Out of the Shadows

SEVEN

Tuesday, January 11

Seth Daniels eased into second gear, babying the car, aiming for a smooth transition, and scowled at the betraying jerk. He knew Bonnie was watching him in amused understanding but refused to meet her eyes. It was hard enough on a guy that his girlfriend was the sheriff's sister; it was downright embarrassing to have that same girlfriend teaching him how to drive a stick shift.

"It just takes practice," she said, her carefully neutral voice doing nothing except underline the fact that she was trying not to further damage his fragile male ego.

"I know that," he said.

"And coordination."

"I know that too, Bonnie."

"All I'm saying is that you'll get the hang of it. It can't be harder than playing football, and you do that."

Seth winced as the shift into third was accomplished with another jerk and a grinding noise. "Oh, yeah — how hard can it be?" he muttered. A sideways glance showed him Bonnie was biting her lip, and he struggled with himself for a moment before finally laughing.

"Okay, okay. I'll get the hang of it. Just tell me Miranda didn't teach you how to hunt bears or fly a jet."

"You want to learn how to hunt bears?" she asked innocently. "Because if so — "

"Bonnie."

She laughed. "No, she didn't teach me either of those things. Just the more usual stuff. Cooking, sewing, driving a stick . . . sharpshooting."

"Jesus."

Bonnie smiled at him. "Well, she was trying to be mother and father, you know."

"Well, yeah, I understand that — but sometimes I wonder if she wasn't also trying to be a commando. Sharpshooting?"

"With a gun in the house, she just thought I should know how to handle it."

"But sharpshooting? Knowing how not to shoot yourself in the foot is one thing, but how often in life will you need to blow the wings off a fly at a hundred yards?"

"The light's yellow, Seth — use the clutch and downshift."

He obeyed, eventually bringing the car to a halt at the traffic light in a maneuver smooth enough to partially soothe his ruffled feathers. "You changed the subject," he told her.

"There was nothing more to say. Randy taught me what she thought might be useful someday. So I can bake biscuits and sew on a button, and I can also change a tire and handle a gun."

Seth looked at her for a moment, then eased the car forward when the light changed. "I'm surprised she let you come out with me today."

"We have to be back home by curfew, Seth."

"Yeah, I know that." He was seventeen, which put him in the age group required to be off the streets and under parental or employer supervision by 5:00 P.M.

"But she's always been so protective of you, and with a killer running loose — "

"I promised her I wouldn't go anywhere alone even before curfew, that I'd either be with you or home with Mrs. Task. She likes you, and she trusts you."

"She does?"

"Why are you so surprised by that? You could be the poster child for good teenagers."

"Thanks a lot."

"It's true and you know it. Your grades are good enough that you tutor other students, and we all know you'll go to medical school. You work part-time in Cobb's garage and in your father's clinic every chance you get. You even help teach a Sunday-school class and have a paper route."

"I've had that route since I was ten," he said defensively, then glanced at her and found her smiling at him. It was a smile that never failed to raise his blood pressure and make him think so many absurd things he dared not say aloud. Even if he could say anything coherent, which he doubted.

Bonnie didn't seem to notice the effect she had on him. "Well, anyway, Randy trusts you. She knows I'm safe with you."

Glancing at her again, Seth saw a shadow cross her face, and it distracted him from surging hormones. "Every time you say something like that, I get the feeling ..."

"What?" Bonnie said, but more like she was just responding brightly than because she really wanted to know.

Seth listened to the tone rather than the words and backed off. "Nothing." He was honest enough to ask himself if he did it because he knew she didn't want to confide whatever it was — or because he was afraid to hear it. And he didn't know the answer.

Distracting them both, he said, "Hey, there's Steve. Want to stop and say hi?"

"He looks like he's in a hurry. Doesn't he have to go in to work?"

"At six, yeah." Seth downshifted and heard the gears grind. "Damn. Maybe I'd better concentrate on what I'm doing."

"Maybe you'd better." She sounded amused again, but her tone sobered when she added, "Steve is planning to dump Amy, isn't he?"

"I don't know what Steve is planning to do."

"Don't you?"

"No. Honest, Bonnie, I don't." He hesitated. "He's a great guy, it's just that he likes ..."

"Variety?" she supplied wryly.

"I'm not saying it's a good thing — just his thing. Come on, Amy must have known that going in. It's not like Steve's reputation is lily white. She did know, right?"

"Knowing is one thing. Believing and understanding are something else."

Seth grimaced. "She thinks she can change him?"

Bonnie sighed. "I guess so."

"She won't change him, Bonnie."

"I know." She checked her watch. "It's after four, Seth."

He accepted the change of subject with relief. Keeping his own romantic relationship on an even keel was difficult enough; trying to manage someone else's was beyond him. "Yeah, I know. Time to head for home. Do you want to stop by and see Miranda first?"

"No. She'll probably be home by seven or so. There isn't much they can do at night except keep going over and over all the reports and information, and after a while it's like ..."

"Like a dog chasing its tail?"

"Pretty much."

"Must be driving Miranda crazy. She's always been so good at solving crimes quickly. But I guess there's never been anything like this killer."

"No," Bonnie said. "There's never been anything like him."

Hearing an odd note in her voice, Seth shot her a glance. She was unconsciously rubbing the scar on her forearm, something he knew she only did when she was worried or anxious about something. "They'll get him, Bonnie."

"I know. I know they will."

"You're worried about Miranda?"

"Of course I am."

"She'll be all right. I don't know anybody better able to take care of herself than Miranda."

"You'd think so," Bonnie said, "wouldn't you."

They had taken to locking the conference room whenever it was empty, keeping their reports and speculations away from the eyes of the curious. Even Miranda's deputies, with the exception of Alex Mayse, knew only as much as necessary. So Bishop was not happy when Miranda came in at nearly six o'clock Tuesday evening accompanied by the mayor.

Bishop had met John MacBride the day before and hadn't been terribly impressed — but that might have been because MacBride had made a point of touching Miranda in a casual manner guaranteed to alert the instincts of any other man. Miranda had been polite, professional, and unresponsive to the attention — but she hadn't objected.

When His Honor stood staring at the gruesome display on the bulletin board with a sickened expression on his face as Tony explained their procedures, Bishop moved as close to Miranda as he dared.

"This isn't a good idea," he said quietly.

"I know," she said, equally quiet. "But he insisted. And if this visit reassures him that we're doing everything we can to find the killer, then maybe he'll be able to reassure the town council and all the other worried citizens. Right now, no one is bringing any undue pressure to bear on the investigation, much less trying to run things. I'd like to keep it that way."

Bishop was politically savvy enough to get the point, but it didn't make him like the situation any better. "If some of these details get out, you'll have a major panic on your hands — and our job won't get any easier."

"He won't talk about the details."

"How can you be so sure?"

Miranda sat on the edge of the conference table and lifted an eyebrow at him. "Because I told him not to."

Bishop didn't know whether to be amused or irritated. "And he always does what you tell him to?"

"He does when it's my job."

A glance showed Bishop that MacBride and Tony were still occupied. "Can you read him?"

Miranda shook her head.

"Even when he touches you?"

"Even then."

Bishop silently debated if it would be wise to ask about this touching, then forced himself to remain professional. "Because of your shields or his?"

"His." Miranda shrugged. "It's not an uncommon trait in small towns. You must have noticed."

"I have. Yesterday when Tony and I were walking around downtown meeting the merchants, I couldn't read two-thirds of them. Neither could Tony."

"Like I said, it's not so extraordinary. In small towns, privacy is especially hard to come by, so the tendency is to guard oneself. Over a lifetime, that could easily and logically equate to mental and emotional shields and walls."

"Is that why you settled here?"

"It was one of the reasons."

"And because small-town life would be good for Bonnie?"

"That too."

Bishop reflected somewhat bitterly that she was only willing to talk to him like this when there were other people around. He had tried to take advantage of such moments, but since he could hardly say some of the things he wanted to say when there was every chance of being overheard, he had forced himself to bide his time, to concentrate on the investigation and keep their conversations relatively professional.

It wasn't getting any easier.

Hoping to make a breakthrough of sorts, he reached into his jacket pocket for a folded piece of paper and held it out to her. "I meant to give you this earlier."

She didn't move. "What is it?"

"Access to those sealed files we talked about."

Still, she didn't move.

He pretended not to notice her hesitation. "The files have been copied from the Bureau's database into a separate, secured area, and you've been granted temporary access. Nothing can be downloaded or copied, you'll have to agree to that. The computers here are capable of establishing the link. These are the codes you'll need."

Finally, Miranda took the paper from him without, needless to say, touching him.

Bishop didn't wait to find out if she would thank him, since he suspected he'd be waiting a long time. He joined the two men at the bulletin board.

He didn't have to be a telepath to interpret Tony's quick roll of the eyes, and when he heard the nervousness in MacBride's voice he realized the other agent was probably holding on to his patience with both hands.

"But why aren't you doing more to catch him? Roadblocks, or searching with dogs, or—"

Bishop cut him off. "No trail was left for dogs to follow. And roadblocks can only catch a suspected killer when he's trying to leave town. This one lives here."

"You can't possibly know that."

"It's my job to know that, Mayor. The killer lives in Gladstone or the surrounding area. He's been very careful not to leave evidence we can use to find him. And we're not likely to catch him unless he makes a mistake."

MacBride looked pained. "That's blunt enough."

"It's the truth."

"But... to make a mistake, wouldn't he have to—"

"Kill again. Yes, I'm afraid so." Bishop paused a beat. "So in instituting the curfew, Sheriff Knight has done the only thing she could do to protect the young people of Gladstone. And, in the meantime, we're studying what information we have and are using every scrap of knowledge and experience we have between us to look for and interpret even the most minute detail of the crimes. We will catch him, Mayor. It's only a matter of time."

MacBride glanced again at the bulletin board and said, "I hope so, Agent Bishop. I hope so." He waved Miranda back when she would have gone to the door to show him out, and quietly left the conference room alone.

In an admiring tone, Tony said, "Why didn't I think to tell him it was only a matter of time? That perked him right up."

"Shut up, Tony."

Tony grinned at him, then looked at Miranda and sobered. "Sorry, Sheriff. Nobody knows better than me how serious this is. It's just... I don't deal well with elected officials as a rule."

"Present company excepted, Agent Harte?" she said lightly.

"Present company excepted," he said promptly.

"Then make it Miranda, all right?"

"I'd love to, if you return the favor."

"Tony it is."

"Thanks. So — Miranda — has the canvass of the area around that well turned up anything?"

She shook her head. "Alex is still out with his team, but so far nothing. No one who lived in the area will even admit to having been awake or out of bed between four and six A.M., much less to having seen or heard a car — or anything else."

Tony looked at Bishop and grimaced. "Well, it was a long shot."

Bishop nodded. "A very long shot."

"Reassuring words to the mayor aside," Miranda said, "do we have something useful? Fact, conclusion, speculation . . . hunch?"

"All we know today that we didn't know yesterday," Bishop said, "is that none of the surrounding law enforcement agencies have any similar crimes on their books — solved or unsolved."

"Another indication that he's local," Tony said, taking a chair at the table.

"Which we were virtually certain of anyway," she pointed out.

"Yeah." Tony shrugged. "And I can't see we're going to get anything else unless Sharon comes up with something useful in testing the Ramsay boy's bones. Or unless we're overlooking something

about one of the other victims."

"I'd be surprised if all of us had missed anything important. We have all the information we're ever likely to get from the victims. In this life, anyway." Miranda looked at Bishop and said dryly, "Have a good medium on the payroll?"

He took the question seriously. "We've never been able to validate a medium in any credible sense. Talking to the dead isn't an easy thing to prove scientifically."

"I guess not."

Bishop hesitated, then said casually, "I seem to recall that sort of thing was Bonnie's particular talent. Seeing ghosts. Does she still?"

Miranda stiffened. In a very quiet voice, she said, "Bonnie is not part of this. You don't see her, you don't talk to her — in fact, you don't go anywhere near her. Is that clear?"

"She's a teenager, Miranda." The scar on Bishop's cheek stood out starkly. "If for no other reason than fitting the victim profile, she is part of this."

"No. Not as far as you're concerned. You stay away from her." She looked at Tony. "All of you stay away from her." Then she walked out of the room.

"Brrrrr." Tony half zipped his jacket and thrust his hands into the pockets. "I guess we stay away from Bonnie."

Bishop grunted and turned grim eyes to the bulletin board. "If we can. For as long as we can."

Tony looked at him curiously. "Does her sister have more than one ability too?"

"Probably. They all did. But Bonnie was only a kid when I knew her, no more than eight, and her abilities were still developing."

"But she saw ghosts?"

"So she said."

"Her family believed her?"

"Yeah, they believed her." Bishop's voice was suddenly flat. "They were a ... remarkable family."

"Sorry, boss. Didn't mean to rake up old—"

"Memories? They aren't old and you didn't rake them up, so don't worry about it." Bishop stared at the bulletin board, trying to fill his mind with details of the killings and nothing else. "If I could just figure out what the killer needed from the Ramsay boy ..."

"You think that's the key?"

"Could be. I'm certain it's a detail vital to understanding the bastard."

"Assuming we don't catch him quick enough, what about his next victim?"

"Male," Bishop said. "Late teens, probably. Strong, maybe even aggressive, but definitely masculine. By all appearances he won't seem vulnerable, and no one could ever think of him as a victim."

"Why?"

Bishop tapped the yearbook picture of Lynet Grainger. "Because of her. She tempted him, Tony, and he didn't want to be tempted. He won't trust himself to grab another girl, not yet. First he'll have to prove to himself that he's powerful and in charge. Prove to himself there's nothing sexual about what he's doing. So he'll pick an older boy, someone he could never feel a sexual attraction to and one who won't be easy to subdue. If he hasn't already chosen him, he will soon. He won't want to spend too much time with his own doubts, letting them prey on his confidence. And he won't kill this boy quickly, not like Lynet. He'll need to make this one suffer a long time."

From the doorway, Miranda said quietly, "Sometimes you're just too goddammit smart for your own good, Bishop."

He and Tony looked at her, alerted by something in her voice. Strain showed in her grim eyes and in the straight, hard line of her mouth.

"We have another missing teenager," she said.

By nine o'clock that night, they were reasonably sure that eighteen-year-old Steve Penman was not going to return from some unannounced trip or errand wondering innocently what all the fuss was about. He had last been seen shortly before four o'clock, when he had dropped off his sixteen-year-old girlfriend at her home. He'd made sure to get her home before curfew, Amy Fowler numbly told the sheriff and FBI agents, so she'd be safe. Then, not restricted by the curfew himself, he had headed back toward town to pick up something at the drugstore before he reported to work at the paper mill for the six o'clock mini-shift.

When he hadn't reported to work, his supervisor, as requested by the Sheriff's Department, had immediately notified his parents. They had called the sheriff.

His car was found parked near the front of the drugstore, but no one inside remembered seeing him come in. Deputies were questioning other merchants, and the sheriff had gone on the radio to request calls from anyone who had been downtown between four and six and might have seen anything unusual.

The phones were ringing off the hook, but the calls were only from concerned citizens saying they had seen nothing.

"How could he just vanish like that?" Miranda was absently rubbing her temples. "How could he have been taken against his will without a sound or any kind of commotion, without even being noticed? The kid's six feet tall, and he was wearing his bright blue football jacket. Not what you'd call invisible. If he got to town just after four, it wasn't even dark yet."

Alex looked at the legal pad before him on the conference table. "At last count, between four and six o'clock there were a dozen senior boys in town wearing those jackets. They were planning to throw some kind of party for their coach sometime this week, apparently postponed from the end of the season because he was in Nashville having bypass surgery. So several of them were in town getting supplies." He paused. "None of the boys saw Steve Penman or anything they believed to be even remotely suspicious."

Miranda felt Bishop's eyes on her, realized what she was doing, and stopped rubbing her temples. With a certain amount of detachment, she wondered if it was possible for a head to split wide open. "No trail for the dogs to follow. No leads. No witnesses. No clues."

"And we don't have much time," Tony contributed soberly. "If Bishop is right, this boy may be kept alive for a while — but I'm guessing it won't be for long."

Miranda leaned back in her chair, trying to appear at least somewhat relaxed, and looked across the table at Bishop. "Does this abduction alter your profile?"

He shook his head. "We're looking for a white male, thirty to forty-five, in good physical shape. He's probably single, or has a place other than his home where he's assured of privacy and has the means to confine his victims. He's highly intelligent, meticulous and controlled, definitely organized. He either has a business of his own or else works in some administrative or managerial capacity, a position of authority. He understands enough about police procedure to avoid leaving any forensic evidence we can use, but whether that's professional knowledge or just a hobby is impossible to guess."

"Professional knowledge? Are you saying he could be a cop?" Alex asked.

"It's possible."

"But is it likely?" Miranda watched him closely. "What's your hunch?"

"My hunch is he's not. I think it's a hobby of sorts, that he's educated himself in police techniques. He may even have a conduit into this department, a friend or relative who could be, in all innocence, passing on information to him."

"Great," Miranda said.

Bishop shook his head. "It isn't likely to be restricted information. But if it was, I doubt he'd be stupid enough to let us know he has it by altering his M.O. He's smart enough to know how to leave a body so that nothing can be traced back to him, and cool enough to take his time and make sure it's done right. He's not given to panic or carelessness."

"An expert killer," Alex said.

Musing aloud, Tony said, "I'm wondering what the trigger was. What set him off so suddenly. Most killers of this sort start comparatively young, showing signs of homicidal tendencies all the way back to childhood.

Not many reach their thirties or forties with their crimes still completely undiscovered."

"Unless they're very, very lucky," Bishop said slowly. He asked Miranda, "Before the new highway opened, this town was on one of the main routes to Nashville, wasn't it?"

She nodded, a frown drawing her brows together.

"According to your records, there are no unsolved disappearances of locals, but what about transients? Teenagers, either runaways or kids passing through the area. Say . . . within fifty miles of Gladstone. There would have been bulletins of some kind among regional law enforcement agencies, general alerts."

"None since I took office," Miranda said. "Before | that, I wouldn't know. Investigating disappearances wasn't one of my duties as a deputy."

"We need to know how many unsolved cases we're really dealing with here," Bishop told her. "I'm hoping like hell we don't find any more missing teenagers, but if we do, every other case gives us one more opportunity to see if this bastard made a mistake we can use to throw a net over him."

Miranda looked at Alex and nodded.

Alex got up. "I'll have Sandy and Greg start checking files. We only have the recent stuff on computers; anything going back further than five years or so will be in storage boxes in the basement. How far back do you want to look?"

"Ten to fifteen years," Bishop replied.

Alex sighed. "It'll take days, probably longer. The last few administrations weren't exactly known for their record-keeping expertise."

"Call in anyone you need to help," Miranda said. "We're all on overtime anyway." After the deputy left, she said to Bishop, "Ten to fifteen years?"

"If the killer is at the high end of that age estimate, he could have been at this fifteen years or longer."

"Christ. And nobody noticed?"

"Maybe because he was hunting somewhere else. Or maybe just because his victims fell through the cracks and were never really missed."

Miranda drew a breath and let it out slowly. "And it seemed like such a nice, safe little town."

"You know there's no such thing."

She was silent.

"There's no such thing," he repeated.

"Yes. I know."

Into the silence, Tony murmured something about helping Alex and slipped from the room.

Before Miranda could follow him, Bishop said, "You have another headache, don't you?"

Lightly, she said, "My entire life is a headache at the moment."

He ignored that. "Miranda, do you understand the danger of what you're doing?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You're working so hard at keeping me out—"

"Don't flatter yourself," she snapped.

Bishop counted silently to ten. "All right. You're working so hard at keeping us out, channeling all your psychic energy into blocking us, that your body is beginning to rebel. Headaches, sensitivity to light and sound, nausea."

"You're imagining things, Bishop."

"It can damage you beyond repair, Miranda, do you understand that? We've learned a lot more about psychic ability in the last few years, and the current understanding is that the electrical impulses that trigger telepathy and precognition can also damage the brain — especially if they aren't allowed to dissipate naturally."

"If you'll forgive a lousy pun," she said, "I'll keep that in mind."

He stared at her for a long moment, then said deliberately, "I suppose you've considered what would happen to Bonnie without you to watch over her."

Miranda wondered why she wasn't getting up and walking out of the room. "Bonnie is not your concern."

He hesitated. "She would be, you know. Not because I owe you, but because I owe her."

She was surprised and tried not to let it show. "It's not a debt you can pay, Bishop."

"I know."

Miranda felt the sudden need to go away somewhere by herself and reinforce her shields. She put her hands on the table as she got to her feet, hoping grimly that the action looked more casual than the necessary support it was.

Abruptly, Bishop reached across the table and grasped her wrist.

For a frozen instant, Miranda stared into those pale, compelling eyes of his with a sense of blind panic. Then she jerked away from him and stepped back.

Bishop remained where he was, his arm stretched out, the long fingers slowly closing into a fist. "You won't let me in."

Miranda uttered a shaken laugh. "And you have the nerve to be surprised by that?"

His scar stood out so starkly that it appeared newly made, raw. "What are you afraid of, Miranda?" he demanded roughly. "What is it you don't want me to see, don't want me to know?"

"Like I said before, don't flatter yourself."

"Miranda—"

She hadn't intended to say anything else. She should have simply turned around and walked out of the room. But the panic drove her to distract, deflect. "I let you in once, Bishop. Into my life. Into my mind. Into my bed. Even, God help me, into my heart. And that mistake cost me so much I'm not likely to ever repeat it."

He leaned back and spoke with great deliberation. "I'm the one who made the mistake. I was stupid and arrogant, and so obsessed with catching a killer I couldn't see beyond that goal. And I'm sorry. Not a day passes that I don't regret what happened eight years ago. But it's done, Miranda. I can't go back and change anything, as much as I'd like to. I have to live with what I did, what I caused to happen. But..."

She didn't move, didn't prompt him or do anything except wait.

"But if anything happened now to you or Bonnie because of me, I couldn't live with that. I'm not asking for your forgiveness. I'm just asking you not to hurt yourself trying to keep me out. I'll stay out. I swear to you, I will."

Miranda would have liked to say something cool or mocking, but she didn't trust herself to say a word. Instead, she just turned and walked out, leaving him there.

And wondered how long she could keep the truth from him.