Out of the Shadows tbscus-3

by Кей Хупер

  "You're welcome," he said.

  Miranda laughed under her breath, then went grave again as she looked down at the Ouija board. "So whatever spirit they contacted is probably still here, in the house." She kept her voice matter-of-fact, even though her skin crawled at the idea of a spirit so angry or desperate to escape, it had ruthlessly attacked her.

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "No. But I think we'd better assume it for now."

  "And both of us are psychically blind as a couple of bats. Even if we were mediumistic, neither of us could open a door for it — to come into us or to leave here. So we're safe from it, at least for now. But when we regain our abilities we'll have to be careful; if it attacked you only because your shields were down, then anyone with any kind of psychic ability could be at risk."

  "Bonnie can't come back here," Miranda said.

  "At least not until we regain our abilities and figure out what to do about it," he agreed. "Young as she is, we can't take the chance she might not be able to protect herself — especially if, say, it's the spirit of Steve Penman, who by most accounts did have a lot of anger in his nature."

  Recalling the force of the attack against her, Miranda felt a chill. Bonnie had good shields, strong shields, but they could be weakened by physical weariness or slip because of carelessness or inattention. Just a slight opening, a weak point in the defenses, and an angry spirit could force its way in — especially into the mind of a mediumistic psychic designed by nature to be receptive to the contact.

  "She'll be all right, Miranda."

  He was, she decided, getting entirely too good at reading her, especially without benefit of his extra senses. "I know."

  "You said it would take time for the spirit to gain enough energy, enough strength, to leave here. Right?"

  "Right." As far as I know. But do I know enough to be sure?

  "Then we have a little breathing room. And there is a more immediate threat we have to consider."

  He was right. Pushing aside the unknown, Miranda said, "Gossip is spreading fast about how we were able to find Steve's body. Sooner or later, the killer is going to find out Bonnie poses a danger to him."

  "Yes — assuming he even believes in what she can do."

  "You said it yourself, Bishop — this killer wants to think he's in control and all-powerful; it will only reinforce his ego if he thinks the only way we can interfere with his plans is by using paranormal means. That's right, isn't it? He'll be eager to accept the idea that the ghost of one of his victims sent us to find Steve Penman."

  "He'll also be eager to make sure we can't use that tool again. Especially if it unsettles him to believe his victims can speak through Bonnie, can accuse him of his crimes. So I'd say we have far more to fear from the living than the dead, for the present anyway."

  Miranda got up and moved across the room to the big front window. The streetlights were barely visible through the swirling, blowing snow, and the moaning of the wind was constant.

  "I hate this," she muttered. "We're isolated, cut off from everything, helpless to do anything but wait. While that maniac is out there somewhere, probably pissed and thinking about his next victim. I just hope to God he's trapped inside like the rest of us."

  Bishop came up behind her and slid his arms around her. "You know, for an atheist you have an interesting relationship with God."

  She was stiff for just an instant, then relaxed against him. "Oh, you noticed that?"

  "I did, yes."

  She chuckled, grateful for the momentary distraction from her worries. "Just habit, I suppose, to use the word. The name. No disrespect intended or offense meant. And no belief in a deity. Malign fate, maybe, but no benevolent intelligence watching over us."

  "Yet you know something of us survives death."

  "To me, that's not a religious thing — not a question of faith or belief, or any notion that surviving death is some kind of reward for a life well lived. It's a certainty. It's like knowing a tree sheds its leaves year after year, cultivating a new set each spring of its life cycle. The tree grows and sinks its roots deeper and deeper, and wears a new set of leaves each spring until it finally grows as large as it can, reaches the end of its life, and dies."

  "Our bodies are the . . . leaves of our soul?"

  "Why not?" She shrugged. "We tend to think what's real and lasting is only what we can see, but that doesn't mean we're right. Maybe our skin and bones and the faces we see in the mirror are really the most transitory things about us. Maybe we just wear our bodies the way that tree wears its leaves, our physical selves being born and maturing and dying over and over while inside our spirits grow and learn."

  "It has its attractions, that theory," Bishop said. "And maybe it explains ..."

  "Explains what?"

  He hesitated, and when he replied he made sure his tone was light. "Explains what I felt the first time I set eyes on you. Do you suppose one soul can recognize another even wearing a different set of leaves?"

  After a moment, she said in an equally casual tone, "I guess that would depend on the soul. An old soul would probably have more practice at it, especially if you believe the karmic theory that says we travel through our existence surrounded by many of the same souls in life after life. Maybe we're psychic because we're old souls, and these abilities of ours are simply the result of a ... spiritual evolution."

  Bishop wondered if neither of them wanted to probe too deeply and question their own feelings because they were afraid of the answers they might find. But he accepted the tacit avoidance, and his own relief told him he was not yet ready to risk pushing Miranda in that direction.

  "Another theory that has its own attractions," he said judiciously. "Nice to think of oneself as a highly evolved soul. Do you suppose an earlier set of my leaves might have been Charlemagne?"

  Miranda turned to smile up at him. "More likely Rasputin," she said. "Although I suppose you could have been both, given the dates."

  "The Mad Monk? Thanks a lot."

  She slid her arms up around his neck. "There's just something about those eyes. Absolutely hypnotic."

  "If you'll forgive a bad pun — look who's talking." He kissed her, then said, "We won't let anyone harm Bonnie, Miranda. Not in this life or from the next."

  "Promise?" Immediately, she shook her head. "No, that's not fair. And not realistic."

  Bishop lifted a hand to smooth a strand of her silky black hair from her face. He knew she was right, knew that to make such a promise right now, with everything that was going on around them, was unreasonable and even irrational. But he wasn't very surprised to hear himself say steadily, "I promise, Miranda."

  Sunday, January 16

  Deputy Sandy Lynch refilled her coffee cup and returned to her desk after a brief look out the window. The wind had finally died down, at least for the moment, and the snow had slowed to

  gently drifting flakes; if she'd been a fan of winter wonderlands, she would have loved it. But with a foot or so of snow on the ground and power outages being reported now that people were up and about, it promised to be a difficult, busy day for the Sheriff's Department.

  Especially if, as the Weather Service was predicting, the back side of the storm blew through later today.

  Sandy sipped her coffee and then rubbed her eyes wearily. Spending most of the night reading old classified ads hadn't been a lot of fun, but at least it had kept her occupied. Not that she really knew what she was looking for. As instructed, she was making a list of similar ads that had run around the time of each of more than a dozen reported disappearances of teens passing through the area. But in doing so, she had noticed that several businesses appeared to run ads all or most of the time — like the paper mill, for instance, which always seemed to need to hire more employees.

  The car dealerships and garages also appeared to have a high turnover, the school system always seemed to be looking for bus drivers and janitors, and even the town of Gladstone itself offered a fairly constant s
tream of opportunities for transient labor such as street cleaning and litter control, grounds maintenance, and various kinds of painting and repairs.

  Some time in the wee hours of the night, Sandy had compared some of the old classifieds with those in last week's paper, but nothing of particular interest had jumped out at her. Ads from years ago and those more recent appeared boringly similar.

  "Dead bodies one day and paper cuts the next," she muttered sardonically to herself. "Talk about extremes. I just love my job."

  The front door opened to admit a gust of really cold air and one FBI agent, and since Sandy's desk was the nearest one occupied beyond the reception area, she got to chase blowing papers around.

  "Sorry about that, Deputy," Bishop apologized.

  Sandy got off her knees and back into her chair, wishing he didn't make her feel so flustered. "It's okay, Agent Bishop. Agent Harte is back in the conference room."

  "Thank you." Bishop nodded courteously with a smile and went on past her desk.

  Deputy Brady Shaw waited until the agent disappeared down the hallway before marveling, "Was that an honest-to-God smile? And me without my cameras."

  "He's always polite," Sandy objected, ruefully aware of defending a man who could undoubtedly defend himself.

  "Yeah, but he doesn't waste smiles — even on you, Sandy. At least he didn't yesterday." Brady nodded judiciously. "The test will be when Sheriff Knight comes in."

  "What test?"

  "To see if she's smiling too," Brady replied with a grin.

  Sandy rolled her eyes and heaved a sigh. "Honestly, you men. Just because he's in a good mood you figure he got lucky last night."

  "Give me another reason why he'd be in a good mood," Brady challenged. "We've got a killer running around out there and bodies piling up like cordwood, we're in the middle of a blizzard, the power is failing all over town — and the Bluebird Lodge sucks as a place to stay."

  "I'm going back to work now," Sandy announced.

  "I'll bet twenty bucks that Sheriff Knight is also in a good mood when she gets here."

  "I'm ignoring you."

  Brady chuckled. "Just wait and see if I'm not right."

  Bishop walked into the conference room to find Tony leaning back with his feet propped on the conference table, and said, "Have you even moved since I left last night?"

  "Of course I have." Tony looked at him with bright, speculative eyes.

  "Don't even start," Bishop warned.

  "I was just going to observe how much benefit there obviously is in a good night's sleep," Tony said innocently. "Last night you were pacing holes in the floor, and this morning you're . . . not nearly as tense."

  Dryly, Bishop said, "Tony, you're about as subtle as neon."

  Tony laughed. "Okay, okay. Where's Miranda?"

  "She went by Dr. Daniels's clinic to talk to Bonnie and take her a few things."

  "So the kid's stuck there for the duration?"

  "She's safer there." Bishop briefly explained what he and Miranda believed had happened when Bonnie had used the Ouija board the day before.

  Sobered, Tony said, "Poor kid. I always thought being mediumistic would be the least fun ability to have, even if it did confirm some kind of existence beyond death."

  "It's one of the two abilities with the highest potential danger to the psychic, I know that much."

  "What's the other ability? Being able to tap in to the mind of a killer?"

  Bishop nodded. "I've known only two psychics with that ability. It killed one of them and damned near killed the other."

  "Miranda's sister," Tony realized. "And the other — was that the psychic you told us about last year, the one in North Carolina?"

  "Cassie Neill. When that case was over and done with, she had almost totally burned out psychically. It'll be years, if ever, before she regains any of her former abilities."

  "You told us it was a good thing, for her."

  "Yeah. She'd devoted her entire adult life to using her abilities to help the police, and she was about as close to a total breakdown as anyone I've ever seen. At least now she can have a shot at a normal life."

  "Odd how some of us have few problems and others seem to be ... almost punished ... by psychic abilities," Tony mused.

  "Why do you think it was so difficult to pull together an effective team of psychics that it took years to do it?" Bishop said. "Finding genuine psychics wasn't the problem; finding genuine psychics who could handle the work consistently was."

  "Urn. Which means we could really use someone like Miranda on the team."

  Bishop picked up a sheaf of messages from the table. "She has a term of office as sheriff to finish out."

  "And then?"

  "We haven't talked about it."

  Deciding not to push, Tony said, "Probably best to take things a day at a time for now." He saw Bishop frown down at the messages, and added, "You asked last night that the deputies taking phone calls note down any comments or questions about how we were able to find Steve Penman's body. There weren't many calls last night, but lots this morning."

  "Have you looked at these?" Bishop asked.

  "No, one of the deputies just brought them in a little while ago. Why?"

  Grim, Bishop said, "Because the prevailing theory seems to be that we were able to find Penman's body because Liz Hallowell saw it in the tea leaves."

  "Oh," Tony said. And then, slowly, "Oh, shit."

  SIXTEEN

  "No answer at her house or the store." Miranda cradled the receiver. "She's an early riser, she'd be up by now."

  Bishop checked his watch. "Nearly ten. If the weather reports are on target, we'll get the back side of the storm by noon or a little after."

  Miranda picked up a clipboard from the conference table and studied it with a frown. "Her house isn't in one of the sections reporting a power outage, but even if it were she'd still have the phone. Damn."

  Tony said, "Unless he's stupidly out there now leaving tracks in the snow, or even more stupidly went out in the middle of the storm, he had to have acted fairly early last night, right? Just hours after we found Penman's body. Would he have felt threatened enough to move against her so quickly?"

  "Believing it was possible she had a pipeline to his victims?" Bishop barely hesitated. "I'd say yes."

  Miranda nodded. "Then we have to go out there, before the storm gets wound up again. Where's Alex?"

  "The lounge," Tony answered. "When everything was so quiet a few hours ago, he decided to get a little sleep. Want me to wake him?"

  "No. If we're very lucky, there won't be any reason to disturb his sleep now or later." She drew a breath. "In fact, I don't want to tell any of the deputies unless it's necessary. Liz is ... very well liked. We'll keep it just between us, for now. Tony, if something has happened, first impressions could be very useful to us."

  "Well, sure, but I'm not especially strong," he reminded her.

  She gave Bishop a wry look, and he said, "At the moment, you have both of us beat."

  Tony blinked. "Ah. I wondered why the transmitter was so silent that I was reduced to trying to read your stone face."

  "Temporarily out of order."

  "How temporarily?"

  "A few hours, if we're lucky. A few days, if we're not."

  "Receivers busted too?"

  "Afraid so."

  Tony looked from one to the other, having little luck reading two very calm faces. "I see. I don't, actually, but since it's obvious I'm not going to get an explanation, never mind. The timing could be better, guys."

  "No kidding." Miranda put down the clipboard. "There's some snow gear in one of the storage lockers. You'll both need boots, at least." She was already wearing hers.

  "I'll get them," Tony said.

  "Don't say anything to the others," Miranda told him.

  "Gotcha."

  When they were alone in the conference room, Bishop said, "Assuming we're right about this, none of us could have anticipated that he'd move so
fast."

  "I know, I know." But she was frowning.

  And Bishop didn't like something he saw in her face, a tension or strain that hadn't been there just a few minutes ago. "Miranda, none of this is your fault."

  She looked at him steadily. "But Tony's right about our rotten timing. We could hardly have picked a worse moment to have our abilities muted."

  "We didn't pick the moment, it picked us." Bishop's voice was deliberate. "And I'm not sorry it did. The rate we were going, we were never going to get there without a nudge."

  "It was more of a shove," she said.

  It wasn't like her to be flippant at such a moment, and it told Bishop probably more than she would have liked about her state of mind. He crossed the space between them and lifted a hand to touch her face. "Are you all right?"

  "There is," she said with a touch of grimness, "such a thing as being known too well."

  "What's wrong, Miranda?"

  "Me. I'm wrong."

  "In what way?"

  Miranda drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I thought I could change things. I thought I could . . . exert some kind of control over fate, even if only a little. And I thought I had. But if Liz is dead ... if she died last night before you came to me ... then it's all happening just the way I saw it happen, in spite of what I tried to do to change it. I can't change it. Apparently there's not a goddamned thing I can do to stop any of it."

  Bishop felt a little chill that came from instinct rather than knowledge. "What is it? What did you see?"

  Whether Miranda would have answered became moot when Tony returned to the conference room with the snow boots. She turned away from Bishop, becoming once again the brisk and efficient sheriff, and the moment for confidences passed.

  Miranda made that even more clear when she decided they should take two vehicles — just in case one of them got stuck in the snow. It was a reasonable precaution, but it was also an obvious desire to be alone for a while since she rather pointedly suggested that Bishop and Tony take their rental SUV.