"Not yet. Nobody else wants it."
He caught a glimpse of the river and realized they were getting close. Absently, he said, "A Ouija board. I would have thought Bonnie would know better than that."
"She does. But she wanted to help her friend."
"Where are they now?"
"Seth's father, Colin Daniels, is one of our local doctors. He runs a pediatric clinic. Bonnie and Seth took Amy there before they came to tell me, then they went back there to stay with her. Colin's her doctor, and he's got her sedated."
"Then she's convinced the Penman boy is dead?"
"Apparently it was a pretty convincing scene."
"Who did they reach? Penman?"
"I don't know. And neither do they."
Bishop hesitated. "If Bonnie's that sensitive, maybe—"
"No way, Bishop. You should know better than that. Whatever Bonnie opened the door to is likely to be confused and enraged at the very least, and I will not allow my sixteen-year-old sister to subject herself to that kind of negative psychic energy. It could destroy her."
"You're right," he said. He thought he'd surprised her, and the reminder of how ruthless she thought him was unexpectedly painful. "I would never do anything to hurt Bonnie, Miranda. If you don't believe anything else I ever say to you, believe that."
She glanced at him, but all she said was, "The road leading out to the mill house should be just ahead. There's no way to approach quietly except on foot — and we'd be very visible on foot."
He saw what she meant when she turned the Jeep off the winding two-lane blacktop and onto a rutted dirt road. She stopped, leaving the engine running, and they both studied the scene ahead. A half mile or so down the road, the mill house was visible. Part of the roof had fallen in on one side, and only shards of glass remained in the few windows not boarded up. The waterwheel had long since become no more than a crumbling skeleton, and overgrown bushes, their branches stripped bare in winter, reached as high as the eaves.
Miranda pulled a pair of binoculars from the center console and got a closer view of the place, then passed them to Bishop. "I don't see anyone. How's the spider-sense?"
He rolled down his window and leaned out with the binoculars, then put them aside and concentrated all his senses. "I don't see anyone either." After a long while, he looked at Miranda and added quietly, "But I smell blood."
She put the Jeep in gear without another word and drove up the road almost to the mill house before parking. "The ground's likely softer near the house," she said. "There might be tire tracks, footprints. Something we might be able to use."
"It's a chance," he agreed.
They got out, both automatically drawing and checking their weapons. Miranda got flashlights and latex gloves from a tool kit in the back of the Jeep, and they made their way cautiously to the house.
They had never worked together this way before, and it wasn't until later that Bishop realized how smoothly and in sync they had operated as a team. Nothing had to be said, and neither wasted a motion or a second of time. They split up to bracket the house, each of them treading carefully to avoid trampling any evidence. They tried and failed to see into several windows as they worked their way toward the door.
The smell of blood grew stronger.
Miranda was the first to reach a window that allowed a view of the inside, and Bishop knew instantly that the sight sickened her. She stood there for a moment, her face still and pale, then moved past the window and joined him beside the closed door.
She whispered, "What I saw couldn't try to escape."
Bishop reached out to try the rusted doorknob, and it turned easily, as if recently oiled. Cautiously, making sure they were standing well to the side, he pushed open the door.
The heavy, coppery stench seemed to roll out at them, cloying and sickly sweet.
He already knew nothing alive was in there, but they went in by the numbers anyway, guns ready, alert for threats and protecting each other as partners did.
Whatever machinery had once been contained in the single huge room was long since gone. Half the space was cluttered by rotting beams and broken tiles; the other half, sheltered by the partial roof, was dim and musty, with weeds sprouting here and there between the few remaining floorboards.
Under the crossbeam, a shallow trench had been dug in the ground. It was about three feet long and a foot wide, and no more than ten inches deep. The soft earth had soaked up much of the blood.
Above the trench, suspended from the crossbeam by a rope knotted around both ankles, hung the naked body of Steve Penman.
Blood still dripped from his slashed throat.
ELEVEN
Deputy Sandy Lynch didn't get sick this time, but she was none too happy that the call had come in while she was on duty. Even if all she had to do was fetch and carry for Dr. Edwards, who had returned just in time to examine Steve Penman's butchered body, it meant Sandy was stuck inside the mill house with that body and all the blood, and she hated the smell of blood, she just hated it—
"Deputy?" Agent Edwards said kindly. "If you could hold the light a little higher, please?"
"Yes, ma'am." She did and tried not to look at what it showed. She also tried to breathe through her mouth only, and tried not to look too desperate when Alex looked in long enough to catch her eye.
Alex retreated from the doorway to where Miranda stood next to Tony Harte, who was making a plaster cast of tire tracks.
"Sandy's about to lose her lunch," Alex said.
Miranda nodded. "Have her switch places with Carl.
We need somebody at the end of the road just in case anyone passes by and gets too curious."
"Right." Alex went off to obey orders.
"I know how she feels," Tony commented, sitting back on his heels as he waited for the plaster to harden. "She's — what? — twenty?"
"About that." Miranda shifted her gaze to Bishop, standing near the crumbling waterwheel several yards away. "And she didn't bargain for all this."
Tony noted the direction of her stare, but all he said was, "I guess not. Sometimes fate just loves to knock you back on your ass."
Miranda looked at him, one brow rising slightly.
Innocently, he said, "By the way, thanks for not blocking us anymore. It was giving me a hell of a headache."
"So what can you pick up from the area?" she asked, neatly bypassing any discussion as to why she had retracted her shield to enclose only her own mind.
Tony sighed. "All I got inside was the boy's terror — which gives me a whole new insight into the human mind, since he was unconscious the entire time and shouldn't by any science we've always believed in and relied upon have known or been able to feel what was being done to him."
"But he knew? He felt it?"
"He knew," Tony said soberly. "Knew he was going to die and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. And he felt it. The pain."
Miranda tried not to think too much about that. "Did he know who — "
"If he did, he was too terrified of dying to care who was killing him. I just got the emotions, not the thoughts."
"I see. Anything else?"
"About what you'd expect. There was a kind of ... free-floating rage, I assume the killer's. He wasn't finished here, and I don't think he intended us to find the body here, so if we do find any evidence, it might be worth a lot. That's it for me. Sharon might get more, since this is definitely the scene of the crime and not just a dumping place."
"Yes, this time we got.. . lucky."
"Gotta love those anonymous tips," Tony said.
It was Miranda's turn to sigh. "It would be nice to have some solid evidence from here on out. Too many more anonymous tips I can't explain and we'll all be in trouble."