Free Whisper of Evil by Kay Hooper Page A

good at what he does."
    Max shrugged. "Okay, but even the best make mistakes sometimes. I could still be the killer."
    "You aren't," Nell said.
    "You can't know that."
    "Yes, I can." She waited until he reluctantly met her gaze, and added evenly, "And you know how I can."
    Max was far too conscious of Casey's silent attention to say any of the things he wanted to say to Nell. He didn't know how much Casey knew but, even more, he wasn't about to open up old wounds and take the distinct risk of having Nell rub salt into them.
    So all he said was, "So I'm off your suspect list. Who's on it?"
    Casey said, "Just about everybody else, if you want the truth. Virtually all the men, anyway."
    "You're sure the killer is male?"
    Nell nodded. "Pretty sure. According to Bishop's profile, he's probably white, likely in his mid-thirties to mid-forties, and almost certainly a cop, though he could also be someone to whom cops are a hobby and his interest in them an obsession. Whichever it is, he knows police procedure, understands forensics, and has no intention of making a mistake that might get him caught."
    "He doesn't want to get caught? I thought most serial killers did, at least on some level."
    "This isn't a serial killer, at least not in the accepted sense. This killer isn't choosing victims at random or because he has no connection to them. This is personal to him, very personal. He's picking his victims in order to expose their secret crimes, their secret lives. Which means he knows them, and probably quite well. He doesn't like secrets; somewhere in his life, maybe his childhood, a secret damaged him and somehow changed his world or his perception of himself forever."
    Max frowned. "So he wants the truth to come out, no matter the cost."
    "That seems to be his motivation, at least in part. We also believe that in killing these men, he's attempting to punish them for their secrets. Whoever is responsible for the secret in his own life was probably out of his reach and somehow escaped punishment for that sin or crime. Because he couldn't get justice for himself, he's trying to get it for the innocents in these men's lives—or at least that's what he believes."
    Nell hesitated, frowned. "Bishop thinks there's something else too, some other piece of this guy's reasoning that would help explain either what he's doing or his choice of victims."
    "That's wonderfully vague," Max noted.
    Casey said, "As I understand it, profiling is mostly educated and intuitive guesswork. More of an art than a science. Bound to be some vagueness there."
    Nell was still frowning. "Bishop isn't normally vague, believe me. And his profiles tend to be bull's-eyes more often than not. But something about this killer is bothering him, and I don't think even he knows why. If he hadn't been hip-deep in another tricky case himself, he'd be down here trying to solve the puzzle firsthand. As it is, I have a direct line to him and I'm under orders to keep him advised."
    "But you aren't here alone," Max repeated.
    "No."
    "How effective can an agent be when he or she is pretending to be something else?"
    "We all function quite well that way, actually. My unit is… peculiarly suited to undercover operations."
    "Why?" Max demanded.
    "Well, among other things, let's just say we're all accustomed to keeping secrets."
    He frowned at her. "I thought most feds were."
    "You've been watching too much television."
    Casey laughed and said, "You've told him this much, Nell, might as well tell him the rest."
    Nell shrugged. "It's not something the Bureau publicizes, but the Special Crimes Unit is made up mostly of agents who each have one or more… unorthodox investigative abilities."
    "Meaning?"
    "Psychic abilities, Max. I finally found something useful to do with the Gallagher curse."

    CHAPTER FIVE

    Shelby Theriot had grown up in Silence, just as her parents had done. And unlike some of her friends, she hadn't even gone away to college; there was a small community college in