FEBRUARY 21, 1999
When Cassie heard the scream, it was so loud in her head that she dropped the glass she'd been holding and clapped her hands over her ears.
'No,' she whispered helplessly.
Without her volition her eyes closed, and behind the lids flashed whorls of vivid colors streaked with black. A second scream made her jerk. And hurt her throat.
'No, please… please don't hurt me…'
Abruptly Cassie was somewhere else, someone else. She felt the painful constriction of something around her wrists, felt a sharp edge at her back and cold hardness beneath her. She couldn't see, it was all black, but then the bag over her head was jerked off.
The mask he wore was horrible. The character might have been from some recent slasher movie, the face a human one but terribly distorted, and it made her shock intensify, her terror soar.
For an eternal instant Cassie was paralyzed, completely trapped in the woman's spiraling emotions. Shock, wild terror, despair, and the cold, cold certainty that she was going to die soon and horribly clawed at her. Through the woman's tear-blurred eyes she saw that eerie mask loom above her, saw the butcher knife in his gloved hand, and her throat hurt with gasping breaths and whimpers and raw screams.
As his arm started downward in a vicious arc, Cassie desperately wrenched herself free of the doomed woman. But she wasn't fast enough to save herself completely. She felt the first hot agony of the knife piercing her breast, and everything went black.
'Ben.'
'Matt? What is it?'
'Meet me in town. Ivy Jameson's place.'
Ben switched the phone to his other hand and checked his watch. 'Now? It's Sunday afternoon, she'll be – '
'She's dead, Ben.'
Ben didn't even ask how. Matt's tone told him all he needed to know. 'I'm on my way,' he said.
Ten minutes later he parked the Jeep behind Matt's cruiser and one other in the driveway of the Jameson house on Rose Lane just two streets behind Main Street. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, the big old houses sitting peacefully on manicured lawns, the older residents happy to be no more than a short, pleasant afternoon walk from downtown.
Ben noticed that several of those older residents were on their front porches, staring at him as he got out of his Jeep. Although they were too polite or too frightened to venture closer to Ivy's house, it was obvious that their interest was intense.
One of Matt's deputies was standing by the front door and opened it for Ben as he came up on the porch. 'Judge. Sheriff's inside.' He looked a bit green around the gills.
Ben went into the house. He was familiar with it, as he was most of the homes of the more politically active citizens of Ryan's Bluff; Ivy Jameson's vote had been one of the hardest to get.
From the spacious entrance hall the staircase rose to the second floor, the formal dining room opened to the right, an equally formal living room to the left, and straight ahead lay the rear of the house and the kitchen. The hardwood floor gleamed, fresh flowers in a lovely crystal vase decorated the entrance hall table, and there was an air of stuffy dignity about the place.
The two men sitting on the sofa in the formal living room spoiled the atmosphere of dignity; they were in their stocking feet, faces slack and pale with shock, and the younger one was breaking Ivy's most sacrosanct house rule by smoking a cigarette jerkily, flicking the ashes into an already full crystal candy dish on the coffee table before him.
Ben knew them both. One was Ivy's brother-in-law, and the other was her nephew. Neither looked toward him, and he made no attempt to speak to them.
Another deputy standing just outside the living room doorway silently gestured toward the rear of the house.
He, also, looked queasy, and when Ben passed him, murmured, 'Sheriff said to watch your step, Judge. The floor back there is… slippery.'
It was slippery all right.
The tile floor of the kitchen was covered in blood.
'Oh, Christ,' Ben muttered as he stopped in the doorway. He had observed scenes of violence before, but not many, and nothing that had prepared him for this.
Matt stood a couple of feet inside on one of the few blood-free spots on the floor. 'It looks like Ivy finally pissed off the wrong person.'
It was unquestionably a scene of rage. Even the white appliances were spattered with blood, and the stab wounds in Ivy's thin body were almost too numerous to count. She'd been all dressed up, probably for church earlier in the day. Her dress might have been any light color once; now it was red.
She still had one shoe on.
'Notice the way he left her?' Matt asked.
'Yeah,' Ben said, trying to breathe through his mouth because the smell was overpowering. 'Sitting up with her back against the leg of the work island. Her hands in her lap. Posed. Is there a coin?'
'A nickel. In her left hand.' If the smell bothered Matt, it wasn't apparent.
Ben gestured. 'And footprints. The killer?'
'Among others. When she didn't show up for church or Sunday dinner afterward, and didn't answer the phone, Ivy's mother sent her son-in-law and grandson over to see if anything was wrong. They came in the back door, said they were sliding all over before they knew what was happening. If we're lucky, we might get one footprint we can't match to their shoes.'
Matt pointed out a bloody butcher knife on the floor a foot or so away from Ivy's body. 'No question about the murder weapon. He just grabbed a knife off the rack.'
'Forced entry?'
'No sign of it. And her relatives say she always locked the back door, all the doors, that she was fanatical about it.'
'So she must have let him in?'
'Looks that way.'
Ben backed out of the doorway. 'This smell. I can't – '
Matt followed him, avoiding the blood gingerly, and joined him in the small hallway outside the kitchen. 'Doc Munro's on his way. So're my technical people. I took one look and called you first.'
'Her position, the coin. It's the same killer, Matt.'
'Yeah.' Matt drew a breath, his face very grim. 'And he barely waited three days between killings, Ben. Worse, Becky Smith and Ivy Jameson had only two things in common. They were both white and both female. Beyond that there are no similarities between them.'
'I know.'
'Did you notice the knife rack? We won't know for sure until her housekeeper inventories for us, but it looks like one of the big butcher knives is missing.'
Ben stared at his friend in silence, unwilling to give voice to any of the disturbing possibilities in his mind.
Matt was less reluctant. 'The bastard's probably taken his next weapon from this victim. Cute. Really cute.'
'Jesus,' Ben muttered, frustrated by the realization that the killer might have already chosen his next victim
