Out of the Shadows (2 page)

"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.
She'd been awakened twice by a dog howling, and just before dawn thunder had rumbled even though there was no storm. This morning her neighbor's pet rooster had faced her own front door while crowing, which meant a stranger was coming. She'd spilled salt three times in the last two days, so even doing what she could to immediately negate the bad luck wouldn't get rid of it all.
And a bird had struck the window of her breakfast room, a dove no less, breaking its poor little neck. Since she lived alone, Liz assumed she was the one whom death was hovering near.
Alex would shake his head when she told him, but Liz's grandmother had been Romany and she herself had been born with a caul—and she knew what she knew.
Bad was here, and worse was coming.
So before Liz had ventured out of her house today, she'd made damned sure to put several amulets in the medicine bag that hung around her neck on a black thong: a couple of ash-tree leaves, a clove of garlic, bits of lucky hand root and oak bark, and several small stones—bloodstone, carnelian, cat's eye, garnet, black opal, staurolite, and topaz. She also carried a rabbit's foot in her purse, and her earrings were tiny gold wishbones.
None of which protected her from Justin Marsh, which was a pity.
"This is blasphemy, Elizabeth," he declared, waving a book beneath her nose.
She pushed the book gently back far enough to bring the title into focus, then said mildly, "It's a novel, Justin. A made-up story. I doubt very much if the author is trying to persuade anyone to actually believe that Christ was a woman. But if it makes you feel any better, you're the first one I've seen even pick it up."
His pale brown eyes glittered in his perpetually tanned face. The healthy thatch of white hair and the customary white suit made him look like a televangelist, she thought. He sounded like one too.
"Books like this one should be banned!" he told her stridently.
Liz noted that few of her other early-morning customers even looked up, as accustomed to his tirades as she was herself. "We don't ban books around here, Justin."
"If innocent minds should read this—!"
"Trust me, innocent minds don't venture into that section of the store. They're all three rows over reading stuff about ninjas and how to hack into computer systems."
He missed the irony, just as she had expected.
"Elizabeth, you're responsible for protecting impressionable young minds from corruption such as this." He waved the book under her nose again.
Behind him, a deep voice said dryly, "No, their parents are responsible for that. Liz just runs a bookstore."
"Morning, Alex," she said.
"Hi. Coffee would be heaven, Liz."
"You got it." Leaving Alex to deal with Justin, she went behind the counter to pour a couple of cups of the Swiss-chocolate-flavored coffee Alex had recently become addicted to. By the time she joined him at their customary table near the front window, Justin had vanished.
"If he's over there tearing up another book ..."
"I warned him the next episode would mean a fine and jail time, for all the good it'll do." He blew on the coffee automatically, but began sipping before it had a chance to cool. "I don't know why he can't go away somewhere and start a nice pseudo-religious cult, leave us the hell alone."
"He isn't charismatic enough," Liz said definitely. "Just a not-too-bright kook, and it's obvious. It's Selena I feel sorry for."
Alex grunted. "I never heard she was forced to marry him. Besides, the way she looks at him it's obvious she considers him the Second Coming—if you'll forgive the blasphemy."
"I guess every town has to have at least one Justin Marsh. What else would we have to talk about otherwise?"
"Murder?" he suggested dryly.
Liz looked at his tired, drawn face and said slowly, "I heard it was Adam Ramsay's body this time."
"Sheriff says it is. Doc says it isn't. We'll know for sure when Doc compares the dental records."
"What do you think?"
"I think Randy isn't often wrong." He shrugged, frowning down at his coffee. "But if she's right this time, something very weird is going on, Liz."
Without thinking, Liz said, "The leaves told me that this morning."
Alex looked at her with resignation. "Uh-huh. Did they happen to tell you anything else? Like maybe if we have a vicious killer in this nice little town of ours?"
"You don't think it's one of us?" she exclaimed, genuinely shocked.
He smiled at her with an odd expression she couldn't quite define. "Liz, Gladstone might as well be the town that time forgot. Or at least the town travelers bypass. How many strangers do you notice in any given week?"
"Well... not many."
"Not many?"
"All right, so strangers are rare, especially if you discount insurance salesmen. But that doesn't have to mean one of us is doing these terrible things, Alex."
"I don't like to think it either, you know. But how likely is it that a stranger picked Gladstone as his base of operations to begin killing teenagers?"
"When you put it like that..."
"Yeah."
After a moment of silence, Liz said reluctantly, "Whatever is going on, it isn't over, Alex."
"Tea leaves again?"
"I know what I know." It was her standard response to doubt or disbelief.
"Because your grandmother was a gypsy? Liz—"
"I know you don't believe, but you have to listen to me this time. I've never seen so many dark omens and portents. There's evil here, real, literal evil hanging over this town."
"That much I'll buy. Have you checked your crystal ball lately to see how it'll all turn out?"
"You know I don't have one of those." She hesitated. "But I do know someone's coming. The leaves showed me that. A dark man with a mark on his face. An outsider. He'll come to help, but for some other reason too, a secret reason. And I think ... I know ... he'll give his life to save one of us."

Miranda let herself into the small, quiet house not far from downtown Gladstone and went directly to the kitchen. It was a bright room most of the time, but last night's rain had left the sky overcast, and not even the airy yellow-and-white color scheme and gleaming white appliances could do much to cheer the room.
Or Miranda.
She went to the coffeemaker and turned it on, warming the remains of last night's pot because there hadn't been time earlier that morning to make fresh, and Mrs. Task was coming in late because of a doctor's appointment. The reheated coffee would be unbearably bitter, she knew.
But it would suit her mood.
Fresh coffee awaited her at the office, but she'd wanted to stop here first, if only for a few precious minutes, away from ringing telephones and anxious deputies and frightened townspeople. She thought Alex had probably detoured as well, though he would have gone to Liz's place rather than his own home.
They all took their comfort where they could.
"Randy?" A girl of about sixteen, her resemblance to Miranda striking, came hesitantly into the room. She was wearing a nightgown and robe even at ten in the morning on a school day, but that was explained when Miranda spoke.
"You shouldn't have gotten up, Bonnie. Doc said sleep would help you more than anything."
"I feel much better, honest. It's only a cold, nothing major." Bonnie watched Miranda pour very black coffee into a cup. "Was it... ?"
Miranda sipped her coffee, then nodded.
"Adam Ramsay? Just like you saw?"
"Just like I saw," Miranda confirmed bitterly.
Bonnie shivered and bit her lip, then walked to the table in the center of the room and sat down. "I didn't really know him. Still ..."
"Still," Miranda agreed.
"It's all going to happen now, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid so."
Bonnie's lip quivered before she bit it again. "Then we'll leave, that's all. We'll just—"
"It wouldn't matter, Bonnie. It wouldn't change anything. Some things have to happen just the way they happen."
"You can't stop it?" Her vivid blue eyes were desperately worried.
"No, I can't stop it." Miranda drew a breath. "Not alone."
"Maybe Alex can—"
"No. Not Alex."
Their eyes met, held, then Bonnie said, "You could ask them to send somebody else."
"I need 
him.
" Bitterness had crept back into Miranda's voice, and reluctance, and something that might have been loathing.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"It's been a long time, Randy. Eight years—"
"Eight years, four months, and an odd number of days." Miranda's laugh held no amusement. "I know how long it's been, believe me."
"I only meant that things change, Randy. People change, you know they do. Even he must have changed. It'll be different this time."
"Will it?"
Bonnie hesitated. "You've seen something else, haven't you? What is it? What have you seen?"
Miranda looked down at her coffee, and her mouth twisted. "Inevitability," she said.
Friday, January 7
"I can't explain it," Dr. Shepherd said, his habitual cheery smile replaced by a baffled frown. "The dental records match, without question. What we found are the remains of Adam Ramsay."
"But," Miranda said.
"Yeah—but. The bones show all the signs of belonging to a man at least forty years old. The sutures of the skull were filled in. Calcium deposits and other changes in bone structure also indicate forty to fifty years of life." He paused. "This one's beyond my knowledge, Randy. Obviously someone with more training and experience in forensics, a forensic pathologist or anthropologist, should examine the remains. I must have missed something somehow, misread the results or performed the wrong tests—something."
Miranda looked at him across her desk. "Setting that aside for the moment, maybe we're losing sight of the point. The point is that we found the remains of a seventeen-year-old runaway. Do you know how he died?"
"Enough of the skull was intact to reveal evidence of blunt-force trauma in at least two spots, and I don't believe it was postmortem."
"Not accidental blows?"
"If you're asking for my opinion, I'd say not. For the record, a blow to the head probably killed him. Whether that blow was deliberate or accidental is impossible for me to state with any medical—or legal—certainty."
Miranda made a note on the pad in front of her. "I appreciate you coming into the office to report, Doc."
"No problem. I knew you had your hands full. Any word on Lynet Grainger?"
"Not yet. I've got all my deputies, Simon's bloodhounds, and every volunteer I could get my hands on out searching for her, but no luck so far. She left the library Wednesday night and vanished into thin air." Her mouth tightened. "If her mother hadn't been drunk that night and failed to report Lynet missing until yesterday afternoon, we might have had a better shot at finding her. As it is, with nearly forty-eight hours gone now, the trail is ice-cold."
Shepherd studied her. "You look like hell, if you don't mind me saying so."
"Thanks a lot."
"Did you even go to bed last night, Randy?"
Miranda drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Doc, I've got two teenagers dead and a third one missing, and no evidence to persuade me we're just in the middle of a series of tragic accidents and random disappearances. I also have no evidence pointing me toward the killer—or killers—of the two dead kids, and no clue to help me find Lynet Grainger. I spent half the morning arguing with the mayor and the other half fielding calls from terrified parents. Somebody in my nice, safe little town has apparently decided to start torturing, maiming, and killing teenagers. And I have a sixteen-year-old sister at home. What do you think?"
"I think you didn't go to bed."
She straightened in her chair as if to refute his accusation, then lifted a hand to rub the back of her neck wearily. "Yeah, well, I couldn't have slept anyway. I don't want to find another dead teenager, Peter."
"Do you think you will?"
"Do you?"
He hesitated for a beat. "Honestly? Yes. I don't know what's going on, Randy, or who's behind it, but I think you're right about one thing. Someone is after our teenagers. And that someone has some very strange ... appetites."
In an abrupt turnabout, Miranda shook her head. "We don't know that's what's going on."
"Don't we?"
"No."
"I see. Then I guess you have a reasonable explanation for why Kerry Ingram's body was drained of almost all its blood."
"Don't tell me you think the killer drank it," Miranda objected dryly.
"No—although that sort of thing is more common than most people would like to believe."
"I wonder why."
Ignoring the muttered aside, Shepherd went on, "I believe that the killer had some need for the blood, undoubtedly one a rational person could never understand. And—not that you missed this detail, I'm sure—it's interesting to note that we actually found only a small percentage of Adam Ramsay's bones out there."
"The animals. Scavengers."
"Maybe. Or maybe he wasn't all there to begin with. Maybe the killer took his blood as well as the girl's. And a few bones to go with it. And maybe he took Lynet Grainger because he didn't get all he needed from the first two."
"Speculation," Miranda said firmly. "We don't even know that Kerry and Adam were killed by the same person, and Lynet's disappearance doesn't have to end with us finding her body."
"That's true enough." Shepherd got to his feet. "But here's something just as true: It's not like you to hide your head in the sand, Randy."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do." He smiled faintly. "I also think you're honest enough—maybe especially with yourself—to face up to it sooner rather than later. At least I hope so. I don't read tea leaves like Liz Hallowell, but I don't need to have gypsy blood to know there's something very strange going on in Gladstone."
"Yes. Yes, I know that."
"Nobody will think less of you for calling in help, not when something like this is going on."
"So everyone keeps telling me."
"And they're telling the truth." He paused. "We need to get an expert in to look at those bones, Randy. Tell me who, and I'll make the call."
She looked at him for a long while, then sighed. "No, it's my job. I'll make the call, Doc."
But she didn't pick up the phone after Shepherd left. Instead, she went through the case files one more time, studying every piece of information gathered on Kerry Ingram and Adam Ramsay. She fixed all her will on finding something, some tiny, previously overlooked clue, that would tell her these were ordinary murders, committed in anger or for some other perfectly tragic, perfectly human reason.
But no matter how many times she went over it all, the photos of a young, battered body and skeletal remains, the medical reports and the interviews with relatives and acquaintances, the traced movements of the two teenagers during the last weeks before they disappeared—no matter how many times she went over the information in the files, only the same unalterable, inescapable chilling facts jumped out at her.
Kerry Ingram's exsanguinated body.
The bones missing from Adam Ramsay's remains.
The aged condition of the bones they had found.
Miranda closed the last file and stared across the room at nothing. "Goddammit," she whispered.
Inevitability.
Some people called it fate.