by Kay Hooper
“I heard that,” Doc Shepherd called out.
Unrepentant, Alex called back, “I meant you to hear it.” He returned his attention to Miranda and went on in a lower voice. “Call in the feds, Randy. Nobody'll think less of you. And, goddammit, we need the help.”
“They don't help, they take over.”
“Then I say let 'em have it.”
She shook her head. “I can't say that, Alex. I can't just hand this problem over to somebody else because I'm afraid it might be too difficult for me.”
“MacBride can pull rank—and you know he will. Randy, there were just enough doubts about electing a woman sheriff to make him very, very nervous of any criticism from the voters. First sign this department can't handle the investigation, and he'll be yelling for help as loud as he can.”
“No,” she said. “He won't do that, not publicly.”
“Then he'll pressure you to do it.”
“Maybe.”
“Randy—”
“We don't know there's anything unusual here,” Miranda repeated stubbornly. “And just because we've gotten nowhere investigating Kerry Ingram's murder doesn't mean we won't have better luck with this case. One thing I'm sure of is that I'm damned well planning to give it my best shot. I'm not calling in outsiders unless we have no other choice.” She lifted one hand and rubbed the nape of her neck, where tension had undoubtedly gathered, and scowled at the remains of Adam Ramsay.
Alex watched her, not bothering to be subtle about it because he had long ago realized that Miranda was never conscious of masculine scrutiny. Not on the job, at any rate. She tended to wear sweaters and jeans, kept her black hair pulled back severely from her face, her nails short and unpolished, and her makeup to a minimum. And none of it mattered one little bit.
Miranda Knight was one of those rare women who would have been beautiful even if you wrapped her in a burlap feed sack and dipped her in mud.
She wasn't in uniform even on duty, a perk she had more or less demanded before taking on the job, and the snug jeans and bulky sweater she wore today did little to hide either the gun on her hip or measurements of true centerfold proportions.
Alex had never been sure which attracted Gladstone's mayor more, the gun or the body, but it was an open secret that John MacBride had had his eye on Miranda long before they'd both been voted into office over a year before.
What Miranda thought of the mayor, on the other hand, was a secret known only to her. She might refer to him casually when speaking to Alex, but in public she was invariably formal, polite, and respectful to His Honor, and if she had so much as allowed him to buy her a cup of coffee she'd managed to drink it where nobody in this very curious town had been able to observe.
Still, Alex couldn't help but wonder if MacBride's determined pursuit of the last few months would change if Miranda refused to ensure the mayor's political safety by handing the investigation over to the feds with all speed.
“We don't know there's anything unusual here,” she said again, the emphasis making Alex look at her in sudden awareness.
“Have you noticed something?” he asked.
Obviously conscious of his stare, Miranda nonetheless didn't meet his eyes. “I just said—”
“I know what you said. I also heard how you said it. And I know that sometimes you see things everybody else misses. What do you see that I don't, Randy?”
“Nothing. I see nothing.”
Alex thought she was lying to him. But before he could press her, Doc Shepherd came up to them.
“I have a preliminary report,” he told Miranda. “I'll write it up as soon as I get back to the office, of course, but if you want to hear what'll be on it while Brady's getting shots of everything—”
“Let's hear it.”
“No way to tell if the boy was strangled like the Ingram girl, but there is evidence that a few bones were broken prior to death.”
“Could they have been broken in an accidental fall?” Miranda asked.
“Not likely. I'd say his arms were twisted hard enough to snap, which would require considerable, deliberate force. And two bones in his left hand were crushed, probably by a hammer or similar tool.”
Alex offered a reluctant question. “Are you saying he was tortured?”
“I wouldn't rule it out, but there isn't enough evidence for me to be absolutely sure.”
“What are you sure of?” Miranda asked.
“I'm sure he's been dead at least three or four weeks, possibly longer. I'm sure he was killed somewhere else, then brought here and buried in a shallow grave that didn't protect the body very long from scavenging animals.” Peter Shepherd paused briefly. “Now let me ask you something: Are you sure these are the remains of Adam Ramsay?”
Alex was surprised by the question, but when he looked at Miranda he realized she wasn't.
“We found his class ring here,” she said neutrally. “And the gold crown on that front tooth matches our information. Height and estimated weight in the right range. And the patch of scalp still attached to the skull has red hair like Adam Ramsay. We have every reason to believe the I.D. is accurate.” It was her turn to pause, and when she went on, she asked what sounded like an unwilling question. “You think it isn't him?”
Clearly enjoying his role, Shepherd said, “I think if it is him, his mother must be a hell of a lot older than she looks. I'll know more after I conduct a few tests, but I'll be surprised if I find out those bones belonged to any man less than forty years old.”
Again, Miranda didn't seem surprised, but all she said, in the same dispassionate tone of before, was, “We have complete dental records, so verifying identity—if it is Adam—shouldn't take long.”
Bewildered, Alex said, “Adam was seventeen.”
“Those bones are older,” Shepherd answered with a shrug.
“There's barely enough of him left to put in a shoe-box,” Alex objected. “How can you possibly know—”
Miranda lifted a hand to stop Alex. “Why don't we wait until we have a few more facts before we start arguing? Doc, if you'll take the remains back to the morgue, I'll have the dental records sent over.”
“I don't know who his family doctor was, but if you could get those records as well …”
“I'll send them along.”
Alex followed as Miranda retreated several yards to give the doctor room to work, and said accusingly, “You knew what he was going to say, didn't you?”
“How could I have known that?” Her tone wasn't so much evasive as matter-of-fact. She watched Shepherd work the remains into a black body bag.
“That's what I'm asking you, Randy. How did you know? You been hiding a degree in medicine or forensics?”
“Of course not.”
“Well then?”
“I didn't see anything you didn't see, Alex.”
“But you knew that skeleton wasn't Adam Ramsay?”
Miranda finally turned her head and looked at Alex. There was something in her face he couldn't quite read and didn't like one bit, a shuttered expression he'd never seen before. For the first time in the nearly five years he'd known her, Alex felt he was looking at a stranger.
“On the contrary,” she said quietly. “What I knew— what I know—is that we've found all that's left of Adam Ramsay.”
“I don't get it.”
“It's Adam Ramsay, Alex. The dental records will prove it.”
“But if the bones belonged to an older man—” Alex broke off and made his voice low. “So Doc is wrong about that?”
“I hope so.”
Alex didn't make the mistake of thinking Miranda was engaged in a game of one-upmanship with the doctor. Thinking aloud, he mused, “If Doc's right about the age of the bones, it'd mean this victim is someone nobody reported missing. And it would mean we might still find Adam Ramsay's body. If you're right—”
“If I'm right, it would mean something else,” Miranda cut in. “It would mean we have a much bigger puzzle than who killed tw
o teenage runaways.”
Liz Hallowell had lived in Gladstone all of her thirty years, which meant she knew just about everybody. And since the bookstore she'd inherited from her parents was centrally located in town and boasted the recent addition of a coffeeshop where people could sit and chat as long as they liked, she tended to know everything that was going on within hours of its happening.
So she knew the latest news on this cold January morning. She knew that a body—or bones, anyway— had been found in the woods just outside town by an off-duty sheriff's deputy trying to get in a little early-morning hunting. She knew it was believed the bones were Adam Ramsay's. And she knew there was something decidedly odd about the whole thing.
Not that murder wasn't odd, of course. But something else was going on, she was certain of it. The leaves in her morning cup of tea had made a chill go through her entire body, and even before that there had been several other unsettling omens. She'd heard a whippoorwill last night and afterward dreamed about riding a horse—which was supposed to be sexual, hardly surprising to Liz given her frustrations of late—and about a door she couldn't open, which wasn't a good sign at all.
She'd been awakened twice by a dog howling, and just before dawn thunder had rumbled even though there was no storm. This morning her neighbor's pet rooster had faced her own front door while crowing, which meant a stranger was coming. She'd spilled salt three times in the last two days, so even doing what she could to immediately negate the bad luck wouldn't get rid of it all.
And a bird had struck the window of her breakfast room, a dove no less, breaking its poor little neck. Since she lived alone, Liz assumed she was the one whom death was hovering near.
Alex would shake his head when she told him, but Liz's grandmother had been Romany and she herself had been born with a caul—and she knew what she knew.
Bad was here, and worse was coming.
So before Liz had ventured out of her house today, she'd made damned sure to put several amulets in the medicine bag that hung around her neck on a black thong: a couple of ash-tree leaves, a clove of garlic, bits of lucky hand root and oak bark, and several small stones—bloodstone, carnelian, cat's eye, garnet, black opal, staurolite, and topaz. She also carried a rabbit's foot in her purse, and her earrings were tiny gold wishbones.
None of which protected her from Justin Marsh, which was a pity.
“This is blasphemy, Elizabeth,” he declared, waving a book beneath her nose.
She pushed the book gently back far enough to bring the title into focus, then said mildly, “It's a novel, Justin. A made-up story. I doubt very much if the author is trying to persuade anyone to actually believe that Christ was a woman. But if it makes you feel any better, you're the first one I've seen even pick it up.”
His pale brown eyes glittered in his perpetually tanned face. The healthy thatch of white hair and the customary white suit made him look like a televangelist, she thought. He sounded like one too.
“Books like this one should be banned!” he told her stridently.
Liz noted that few of her other early-morning customers even looked up, as accustomed to his tirades as she was herself. “We don't ban books around here, Justin.”
“If innocent minds should read this—!”
“Trust me, innocent minds don't venture into that section of the store. They're all three rows over reading stuff about ninjas and how to hack into computer systems.”
He missed the irony, just as she had expected.
“Elizabeth, you're responsible for protecting impressionable young minds from corruption such as this.” He waved the book under her nose again.
Behind him, a deep voice said dryly, “No, their parents are responsible for that. Liz just runs a bookstore.”
“Morning, Alex,” she said.
“Hi. Coffee would be heaven, Liz.”
“You got it.” Leaving Alex to deal with Justin, she went behind the counter to pour a couple of cups of the Swiss-chocolate-flavored coffee Alex had recently become addicted to. By the time she joined him at their customary table near the front window, Justin had vanished.
“If he's over there tearing up another book …”
“I warned him the next episode would mean a fine and jail time, for all the good it'll do.” He blew on the coffee automatically, but began sipping before it had a chance to cool. “I don't know why he can't go away somewhere and start a nice pseudo-religious cult, leave us the hell alone.”
“He isn't charismatic enough,” Liz said definitely. “Just a not-too-bright kook, and it's obvious. It's Selena I feel sorry for.”
Alex grunted. “I never heard she was forced to marry him. Besides, the way she looks at him it's obvious she considers him the Second Coming—if you'll forgive the blasphemy.”
“I guess every town has to have at least one Justin Marsh. What else would we have to talk about otherwise?”
“Murder?” he suggested dryly.
Liz looked at his tired, drawn face and said slowly, “I heard it was Adam Ramsay's body this time.”
“Sheriff says it is. Doc says it isn't. We'll know for sure when Doc compares the dental records.”
“What do you think?”
“I think Randy isn't often wrong.” He shrugged, frowning down at his coffee. “But if she's right this time, something very weird is going on, Liz.”
Without thinking, Liz said, “The leaves told me that this morning.”
Alex looked at her with resignation. “Uh-huh. Did they happen to tell you anything else? Like maybe if we have a vicious killer in this nice little town of ours?”
“You don't think it's one of us?” she exclaimed, genuinely shocked.
He smiled at her with an odd expression she couldn't quite define. “Liz, Gladstone might as well be the town that time forgot. Or at least the town travelers bypass. How many strangers do you notice in any given week?”
“Well … not many.”
“Not many?”
“All right, so strangers are rare, especially if you discount insurance salesmen. But that doesn't have to mean one of us is doing these terrible things, Alex.”
“I don't like to think it either, you know. But how likely is it that a stranger picked Gladstone as his base of operations to begin killing teenagers?”
“When you put it like that …”
“Yeah.”
After a moment of silence, Liz said reluctantly, “Whatever is going on, it isn't over, Alex.”
“Tea leaves again?”
“I know what I know.” It was her standard response to doubt or disbelief.
“Because your grandmother was a gypsy? Liz—”
“I know you don't believe, but you have to listen to me this time. I've never seen so many dark omens and portents. There's evil here, real, literal evil hanging over this town.”
“That much I'll buy. Have you checked your crystal ball lately to see how it'll all turn out?”
“You know I don't have one of those.” She hesitated. “But I do know someone's coming. The leaves showed me that. A dark man with a mark on his face. An outsider. He'll come to help, but for some other reason too, a secret reason. And I think … I know … he'll give his life to save one of us.”
TWO
Miranda let herself into the small, quiet house not far from downtown Gladstone and went directly to the kitchen. It was a bright room most of the time, but last night's rain had left the sky overcast, and not even the airy yellow-and-white color scheme and gleaming white appliances could do much to cheer the room.
Or Miranda.
She went to the coffeemaker and turned it on, warming the remains of last night's pot because there hadn't been time earlier that morning to make fresh, and Mrs. Task was coming in late because of a doctor's appointment. The reheated coffee would be unbearably bitter, she knew.
But it would suit her mood.
Fresh coffee awaited her at the office, but she'd wanted to stop here first, if only for a few precious minutes,
away from ringing telephones and anxious deputies and frightened townspeople. She thought Alex had probably detoured as well, though he would have gone to Liz's place rather than his own home.
They all took their comfort where they could.
“Randy?” A girl of about sixteen, her resemblance to Miranda striking, came hesitantly into the room. She was wearing a nightgown and robe even at ten in the morning on a school day, but that was explained when Miranda spoke.
“You shouldn't have gotten up, Bonnie. Doc said sleep would help you more than anything.”
“I feel much better, honest. It's only a cold, nothing major.” Bonnie watched Miranda pour very black coffee into a cup. “Was it…?”
Miranda sipped her coffee, then nodded.
“Adam Ramsay? Just like you saw?”
“Just like I saw,” Miranda confirmed bitterly.
Bonnie shivered and bit her lip, then walked to the table in the center of the room and sat down. “I didn't really know him. Still …”
“Still,” Miranda agreed.
“It's all going to happen now, isn't it?”
“I'm afraid so.”
Bonnie's lip quivered before she bit it again. “Then we'll leave, that's all. We'll just—”
“It wouldn't matter, Bonnie. It wouldn't change anything. Some things have to happen just the way they happen.”
“You can't stop it?” Her vivid blue eyes were desperately worried.
“No, I can't stop it.” Miranda drew a breath. “Not alone.”
“Maybe Alex can—”
“No. Not Alex.”
Their eyes met, held, then Bonnie said, “You could ask them to send somebody else.”