An Ice cold Grave

Twelve

MANFRED'S mother, Rain Bernardo, was a younger version of her mother. The resemblance was only physical, I discovered. Rain was not the least bit psychic, and she hadn't had any special rapport with Xylda. Rain worked in a factory and had risen to management level. She was proud of that. She was proud of being a single mom. She was dismayed that Manfred had followed in Xylda's footsteps and not hers. But she loved her son, and she'd loved her mother, and she was pretty subdued at Manfred's bedside. "Subdued," for Rain, meant she only talked fifty words a second instead of a hundred.

She had the family red hair, and she had the curves of her mother, but in Rain's case they weren't nearly as generous. In fact, Rain was a very attractive woman, and I was pretty sure she hadn't seen her fortieth birthday yet.

We were there when the first of the usual callers came in. Barney Simpson was more solemn than I'd ever seen him, and I wondered if he was a friend of Tom Almand's. After Barney had asked his usual questions about his patient's comfort and contentment with the treatment he was receiving in the hospital, he lingered. I wondered if he was admiring Rain. After all, he was a divorced guy.

"I'm very sorry about your mother," Barney told Rain. "She was a colorful lady, and I know you'll miss her. She made quite an impression on this little community in the short time she was here. She'll be long remembered."

That was a model of tact, I thought. Though Manfred was lying there pale and in pain, a twitch of a smile crossed his face.

"I appreciate your saying that," Rain said, not to be outdone in courtesy. "Thank you for taking such good care of her. Manfred said you came by to see her. Her health was so poor that both Manfred and I know she was due to go anytime, and we don't blame the hospital for anything." She cast a quelling look at Manfred, who had closed his eyes, absenting himself from the whole conversation.

"Manfred thinks she should have an autopsy," Rain said. "And she hadn't been under a doctor's care here in Doraville. Though of course she had doctors in Tennessee, and she saw her cardiologist right before she left for Doraville. What do you think?"

Dr. Thomason came in then, said, "It's raining outside, folks," and shook a few droplets off his umbrella. "Just rain, not ice," he added reassuringly.

"It's good you came in here now," Barney said. "Let me tell you what we've been talking about." Barney repeated Rain's question. "What about it, Len?" he asked.

"Depends on what we hear from her doctor in Tennessee," Len Thomason said, considering. "If her doctor there is of the opinion that her death was expectable, not a surprise, no questions to be answered about it, then I think it would be reasonable to assume we didn't need an autopsy, and that's what I'll recommend to the coroner. On the other hand," he went on, raising both his hands to show us "caution," "if that doctor isn't satisfied—and he knew her best—we'll have to check into it."

Dr. Thomason had put it in such a matter-of-fact way that you felt quite sane and reasonable after listening, and you were sure this was the right course. That manner of his must have been invaluable to his practice. It was almost enough to make me ashamed I'd suspected he might have had something to do with the boys' deaths. Now, as I watched him smile gravely at some question of Rain's, I could only imagine all over again how easily Len Thomason could persuade a boy to go with him anywhere. Everyone trusts a doctor. There were a hundred things he could have said to induce a young man to go off with him. Right now I couldn't think of any, but I was sure given time I would.

Even Barney Simpson, who didn't seem like the most lighthearted of individuals, perked up around Dr. Thomason. I remembered he'd gone in to talk to Xylda the night before; no, he'd peeked in and gone away. He hadn't even gone into the room.

Doak Garland was across the hall, praying with some relatives outside a room with an "Oxygen in Use" sign on the door. Anyone would go with him, too. He was so meek and mild, so pink and polite.

Why was I even worried about further suspects? Tom Almand had been arrested. The case was closed. It was hard to believe one man could cause so much misery. Even Almand's own son had died of his evil. There was something about the whole thing that felt—unsealed, uncompleted.

I was sure that Tom had had an accomplice, a partner in crime.

Once I admitted this to myself, the idea wouldn't go away. While Tolliver talked to Barney Simpson, and Rain discussed Manfred's injury with Dr. Thomason, I picked out the reasons I suspected this. I had them all in my head when I looked up to meet Manfred's eyes. I felt Manfred connect with me. Suddenly Manfred said, "Mom."

Startled, Rain turned to the bed. "What, honey? You feeling okay?"

"I've been thinking," he said. "I won't argue with you about the autopsy if you'll let Harper touch Grandmother and tell us what she sees."

Rain looked from Manfred to me, and I could tell from her compressed lips that she was trying to hide revulsion. She not only hadn't fully believed in her mother's talent, she had loathed it. "Oh, Manfred," she said, really upset, "that won't be necessary. And I'm sure Harper wouldn't want to do that."

"I'll know how she died," I said. "And I'm sure cheaper and less invasive than an autopsy."

"Harper," she said, giving me a face full of disappointment. She struggled with herself for a minute, and I felt sorry for her. Abruptly she swung toward Dr. Thomason. "Would you mind very much, Doctor? If Harper—sees—my mother?"

"No, not at all," Dr. Thomason said. "We medical people long ago realized that there's more to this earth than we see in our practice. If that would bring comfort to your son, and you're agreeable…" He seemed sincere. But then, a sociopath like the one who'd killed the boys would seem very normal, right? Otherwise, people would have spotted him a long time ago.

"Have you heard anything about the boy who was taken to Asheville?" I asked.

"Yes, I have." Thomason nodded several times. "He's not talking, not at all. But they don't think his life is in danger. They think he'll recover. Most of his silence is psychological, not physical. That is, his tongue and voice box are in working order. Lungs, too. Well. Miss Connelly, the body is at Sweet Rest Funeral Home on Main. I'll call them after I leave here, and they'll be expecting you."

I inclined my head. I wasn't looking forward to this, but I did want to know what had taken Xylda into the other world. I owed her that much. And Manfred, too.

"How long do you think Manfred will need to stay in the hospital?" Rain asked.

Dr. Thomason, who'd been on the point of leaving the room, turned to give Manfred an assessing look. "If all his vitals stay good, and he doesn't run any fever or have any other symptoms that scare me, tomorrow should be good," he said. "How about you, young lady? Your pain better?" he asked me suddenly.

"I'm doing much better, thank you," I said. Barney Simpson had been trying to find a break in the conversation to take his leave, and he said "See you later" to everyone in the room and strode out the door.

Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the shock to his nerves the past week had been, but out of the blue Manfred said, "Well, when's the wedding?"

There was instant silence in the room. Dr. Thomason completed his own departure in a hurry, and left Rain looking from the bed to Tolliver and me, almost as astonished as we were.

I'd known Manfred wouldn't be happy, but I hadn't thought he'd be angry. I told myself to bear in mind his many shocks of the past few days. Tolliver said, "We haven't set a date yet," which was yet another surprise I hadn't wanted.

Now I was mad at everyone. Rain was gaping, Manfred was looking sullen, and Tolliver was really furious.

"I'm sorry," Rain said in a brittle voice. "I thought you two were brother and sister. I misunderstood, I guess."

I took a deep breath. "We're no relation, but we spent our teen years in the same house," I said, trying to keep my voice gentle and level. "Now, I think, Manfred must be tired. We'll just go over to the funeral home. Sweet Rest, I think the doctor said?"

"Yes," Rain said, "I think that was it." She looked confused, and who could blame her?

As we strode out of the hospital, Tolliver said, "Don't let him spook you, Harper."

"You think Manfred saying the word ‘wedding' is going to spook me?" I laughed, but it didn't sound amused. "I know we're okay. We don't need to take any big jumps. We know that. Right?"

"Right," he said firmly. "We've got all the time in the world."

I wasn't in the habit of feeling so sure about that, since I spent a lot of time with surprised dead people. But I was going to let it slide for now.

This funeral home was one of the one-story brick models, with a parking lot that would fill up way too quickly. I've been in hundreds of funeral homes, since lots of people don't make up their minds until the last minute about asking me in. This would be one of the two-viewing-rooms kind, I was willing to put money on it. After we walked into the lobby, sure enough there were two doors facing us, each with a podium outside with a signing book waiting for mourners. A sign on a stand, the kind with removable white letters that stick into rows of black feltlike material, said that the viewing room on the right contained James O. Burris. The one on the left was empty. There were also rooms to our right and left; one of those would be for the owner. The other would be for a co-owner or assistant, or it would maybe be employed as a small reception room for the bereaved family.

And here came the funeral director herself, a comfortably round woman in her fifties. She was wearing a neat pantsuit and comfortable shoes, and her hair and makeup were also on the comfortable side.

"Hello," she said, with a kind of subdued smile that must be her stock-in-trade. "Are you Ms. Connelly?"

"I am."

"And you're here to view the remains of Mrs. Bernardo?"

"I am."

"Tolliver Lang," Tolliver said, and held out his hand.

"Cleda Humphrey," she said, and shook it heartily. She led us to the back of the building, down a long central hall. There was a rear door, which she unlocked, and we followed her across a bit of parking lot to a large building in the back, which was really a very nice shed that was brick, to match the main building. "Mrs. Bernardo is back here," she said, "since she's not going to be buried here. We keep our temporary visitors in a transition room back here."

"Transition room" turned out to be Cleda Humphrey's comfort-speak for "refrigerator." She opened a gleaming stainless steel door and a draft of cold air billowed out. In a black plastic bag on a gurney lay Xylda. "She's still in her hospital gown, with all the tubes and so on still attached until the autopsy decision is made," the funeral director said.

Shit, I thought. Tolliver's face went very rigid. "At least her soul's gone," I said, and I could have slapped myself when I realized I'd spoken out loud.

"Oh," said the cheerful, motherly woman. "You can see 'em, too."

"Yes," I said, really startled.

"I thought I might be the only one."

"I don't think there are many of us," I said. "Does it help in your job?"

"When they're gone like they should be," Cleda said. "If I see one lingering, I try to call in their pastor to read a prayer. Sometimes that does the trick."

"I'll have to remember that," I said faintly. "All right. Let me do my thing." I closed my eyes, which wasn't necessary but did help, and to get the best impression possible, I laid my hand on the bag. I could feel the chill flesh under the surface.

I feel so bad, I'm so tired…. Where's Manfred? What's that man doing here? Looking at me. So tired…sleep.

My eyes flew open to meet the funeral director's curious blue gaze.

"Natural death," I said. It wasn't murder if someone else just stood there and watched. I'd had no sense of touching, or any other kind of contact. Someone, some man, had watched Xylda in her last moments, but that was hardly surprising. It might have been the doctor or a nurse. There was no way to tell. However, the image I got was chilling—someone calmly and dispassionately watching Xylda die. Not aiding, but not preventing, either.

"Oh, good," Cleda said. "Well, I'm sure the family will be glad to know that."

I nodded.

The black bag went back into the transition room.

In a somber silence, we retraced our steps across the parking lot and through the corridor back to the front doors of the funeral home.

"I guess you're braced for a huge amount of business," Tolliver said. "When the bodies of the—the young men—are released." I was sure he'd been going to say "victims."

"We're going to be pretty busy, yes, sir," she said. "One of those boys was my nephew. His mama, my brother's wife, she can't hardly get out of bed in the morning. It'd be one thing if someone had grabbed him and killed him—that would be bad enough. But to know he lived for a while, and got hurt so bad, and got used so unnatural, that just kills her."

There was no possible response that would be helpful, because I thought she was exactly right. To know your loved one was cut and burned and raped would make the fact of his death much worse, and there was nothing to be done about it. I'd always figured my sister Cameron had been raped before she'd been killed, without ever having proof of either. And just imagining it might have happened was pretty damn awful. I thought the act of rape itself was unnatural, regardless of the gender of the victim. But an emotional time like this was no time to debate the issue.

"We're really sorry," I said.

"Thank you," Cleda Humphrey said with dignity, and we let ourselves out.

"She was pretty decent," Tolliver said as we got into the car. "Probably the most relaxed funeral home person we've ever dealt with."

That was certainly true. "She seemed to take us pretty much in stride," I said.

"Nice change."

I nodded.

Pastor Doak Garland pulled into the parking lot in his modest Chevrolet just as Tolliver was putting the keys in the ignition. He approached the car, so Tolliver turned the key and pressed the window button.

"Hello again," Doak said, bending down to look at us.

"What are you busy doing?" I asked, hoping he wouldn't ask us about our own visit to Sweet Rest.

"Well, one of the bodies is already being released tomorrow, Jeff McGraw's, so I'm here to talk to Cleda about the service. I think we'll need extra traffic control, so I've already been to the sheriff's department, and I think Cleda needs to be prepared for an extra visitation night."

"This is going to take it out of you," Tolliver said. "There are a lot of services coming up."

"Well, I wasn't the minister for all these boys," Doak said with a gentle smile. "But the whole community will turn out for each funeral, so we're all in for a hard time. And maybe we should be. How could this happen in our midst, and we knew nothing?"

That was too big a question for me. "Wouldn't some of that be due to the former sheriff, Abe, um, Madden?" I said. "Wouldn't some of that be due to his policy of pretending the boys were runaways instead of missing and in danger? He seemed willing to shoulder his share of the blame at the memorial meeting the other night."

Doak Garland looked taken aback. "Maybe we shouldn't be into pointing fingers," he said, but he didn't say it with any force. It was clear he wasn't thinking about Abe Madden's role in the terrible drama for the first time. "You really think that had a bearing?" he said.

"Of course," I said, surprised. I didn't know Abe Madden. I didn't have to be careful of his feelings or his reputation. "If his attitude toward the vanishing boys was really the one I've heard described, then of course it had a bearing. Possibly if the investigation had gotten under way quicker, we'd have a few more kids walking around alive."

"But will assigning blame make this any easier?" Doak asked rhetorically.

I decided to take the question literally. "Yes, it will, for everyone but Abe Madden," I said. "Assigning blame does help people feel better, in a lot of ways. At least in my experience. Plus, if you can correct the behavior that led to the problem, the problem might not repeat itself." I shrugged. Maybe, maybe not.

I'll say this for Doak Garland, he didn't just whip out a platitude, as some men of the cloth were prone to do. He mulled the idea over. "There's a lot in that," he said. "But really, Ms. Connelly, that's just assigning a scapegoat to bear the sins of all of us."

I thought in my turn. "Okay, there's something to that, too," I admitted. "But there is blame to be assigned here, and the former sheriff should shoulder at least some of it."

"As he did," Doak Garland said. "In fact, it would be a good idea if I dropped by to see him. He may be thinking the same way you are."

I wondered if the pastor was trying to make me feel guilty in turn, but I didn't. I don't like to see people get depressed or shunned, but I knew that in my own experience, you had to assume responsibility for your own actions before you could move along with your life.

We didn't have any more to say, I felt. I raised my eyebrows at Tolliver, and he said, "Pastor, we've got to be going." Without further conversation, we rolled up our windows and pulled out of the parking lot.

"Where are we going?" Tolliver asked. "I mean, I can drive around aimlessly, but since there are still patches of ice…"

"I'm hungry, what about you?" I asked, and that was easy to answer. All the businesses in Doraville appeared to be open now, and people were going about their affairs with an air of relief. I felt relieved, too. We could get out of here just about any time now.

"What if we just left?" Tolliver said. "We could be on the interstate going in the right direction in an hour. We could find twenty restaurants."

I was surely tempted. We were sitting in the parking lot of the McDonald's again, and I stared at the golden arches, trying to feel something besides resignation.

"We have to return the key," I said, stalling.

"Yeah, a five-minute delay."

"Will they let us?"

"‘They' being the SBI guys? Sandra Rockwell?"

"Any of the above."

"What could they want us for?"

"We haven't signed a statement about yesterday."

"Yeah, true. We might need to stop by the police station for forty-five minutes and do that. Okay, let's go get a burger, and then we'll tie things up."

I wanted to leave, really I did, but there was something nagging at me, or maybe two or three things nagging at me. But I kept reminding myself I wasn't a police officer, and I wasn't responsible. On the other hand, if I suspected something, I should mention it to someone who'd take me seriously.

I hardly registered standing in line with Tolliver, whom I had to stop thinking of as my brother. We were way past that now. And I realized that now I could touch him in public. Now he knew how I felt. He felt the same way. I didn't have to hide it anymore. It was awful how strong the habit of standing away from him, not touching him, not watching him, had become once I was afraid of losing him if he realized that I loved him. Since the ice storm, I could watch him all I wanted, and he would enjoy it.

"Do you remember us talking yesterday about what Xylda said in Memphis? That in the time of ice, we would be so happy?" I asked him.

"She did say that. We agreed that Xylda wasn't a fraud, at least not all of the time."

"I think that as she got older, she got closer to the bone," I said.

"I don't know if that daughter of hers will ever believe it."

"Rain just wants everything to be normal," I said. "Maybe if I'd been brought up by Xylda, with all her ups and downs and spiritual moments, I'd be the same way."

"I think the way we were brought up was bad enough."

He was right about that. Being raised by Xylda would have been a cakewalk compared to living in the trailer in Texarkana.

I thought again of the sacrifice Chuck Almand had made as I sat alone at our table, waiting for Tolliver to bring our order. I'd gathered the napkins and straws with one hand, transported them, and returned to get the ketchup packets. I stared down at the table, which was clean, and wished I never had to go into another fast-food place in my life, before I returned to the subject of Chuck, niggling at the puzzle of his behavior.

Tolliver put the tray on the table, and I began taking my food off. At least I could eat this food one-handed. Without asking, Tolliver tore open three ketchups for me and squirted them on my French fries.

"Thanks," I said, and went back to thinking. But this was no place to tell Tolliver what I was worried about, even if I could put it together—not here, where every soul in Doraville who wasn't at school or at work was crowded in together sharing germs and eating food that was bad for them. I lost my appetite quickly, and piled my trash back on the tray.

"What's wrong?" Tolliver asked. He did care, but I could hear the undertone of anxiety, maybe of irritation. He wanted to leave. Doraville gave him the creeps and the deaths of all those young men was giving him nightmares.

"After we leave here, let's go out to the death site," I said. "I'm really, really sorry," I added when I saw the expression on his face. "But I need to."

"We found the bodies," he said, in as low a voice as he could manage. "We found them. We did what was required. We got our money."

We so seldom disagreed, or at least we hardly ever felt so strongly about our disagreements. I felt sick.

"I'm sorry," I said again. "Can we just leave here, and talk about it?"

In a stiff silence Tolliver dumped our trash into the receptacle and thumped the tray down on top. He held the door for me when we left, and unlocked the car and got in the driver's side, of course, but he didn't start it up. He sat there waiting for an explanation. He'd almost never done that before. Usually, whatever I said went. But now our relationship had changed in deep ways, and we didn't yet know the new balance. It had shifted, though. Now I had to explain, and I accepted that. It hadn't always been comfortable, being Queen of the World. I'd gotten a little too used to it, too.

In the past, I would simply have told him I needed to see the site again, and he would have driven me there without asking me any further questions. At least, most of the time. I pulled my left leg up on the seat and twisted so my back was to the passenger door. He was waiting.

"Here's my thinking." I took a deep breath. "In the story we've got now, the way it looks, Chuck Almand was helping his dad secure the boys. His dad was bringing him along in the family business by showing him how to kill cats and dogs and other small animals, so Chuck would grow up into a big serial killer like Papa Tom. Right?"

Tolliver nodded.

"But that thinking is wrong," I said. "If Chuck was helping his dad, if we accept the idea that it would take more than two people to subdue the boys—"

"Gacy worked alone," Tolliver said.

That was true. John Wayne Gacy had tortured and killed boys in the Chicago area, and he'd acted alone. Plus, in the pictures I'd seen, he hadn't looked like any really fit guy. "He got them to put on handcuffs, right?" I said. "Told them they were trick handcuffs and he'd show them how to take them off, and then they turned out to be real?"

"I think so."

"So he had a gimmick, and so might Tom," I said.

"And Dahmer acted by himself."

"Yeah."

"So I don't think you're making such a point."

"I'm thinking there were two people." It would have been much easier to subdue a healthy adolescent male if there were two abductors. And maybe the boys had been kept alive for a time so two men could enjoy them, each in his own way. "Maybe one got off on the sex, one on the torture, or each on some personal combination of the two. Or maybe one just enjoyed the death. There are people like that. That's why the boys lived for a while. And we know they did. So the killers could have equal time with their victim."

"And you're sure about this."

"I can't say a hundred percent sure. I think so."

"Based on what?"

"Okay, maybe based on something intangible from their graves," I said. "Maybe just my imagination."

"So—there was Chuck. And Tom made Chuck help him."

"No. I don't think so. That's where I was going when we started talking about Gacy and Dahmer. See, the animals were pretty fresh. But the boys have been vanishing for five years, right? More or less. The animals, well, none of them had been dead for longer than a year, looked like. Warm summers here, lots of bugs."

"So what's the bottom line?"

"Tom's helper wasn't Chuck. It was someone else, someone who's still at large."

Tolliver looked at me with a completely blank face. I had no idea what he was thinking or whether he agreed with me.

I held my hands out, palms up. "What?" I said.

"I'm thinking," he said. He turned on the car while he thought, which was good, because it was feeling pretty chilly. Finally he said, "So, what to do?"

"I have no idea," I said. "I need to run in to tell Manfred his grandmother died on her own. Though there was someone there who didn't do anything about it."

"What?"

"Someone watched her die. Someone didn't call for help. Not that I think it would've done any good. But…" I shook my head. "That's just creepy. She knew someone was standing and watching."

"But not harming her. And not helping."

"No," I said. "Just watching."

"Could it have been Manfred himself?"

I snatched at the idea. That would make sense. Manfred wouldn't necessarily have known Xylda was passing. "No," I said reluctantly, after I'd thought about my connection with Xylda's last moment in the funeral home cooler. "No, it wasn't Manfred. At least, if it was, Xylda was beyond recognizing her own grandson, and I didn't get any sense of that much disorientation from our connection."

Tolliver dropped me off while he went to gas up the car. I strode through the hospital like I worked there, and I got to Manfred's room to find he was by himself. Trying not to look too relieved—Rain was probably a nice woman but she was a lot of work—I went directly to his bedside and touched his hand. Manfred's eyes sprang open, and for a second I thought he was going to yell.

"Oh, thank God it's you," he said when he'd grasped who I was. "What did you find out?"

"Your grandmother died of natural causes," I said. "Ah—do you remember standing in the doorway to her room and looking at her for any length of time?"

"No. I always went right in and sat in the chair right by her bed. Why?"

"At the moment she died, someone was standing in the doorway watching her."

"Did they frighten her?"

"Not necessarily. Surprised her. But that didn't cause her death. She was in the process of dying."

"You're sure." Manfred didn't know what to do about this random piece of information. Neither did I.

"Yes, I am. She died a natural death."

"That's great," he said, much relieved. "Thanks so much, Harper." He took my hand, folded it in his warm one. "You did that for me and it had to be awful. But now we don't need an autopsy, she can rest in peace."

Xylda's resting in peace had nothing to do with whether or not she had an autopsy, but I decided it was best to let the subject die a natural death, as natural as Xylda's.

"Listen to me," I said. His face hardened at my tone, which was serious.

"I'm listening," he said.

"Don't be alone here," I said. "Don't be alone in Doraville."

"But the guy was arrested," Manfred said. "It's done."

"No," I said. "No, I don't think it is. I don't think anyone would actually snatch you from the hospital, but if they let you out, you stick right by your mom all the time."

He could see I was dead serious. He nodded—reluctantly, but he nodded.

And then Manfred's nurse came in the room, and she said it was time for him to get up and walk, aided by her, and I had to go stand out front to wait for Tolliver.

Barney Simpson was on his way to the front of the hospital with a sheaf of papers, and I happened to fall into step beside him.

"I would have thought an administrator would be chained to a desk," I said. "You're all around the hospital."

"If my secretary were well, I would be in my office almost nonstop," Simpson agreed. "But she's off. One of the missing boys was a grandson of hers. And though it's going to be a long time before they get to bury the boy, it just seemed right to let her have a day or two off to be with her daughter."

"I'm real sorry for all the families."

"Well, at least there's one happy family. The folks of that boy that was under the stall should sure be having a good day today."

He gave a nod and veered off into a smaller hall lined with offices. Everyone in Doraville was affected by these crimes, though I guess the severity of the affection was lessened with your emotional distance from ground zero—the killing field above the town.

I felt a little foolish, now that I thought about it. It was nuts, warning Manfred. He was older. But he was small, and attractive, and right now he was vulnerable. He was a stranger, too, and wouldn't be missed as quickly as one of the local boys. It was nuts because if you looked at it logically, there was no way the remaining killer—a killer only I seemed to be worried about—would take another boy. Everyone was watching, everyone was wary, everyone was suspicious. At least, they had been. Now it was another story. The boogeyman was in jail, his tormented son was dead, the last victim was safe in the hospital and going to live. A happy ending for just about everyone. The people I heard talking about it were even not too unhappy about poor Chuck, because he would have been so messed up anyway by his father's death, and all the people assumed he'd had to help his father with the boys and the guilt of it had driven him to sacrifice himself. He'd redeemed himself, maybe.

I thought only part of that was the truth.

But if Chuck were alive, I wouldn't have given a nickel for his life. Because his dad's partner would suspect that Chuck knew his identity, even if the boy hadn't. So someone really was happy Chuck had died, and had good reason for being so.

I thought of all the good things I'd seen in Doraville, and all the nice people I'd met. There was a snake in the grass in this pleasant mountain village, and it was a pretty huge snake. Doraville didn't deserve to be singled out for such horror.

When Tolliver pulled up by me, I got into the car and without saying a word, he drove me up to Davey's old farm, the site of so many cold graves.

Klavin and Stuart were up there, and for once I wasn't displeased to see them. They were measuring the area and making some more pictures of the orientation of the buildings to the road, the surrounding terrain, and whatever else took their fancy. We got out and watched in silence for a few minutes.

They were busy, and disinclined to talk to us. Each couple tried to pretend the other one wasn't there. The wind was blowing up here, and it was chilly, though the beautiful sun took the edge off. I had discarded my heavy coat and put on a blue hoodie, and I pulled the hood up around my face and tucked my hands in my pockets. Tolliver put his arm around me and kissed my cheek.

As if that had been a signal, the two SBI men approached us.

"Have you given your statement at the police station about yesterday?" Klavin said.

"No. We'll do that before we leave town. We just wanted to ask a question, see if you'd answer it," I said. "I suppose it'll be a long time before all the tests are finished on those poor boys."

Stuart nodded. "What were you wanting to know?" he asked. "I figure you're entitled to an answer or two, since you found them."

That was a refreshing point of view, and one with which Klavin didn't necessarily agree.

"I want to know if they were fed and cared for after they were taken," I said. "Or maybe they were sedated. I want to know if their lives were extended."

Both the agents froze. Klavin had been messing with a tiny digital camera, and Stuart had been loading some small machine into the back of their rented SUV. "Why?" Stuart asked, after they'd resumed moving. "Why do you want to know that, Ms. Connelly?"

"I wonder if there was more than one person involved in torturing these boys," I said. "Because I really suspect that Tom Almand wasn't working alone, that he had a killing buddy who helped subdue the poor boys. Some of them were big boys, you know. Tom Almand was a little man. So, did he have some story that made them trust him enough to put themselves into a situation they couldn't get out of? Or did he have a strong right arm that would be sure they got that way?"

The two men looked at each other, and that was enough.

"You gotta tell people," I said. "They all think they're safe, and they're not."

"Look, Ms. Connelly," Stuart said, "we got half the team in jail. We got their killing floor. We got their dump site. We got their survivor, safe and guarded. We even got their backup place for stashing victims, for whatever reason they had it: maybe they prepared it in case they heard this place was being sold, maybe they realized the road up here might become difficult in the winter. Then they'd use the place in the Almand barn. We figure this because there aren't as many bloodstains at the barn. There isn't all the paraphernalia we found in there." He nodded toward the old shed to the left of the Davey house.

"We want to catch this other bastard real bad, Harper," said Klavin. "You don't know how bad. But we don't figure he's going to be grabbing anyone anytime soon. You see what we're saying?"

No, I was too dumb to understand. "Yes," I said, "I see. And to a certain extent, I agree. It would be crazy for him to grab anyone else. But you see what I'm saying? He is crazy."

"But so far, he's managed to maintain a perfect façade," Stuart said. "He's clever enough, got enough sense of self-preservation, to keep on doing that."

"Are you sure about that? Sure enough to risk some boy's life?"

"Listen, the fact is, you don't have anything else to do with this investigation," Klavin said. He'd reached the end of his patience.

"I know I'm not a cop," I said. "I know I usually just come in to a town, do a job, and leave. And I like it that way. If I have to stick around, worse stuff happens. And then we have to stay longer. We want to drive out of Doraville. But we don't want anyone else to die. And until you catch this other killer, there's that possibility."

"But what can you do to stop it?" Klavin asked reasonably. "So far as we're concerned, after you give your statement about yesterday, you and your brother can leave. We have your cell phone number, and we know your home address."

"He's not my brother," I said. If Tolliver could tell people, I could, too.

"Whatever," Klavin said. "Hey, Lang, did you know your dad was in jail in Arizona?"

"No," Tolliver said. "I had heard he got out of jail in Texas, though." If they'd been trying to upset Tolliver, they had gone about it the wrong way.

"You two really got shanked in the parent department," Klavin said.

"No doubt about it," I said. He couldn't make me angry like that, either.

He looked a little surprised, maybe a little abashed.

"I can't figure you out," I said. "You can be decent when you want to be. But this shit about our parents, you think we haven't heard all this before? You think we don't remember what it was like?"

He hadn't expected me to clear the decks. Klavin clearly had issues.

"You two go on," he said, while Stuart watched him, a certain guarded look on his face. "Go back to town. Get your statements entered. Then leave. This case has too much cluttering it up. The psychic. You. Now that you've seen Tom Almand swing a shovel, I guess you know who attacked you. You gonna file charges?"

Oddly enough, I hadn't even thought about it. So much had happened since I'd been attacked that it had been low on my list of mysteries to solve. I took a moment to think about it. Theoretically, I was all in favor of Tom paying for the attack on me. But thinking realistically, how could we prove it was Tom? The only evidence against him was that he'd been known to hit someone else with a shovel, and he'd had reason to want to hit me—if you count the fact that I'd found his victims a reason, and I reckoned it was. I'd stopped his fun. At least, I'd thought so, until the trapdoor had swung open. I saw those boys' faces every time I thought about the trapdoor: the one face covered with blood and lifeless, and the other just as bloody and full of fear and a terrible knowledge.

I'd have to come back here to testify, and there really wasn't any more concrete evidence than there had been.

"No," I said. "Is Almand talking?"

"He's not saying one damn word," Klavin said. "He was actually pretty shocked about his son, I think, but he kind of shook it off and said the boy had always been weak."

"That's someone else's influence," I said. "Someone else's words."

"I think so, too," Stuart told us. He turned his back to us to look out over the acre of land that had yielded such a strange crop. "He's not going to talk in case he might trip up and expose his fuck buddy."

I was a little startled at Stuart going crude on us. But if I'd looked at those bodies and examined the inside of that shack as often as Stuart had, I might be pretty deeply upset…well, even more upset than I was already.

I wasn't sure why I was here. There were no ghosts, there were no souls, there was nothing left of the bones of the eight young men who had been put in the ground here. There was only the cold air, the gusting wind, and the two angry men who'd spent too much time observing too closely what horrors people could wreak on each other.

"What will you do with the shack?" I asked. Tolliver turned to look at it, along with Stuart.

"We'll have to dismantle it completely and remove it," Klavin said. "Otherwise, souvenir hunters will rip it to shreds. You can see the lab techs have removed the most heavily bloodstained areas for the lab's use. And all the instruments that were in there—the manacles, the branding iron, the pincers, the sex toys—they've gone to the lab, too. We brought a bunch of people up here."

Tolliver's mouth twisted in disgust. "How could he look in the mirror?" Tolliver said. It was rare for Tolliver to speak when we were in a professional situation like this. But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.

"Because he was enjoying himself," I said. "It's easy to look in the mirror when life is fun."

Stuart turned to look at me, surprised. "Yes," he said. "He was probably happy every morning. Tom Almand pulled the wool over the eyes of almost every member of this community, for years. He's surely been pleased with himself every day of that time. The only person he couldn't fool, eventually, was his own son."

"So, he fooled everyone else?" I asked.

Tolliver gripped my hand. I squeezed his.

"His colleagues who have worked with him at the mental health center all say they've gotten along with him fine, that he was always on time, conscientious about keeping his appointments, fairly intelligent with his recommendations and referrals, and had only minor complaints by patients in the eight years he's been here."

I was impressed that they'd gotten together that much information in the limited time they'd had. I wondered if he'd been under suspicion from the beginning. Perhaps they'd gotten a head start on him, from a profile or something similar.

"But what about close friends?" I asked.

"He didn't seem to have any close friends," Stuart said. "Oh, he's been on the Hospital Expansion Board for the past six years; and so have Len Thomason and Barney Simpson, which makes sense. They're all health-care professionals, though from different aspects of the field. That minister got elected to the board last year, the one that conducted the memorial service. They've tried to get matching grants, federal money, private money, worked on fund drives, that kind of thing. Knott County really does need a new hospital, as you may have noticed."

All roads seemed to lead to the hospital. No matter what direction I started out in, I ended up at the front doors of Knott County Memorial.

"Has the boy spoken yet?" I asked, aware that pretty soon Stuart and Klavin would decide not to answer any more questions, just because.

"Not yet."

"And I know you've got him under very heavy, very careful guard?"

Klavin said, "You can believe that. Nothing will happen to that boy."

"His family come forward?"

"Oh, yes, they'd reported him missing the night before. And we found his car on the side of the road about a mile from the Almand house. He had a flat tire, and no spare."

"Well, that explains that. Considering the weather, he'd be glad to get a ride, no matter how nervous he was."

"Kids never think anything can happen to them," Stuart said grimly.

He'd found out different. He'd never be the same.

"Would you consider putting a guard on Manfred Bernardo?" I asked.

"He's older than the other boys," Stuart said.

"But he's part of the case."

"He's an adult, and he's in the hospital with plenty of people watching him," Klavin said gruffly. "Our budget's shot to hell."

"It's been interesting talking to you," I said. "Thanks."

"Did you know they were there?" Tolliver asked as we drove back to Doraville.

"No, I had no idea. I just wanted to look at the site again when it was clean."

"Clean?"

"No bodies. Just dirt and trees."

We drove in silence for a few minutes. Then I said, "Tolliver, if you knew you were going to be accused of murder in the next, say, three or four days—you weren't sure when, but you knew it was coming—what would you do?"

"I'd run," Tolliver said.

"What if you weren't quite sure?"

"If I thought there was a chance I wouldn't be picked out of the lineup, or whatever?"

I nodded.

"If I thought there was a chance I could hold on to my life, I think I'd try to stay around," Tolliver said, deep in thought. "Running is getting harder and harder with the rise of computers and the use of debit and credit cards. Cash isn't common, and people who use it are remembered. You have to show your driver's license for almost everything. It's hard to stay invisible in the United States, and it's hard to cross a border without a passport. If you're not a career criminal, it would be almost impossible to do either one."

"I don't think we're dealing with a career criminal here. I think we're dealing with an enthusiastic amateur."

Tolliver said, "Let's get out of here."

He was at the end of indulging me.

We'd had fights before, but they'd never had this element of the personal. But now we were more than manager and talent, more than brother and sister, more than survivors of a common hell.

And he was right. We had no business doing what the police were supposed to do, and God knows there were police enough to do it. But every time I thought of Chuck Almand, dead at thirteen because he wanted to lead me to discover what his life had been like, living with a man who tortured other boys for a pastime…. Then I told myself, He succeeded. He got you there, and all the law enforcement people, which was what he surely intended. Let them take the weight of this now.

"All right," I said. "Let's go."

Tolliver's shoulders relaxed. Up to that moment I hadn't realized how tense he'd been.

He was right.

We had to go to the police station to give our statements, and since there were still plenty of news crews around, we phoned ahead on the cell and asked if we could come in the back. We were denied permission. "It's already too crowded back there," the dispatcher said. "The state boys all have cars there, and a couple of the forensic guys, plus we have deputies working extra shifts. Park in the front, and we'll have someone watching out for you."

We had to park down the street from the station because of all the media, and we walked briskly through them, looking neither to the right nor the left. Luckily, we'd almost made it to the door by the time we were recognized. As the voices rose in questions I wouldn't answer, I focused on the door. I hoped it would be the last time we'd ever walk into that particular building. Deputy Rob Tidmarsh was standing there ready to swing the door open. He escorted us to what had been an interrogation room. In fact, it was the same one where we'd been such unwilling guests. It was now set up with a laptop computer and a young man who was ready to extract information from us. We gave him our accounts of the happenings in the barn, and he printed them out, and we signed them. All this took about an hour and a half, maybe twice as long as we'd estimated, and we saw Sandra Rockwell pass by about six times, but she didn't feel the need to speak to us.

There must be a lot to do, I thought as Tolliver talked to the young man, who was about our age. Chronologically. In a case of mass murder, there must be a million details to collect and put in order. I couldn't imagine being in charge of that. And then to have other people brought in over my head, people coming into my town and in front of my own employees taking the case away from me, or at least important aspects of it…. No wonder Rockwell didn't have time to stop to talk to us. Building a case against the man who'd killed eight boys and tried to kill another was way more important than stroking the ego of a woman who'd done her job and been paid for it.

Yes, no matter how connected I felt to the case, it was time for me to go. I'd never stayed as long, or maybe it just hadn't felt as long. I'd never found that many bodies at one event, either. This was a first for all of us.

What I felt like doing was prying open the heads of a few people myself, prying them open and looking inside, trying to locate the guilt I knew was in one of them. My conviction that there was a second murderer remained unshaken. But I couldn't think of a way to discover for sure who it might be, and Tolliver was right. It wasn't my job. I wished, for one deluded minute, that I was telepathic. I could just read a man's mind and fathom his guilt or innocence.

But that wasn't going to happen, and I wouldn't wish telepathy on my worst enemy. If I'd been psychic…well, after seeing the havoc even a mild gift had wreaked in Xylda's life, and seeing how isolated Manfred felt, I didn't want that, either. My own talent was so focused, so specific, that its use was very limited. And I'd passed the limit here in this little foothill town.

When we were through, we left out of the same door we'd entered, but in the meantime the newspeople had spotted our car and camped around it. Tolliver put his arm around me and we bulldozed through them. Even though my arm was in a cast and there was a bandage on my head, it was hard to get them to move aside. Maybe we'd been dodging them too much, and it had made them more determined to "get" us.

I could swear I recognized one newscaster. Then I realized I had seen him on a national news network. "Have you ever found that many bodies in one place before?" he asked. It was such a pertinent question, and exactly what I'd been thinking about, that I said, "No, never. I never want to again."

The others started screaming louder. If I'd answered one question, I might answer more.

But then he made a huge mistake—he asked a "How did it feel?" question.

Those I won't answer. My feelings are my own.

After a few seconds of struggle to get the door open, of falling inside the car, buckling my seat belt, and locking the door, I was safe from more questions, and then Tolliver tumbled in the driver's door and got himself ready to drive. He put the car in gear and the knot of newspeople relaxed and spread apart to allow us to leave.

It was lucky for us they all stayed close to the police station, hoping for more tidbits from the police or the SBI agents. We were able to get to Twyla's house by ourselves. Twyla's car was the only one in the garage. I wondered how long it would be before she got to bury her grandson. And then there'd be the trial and all the surrounding publicity. Jeff McGraw wouldn't get to rest in peace for years, at least in the minds of his family.

Tolliver pulled in behind Twyla's car, left ours in park with the engine on, and scrambled out with the key to the cabin. He didn't say a word. Maybe he was afraid that if he said something, I would, too; I'd change my mind about leaving.

A car pulled in behind us as I waited. After a second, someone knocked on the window. I pressed the button to roll it down. Pastor Doak Garland stood there, as pink and innocent a man as I'd ever seen.

He said, "Hello again, Miss Connelly."

"Hi. I forgot to tell you what a good job you did at the memorial service. I hope you all took up a good bit of money toward the funerals."

"Praise God, I think we got about twelve thousand dollars together now," he said.

"That's great!" I was genuinely impressed. That was a huge amount of money in a poor community like Doraville. Divided among the six local boys, that wasn't much, especially when you considered the cost of an average funeral these days. But it would help.

As if he could read my mind, Doak said, "Three of the boys had burial insurance, so they won't need funds. And we're hoping to bring in at least three thousand more with a raffle. Twyla has very generously offered to match whatever we make for the raffle."

"That is generous."

"She's a great woman. Can I ask you a question just out of sheer curiosity, Miss Connelly?"

"Ah…okay."

"I'm not sure I've ever been in that old barn behind the Almand house. Where was the poor young man?"

"He was in a kind of—oh, wait, I'm not supposed to talk about it. Sorry, the cops made me promise."

"Well, you hear all kinds of things, you know," he said. "I just wanted to get the facts straight. Where's your companion?"

"He's coming right back out in just a second," I said. Suddenly I felt very alone, though I was parked in a driveway on a suburban street. I jumped, pretending I'd felt my phone vibrate. "Hello?" I said, holding it to my ear. "Oh, hi, Sheriff. Yeah, I'm here at Twyla's, talking to Pastor Garland. He's standing right here, do you need him? No? Okay." I made an apologetic face at the minister, and he smiled and waved, and started into the house. I kept up the false conversation until he'd gone in the back door.

Half of me felt like a very big idiot, and the other half was simply relieved that he was gone. Where the hell was Tolliver? What was taking him so long?

I turned in my seat and began to undo my seat belt. I'd go in to find out what he was doing. I was really anxious. I had the uneasy feeling I'd overlooked something big.

Something about the ninth boy, the one who'd lived.

I stopped what I was doing and considered. He'd been identified. He was safe in the hospital in Asheville. He might never speak about what had happened to him, but I thought it was probable he would, when he got used to being safer and felt better physically. When he did begin to talk, he would identify the other killer, if in fact there was another one.

But what if he hadn't ever seen the other killer? What if he'd been kept in the stable because it had been Tom Almand, and Almand alone, who'd abducted him? Maybe it had been the first and only time Almand had made his son help him, and that was what had driven Chuck over the edge. Maybe Tom hadn't had a chance to share before he was discovered. So the accomplice had an even better chance of getting away with it.

And Doak Garland was not the man. He'd just asked me where the boy had been kept. If he'd been the other murderer, he would have known. If he'd just been trying to muddy the waters, he could have simply said nothing. It didn't make any difference what I thought. Why should he make such a point of asking me, unless he genuinely didn't know?

But someone had known, someone I'd talked to very recently. Someone had said the boy had been under the floor in the stall, or something to that effect. Who had it been? We'd seen so many people. Obviously, not Rain or Manfred; not any of the law enforcement people, they'd know and that would be okay. All right, who? Who had I talked to? The funeral home lady, Cleda something. No, not her.

I'd been sitting there with the door half-open, one foot out while I thought. With a suddenness that struck me dumb, a big SUV pulled in beside me, the door was ripped from my hands, and my arm was grabbed and I was out of the car. Then a big hand hit me right where the shovel had bashed me a long, long time ago, and then I was out.