Stealing Shadows by Kay Hooper

counter as she did. "We don't have homeless in any real sense. The churches in the area are pretty good at helping people in need. As for the disturbed or disabled, there are a few of those middle-aged men you see in most small towns, not 'slow' enough to be unemployable, but not bright enough to be trained for anything but pushing a broom. And there's one woman who's been a well-known character in this town for at least ten years. She escapes her son's watchful eye from time to time and wanders around downtown picking up invisible things from the sidewalk." Ben paused and shook his head. "Nobody knows what she thinks she's picking up, but if you try to stop her, she cries as if her heart's breaking."
     
    Cassie looked down at her coffee. "The wreck of a life."
     
    "Her son says she just went away one day."
     
    "I wonder why," Cassie murmured. "Something like that, there ought to at least be a trigger."
     
    "If something definitive happened, I don't know what it was. The family keeps pretty much to themselves, and they don't welcome questions. It's a common enough trait around here."
     
    Cassie nodded distractedly. Then she seemed to rouse herself from pity and focus on the practical. "I would say she seems an unlikely target, but those men… The sheriff might want to keep an eye on them."
     
    "He will. We've both seen a crowd turn ugly and start looking around for a target. That isn't something you forget, believe me."
     
    "What about people with criminal records?"
     
    "We have our share. The habituals commit mostly petty stuff though – housebreaking, fighting with their neighbors or their girlfriends' ex-lovers, drunk and disorderly. The sort of troublemakers who have their own bunks in Matt's jail and make regular visits on Saturday nights. As for anything else, crimes of real violence are rare around here. I've prosecuted a couple of manslaughter cases, but liquor and spite were involved both times. Convenience-store holdups, a few half-assed bank robberies over the years. But no crime to even hint there's someone living here in this town – or this county – who's capable of butchering three women." Ben sighed. "That high-tech forensics van Matt managed to wring out of his budget last year was mostly gathering dust. Until Thursday."
     
    "So there's no one target a panicked town would immediately look to."
     
    "Not that I know of."
     
    "Except for me."
     
    He waited until she looked him in the eye, then agreed. "Except you. But I'd say the possibility of anything happening to you because of that is very slight. Cassie, I don't doubt that when word finally gets out about you, there'll be suspicion. But in all honesty, even a panicked town would have to be totally out of its collective mind to suspect you of three especially vicious murders. It doesn't always take muscle to kill, but Jill studied karate as a kid, and Ivy quite obviously fought like a wildcat. You couldn't have killed them, and it's obvious."
     
    "A reasonable argument. But the need to blame that grows out of panic is seldom based on logic, and you know it."
     
    "I know it. Even so, I doubt anyone will seriously suspect you. Oh, they'll look at you and talk about you and wonder, and you'll probably get at least a few nasty phone calls accusing you of being a witch or worse, but I don't believe this town will condemn you as a killer."
     
    Cassie returned her gaze to her coffee.
     
    "He's the one you have to worry about. That madman out there. The threat to you is from him."
     
    "I know."
     
    "I talked to Matt about it this afternoon, and he's agreed to say nothing to anyone about you helping us. Neither will I, of course. The longer we can keep it quiet, the less chance there is of the bastard finding out about you."
     
    She smiled faintly. "So you think we've got – what? – forty-eight hours or so before the whole town knows?"
     
    Rueful, he said, "About that, probably. Secrets do tend to get out in small towns."
     
    "Well, I'll