I Can't Hear You — Vikki Kestell

TWO SCENES, TWO WOMEN, two separate deaths, yet neither death suspicious in and of itself. What confounds Detective Richard Hawke and his partner Dov Mayer is the blood left at both scenes . . . blood that does not belong to either of the deceased. The mystery surrounding the two deaths and the inexplicable blood ritual found with both bodies grows when Grace Warner, a local physician and psychiatrist specializing in hearing disorders, receives a scrawled note and brings it to the homicide detectives: I dint meen to skare her.Was the note written by a juvenile or by an adult with a patchy education? Hawke and Mayer's working theories fall apart when the city experiences a third death, a definite homicide this time, complete with the same strange blood ritual found with the first two bodies. Worse, the grisly murder is followed by another . . . and another and another. As panic takes hold of the city, pressure on Hawke and Mayer to find the killer and end his killing spree intensifies. At the same time, the commonalities between the first two deaths and the ongoing string of murders cannot be ignored. Hawke begins to realize that something much deeper is in play, something hidden yet intensely sinister. Can Hawke and Mayer outthink the killer and capture him before they or those close to them become the hunted?