Nate knew he should go home to bed, get a fresh start in the morning — later in the morning — but he also knew he'd be too restless to sleep. There was paperwork awaiting him back at the station, but that held even less appeal, and he wasn't really surprised to find himself just casually wandering past Stephanie's slightly open office door.
She was sitting at her desk, frowning over what he felt was an uncharacteristically untidy jumble of papers spread out on the blotter.
"You're working late," he said from the doorway.
Stephanie looked up with a start, but then smiled. "Not exactly work. Or at least, not work I'm being paid to do. I wanted to keep looking through the old files, see if I could find something useful."
"I could have been anybody, you know," he told her, pushing the door the rest of the way open. "Sneaking up on you — " He broke off, rather sheepishly, because the door creaked loudly as it opened wide enough to admit him.
Stephanie grinned and moved a stack of papers to reveal a gleaming .45 automatic. "I'm fast, especially with the adrenaline rush. If I hadn't instantly recognized your voice, you would have been looking down the barrel of this before you could get anywhere near the desk."
Nate sat down in her visitor's chair. "Never mind fast — are you any good with that?"
"Yes. And I have a license for it. A license to carry it, for that matter." Soberly, she added, "I think our nighttime security is pretty good, especially with your people patrolling as well, but with a killer here somewhere, I'm taking no chances. Army brat, remember?"
"I remember. And I feel a bit better about you working late alone down here. But only a bit." He paused. "You do realize this killer is likely to be someone you know? Or at least that he'll wear a familiar face?"
"The thought had occurred. In a place like The Lodge, all dressed in its Victorian grandeur, it'd be easy to imagine that only the odd maniac wandering past could possibly have sullied our good name with something as distasteful as murder."
He lifted an eyebrow at her.
Descending to normality, Stephanie said, "Except that this place never really was unsullied, was it?"
"Not according to Quentin."
"And not according to what records I've gone over so far. Did you know that the first death recorded on these grounds happened while the place was being built?"
"Yeah, one of my people found mention of that in a historical database. Not so uncommon around construction sites, especially over a hundred years ago."
"Yeah. But this guy didn't fall from a scaffold or get crushed by falling stone, or anything like that. The local doctor at the time stated in writing that the victim was frightened to death."
"Frightened? Of what?"
"Nobody could say. They came to work early one morning, and there he was, just lying near the foreman's shack. No cuts, no bruises. Place wasn't far enough along to even have security out here, not that they needed much in those days. Bottom line, nobody saw anything."
"Frightened to death. Heart attack?" Nate guessed.
"The doc stated that his heart stopped — but that it wasn't diseased, wasn't enlarged, wasn't any of the things they believed in those days showed signs of trouble. And, apparently, he looked scared out of his mind. His face was frozen in an expression of absolute terror."
Nate was silent, frowning.
"That's not all," Stephanie continued. "Another half dozen men died during the construction of The Lodge and its stables. And all the deaths were...just a little bit strange. Surefooted men falling. Skilled men having accidents with tools. Healthy men getting very sick very suddenly."
"What about after construction?"
"Well, then the records get just a bit murky." She shrugged, frowning a little herself. "I know enough about record-keeping to know that the entries I've found so far concerning illnesses, disappearances, and deaths here were noted with an absolute minimum of detail, almost casually."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that from the get-go, any sort of bad news for The Lodge — especially of the death-on-the-grounds variety — was strongly downplayed."
"Wouldn't that be expected for a hotel?"
"To a certain extent, yeah. But your average hotel, when faced with the disappearance, death, or even murder of one of its guests, would have paperwork up the wazoo. Police reports, security reports, doctors' statements. Every piece of paper that could possibly be required to acquit the hotel and all its employees of any wrongdoing."
"Which The Lodge doesn't have."
"Like I said. If you ask me, somebody very early on made the decision of how bad news was to be handled. And whether it became habit or an ironclad rule, that's how it was done from that point onward."
"No paperwork."
"No paperwork, and only the bare mention of an occurrence. Name, date, not much more. Usually buried in accounts of the day-to-day running of the place."
Nate rested his forearm on her desk, fingers drumming absently. "I know how many deaths and disappearances we're talking about in the last twenty-five years, thanks to Quentin's obsession. What about before that? How many?"
"Oh, jeez, it'll be weeks before I can tell you that. I'm barely up to about 1925."
"Okay. How many up to 1925?"
Stephanie drew a breath. "Counting the deaths during construction, I have reported on the grounds of The Lodge more than a dozen deaths by 1925."
It took a minute, but Nate finally said, "Of those, how many were suspicious?"
"In my opinion? All of them, Nate. All of them."
"Are you dead?" Diana asked incredulously. Beau smiled. "No."
She took a step closer, uncertain. "Are you a medium?"
"No." Diana looked around her at the gray easels with their gray canvases daubed and stroked with varying shades of gray paint. She looked at the gray plants here and there in the conservatory, looked down at her own gray self and then up at him. Gray too. Everything was gray.
"Then I repeat. What the hell are you doing here?"
"I told you. Waiting for you."
"Beau, do you know where we are?"
"I think you call it the gray time."
"What do you call it?"
He looked around him, as though in mild curiosity, and said, "Your name fits. It's an interesting place. Or — time."
"Only the dead walk here."
"You walk here."
"I'm a medium." She stopped, startled, and Beau smiled again.
"Is that the first time you've said it?"
"I guess so. First time I meant it, anyway."
"It'll get easier," he told her. "Not so surprising. Even ordinary, after a while."
Diana shook her head. "Never mind that. I don't understand how you're here."
"It's a knack I have. My sister says I'm... very plugged in to the universe."
"Is that supposed to be an explanation?"
"Probably not. Diana, it doesn't really matter how I'm here. All that matters is that you see what I have to show you, and listen to what I have to tell you."
"You sure sound like a guide," she muttered.
"Sorry." He turned, beckoning her to follow, and led the way to the back corner where her easel was set up.
Her easel. Her sketchpad. Her drawing of Missy, there despite the fact that she knew it was in the tote bag in her cottage. But more astonishing, there was a brilliant scarlet slash across the sketch, glistening wetly and, in fact, still dripping onto some rags below the easel.
Scarlet. Not gray.
Like the green door, this was a color she could see.
"Why?" she asked, sure somehow that she wouldn't have to explain her question more fully.
"Signposts," he said. "The gray time has them as well. Things to pay attention to. Things to remember, so you can find your way. Only here they stand out a bit more."
Diana thought about that. "The green door I get; it's the way back. The way out. But this?"