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occurred to me that he might have been the one who locked the door.”
    “You just leaped to the conclusion that a crime had been committed?”
    “A crime was committed,” she said drily. “Whoever entered my aunt’s house and installed that padlock had, at the very least, broken into the place.”
    He sat back, thinking about it. His cop instincts were not entirely satisfied but at least he now had a rational explanation for her actions. That was a very good thing because the detectives from Seattle and Portland as well as the media were already on their way. He had a press conference to prepare for. It was going to be a zoo. Discovering the young woman alive in the basement of the old Tallentyre house was the biggest break yet in the unsolved murders attributed to the Bonfire Killer, and he was the man in charge.
    “Thank you, Miss Tallentyre. That’s all for now. How long will you be in town?”
    “I’m going back to Oriana in the morning.” She rose and paused with an inquiring expression. “Unless I can get into the house tomorrow? I’m really anxious to put it on the market.”
    “It’s a crime scene now. Going to stay that way for a few days.” He stood. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
    “I understand.” She hitched the strap of her dark green purse over one shoulder.
    “Where are you staying tonight?”
    “The Shelbyville B and B.” She took her long black raincoat off a wall hook. “You have my contact information in Oriana.”
    “Right.”
    Belatedly he realized he should have helped her with the raincoat. But she already had it on. Strange how much it resembled a long black cape.
    He did manage to open the door for her. She paused before going through it. He got the feeling she had decided there was something unpleasant she had to say before she left.
    “Do you want to know what my intuition tells me about the killer?” she asked without inflection.
    Here it comes. Damn . Just when he had begun to hope that she wasn’t going to tell him she was psychic.
    “Sure,” he said, keeping his tone just as even as her own. “Tell me about the killer.”
    She seemed to draw even deeper into herself. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly but he could see that she was determined to say whatever it was she had to say.
    “He locked the woman in the basement because his mother used to punish him that way,” she said quietly. “She left him in the dark for hours and then she beat him with a belt because he had befouled himself while he was confined. She told him that there was a demon inside him and that she had to drive it out.”
    “No offense, Miss Tallentyre, but that’s the kind of useless crap every so-called profiler I’ve ever met says about the perp. Next you’ll be telling me that he’s an organized killer, right? That he’s a white male somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four. That he’s an intelligent loner with no close ties to family, church or community.”
    “I don’t know about those things,” she said very steadily, “but I can tell you that you’re looking for a man who is convinced that he has been possessed by a demon. He thinks of himself as a witch hunter.”
    He exhaled heavily. “I appreciate your insights.”
    “The first witch he ever killed was his mother. He covered up the crime by setting fire to her body. That should give you a starting point. He obviously got away with that murder, which implies that it is either a cold case or a death that was made to look like an accident.”
    He was not impressed. “They call this guy the Bonfire Killer because he kills his victims, dumps them in a field and sets fire to the bodies, destroying all the evidence. No big secret there.” He paused, intrigued in spite of himself. “What makes you think he killed his mother?”
    “Intuition,” she said coolly.
    She was really giving him the creeps now. Raine Tallentyre was either a consummate actress or a total nutcase like her aunt.
    “Right, thanks,