“Do you think he’ll leave you alone?”
She was silent.
“Cassie?”
“No,” she whispered.
Ben wished she would look at him again, but her gaze seemed welded to her coffee cup. “Then help us. Becky Smith was just twenty, Cassie. A college student who loved kids and wanted to be a teacher. She deserved her life. She deserved her chance. Help us catch the bastard who took that away from her.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I have some idea. I know it’ll take a lot out of you. But we need your help. We have to do whatever it takes to get this guy before he gets away. Or before he kills again.”
Finally her gaze lifted to meet his, and there was something lurking in the depths of her eyes that made him flinch. Something small and hurting.
“All right,” Cassie said quietly. “I’ll get my jacket.”
“So?” The sheriff wasn’t openly hostile, but close. “Let’s have it.”
They were in Matt’s office, seated side by side in the visitors’ chairs in front of the old slate-top desk that had been his father’s, and the sheriff was already in a nasty mood because his people had found absolutely nothing useful at the crime scene.
And he didn’t believe in psychic bullshit, he just didn’t.
“I can’t tell you much more than I already have,” Cassie said. “The killer is male—”
“How can you be so sure of that?” Ben asked. “You said identity isn’t a conscious thing. Is gender?”
“Sometimes. But in this case…” She avoided his gaze, fixing hers on the hands clasped in her lap. “When he was watching her… planning what he would do to her… he was… aware of his erection.”
It was the sheriff who reddened slightly and shifted in his chair, but his voice was sharp when he said, “This wasn’t a sexual attack.”
“They’re always sexual attacks.”
“This woman was not touched sexually,” he insisted. “Preliminary reports say no semen was found anywhere on or near the body. For Christ’s sake, she still had her panties on.”
“That doesn’t matter. He was in a state of sexual excitement when he stalked her, and he achieved release when he killed her.”
“My God, you were in his mind during all that?” Ben said, startled.
“Yes. When he first went after her and then again, after he’d tied her up and was… was ready to hurt her. That time I was with him for a few minutes. It didn’t take long, and just as he killed her I… managed to break away.”
Ben wondered what it must be like to observe—maybe even experience intimately—the orgasm of an insane killer, and thought it was undoubtedly one memory Cassie would happily part with. For the first time, he began to truly understand what lay behind her haunted eyes.
Monsters indeed.
The sheriff had something else on his mind. “So he tied her up, did he?”
“Not with ropes,” Cassie said. “A belt, I think. For her wrists. He didn’t tie her ankles. He—he made her sit with her legs apart.”
“Why?” Ben asked.
“It was… part of the pose somehow. Part of what he needed to see. He was taunting her. He kept… he kept putting the knife between her legs and threatening to put it inside her. He wanted her to be afraid. She was. She was terrified.”
“You know this because you saw it,” Matt said.
“Yes.”
“Through his eyes.”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
The sheriff was looking at her squarely, his gaze narrowed in suspicion. “I’m having a hard time understanding this, Miss Neill. You claim not to know the murderer. So how is it you’re able to see what he does? Know what he was feeling? Do you always pick up the thoughts and plans of strangers? Like a bad filling picks up stray radio signals?”
She shook her head and explained what she had explained many times before. “Maybe I touched something he touched. That’s most likely.”
“Touched something like what?”
“Like… a door he’d just passed through. Something on the shelf of a store. A theater seat he’d been in the night before. Or I might have bumped against him in the grocery store. Our eyes might have met for a moment on the streets. But—”
Ben interrupted. “Eyes meeting? Something so… impersonal?”
Cassie’s head turned slightly toward him, but her gaze remained on her hands. “It’s… a question of connecting. I’ve never been able to—to read anyone without some kind of connection. It’s almost always a physical touch, either of the person or something the person came into contact with recently. An object. A bit of clothing.”
“But eyes meeting?” Ben repeated. “Two strangers on opposite street corners—it could be as brief and simple as that?”
“Ben, do you mind?” the sheriff said.
“It’s an important point, Matt. If all she needed to make this connection was a glance—”
Sourly, the sheriff said, “I know goddamned well what it means, Ben. A town full of suspects. Assuming, of course, that I believe any of this bullshit. So far I haven’t heard a good reason to.”
“Cassie knew someone would be murdered,” Ben said. “She told both of us a couple of days ago. She called me this morning to tell me it had happened—and where.”
“Yeah, and you know what I think about that. Maybe she was able to do that because she’d been there. Maybe she knew the details because she killed Becky Smith.”
Cassie lifted her gaze for the first time. “No. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even know her.” Then a frown flitted across her brow. “But neither did he, really.”
Ben leaned forward. “What? He didn’t know her?”
Cassie turned her head and looked at him. “No. He’d been watching her. He knew who she was. He thought he knew… what she was.”
“What do you mean—what she was?”
“Somehow… she wasn’t what he thought. He was disappointed in her. Maybe because of something she’d said or done. He was angry at her. Enraged. Yet… I didn’t get a sense of intimate knowledge. And I don’t believe she had known him in any real sense before he grabbed her.”
“She didn’t know who he was?”
Cassie shook her head. “I can’t be sure, but I don’t think so. She might have recognized him as someone she’d seen around town, maybe even on a regular basis, but I didn’t get the sense that she really knew him. He might have done something to disguise himself, of course, though that doesn’t seem likely if he knew he was going to kill her. As for what she saw, she was pleading with him not to hurt her, but she never said his name. If she’d known his name, if she’d recognized him, she probably would have.”
“You get sound too?” the sheriff said.
Ben swore impatiently, but Cassie’s gaze returned to him and a faint smile without real amusement curved her mouth. “Sometimes it’s just like turning on a television set.”
“Turn it on now,” he invited. “Let’s see what the bastard’s doing at the moment.”
“I wish it were that easy.”
His chair creaked angrily as he leaned back. “Yeah, I thought so. Not quite like turning on a TV, I guess.”
It was obviously an attitude Cassie had encountered before. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. I wish I could just flip a switch or say a magic word and climb inside this monster’s head to get the answers you need.” She drew a breath. “If he kills again, I’ll probably connect again. Murderers like this one tend to get progressively more wound up and excited when the lust to kill starts building in them. Those powerful emotions broadcast strongly. Now… now he’s probably in a cooling-down period. Very calm, maybe tired. His mind is quiet, contained. It isn’t reaching out. And without a physical connection, I can’t reach out to him.”
Ben glanced at Matt but said nothing.
There was a moment of silence, and then the sheriff said grimly, “ ‘Cooling-off period’ is the phrase those behavioral sciences boys at Quantico use.
Miss Neill, are you trying to tell us we’ve got a serial killer here? On the basis of one murder?”
Cassie hesitated visibly. “I can’t say for sure. I only know there’s… something abnormal about him. About the way his mind works. And she was a stranger to him, or as good as. People who kill are almost always driven—by rage, hate, jealousy, greed, even fear. People who kill the way he did, using a knife, getting the blood on him… that can only be done in an extreme emotional state. It’s hard to feel so strongly toward a virtual stranger, for someone whose life never touched yours in any meaningful sense. But serial killers… they have their own mad reasons to kill. And they almost always kill strangers.”
“You seem to know a lot about the subject,” the sheriff said.
“I’ve spent a lot of time around some very good cops. I learned as much as I needed to in order to try to help them. Enough so that it’s been a long time since I had a good night’s sleep.” Her voice was matter-of-fact and without self-pity.
“Monsters,” Ben murmured.
She glanced at him. “When I was a child, my mother told me that if I turned on a light, I’d see there was no monster hiding in the closet or under my bed. She was always right about that. Then. I’m all grown-up now. And the monsters in my life aren’t under my bed. They’re inside my own mind, where I can’t shine a light on them.”
The sheriff was unaffected by her words. “Ever talk to a shrink, Miss Neill?”
“Lots of them.” Her voice was as dry and unemotional as his had been. “Sheriff, I can give you plenty of references. Testimonials from lots of cops on the West Coast, all of them as hardheaded and rational as you are. They’ll tell you that they were doubtful too, in the beginning. That they also suggested I talk to someone about these… voices and images in my head. And they’ll tell you that time and experience convinced them that sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I could help them catch killers.”
She drew a breath, her pale eyes fixed on his. “No matter what you believe or don’t believe about what I can do, Sheriff Dunbar, there’s one thing you can be very, very sure of. I hate this. I didn’t ask for this, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It is not a pleasant thing to be jolted awake in the middle of the night with the screams of a dying woman ringing in your ears and the smell of her blood so real, you expect to find yourself covered in it.
“It is not a pleasant thing to sit across a desk from hard and suspicious men like you and talk calmly about vicious crimes and monsters who can’t be banished by the light of day or sanity. And it is more traumatic and debilitating than you will ever know for me to force myself to drop all the guards I’ve spent a lifetime building and climb inside the mind of something that is not human.
“So give me a break, Sheriff. I did not kill that poor woman, and since I did not, you will never find a shred of evidence against me. Now, I will give you the references I spoke of, and you can check them out or not. Believe them or not. If you want my help, I will do everything I can to help you. If not, I’ll go back to my peaceful house and my peaceful life. And the next time I’m awakened by the screams of a dying murder victim, I’ll pull my pillow over my ears and try my damnedest to ignore them.”
Ben looked at Matt but said nothing. Cassie was obviously her own best champion, at least where her psychic ability was concerned, and if there was ever going to be any kind of understanding between her and the skeptical sheriff, it would have to be reached by the two of them.
It would not be easy.
“I don’t believe in psychics, Miss Neill,” Matt said. “And I don’t trust you.”
“That is your prerogative, Sheriff.” She matched him stare for stare, and her voice was cool, her steel core suddenly evident. “Judge Ryan asked me to help, and I said I would. But I am not going to jump through hoops for you, especially when my help is not wanted. If you think I’m a killer, lock me up. When the next body turns up, I’ll have a cast-iron alibi. Unless you do believe it’s possible to walk through walls and bars.”
He ignored that. “I don’t suppose you have an alibi for last night?”
“The same one you have. I was home in bed. Of course, I was alone.”
Matt stiffened. “Meaning?”
“Meaning you weren’t.”
Ben was surprised but kept his mouth shut.
“Nice guess, Miss Neill,” Matt said.
“It wasn’t a guess. I don’t even have to try very hard to read you, Sheriff. You’re an open book. The lady has red hair. I believe her name is… Abby. Abby Montgomery.”
Ben said, “For God’s sake, Matt—if Gary finds out, he’ll come after you with a gun. She’s still his wife.”
“They’re separated,” Matt snapped.
“Not in his mind.”
Matt stared at Cassie. “You probably saw us together.”
“You’ve been very circumspect, both of you,” she said. “Nothing in public. As Judge Ryan said, her husband hasn’t accepted the separation. He has a bad temper. It’s why their marriage broke up.” She frowned suddenly. “Be careful, Sheriff. Be very careful.”
“Or?”
“Or you’ll never be able to take her to Paris next summer the way you want to.”
THREE
“Shit,” Matt said, obviously shaken. “You couldn’t have known that. I haven’t even told Abby. Nobody knows.”
“You know.”
There was a long, tense silence, and then Cassie shook her head. “I don’t usually do that. Invade someone’s privacy. I’m sorry. But you made it easy for me, Sheriff.”
It was Ben who said “Because he was acting like an ass?”
Cassie smiled slightly but didn’t look at him. “No. That just made it easy for me to try to read him. You’re simple, Sheriff. You think loudly.”
Ben had to laugh, and after a moment even Matt smiled.
“Well, stop listening, will you?”
“I didn’t listen very closely,” she promised him. “And I’ll try not to do it again. You just made me mad.”
Matt nodded slowly. “Okay, I admit that little parlor trick was fairly convincing. And if those references of yours pan out, it’s another point in your favor. But I’m still not a believer, Miss Neill.”
“All I ask is that you keep an open mind.” She glanced at Ben, then added, “And give me a chance. Maybe I can help. Maybe I can’t. But I will try if you want me to.”
“Can you tap into this guy directly? You said it required a connection, which obviously already exists.”
“If he were sitting right in front of me, I probably could. But for me to reach out over distance and try to tap into his mind when I don’t know who he is or where he is… that’s difficult. I’d need something of his, something he touched. Something I could touch physically.”
“What about… something Becky was wearing? He touched her.”
Ben thought Cassie’s face tightened. But her voice remained calm.
“We found out… that’s dangerous for me. To touch the belongings of a murder victim, especially the clothing worn during… during the crime. I connect with the strongest, most recent emotions permeating that clothing. The moment of greatest terror. Usually that’s the moment of death.”
“What happened when you tried it?” Ben asked.
Matter-of-factly she answered, “It was like falling into a deep black well. I didn’t have the strength to pull myself out. If someone hadn’t been there to break the physical connection, I don’t think I would have made it. As it was, I was in a coma for a week. And afterward… it was like all the psychic pathways in my mind had been cut or burned out. It was six months before I got my abilities back.” She paused, then added almost wistfully, “It was so quiet. It was the first time I could understand how normal people sense things.”
After a moment of silence Matt said, “So you need something belonging to the killer. Something he touched that wouldn’t have been… affected by her death.”
She nodded. “The coin might
work.”
Matt stiffened and shot a look at Ben, who spoke immediately.
“I didn’t tell her.”
Cassie said, “I broke the connection before she died, but it came back faintly a little while later, when he put her in the woods. When he posed her like that. It’s how I knew where you’d find her. And I saw him put the coin into her hand.”
“What do you think it means?” Ben asked her. “The coin?”
“I think it has something to do with her worth in his eyes. It was a silver dollar, wasn’t it?”
“It was,” Matt said. “No prints.”
“Yes, he was very careful about not leaving traceable evidence, so the coin itself probably won’t lead you to him.” Cassie frowned as she looked at Ben. “Her worth in his eyes. How he posed her, the coin, the way he taunted her before he killed her. He thought she was a whore.”
“She wasn’t,” Matt objected immediately. “She was just a kid.”
Cassie’s eyes fixed on the sheriff, and she spoke gently. “What she actually was didn’t matter to him. In his mind she was a whore. If you want to find him, you have to figure out how his mind works.”
“Yeah, I know.” Matt sighed heavily. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“Not much fun trying to think like a madman, is it?”
Matt looked at her. “You’ve made your point.”
Cassie didn’t push it. “Do you have the coin?”
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Ben said. “Today, I mean. Cassie, you said you were awake most of the night—you must be tired.” He didn’t add that she was visibly exhausted.
“I’d like to try, Judge.”
“I wish you’d call me Ben.”
She glanced at him and nodded but spoke to the sheriff. “I’d like to try. If you have the coin.”
Matt opened the center drawer of his desk and brought out a small, clear plastic bag labeled EVIDENCE. He pushed it across the desk to Cassie.
She didn’t touch it immediately, but instead sent Ben another quick glance. “I’ll need a lifeline.”
“A what?”
“A lifeline. Somebody to… talk me through. Keep me focused. Keep me from going too deep.”