Some time in the wee hours of the night, Sandy had compared some of the old classifieds with those in last week's paper, but nothing of particular interest had jumped out at her. Ads from years ago and those more recent appeared boringly similar.
“Dead bodies one day and paper cuts the next,” she muttered sardonically to herself. “Talk about extremes. I just love my job.”
The front door opened to admit a gust of really cold air and one FBI agent, and since Sandy's desk was the nearest one occupied beyond the reception area, she got to chase blowing papers around.
“Sorry about that, Deputy,” Bishop apologized.
Sandy got off her knees and back into her chair, wishing he didn't make her feel so flustered. “It's okay, Agent Bishop. Agent Harte is back in the conference room.”
“Thank you.” Bishop nodded courteously with a smile and went on past her desk.
Deputy Brady Shaw waited until the agent disappeared down the hallway before marveling, “Was that an honest-to-God smile? And me without my cameras.”
“He's always polite,” Sandy objected, ruefully aware of defending a man who could undoubtedly defend himself.
“Yeah, but he doesn't waste smiles—even on you, Sandy. At least he didn't yesterday.” Brady nodded judiciously. “The test will be when Sheriff Knight comes in.”
“What test?”
“To see if she's smiling too,” Brady replied with a grin.
Sandy rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. “Honestly, you men. Just because he's in a good mood you figure he got lucky last night.”
“Give me another reason why he'd be in a good mood,” Brady challenged. “We've got a killer running around out there and bodies piling up like cordwood, we're in the middle of a blizzard, the power is failing all over town—and the Bluebird Lodge sucks as a place to stay.”
“I'm going back to work now,” Sandy announced.
“I'll bet twenty bucks that Sheriff Knight is also in a good mood when she gets here.”
“I'm ignoring you.”
Brady chuckled. “Just wait and see if I'm not right.”
Bishop walked into the conference room to find Tony leaning back with his feet propped on the conference table, and said, “Have you even moved since I left last night?”
“Of course I have.” Tony looked at him with bright, speculative eyes.
“Don't even start,” Bishop warned.
“I was just going to observe how much benefit there obviously is in a good night's sleep,” Tony said innocently. “Last night you were pacing holes in the floor, and this morning you're … not nearly as tense.”
Dryly, Bishop said, “Tony, you're about as subtle as neon.”
Tony laughed. “Okay, okay. Where's Miranda?”
“She went by Dr. Daniels's clinic to talk to Bonnie and take her a few things.”
“So the kid's stuck there for the duration?”
“She's safer there.” Bishop briefly explained what he and Miranda believed had happened when Bonnie had used the Ouija board the day before.
Sobered, Tony said, “Poor kid. I always thought being mediumistic would be the least fun ability to have, even if it did confirm some kind of existence beyond death.”
“It's one of the two abilities with the highest potential danger to the psychic, I know that much.”
“What's the other ability? Being able to tap in to the mind of a killer?”
Bishop nodded. “I've known only two psychics with that ability. It killed one of them and damned near killed the other.”
“Miranda's sister,” Tony realized. “And the other— was that the psychic you told us about last year, the one in North Carolina?”
“Cassie Neill. When that case was over and done with, she had almost totally burned out psychically. It'll be years, if ever, before she regains any of her former abilities.”
“You told us it was a good thing, for her.”
“Yeah. She'd devoted her entire adult life to using her abilities to help the police, and she was about as close to a total breakdown as anyone I've ever seen. At least now she can have a shot at a normal life.”
“Odd how some of us have few problems and others seem to be … almost punished … by psychic abilities,” Tony mused.
“Why do you think it was so difficult to pull together an effective team of psychics that it took years to do it?” Bishop said. “Finding genuine psychics wasn't the problem; finding genuine psychics who could handle the work consistently was.”
“Um. Which means we could really use someone like Miranda on the team.”
Bishop picked up a sheaf of messages from the table. “She has a term of office as sheriff to finish out.”
“And then?”
“We haven't talked about it.”
Deciding not to push, Tony said, “Probably best to take things a day at a time for now.” He saw Bishop frown down at the messages, and added, “You asked last night that the deputies taking phone calls note down any comments or questions about how we were able to find Steve Penman's body. There weren't many calls last night, but lots this morning.”
“Have you looked at these?” Bishop asked.
“No, one of the deputies just brought them in a little while ago. Why?”
Grim, Bishop said, “Because the prevailing theory seems to be that we were able to find Penman's body because Liz Hallowell saw it in the tea leaves.”
“Oh,” Tony said. And then, slowly, “Oh, shit.”
SIXTEEN
“No answer at her house or the store.” Miranda cradled the receiver. “She's an early riser, she'd be up by now.”
Bishop checked his watch. “Nearly ten. If the weather reports are on target, we'll get the back side of the storm by noon or a little after.”
Miranda picked up a clipboard from the conference table and studied it with a frown. “Her house isn't in one of the sections reporting a power outage, but even if it were she'd still have the phone. Damn.”
Tony said, “Unless he's stupidly out there now leaving tracks in the snow, or even more stupidly went out in the middle of the storm, he had to have acted fairly early last night, right? Just hours after we found Penman's body. Would he have felt threatened enough to move against her so quickly?”
“Believing it was possible she had a pipeline to his victims?” Bishop barely hesitated. “I'd say yes.”
Miranda nodded. “Then we have to go out there, before the storm gets wound up again. Where's Alex?”
“The lounge,” Tony answered. “When everything was so quiet a few hours ago, he decided to get a little sleep. Want me to wake him?”
“No. If we're very lucky, there won't be any reason to disturb his sleep now or later.” She drew a breath. “In fact, I don't want to tell any of the deputies unless it's necessary. Liz is … very well liked. We'll keep it just between us, for now. Tony, if something has happened, first impressions could be very useful to us.”
“Well, sure, but I'm not especially strong,” he reminded her.
She gave Bishop a wry look, and he said, “At the moment, you have both of us beat.”
Tony blinked. “Ah. I wondered why the transmitter was so silent that I was reduced to trying to read your stone face.”
“Temporarily out of order.”
“How temporarily?”
“A few hours, if we're lucky. A few days, if we're not.”
“Receivers busted too?”
“Afraid so.”
Tony looked from one to the other, having little luck reading two very calm faces. “I see. I don't, actually, but since it's obvious I'm not going to get an explanation, never mind. The timing could be better, guys.”
“No kidding.” Miranda put down the clipboard. “There's some snow gear in one of the storage lockers. You'll both need boots, at least.” She was already wearing hers.
“I'll get them,” Tony said.
“Don't say anything to the others,” Miranda told him.
“Gotcha.”
When they were alone in the conference room, Bishop said, “Assuming we're right about this, none of us could have anticipated that he'd move so fast.”
“I know, I know.” But she was frowning.
And Bishop didn't like something he saw in her face, a tension or strain that hadn't been there just a few minutes ago. “Miranda, none of this is your fault.”
She looked at him steadily. “But Tony's right about our rotten timing. We could hardly have picked a worse moment to have our abilities muted.”
“We didn't pick the moment, it picked us.” Bishop's voice was deliberate. “And I'm not sorry it did. The rate we were going, we were never going to get there without a nudge.”
“It was more of a shove,” she said.
It wasn't like her to be flippant at such a moment, and it told Bishop probably more than she would have liked about her state of mind. He crossed the space between them and lifted a hand to touch her face. “Are you all right?”
“There is,” she said with a touch of grimness, “such a thing as being known too well.”
“What's wrong, Miranda?”
“Me. I'm wrong.”
“In what way?”
Miranda drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I thought I could change things. I thought I could … exert some kind of control over fate, even if only a little. And I thought I had. But if Liz is dead … if she died last night before you came to me … then it's all happening just the way I saw it happen, in spite of what I tried to do to change it. I can't change it. Apparently there's not a goddamned thing I can do to stop any of it.”
Bishop felt a little chill that came from instinct rather than knowledge. “What is it? What did you see?”
Whether Miranda would have answered became moot when Tony returned to the conference room with the snow boots. She turned away from Bishop, becoming once again the brisk and efficient sheriff, and the moment for confidences passed.
Miranda made that even more clear when she decided they should take two vehicles—just in case one of them got stuck in the snow. It was a reasonable precaution, but it was also an obvious desire to be alone for a while since she rather pointedly suggested that Bishop and Tony take their rental SUV.
All the way out to Liz Hallowell's house, even as he concentrated on navigating in the deep snow, Bishop was trying to sort through the images crammed in his mind, all the emotions and events of Miranda's life during the past eight years. He felt frustrated, knowing that the answer was within his grasp if he could only identify it. But it was like searching for a single snapshot in a box filled with them when he wasn't sure what the picture was supposed to look like.
“Boss?”
Slowing cautiously to follow Miranda's Jeep around a corner, Bishop said, “Yeah?”
“If Liz Hallowell is dead … do we let the killer believe he succeeded in silencing our medium?”
“If it'll protect Bonnie, I say we damned well try. And you'll notice Miranda didn't send any of her deputies to the clinic; doing anything to draw attention to Bonnie before we know for sure what's happened could be a bad mistake.”
“So could waiting,” Tony offered soberly.
“I know. And so does Miranda.”
Tony was silent for half a block; then, as he drew his weapon and checked it absently, he said, “Either the transmitter's beginning to recover, or you're worried as hell, because I can feel it.”
Bishop tried experimentally to focus his spider-sense. “No, I'm still pretty much blind at the moment.”
“And worried?”
“Let's just say I don't like the way things are shaping up.”
“Can't say that I blame you about that.”
Nothing more was said, and minutes later they reached Liz Hallowell's house. Bishop parked his vehicle behind Miranda's, and they joined her outside.
She was studying the smooth expanse of pristine snow covering the ground, Liz's parked car, and the small house. “Nobody's gone in or out of the house this way for hours at least,” she said.
“I'll check the back.” Tony headed off to make a wide circuit of the house. Minutes later, he returned. “Nope, no sign anyone's come or gone since the storm got serious last night.”
“Feel anything?” Bishop asked.
“I don't feel anybody alive in there,” Tony said reluctantly.
Miranda sighed, her breath misting the air. “Shit.” The curse was too weary to hold any other emotion. “Anything else?”
Tony was silent for a minute, his attention and senses focused on the house, then frowned at the other two. “You know, for a murderous maniac, this guy has some peculiar emotions. What I feel most of all is intense regret. I mean, bordering on actual grief. He did not want to do … whatever it is he did.”
Grim, Miranda said, “Let's go find out what he did.”
They trusted Tony's sense of the place, but nevertheless drew their weapons automatically as they cautiously approached the house. They found the front door unlocked and went inside swiftly and silently, protecting one another and alert to possible danger.
Bishop didn't need his spider-sense to know there was no longer anything dangerous here, but he moved carefully, like the others, as he began searching the house. The big and open kitchen/dining/family-room area was easy to look over, and all that met their eyes was a placid cream-colored cat with chocolate points sitting on the back of the sofa; the cat didn't seem the slightest bit disturbed by strangers and was busily engaged in washing one brown forepaw.
They split up to check the other rooms. Bishop and Tony found nothing, and were just coming back up the hallway when Miranda emerged from the master bedroom. She leaned against the doorjamb, slowly returning her pistol to the hip holster she was wearing today.
Bishop felt an odd ripple in their connection, a flutter of emotions that marked the beginning of the return of his abilities. It told him much more clearly than her utterly remote expression that Miranda was badly shaken. It also told him why.
“Tony,” she said, her voice carefully matter-of-fact, “could you do me a favor?” She wasn't looking at them but toward the living room.
“Sure,” he responded instantly, his fixed attention showing that Bishop wasn't the only one whose extra senses were on the alert.
“There must be a carrier or crate for the cat around here somewhere. Could you look for it, please? And put the cat in it when you find it?”
Tony looked at the cat still busily cleaning its forepaw, then sent one quick glance toward the master bedroom. His face paled. “Yeah,” he said a bit jerkily. “Yeah, I'll do that.”
When he had gone, Bishop stepped to the doorway beside Miranda. He reached out and grasped her arm, needing to touch her.
“I'd read about it,” she said. “Even saw a couple of pictures in a training manual. But this is the first time …”
“The survival instinct,” Bishop said. “You can't blame the cat for that.”
“Yeah. Except that somehow I do.” Softly, without looking at him, she added, “Alex is not going to see that.”
Bishop didn't argue. He squeezed her arm gently, then went past her into the bedroom. Wary of disturbing any evidence, he stepped inside just far enough to be able to study the scene.
Steeled by Miranda's warning, he wasn't shocked by what he saw, but he was somewhat surprised by a couple of things.
Liz Hallowell lay in the center of her double bed, for all the world as if she'd simply gone to sleep as usual. Had such care been taken for Liz's sake or because her murderer was trying to tell them something?
Guilt? Reluctance? Maybe this time, whether consciously or unconsciously, he wanted them to know he regretted at least this murder, this death.
She looked so peaceful. The covers were drawn up to her chin, sheet and comforter folded neatly, the bed smooth and unblemished—except for the small circle of blood over her abdomen that marked the location of the wound that had killed her.
That must have been what first attracted t
he cat.
There were only a few flecks of blood on the pillow on one side of her head, the side where some of the skin had been peeled from her face. The cat had been neat.
And, apparently, not very hungry.
Bonnie came out of Amy's room and closed the door. Sedated again, her friend would sleep for a few more hours; it had so far proven unwise to allow her to be awake for long, since all she did was cry. Bonnie felt helpless, and it wasn't a feeling she enjoyed. She was also jumpy, and started when Seth put a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey—what's wrong?”
“You just startled me, that's all.”
“I know the feeling,” Seth said ruefully, taking her hand as they began walking down the quiet hall. “It must be the storm or something, but I've been jumping at shadows all morning.”
“Shadows,” Bonnie said.
“Yeah, you know what I mean. You get edgy and your mind starts playing tricks on you, starts telling you there's somebody behind you when there isn't. Like that.” He didn't tell her about his imaginings of the night before.
Bonnie frowned briefly, but when she spoke, it was to say, “I promised your dad I'd read stories to Christy and Jordan, try to settle them down. They're jumpy too.”
“The storm,” Seth said. “According to the weather reports, this afternoon will be even worse than last night.” He sent her a searching look. “You've been awfully quiet since Miranda came by here. Bonnie, if you'd rather be home—”
“No,” she said, “I'd rather be here, with you.”
“You're sure? Because I can take you to your house and stay there with you.”
Bonnie hesitated, then said steadily, “Here is safer, Seth.”
“Safer?”
“I know your dad thought Amy was just hysterical when she babbled all that stuff about me being a medium, but somebody must have taken her seriously; Randy says people are talking about how they were able to find Steve's body.”