Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [13]
“Fair enough.”
“So I gather you don't normally inform local law enforcement of this?”
“Depends. It's pretty much left up to our judgment. The assigned team, I mean. Bishop says you can't plan some things in advance, and whether or not to spill the beans—and when—is one of them. I've been on assignments where the local cops didn't have a clue, and others where they were convinced, by the time we left, that it was some kind of magic.”
“But it isn't.” He didn't quite make it a question.
“Oh, no. Perfectly human abilities that simply don't happen to be shared by everyone. It's like math.”
“Math?”
“Yeah. I don't get math. Never have. Balancing my checkbook stresses me out like you wouldn't believe. But I always liked science, history, English. Those I was good at. I bet you're good at math.”
“It doesn't stress me out,” he admitted.
“Different strokes. People have strengths and weaknesses, and some have abilities that can look amazing because they're uncommon. There aren't a lot of Mozarts or Einsteins, so people marvel at their abilities. Guy throws a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball and puts it over the plate three out of five pitches, and he's likely to be set for life, because very few people can do what he does. Gifts. Rare, but all perfectly human.”
“And your gift is?”
“Clairvoyance. The faculty of perceiving things or events beyond normal sensory contact. Simply put, I know things. Things I shouldn't be able to know—according to all the laws of conventional science. Facts and other bits of information. Conversations. Thoughts. Events. The past as well as the present.”
“All that?”
“All that. But more often than not it's a random jumble of stuff, like the clutter in an attic. Or like the chatter of voices in the next room: you hear everything but really catch only a word or two, maybe a phrase. That's where practice and training come in, helping make sense of the confusion. Learning to see the important objects in that cluttered attic or isolate that one important voice speaking in the next room.”
“And you use this . . . ability? In investigating crimes, I mean.”
“Yes. The Special Crimes Unit was formed to do just that. For most of us, becoming a part of the unit was the first time in our lives that we didn't feel like freaks.”
Rafe thought that much, at least, made sense. He could understand how people with senses beyond the “normal” five might feel more than a little alienated from society. Having a useful and rewarding job and a place where they were considered entirely normal had probably changed their lives.
Isabel didn't wait for his response, just went on in that slightly absentminded tone. “There's been very little study into the paranormal, really, but we've built on that with our own studies and field experience. We've developed our own definitions and classifications within the SCU, as well as defined degrees of ability and skill. I'm a seventh-degree clairvoyant, which means I have a fair amount of ability and control.”
Rafe watched as she knelt down and touched the ground, no more than an inch or so from where Tricia Kane's blond hair had lain. “Touching the ground helps?” he asked warily.
“Touching things sometimes helps, yeah. Objects, people. It's better when the area is contained, enclosed, but you work with what you've got. The ground is pretty much the only thing left out here, so . . .” She looked up at him and smiled, though her eyes held a slightly abstracted expression. “Not magic. Maybe we're just a lot more connected to this world and to one another than we think.”
It was hot, the way it is now. But barely light. She could smell the honeysuckle. But that's all . . . all she could get about the murder, at least. That and her certain sense of something dark and evil crouching, springing . . . But only that. Isabel wasn't really surprised. This place was wide open, and they were always the toughest.
He watched her intently. “What do you mean?”
He had very dark eyes, she thought. “We leave footprints when we pass. Skin cells, stray hairs. The scent of our