It was a place Ivy visited regularly and just as habitually criticized, a one-time hot spot that had seen better days but still offered good, plain food and hot coffee right up until midnight, seven days a week.
“This coffee is too strong, Stuart,” Ivy told the young man behind the counter.
“Yes, Mrs. Jameson. I’ll make fresh.”
“You do that. And put in a pinch of salt to draw the bitterness.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
When Cassie answered a second knock on her front door late Friday afternoon, she was surprised to find a stranger standing there, a young man wearing a dark jump suit with the name Dan on one pocket and SafeNet Security on the other. He was holding a clipboard, and spoke politely.
“Miss Neill? I’m Dan Crowder, SafeNet Security. My partner and I are here to install your security system.”
She looked past him to a white van in her driveway with the security company logo on its side and another clean-cut and uniformed young man standing beside it.
“My security system?”
“Yes, ma’am. Judge Ryan sent us.”
He certainly hadn’t wasted any time.
Dan smiled reassuringly. “Judge Ryan said you were to call him if you had any doubts, Miss Neill.”
Cassie didn’t call Ben; she called the security company. As she’d expected, Dan’s story was confirmed.
Cassie toyed with the idea of sending Dan and his partner away, but in the end let them in so they could commence their work. Because Ben had been right about one thing.
In a small town, it was only a matter of time before the wrong person discovered what she could do.
“Ben?”
On the point of entering the building next door to the courthouse where his office was located, Ben paused and turned to see Jill Kirkwood approaching him. He couldn’t help remembering Cassie’s assertion that Jill had not accepted their breakup, but still managed to smile and greet her with the same low-key easiness he’d held on to since they’d broken it off.
Since he had broken it off.
“Hi, Jill. What’s up?”
“Is there any news on who killed Becky Smith?”
He was only a little surprised that she asked. In the brief time it had taken him to walk the two blocks from the downtown office where he’d had an earlier appointment, he had already been stopped three times by worried citizens asking the same anxious question. Still, it wasn’t like Jill to be much interested in crime, even a particularly vicious one.
“Nothing new that I know of,” he told her. “Matt and his deputies are working on it.”
“Does he know that Becky thought she was being followed?”
“She thought—how do you know that?”
“She told me. Came into the store one day last week. Wednesday, I think it was. We got to talking, and she mentioned she’d caught a glimpse of somebody watching her. She sort of laughed about it, said something about having a secret admirer who didn’t want to show his face. She wasn’t worried about it, so I didn’t give it a second thought.”
So he did watch her before. Another bull’s-eye for Cassie.
“You’d better tell Matt about it, Jill. I don’t think he knows, unless somebody else told him in the last day or so.”
“All right, I’ll go see him.” She smiled. “I was glad to meet Cassie Neill. I liked her aunt.”
“Yeah, so did I.”
“She hasn’t been in town long, has she?”
“Cassie? About six months, I think.”
“Oh. I just didn’t remember seeing her before yesterday.”
“I’m not surprised. She seems as much of a loner as Miss Melton was.”
“Seems? You don’t know her very well?”
“I met her Tuesday.” He felt a flash of annoyance at being questioned but trusted he kept the reaction out of his face.
Jill laughed a little, with the bright smile and artificial ease of someone aware of crossing the line. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
Obviously his poker face wasn’t as good as he’d thought.
Ben said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Look, why don’t you go and tell Matt what you know. He needs to hear it. The sooner we get this bastard behind bars, the better it’ll be for everyone in town.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later, Ben.”
“Sure.” For just an instant as she turned away, he considered warning her to be careful, but cast off the impulse as ridiculous and unnecessary. What could he say, after all? Watch out for strangers following you?
She was a smart lady, and knowing what she did about Becky being followed, she would certainly take notice—and take steps to protect herself—if she suspected the same thing was happening to her.
So Ben watched her walk away and said nothing.
Laughing at me.
I can hear them.
Watching me.
Eyes following me.
Gotta stop them.
Gotta make them pay.
My head hurts.
I’ll show them.
My feet hurt. Gotta slow down. Gotta…
Look at that one. So proud of herself. So sure she’s the best. She deserves… she deserves… she deserves…
My head hurts so bad.
Eyes watching me.
I wonder if they know…
Blood smells like coins.
FIVE
FEBRUARY 21, 1999
When Cassie heard the scream, it was so loud in her head that she dropped the glass she’d been holding and clapped her hands over her ears.
“No,” she whispered helplessly.
Without her volition her eyes closed, and behind the lids flashed whorls of vivid colors streaked with black. A second scream made her jerk. And hurt her throat.
“No, please… please don’t hurt me….”
Abruptly Cassie was somewhere else, someone else. She felt the painful constriction of something around her wrists, felt a sharp edge at her back and cold hardness beneath her. She couldn’t see, it was all black, but then the bag over her head was jerked off.
“Please don’t hurt me… please, please don’t hurt me… please don’t—”
The mask he wore was horrible. The character might have been from some recent slasher movie, the face a human one but terribly distorted, and it made her shock intensify, her terror soar.
“Please don’t hurt me! Oh, God, please don’t! I won’t tell anyone, I promise! I swear! Just let me go, please!”
For an eternal instant Cassie was paralyzed, completely trapped in the woman’s spiraling emotions. Shock, wild terror, despair, and the cold, cold certainty that she was going to die soon and horribly clawed at her. Through the woman’s tear-blurred eyes she saw that eerie mask loom above her, saw the butcher knife in his gloved hand, and her throat hurt with gasping breaths and whimpers and raw screams.
“You’ll never laugh at me again,” he rasped, and his arm lifted, the knife gleaming dully.
“No! Oh, Jesus—”
As his arm started downward in a vicious arc, Cassie desperately wrenched herself free of the doomed woman. But she wasn’t fast enough to save herself completely. She felt the first hot agony of the knife piercing her breast, and everything went black.
“Ben.”
“Matt? What is it?”
“Meet me in town. Ivy Jameson’s place.”
Ben switched the phone to his other hand and checked his watch. “Now? It’s Sunday afternoon, she’ll be—”
“She’s dead, Ben.”
Ben didn’t even ask how. Matt’s tone told him all he needed to know. “I’m on my way,” he said.
Ten minutes later he parked the Jeep behind Matt’s cruiser and one other in the driveway of the Jameson house on Rose Lane just two streets behind Main Street. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the big old houses sitting peacefully on manicured lawns, the older residents happy to be no more than a short, pleasant afternoon walk from downtown.
Ben noticed that s
everal of those older residents were on their front porches, staring at him as he got out of his Jeep. Although they were too polite or too frightened to venture closer to Ivy’s house, it was obvious that their interest was intense.
One of Matt’s deputies was standing by the front door and opened it for Ben as he came up on the porch. “Judge. Sheriff’s inside.” He looked a bit green around the gills.
Ben went into the house. He was familiar with it, as he was most of the homes of the more politically active citizens of Ryan’s Bluff; Ivy Jameson’s vote had been one of the hardest to get.
From the spacious entrance hall the staircase rose to the second floor, the formal dining room opened to the right, an equally formal living room to the left, and straight ahead lay the rear of the house and the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed, fresh flowers in a lovely crystal vase decorated the entrance hall table, and there was an air of stuffy dignity about the place.
The two men sitting on the sofa in the formal living room spoiled the atmosphere of dignity; they were in their stocking feet, faces slack and pale with shock, and the younger one was breaking Ivy’s most sacrosanct house rule by smoking a cigarette jerkily, flicking the ashes into an already full crystal candy dish on the coffee table before him.
Ben knew them both. One was Ivy’s brother-in-law, and the other was her nephew. Neither looked toward him, and he made no attempt to speak to them.
Another deputy standing just outside the living room doorway silently gestured toward the rear of the house. He, also, looked queasy, and when Ben passed him, murmured, “Sheriff said to watch your step, Judge. The floor back there is… slippery.”
It was slippery all right.
The tile floor of the kitchen was covered in blood.
“Oh, Christ,” Ben muttered as he stopped in the doorway. He had observed scenes of violence before, but not many, and nothing that had prepared him for this.
Matt stood a couple of feet inside on one of the few blood-free spots on the floor. “It looks like Ivy finally pissed off the wrong person.”
It was unquestionably a scene of rage. Even the white appliances were spattered with blood, and the stab wounds in Ivy’s thin body were almost too numerous to count. She’d been all dressed up, probably for church earlier in the day. Her dress might have been any light color once; now it was red.
She still had one shoe on.
“Notice the way he left her?” Matt asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said, trying to breathe through his mouth because the smell was overpowering. “Sitting up with her back against the leg of the work island. Her hands in her lap. Posed. Is there a coin?”
“A nickel. In her left hand.” If the smell bothered Matt, it wasn’t apparent.
Ben gestured. “And footprints. The killer?”
“Among others. When she didn’t show up for church or Sunday dinner afterward, and didn’t answer the phone, Ivy’s mother sent her son-in-law and grandson over to see if anything was wrong. They came in the back door, said they were sliding all over before they knew what was happening. If we’re lucky, we might get one footprint we can’t match to their shoes.”
Matt pointed out a bloody butcher knife on the floor a foot or so away from Ivy’s body. “No question about the murder weapon. He just grabbed a knife off the rack.”
“Forced entry?”
“No sign of it. And her relatives say she always locked the back door, all the doors, that she was fanatical about it.”
“So she must have let him in?”
“Looks that way.”
Ben backed out of the doorway. “This smell. I can’t—”
Matt followed him, avoiding the blood gingerly, and joined him in the small hallway outside the kitchen. “Doc Munro’s on his way. So’re my technical people. I took one look and called you first.”
“Her position, the coin. It’s the same killer, Matt.”
“Yeah.” Matt drew a breath, his face very grim. “And he barely waited three days between killings, Ben. Worse, Becky Smith and Ivy Jameson had only two things in common. They were both white and both female. Beyond that there are no similarities between them.”
“I know.”
“Did you notice the knife rack? We won’t know for sure until her housekeeper inventories for us, but it looks like one of the big butcher knives is missing.”
Ben stared at his friend in silence, unwilling to give voice to any of the disturbing possibilities in his mind.
Matt was less reluctant. “The bastard’s probably taken his next weapon from this victim. Cute. Really cute.”
“Jesus,” Ben muttered, frustrated by the realization that the killer might have already chosen his next victim too.
“And one more thing.” Matt’s voice was level. “This time your psychic didn’t see it coming.”
• • •
By the time Ben got to Cassie’s house, it was beginning to get dark. Even so, he saw her. She was sitting on the front porch, curled up in one of the two big wicker chairs placed to one side of the front door.
As Ben reached her he said, “The security system won’t do much good if you’re outside it, Cassie.” His voice was sharper than he intended it to be.
Almost lost in a sweatshirt several sizes too big, her jean-clad legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, Cassie didn’t glance at him. She merely said quietly, “I had to come out here. It was… all I could smell was blood. It wasn’t so bad out here.”
Ben moved the other chair so that it was facing hers and sat, literally placing himself in her line of vision. She still looked past him. No warm hand touched him. “So you knew he killed again.”
“Yes.” Her face was so pale, even her lips seemed drained of color.
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“By the time I could, it was too late. There was nothing anyone could do for her. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Did you see anything this time? Anything that might help us catch this bastard?”
Cassie shook her head slowly. “No. He—he was wearing some kind of mask.”
“How do you know that? Did he look in a mirror?”
“No. This time I… I didn’t connect with him. I connected with her. She was… was crying, but I could see him. He had some kind of mask, a horrible mask. Like something a kid would wear on Halloween.”
Ben frowned. “Why would he do that? He wasn’t planning to leave a witness behind.”
“I don’t know. Except… the mask made her even more frightened. Maybe that was it. Maybe he wants them to be afraid.”
“Or maybe he knows you’re watching.”
“No.”
“How can you be sure of that? If you connected with her?”
“I’m sure.”
Ben was silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Why did you connect with her?”
“Maybe because I had met her briefly.” Cassie’s voice was growing more distant, and her eyes had an odd, unfocused look to them.
“Do you connect with the victim very often?”
“Not if I can help it. As dark as the mind of a killer is, the mind of his victim is… almost worse. The terror and despair, the agony…” Cassie shook her head again slowly. “It pulls me in. They pull me in. They’re so desperate, so frantic to find a way out.”
He stopped himself from reaching out to her, bad as he wanted to. “I’m sorry.”
She shivered visibly, and finally looked at him, saw him. But when her gaze touched him, it was cool rather than warm, and such a faint sensation, it was almost ghostly.
“I can’t do it anymore.” Her voice was low, hurried. “I know it’s the right thing to do, I know the sight gives me a responsibility, and I’ve always tried… but I can’t do it anymore. I thought I could. I thought there had been enough time… enough peace. I thought I was strong enough. But I’m not. I can’t go through it again.”
“Cassie—”
“I can’t. I can’t help you. I can’t help myself.”
“You came to me,” he reminded her quietly.
“I know that. I wanted to help. But I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“What you saw today. Were you looking? Were you trying to tap into him—or her?”
“No.”
“Then what choice do you have?”
“I can leave.”
“You left L.A. What good did it do? Cassie, there are monsters everywhere.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the chair.
Ben watched her for several moments, unsettled by his intense desire to touch her, hold her. He had never been attracted to emotionally fragile women, to the opposite, if anything. If he admitted the truth, any woman who was not wholly focused on her own life and career and disinterested in anything more than a casual affair had very quickly found him to be elusive and emotionally remote. As Jill could testify.
So protective impulses and urges to comfort were alien to his nature when it came to women. He preferred to spend the night in a woman’s bed so that he could leave long before dawn with a minimum of fuss, and that alone said a great deal about his avoidance of involvement on any level except the physical.
Needy women were definitely not his style. Not that Cassie clung in any way or, indeed, had even reached out to him. On the contrary, she was completely self-contained, and everything about her from the avoidance of touch and even eye contact to her body language said she was literally untouchable.
He thought she needed to be held worse than anyone he’d ever known. But he didn’t touch her. Because she would not have welcomed the touch, and because he shied away from offering it.
Finally, her voice drained, Cassie said, “A few years ago, a cop friend of mine gave me a quotation from Nietzsche. He told me to put it where I could see it every day, to never forget. ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.’ ” She lifted her head and looked at him with exhausted eyes. “I don’t know how many more times I can do it and survive, Ben. Every time I’ve looked into that abyss, a piece of me stayed there.”