairs near the front window, rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the two women warily. “I'm still trying to deal with you being a fed,” he told Paige. “And the fact that you've been here longer than Isabel.”

  Isabel shook her head. She was sitting in the other rickety chair, both of which faced Paige, who sat on the bed. “I'm still pissed at Bishop for that part of it. All the time I was arguing with him about sending me down here, and he already had an agent in place—and had sent her here right after the first murder, even before you asked for a profile.”

  “Not much gets past him,” Paige reminded Isabel. “Neither of them has said, but I get the feeling he and Miranda keep an eye on any investigations that might even possibly involve any of the killers in our cold-case files. Hell, Kendra probably wrote a program for them purely to do that—scan all the police and law-enforcement databases looking for specific details or keywords.”

  “He might have told me,” Isabel said.

  “And he might have told Hollis why she was supposed to make sure Rafe knew you understood Latin. Of course, if he had, then she might have been self-conscious about what she was doing, and Rafe might have picked up on the wrong part of the conversation, and you might never have had to bring him to me to find out if he's psychic because he'd be dead.”

  “If my vote counts,” Rafe said, “I vote we let Bishop continue to do things his own way.”

  “Okay, point taken. But Hollis is right: one of these days, one of us is going to have to sit down and have a long talk with Bishop and Miranda about the philosophical and actual consequences of playing God.”

  “Later,” Rafe said. “Can we please do what we came here to do and find out what's going on inside my head? How do we find out, by the way? And does it involve something unspeakable like . . . chicken entrails?”

  “What have you been reading?” Paige demanded.

  “Well, since nobody offered me a copy of the psychic newsletter . . .”

  Isabel frowned and looked at Paige. “Isn't that a joke Maggie uses sometimes?”

&nbs
p; Paige nodded, her gaze thoughtfully fixed on Rafe. “Yeah. He's very plugged-in. Aside from Beau, I've never met anybody else who could do that. He's sort of picked up the rhythm of the way you talk too.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “Ladies, please.” Rafe was beginning to look profoundly uneasy.

  “Oh, you're psychic,” Paige said matter-of-factly.

  Rafe had braced himself to be told that, but the abruptness and utter calm of the disclosure threw him more than a little. “You don't have to touch me to make sure?”

  “No. I'm not a touch telepath, I'm an open telepath. All I have to do is focus on someone and concentrate. If I can read them at all, I know right away. I can read you, and you're psychic.”

  “I am?”

  “You are.” Paige looked at Isabel. “I was pretty sure he was, at that news conference before you showed up on Thursday. When you walked into the room, I was positive.”

  “That's when everything changed,” Rafe murmured. “I felt it.”

  “I'm not surprised,” Paige said frankly. “The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. It was like an electrical current was let loose in the room.”

  “Why didn't you tell me?” Isabel demanded. “Then would have been nice, but when I called you today—”

  “I reported in to Bishop on Thursday, and he told me to wait. That you and I shouldn't have any contact at all until you called me. On Sunday.”

  “He knew I'd call today.”

  “Apparently, yes.”

  “At least tell me he didn't give you a whole list of things to say to one or both of us.”

  Paige grinned. “No. He just said you'd call, and it would be safe for us to meet, that I should follow my training and instincts. So that's what I'm doing.”

  Isabel was looking thoughtful, her irritation with Bishop a fleeting thing. “Wait a minute. Rafe was already a functional psychic before I came into the room?”

  “Yeah, but not consciously.”

  “Then the original trigger was—”

  “Dunno. It had to be recent, and probably some kind of emotional or psychological shock.”

  Slowly, Rafe said, “I don't recall anything like that happening. My life was very ordinary until all this started. Having a serial killer loose in my town was a shock, I admit, but nothing I'm not trained to deal with.”

  “Could have been some kind of subconscious shock, I suppose, though that's really rare. We're usually completely aware of the jolts we get through life. Whatever it was, I can't get at it; it's behind his shield.”

  Isabel rubbed her forehead briefly. “Okay, let's try something a little easier. What happened when I came into the room that day?”

  Readily, Paige said, “As near as I can tell, you were the catalyst. Or it was a combination of the two of you in close proximity for the first time. On a purely electromagnetic level, it was like energy going to energy. I felt it come through the room between you. Jeez, I could almost see it.”

  “And what did that do to Rafe's abilities?”

  “Same thing it did to yours. Started to change them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rafe said. “Change them from what? And into what?”

  “Here's where we get into educated guesswork,” Paige told them. “From what I was getting before Isabel walked into the room, I think your natural ability would have been precognition.”

  “Seeing the future?”

  “Like your grandmother,” Isabel said. “She had the sight.”

  Rafe leaned forward, elbows on knees, and frowned at Paige. “But I'm not precognitive now?”

  “No, not actively. When Isabel walked in, everything changed. Her energy added to yours closed that door and opened another one.”

  “I'm afraid to ask,” Rafe said.

  “I'm not,” Isabel said. “What's behind door number two?”

  “Clairvoyance.”

  Startled, Rafe said, “Like Isabel?”

  “Yeah, except that as we all know you have a shield. Dandy one, as a matter of fact. So dandy you've got it wrapped around both of you.”

  “How is that possible?” Isabel demanded. “He's not consciously controlling any of this.”

  “That's how it's possible.” Paige eyed Rafe thoughtfully. “In case you don't know this, your conscious mind is always second-guessing your hunches and instincts. For most of your life, I gather.”

  He nodded without comment.

  “Well, your instincts are fighting back. Once your abilities became functional, your subconscious took them over. With a vengeance.”

  Isabel frowned. “Wait a minute. If this shield of his is so powerful it can even enclose my mind—”

  “Then how am I able to read him? It's because he's doing all this at a subconscious level. Just beneath his conscious mind is a solid wall.” Paige lifted her brows at Isabel. “Same one that's just beneath your conscious mind. It's really no wonder you can't hear the voices anymore.”

  With a sigh, Isabel said, “You know, Bishop was right—as usual, damn him—to send Hollis with me. She's been pretty much on the mark about all of this.”

  “Yeah, the rookies often are. Sometimes knowing just the basics can offer you more room to speculate and the imagination to do it,” Paige said. “The rest of us tend to get tripped up by our own assumptions.”

  “I'm still trying to figure out the basics,” Rafe told them. To Paige, he said, “So I'm not stripped naked to you, just down to my underwear.”

  “Pretty good analogy.” She smiled. “And accurate, as far as it goes. I'm not picking up thoughts from you—I mean clear thoughts like sentences. It doesn't work that way for me. You could be calling me rude names in your head or worrying about some deep dark secret you don't want anybody to know, and I wouldn't necessarily read either.”

  “Because you specialize in reading psychic ability in other minds?” he guessed.

  Paige nodded. “Exactly. My own energy seems to be tuned for that, picking up on that particular frequency. So I usually know if somebody else is psychic, how they're psychic, and what's going on in that area of their minds. But the human brain is vast, mostly unmapped terrain, and the larger part of it is as alien to me as it is to most everybody else.”

  Rafe shook his head as he sat back in his chair, but said, “Okay, how do I control this?”

  “Simple. Get your conscious mind in control.”

  “And you're going to tell me how to do that?”

  “Wish I could. Sorry. This is the sort of thing almost every psychic has to figure out more or less alone. The only advice I have to offer is that you two work together on it. Clearly, you're meant to.”

  It was Isabel who said, “So tell us why.”

  Paige didn't hesitate. “Do me a favor and hold hands for a minute.”

  Rafe looked at Isabel, then held out his hand. With only a slight hesitation, she put hers in it.

  At the spark, Paige's eyes widened. “I'd heard about it but not seen it. Interesting, to say the least.” She frowned, obviously concentrating.

  But then something really weird happened.

  While Isabel and Rafe watched in fascination, Paige's shoulder-length dark hair began to lift and stir as though a breeze had wafted through the room. There was a soft popping and crackling, and a low hum began to fill the silence.

  15

  HOLLIS LOOKED UP as Ginny stuck her head in the conference room to say, “Caleb Powell is here to see you. Should I show him in here, or to one of the offices?”

  “In here, I guess. Thanks, Ginny.” Hollis went to cover the bulletin boards, then returned to a chair on the far side of the table. She was more than a little surprised that he wanted to see her at all; to seek her out here at the police station, and on a Sunday, definitely made her wonder.

  Especially after their last meeting.

  “Hi,” Caleb said as he came in. He didn't shut the door behind him, and Hollis didn't suggest that he do so.

  “Hi yourself. What's up?” Wit
h a gesture, she invited him to sit down on the opposite side of the table.

  He hesitated, then sat down. “I wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “You know. I acted like a jerk when you told me about your eyes.”

  She couldn't help but smile. “You didn't act like a jerk, you were just a little unnerved. I can hardly blame you for that, since I am too. And I've had months to get used to them.”

  “Still, it was a lousy way for me to act. I'm sorry.”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Caleb moved half-consciously in his chair. “Then why do I get the feeling I've damaged . . . something . . . beyond repair?”

  Having watched Isabel and Rafe circling each other like a couple of wary cats, Hollis was in no mood to play games. “Caleb, you seem like a nice guy, with a nice, satisfying life here in Hastings. And I hope that after we've done our job and gone away, you get your nice little town back again. I hope we can offer you some sense of closure in Tricia's death by finding the animal who killed her.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. There isn't anything else. There never was, really.”

  “There might have been.”

  Still being honest, she said, “I sort of doubt it. Not because of anything you said or did, but just the timing.”

  “And there's no use even trying?”

  “I think . . . that right now my life and your life are so different we could never even find a bit of common ground to stand on. Honestly. You don't know me, Caleb. The little bit you do know is just the tip of a pretty dark and unsettling iceberg.”

  He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Yeah, I was afraid you'd say something like that.”

  “Admit it. You're relieved.”

  “No. No, not relieved. In fact, I have the distinct feeling I'm missing out on something I'll regret one day.”

  “Nice of you to say so.”

  He smiled a bit ruefully. “Look, there's something else I came here to tell you. Show you. Something that could possibly be related to Tricia's murder.”

  Hollis had no problem in shifting from the personal to the professional—which told her a lot. “What is it?”