Stuart looked pleased. “Yes, we think they all died in the old shed there on the property.”

I was glad we hadn’t opened the sagging doors while we were there. I didn’t want to know what it looked like inside. From my moments with the dead, I had too clear an idea as it was.

“Is…is there another site you’d like me to check?” I dreaded them saying yes—but Max Stuart shook his head.

“We don’t know how you do what you do,” he said. “If we hadn’t seen the results, we’d never believe you. But we’ve seen all the bodies, and we’ve heard how you found them, and no amount of investigation can find any link you ever had with any living soul here. So we have to believe you actually have some uncanny ability. We don’t know its dimensions or its limits. Is there anything you can tell us about these boys?”

That must have been incredibly hard for him to say. I started to deny it automatically, but then I thought again. I’d explain as closely as I could. “I see the moment of death,” I said. “I see their bodies in the grave. Hold on,” I said, and I shut my eyes, gripping the arm of my chair with my good hand and hugging the bad arm close to me. The clothes had been thrown down into the grave….

“Most of them had crosses, right?” I said. Klavin started. Stuart glanced back at the board, as though this was printed right above the boys’ names. “But this is a religious community, and that may be a coincidence.” I looked back at the bodies, staring down into the earth in my memory. Oh, there. “Broken bones,” I said. “Some of them have broken bones.”

“Not from the torture?” Tolliver asked me.

“Well, yeah, some fresh ones from the torture. But at some time in the past, at least four of them had broken a bone.” I shrugged.

“Does that mean they were all abused as children? Is that the common thread?” Agent Stuart bent forward, as if he could pull the answer out of my head. “What did these boys have in common? Why were they picked?”

“I don’t know. I see what I see in a total flash: body, emotions, the situation. Once I saw the dead guy’s pet, or maybe I just picked up on that from the dying person’s thoughts. I don’t see the person who caused that death.”

“Just tell us everything you do know,” Klavin said.

I looked from one to the other, suspiciously. They would listen, sure, and then give me those long-suffering looks that said they didn’t believe a word I’d said. I’d had investigators tell me that before. “Oh, please, any little detail will help….” Then it was like, “Oh, that’s all you can do? What good is that?”