“No? So how come I never heard of him until he starts calling the house every five minutes?” “What are you talking about. You know Daniel, you see him every day.”

“I mean you never told me about him and you.”

“There is no him or me. I mean, not yet. There was nothing to tell.” Why should she feel guilty all of a sudden? What was he doing to her mind? “And he hasn’t called every five minutes. Just once last week.”

Jerram’s face flushed, and he got up and went over to the window. “Well, that’s not exactly true. He called when you were sick. You were in no shape to talk, you know. I guess … I forgot.” Rose didn’t know whether to believe him. But he really did look repentant and embarrassed. And the fact was that Jerram did often forget phone messages. Mom was always nagging him to write them down.

She knew he was waiting for the magic words. “Okay. I forgive you. Just this once.”

He smiled. “Not to change the subject,” he said, and of course did. “But I’ve been thinking. What if this new body is connected to Nancy Emerson and her friend Cyn? Maybe it’s a serial killer, like Barney said. We all laugh at her crackpot ideas, but it’s too much to believe that three murders in Bethboro are coincidence.” “Maybe. But we don’t know about Cyn.” “Cold-blooded as it sounds, let’s assume she’s dead, too.”

“It could have been suicide, like Barney also said.”

He shook his head. “Suicides don’t bury themselves so well. Cyn would have swallowed pills or done something close to home. Even if she jumped off the Cabin River bridge they’d have found her body. I think she was abducted, just like Nancy, in a car. The skeleton was found in an auto junkyard which, again, indicates use of a car. Somebody out there is cruising, looking for victims.”

Rose remembered the car that followed her the night she went to see Mackey. Had she been so close to danger? “But the skeleton doesn’t have to be related; it’s five years old. Why would someone wait five years between murders?” “Who says he did? Who says these are the only bodies? They’re just the ones that have been found.”

“God, is this going to go on forever? If I’m going to be cursed with this psychic ‘gift,’ as Mackey calls it, what good does it do for me to find dead bodies?”

“Get ’em while they’re fresh, with plenty of clues, it could lead to the killer,” Jerram said heartlessly.

“But why not just lead me to the killer in the first place?”

“Interesting question,” Jerram said excitedly. He sat down on the bed again. “You sure you haven’t seen anything else in the dreams?”