"No," Bonnie said. "He wasn't careful enough."
"When are the deputies due back with Marsh?" Tony asked.
Bishop checked his watch. "Maybe half an hour or so, depending on the roads." Sitting on the conference table as usual, he returned to brooding over the bulletin board.
"Something bothering you?"
"Just trying to figure the bastard out. I keep coming back to the way he killed Lynet."
"Because he drugged her?"
"Because he drugged her and then beat her that way. If you look at what he did to the others — say, Kerry Ingram, for instance — what he did was deliberately torture someone who was acutely aware of what he was doing. It wasn't just physical torture but emotional and psychological as well."
Miranda came into the room in time to hear, and said, "But with Lynet, the torture was physical — and she was entirely unaware of it."
Bishop nodded. "So why did he bother? I mean, kill her, sure — once he grabbed her, even if it was a mistake, he had to follow through. But why beat her to death?"
"Because he's a perverted son of a bitch?" Tony offered.
"Because he was angry," Bishop said. "Not angry at her, or he would have made sure she felt it."
"At himself?" Miranda guessed.
"Maybe. Or his situation. Maybe he realized that Lynet was the beginning of the end, literally. Maybe she was the one who proved to him that he wouldn't be able to go on much longer if he had to kill kids he knew."
Tony shook his head with a snort. "So he's pissed at his poor victim because she's somebody he knows, and because he's pissed he beats her to death — but he drugs her first because he doesn't want her to know he's hurting her? Jesus."
"You're missing the point, Tony."
"What point?"
Bishop looked at him. "That uncontrolled rage. It's a change in him, in his behavior. If you look at the Ramsay boy and Kerry Ingram, what he was doing to his victims could almost be termed . . . clinical. Emotionless. He strangled Kerry again and again to the point of unconsciousness, then waited for her to revive and did it again. As if he was . . . studying her responses somehow. And even though we only have the Ramsay boy's bones, it's obvious from them that his killer came up with more than one creative method of torture. If it was torture."
Tony said, "What are you driving at?"
Bishop returned his gaze to the bulletin board. "Maybe I've been looking at this the wrong way. Maybe his goal isn't to torture as much as it is ... to learn."
With a grimace, Tony said, "The way the doctors at Auschwitz wanted to learn?"
"Could be. It might explain how he's choosing his victims. How he rationalizes it, I mean. He may view teenagers as disposable somehow, as less valuable than adults. That could be how he justifies this to himself. Teenagers are . . . emotional, combative, driven by their hormones. They flout authority, assert their independence, cause trouble for their parents and society at large."
"So he's using them as lab rats?" Tony shook his head. "But to what end? If he's convinced himself he's doing something noble and worthwhile for mankind, then what's the ultimate goal? Or am I being too logical?"
"No, he'd have a goal," Bishop said. "An ultimate aim or at least an avenue of pursuit."
"Just tell me he's not building a creature," Tony begged.
"No," Bishop said slowly. "No, I don't think he's doing that."
When he saw the Ouija box atop the stack of games on the coffee table, Seth thought that Bonnie must have changed her mind about using it. But then he remembered her voice and the expression on her face when she'd talked about how dangerous it was to be even unconsciously tempted to use it, and about promising Miranda she wouldn't try it again. And he knew it wasn't Bonnie who had brought the game back into the ward. He stood there just inside the room, holding the juice he'd fetched for the two young patients. Across the room, Bonnie was reading them a story. No one had yet noticed his return. He'd been gone barely ten minutes.
What bothered Seth was a very simple question. If Bonnie hadn't brought the game, if he hadn't, and if neither of the little girls — confined to their beds — had done so ... then who had? Who would have?
He looked at the stack of games again, and this time a feathery chill brushed up his spine.
The Ouija board was now out of its box, the planchette centered on the board and ready.
Christ, it even tempted him. To put his fingers on the planchette and see if it moved, see if the dead really could speak by spelling things out on a board . . .
With an effort, Seth snapped himself out of it.
He wanted to tell himself again that this was just a dream, a figment of his strained and anxious imagination. But he was standing there, wide awake, and a game that hadn't even been in the room ten minutes before had in the space of a few seconds arranged itself so as to be ready to be ... played.
And if he listened intently, concentrated really hard and closed out the sound of Bonnie's musical voice reading the story, he was almost positive he could hear that unearthly whispering.
"Seth?"
He jumped slightly and looked toward the girls to find Bonnie gazing at him questioningly. "I didn't want to interrupt," he said, surprised his voice sounded so calm. He carried the juice to the girls.
"It's a good story," Jordan confided.
"Bonnie reads it real good," Christy said.
"We're about halfway through," Bonnie told him.
He nodded, glanced at his watch, and summoned a smile. "Dad's just down the hall. I'll go check with him, see how things are going."
"Okay," Bonnie said. "We'll be here."
As he turned toward the door, Seth realized that from where she was sitting Bonnie couldn't see the coffee table. He made a slight detour and replaced the board and planchette in the box, not surprised that his hands shook a bit.
He half expected the damned thing to bite him or something.
But the game appeared perfectly innocent now, and didn't do anything supernatural like jump out of his hands as he carried it back to the storage room and placed it on the high shelf.
"I'm not going to scare Bonnie," he muttered, stacking three other games and a bucket of wooden blocks on top of the Ouija board. "She has enough to worry about without some damned stupid game haunting her."
It was enough that it was haunting him.
He gave the box a final shove and left the storage room, closing the door very firmly. And pretended to himself he didn't hear a thing as he walked away.
Sandy Lynch poured a cup of coffee and used it to warm her cold hands. "How come I get all the crappy duties?" she demanded of the room at large.
Carl Tierney, lounging at his desk as he waited for the sheriff to buzz him, said lazily, "Because you're the baby deputy."
"That sucks," she said roundly.
"We've all been there, kid." He smiled at her. "Besides, it wasn't such a crappy duty. I was there too."
"You got to drive. I got to sit in the back and listen to Justin Marsh go on and on and on."
At his desk nearby, Alex said absently, "He does tend to do that."
Sandy, not quite certain how to treat the recently bereaved and cautious about trying, adopted what she hoped was a perfectly brisk and professional tone. "No kidding he tends to do that. And the man has radar when it comes to gossip, I'll swear he does. I heard things about people I really didn't want to know."
"For instance?" Carl probed curiously.
"Shame on you."
"Hey, it's better than being bored. Give."
"No." But Sandy couldn't resist adding, "Just tell me how he heard, from way out where he lives, that it was the sheriff's sister told us where we could find Steve Penman's body. I mean, gossip's probably spreading like wildfire by now, but way out there? And of all the screwed-up stories he might have heard, that's the one he believed?"