Sense of Evil - Kay Hooper [87]
Ginny joined them in time to get the gist of the conversation, saying, “The things people get up to behind closed doors. We've found Rose Helton.”
“Alive and well, I gather?” Mallory said.
“Definitely alive. I'd say pissed rather than well. When I told her that her husband was sleeping it off in a cell after having waved his gun around at the chief and two federal agents, she said she hoped the judge would throw away the key.”
“Where is she?” Hollis asked.
“In Charleston, with a college friend.”
“She went to college?” Mallory asked in surprise. “And still married Tim Helton?”
Pronouncing the words carefully, Ginny said, “She said it had been a cosmic karmic mistake. And that she'd already filed for divorce and wasn't coming back here. And, oh, by the way, in case we hadn't found it, there was also a still in an old shed in the back pasture.”
“We found it,” Hollis murmured.
“Everybody said they were so happy.” Mallory shook her head. “Christ, you really don't know about people.”
Hollis said, “Well, anyway, we can cross her off the missing list.”
“One less to worry about,” Ginny agreed.
“How's the rest of the list coming?” Mallory asked her.
“No change. No sign of Cheryl Bayne. Plus, we still have several women missing in the general area, and nothing new on Kate Murphy.” Ginny sighed, clearly weary. “It's like she disappeared into thin air. She fits right in with the other victims too.”
“But not Cheryl Bayne.”
Hollis said, “I think Isabel's probably right about Cheryl. If the killer got her, it wasn't specifically because she was—is—a reporter, but because she somehow got too close. Or he was afraid she had. And if so, it's only going to get more difficult to even try to predict what he might do next.”
“Except kill,” Mallory offered wryly.
It was Hollis's turn to rub the back of her neck. “And there's something else. Isabel's the profiler, but I've got to say, if Kate Murphy is a victim, why haven't we found her? So far, the rule's been that if he kills them, he does it quick and leaves them out in the open where they're easily found. Assuming he has killed again, or that he has Kate Murphy, why would he change his M.O. now?”
“Our patrols are checking out every highway rest stop,” Ginny said. “Most of them two or three times a day.”
“Maybe we've spooked him,” Mallory suggested. “He could be killing and leaving the bodies in places we aren't keeping under observation.”
Hollis glanced toward the closed door of the conference room. “Maybe it's time we discussed that possibility.”
Mallory didn't move. “Rafe had a sort of determined look on his face when he closed the door. I'm not so sure I want to be the one to disturb them.”
Hollis continued to look at the door intently, focusing, tentatively trying out the spider sense. After a long moment, she said, “Um . . . let's give them a few more minutes.”
“You're serious?” Rafe leaned forward and touched her hand, not even reacting now to the spark.
Isabel looked down at their hands for a moment, then back at his face. “Entirely serious. For the first time in more than fourteen years, there's silence in my head.”
“That's what's been wrong all day.”
“That's it,” she said, unsurprised that he had noticed. “The question is: why?”
They both looked down at their touching hands, and Rafe said, “Frontier territory, huh?”
“Yeah. Scary, isn't it?”
“Today, looking at the wrong end of a gun being waved around by a paranoid drunk, was scary. This? This is just a very interesting turn my life has taken.”
“You're a very unusual man,” she said.
“Which is probably a good thing,” he said, “considering that you're a very unusual woman.”
There was a part of Isabel that wanted to shy away, to pretend he hadn't said that or that she hadn't understood what he meant. But Isabel didn't let herself shy away, or draw away, or back away. Whatever this was, it was something she had to deal with.
“Rafe, do you realize what this could mean?”
“Static electricity is more important than I thought it was?”
“Electromagnetic