[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
few hours.
If I don t do this, you re going to nag me about it forever, aren t you?
Damn straight.
Casey exhaled a defeated sigh. All right, all right. I ll run it by the boss. If he s okay with it, I ll do it.
Satisfied?
Sure. He poked her arm and grinned. Now, that wasn t so hard, was it?
Two hours later, after returning to the station house, filling in the boss and making a dent in the daily
paper-work, Casey turned her car into her driveway. Without conscious thought she automatically
followed the pre-scribed safety rules for a woman living alone, casting a quick look around the interior of
the space to be certain she was alone, then closing the garage door with the re-mote before unlocking her
car door and getting out.
Gathering up her purse and the plastic bag contain-ing the milk and bread she d picked up at the market
on the way home, she entered her town house through the door connecting the garage and the kitchen.
The instant she stepped inside she heard her telephone ringing.
Depositing her things on the kitchen counter, she hurried into the living room and picked up the receiver.
Hello?
Hey, Stretch, it s Will.
Well, hi. This is a surprise. Then it occurred to her that none of her brothers ever called just to chat,
and she frowned, gripping the receiver tighter. Is something wrong? Is it Granda? Is he ill?
He s fine. Unless you count tottering around the den shaking his walking stick and threatening to beat
the living daylights out of the sheriff as ill.
Oh, dear. What s happened?
Happening. Do you have your TV on?
No. I just walked in.
You better turn it on. The sheriff is holding a press conference.
What! He s not authorized to do that. Hold on a sec. Still holding the receiver to her ear, she picked
up the remote and turned the set on, and Sheriff Craw-ford s jowly face filled the screen.
& don t mean to criticize, he said in his most pa-tronizing tone. I m sure Detective O Toole is doing
her best, but she s been running the show for almost a week now, and the killer is still at large. We need
to catch this man before he kills again.
Someone needs to remind Crawford that he had the first two cases for more than a month without so
much as getting an ID on the second vic, Will grumbled in Casey s ear.
In the background, she could hear her granda shout-ing dire threats and describing the sheriff s ancestry
in colorful and unflattering terms.
Has Detective O Toole made any progress at all on the cases? one of the reporters on the TV screen
shouted.
Only that the killer drives a light-colored van and all of his victims have been redheads. I d advise all
red-headed women to be very careful. Maybe even visit their hairdressers and go blond, the sheriff said
with a good ole boy grin. Also, I ve heard, off the record, that a local doctor is under suspicion.
Oh, my Lord! Casey gasped. That idiot! That bombastic, glory-seeking, pea-brained idiot! He just
gave away the most useable pieces of evidence we had to work with and possibly set an innocent man
up for potential ruin. Just wait until I get my hands on that jack-ass. I ll personally sew his mouth shut if
that s what it takes to keep him quiet.
Take it easy, Stretch, her brother advised. Don t go flying off the handle. And don t confront
Crawford yourself. Take your complaint to your boss and let him handle it.
Casey ground her teeth and counted to ten. The ad-vice was vintage Will. He was a by-the-book cop.
He followed the rules, went through the proper channels, kept his formidable Irish temper under strict
control and his nose clean. As a result, he d made lieutenant by age thirty-two. And for those exact same
reasons, it was doubtful that he would advance any further.
Sometimes, Will s strict adherence to the rules got under Casey s skin.
In many ways they were alike. They were both seri-ous and hardworking, both disciplined and
dedicated to the job, and though her brother would deny it they both possessed a strong sixth sense.
Some called it ESP or intuition or psychic ability, but what it boiled down to was a gift for sensing things
that weren t obvious to others.
When investigating a case, Casey would often get a feeling about a person or a situation. It would
sometimes manifest itself as a gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach, or a tingling all over her body
that wouldn t go away, as though every nerve ending had sprung to vibrant life. Or sometimes it was as
though she had suddenly sprouted invisible antennae that picked up warning signals.
To Casey s way of thinking the ability was the most useful and formidable tool a cop could have, and
she had made use of the gift throughout her career and went with her hunches.
Will, on the other hand, rejected the very notion that such a thing as extrasensory perception existed,
and most certainly not in him, even though, as children, both he and Casey had experienced the
phenomenon on numerous occasions.
By adulthood he had turned his back completely on the gift with which he d been born. He d joined the
po-lice force, determined to make his mark using only good, solid, tried-and-true police procedures.
None of that hocus-pocus stuff for William Harrison Collins.
His stubborn refusal to follow his instincts some-times made Casey want to strangle her eldest sibling,
but as much as she hated to admit it this time she knew that Will was right.
Did you hear what I said, Stretch? her brother asked in response to the tense silence on the telephone
line.
I heard you.
So you ll let Lieutenant Bradshaw handle this?
Yes, she agreed, gritting her teeth.
You swear?
The press conference ended, and Casey switched off the TV and began to pace the room with the
telephone pressed to her ear. She was livid. Nothing in the world would have pleased her more at that
moment than to be able to give her temper free rein and let fly at Sheriff Crawford, but the rational part of
her knew if she did that she would probably permanently derail her career.
Stretch? Will prodded again.
All right, I swear.
But, oh, how she ached to publicly tell off the big blowhard and let the chips fall where they may.
The next morning, for the first time in years, Casey skipped her morning run. A restless night had done
little to dampen her temper, and when she stormed through the front doors of the station house, the
officers who usually called a friendly greeting either eyed her warily or were prudent enough to suddenly
have business elsewhere.
The mob of reporters waiting to pounce on her, how-ever, possessed no such common sense.
Casey had made it only halfway across the lobby of the station house when someone called out, There
she is!
Pandemonium broke loose. Like a swarm of bees, the press swooped down on her and she found
herself being jostled and crowded by reporters and cameramen, and people sticking microphones in her
face.
Detective! Detective! What do you think of the sher-iff s allegations?
Is it true, Detective, that you suspect a local doctor of being the Hunter? Do we have a Jack the Ripper
roaming the streets of Mears?
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]