“I hoped we’d wrap it up,” she said. She seemed too down to disguise her thoughts and emotions. “I hoped this would be it. We’d find more bodies here. We’d find evidence—maybe trophies—tying someone, maybe Tom, to all the murders. It would all be over. We would have solved the case ourselves, instead of having to turn it over to the state boys or the FBI.”

Sandra Rockwell was not the clear pool she’d seemed at first.

“There aren’t any human corpses here. I’m sorry we can’t wave a magic wand and make that come true for you,” I said. And I was sincere. Like most other people, I wanted the bad guys caught, I wanted justice to prevail, and I wanted punishment of the wicked. But so often you didn’t get all three at the same time, or in the same degree. “Can we leave now?” I asked.

The sheriff closed her eyes, just for a second. I had a creepy-crawly feeling in my belly. She said, “The SBI has asked that you remain on site for another day. They want to question you some more.”

The creepy-crawly feeling resolved into a knot of anxiety. “I thought we’d get to leave after we did this.” My voice must have gone up, because a lot of people turned to look at us. Even the boy at the heart of this brouhaha turned to look. I stared right into Chuck Almand’s face, and for the first time I consciously looked into another human being.

“You might as well shoot him now,” I said. It was an awful feeling. I wondered if this was how Xylda saw things, if this was what had made her so peculiar. I wondered if Manfred would go the same way. It wasn’t like free choice had been taken away from the boy, that he was doomed from the beginning by his nature. It was more like I could see what choices he would make. And they were almost all on the side of becoming one of those people who end up as the subject of a documentary on A&E.

Was what I was seeing the truth? Was it inevitable? I hoped not. And I hoped I never experienced it again. Maybe I was able to see inside Chuck Almand only because I was close to two genuine psychics, and their proximity sparked a touch of it in myself. Maybe it was the rumble of thunder far away. That sound always triggered the lightning feelings in me—a jittery combination of fear and agitation. Maybe I had the completely wrong perspective.

“Tolliver,” I said, “we have to find a place to stay. They’re not going to let us leave after all.” We should have taken off from the pharmacy, taken off and never looked back.