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 two 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.