“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just really don’t want to have to be the one to tell Bob his wife’s dead.”
“A friend?” Hollis asked.
“Not a close one, though we went to school together.” He shrugged. “Small town.”
“With the traditional small-town grapevine?” she wanted to know, shifting the subject. Maybe.
It was Marc who said, “People around here tend to keep their business to themselves when it comes to outsiders, but that isn’t to say that they don’t know what’s going on around them and talk about it among themselves.”
“But they’ll be slow to do anything like alert the media?”
“That’s been the rule around here as long as I can remember. At least for most of the locals. But we have a crop of relative newcomers in the area, and I have no idea what their tolerance for media scrutiny would be. Some people do love the spotlight.”
Hollis sighed. “Ain’t that the truth. So we don’t have much time before the news breaks.”
“I’d guess not much, no.” Marc shook his head and directed the conversation back a step. “You said this killer escalated to an unusual degree?”
“Yeah.” Hollis frowned. “The time gap could explain the intensity of the escalation, at least in part. If he wanted to kill, needed to kill, but couldn’t, for whatever reason. Sheer frustration could easily make a killer more savage.”
“Assuming there actually was a time gap.”
She nodded. “Always possible he’s killed somewhere else and we missed the signs.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No. We believe he’s laid low all these weeks, that he didn’t kill until he got his hands on Becky Huntley on or after September twenty-second, when she disappeared. Before that…maybe he was searching for a place like Venture. Or maybe he came straight here, because of that connection Dani suggested, and has spent all this time since his arrival getting ready.”
It was Marc’s turn to frown. “He didn’t do much advance prep the first time, did he? Grabbed the women usually coming or going from home or work, in areas with little or no security.”
Hollis nodded. “Yeah, he was like a vicious animal. Grab and run, and lucky enough or smart enough to time every grab perfectly. Never any witnesses, which means we haven’t even the vaguest description of him.”
“He could be anyone,” Dani murmured. “We could walk right past him on the street and never know.”
“Probably,” Hollis agreed. “If monsters looked the part, they’d be a hell of a lot easier to catch.”
Marc circled once again back to the point, saying, “But if he did spend all the time between the last murder in Boston and the first one here somehow getting ready, that’s new.”
“One of the many potential differences, yes.”
“An important difference?”
“Bishop believes so. And I agree. Think about it. What he risks most in a smaller area with fewer people is discovery. He can’t grab and then butcher a dozen victims in a dozen different locations over a short span of time, not in a place like Venture. He might be able to do that once, maybe twice if he’s really lucky, but not more than that. He needs a base. Somewhere safe, somewhere isolated, somewhere he can do what he wants to do with little or no fear of discovery.”
Dani stirred and said, “Like a warehouse. Like the basement of an otherwise deserted warehouse.”
Hollis nodded. “Like a warehouse. When the universe offers you a signpost, you pay attention.”
“But is that part of the trail we’re meant to follow?” Dani’s uneasiness grew. “Or something entirely separate?”
“Actually,” Hollis said in a slow tone of realization, “it’s an even more complicated question. Because Becky didn’t say we were supposed to follow the trail. She just said someone was leaving us a trail to follow.”
There was a long silence, and then Dani said, “And in my dream, we’re walking into a trap.”
Before anybody could comment on that, an older deputy tapped on the door and stuck his head in, addressing Marc apologetically.
“Something we thought you ought to know, Sheriff.”
“What?”
“We got a call late last night from a young lady who suspected she was being followed home from work and that somebody had gotten into her locked apartment.”
“Steal anything?”
“No, that’s the weird thing. He left something behind. A necklace. Shorty’s looking it over now.”
Marc frowned. “I take it she’s sure it wasn’t left by a boyfriend or something like that.”
“She’s absolutely positive, Sheriff. She’s also shook up and not the sort to get that way without reason. A while ago, when she opened her apartment door to leave for work, she found a dozen red roses leaning against her door—with a note that spooked her even more. She called it in, and this time the deputies responding decided you should talk to her.”
Eyeing his deputy, Marc said, “I take it you were one of those deputies?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You were out at the crime scene yesterday, weren’t you, Harry?”
“Yes, sir.” With clearly forced calm, Deputy Walker added, “I know Bob Norvell, and I know Becky Huntley’s parents. And I really think you should meet Marie Goode and talk to her. I think maybe she’s got reason to be scared.”
Gabriel Wolf parked the Jeep well back from the abrupt end of the old dirt access road and got out. He didn’t get too close to the edge, just close enough to peer over and note that a spring flood sometime in the past had changed the course of a wide creek and allowed it to wash out a long stretch of the old road.
It was no Grand Canyon but still a long way down to the sluggishly moving creek.
“Well, shit,” he said. “Have to be close enough, I guess.”
He got his binoculars from a large duffel bag in the backseat and returned warily to the best vantage point he’d been able to find overlooking most of Prophet County, at least without climbing a fucking mountain. This time, he not only kept well back from the unstable edge but also in the dubious cover of a cluster of trees only now beginning to assume this year’s muted fall colors.
He did not want to be seen up here.
He adjusted the focus of the binoculars and swept the distant area first, where the small town of Venture was visible, sprawling more than he had expected. It had once existed as a fairly important stop along the railroad from Atlanta heading north; the line had run through Venture and continued along the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, transporting cotton, tobacco, pecans, and whatever other crops and goods the state produced, as well as the stone and other minerals quarried farther to the south.
Gabriel studied what he could see of Venture, frowning a little. He’d seen small towns left by the wayside of progress, abandoned when railroads closed down lines and unwise timber harvesting practices left scarred hillsides and crops like cotton and tobacco failed or moved elsewhere, and this particular small town had either recovered from such economic hits long ago or else had never experienced them.
And yet…trains no longer even paused here, slowing a little as they passed Venture only because the line then wended its way into the mountains, where speed could be deadly. As far as Gabriel could see, there were no major industries in the area, barring one lone paper mill up on the river miles outside town.
Several tidy farms boasted dairy cows, some beef cattle, and other small livestock, and he’d noted at least three other farms where horses and riders were from all appearances trained in show jumping and cross-country eventing. Some timber was being cut to the west of the town, but not on a large scale despite the proximity of the paper mill. He spotted a couple of tobacco fields, but most of the agriculture he saw consisted of little more than backyard vegetable gardens intended only to supplement or supply much of the diet of the families that owned and worked them.
“Where’s the money coming from,” he murmured.
&n
bsp; You’re a suspicious bastard.
“Yeah. Yeah. It’s my job to ask the tough questions.”
Actually, it isn’t. It’s your job to find that warehouse. Or at least eliminate as many dead ends as we can.
Gabriel visually swept the area again, and sighed. “This used to be a major stop for at least two railroads, and one very large textile mill operated in the area for generations; there are abandoned warehouses, deserted buildings, and defunct storage facilities all over the damn place.”
Defunct?
“Yeah, don’t you like that word?”
I’m just wondering how come such a prosperous little town hasn’t torn down all those abandoned buildings.
“It does give one pause, doesn’t it?”
They don’t seem to clutter up the landscape too much. Maybe that’s why.
“If it ain’t ugly, leave it be?”
Well, even demo costs money.
“You calling me a suspicious bastard again?”
No, I’m sharing your suspicion. But I don’t know that it gets us anywhere.
“Now you’re just being a pessimist.” Gabriel continued to study Venture through his binoculars, sharpening the focus on the neat and very attractive downtown area. “Huh.”
What?
He sighed and lowered the binoculars. “Either the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing—No, that’s not it, that’s never it, even when it looks that way.”
What are you muttering about?
“I think we’re dealing with that need-to-know shit again. We aren’t alone in Prophet County.”
Well, we knew that.
“I’m not just talking about Dani and Paris. Or Hollis Templeton.”
Who, then?
“Somebody unexpected. Somebody who really shouldn’t be here, not for this one.”
Who do you—Oh. Oh, shit.
“Exactly,” Gabriel murmured, raising the binoculars to his eyes once again to watch a surprisingly inconspicuous figure strolling along the quaint downtown sidewalk. “I guess he’s taking the predicted threat to Miranda very, very seriously.”
10
MARC DIDN’T HAVE any logical reason for taking Dani with him when he went to talk to Marie Goode in his office, so he didn’t bother trying to invent one.
He was just relieved Dani didn’t ask.
That emotion lasted only until they went into his office and Marie Goode rose from one of his visitor’s chairs.
She was petite, almost waifish, with short dark hair and big dark eyes, and looked almost childlike in her waitress uniform.
Shit.
Marc exchanged a quick glance with Dani, and then they continued on into the room and he introduced the two women, offering no information as to who Dani was or why she was part of the interview.
Marie Goode was clearly too upset to worry about it. “Sheriff, did Deputy Walker tell you? About the necklace and the flowers? About somebody following me last night?”
“He told me, Ms. Goode. But I haven’t had a chance to read your statement, so if you wouldn’t mind going through it all again for me now? You believe someone began following you when you left work last night?”
“Well, I thought it was my imagination at first, but…”
Dani watched the younger woman continue to relate her experience to Marc, but a chill shivered over her skin when she realized that Marie’s voice had faded, within a matter of seconds, into silence.
It had happened to Dani before—but only in her vision dreams. Then, while she slept, her mind seemed to accept these abrupt silences of the people and places and things around her, because something deeper than her dreams, deeper than her visions, understood that it needed to listen to whatever was happening far beneath the surface. To something more important. And it was almost always something vital to her understanding of the vision dream’s true meaning.
But now her waking mind scrambled in panic, the knee-jerk, fearful reaction so quick that she very nearly missed that whisper of sound beneath the voices in the room, beneath the light, beneath what she could touch. Beneath what seemed real.
I want you.
She went still inside, the instinctive focus barely holding panic at bay. Her gaze shifted to Marc, and she wished desperately that it was his whisper she heard in her head. That she could believe it was his whisper.
It wasn’t.
It was cold. It was hard. It was implacable.
And it was evil.
I want you, Dani. I’ll have you. Even if you run. Even if you hide. No matter what he does to protect you. No matter what you dream. No matter—
“Dani?”
She realized she was on her feet in front of Marc’s desk, half-turned toward the door. She also realized that Marie Goode was gone, that Marc must have just shown her out, because he was coming back from the door, frowning at her.
Dani sat down abruptly and fought to pull air into her lungs, as though she had been holding her breath for a long, long time.
“Dani, what the hell’s wrong?”
“I—I don’t—” She pulled herself together and did her best to hold her voice steady. “I thought I heard something, that’s all. Did you assign a guard for Marie Goode? She’s the right type, and if he’s already watching her—”
“Of course I assigned a guard.” He sat down in the other visitor’s chair, still frowning at her. “What did you hear?”
“I said I thought I heard—” Again, she got a grip on herself, on the panic that was doing its best to overwhelm her. “I’m not sure. Maybe my imagination. I thought I heard a whisper, that’s all.”
“A whisper? Someone trying to reach you? Psychically?”
“My abilities don’t work that way.”
“Just because they never have,” he said slowly, “doesn’t mean they can’t. Psychic ability grows and evolves just like any other human ability does. What did the whisper say?”
“Marc, I don’t—”
“What did it say, Dani?”
She didn’t want to answer, but things were already so strained between them that she didn’t want to make the situation worse. “He said…he wanted me. That he’d have me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who. Even if I’d heard his voice before, who can recognize a whisper?”
“All I know,” Marc said deliberately, “is that it scared the hell out of you. So I’m guessing that even if you aren’t sure, you suspect what you heard came from the killer.”
“That’s not possible.”
Marc’s frown was gone, yet his face managed to be harder than ever. “You’re already…keyed on to this killer, right? Dreaming about him?”
She had never heard that particular terminology, but it did make sense to her. “In a manner of speaking.”
“We both know it’s all about connections with you. I assumed you were having the vision dreams because Miranda’s a friend and there was a threat against her.”
Dani hesitated, then nodded. “So did I.”
“Any chance the killer keyed on you because of the vision dream? That he somehow caught one end of a connection straight back to you?”
“I don’t know.” God, I hope not. “Maybe. Or maybe, if it happened at all, it was somehow through Marie Goode. If he’s watching her—”
“She isn’t psychic,” Marc said. “What if he is?”
Dani drew a breath and said, “I don’t have to be an experienced investigator to know that if this killer is psychic, we’re in very big trouble.”
“Either way, if he is or isn’t, you’re still scared as hell, Dani. Because he’s touched a part of you not many people have touched. Whether you made the connection or he did, it’s real. It exists. Do you think I can’t see that? Do you think I can’t feel it?”
“Marc…”
“We both know those kinds of connections aren’t easily severed once they’re made. And he could hurt you, couldn’t he? He could come after you in a way that no physical barrier
, no wall or locked door or bodyguard with a gun could stop.”
Not something she wanted to think about, because it did scare the hell out of her. Especially since it eerily echoed the whisper she had heard.
Still, with forced lightness, she said, “I’m safe. At least until we find that warehouse.” She heard herself say it.
She only wished she could believe it.
Gabriel pulled the Jeep off the otherwise deserted road and behind a tangle of some kind of vine he didn’t recognize. “I hate it when somebody changes the rules,” he grumbled.
We don’t know that anybody did.
“Bullshit, we don’t know. The SCU is supposed to be all but invisible here in this investigation, and he’s about as visible as it gets.”
You said he seemed inconspicuous.
“Seemed being the operative word. Temporary being a better one. Just as soon as this town wakes up to the knowledge that two of their own have been murdered, have been butchered, you can bet strangers are going to get noticed. And probably shot.”
I think you’re exaggerating. But best we keep a low profile and work as fast as we can.
“I hear that.” He got out of the Jeep and paused beside it only long enough to dig a smaller backpack from the big duffel bag in the backseat, then locked up the vehicle. He moved through the woods along the road for twenty or thirty yards, then came upon the disintegrating blacktop drive leading to a fair-size cluster of buildings that had once housed some kind of manufacturing plant.
What was manufactured?
“Details, details.”
They might be important, you know that.
Gabriel sighed and shrugged the backpack off one shoulder. He opened a pocket and pulled out a map of the county that boasted numerous areas circled in red. He studied the notes scrawled in the margin for several moments. “Plastics.”
Nothing more specific than that?
“Not on the map. But if I remember the research from yesterday, it was plastic hangers, something innocuous like that. Just a place that made useful things.”
And got closed during a downsizing of the company. I remember now.