“Definitely possible,” Bishop said.
“Okay.” Hollis was nodding slowly. “So Megan is impulse. Something about her triggered him. Possibly something she did or said. Something personal. Which would mean he knew her.”
“Possibly very well,” Miranda said.
“Yeah. We really do have to talk to her family, people who knew her. Look for somebody else in her life around about the time she was being jilted by Paul Ainsworth.” She blinked. “Um . . . how was Paul related to Cole?”
“Cousins,” Bishop answered. “Not especially close, according to Finn.”
Hollis nodded again. “So we look for somebody in Megan’s life last summer. He knows her, something maybe happens between them, he kills her. And he’s very lucky or very good, because he gets away with it. It was his trigger, and now he has a need to kill again. Months later, and not long after a pretty bright spotlight was shining on this town for weeks, our unsub takes another victim. Most likely it’s Cole. He stormed out after a fight with his wife, and she was too mad to care that he—she assumed—was staying somewhere with a buddy for a day or two. So he wasn’t missed right away. Just like with Megan. So maybe a second victim chosen for opportunity, because nobody would immediately realize he was gone.”
“Maybe,” Miranda agreed.
Hollis frowned. “Wait. Megan’s car?”
Bishop said, “According to Finn, there’s no sign of Megan’s car. There was no search for it months ago, obviously, since everyone believed she had driven it out of Salem herself, but deputies are on the lookout now and he’s officially put out a BOLO statewide. Nothing yet.”
Quentin said, “The unsub’s had more than enough time to get rid of that car. I doubt we’ll ever find it.”
Hollis nodded. “One car missing for months, yeah. Cole didn’t take his car, which his wife assumed meant he was somewhere nearby with a friend. But we can’t assume that because we don’t know where he disappeared from.”
“Probably not too far from home,” Quentin speculated. “Educated guess says the unsub grabbed Cole from the downtown area at or near his condo—somehow; immobilized him—somehow; and hid him—somewhere.”
Diana asked, “Did Megan live in one of the downtown condos too?”
“No, at her family home out in the valley,” Bishop replied. “No one in her family and no one else who knew her saw her leave. With everything that was happening then, her clothing and car gone, it was just assumed she had left to get away from all the unpleasant attention.”
Hollis muttered something under her breath, then said, “And last night he grabbed Simon Cavendish, who was walking home, as usual, through part of the downtown area. On a weekday. No car to ditch, but still the unsub had to be careful, fast—and lucky. Because he still had Cole stashed somewhere, and if what I felt yesterday was right, he’d already started torturing him. Started—and then stopped to go grab Simon? Does that make sense?”
“Still depends on the why,” DeMarco said.
“We were here,” Hollis pointed out. “And by late yesterday everybody knew it. Some of us on the slopes, some in town, at least until it started to get dark. Pretty damned visible. But obviously not a deterrent.”
“Wait,” Diana said. “Once we knew yesterday there was already a victim, we weren’t just searching the slopes and being visible in town; Finn’s deputies were canvassing here in town, looking for anyone that might have been missing. Literally going door-to-door. Businesses as well as homes. Could the unsub take the chance of not being where he was supposed to be?”
“Good point,” Quentin told her. “He might have stopped working on Cole because the deputies were moving through town knocking on doors, others calling citizens, trying to find out who was missing. All of us were out. He might have realized what was going on.”
“Especially,” Hollis said, “if he’s psychic. Just because we’ve been having trouble with our extra senses doesn’t mean a psychic born and raised here has the same problem. Dammit.”
HE WAS AS comfortable on the mountain slopes as he was on a paved street, and he had the sharp night vision of an owl, so he was able to find the precise spot quickly and easily even in the dark. The tools he had hidden remained undisturbed, as did his earlier work.
Maybe that was luck.
Or maybe it was something else.
He had the night to complete his work. He knew very well that the search teams had returned to town, and he knew the patrol routes of Finn’s deputies, so he wasn’t worried about discovery.
And Simon would keep.
He could feel the unease of Salem, and it made him smile. Most were shut inside their homes for the night. And most were anxious but felt somewhat protected, he knew. Those with Talents counted on them to help them survive, unwilling to believe the Talents themselves might make them targets. And everyone knew about the FBI agents Finn had called in, the ones with their guns and their own Talents.
So even members of the Five, uneasy though they were, were also calmed somewhat by that knowledge. But he couldn’t allow them to feel safe. That’s what they had to understand, all of the Five and all of the very smart cops.
They had to understand no one was safe.
“IT’S AT LEAST possible that he is psychic,” Bishop said. “And if he’s psychic and possesses one of the very solid shields you were able to see today when you were studying auras, whatever abilities he has are likely to be hidden from us.”
“And he doesn’t have to be a member of one of the five families in order to be psychic, right?”
“We know there are psychics outside the Five.”
Diana asked, “Do we know who they are? I mean, we know the elders of the Five are elders because they’re among the strongest in their families with Talents. Has anybody kept track of psychics in other families? Their strengths and weaknesses, their particular abilities?”
“Not officially,” Miranda said.
Diana frowned at her. “How about unofficially?”
It was Bishop who said, “There’s no real way to be sure going back generations. According to Finn, there was a general awareness—maybe a psychic awareness—as recently as twenty years ago that there were maybe a score of people at that time outside the Five with abilities. Talents. Not handed down in their own families but occurring fairly randomly as psychic abilities do. Some approached members of the Five asking for help in learning to understand and control those abilities.”
DeMarco asked, “Was that help given?”
“For a while, yeah. Then Duncan Cavendish began building his power base, recruiting loyal followers, and whispers began that he was interested in Talents.”
“Scary interested?” Hollis answered her own question before Bishop could. “Yeah, I remember. Scary interested. He wanted energy, wanted other abilities for his very own. Basically wanted to use whatever he could steal in his ambition to become a god. Steal . . . fatally. If word about that got around, I imagine that would have made any psychic think twice about being open about their own abilities.”
“It did.”
“So, for the last decade or so at least, psychics outside the five families decided to keep quiet about it.”
Bishop nodded. “It was one of the reasons why we believe Cavendish targeted descendants of the Five who lived outside Salem; at least he could be relatively certain abilities were possible in them. In Salem, those who hid their abilities hid them well. Including from other psychics. Even as powerful as he was in the beginning, Cavendish didn’t dare target the five families here in Salem. He recruited some psychics from the other families and found various ways of using the abilities of both them and the few Cavendishes who were rabidly loyal to him as tools, but he didn’t kill them.”
“But he killed other psychics. I mean, before he started targeting descendants outside the valley.”
“Looking back, there was a pattern very early on, but at the time it went virtually unnoticed. Over roughly two decades, there were some people who either supposedly left Salem or simply disappeared. No bodies were ever found, not that Finn could discover. And he couldn’t be absolutely certain those who vanished had been psychics. But he suspected. And given what we now know for certain Duncan was doing over the last year, it’s at least highly probable he’s responsible for some if not all those missing people and that they were psychics.”
Diana said, “So fear of Duncan would have kept psychics outside the Five quiet. And now that he’s no longer a threat?”
“There hasn’t been a lot of time for any long-term wariness to change,” Quentin pointed out. “Not nearly enough, if you ask me. I’m betting any surviving psychics figured out how to stay alive by being very quiet about their abilities, probably suppressing and denying, and even with Duncan gone that’ll be a hard habit to break.”
Hollis shook her head slightly, frowning. “So we really can’t be sure our unsub is one of the Five. No matter what Daniel hinted to Diana and me in the gray time, it’s probably more likely he isn’t, especially if he’s psychic and had to hide that for years in fear for his life. He could have worked up quite a grudge against Duncan and those helping him. Right?”
Bishop nodded. “Yeah. But he doesn’t appear, so far, to be targeting people who helped Duncan. Though that could be something else dictating his actions. The rabid loyalists are virtually all gone, their cases working their way through the court system. Because of the severity of the charges, none were granted bail.”
“And none of the victims we know about so far were among those who helped Duncan even in . . . less illegal, criminal ways.”
“No, Finn’s certain of that.”
Hollis was still frowning. “So whatever the unsub’s endgame is, it could very easily have nothing to do with Duncan.”
“That seems more likely than not.”
“And we don’t know that it’s about power for the unsub. Attaining more power, I mean, by specifically killing psychics. He’s just . . . killing.”
“Just,” Diana murmured.
“You know what I mean.” Hollis shook her head slightly. “Targeting the Five, but not because of Duncan’s crusade. And his victims so far . . . We’re sure Megan wasn’t psychic?”
Miranda said, “According to Finn, she wasn’t.”
“And Cole wasn’t. But Simon is.”
Bishop nodded.
“Abilities that didn’t help him,” Quentin pointed out.
“Ours don’t seem to be helping us very much,” Hollis said. “Not so far, at any rate.”
“So he really could have an edge,” Diana said steadily. “An edge over his victims, and over us. Be a step ahead of us.”
Hollis moved restlessly in her chair. “Hell, maybe more than a step. He knows the town better than we do, the valley, the slopes. The people. He has his plan and there’s been plenty of time for him to work on that, perfect it, if we believe he’s been planning since Megan if not before. He could have more than one place he can . . . work. Different places ready where he can stash victims. Dammit. Why do I have the feeling that our getting here, what we believed was early in the game, is not going to do a single thing to help us stop him.” It was not a question.
Clearly just as frustrated, Diana said, “What’s the point of a heads-up if it doesn’t help us at all?”
“Who told you the Universe was fair?” Quentin asked dryly.
“You did.”
“I said it was balanced; I never said it was fair.”
“Balanced means we catch a break now and then, right?”
“One would think.”
“The crows could be a break,” Hollis pointed out. “They’ve certainly been visible today. Tia said they’d look for Simon specifically tomorrow and keep patrolling the valley.”
“Which could be a big help,” DeMarco agreed.
“Yeah, but . . . the crows don’t figure into the profile, right? I mean, however they’re able to help, we still need to figure out this unsub, and sooner rather than later.”
There were nods all around.
Bishop said, “We know he’s physically strong, he’s mobile, and he knows the area.”
“He’s a sadist,” Quentin contributed. “The victim that may be Cole Ainsworth was certainly tortured before death, his body dismembered and defiled after death. Broken bones stuck into the ground like some weird . . . I don’t even know what to call it. Megan’s remains were more or less intact, but basically skeletal, so we don’t know what he did to her, or whether he returned to her body after she was dead. Maybe to experiment.”
Hollis stirred. “Finn said there’d been no reports of animals going missing or being found dead or inexplicably hurt, right? And no reports of arson in the valley, not even small fires?”
“No,” Bishop replied. “None of the early signs we might expect from a budding typical serial.”
Diana said slowly, “Can we even consider him a typical serial? I mean, killing a series of people, yeah, but chances are better than good that he knows some if not all of his victims, right?”
“Given the size of the valley, the population, the time period we’re talking about, it’s likely,” Bishop agreed.
“Which affects the profile.”
He nodded. “They used to be called stranger killings; it was what made them so difficult to solve, because the killer had absolutely no connection with his victims, unlike in typical murders where connections and motives are usually pretty obvious. In this case, we’re all but certain he’s a part of the community here, the town, but victimology will likely be filled with too many overlaps to be helpful. Same church, same gym or grocery store, same doctor or clinic.”
“So again, all we can be fairly sure of so far is that victims are chosen from among the five families,” DeMarco said. “Which tells us he has a grudge and a plan.”
“And doesn’t tell us much more,” Bishop agreed.
“I wish Megan had told me more,” Hollis muttered, voicing a common complaint because she’d learned through bitter experience that spirits were seldom very helpful. “If she was his trigger, why? Just because she was leaving? People had left Salem before, for jobs, school, just to move away. What was it about Megan, about her leaving, that made her his first target? That’s what sticks out to me. Megan. And the way Diana and I were alerted in the gray time.”
DeMarco looked at Bishop. “Finn talked to her family?”
“He did, though they were so overwhelmed by the news of her death they couldn’t tell him much.”
“All due respect to Finn, we need to talk to them.”
Bishop nodded. “On the list for tomorrow. Miranda and I will talk to them.”
“And we’ll have Jill’s post by then,” Hollis said. “Maybe know more about what he did to the latest victim, to Megan, if there’s anything at all consistent. Maybe more puzzle pieces. But I don’t see that adding to the profile, not unless Jill finds something none of us is expecting. And we saw what was there.” She sighed. “Still not seeing much benefit to our heads-up. So why bother? Just the Universe messing with us?”
There were several rueful smiles at another common complaint, and it was Miranda who said, “Maybe how we got the heads-up is the important thing.”
“Because it was in the gray time?” Diana frowned.
“It does stick out, as Hollis said. You two have both been able to gain useful information in the gray time, but before it was always after we were already on a case. Right?”
“Yeah. So . . . why was it different this time?”
Still frowning, Diana looked at Hollis, noting that the other woman was also frowning. “Hollis?”
“What?” Hollis looked at her, saw her, then blinked. She became aware she was chewing on a thumbnail, forced herself to stop, and crossed her arms as she leaned back in her chair. “It’s your time or place a lot more than it is mine,” she pointed out.
“Yeah. So maybe you can think about it, about what we saw with . . . clearer eyes than I can.”
Hollis frowned back at her. “Something didn’t seem right to you. You thought it was strange. Unusual.”
“Well . . . thinking about it more since then, maybe.”
Bishop said, “Sure that isn’t a little self-doubt talking?”
Diana immediately shook her head. “Not at all sure. There are still plenty of blank places in my memory of most of my visits to the gray time in those early years. That’s why I think Hollis might have a better take. I’m certain when I’m there, confident of what I know or don’t know. I’m usually certain afterward that what I saw, what was told to me, was something I could trust, especially in the last few years.”
Quentin was watching her steadily. “But not this time? You were sure even right after that visit that something had been different. Because the supposed victims you were both shown were in color. Right?”
Diana nodded. “We both saw them in color. Which really, really stands out in the gray time.”
“Signposts,” Bishop said.
She nodded again. “So far, everything I’ve ever seen in color in the gray time was important.”
Quentin said, “Is that why you keep thinking about going back?”
“Maybe.” She looked at him for a long moment, then returned her gaze to Hollis. “You’ve been there a few times now. Is any of it bugging you? I mean other than those . . . victims . . . all in color?”
Hollis was still frowning. “Being in the gray time was just . . . creepy. More than usual. Maybe because we weren’t on a case and it was . . . startling . . . to be yanked there. Maybe. Those victims being in color made it extra creepy.”
“What else?” Miranda asked her.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, then said, “Something about the guide, I think. About Daniel.”
Quentin looked at Diana and said, “You were bothered about him earlier. About him maybe being stuck in the gray time. Until he appeared to guide us to a victim on the mountain.”
“I think . . . I know I was bothered by something about him. Maybe that was it. Even him appearing to me on this side of the gray time was different. That’s rare for me; we all know that. And him leading us to a victim—that was also rare.” She frowned at Hollis. “What about Daniel was bugging you?”
“I dunno. Something about the way he talked to us, the way he smiled. Maybe.” Both her uncertainty and her frustration with it were clear.
“How did he talk to you?” Bishop asked her. “What was different?”
Hollis said, “Like I said, it’s really more Diana’s time or place than it is mine; I haven’t been there that many times. So maybe it wasn’t as odd as it felt to me. I mean, Daniel was fairly unhelpful, which is the rule with spirits and spirit guides, we all know that, but . . .”
DeMarco was watching his partner steadily. “Which of your senses are strongest there?”
She looked at him, surprised. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”
“So?”
“Well . . . it’s a disorienting kind of place, at least to me. It’s cold and looks weird and smells weird, even sounds weird when I speak or Diana does or the guide. I feel cold and tired there almost at once. None of my senses seem to work right there.”
“None of them?”
“The usual five are sort of muffled or just different there. The spider senses definitely don’t work. At all. At least not for me, not so far. Empathy . . . Huh. This is the first time I’ve been there since I became an empath. I think. I don’t remember feeling any emotions other than my own.”
“Clairvoyance?” Bishop asked.
“I’m not clairvoyant.” But it was said more or less automatically, and she was still frowning.
DeMarco said, “Gut feeling. What did you know when you were there? About Daniel.”
“He didn’t belong there.” She looked surprised again.
“Why not?”
“I . . . don’t know.”