Whisper of Evil (8 page)

Quietly, she said, "So maybe he's wondering too."

"Maybe he is."

"Or maybe," she suggested, "he doesn't know a damned thing about the Gallagher curse."

"He knows about secrets, Nell, remember? Every man he's killed has had secrets, and those secrets are out or coming out. I don't know much about killers, but this one seems to have his game plan all worked out, and that plan includes exposing the dark sides of people's private lives. So if you ask me, you've got a double chance of becoming a target. Because you've got a secret, and because that secret—that ability—is a threat to him."

"It's no secret if people are talking about it."

"It's something you try to hide, and that makes it a secretive thing."

"A… dark and secretive thing?"

"Some people would call it that. This town hasn't changed all that much, Nell, and your family never did anything to make this curse of yours something to understand and not fear. People fear what they don't understand, and some people still call psychic abilities dark. Even evil."

"Which is why they call me a witch."

"Which is why some do, yes."

She drew a breath. "And that's why you've been following me? Because you believe what I can do makes me a target?"

"That's why." He smiled faintly. "Of course, I didn't know you had a gun. I suppose you know how to use it?"

"Yeah, I know how." She turned her head slightly, looking toward the door with a faint frown. "They teach us how to do that."

"They? Who are they?"

Before Nell could answer, the door opened quietly and Casey Lattimore stepped into the room. Closing the door behind her, the mayor of Silence said dryly to Max, "They are the FBI. The training academy for agents is at Quantico. Right, Nell?"

"Right."

"Last year," Mayor Lattimore said from her position in the room's one armchair, "weeks after Peter Lynch died, I was feeling frustrated. Not that anybody could have been sure it was murder, not then, but nothing seemed to be happening in the investigation. Worse, I didn't really understand police procedure. I thought it was something I needed to understand."

"So you went up to Quantico," Max finished slowly. "Took that course for civilian authorities." He was sitting on the bed, rather gingerly.

She nodded. "And that's where I ran into Nell."

Nell, still leaning back against the dresser, said, "My unit operates out of Quantico, and sometimes we're tapped to help teach some of the courses offered. I was between assignments and ended up helping the instructor speaking to Casey's group that week. We recognized each other."

"After twelve years?" Max asked.

Casey said, "Don't forget, I taught both of you in high school. Not to swell your head, Max, but some students really are more memorable than others. You and Nell, I remembered."

Max decided not to ask why. "Okay, so you recognized Nell. And then?"

"Well, nothing much happened then. We had lunch a couple of times. Talked, briefly, about Silence. I told Nell about my concerns, about this recent death that seemed so difficult for our sheriff and his people to resolve."

"But there wasn't much to go on," Nell continued, "especially not at a distance. So there really wasn't anything I could do, even offer anything helpful in the way of advice. Casey finished her course, and we said good-bye. Then, a couple of months ago, she called me. By then, three men were dead, and the odd little twist about their sins coming to light afterward seemed to pretty strongly indicate there was one killer. A very unusual sort of killer."

"Which attracted the interest of the Bureau?" Max lifted a brow at her.

"Which attracted the interest of my boss, the leader of the unit I belong to. He's a profiler, instinctive as well as trained. When I gave him all the information Casey had passed along to me, he was able to develop a tentative profile of the sort of person likely to be the killer."

"And?"

Nell looked at the mayor, who said, "And we immediately had a problem. According to Agent Bishop's profile, the killer was likely to be a cop."

Max whistled softly. "Which might explain why the murders are going unsolved."

"Which might explain why." Casey sighed. "Worse, what it meant was that I couldn't trust the local police—any of the police. They were all suspect, from Sheriff Cole down to his deputies, and even those not directly suspected are likely to have loyalties that could color their thinking. So I could hardly go to any of them with the information that our killer might well be a cop." She shook her head. "We needed help from investigators outside the town, outside the parish, and we had to keep it quiet because we certainly couldn't let it be known that our own sheriff's department was under suspicion."

"But the Bureau is very picky about sending in agents if the local authorities haven't asked for our help," Nell continued. "States' rights, various jurisdictions—it can get tangled and ugly in a hurry if we aren't very, very careful how we handle things. Still, Casey was in a position to ask for our help in a unique situation and to authorize us to begin investigating, so the decision was made."

"To send you in?" Max was still trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Nell—the half-wild, fey girl he remembered so vividly—was now a federal cop.

"To launch an undercover investigation," she corrected. "No agents wandering around in town flashing their badges or muscling in on the local cops. Since we knew we'd have to investigate those local cops while also working to solve this series of murders, we could hardly operate openly.

"Something much quieter and a lot more subtle was needed. Obviously. And an agent who wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb. I was chosen partly because I have a nice, innocent—and authentic—reason to be here. Settling my father's estate." She spoke without emotion. "Even the most suspicious person would be unlikely to figure me for anything other than a reluctant daughter returning home because there were things I had to take care of here. So I was perfect for the job."

Max shook his head. "They didn't send you down here alone, surely?"

"No."

He stared at her for a moment, then looked at Casey.

"Nell is my contact," she said. "I don't know the other agent—or agents—involved."

"Which is the way it stays," Nell said, looking steadily at Max. "Undercover means under cover. The safety of an agent often depends on how secure the cover is; what you don't know, you can't betray, consciously or unconsciously. If you hadn't presented a potential problem by—rather obviously—following me around today, there wouldn't have been any need to tell you this much."

"Thanks a lot," he muttered.

"Don't mention it."

Casey smiled slightly, but said, "If anybody else noticed you following Nell, Max, they'll probably chalk it up to… renewed interest, shall we say? Old gossip can have its uses. Since there was always a… mystery… concerning you two, people will tend to focus on that."

"Great," Max said without looking at Nell. "It's always been my ambition to look like a lovelorn jerk."

"Better than looking like a stalker or a murderer," Casey reminded him matter-of-factly.

"We all know I'm already suspected of the latter." He kept his gaze on her. "Which makes me wonder why you two decided to bring me in on this. It can't be only because I was following Nell all day. Aren't you taking quite a chance? I could be the killer, you know."

"You aren't a cop," Casey reminded him.

"No, but that profile could be wrong."

"It isn't," Neil said. "Certainly not on the major points. Bishop is very good at what he does."

Max shrugged. "Okay, but even the best make mistakes sometimes. I could still be the killer."

"You aren't," Nell said.

"You can't know that."

"Yes, I can." She waited until he reluctantly met her gaze, and added evenly, "And you know how I can."

Max was far too conscious of Casey's silent attention to say any of the things he wanted to say to Nell. He didn't know how much Casey knew but, even more, he wasn't about to open up old wounds and take the distinct risk of having Nell rub salt into them.

So all he said was, "So I'm off your suspect list. Who's on it?"

Casey said, "Just about everybody else, if you want the truth. Virtually all the men, anyway."

"You're sure the killer is male?"

Nell nodded. "Pretty sure. According to Bishop's profile, he's probably white, likely in his mid-thirties to mid-forties, and almost certainly a cop, though he could also be someone to whom cops are a hobby and his interest in them an obsession. Whichever it is, he knows police procedure, understands forensics, and has no intention of making a mistake that might get him caught."

"He doesn't want to get caught? I thought most serial killers did, at least on some level."

"This isn't a serial killer, at least not in the accepted sense. This killer isn't choosing victims at random or because he has no connection to them. This is personal to him, very personal. He's picking his victims in order to expose their secret crimes, their secret lives. Which means he knows them, and probably quite well. He doesn't like secrets; somewhere in his life, maybe his childhood, a secret damaged him and somehow changed his world or his perception of himself forever."

Max frowned. "So he wants the truth to come out, no matter the cost."

"That seems to be his motivation, at least in part. We also believe that in killing these men, he's attempting to punish them for their secrets. Whoever is responsible for the secret in his own life was probably out of his reach and somehow escaped punishment for that sin or crime. Because he couldn't get justice for himself, he's trying to get it for the innocents in these men's lives—or at least that's what he believes."

Nell hesitated, frowned. "Bishop thinks there's something else too, some other piece of this guy's reasoning that would help explain either what he's doing or his choice of victims."

"That's wonderfully vague," Max noted.

Casey said, "As I understand it, profiling is mostly educated and intuitive guesswork. More of an art than a science. Bound to be some vagueness there."

Nell was still frowning. "Bishop isn't normally vague, believe me. And his profiles tend to be bull's-eyes more often than not. But something about this killer is bothering him, and I don't think even he knows why. If he hadn't been hip-deep in another tricky case himself, he'd be down here trying to solve the puzzle firsthand. As it is, I have a direct line to him and I'm under orders to keep him advised."

"But you aren't here alone," Max repeated.

"No."

"How effective can an agent be when he or she is pretending to be something else?"

"We all function quite well that way, actually. My unit is… peculiarly suited to undercover operations."

"Why?" Max demanded.

"Well, among other things, let's just say we're all accustomed to keeping secrets."

He frowned at her. "I thought most feds were."

"You've been watching too much television."

Casey laughed and said, "You've told him this much, Nell, might as well tell him the rest."

Nell shrugged. "It's not something the Bureau publicizes, but the Special Crimes Unit is made up mostly of agents who each have one or more… unorthodox investigative abilities."

"Meaning?"

"Psychic abilities, Max. I finally found something useful to do with the Gallagher curse."

CHAPTER FIVE

Shelby Theriot had grown up in Silence, just as her parents had done. And unlike some of her friends, she hadn't even gone away to college; there was a small community college in the parish, and it had provided all the additional education Shelby could bear after finishing high school.

In high school, she had been voted Most Likely to Grace the Cover of a Magazine, which only proved that kids in high school were rotten judges of character.

Shelby didn't give a damn what she looked like, and had in fact rejected several offers that would have put her feet on the path to possible fame and fortune as a model. But she very much liked being on the other end of a camera, and over the years her pictures had begun appearing in various magazines.

It was still more of a hobby than a career, mostly because Shelby didn't really need a career, and also because she wasn't in the least ambitious. She didn't need a career because her parents had left her both a nice house and stock in a number of flourishing businesses. She wasn't ambitious because it simply wasn't in her nature to be. She took pictures because she enjoyed it and needed neither money nor approval to validate doing something that was fun and satisfying in and of itself.

All of which explained why Shelby had spent the day just wandering around with her camera, snapping pictures here and there of whatever scenery or person caught her fancy. The townspeople were too accustomed to this to protest; Shelby had formed the habit of giving away prints to her subjects, cheerfully handing over negatives as well if asked for them, and since she never used a picture without permission, no one minded even the sometimes unflattering shots she occasionally got while catching her subjects unawares.

Since the light was particularly good on this Thursday, Shelby spent virtually the entire day outside, quitting only when darkness forced her to. She stopped by the cafe for supper because she didn't feel like fixing anything for herself, flirted with Vinny for a few minutes afterward, and then went home.

Her small house, on the outskirts of town, was the picture-postcard image of a white cottage, complete with a white picket fence. She loved flowers but boasted a brown thumb, so she paid a gardener to keep the front and back yards looking pretty year-round; the rest of home maintenance she took care of herself, perfectly capable of wielding both a paintbrush and a hammer with equal skill.