Raintree Read online

  The same someone who had sliced her throat.

  Hope took a deep breath to compose herself, then decided that wasn’t a good idea. Death wasn’t pretty, and it didn’t smell nice, either. She had, of course, seen bodies before. But they hadn’t been quite this fresh, or this mangled. It was impossible not to be affected by the sight.

  Raintree sighed. “You’re not going away, are you?”

  Hope shook her head, and tried to casually cover her nose and mouth with one hand.

  “Fine,” Raintree said sharply. “Sherry Bishop, twenty-two years old. She was single and had no significant relationship at the time of her murder. Money was tight, so robbery is unlikely as a motive. Bishop was a drummer with a local band and also waitressed at a coffee shop downtown to make ends meet.”

  “If she was in a band, maybe a stalker fixated on her,” Hope suggested.

  The man who continued to squat on the floor by the body shook his head. “She was killed by a left-handed woman with long blond hair.”

  “How did you come up with all that information in the past, what, twenty minutes?”

  “Fifteen.” Gideon Raintree stood slowly.

  He was over six feet tall—six-one, to be exact, according to his file—so Hope had to crane her neck to look him in the eye. His skin was warm, kissed by the sun, and this close, the green of his eyes was downright remarkable. The goatee and moustache gave him an almost devilish appearance, and somehow it suited him. When his eyes were narrowed and watchful, as they were now, he looked incredibly hard, as if he possessed no more heart than the murderers he pursued. Feeling more than a little like a coward, Hope dropped her gaze to his blue silk tie.

  “From the angle of the wound, it appears that the attacker held the knife in her left hand,” he explained. “The coroner will confirm that, I’m sure.”

  From what she’d heard, Gideon Raintree was always sure of himself. And always right. “You said her. How can you know the killer was a woman?”

  Gideon nodded. “There’s a single long blond hair on the victim’s clothing. Hair that length on a man is possible, but unlikely. Again, the coroner will have to confirm.”

  All right, he was observant. He had done this before. He was good. “How could you possibly know the personal details of her life?” Hope asked. Drummer. No significant other. Waitress in a coffee shop. She quickly scanned the room for clues and saw none.

  “Sherry Bishop was my cousin Echo’s roommate.”

  Hope nodded. She tried to remain unaffected, but the smell was making her queasy.

  Raintree stared right through her with those odd eyes of his. “This is your first homicide, isn’t it?”

  Again Hope nodded.

  “If you’re going to throw up, do it in the hallway. I won’t have you contaminating my crime scene.”

  How thoughtful. “I’m not going to contaminate your crime scene.”

  “Good. If you insist on sticking around, interview the neighbors and see if they heard anything last night or early this morning.”

  Gladly. Hope nodded yet again, then turned to escape from the room, leaving Gideon Raintree alone with the victim. She was quite certain that he was more comfortable with the dead woman than he was with her.

  His new partner was intently interviewing a nosy neighbor, and the crime scene techs were doing their thing inside the apartment. Gideon sat beside Echo on the steps that led to the fourth floor.

  “Is she here?” Echo asked softly.

  No one was paying them any attention at the moment. Gideon didn’t expect that would last long. “She’s sitting behind us.”

  Even though Echo knew she wouldn’t see anything, she glanced over her shoulder to the deserted steps. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known.”

  Like Bishop, Echo was a young twenty-two. She was incredibly talented—as a guitar player and as a seer—but she had little or no control over her gift of prophecy. Calling her psychic wasn’t quite right. She couldn’t tell you where you’d left your wallet or whether or not you would marry within the next year, but she did see disasters. She dreamed of floods and earthquakes. Her nightmares came true.

  Gideon had a touch of pre-cog ability, but not enough to make a significant difference. His instincts were just a hair sharper than was normal, but he didn’t dream about catastrophes and experience them as if he were there—there and unable to do anything to stop what was coming. Compared to Echo’s power, he considered talking to dead people a walk in the park.

  “It was painless,” Gideon said as he put his arm around Echo’s shoulder. “She didn’t even know what happened.”

  “What a load of bull,” Sherry muttered, her voice sour. “It hurt like hell!”

  Fortunately, no one but Gideon heard her.

  “Why would anyone kill Sherry?” Echo asked. The tears hadn’t stopped, but they were softer now. Constant but gentle. “Everyone liked her.”

  “I don’t know.” Something Gideon didn’t like niggled at his brain. Bishop hadn’t recognized her killer. She’d never suspected that her life was in danger. There was no logical reason for her to be dead, much less savagely mutilated. In every case he’d had since moving to Wilmington four years ago, the victim had known the name of the killer. Drugs were the usual motive, but there had been a few crimes of misdirected passion. Murder by stranger was a rare thing. With a few notable exceptions, it took a personal connection for murder to occur.

  He didn’t want to scare his cousin, but there was one possibility he couldn’t ignore. “Have you had any visions lately that might’ve put you in danger?”

  Echo didn’t need to be asked twice. “Do you think the person who killed Sherry was after me?”

  “Son of a bitch!” Sherry said softly. “I never should’ve dyed my hair blond and pink like Echo’s. We thought it would be such a good thing for the band, you know? A trademark. A…a thing…” She pouted. “I thought it was so cute.”

  “It’s just a possibility,” Gideon said softly. “Look, you won’t be able to stay here for a while anyway, so I want you to find yourself a quiet place to crash, and I want you to stay there until I figure this out. Where are your folks?”

  “St. Moritz.”

  Figures. “I don’t want you going that far.” Besides, Echo’s parents were all but useless in a crisis. “You can stay at my place for a few days.”

  Echo sighed and rested her head on her hands. “We have a gig next weekend, so I’m cool until then. I can call the coffee shop and tell them I won’t be in this week, and then I can go to Charlotte and stay with Dewey until Friday.”

  Dewey. Great. The guy was a rail-thin goofy-looking saxophone player who had the hots for Echo, even though she insisted they were just friends. Still, a few days with Dewey would be better than staying around here if there was any chance the murderer had been after Echo and not Sherry. “Call me before you come back to town. You may have to cancel your gig.”

  Echo didn’t protest, as he’d thought she might. “Maybe we should just cancel everything. We’ll never find a drummer to take Sherry’s place. And even if we do, it won’t be the same.”

  Gideon didn’t see Echo often. He was twelve years older than she was, and they had no common interests. In fact, his little cousin had a wild streak that put his teeth on edge. Not that he’d always been a saint. But they were family, and he checked in on her now and then. He had even been to a smoky club to see her band play a couple of times. The music had been too loud and too angry to suit him, but the girls had all seemed to have a good time.

  She was right. It would never be the same.

  “You look tired.”

  Echo shrugged her thin shoulders. “I’m supposed to work this afternoon—you know, at the coffee shop—so I stayed up all night instead of driving home last night or trying to get up early this morning to drive back. You know how I hate to get up early.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “It just made more sense to stay up and drive back to grab something to eat