Tolliver looked nauseated.

"That's not what we're getting from the other psychic," Klavin said in challenge. "She says that the killer sat and watched for the moment of death, taking an ‘orgasmic' pleasure from it."

"Then Xylda's probably right," I said instantly. "I'm not a psychic, and she is. Or maybe…" But then I stopped. Both the agents were looking at me with that expression I knew so well. It said, as clearly as if they'd spoken out loud: Watch her. She's going to back and fill and try to dovetail her imaginings with the story the other freak told us.

"Did you ever think," I said very slowly, very reluctantly, "that there might be two killers?"

They were both goggling at me. I can't interpret the living nearly as well as I can the dead. I'd done well with the two state agents so far, but I had no idea what their faces were saying now.

"That's all I can tell you," I said, and I got up to leave. Tolliver hastily got to his feet, too. "Can we leave town?" I asked. "Whenever we choose?"

"As long as you let us know how to reach you, you and your brother can hit the road," Stuart said, in a tone that implied he'd be glad to see the back of us.

"I'm not her brother," Tolliver said. He sounded as angry as if they'd been arguing about it for the previous hour.

Stuart looked surprised. "All right, then. Whatever," he said, shrugging. "You two can go."

I was so astonished by Tolliver's outburst that I had to fumble to gather up my purse and follow him out. He almost left me in his cloud of dust. He proceeded clear on out of the station, with me trailing behind. With a little awkwardness with the doors, I was slowed down enough that I just reached him when he got to our car. He was standing with his hands on the hood, glaring down at the gray paint. The remaining newspeople were shouting at us, but we completely ignored them.

I had no idea what to say. I just stood there and waited. I would have gotten in the car, but he had the keys in his hand. The mist in the air began to get heavier, become almost-rain. I was miserable.

Finally he straightened up, and without a word to me, he clicked the doors open. I stepped down from the curb to the door on the passenger side, opened it and got in, pulled it closed. Thank God it was my left arm that was out of whack. Still silently, Tolliver leaned over me to pull my seat belt around and click it shut.

"Where?" he said.

"The doctor's office."

"You hurting?"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath. He held it for a minute. Let it out. "I'm sorry," he said, leaving it open as to what he was sorry about.

"Okay," I said, not really sure what ground we were walking on. I had a few ideas. Some of them were more frightening than others.

Tolliver had pinpointed the location of the doctor's office earlier on one of his drives to and from the hospital. Dr. Thomason's red brick office was small, but the parking lot contained at least six cars. When I went in, I anticipated a long wait. The man who was not my brother went up to the window, told the woman behind it who I was and that I'd seen the doctor at the emergency room.

"We'll have to work her in, hon, it may take a little bit," she said, reaching up to push her glasses back on her nose. Then she patted her helmet of sprayed hair lightly, to make sure it was still in good shape, I guess. Tolliver was working his old magic. He brought back a clipboard with forms to fill out.

"Apparently, we'll have plenty of time to do this," he said, for my benefit. I was in a blue molded plastic chair against the far wall, and he came to join me. In the waiting room with us were a young mother and her baby, who was blessedly asleep, an elderly man with a walker parked in front of him, and a very nervous teenage boy, who was one of the tribe of foot jigglers.

A nurse in teal came to the door and called, "Sallie and Laperla!" The young mother, hardly more than a teenager herself, got up with the infant carrier cradled in her arms.

"I wonder if she knows La Perla is a brand of underwear," I murmured to Tolliver, but that barely got a smile from him.

The boy scooted down the line of chairs until he was within conversational distance of us. "You the one found the bodies," he said.

We both looked at him. I nodded.

Now that he'd told me who I was, he was stumped to think of something else to tell me. "I knew all them," he said finally. "They was good boys. Well, maybe Tyler got into a little trouble now and then. And Chester, he wrecked his dad's new Impala. But we went to youth group together, at Mount Ida."

"All of you?"

"'Cept Dylan, he's a Catholic. They got their own youth group. But the rest of the churches, they all go together at Mount Ida."

Ordinarily, I'd be bored stiff by this conversation, but I wasn't today.

"Did you read the stories in the paper today?" I asked.

"Yep."

"You ever met those two boys from out of town?"

He looked surprised. "No, never," he said. "I never heard of 'em. I think they were hitching or something. They were from way far away."

I hadn't read the whole story. "Way far away" to this boy might mean Kentucky or Ohio. He meant only that the two out-of-towners weren't from North Carolina.

The young mother came out, her baby crying now. They stopped at the window for a minute, then went out the front door. I could see the rain increasing. She would have to run for her car. The nurse called the old man, who got slowly and carefully to his feet. He shuffled through the door to the inner sanctum preceded by his walker, which had sliced-open tennis balls fixed on the front feet. It gave the walker a jaunty air. As soon as he was through the door, the nurse also called, "Rory!" Our companion jumped to his feet and hurried back.

Now that we were by ourselves, I thought Tolliver would talk to me, but he leaned back and closed his eyes. He was shutting me out on purpose, and I didn't know what to make of it. If he was just in a snit over some unknown issue, then I could be in a snit right back. If I'd hurt him somehow, or he was harboring some personal grief unknown to me, then I wanted to help him. But if he persisted in being a butt-head, then he could just stew in his own juice.

I leaned my own head against the wall, closed my own eyes.

We probably looked like prize idiots.

After about ten minutes of this, the old man made his way out, and Rory sped past him to hold the door open. "Allergy shot!" he called to us cheerfully as the old man shuffled past. I didn't know if he was explaining about his own visit or the old man's, but I nodded in acknowledgment.

The nurse opened the door yet again. She was a pretty, trim woman of about forty-five, with dark hair and bright blue eyes. She was so healthy and cheerful that I felt better just looking at her. "Miss Connelly," she said, and looked at us curiously.

Tolliver leaped to his feet and reached down to help me get up. This was just plain weird. I took his hand, and he hauled. The nurse showed us back to our designated waiting room. She weighed me and measured me and took my blood pressure, which was just fine. Then she began to ask me questions. It was mostly a repeat of what was on the forms, and the stuff from the hospital.

"So you just wanted to see Dr. Thomason today to get him to check up on your injuries?" She sounded a little dubious.

"Yes, I'm having more pain than I'd expected, though that may be because I'm so very, you know, depressed."

"Oh, I guess in your line of work, that would be…understandable."

"But surely—excuse me—you must be feeling the same way, here in Dr. Thomason's office."

"Because most of the boys were patients of ours? Yes, it's a sad thing. A sad, sad thing. You never think something like that would happen to anyone you know. And we knew all those boys, though a couple were patients of Dr. Whitelaw's."