Sense of Evil (37 page)

Isabel stopped as well, following her partner’s gaze. “What? I don’t see anything.”

“Jamie. She’s—”

At first Isabel thought the rumble of thunder had drowned out whatever Hollis had been saying, but then she felt a sharp tug at the small of her back and whirled, instinctively dropping the metal box, filled with the sudden cold certainty that she had been blindsided again.

A flash of lightning brilliantly lit the scene before her. Hollis falling on the ground with blood blossoming on the back of her pale blouse. Mallory standing hardly more than an arm’s length from Isabel, a big, bloodstained knife in one black-gloved hand and Isabel’s gun in the other.

“You know,” she said, “I’m really surprised you didn’t pick up on it. All those vaunted psychic abilities, yours and hers. And Rafe’s, I suppose. It was so clear, and none of you saw it. None of you saw me.”

Rafe was able to soothe the mayor’s worries, but just barely enough to allow his own escape. He headed toward Grogan’s Creek church and the cemetery behind it, a name neatly printed on a piece of paper tucked in his pocket.

But when he reached a stop sign, he found himself hesitating, looking not east toward Grogan’s Creek, but west toward Rosemont.

There was no reason to worry, of course. She could take care of herself. Besides which, she wasn’t alone. Hollis was with her, and Dean.

He started to turn the wheel toward the east, then hesitated again. “She’s okay,” he heard himself say aloud. “She’s fine.”

Except that his gut said she wasn’t.

His gut—and the blood on his hands.

Rafe stared at the reddish stains, shocked for an instant because it had happened so suddenly.

But then, just as suddenly, he knew the truth. He understood what it meant.

And he knew Isabel was in deadly danger.

He turned the wheel hard, heading west, and reached for his phone to call Dean.

19

M
ALLORY—”

“You still don’t get it, do you? Mallory doesn’t live here anymore.”

Gazing into eyes that looked dead and empty even when the lightning flashed in them, Isabel fought to keep her voice calm. “So who are you?”

With an amused little chuckle, Mallory said, “This isn’t some split-personality deal, you know. That’s a bunch of bullshit, what you read in the books. I was always the stronger one. Always the one who had to take care of Mallory, clean the messes after she screwed up. Always. We were just twelve when it happened the first time.”

“When what happened?” Was Hollis alive? Isabel couldn’t tell. And what had happened to Dean?

“When I had to kill them. Those bitches. All six of them.”

“You were— Why? Why did you have to kill them?”

“Are you stalling?” Mallory asked, interested. “Because Rafe isn’t coming, you know. Nobody is coming.”

“Well, then,” Isabel said, her mind racing, “it’s just you and me. Come on, impress me. Show me all the signs I should have seen along the way.”

“The only thing you and that Bishop of yours got right was gender. Male.”

“Trapped in a female’s body?” Isabel was deliberately flippant. “I think that’s been done.”

“Oh, no, I was male first. Always. I kept telling Mallory, but in the beginning she wouldn’t listen. And when she did listen, she got confused. She thought she was a lesbian.”

Recalling the riot of emotions and hormones of adolescence, Isabel said, “When she was twelve?”

“Those girls at camp. In her cabin. There were six of them, all giggly and girly. The one who slept with Mallory started touching her one night. And Mallory liked it. It made me sick, but Mallory liked it.”

“So what happened?”

“I heard them the next day. All six of them, giggling and looking at Mallory. They knew. All of them knew. The one who’d touched her had told the others, and they were going to tell too. I knew they would. They’d tell, and everybody would know Mallory wasn’t normal.”

“What did you do to stop that?”

“I killed them.” Her voice was eerily Mallory’s and yet . . . not. Deeper, rougher, harder.

Isabel told herself what she smelled was the lightning, not brimstone. But she knew the truth.

Nothing this side of hell smelled quite like brimstone.

Except for evil.

“See, they weren’t supposed to take the boats out onto the lake, not without one of the counselors. But I made Mallory talk them into it. So they took a boat out, way out, and I made sure there were no life jackets. And then I turned the boat over. None of them made it to the shore, but I got Mallory there, of course. So sad, those other girls drowning like that. Mallory was never the same afterward.”

Rafe found Dean Emery slumped over the wheel of his cruiser. He knew nothing could be done for him, but he called for backup and an ambulance, then hurried through the gates of the cemetery, gun drawn, reaching out desperately with every sense he possessed, old and new.

To hell with the goddamned shield.

Mallory shrugged. “That was when her parents moved here to Hastings. So nobody would know what had happened and she could get over it.”

“But she didn’t.” Isabel was dimly aware of the voices, whispering louder, but the thunder and her own fixed concentration on Mallory kept them distant.

“No, not really. She was afraid to have girl friends after that, so all her friends were boys. She played sports, got tough, learned to take care of herself. So I didn’t have to worry about her.”

“When did that change?”

“You know when it changed, Isabel. It changed in Florida. Mallory was in college in Georgia, but she transferred to a college in Florida to take a few courses one semester.”

“There was a redhead,” Isabel said. “She was attracted to a redhead, wasn’t she? A woman. Were they lovers?”

In the eerie twilight, Mallory’s mouth tightened. “That bitch. She got Mallory drunk and slept with her. And in the morning, she acted like it was nothing. But I knew. I knew she’d tell. I knew she’d tell her redheaded friends. So I had to take care of them, of course. All six of them, just like before.”

Isabel didn’t waste her breath with any reasoned argument. Instead, she said, “We wondered why the women were going with . . . him. Why they didn’t feel threatened. It was because Mallory was a woman.”

“It’s not my fault if people don’t look beneath the surface.” She—or he—laughed.

“Mallory didn’t know what you were doing, did she?”

“Of course not. She wouldn’t have been able to hide our secret. I had to do that. And I had to protect her. When she got abnormal that way.”

“What about the women in Alabama?” Isabel asked, only vaguely aware that the wind was gusting wildly now. “The brunettes? Mallory got involved with a brunette woman?”

“She was staying with a cousin over there. Just for a couple of weeks. But that was long enough. Long enough to start mooning over that dark-haired bitch. I didn’t even wait for that to get started. I just took care of it. I got rid of her. And the rest of them. The other five.”

“The ones who would have told?”

“Of course.”

“How did you know they would have?”

“Oh, don’t be stupid, Isabel. I always knew who’d tell. As soon as I saw you, I knew you would.”

“But Jamie was first, wasn’t she?” Isabel asked. “Jamie was the one who caught Mallory’s eye.”

“I thought she was over it,” the thing inside Mallory said. “She was involved with Alan, she was—was
normal.
But then she talked to Jamie about buying a house. And she felt . . . that . . . again. That longing. That desperation to be touched like that. By her.”

“They became lovers.”

“Lovers?
What they were doing had nothing to do with love. Mallory thought she deserved to be punished, because she’d lived when the other girls had died. So she let Jamie punish her. And take pictures of it. But I made her stop. I made her go back to Alan.”

Realizing, Isabel said, “And you made her forget. Always. You made sure that her attraction to other women was … like a fantasy to her. Didn’t you?”

“It was an aberration. She didn’t need to remember that.”

Isabel nodded slowly. “That’s why Mallory never reacted to anything we found out about Jamie. As far as she knew, as far as she could remember, they’d never been involved.”

“I protected her. I always have.”

“So you sent her back to Alan. Then you watched Jamie for a while, didn’t you?”

“So sick. Ugly. And she was mad at Mallory for not wanting to do those things anymore. That’s why she got too rough with her next
lover
and killed her.”

“Hope Tessneer.”

“I decided to scare Jamie before I got rid of her. Besides, I was curious. So I took that one’s body and hid it. It was fun to watch Jamie panic. Of course, she was thrilled when Mallory called her. Thrilled to meet her. And, you know, she didn’t struggle at all. Isn’t that interesting? Supposedly all dominant and powerful, and she died with hardly a whimper.”

“But you killed her too quickly,” Isabel pointed out, glancing toward the box she had flung aside. “You didn’t know where she’d hidden the photos. The proof of what she and Mallory had done together.”

“I thought they’d be in her apartment. But they weren’t, of course. I didn’t know where they were.”

Isabel swallowed. “Until Emily?”

“Well, you told me to put her on the list, Isabel, didn’t you?”

The sick sensation in Isabel’s stomach churned even more. “I did?”

“Sure. You told me she might have seen something. Might know something about her sister’s killer. And she’d seen the photographs, of course; I knew that as soon as she handed over the ones with Jamie and that other bitch. I didn’t think she’d seen Mallory’s, but I couldn’t be sure. So I had to get rid of her.”

“Blood on my hands,” Isabel murmured.

“You and Rafe, both so guilty. I think part of him knew all along. I could feel it, even though Mallory never did. I think that’s what made him psychic. You said the trigger had to be a traumatic shock, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Poor Rafe. He couldn’t consciously believe Mallory could do anything like that. Not his friend and fellow cop Mallory. But I think he noticed something there where Jamie died. I’m not sure what; I’m very good at cleaning up after myself. Whatever it was, it told him Mallory had been there. So he knew. Deep down, he knew.”

“And woke up with blood on his hands.” Isabel drew a breath. “He’ll know for sure now. Both Hollis and me dead, probably Dean, too, and you—Mallory—still alive. He’ll know.”

“No, see, you still don’t get it. The change is finally complete. I got tired of only coming out sometimes, of being asleep inside Mallory so much of the time. So I’ve been taking over. More and more. Mallory’s gone now. She’s never coming back. And after I’ve taken care of you, I’ll leave.”

It was true, Isabel realized. She looked at the shell that had once held the personality, the soul, of a woman she had liked very much, and knew without doubt that Mallory Beck was gone. She had started going away when six little girls had died on a lake, and over the years more and more of her had fallen away.

Until now. There was only this. This evil thing that had lived deep inside.

Isabel knew.

This was the evil that had killed Julie. The evil Isabel had sworn to destroy. Crouching in the darkness. Waiting to sprint.

Wearing the face of a friend.

He/she glanced down at Hollis, faintly dissatisfied. “She’s not blonde. Neither was that stupid, nosy reporter.”

“Cheryl Bayne. She’s dead?”

“Of course she’s dead. Little twit hadn’t even realized, but I think she’d seen me slipping into the gas station a couple of days before your partner and I
found
the body. It bugged her enough to send her snooping around the place, but I don’t think she even knew what she was looking for. Until she found it, of course.”

“What did you do with her body?”

“A cop to the last, aren’t you?” The thing inside Mallory laughed. “They’ll find her, eventually, at the bottom of a well. I didn’t have time to play with her, you see. I had to get busy. Because she wasn’t a blonde. But you are, and you’ll make five.”

Isabel knew she didn’t have a hope of getting to her calf holster and second gun. Not without a distraction. But even as she thought of that, her mind was suddenly clear and calm, and she was aware of a strength and utter certainty she had never felt in her life.

She wasn’t alone.

She would never be alone again.

“Mallory.” Rafe was there, stepping from behind a tall monument at a right angle to the women, his gun extended in two steady hands.

“Didn’t you hear me, Chief?” The black-gloved hand cocked Isabel’s pistol and held it aimed at her heart. “Mallory’s gone. And I’ll kill Isabel if you so much as twitch.”

“You’ll kill her anyway,” Rafe said.

“Go away like a good chief and I might let her live.”

“Evil,” Isabel said, “always deceives. That’s what it’s best at. That’s why it wore the face of a friend this time. And that’s why we can’t let it walk away alive.”

The thing wearing Mallory’s skin opened its mouth to say something, but the wind that had been steadily gaining strength abruptly sent a gust of hot air through the cemetery, and the birch tree beside the chapel flung one of its broken branches through a stained-glass window.

The crash was loud and sudden, and Isabel instinctively took advantage of it, throwing herself sideways to the ground even as she reached for the gun strapped to her calf.

The black-gloved hand started to follow Isabel’s path, finger tightening on the trigger, but the evil inside was just a split second slower than Rafe’s training and instincts.

His shot spun Mallory around so that his/her gun was pointing toward Rafe.

Isabel’s shot finished it.

The storm, uncaring of both human living and evil dying in its path, roared louder and louder as it finally made up its mind to hit Hastings.

EPILOGUE

Friday, June 20

Y
OU’RE A HARD WOMAN to kill,” Isabel said. Hollis raised both eyebrows at her. “I’m not saying it like it’s a bad thing.”