Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

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?"

"That story's as good as any other," Carl said with a shrug. "I heard it from a guy who's married to one of the nurses at the clinic, so why not?"

"Why not? I'll tell you why not. Just how would that sweet girl know anything about a murder?"

"Tarot cards, I heard. Or maybe it was a Ouija board."

Alex looked up from the files spread out on his desk, frowning slightly. There was something he needed to remember, something he needed to say. But whatever it was drifted away before he could quite grasp it.

He was so tired he could barely think, his eyes were scratchy from staring at spiky handwriting, and his throat had nearly closed up from the dust.

Of course from the dust.

He'd barely slept in the last forty-eight hours, had downed enough coffee to put an entire platoon on a caffeine jag, and judging by the way his stomach was gnawing at itself and grumbling loudly he probably should have eaten something along the way.

Liz would have said he was just asking for trouble, letting himself get run-down like this—

No. He wasn't going to think about Liz. He wasn't ready to think about Liz. Close that door, just close it.

He forced himself to tune back in to the conversation between the veteran and the baby deputy.

"And what's the point of learning how to shoot if I'm never going to draw my gun?" Sandy was saying aggrievedly. "I push papers, I answer phones, I hold lights for FBI doctors, I listen to religious fanatics gossip about their neighbors, I even make the damned coffee. What kind of cop am I?"

"One just learning about things," Carl replied soothingly but with amusement. "Give it time. Even the sheriff had to do the same sort of stuff when she first signed on."

"She did?"

"Sure, she did. All of us did. Of course, I don't recall her puking her guts out the first time she saw a body."

"Bones," Sandy reminded him coldly. "Horrible bones with bits of — of skin and hair still sticking to them. That's what I saw, Carl Tierney. Not a body. Bones. And you're one to talk; everybody knows you got sick too."

"That's slander."

"Not if it's true."

"It isn't. Vile gossip."

Alex tuned out the conversation again, wondering vaguely what had interested him the first time. He turned his attention back to the old file before him, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. He was dimly aware of people talking, moving through the room, phones ringing, but none of it touched him.