"How did you fail?" Matt asked.
"Misinterpreted something I saw. What I told them led the police to concentrate on the wrong suspect, and the real killer had time to kill again. Which he did." She looked steadily at the sheriff. "It wasn't the first time something like that happened, and it won't be the last, No psychic is a hundred percent right a hundred percent of the time."
Again Cassie gave a little shrug. "There were a few more cases after that, some I was able to help solve and some I wasn't. Bishop kept turning up, kept asking me to allow myself to be tested. So I finally did. And I flunked all the tests. As I said, I don't perform well in a laboratory setting. I always did choke at exams."
"You graduated college," Bishop pointed out. "Eventually you had to pass those exams."
"Putting myself through that earned me a degree. Putting myself through your tests again would earn me absolutely nothing."
"Except scientific validity and recognition."
"And then what? Go on the talk shows? Find myself getting tons of mail from poor lost souls who think I might be able to help them? Sit in more laboratories while more scientists devise more tests to measure and weigh and define my abilities? Why? Despite what you think, Bishop, I don't want to be recognized. I don't want to be validated. And I sure as hell don't want to be famous."
"Then," he said softly, gesturing around them, "why do this? Why involve yourself in police investigations?"
"Because I can help. Not all the time, but sometimes. Because I was raised to believe it's my responsibility. And because I can't not involve myself." She drew a breath and added quietly, "And I really couldn't care less whether or not my reasons satisfy you."
"They satisfy me," Matt said, surprising everyone.
"And me," Ben agreed, tired of feeling invisible in the room.
Cassie glanced at him for the first time, something he couldn't read flickering in her eyes. Then she looked at Matt. "In that case, I say we have more important things to talk about. Is there still no word on that poor girl?"
"No, nothing. Do you think you'd have any luck trying to connect with the killer again?"
Before Ben could object, Cassie said, "I've already tried a couple of times today, and – "
"What?" He stared at her. "When? And without a lifeline? Dammit, Cassie!"
She avoided his gaze once more. "Not long after I woke up this morning, and in the car coming here. There was no danger. It would have been a shallow contact – if I'd been able to get through. I wasn't able. He's keeping me out."
"Convenient," Bishop murmured. For someone who'd more or less been told to mind his own business, he didn't appear to be discouraged or disgruntled, merely calm and watchful.
Matt glanced at him, then said to Cassie, "How about trying to reach the girl? I still have the gloves she left in her brother's car yesterday."
Cassie nodded without hesitation. "I'll try."
The sheriff jerked his head toward the agent. "Want him gone?"
"No, he can stay." She smiled faintly. "One of the things that intrigues him about me – I do perform well outside laboratories."
Bishop made no comment.
Matt reached into his center desk drawer and drew out a plastic bag with a pair of delicate ladies' gloves inside. He pushed the bag across to Cassie. "I'm assuming you could reach her if she's still alive. What if she's already dead?"
"I may get nothing. Or I may know where she is." She had not yet reached for the bag.
"How?" Ben asked her. "If there's no mind there to tap into, how do you know?"
Cassie turned her head and looked at him with an odd little smile. "I have no idea. Sometimes I just know."
He watched as she reached for the bag, opened it, and drew out the pair of gloves. Head bent, she held them in her lap, fingers toying with them. Ben saw her eyes close.
He waited a minute or so, then said, "Cassie? What do you see?"
She didn't respond.
"Cassie?"
"Poor thing." Her voice was soft.
The sheriff muttered, "Shit."
Ben kept his voice steady. "Can you see her, Cassie? Where is she?"
"She's… in a building. A barn. It hasn't been used for a long time, I think. There used to be pasture all around it, but now everything's overgrown…"
Cassie lifted her head and opened her eyes. She was pale but calm. She slid the gloves back into the plastic bag and pushed it across the desk to the sheriff. "I can show you the way," she told him.
Ben wanted to protest, but he knew it would be almost impossible for Cassie to pinpoint the location on any map; there were far too many abandoned barns in far too many overgrown pastures in the area.
Ben and Cassie went in his Jeep, with the sheriff and Bishop following in Mart's cruiser. Ben and Matt agreed that the fewer people who knew they were searching for a body, the better. At least until it was found.
As they headed north out of town at Cassie's direction, Ben said, "I'm surprised Matt's letting Bishop tag along. In fact, I'm surprised he's giving him the time of day."
"If I know Bishop, he probably implied that the Bureau would be very interested in these murders – if they knew about them. The other newspapers in the state too. Although, of course, if he's busy following the investigation, he won't have time to report in or call anybody."
"You seem to know him very well."
Cassie glanced at him. "I can't read him, if that's what you're asking."
"Even when you touch him?"
"I've never touched him."
Ben digested that. "So he has walls too, huh?"
"Big, thick ones." Cassie paused. "Turn up here to the left. Beside that fence."
He did so. "What's he after, Cassie?"
"I don't know. If I had to guess, I'd say proof. On the other hand, I've always had the idea he's looking for something he really doesn't expect to find in a lab or on a score sheet."
"For instance?"
"I don't know. As I said, it's just an idea. Wait – slow down a bit. See that dirt road up ahead? Turn onto it."
From the gathering tension in her voice, Ben knew they were getting close, so he fell silent and concentrated on following her directions. Several miles and a few more turns later, he stopped the Jeep on a fairly narrow dirt road. Cassie pointed, and he could see through the trees a ramshackle building that had probably once been a barn.
Uncertainly she said, "I don't think the killer came from this direction, but – "
"In case he did, we'll stop here to avoid screwing up any tracks."
Matt's cruiser pulled in behind them, and the sheriff and FBI agent got out and approached the Jeep, both on Ben's side.
"Is this it?" Matt asked.
Ben pointed and related what Cassie thought about the killer's approach.
"Okay. You two wait here."
"Matt?" Cassie leaned forward a bit so she could see him. "This time he arranged the body for… for maximum shock effect. Brace yourself."
He nodded. He and Bishop disappeared into the trees.
Ben looked at Cassie. "Were you right? About what he intended to do to her?"
Cassie drew a breath and let it out slowly. "Not entirely. He had a few more plans I didn't know about."
"What do you mean?"
She turned her head and looked at him with haunted eyes. "He cut her up, Ben. She's in pieces."
SIXTEEN
The news that the horribly mutilated body of fifteen-year-old Deanna Ramsay had been found spread through Ryan's Bluff like wildfire. By the time Cassie and Ben got back to the Sheriff's Department less than an hour after the body was found, a small crowd was already gathering; by the time the black van belonging to a local undertaker passed through town a few minutes later escorted by a couple of deputies, the crowd had doubled.
With the sheriff still at the crime scene, Ben went out to talk to them. Cassie remained inside and didn't hear what he said, but she watched from the window in Mart's office, and she wasn't surprised when the visibly agitated group calmed somewhat and eventually began to disperse.