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."