Your subjects? But Miranda couldn't say it, couldn't force a word out. Her fear was choking her again.
Bishop either knew or guessed, because he spoke up then, his voice steady. "Because you knew them. Knew their names, their faces. Their mothers and fathers."
MacBride responded to that easily, almost eagerly. "That proved to be... surprisingly difficult. Adam wasn't so bad, the sneaky little bastard, but Kerry ... she kept crying and asking me why. And then there was Lynet, little Lynet. ... I liked her."
"But you killed her anyway," Bishop said.
"I had to. Once I'd taken her, well. . . she had seen me. I couldn't let her go. But I made sure she didn't suffer."
Miranda swallowed hard and said, "That might earn you a cooler corner of hell, but I doubt it."
"You still don't understand. It was research, Randy, that's all. Study."
"To figure out what makes bodies tick? Sorry, John, but medical science has pretty much got that pegged."
"Do you think so? I don't agree. There's still so much to learn. I wanted to learn." His expression darkened for the first time. "I wanted to be a doctor. But they said my grades weren't good enough in college. My grades. Idiots. I've learned more on my own than any school could have taught me. All it took was a certain amount of. . . detachment."
Bishop said, "We've been wondering about something. Why take the blood?"
Not at all reluctant to supply the information, MacBride said, "I was working on various ways to naturally preserve organs and flesh. I thought blood might do it. But I haven't found quite the right combination of blood and chemicals just yet."
Bishop nodded gravely. "So I guess you were experimenting with the chemicals when you discovered how to age bones?"
MacBride shrugged dismissively. "I used the chemicals to clean the bones, but I noticed how it aged them. I wondered how the formula would affect a living subject, so I tried it on Adam. I'm afraid it was very painful — but he deserved it, the little sneak."
"He found out about you."
"Little sneak. Poking his nose into places he had no business being. If he'd just done the yard work I hired him for, everything would have been fine. But, no, he had to snoop. He took my knife. One of my jars. Other things, probably." MacBride laughed suddenly. "The little bastard wanted to blackmail me, can you believe that? Wanted me to pay him to keep his mouth shut."
"So you killed him," Bishop said. "But he didn't talk, did he, MacBride? He didn't tell you where he'd hidden the things he took from you."
"No. He seemed to have it in his head that as long as he had that stuff hidden he'd be all right in the end. Idiot." MacBride shifted slightly and, perhaps tired of remaining in the position, stepped back away from Bonnie. He didn't push her to the ground so much as guide her down with his gun hand until she was sitting. He kept his gaze steadily on the two people in front of him.
Miranda wanted to go to her sister so badly that she could feel her muscles tensing, and forced herself to relax as much as she was able. It wasn't time to act. Not yet.
MacBride no longer held the pistol to Bonnie's head, but he still had the grenade.
He straightened, the gun held negligently but not so carelessly as to offer Miranda any hope. "Of course, I didn't like not knowing where the stuff was, but that kid was so sly and sneaky, I doubted he'd told anyone about it."
"A chance you were prepared to take," Bishop said. "Until Steve told you he had it."
"He didn't mean to tell me," MacBride said with a shrug. "It was an accident, really — a very fortunate accident. I ran into him in front of the drugstore, and he asked me about the knife. He knew I collected them, so he thought I could tell him who else in town did. I said I had a collectibles catalog in my car, and he went with me to see it. After that, it was easy."
"Too easy," Bishop said. "You hit him too hard."
"Well, I figured the kid would have a thick skull, as big as he was. I was wrong, worse luck." He frowned suddenly and glanced down at Bonnie, his thoughts obviously having come full circle.
"I was surprised when you found him so soon, before I wanted you to. But if she did it... that does open up new possibilities. Maybe I don't need lots of other subjects. Maybe just one will do."
Miranda felt a chill so icy that she went cold to her bones. Bonnie in the hands of this madman, the subject of his insane "research" for God only knew how long?
No.
"She can't help you," Miranda said.
"She can if she can really talk to the dead," MacBride said in a reasonable tone. He seemed undisturbed as he put the pin back in the grenade and dropped it negligently into the mulch. "That's an aspect of the human experience I haven't explored yet. I understand the death of the flesh, but not what happens to the mind and spirit." He glanced down at Bonnie. "Is there a heaven? A hell? A God?"
Very quietly, Bonnie answered, "All three."
That reply startled Miranda, but MacBride was, for the first time, visibly shaken.
"You're lying," he accused, his eyes now shifting back and forth between his captive and the pair facing him.
"No." Bonnie's voice was still quiet. She even smiled. "It's the truth. Didn't you know? Didn't you realize there'd be judgment and punishment?"
Miranda had to bite her lip to keep from saying, Be careful! Don't push him too far! Don't frighten him!
Obviously trying to recapture his earlier clinical tone and only partially succeeding, MacBride said, "Your brain must be different if you can talk to the dead. That would be interesting to study, your brain."
As if she hadn't heard him, Bonnie said, "Your victims would love to judge and punish you. They're just looking for a door so they can come back."
"Door?" MacBride was frowning, plainly uneasy.
"Between our world and theirs. Victims of murder are unhappy souls, and angry. They stay in limbo for a long time, unable to move on."
"Dead is dead." He didn't sound nearly as sure as he obviously wanted to. "I know. I've watched death again and again. It's just like flipping a switch. Alive — then dead. There's nothing after. Nothing."
Bonnie turned her head and looked up at him with an oddly serene smile. "Nothing? Then how did we know where to find Steve? You thought it was Liz, reading tea leaves. But it wasn't. It was me. And Steve. Poor dead Steve."
MacBride's throat moved convulsively.
"Shall I open the door again, Mayor? Shall I let poor dead Steve and all your other victims back in?"
Don't frighten him, Miranda thought again. MacBride was like a cornered animal when he was frightened. . . .
"Ghosts can't hurt me," MacBride scoffed, only a faint quiver betraying his apprehension.
"Are you sure about that, John?" Miranda asked, trying to draw his attention away from Bonnie. "Are you really sure?"
"Sure enough." But a white line of tension showed around his lips, and his eyes were still moving restlessly as though searching the profuse vegetation all around them for something threatening.
"They want back in," Bonnie said softly. "They want to ... talk to you, Mayor."
"There's nothing after death." The gun in his hand moved until it was pointed at Bonnie. "Nothing. No heaven. No hell. No ghosts." His voice was suddenly toneless, and dawning in his face was the look of a man confronting a nightmare he hadn't dared to imagine.
Miranda could almost hear the screams of his victims, and knew that John MacBride heard them. She saw his finger tightening on the trigger, and understood in a moment of utter clarity that he would kill Bonnie because he dared not leave her alive.
Bonnie could talk to the dead. And John MacBride couldn't bear to hear what the dead would say to him.