install half a dozen smoke detectors. Kept lots of fire extinguishers in the house. Had those little window emergency ladders in all the upstairs rooms. She wouldnt even allow a fire to be built in the fireplace.
Phobic.
For sure.
Five
Her name is Stacy Anderson, Raine said into her cell phone. They think she may be the latest victim of that freak the press calls the Bonfire Killer, the one that has been trolling among the prostitutes in Seattle and Portland.
Damn. Andrew Kitredge sounded more resigned than surprised. You cant even leave town for a day without stumbling onto a murder scene.
She almost smiled. Andrew was one of the few people in the world who was aware of her littleeccentricity , as he called it, and took it in stride. His life partner, Gordon Salazar, was another who accepted her, voices and all.
Aunt Vella had understood her, of course, and her father, if he was still alive, would have considered her psychic side normal. But Judson Tallentyre died in a car accident when Raine was six and now Vella was gone, as well.
She had no other close blood relatives. Her mother died when she was a year and a half old. Judson Tallentyre, forced to surface from his precious research in order to deal with the nuisance of caring for a baby daughter, had asked his sister to move into the household. Vella agreed, taking Raine into her heart immediately.
Childcare issues resolved, Judson immediately disappeared back into his lab.
The day of his funeral had been a turning point in Raines young life. The small, sad ceremony was conducted in a gray, northwest mist. It was followed by what she had come to think of as the Night of Fire and Tears. She did not recall everything about that fateful evening but a series of frightening and disturbing snapshots had been forever etched in her mind.
A few months after the terrible night, Vella had sunk into the first of what would prove to be a number of long and extended depressive episodes. Aware that she could no longer care for a little girl on her own and terrified that the state would take Raine away and put her into the foster system, she turned to her best friend from childhood, Andrew Kitredge, and his partner, Gordon.
Andrew and Gordon never hesitated. They took Raine and Vella into their lives, assuming responsibility for Raine whenever Vella spiraled downward into one of her episodes. Somehow the four of them had formed a family, shielding Raine from the long arm of the state.
You dont have to make it sound like I do it deliberately, she said to Andrew, trying to lighten the mood.
I know you dont, Andrew said. But you have to admit that your little eccentricities have a tendency to rattle nerves.
Okay, Ill grant you that much.
She had been rattling Andrews and Gordons nerves ever since the summer of her nineteenth year, when she stumbled onto her first crime scene: that of a woman who had been murdered by her stalker-husband.
She settled deeper into the chair, propped her stocking-clad feet on a hassock and studied the view out the window. It wasnt quite six oclock but night came early in the Cascades, especially at this time of year.
Thank God that girl was still alive, Andrew said. I cant even imagine what her family must have gone through after she disappeared.
She told Langdon that she doesnt have any family, at least not one she wants to acknowledge. Evidently shes been living on the streets for the past couple of years. The chief says that fits the profile of the Bonfire Killers victims. Theyve found three bodies so far, all young women with backgrounds like Andersons. One was from Portland. The others were from Seattle.
Classic serial killer victims, Andrew mused. The kind of people no one misses when they disappear. I wonder why Stacy Anderson was still alive when you found her.
She said the freak told her that she needed to be punished first by being