'So you ran here, is that it? Here, in this isolated house near a small town where you could hope for peace.'
'Don't I have a right to peace? Doesn't everyone?'
'Yes. But, Cassie, you can't ignore what you see any more than I could ignore it if I saw someone stabbed on a street corner. I would have to do what I could to help. So do you.'
She drew a breath. 'I've spent ten years doing what I could to help. I'm tired. I just want to be left alone,'
'Do you think he'll leave you alone?'
She was silent.
'Cassie?'
'No,' she whispered.
Ben wished she would look at him again, but her gaze seemed welded to her coffee cup. 'Then help us. Becky Smith was just twenty, Cassie. A college student who loved kids and wanted to be a teacher. She deserved her life. She deserved her chance. Help us catch the bastard who took that away from her.'
'You don't know what you're asking.'
'I have some idea. I know it'll take a lot out of you. But we need your help. We have to do whatever it takes to get this guy before he gets away. Or before he kills again.'
Finally her gaze lifted to meet his, and there was something lurking in the depths of her eyes that made him flinch. Something small and hurting.
'All right,' Cassie said quietly. 'I'll get my jacket.'
'So?' The sheriff wasn't openly hostile, but close. 'Let's have it.'
They were in Mart's office, seated side by side in the visitors' chairs in front of the old slate-top desk that had been his father's, and the sheriff was already in a nasty mood because his people had found absolutely nothing useful at the crime scene.
And he didn't believe in psychic bullshit, he just
'I can't tell you much more than I already have,' Cassie said. 'The killer is male – '
'How can you be so sure of that?' Ben asked. 'You said identity isn't a conscious thing. Is gender?'
'Sometimes. But in this case…' She avoided his gaze, fixing hers on the hands clasped in her lap. 'When he was watching her… planning what he would do to her… he was… aware of his erection.'
It was the sheriff who reddened slightly and shifted in his chair, but his voice was sharp when he said, 'This wasn't a sexual attack.'
'They're always sexual attacks.'
'This woman was not touched sexually,' he insisted. 'Preliminary reports say no semen was found anywhere on or near the body. For Christ's sake, she still had her panties on.'
'That doesn't matter. He was in a state of sexual excitement when he stalked her, and he achieved release when he killed her.'
'My God, you were in his mind during all that?' Ben said, startled.
'Yes. When he first went after her and then again, after he'd tied her up and was… was ready to hurt her. That time I was with him for a few minutes. It didn't take long, and just as he killed her I… managed to breakaway.'
Ben wondered what it must be like to observe – maybe even experience intimately – the orgasm of an insane killer, and thought it was undoubtedly one memory Cassie would happily part with. For the first time, he began to truly understand what lay behind her haunted eyes.
Monsters indeed.
The sheriff had something else on his mind. 'So he tied her up, did he?'
'Not with ropes,' Cassie said. 'A belt, I think. For her wrists. He didn't tie her ankles. He – he made her sit with her legs apart.'
'Why? 'Ben asked.
'It was… part of the pose somehow. Part of what he needed to see. He was taunting her. He kept… he kept putting the knife between her legs and threatening to put it inside her. He wanted her to be afraid. She was. She was terrified.'
'You know this because you saw it,' Matt said.
'Yes.'
'Through his eyes.'
'Yes, Sheriff.'
The sheriff was looking at her squarely, his gaze narrowed in suspicion. 'I'm having a hard time understanding this, Miss Neill. You claim not to know the murderer. So how is it you're able to see what he does? Know what he was feeling? Do you always
She shook her head and explained what she had explained many times before. 'Maybe I touched something he touched. That's most likely.'
'Touched something like what?'
'Like… a door he'd just passed through. Something on the shelf of a store. A theater seat he'd been in the night before. Or I might have bumped against him in the grocery store. Our eyes might have met for a moment on the streets. But – '
Ben interrupted. 'Eyes meeting? Something so… impersonal?'
Cassie's head turned slightly toward him, but her gaze remained on her hands. 'It's… a question of connecting. I've never been able to – to read anyone without some kind of connection. It's almost always a physical touch, either of the person or something the person came into contact with recently. An object. A bit of clothing.'
'But eyes meeting?' Ben repeated. 'Two strangers on opposite street corners – it could be as brief and simple as that?'
'Ben, do you mind?' the sheriff said.
'It's an important point, Matt. If all she needed to make this connection was a glance – '
Sourly, the sheriff said, 'I know goddamned well what it means, Ben. A town full of suspects. Assuming, of course, that I believe any of this bullshit. So far I haven't heard a good reason to.'
'Cassie knew someone would be murdered,' Ben said. 'She told both of us a couple of days ago. She called me this morning to tell me it had happened – and where.'
'Yeah, and you know what I think about that. Maybe she was able to do that because she'd been there. Maybe she knew the details because she killed Becky Smith.'
Cassie lifted her gaze for the first time. 'No. I didn't kill her. I didn't even know her.' Then a frown flitted across her brow. 'But neither did he, really.'
Ben leaned forward. 'What? He didn't know her?'
Cassie turned her head and looked at him. 'No. He'd been watching her. He knew who she was. He thought he knew… what she was.'
'What do you mean – what she was?'
'Somehow… she wasn't what he thought. He was disappointed in her. Maybe because of something she'd said or done. He was angry at her. Enraged. Yet… I didn't get a sense of intimate knowledge. And I don't believe she had known him in any real sense before he grabbed her.'
'She didn't know who he was?'
Cassie shook her head. 'I can't be sure, but I don't think so. She might have recognized him as someone she'd seen around town, maybe even on a regular basis, but I didn't get the sense that she really knew him. He: might have done something to disguise himself, of course, though that doesn't seem likely if he knew he was going to kill her. As for what she saw, she was pleading with him not to hurt her, but she never said his name. If she'd known his name, if she'd recognized him, she probably would have.'
'You get sound too?' the sheriff said.
Ben swore impatiently, but Cassie's gaze returned to him and a faint smile without real amusement curved her mouth. 'Sometimes it's just like turning on a television set.'
'Turn it on now,' he invited. 'Let's see what the bastard's doing at the moment.'
