In Serena's Web (20 page)

“We’re all hoping the same thing,” Quentin assured him. “In the meantime, knowing who the victim was would at least give us a place to start. Any word on the prints your people took?”

“When I checked in an hour ago, no. I’ll go back to my Jeep and check again; like I told you, cell service is lousy up here, and our portable radios are next to
useless. We have to use a specially designed booster antenna on our police vehicles to get any kind of signal at all, and even that tends to be spotty.”

“Appreciate it, Sheriff.” Quentin watched the older man cautiously make his way down the steep trail toward the road and their cars, then turned his head and looked at Miranda with lifted brows.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Quentin lowered his voice even though the nearest sheriff’s deputies were yards away. “The M.O. is close. Torture on the inhuman side of brutal.”

She slid her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and frowned. “Yeah, but this … this is beyond anything we’ve seen so far.”

“From this killer, at least,” Quentin muttered.

Miranda nodded. “I’m not seeing a purpose for what was done here. Whether he was dead at the beginning is still arguable, but this man was most definitely dead a long time before his killer was finished with him, so why keep going if it was torture?”

“For the fun of it?”

“Christ, I hope not.”

“You and me both. Am I the only one having a very bad feeling about this one?”

“I wish you were. But I think we’ve all picked up on something unnatural here, and at the other dump sites. For one thing, I have no idea what means this killer used to strip the body literally to the bone.”

Quentin glanced toward the remains. “I didn’t spot any obvious tool marks on the bones. Or claw or tooth marks, for that matter. You?”

“No. Or any visible signs that chemicals were used, though forensics will tell us that for certain.”

“We ship the body—or what’s left of it—to the state medical examiner?”

“We do. Duncan already okayed it; he’s been very frank about the state of technology in this area.”

“As in the fact that there
is
no technology? I mean, we’ve been to some pretty out-of-the-way places, but this is what I’d call seriously remote. How many people you figure the town of Serenade can boast? A few hundred at best?”

“Nearly three thousand, if you count those living outside the town limits but still using Serenade as their mailing address.” She saw Quentin’s brows go up again, and explained, “I checked when we were flying in.”

“Uh-huh. And did you happen to notice that the one motel we passed looks an awful lot like the sort that would have Norman Bates behind the desk?”

“I noticed. Though I thought of it as your typical No-Tell Motel.” Miranda shrugged. “And we both know it may not matter. If this victim fits the pattern, then where he was found is only a small piece of the puzzle. In which case we won’t be staying here long.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

She looked at him, her own brows rising.

“Hunch,” he explained. “We’re only about thirty miles away from The Lodge, as the crow flies, and there was a lot of unnatural going on there for a very long time.”

“You and Diana put that to rest,” Miranda reminded him.

“Well, we—she, mostly—put part of it to rest. Hopefully the worst part. But that doesn’t mean we got it all.”

“It’s been a year,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, to the month. Hell, almost to the day. Which I’m finding more than a bit unsettling.”

Miranda Bishop was not in the habit of discounting either a hunch or an uneasy feeling expressed by someone around her, especially a fellow team member, and she didn’t start now. “Okay. But, so far, nothing leads us in the direction of The Lodge. No connection to the place, or to anyone there, not that we’ve found.”

“I know. Wish I could say that reassured me, but it doesn’t.”

“Do you want to drive over to The Lodge, take a look around?”

“If anybody goes, it should be someone with a fresh eye and no baggage,” Quentin answered, so promptly that she knew the question had been on his mind for a while. “And probably a medium, given the age and … nature of the place.”

“You know very well we only have two available. Diana shouldn’t go because of all the baggage, and I’d rather keep Hollis close.”

Quentin eyed her. “Why?”

Miranda’s frown had returned, but this time she appeared to be gazing into the distance at nothing. Or at something only she could see. And it was a long moment before she replied. “Because her abilities are … evolving. Because every case seems to bring a new ability and ramp up the power on an existing one. And that’s
faster than we’ve
ever
known psychic abilities to evolve. It’s unprecedented.”

“She’s been in some unusually intense situations these last months,” Quentin said slowly. “From the beginning, really. Hell, the trigger that made her go active was about as extreme and intense as anything
I’ve
ever heard of.”

“Yes, she’s clearly a survivor,” Miranda said.

“But?”

“I don’t know that there is a but. Except that the tolerances of the human brain are likely to be higher than those of the human mind.”

Quentin worked that out. “You mean she may not be adjusting to all this quite as easily as she appears to be. Emotionally. Psychologically.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. So I’d rather keep her close for now. So far, every one of these dump sites has been just that, with no evidence that the killer remained behind in the area. At every site so far, we’ve collected evidence, asked a few questions and explored a few dead ends, then moved on.”

“So … less intensity to trigger something new in Hollis?”

“That,” Miranda said, “would be the theory. It isn’t something we can keep up indefinitely, for obvious reasons. But short of ordering her to take a sabbatical, which would not go over well at all, it’s the best temporary solution we’ve been able to come up with.”

“You and Bishop?”

Miranda nodded. “It doesn’t fix the problem—assuming the pace of Hollis’s development as a psychic
is
a problem—but we’re hoping it’ll at least offer her a little breathing space. More time to adjust to what’s been happening to her, to work on her investigative skills rather than her psychic ones.”

“Okay.” Quentin looked around, suddenly and obviously uneasy. “Great theory. But I’m beginning to think this creepy but calm investigation of ours might be turning into something else. Like one of the more intense ones. Because they should be back by now, shouldn’t they?”