It wasn’t like this, creating puzzles. There wasn’t this sense of pressure, even when Harry had insisted on last-minute changes to her puzzles page back when she’d worked for the Washington News.

  There was more pressure now. The pressure of trying to catch a killer. The pressure of trying to find something in a series of clues that didn’t seem to point anywhere. Maybe that was why Amber was treating it all as a puzzle; because, under pressure, that was the thing she knew best how to deal with. Even now, the temptation was to get out her phone, call up an image of the inkblot, and keep searching for a way to unravel its meaning.

  She had to force herself not to. Instead, she took a few deep breaths, collecting herself, then went back to where Simon was waiting back in the main office of the Guisborough PD.

  “Are you ok?” he asked. “So soon after the murder scene …”

  Amber realized that he thought that the whole scene had shaken her up and that was why she was doing all of this. Maybe he was even right. Amber felt a little shaky, like nothing made sense right then. “I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?” Simon asked.

  Amber forced herself to nod. “We need to focus on the case, not me.”

  “Ok. Well, I had an idea,” Simon said. “You’re right about one thing: the Rorschach card is the most consistent and unique thing about all of these murders, even if you don’t think it fits the standard patterns. So, that started me thinking that we need to know a lot more about the Rorschach test.”

  “How are we going to find that out?”

  “I think I’ve found someone who can help us.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Amber was impressed by the offices she and Simon were standing in, on one of the upper floors of a shining, expensive office building. Discrete cards left in the lobby promised therapy and psychological training for the discerning professional.

  The office itself was decorated in soothing, pastel shades, with furniture that appeared to consist almost exclusively of precise and expensive recreations of 1950s designs. It was as if Ms. Lloyd had decided that giving clients the sense that they were stepping into something from the past was the easiest way to make them feel less threatened by the whole experience.

  An assistant met Amber and Simon as they stepped out of the elevator. She had a brisk, professional look, her dark hair tied back, her makeup carefully understated, her dark pantsuit immaculate in a way that made Amber worry about how rumpled her own clothes were getting after running around trying to find a killer for more than a day.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  Simon flashed his badge. “We called ahead. Dr. Lloyd is expecting us.”

  “Just take a seat for a moment or two,” the assistant said. “She’s just finishing with a client.”

  It was frustrating, having to wait when the killer could be hunting his next victim even now. Amber didn’t like having to sit there until a middle-aged businessman came out of an interior office space and left. It felt as though they were wasting time that might have been better spent trying to figure out whatever meaning the killer had put into the inkblot.

  “Who are we here to see?” Amber asked.

  “Dr. Sally Lloyd. She’s a forensic psychologist.”

  Meaning that she might know all about the Rorschach test.

  The assistant gestured for them to go through into an interior office where comfortable looking chairs sat around a small, round desk. There were a couple of landscape paintings on the walls, but otherwise the space was mostly empty.

  Sally Lloyd proved to be a woman in her fifties, tall and slender, with short hair bleached until it was almost white. Her blue eyes sparkled with intelligence as she gestured for the two of them to sit down.

  “You must be Agent Phelps. And this is …”

  “Amber Young,” Simon explained. “She’s working with me on this case. We could use your help, Dr. Lloyd.”

  “So you said when you called,” the psychologist said. “What exactly do you need from me?”

  “First, I have to ask you, have you ever been involved in work at the Guisborough Wellness Institute?” Simon asked.

  “Very rarely. I did most of my work in forensic psychology before I moved to the area, and I’ve since focused more on applications of psychology within business.”

  “Was that hard for you to do?” Amber asked. It intrigued her that someone had gone from an area where they were working directly with criminals, trying to make a difference, to taking a step back and focusing on something other people would have called more mundane. It sounded far too close to the decision she was trying to make in her own life.

  “No,” Dr. Lloyd said. “Ultimately, I realized that I had done my share. I chose to reprioritize my life to focus on the things I wanted to do. I see no reason to apologize for that.”

  Was that what Amber should do? Focus on the thing that she loved most in the world, puzzles, even though there was a chance for her to make more of a difference in the FBI? What did she have left to prove to herself now that she’d passed the training and caught two killers?

  “Even so, I think you might want to take extra precautions for a few days,” Simon said. “This killer appears to be targeting people in the psychiatric professions.”

  “I already have,” Dr. Lloyd replied. “I watch the news, the same as everyone else. But you didn’t just come here to warn me, did you?”

  Simon shook his head and took out the latest inkblot.

  “We’ve been finding cards like this at the crime scenes. We believe that they might be linked to the Rorschach test in some way, especially given that the victims so far have all had psychiatric links.”

  “May I?” Dr. Lloyd took the card, turning it over between her elegantly manicured hands. “Are you aware that this is not, strictly speaking, one of the standard Rorschach cards?”

  “We know,” Amber said. That had been her point all along, her reason for suspecting that it was the key to some kind of puzzle.

  “Which may mean that your killer has designed it to reflect something specific that he feels,” Dr. Lloyd went on. “It may represent the emotional state that he enters in order to kill, or some event from his past that has triggered his violence.”

  “And could we work out what that event is?” Simon asked.

  Dr. Lloyd shook her head. “The Rorschach test is, by its nature, projective. The point of it is to give an ambiguous stimulus for the patient to react to.”

  “Have you used it in your work?” Amber asked.

  “I used to, occasionally. Now, it isn’t really relevant, and of course, there are those who argue quite strongly against it.”

  That seemed to catch Simon’s interest. “Does that include anyone local?”

  Dr. Lloyd frowned for a moment and then nodded. “Ashley Seaver, for one. He has been a campaigner against the use of the test for several years. His own experiences with it have left him … quite angry on the subject.”

  The question now was how angry? Angry enough to kill over it? Angry enough to target those who might have helped to administer the test to people? Angry enough to leave his own rage filled interpretation of one of the cards at every scene?

  Simon seemed to be thinking the same thing because he looked over at Amber.

  “I think we need to go talk to Ashley Seaver. At the very least, this is someone who can give us some insight into people who are against the Rorschach test.”

  And if they were lucky, he might also turn out to be someone whose objections to it had spilled over into much more violent methods.

  *

  “Do you really think Seaver might be the killer?” Amber asked as they pulled up outside the address for Seaver that they’d gotten from the DMV.

  “It’s hard to say,” Simon said. “Sometimes, people do extreme things to make their point if they think that no one’s listening.”

  “So, he’s a suspect?” Amber wanted to know how they were going to approach this.

  “A potential suspect. For now, though, he’s someone who can potentially provide us with more information on the Rorschach test. I don’t want to go in too hard to start with.”

  Amber nodded. She’d been willing to back Simon up if he’d been about to charge in there and demand answers from Ashley Seaver, but she agreed that it was probably better to approach this calmly. There was nothing beyond a vague suspicion to connect him to any of this, after all, and he also had the potential to tell them more.

  Ashley Seaver lived in a small, single-story house on the fringes of the town, with an overgrown yard, as if he didn’t have the time to give it any of his attention.

  Amber and Simon walked up to the front door, trying the bell. It took several seconds before there was any answer, but eventually, the door creaked open.

  The man who stood in the doorway was a little shorter than Simon, shaven headed and with a short, blond beard. He was probably in his early thirties, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. He looked out at the two of them with suspicious eyes.

  “Yes? Who are you?”

  “We’re with the FBI,” Simon said. “We’re working on the murders over the last few days.”

  “The ones with the Rorschach tests?”

  Of course, that detail was all over the news by now.

  “We hoped that you might be able to tell us about them,” Simon said.

  “I can tell you about them all right.” There was a hostile look in Seaver’s eyes then. “They’re pseudo-science. Everything’s down to the interpretation of a so-called expert. At best, they’re like some fake psychic cold reading you to make it sound like they know what they’re talking about. At worst, it’s a coin flip with your freedom on the line!”

  There seemed to be genuine anger in his voice at that.

  “Maybe you could tell us more about them,” Simon suggested. “And help us to understand why someone might want to leave them at a series of crime scenes.”

  Instantly, Amber saw the suspicion and hostility on Ashley’s face increase. He took half a step back, as if he might slam the door, shutting them out.

  “You want to pin this on me, don’t you? It’s going to be just like last time.”

  Last time? Those words caught in Amber’s mind. So did the vehemence with which Seaver had said them.

  “What happened ‘last time’ Ashley?” Simon asked.

  “I got in a fight.”

  “And?”

  “And some shrink used the Rorschach test on me. He decided that it meant I had a personality disorder, and I needed to be locked away. Do you know what happens then, Mr. FBI agent?”

  “You tell me, Ashley.”

  Ashley Seaver’s tone only grew harsher. “They keep you in there until they think you aren’t dangerous anymore. Years. They kept me there years because of a stupid, fake test!”

  He looked angry then, angry enough that Amber was almost convinced he was about to lash out. She found herself looking for a way to defuse the situation.

  “We aren’t interested in pseudo-science, Ashley,” she said. “We’re interested in facts, in evidence. That’s what matters, right?”

  “Right,” Ashley said, automatically. He looked away with a hurt expression. “Not someone’s opinion, facts.”

  “So, do you have any facts that might help us, Ashley?” Amber asked.

  “Such as?”

  “How about where you were last night?” Amber asked.

  “I was flying back from California,” Ashley said. “There’s been a convention over the last couple of days, dedicated to debunking the pseudo-science at the heart of our legal system and business world. Did you know that there are still companies using graphology to screen some of their job applicants? Graphology! But the Rorschach test is worse than all of it! Locking people away with pure guesswork!”

  He seemed to be getting worked up again, but at least Amber and Simon had something they could latch onto, something they could check.

  “Do you have any evidence that you were at the convention?” Simon asked.

  Ashley reached towards his pocket. Amber saw Simon tense, but his hand came out holding a phone.

  “It’s all here. Pictures of me there. My digital ticket for the flight. All of it.”

  Meaning that he had an alibi for the murders.

  “Ashley,” Amber said. “Is it possible that someone else hates the Rorschach test even more than you do? Is it possible that someone might be killing because of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Ashley said. “It’s possible. What happened to me was wrong. How many other people has this happened to?”

  It was both frustrating and a glimmer of hope. Frustrating because the alibi was the end of Ashley Seaver as a potential suspect, but he had a point. How many other people were there out there who thought that they’d been wrongly incarcerated in a psychiatric facility because of the Rorschach test?

  “It’s not people like me you need to watch out for,” Ashley said. “It’s the people who like the Rorschach test who are the dangerous ones. I bet one of those is the killer you’re looking for.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  For Colm, staying hidden was just another kind of puzzle to create. It was about leaving hints in all the wrong directions, about building up layers that he knew the authorities would never be able to unpick.

  Currently, he was in a safehouse that he’d put in place for exactly this kind of eventuality. Colm liked to plan ahead. The safehouse was on the highest floor of a rundown apartment block in DC. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have stayed in anywhere that high up because it limited his options for escape, but he’d already plotted out a route across the surrounding rooftops that gave him the option to come down to street level at any one of half a dozen different locations.

  It was secure enough for now, although he would move on soon enough. This was a place to hide, not one from which to conduct the kind of puzzle construction that he had in mind. For that, Colm would need specialist equipment.

  That meant money, so he was currently in the process of discretely draining funds from a number of hidden online accounts into a fresh one that he had set up specifically for his latest endeavor. Most of the hidden accounts were even ones that belonged to him, although there were a couple where people simply hadn’t made their passwords complex enough.

  For the next part, Colm was careful to route his internet access through a dozen different countries, not wanting anything to lead back to him. Of course, any access meant a degree of exposure, but that was a game in itself, trying to create layers of puzzles so complex that he would be long gone before the US Marshals even got close.

  Colm searched for Amber Young, determined to find out more about her. He already knew a lot. He’d been determined to learn about her, had even played through some of the puzzles she’d set. There had been something fresh about those, something that had caught Colm’s interest. Of course, she’d obviously been holding back for most of them, trying to persuade the stupid people of Washington that they weren’t so stupid after all. But there were a couple where she’d let slip what she could do, where she’d set the puzzles that she clearly wanted to set, unhindered by the efforts of the editors to hold her back.

  Colm found those fascinating. They made him feel alive. They made him feel, when ordinarily the world seemed so grey and boring.

  Colm had to tear himself away from the puzzles to focus on a more immediate question: locating Amber Young. The Washington News didn’t publish the addresses of its staff, for obvious reasons, and it didn’t seem to be something that she’d been foolish enough to put up online.

  Amber wasn’t foolish. Anything but. It was what made her so interesting.

  Even so, Colm had his ways. Public records were worth their weight in gold, of course. It didn’t take Colm long to find an address for her. And he knew that Amber was currently elsewhere because the quickest of searches showed all the news reports that were coming out about her working on the case in Guisborough.

  It seemed like the perfect opportunity to go see the place where Amber lived.

  *

  Reaching Amber Young’s apartment without being spotted or leaving a trail that others could follow proved to be an interesting puzzle for Colm. He’d had to find ways to disguise his features that wouldn’t themselves draw attention. He’d had to find routes that avoided the watching gaze of cameras, or which let him pass them without his features being visible in a way that would help facial recognition technology.

  Entering the apartment building was easier because Colm simply timed his approach to coincide with someone with a key, following them in and brushing past, moving quickly. So long as he looked like he knew where he was going, he was sure that he wouldn’t be challenged.

  And if he were, well, he had weapons hidden just in case.

  Colm reached Amber’s door without incident, looked around to make sure that no one was watching, and then quickly picked the lock. It wasn’t a good lock, but he didn’t blame Amber for presenting him with too weak a puzzle. That one was down to the building’s management, not her.

  The interior of her apartment opened up to Colm like a prize. And it was a prize, a treasure trove of puzzles and half-made designs. With carefully gloved hands, Colm shut the door behind himself and started to move through the apartment.

  There were puzzles everywhere. Some were other people’s, things Colm recognized, puzzles that Amber clearly kept around for the joy of solving them. There were stacks of board games, a couple of chess sets out in the open, with positions set up in the middle of puzzles. Colm stood there for more than a minute in front of them, making sure that he had the solutions. He resisted the temptation to make the next move in each of the puzzles as a clue to Amber. That would be the first move in a different kind of game between them, and Colm wanted to find a different way to make that move.

 

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