away, and irrationally angry with him for taking me at my word and going.
"We're mighty sorry about that," Klavin said, exuding so much down-home charm I thought I might throw up. "Can you tell us why you were attacked?"
"No," I said. "I can't. Probably something to do with the graves, though."
"I'm glad you brought that up," Stuart said. "Can you describe how you found those graves? What prior knowledge you had?"
"No prior knowledge," I said. It seemed they weren't interested in the attack on me anymore, and frankly, I could understand why. I'd lived. Eight other people hadn't.
"And how did you know they were there?" Klavin asked. His eyebrows shot up in a questioning arch. "Did you know one of the victims?"
"No," I said. "I've never been here before."
I lay back wearily, able to predict the whole conversation. It was so unnecessary. They weren't going to believe, they would try to discover some reason I'd be lying about how I found the bodies, they'd waste time and taxpayer money trying to establish a connection between me and one of the victims, or me and the killer. That connection didn't exist, and no amount of searching would uncover one.
I clutched the covers with my hands, as if they were patience.
"I don't know any of the boys buried in the graves," I said. "I don't know who killed them, either. I expect there's a file on me somewhere that you can read, that'll give you the background on me. Can we just assume this conversation is already over?"
"Ah, no, I don't think we can assume that," Klavin said.
I groaned. "Oh, come on, guys, give me some rest," I said. "I feel terrible, I need to sleep, and I have nothing to do with your investigation. I just find 'em. From now on, it's your job."
"You're telling us," Stuart said, sounding as skeptical as a man can sound, "that you just find corpses at random."
"Of course it's not at random," I said. "That would be nuts." Then I hated myself for responding. They just wanted to keep me talking, in the hope that I'd finally reveal how I'd found the bodies. They would never accept that I was telling them the truth.
"That would be nuts?" Stuart said. "You think that sounds nuts?"
"And you gentlemen are…who?" asked a young man from the doorway.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. "Manfred?" I said, completely confused. The fluorescent light glinted off Manfred Bernardo's pierced eyebrow (the right), nostril (the left), and ears (both). Manfred had shaved his goatee, I noticed distantly, but his hair was still short, spiky, and platinum.
"Yes, darling, I came as soon as I could," he said, and if my head hadn't felt so fragile, I would have gaped at him.
He moved to my bedside with the lithe grace of a gymnast and took my free hand, the one without the IV line. He raised it to his lips and kissed it, and I felt the stud in his tongue graze my fingers. Then he held my hand in both his own. "How are you feeling?" he asked, as if there were no one else in the room. He was looking right into my eyes, and I got the message.
"Not too well," I said weakly. Unfortunately, I was almost as weak as I sounded. "I guess Tolliver told you about the concussion? And the broken arm?"
"And these gentlemen are here to talk to you when you're so ill?"
"They don't believe anything I say," I told him pitifully.
Manfred turned to them and raised his pierced eyebrow.
Stuart and Klavin were regarding my new visitor with a dash of astonishment and a large dollop of distaste. Klavin pushed his glasses up on his nose as if that would make Manfred look better, and Stuart's lips pursed like he'd just bitten a lemon.
"And you would be…?" Stuart said.
"I would be Manfred Bernardo, Harper's dear friend," he said, and I held my expression with an effort. Resisting the impulse to yank my hand from Manfred's, I squeezed his bottom hand as hard as I could.
"Where are you from, Mr. Bernardo?" Klavin asked.
"I'm from Tennessee," he said. "I came as soon as I could." Manfred bent to drop a kiss on my cheek. When he straightened, he said, "I'm sure Harper is feeling too poorly to be questioned by you gentlemen." He looked from one of them to the other with an absolutely straight face.
"She seems all right to me," Stuart said. But he and Klavin glanced at each other.
"I think not," Manfred said. He was over twenty years younger than Klavin, and smaller than Stuart—Manfred was maybe five foot nine, and slender—but somewhere under all that tattooed and pierced skin was an air of authority and a rigid backbone.
I closed my eyes. I really was exhausted, and I was also not too awfully far from laughing out loud.
"We'll leave you two to catch up," Klavin said, not sounding happy at all. "But we're coming back to talk to Ms. Connelly again."
"We'll see you then," Manfred said courteously.
Feet shuffling…the door opening to admit hospital hall noises…then the muffling of those noises as the SBI agents carefully pulled the door shut behind them.
I opened my eyes. Manfred was regarding me from maybe five inches away. He was thinking about kissing me. His eyes were bright and blue and hot.
"Nuh-uh, buddy, not so fast," I said. He withdrew to a safer distance. "How'd you come to be here? Is your grandmother okay?"
Xylda Bernardo was an old fraud of a psychic who nonetheless had a streak of actual talent. The last time I'd seen her had been in Memphis; she'd been frail enough then, mentally and physically, to necessitate Manfred driving her to Memphis and keeping tabs on her while she talked to us.
"She's at the motel," Manfred said. "She insisted on coming with me. We drove in last night. I think we got the last motel room left in Doraville, and maybe the last one in a fifteen-mile radius. One reporter checked out because he got a more comfortable room at a bed and breakfast, and Grandmother had told me to drive to that motel fast and go into the office in a hurry. Every now and then, she comes through in a helpful way." His face grew somber. "She doesn't have long."
"I'm sorry," I said. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but that was a stupid question. Did it really make a difference? I knew death quite well, and I'd seen it stamped on Xylda's face.
"She doesn't want to be in a hospital," Manfred said. "She doesn't want to spend the money, and she hates the ambience."
I nodded. I could understand that. I wasn't happy about being in one, myself, and I had every prospect of walking out of this one in one piece.
"She's napping now," Manfred said. "So I thought I'd drive over to check out how you were doing, and I found the Dynamic Duo asking you questions. I thought they'd listen to me if I said I was your boyfriend. Gives me a little more authority."
I decided to let that issue ride for the moment. "What are you-all doing here in the first place?"
"Grandmother said you needed us." Manfred shrugged, but he believed in her, all right.
"Wouldn't she be more comfortable at home?" It made me feel very guilty to think about the aging and ill Xylda Bernardo dragging herself and her grandson to this little town in the mountains because she thought I needed her.
"Yes, but then she'd be thinking about dying. She said to come —we came."
"And you knew where we were?"
"I wish I could say Grandmother had seen it in a vision, but there's a website that tracks you."
"What?" I probably looked as dumbfounded as I felt.
"You've got a website devoted to you and your doings. People email in to report sightings of you."
I didn't feel any smarter. "Why? "
"You're one of those people who attracts a following," Manfred said. "They want to know where you are and what you've found."
"That's just weird." I simply didn't get it.
He shrugged. "What we do is weird, too."
"So it's on the Internet? That I'm in Doraville, North Carolina?" I wondered if Tolliver knew about my fan following, too. I wondered why he hadn't told me.
Manfred nodded. "There are a couple of pictures of you taken here in Doraville, probably with a cell phone," he said, and I was floored all over again.
"I can hardly believe that," I said, and shook my head. Ouch.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Manfred asked. "What happened here?"
"If I'm talking to you and not a website," I said, and the look on his face made me instantly contrite. "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm just freaked out about the idea that people are following my whereabouts and watching me, and I didn't have a clue about it. I don't think you'd ever do that."
"Tell me how you came to get hurt," he said, accepting my apology. Manfred settled into the chair by my bed, the one Tolliver had been snoozing in.
I told Manfred about the graves, about Twyla Cotton and the sheriff, about the dead boys in the cold soil.
"Someone here's been vanishing guys for years, and no one noticed?" Manfred said. "This is like an Appalachian Gacy, huh? "
"I know it's hard to believe. But when the sheriff explained why there hadn't been a public outcry about the disappearances, it seemed almost reasonable. The boys were all at that runaway age." There was a silence. I wanted to ask Manfred how old he was.
"Twenty-one," he said, and I gave a jerk of surprise.
"I have a little talent," he said, trying for modesty.
"Xylda can be such a fake," I said, too tired to be tactful. "But she's the real deal underneath."
He laughed. "She can be an old fraud, but when she's on her game, she's outstanding."
"I can't figure you out," I said.
"I talk good for a tattooed freak, don't I?"
I smiled. "You talk good for anybody. And I'm three years older than
