“You could never become a monster.”
“I could lose myself in one. What would be the difference?”
He leaned toward her, elbows on his knees, getting closer without actually touching her. “Cassie, you’re the only one who can decide if the risks are worth taking. The risk of this madman finding out who you are before we find him. The risk of getting too deep in his head. The risk of losing something of yourself in the blackness of his soul. Only you can really know what it might cost you. And only you can decide if the price is too high.”
She gazed at him almost curiously. “You pointed out one of the risks yourself. That no matter how careful I am, how skilled, the killer is more than likely to find out who I am in this small town of yours. Even so, you believe I should try to help you catch him.”
Ben was silent for a moment, then said, “If you’re leaving Ryan’s Bluff, the discussion is over. I understand self-preservation; anyone would. I’ll respect that decision, Cassie. But if you’re staying here, then you have to help us catch him. Because as long as you’re here, you’re a potential threat to him. You can see inside his head. Sooner or later he’ll find out you can do that. And he’ll come after you.”
“So I’ve convinced you, huh? That psychic ability is real?”
“Let’s just say… I’m convinced you’re real. I don’t pretend to understand it, but I do believe you possess an extraordinary skill. And right now I need that skill to help me catch a monster. Before he kills anybody else in my town.”
Cassie sighed. “All right.” More than anything else, she sounded defeated. “What do you want me to do?”
Ben hesitated, almost wishing he had not been so persuasive. “After a lot of arguing, I finally got Matt to agree that you should go to the crime scene, see if you pick up anything.” He paused, then added roughly, “But right now I think you should sleep about twelve hours. Tomorrow is soon enough.”
A little laugh escaped Cassie. “Very nice of you to be concerned, but not very practical or wise. I’d say there’s no time to waste. For him to kill again so soon is a very bad sign of worse things to come.”
“Be that as it may, you’re exhausted. If you push yourself too hard—”
“You don’t have to worry. I won’t collapse on you. I’m stronger than you think.” She got to her feet.
Ben rose as well. “Cassie, a few more hours won’t make any difference. She lived alone, and Matt has a couple of his officers standing guard, so the scene won’t be disturbed. And it’s not going to be a pleasant thing to see, whether you pick up anything or not. You should rest, recover some of your strength first. I’ll take you there tomorrow—” He broke off when she lifted a hand to brush back her hair and he saw the bandage. “What the hell happened?”
She looked at her hand as if it belonged to a stranger, and answered absently, “I broke a glass.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“It wasn’t a deep cut.” She was obviously puzzled as her gaze returned to his face. “Her house. That’s where you found her?”
“Yes. In the kitchen. Isn’t that what you saw?”
Tension gathering in her voice, Cassie said, “The kitchen. No, that isn’t right.”
“He definitely killed her there, Cassie. There was blood everywhere, and the M.E. says that’s where she died.”
Cassie closed her eyes for a brief moment, then opened them and looked at him almost beseechingly. “Who died, Ben? Who was she?”
“Why—Ivy Jameson. Isn’t that who—” Ben watched her sit down abruptly as though the strength had left her legs. He drew a deep breath. “You mean there’s someone else?”
“Yes. There’s someone else.”
Ben called Matt from the Jeep once they were on their way to town, and the sheriff got there before them. He came out onto the sidewalk so quickly that Ben had barely gotten his door open. It was dark by then, but the streetlights made the sidewalk nearly as bright as day.
“Don’t go in there,” Matt said.
He hadn’t really doubted Cassie this time, but Ben nonetheless felt a shock, and with it pangs of pain and regret. “Is she… ?”
Matt nodded. “The doc will have to tell us when, but I’m guessing she was killed while we were at Ivy’s place. I’m sorry, Ben.”
Ben gazed blindly toward the open front door of Jill Kirkwood’s store for a moment. “I should have told her to be careful.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered, you know that. I warned her when she came to tell me about somebody following Becky. And I’m sure she thought she was being careful. But even if the town had been under curfew, she wouldn’t have hesitated to come into her store on a peaceful Sunday afternoon to catch up on paperwork.”
“I have to see her.”
The sheriff caught his arm. “No. There’s no reason for you to go in there, Ben. My team will be here any minute, and this time they’re damned well going to get a completely undisturbed crime scene.” He paused, then added steadily, “You don’t need to see her. You don’t want to see her.”
“How did he kill her?”
“Knife, same as the others. But either he killed her someplace else or she hadn’t pissed him off as badly as Ivy had. Virtually no blood at the scene. Only one wound, as far as I could tell. Left breast.”
Ben half turned toward the Jeep, where the dome light showed Cassie’s huddled posture and pale face. She hadn’t said much at all since they had left her place. He returned his gaze to the sheriff. “Cassie said Jill was tied with her back to something with a sharp edge.”
“Yeah, she’s sitting up against a corner of her desk. He probably had her wrists tied behind her at some point but, like the others, he left her untied and with her hands in her lap.”
“The coin?”
“A quarter.” The sheriff paused. “Mind if I ask a few questions now?”
Ben knew whom those questions would be directed to, and it wasn’t himself. But before he could reply, Cassie got out of the Jeep and came around it to join them.
Quietly she said, “Ask away, Sheriff.”
“Where were you today?”
“At home. Alone, until Ben arrived a little while ago.”
“You’re saying you have no alibi.” The sheriff’s voice was mechanical.
“For Christ’s sake, Matt,” Ben snapped, “surely you don’t believe Cassie killed three women!”
The sheriff looked at him briefly, then returned his gaze to Cassie. “And where is your car, Miss Neill?”
Matter-of-factly she said, “So you’re having me watched. I thought you might be. My car is here in town, Sheriff, as you obviously know. I had it towed in yesterday morning when I discovered it wouldn’t start. It’s at that garage one block back from Main Street.”
“And you refused a loaner.”
“I didn’t need one. There was nowhere I wanted or needed to go in the few days the car would be here.”
As alibis went, it wasn’t bad.
Ben said, “She couldn’t have walked that far, Matt, not if—not if Jill was killed in the last few hours.”
“Yeah, I know. Besides—” Matt glanced at Ben as he broke off, and it was Cassie who finished the sentence.
“It’s not likely I’d have the physical strength to drive a butcher knife in someone’s chest to the hilt,” she said, still matter-of-fact.
“No,” the sheriff said. “It isn’t. Possible, but when I add that fact to others, it’s very unlikely that you’re our killer.”
Ben felt sickened. “The knife. How do you know—”
“It’s still in her, Ben. It looks like the missing knife from Ivy’s kitchen.”
“Christ.”
The sheriff kept his gaze on Cassie. “So you saw Jill being killed, but Ivy Jameson’s murder was a complete surprise to you.”
“I never knew Miss Jameson, though I had heard of her. I met Jill once, briefly. It was enough for a connection, obviously, because I tapped into her mind, not his.”
“Why not his? He killed twice today, leaving a bloody mess behind at Ivy’s. Why weren’t you aware he was doing that?”
Cassie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Whatever the sheriff might have said to that was postponed as a squad car and a black paneled van arrived, blue lights flashing.
“Take her home, Ben, while I get my people working on the crime scene. Tomorrow is soon enough to find out if she can tell us anything helpful.”
“She” went back around the Jeep and got in without another word.
Ben wanted to censure his friend for his chilly attitude toward Cassie but knew it wouldn’t help matters. So all he said was “I’ll be back when I’ve taken Cassie home.”
“Don’t rush. I said you didn’t need to see this one, Ben, and I meant it.”
“It’s my job to view crime scenes, Matt.”
“Not when you were personally involved with the victim. Bad idea.”
“We were not personally involved, not anymore. It was months ago.”
“Still.”
“I can handle it,” Ben said flatly.
“Will you, for once in our lives, take my advice and my professional opinion and stay the hell away from this crime scene?”
“And when I prosecute the bastard in court? You don’t think I’ll need details from this crime scene?”
“I think you can get what you need from photographs and reports. Ben, I am asking you, as sheriff and as your friend, to let us handle this.” Without waiting for an answer, Matt turned away and went to meet his team.
Ben watched them go into the store, then got into the Jeep and started the engine.
“He’s right,” Cassie said.
“I can handle it,” Ben repeated.
“Probably. But why should you have to? Why put yourself through that if there’s a choice?”
“Maybe there isn’t a choice. It’s my job, Cassie.”
She didn’t respond until the lights of town faded into the night behind them. “Ask yourself if Jill would have wanted you to see her like that. And if you have any doubts, the answer is no.”
She was right, and Ben knew it. “All right.” He was silent for a few more miles, then said, “I’m sorry about the way Matt treats you. He’s just pigheaded. And all this is a lot more than he bargained for.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let him get to you.”
“He isn’t. I’ve run into the same kind of attitude before, believe me. It’s perfectly natural for him to mistrust me.”
“He just can’t believe we have a monster here.”
“It isn’t an easy thing to believe.”
Ben realized his shock was wearing off just enough to let horror creep in. “My God. Three women murdered in less than a week. We have no idea who killed them or why. And we have no idea how many more he’ll kill before we catch him. You were right. A serial killer.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Becky… Ivy… Jill. Aside from being female and white, they had virtually nothing in common.”
“Did they go to the same church?”
Ben thought about it. “No. Becky and Jill did, the same Baptist church I belong to, but Ivy was a Methodist. Why?”
“I don’t know. Something about the way he had those coins laid out, as though they were on an altar or something, made me think of church.” Cassie shook her head. “At this point I’m just guessing.”
“Keep going, you might hit on something.”
“Something helpful, you mean? Probably not without more information. The mind of a serial killer is so… unique, so subjective, it’s almost impossible to generalize beyond a few basic suppositions. And we already know those. White male, since he’s killing white females. Young, possibly abused background. But apart from those facts, this man’s motivations are bound to be completely unique to him and his experiences. Guessing about them is not going to be productive, not until we know a lot more than we do now.”
“There must be a pattern.”
“There is—to him. But whether we’ll even recognize his reasoning is doubtful. There’s no logic in madness.”
“So to catch a madman, we have to think like a madman?”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Cassie said very quietly. “That abyss is darker and colder than you can even imagine.”
SIX
They reached Cassie’s house a few minutes later without further discussing the situation. With no reason to hurry back to town, and all too aware of how sleepless the night ahead was likely to be for him, Ben had no intention of just dropping her off and leaving. But he was acutely aware of Cassie’s weariness—of spirit as well as body—and doubted she would welcome even casual company.
He was wrong.
“I could use some coffee. How about you?” she asked, unlocking the door.
“I’d love some, thanks.”
Cassie disarmed the security system with the tentative touch of someone to whom the steps were still unfamiliar, then led the way to her bright and cheerful kitchen.
Ben was too restless to sit while she made the coffee but wasn’t aware he was prowling the room until she spoke again.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
He checked the back door, making sure it was locked and the new dead bolt thrown. “What wasn’t?”
“Jill’s death.”
He turned to find her leaning back against the sink, arms crossed, watching him gravely. He started to deny that it was bothering him but couldn’t. “I should have warned her.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. Like the sheriff said, it would never have occurred to her that she should be especially careful going to her store on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody can be on guard all the time.”
“You can, apparently.” Why did her reserve, her aloofness, bother him so much?
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug and her gaze fell away from his. “Yes. But we aren’t talking about me. There was nothing you could have done to save Jill. Accept that.”
“And move on?”
“We don’t have a choice. Death takes people away from us all our lives. We have to move on. Or die ourselves.”
“I know, I know.” It was Ben’s turn to shrug. “But it doesn’t help, knowing that. She was thirty-two years old, Cassie. Just thirty-two years old. She lived here all her life, and she thought she was safe. She should have been safe.”
“It isn’t your fault that she wasn’t.”
“Then whose fault was it?”
“His. That monster out there. And if he isn’t stopped, he’ll be responsible for even more deaths.”
“He’ll also be responsible for destroying this town. It’s already started. Matt’s had to put on more people just to answer the phone since word of Ivy’s murder got out. When the morning paper announces Jill’s death… Things are going to get very tense very fast around here. Three murders in four days. Three women brutally killed, one in her own kitchen.”
Cassie turned away to pour the coffee, and said very quietly, “The townspeople are going to be looking for someone to blame for those deaths.”
“I know.”
“Are there any likely targets?” She set his cup on the counter near him, then retreated a few steps with her own.
“You mean the easy targets? The homeless, the disturbed or mentally disabled, those with criminal records?”
“Yes.”
“Not many.” Ben picked up his cup and sipped the hot coffee, leaning a hip against the counter as she did. “We don’t have homeless in any real sense. The churches in the area are pretty good at helping people in need. As for the disturbed or disabled, there are a few of those middle-aged men you see in most small towns, not ‘slow’ enough to be unemployable, but not bright enough to be trained for anything but pushing a broom. And there’s one woman who’s been a well-known character in this town for at least ten years. She escapes her son’s watchful
eye from time to time and wanders around downtown picking up invisible things from the sidewalk.” Ben paused and shook his head. “Nobody knows what she thinks she’s picking up, but if you try to stop her, she cries as if her heart’s breaking.”
Cassie looked down at her coffee. “The wreck of a life.”
“Her son says she just went away one day.”
“I wonder why,” Cassie murmured. “Something like that, there ought to at least be a trigger.”
“If something definitive happened, I don’t know what it was. The family keeps pretty much to themselves, and they don’t welcome questions. It’s a common enough trait around here.”
Cassie nodded distractedly. Then she seemed to rouse herself from pity and focus on the practical. “I would say she seems an unlikely target, but those men… The sheriff might want to keep an eye on them.”
“He will. We’ve both seen a crowd turn ugly and start looking around for a target. That isn’t something you forget, believe me.”
“What about people with criminal records?”
“We have our share. The habituals commit mostly petty stuff though—housebreaking, fighting with their neighbors or their girlfriends’ ex-lovers, drunk and disorderly. The sort of troublemakers who have their own bunks in Matt’s jail and make regular visits on Saturday nights. As for anything else, crimes of real violence are rare around here. I’ve prosecuted a couple of manslaughter cases, but liquor and spite were involved both times. Convenience-store holdups, a few half-assed bank robberies over the years. But no crime to even hint there’s someone living here in this town—or this county—who’s capable of butchering three women.” Ben sighed. “That high-tech forensics van Matt managed to wring out of his budget last year was mostly gathering dust. Until Thursday.”
“So there’s no one target a panicked town would immediately look to.”