Haunted (A Bishop/SCU Novel Book 15) (15 page)

—

MIRANDA LISTENED TO
the rather terse report, then said, “It sounds like you’ve got everything under control, Hollis.”

“Yeah, right.” Hollis was still dressed even though it was after ten, but she’d kicked her shoes off and was leaning back on several pillows piled at the headboard of her bed, a muted news channel on the TV. And she was using the hotel’s landline.

She’d discovered her cell phone to be dead as a doornail, which, between the normal “psychic drain” and all the energies up the mountain, hardly surprised her. It was charging on the dresser across the room. For all the good it would do her tomorrow.

Her tablet was also charging; like everything else electronic that the SCU agents used, it tended to have a very short battery life—even inside its specially designed cover.

“It’s a rough case for your first time as a primary and profiler,” Miranda conceded. “Serial killer investigations are always rough. But certainly not beyond your abilities.”

“Well, it might have helped if you or Bishop had told us we were investigating the flip side of the mountain serial.”

“What, and spoil your fun?”

Normally, Hollis appreciated Miranda’s wry humor, but tonight her head was pounding and she was still uneasily sure she was not qualified for the job she’d been tasked for.

“I just . . . I want to do right by these people. They’re good people. Even if Trinity
is
still holding out on us.”

There was a brief silence, and then Miranda said, “You think she is?”

“I know she is. Just not quite sure what it’s all about. Something she doesn’t think matters to the investigation; she’s too good a cop to keep something like that to herself.”

“Mmm. What do you think of the town?”

“It’s gorgeous—but a lot of odd stuff has happened here over the years. Most of it decades ago if not longer, admittedly, but we should have known. And we damn sure should have known about that strong electromagnetic field from somewhere at or above the old church down at least a half dozen streets below it. It’s like the top part of this town is . . . almost in a world of its own.”

“How did it make you feel?”

“The energy? Uncomfortable. Bothered. Deacon said it felt like his skin was crawling—but he also said that was probably what he was picking up from me.” She considered. “Though I suppose that’s what a tough manly man would say. Is he one? I don’t know him well enough to guess.”

“Not like you mean. He’s tough enough to not worry about protecting his image. Or even projecting one.”

“Okay. Then maybe he
was
picking it up from me. Reese didn’t say, but I was probably broadcasting like crazy.”

“What else did you feel up there?”

She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “We were being watched.”

“By?”

“I thought at first the killer. And maybe it was him. What I felt was something almost . . . gleeful. Almost like it was a game, and he was watching to see how we’d react to what he left for us. Nothing threatening, just curious and . . . gleeful. Which was creepy enough, I can tell you.”

“But it changed?”

Hollis scowled as she stared at the muted TV. There’d been a blizzard in the Northeast. Probably a foot of snow even at Quantico. Not that Bishop was there. She hadn’t asked, but he’d been heading out to a new case the same time they had. She couldn’t remember where. Maybe California.

She wondered if Tony was complaining about the weather.

“Hollis?”

“Yes, it changed. You’re getting as bad as Bishop. Why do you ask me questions when you know the answers?”

Not being her husband, Miranda answered.

“Because I don’t know the specifics. Did it feel like someone or something else watched you later?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see something?” She was patient.

“No. No, I didn’t see anything at all. Not a spirit. Not even one of those orbs that keep showing up on the ghost-hunting TV shows. I didn’t see a damned thing, Miranda. Just like I haven’t seen anything spiritual for months. And it’s beginning to scare me.”

—

“SO,” TONY HARTE
said when Bishop’s phone call with his wife had ended, “did you
know
this case would force Hollis to face a few things she’s avoided facing until now?”

“We knew it was possible,” Bishop said.

“You didn’t warn her.”

“Some things have to happen just the way they happen, Tony. You know that.”

“Yeah.” Tony was more resigned than sarcastic. “We all know that.”

It was considerably earlier in San Francisco. It was also a very, very foggy night.

Gloomy, Tony turned away from the window that had shown him only a view of the dim glow of a few nearby streetlights and one weirdly garish glow from the neon sign of a bar just slightly down the block.

“I’d rather have rain,” he said. “At least then you can
see.
Fog is just creepy. It distorts or hides everything.”

“We don’t have to be out in it tonight,” Bishop said. “Count your blessings.”

He was sitting at what was a rare luxury for them when on a case, a very spacious table in their small hotel suite, more of a conference table than one designed for eating.

Two-bedroom suites generally didn’t have to seat eight people for dining. And this particular suite was currently occupied by only two people.

“I thought Maggie helped Hollis heal,” Tony said, referring to Maggie Garrett, one of the founders of Haven and a quite extraordinary empathic healer.

“She healed the worst of the damage,” Bishop said. “But physical scars fade a lot faster than emotional and psychological ones, even with help. Emotionally . . . Hollis was given the gift of being able to heal physically and move on and adjust to her psychic abilities without the additional burden of memories too painful to bear.”

Tony frowned. “Maggie took away her memories?”

“You know better than that. Nobody on our side has been able to develop that ability. No, Maggie just . . . pushed the memories into the distance. Made it feel to Hollis as if more time had passed. But it was a temporary fix.”

“Did anybody tell Hollis that?” Tony asked dryly.

“We weren’t sure ourselves. Hollis has been amazingly resilient, with some of the strongest survival instincts we’ve ever encountered. As Quentin is so fond of pointing out, she should have died half a dozen times by now.”

“Okay. And so?”

“And so . . . we’ve worried. Her abilities have grown in ways no one could have predicted, and most are extremely powerful, even more so than Hollis knows.”

“How could she not know?”

“Do you know if you can lift a car with your bare hands?”

“Well, yeah,” he said. “I can’t.”

“And if someone you loved was trapped under that car? If the situation was extreme, and you had to do something incredible in order to save them?”

Slowly, Tony said, “It’s been done. So I suppose under those conditions I probably could. Are you saying Hollis doesn’t know her limits because they haven’t been tested? Even with all she’s been through?”

Bishop’s voice was grave in a way it seldom was. “Every situation is unique, and if we’re tested, it tends to be in ways specific to whatever’s happening.”

“Okay. I think I get that. And so?”

“She’s the only recipient of an eye transplant who can see. Why do you suppose that is, Tony?”

He had to think about that for a moment, but then it came to him. “Because she was a medium-healer from the very beginning. We just didn’t know—she didn’t know, at least consciously—that the first person with an injury she healed was herself.”

“The first sense she healed. Changed,” Bishop said. “Maggie helped her with the initial physical and emotional trauma, but her sight was gone. Her eyes were gone. There was no healing that, not by the strength of any empath we know. And by every medical and scientific measurement we know or think we know, an eye transplant will always fail unless and until science develops the knowledge to hardwire the optic nerve born in one person into the brain of another—and somehow teach those two separate organs to work as if they were born connected.”

Tony stared at him, then said, “I never thought . . . but that sounds really creepy.”

“A lot of people walk around with organs they weren’t born with inside them, Tony. Transplants are routine. We’ve developed drugs to trick the body into accepting organs it wasn’t born with, and allow them to function normally. Hearts, kidneys, lungs, livers. Even corneas. But the eyes themselves? No drug known to our science can forge that connection and make it function.”

“But Hollis needed to see,” Tony said.

“She was an artist before the attack. Her sight was more important to her sense of self than it would have been for many people. If she hadn’t lost her sight, she might never have become a healing medium, but simply a medium. Because that was the first extra sense that made itself known. She heard spirits. One, in particular, at least at first. A spirit that would help her avenge many women, including herself. Still, despite what she might have been capable of doing blind, Hollis needed to see. A doctor performed the transplant, made all the physical connections he was capable of making, sewing together severed ligaments and muscles and nerves—which had never been connected to each other. So it should never have worked.”

“Hollis made it work.”

“Without even being consciously aware of it. The spirit told her she could see if she wanted to. She wanted to. And maybe an artist’s trained knowledge of how every part of the body fit together helped her. She finished what the surgeon began. She healed the severed and damaged connections between eyes and brain. And then she somehow convinced her brain to accept and process images from those new eyes. Eyes from a donor she convinced her body and her brain to accept completely.”

“She could see.” Tony frowned again. “She’s said things now and then, offhandedly, about seeing things differently. That her sight is different now.”

“Not only different,” Bishop said. “Changing. It was a bit off in the beginning, judging by what she told me, and what little she admitted to the doctors. Not enough to impair her vision, but enough to distract her from time to time. Then various cases brought her into contact with energy fields. Sometimes sheer electrical energy, like storms. Then there was Samuel, with his incredibly powerful and incredibly dark energy. Then there was what happened at Alexander House, when she channeled an enormous amount of energy.”

“I know Samuel literally hit her with a blast of his energy,” Tony said slowly. “One of those things that should have killed her and didn’t. But it changed her. Or . . . it woke up that other psychic ability, self-healing. Good thing, too.”

“Definitely,” Bishop agreed. “And even though she didn’t literally channel energy then, she did absorb dark energy and use it to heal herself.”

Tony blinked. “That’s what she did?”

“We believe so,” Bishop said. “It’s what helped make it possible for her to do what she did at Alexander House. She’s unique, Tony. She’s the only psychic we know of able to actually use dark, negative energy—absorb it, channel it, change it, expel it, possibly even shape it to her needs—in a productive way and without herself being harmed in the process.”

“Not harmed. But . . . ?”

Bishop nodded. “Always a price. For Hollis, the price isn’t clear, at least not all of it. But there will be a price.”

Annabel Hunter was regretting her decision to decline her friend Toby’s offer of a sleepover. Not the sort of sleepover a couple of teenage girls would have, of course, braiding each other’s hair and playing loud music and talking about boys.

No, a much more mature version. Just two adult female friends nervously keeping each other company because a killer was on the loose.

And probably drinking a lot of wine.

Annabel broke out an unopened bottle of her own stock by nine thirty, and by ten thirty had consumed half of it. Maybe that’s why the old movie she had on television was so funny.

Because she had the vague idea it wasn’t really supposed to be a comedy.

She thought she was probably getting drunk, then decided that was a good idea. She’d sleep better. Maybe even not dream. And it might be early for bed, but she figured extra sleep was bound to do her more good than harm.

Especially after hearing about what had happened to Barry.

Especially after Trinity’s call.

And most especially after what Toby had shared.

Damn tarot cards.

The thought had barely skittered across her mind when the TV suddenly developed a mind of its own.

The old movie vanished, channels scanning past in a blur. Stopping on a sitcom. Then scanning again, stopping this time on a music channel. Seconds later, on again to pause briefly on a science documentary, before settling for way too long on a movie about demonic possession.

Annabel fumbled for the TV remote, but before she could do more than grasp it, channels were scanning by again, but slowly now, and pausing for long seconds on each of a series of movies she recognized.

One about a haunted house. One about a psychotic murderer. One about supposed witches being horribly—and graphically—tortured during the Inquisition. One about a group of teenagers on an ill-advised weekend party trip to a creepy isolated cabin, where a lunatic machete-wielding killer stalked them. One about a seemingly simple, innocent game that ended in terrifying, bloody death. One about an extremely disturbing little Asian ghost girl with long, stringy black hair and the seeming ability to drive people out of their minds with terror.

Annabel wasn’t so drunk that she didn’t catch the theme emerging. In fact, she didn’t think she was drunk at all. Not now.

Not any longer.

In fact, she was certain she was cold sober when she began pushing buttons on the remote—and the TV continued to wend its way through a series of nightmarish images.

“Dead batteries. That’s all it is,” she muttered to herself, trying to ignore the screams from the TV.

Never mind that the light indicating the remote had power was bright green.

Had to be the batteries. Dead batteries. She’d just get up and go find fresh ones, and—

“I’m coming for you next, Annabel.”

She froze, her eyes on the remote, listening to the utter silence that had followed that sinister male threat. And it was a long time before she was able to force herself to look at the TV.

The dark black screen of which showed her nothing now except her own reflection in the lamplit room.

January 30

Reese DeMarco stood in the doorway of the bedroom and studied the very, very peaceful space. If he hadn’t known better, he would never have guessed someone had died in this room. It was the bedroom of a very neat man, almost compulsively neat, with not a thing, seemingly, out of place.

“You seeing anything I’m not?” he asked his partner.

Hollis was a few steps into the room, turning slowly as her gaze roamed over furniture and prints on the walls and simple blinds on the windows and muted rugs on the polished hardwood floor. “No,” she said finally. “Neat, wasn’t he? Trinity?”

DeMarco stepped inside the room to allow the sheriff to come in, and found himself looking down to see that her ever-present black dog had moved as well, but not into the room with his mistress. Instead, he was sitting beside DeMarco, exactly on the threshold. Before DeMarco could ask the question tickling the back of his mind, Hollis spoke to the sheriff.

“When you got here, when Braden led you here—the front door was locked?”

“Yeah.” Early night or not, Trinity didn’t look as if she had slept very well. “I knocked, rang the bell, no answer. He kept a spare key behind a loose brick in the facade.”

“Who knew that?”

“Anyone who knew Scott. This was a very safe town, remember? Beyond a little occasional teenage vandalism, we don’t get break-ins.” She shrugged. “I was wearing leather gloves when I used it, because it was cold that morning. I had the key printed later. A couple of clear prints. His.”

“And this door locked from the inside.”

“Yeah. I had a locksmith check the front door and this one. He said there were no signs anything other than the key had been used to unlock the front door.”

“And this door?”

“No signs it had been tampered with. But you can see it’s a typical sort of modern bedroom door, with a turn lock on the inside but not a deadbolt, and not really a keyhole on the outside. A tiny slot for an emergency release key in case a kid gets locked inside, or the door’s locked accidentally.”

“Let me guess,” DeMarco said. “It was on the top of the door frame.”

“Yeah. Where we’re all told to keep them: handy, but not visible or in the way. This apartment complex isn’t that big, but there are two families with kids, and safety is a factor. The owner is in residence and serves as the building’s manager. He told me he makes very sure to tell each tenant where the emergency release keys are to be kept. And that he checks between tenants, and replaces any keys that are missing. They’re more or less universal with this type of door.”

Hollis was frowning. “If a door can be unlocked from the outside, it can be locked as well.”

Trinity nodded. “Locked-room murder mysteries aren’t what they used to be, at least not in newer buildings where safety concerns triumph. The killer could have used the emergency release key to lock the door from out in the hallway. Probably what he did.”

“I had a feeling the how of that locked door wouldn’t be as interesting as the why of it,” Hollis said.

“The why of it?”

“Yeah. Why lock the door? What was the point? Most everybody knows how this type of door works, so finding it locked wouldn’t be a big deal. Mildly puzzling, but not a barrier to discovering the body, not anything that would have slowed anyone down—or impeded the investigation if it was a question that went unanswered.” She paused, then added slowly, “It was almost . . . childish, locking this door from the outside. And mocking, because the killer took the time to do it when he didn’t have to. When there was no point in it.”

DeMarco said, “Especially when the big mystery was how he managed to break Abernathy’s neck without leaving so much as a bruise.”

“Misdirection?” Trinity suggested. “Hoping we’d be so preoccupied with the locked door that the manner of death wouldn’t seem as interesting by comparison?”

“Not unless he knows virtually nothing about police investigations,” Hollis replied. “I mean, people not trained in crime scene investigation might have dwelled on something you generally hear of only in mystery novels, but cops? No. You noted it in your report, but you didn’t give it much importance. Neither did we. Why would we? We concentrate more on time of death and cause of death, on possible enemies, possible motives, possible witnesses. Who saw him last, what was the last thing we
know
he did. Who cares whether the door was locked?”

It was Trinity’s turn to frown. “Good point. I just considered it another oddity in a very odd murder.”

“Natural enough, especially given the murder that followed this one. And maybe I’m missing something, maybe there
was
a reason. But I can’t think of one.”

“Neither can I,” DeMarco said.

Trinity sighed. “Then I vote we put it in the column of mildly puzzling things and get on with the bigger puzzling things.”

“You won’t get an argument,” DeMarco said.

Hollis opened up the tablet she’d carried in with her, swore under her breath as she noted the already-diminished battery life, then studied the ME’s report for a moment, using two fingers to enlarge a particular section. “He wasn’t strangled, manually or with a rope or garrote, and his neck wasn’t exactly broken, not the way we’ve been talking about it. Literally, his spine was severed.”

DeMarco took a step into the room, noting abstractedly that Braden remained exactly where he was. “Wait a minute. His spine was severed? Not fractured or crushed or torn? Something that couldn’t have been done by twisting? Because that’s the only method I thought might possibly have broken his neck without leaving even a bruise, at least if it was done very quickly by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“Severed.” Hollis looked at him. “I don’t know why I didn’t see that word before, because it’s here. His neck was broken, all right. Between two vertebra that weren’t damaged. The spinal cord was very neatly and cleanly severed. As if . . . as if a razor-sharp knife slipped in between the vertebra and severed his spinal cord just below the base of his brain.”

“Without cutting his skin,” Trinity said slowly.

“Yeah. Without cutting his skin.”

“Which makes it more than possible,” DeMarco said, “that we’re dealing with a killer in possession of some kind of psychic ability.”

“Someone able to . . . slip a psychic knife into someone else’s brain?” Trinity asked, not quite incredulous.

Hollis nodded slowly. “It’s all about energy. And energy can be a force that dances, that swirls, that pushes or pulls . . . or forms an edge as sharp as a scalpel to neatly sever a spine.”

—

DEACON RAN HIS
fingers through his hair and took a long drink of his coffee, but his eyes still appeared a little bleary when he looked at the others. “So, the mysteriously broken neck is even more mysterious than we first thought.”

“Yeah.” DeMarco eyed him. “Late night?”

“Late, yes. Fun, no.”

Trinity murmured, “How is Melanie?”

“A bundle of nerves,” he replied cordially. “And so are at least two of her friends. I know that because she got one call while we were having dinner, which sounded very enigmatic on my end, and then when I was about to leave her apartment after enough wine, I hoped, to settle her nerves, another friend showed up. Annabel. And she’d already had wine.”

“Still nervous?” DeMarco murmured.

“Scared half out of her wits.”

Hollis sat forward in her chair at the conference table. “What had scared her?”

“Her television.”

He realized he was being stared at, and grimaced. “Yeah, I know. But she was genuinely terrified, I felt that. And when Melanie managed to calm her down enough to get some sense out of her, I have to admit it creeped me out more than a little.” He explained what Annabel Hunter had experienced in her apartment.

Hollis rubbed her forehead, wishing the remnants of the previous day’s pounding headache would finally leave her in peace. “Spiritual energy has been known to affect electronics, even control them. It’s actually fairly common. If there’s no medium nearby, it’s one way they can try to make contact with the living, using as a conduit something electronic.”

“Annabel didn’t want to make contact,” Deacon informed her politely. “In fact, I got the sense her response of choice would have been to get the hell out of Dodge.”

“But not alone,” Trinity said. “Annabel’s family has lived in Sociable for generations, and she’s the last of the line. She sold the very large family home years back and netted enough to live comfortably for the rest of her life. Bought some investment property here because her roots are here. Occupies herself with volunteer and charity work. Everybody genuinely loves Annabel. She’s that sort. Has lots of friends, remembers birthdays and anniversaries, gives clever little gifts, sometimes for no reason, and if anybody needs to crash on her couch, they’re welcome—and get treated to home-cooked meals for the duration.

“Far as I know, Annabel never made an enemy in her life. And she’d never leave Sociable and strike out on her own, even to run away from something that scared her. Maybe especially not then. She’d run to friends, but not run away.”

“That was my impression,” Deacon said. “And Melanie obviously knew Annabel didn’t need to be alone last night.”

DeMarco said, “I gather you took the couch?”

“Yeah. I think Melanie would have been okay locked in, even alone, but Annabel was shaking like a leaf and still talking nervously at three this morning. They finally went to bed, and I caught a nap on the couch. Everybody was up early. Melanie insisted on going to work, and since Annabel was still too frightened to be alone, I escorted them both to the bank. Then I went to my room, showered, shaved, dressed, and got my gun—consider that official notice, Sheriff, that I’m now armed.” He had returned DeMarco’s second gun to him before leaving the sheriff’s department the previous day.

“Noted.” Trinity clearly wasn’t surprised.

“I plan to stay armed from now on.”