"Please?" Amy begged. Confident of the response she wanted, she moved one of the tables Bonnie used as a nightstand to the side of the bed so she could place the board on it. She put the planchette in position in the center of the board and placed her fingertips on it.
Bonnie wavered for a moment longer. "Oh, all right. But keep the questions very specific, Amy."
Amy laughed. "Why? Is it a dumb board?"
Secrets really were amazingly restrictive, Bonnie reflected, wondering how to explain to her friend that when you opened a door you couldn't always control what came in. "Just don't wander off the point, all right? Ask about you and Steve, and that's all."
"I thought you'd never played this game before," Amy said suspiciously.
"I told you I'd never used a Ouija board, and I haven't." Bonnie drew a breath and placed her fingertips lightly on the planchette. "Let's get on with it."
Amy began, "What I want to know—"
The planchette jerked violently and centered itself over the word NO.
"Hey! You're not supposed to make it move," Amy exclaimed indignantly.
"I didn't." Bonnie stared down at the planchette and the adamant word showing through it.
"But I didn't even ask — " Amy shook her head and guided the planchette back to the center. "We'll try again. What I want to know is—"
The planchette jerked again, and again decisively indicated the word NO.
"Bonnie ..." Every time Amy moved the planchette back to the center, it returned immediately to no. "You swear you aren't—"
"I'm not moving it." Not consciously at least. Not deliberately. Staring down at the board, she said softly, "Who are you?" The planchette moved instantly.
L ... Y . . . N . . . E . . . T.
Amy jerked her fingers away. "That isn't funny, Bonnie!"
Bonnie removed her own fingers and looked at them as if they belonged to someone else. "I didn't do it."
Amy opened her mouth to argue, then realized with a little chill that this was hardly the sort of joke Bonnie would find amusing. "You mean .. ."
"I think we'd better stop, Amy."
"You don't really think . . . It's just a game."
"Some games are dangerous."
Amy felt a thrill of fear not unmixed with excitement. "But if there's a chance ... Bonnie, what if we can find out who killed her? Everybody wants to know that, and if we can find out—"
Bonnie chose her words carefully. "Amy, Randy says the one thing you can never afford to do in this life is assume. You're assuming that whoever — or whatever — spelled out that name really is Lynet."
"But who else could it be?"
"If her . . . spirit. . . could reach out to us, don't you think other spirits could as well? Maybe bad spirits?"
"Are there bad spirits?"
Bonnie looked at her sadly. "There are bad people. Why wouldn't there be bad spirits?"
"Well, but. . . spirits can't hurt us. Can they?"
"I don't know," Bonnie lied. "But I imagine it's not a good idea to open a door for them."
Amy bit her lip. "Bonnie, aren't you scared there's some maniac running around killing kids? Don't you want to look back over your shoulder every time you're somewhere by yourself? And just before you turn a corner, aren't you afraid there might be something awful waiting for you?"
Half-consciously, Bonnie fingered the small, oddly shaped scar on her right forearm. "Yes," she said. "Yes to all that. But, Amy, doing anything because we're scared is bound to be a bad idea. We have to trust Randy and the deputies and the FBI agents to find the killer. It's what they do."
Amy looked at her friend searchingly. "You really don't want to play this game anymore, do you, Bon?"
"I really don't," Bonnie said steadily.
"Okay, then we won't." Amy reached for her backpack to put the board away, and when she picked up the planchette neither she nor Bonnie noticed that it had once again centered itself over the word no.
Miranda glanced at Bishop with a frown, trying to ignore the increasingly frequent stabs of pain behind her eyes. "Why was the killer's mistake not burying Adam Ramsay deep enough? Because we found him?"
Bishop nodded. "I don't think that boy's body was ever meant to be found — unlike the other two."
Alex said, "Granted, Kerry Ingram was found lying openly in a ravine like discarded trash, but Lynet was pretty thoroughly hidden at the bottom of that well."
"Yes, but for how long? I did a little checking, and it seems your local paper reported just a week or so ago that the property around the lake had been sold to a group of buyers from Florida who plan to build vacation homes there. Clearing off the home sites in preparation is due to start in just a couple of weeks. And according to the land surveys, one of those sites is within twenty yards of the well."
"So the body probably would have been found," Miranda agreed. "Okay. But did he want us to find the girls, or just not care whether we did?"
"You tell me," Bishop said, looking at her steadily.
"Me? How would I know?" She was practically daring him to say something about extra senses in front of Alex, and both of them knew it.
Instead, Bishop said, "You know the basics of how to profile a killer, Sheriff. Why would one victim among three be transported miles farther than the others and buried in a forest where even hunters seldom go?"
She thought about it. "Because something about the victim or the way he was killed points to the killer."
"Exactly." Bishop reached back over his shoulder and tapped his knuckles against the photographs on the bulletin board. Photographs of Adam Ramsay's remains. "He took the boy first and kept him alive longest, and when he was finished he buried the remains where he had every reason to expect they would be hidden indefinitely."
"Unfortunately, they nearly were," Alex said. "And by the time we found them, there wasn't much left. How're we supposed to find any evidence pointing to the killer when all we have are bones — and precious few of them?"
"Those bones." Miranda looked at Edwards. "Are you sure there isn't something you can tell us now about those bones, Doctor?"
"Sheriff, to be honest, all I have is a hunch — and it's pretty far out. I need a few days to finish my tests. All I can tell you right now is that the Ramsay boy's bones had been .. . altered."
"Aged," Miranda said.
Edwards nodded. "Artificially aged."
Alex said, "Why, for God's sake?"
"That's the question, isn't it, Deputy? Why — and how. I hope to find those answers, but I need time."
"I hope we have time," Miranda said. "But if Lynet was a mistake, killing her might have altered his needs and his rituals in ways we can't begin to understand let alone predict."
"He could be hunting again," Harte said. "And since we all seem to be having hunches, another one of mine is that he's looking around for his next victim even as we speak."
"In a county with several thousand teenagers." This time, Miranda didn't stop herself from rubbing her temples. "Shit. At the very least, I'm going to have to declare a dusk-to-dawn curfew for everybody under eighteen, try to keep the kids at home, at school — and off the streets."
"I doubt you'll get an argument," Alex told her. "Except from the kids, of course. The mayor will be thrilled to announce any action that sounds like he's helping to keep the town safe."
Miranda sent him a faint smile, then glanced at her watch. Addressing the three agents but looking only at Edwards, she said, "I don't know if you three plan on working tonight, but I do know the cafe and most of our better restaurants will be closing in less than two hours. If you want my advice, you'll go get something to eat while you can."
"Sounds like a good idea to me." Harte stood up and stretched. "If I don't get something besides caffeine in my system, somebody'll have to peel me off the ceiling."
Edwards nodded agreement and looked at Bishop as she rose too. "I'll need a couple more hours at the morgue tonight, then there's nothing I can do until tomorrow."