Colm turned his attention then from the puzzles that Amber had collected to the ones she was working on. They were much more interesting. It was like looking into the interior of her mind, seeing how she thought. There was a breadth and imagination to her work that impressed him, from complex word problems to collections of quiz questions and a design for a puzzle box that seemed to have several interesting twists on the approach. Colm took photographs of the more interesting ideas, not to steal them, but perhaps because imitation could become the sincerest form of flattery.

  Colm continued to make his way through the apartment, through to the bedroom. Colm suspected that he should have felt something intimate about this moment, but to him, all of this was intimate. It was a chance to engage with another mind that, unlike those in the rest of the world, did not bore him.

  Colm saw something on a small bedside table. A diary? Was Amber Young the kind of woman who would disappoint him by keeping a journal full of bad poetry and thoughts about the men she liked?

  Colm couldn’t keep himself from flicking through that journal, and he was instantly glad that he did so. Oh, there were the stream of consciousness ramblings he’d been expecting, the diary notes about her worries, but interspersed with them were the designs and the drawings, the ideas that had clearly come to her in the night that she absolutely had to get down. There were the seeds of puzzle ideas there, fragments of them that spoke to Colm. He knew this moment perfectly: when the idea finally fit into place, when he finally saw how all the pieces of a puzzle worked with one another.

  It was beautiful, and it was exactly what he’d been looking for.

  Carefully, precisely, Colm tucked the journal under his jacket. He picked his way back through the apartment, making sure that he left everything exactly as he had found it. He let himself out and locked the door behind him.

  It was time for him and Amber Young to play a game.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Amber could see the frustration on Simon’s face as the two of them headed away from Ashley Seaver’s house, driving back in the direction of the Guisborough PD.

  “Another dead end,” he said.

  “But one we had to check,” Amber replied. She’d found it easy to imagine that Ashley Seaver’s hatred of the Rorschach test might have spilled over into something more.

  Simon nodded. “And we found some potential additional motives for the killer. It’s just worrying that we already know the most promising looking suspect for each of those motives isn’t the killer.”

  Amber could hear some of the worry there in his voice. She tried to imagine what it was like for him. She might have gone through the FBI’s training course, but Simon was the one with responsibility for the case.

  “So, what now?” Amber asked.

  “I want to go back through the evidence,” Simon said. “I want to look at the connections between the victims again, bearing in mind the things we now know. I want to try widening our search on patients to include ones diagnosed with other conditions too.”

  “We could end up with a hundred results,” Amber pointed out.

  “Then we run down a hundred suspects. It’s better than none.”

  “I want to take another look at the inkblot,” Amber said. “There’s something there, Simon. The uniqueness of it … the killer’s trying to tell us something.”

  Simon was already shaking his head, though. “We’ve been through that, Amber. I need you focused on the other aspects of the case. Not everything is a puzzle.”

  Amber knew that; she just had a hard time believing that there wasn’t a puzzle here. One that might potentially lead them both right to the killer they were hunting. If she could only crack it, then they might be able to solve this case.

  Amber tried to go along with what Simon was asking for, though, by calling the Guisborough Wellness Institute.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Amber Young. I’m working with Agent Phelps of the FBI. I have him here with me if you need to check. We called before to run a check on some of your patients.”

  “Oh yes, I remember. I’ll put you through to Ms. Dern.”

  That took another moment, and soon, she was talking to the hospital’s administrator.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Young?”

  “We were hoping to rerun the search with some slightly wider parameters,” Amber said, trying to think as she said it what those parameters should be.

  “I … guess we could do that. I want to help any way I can. But like I told you, we can really only look at patients admitted in the last ten years, thanks to the computer glitch.”

  “I know that,” Amber said. “We’re more interested in expanding the search in different ways.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  “What ways did you have in mind? What do you want me to search for?”

  “We’re looking for any patients who were declared insane by David Banks or Raymond Werdly. Patients who might have been treated by both of them. If any have records of being treated by Ysabel Jones, then that’s even better.”

  “There won’t be any for Ysabel. She was an agency nurse.”

  “But you knew her?” Amber asked, since the tone of the reply seemed to imply that.

  “Yes, of course. She worked here plenty of times. Honestly, I think if she wasn’t doing so well out of the agency work, I think she would have come on staff a while ago.”

  So, there was a good chance that there was a patient somewhere who had been in contact with all three.

  “All right,” Amber said. “Find me patients with links to both Dr. Werdly and Dr. Banks. This time, we’re not specifically searching for schizophrenia, just for anything that a Rorschach test might have been administered for.”

  “That’s potentially a lot of people,” the administrator said. “Schizophrenia is the condition that is most diagnosed with the test as a part of the process, but doctors have used it for all kinds of personality disorders, and even just to try to explore personality and emotional traits.”

  “See what that gets us, and we’ll go from there,” Amber said.

  She heard the sound of typing on the other end of the phone. “I have literally hundreds of hits,” the administrator said. “It’s just anyone who has ever had a connection with the two doctors.”

  Far too many to look into, in other words. Which meant that they still needed to narrow it down more.

  “Can we limit it to patients with a history of violence?” Amber asked.

  “We can, but that will still be a high number,” the administrator explained. “People aren’t locked away here just because they’re ill. It’s because they pose a danger either to themselves or others.”

  Amber tried to work out the best way to narrow it all down. “We’d be looking for a recently released patient, one who might still potentially be a danger, preferably one with a condition where the Rorschach test is routinely used as a diagnostic tool, and one who was treated by both doctors.”

  That was a narrower definition but, the moment Amber said it, she worried that it might be too narrow.

  “That just takes us back to Matthew Aymes,” Ms. Dern said. “I’m sorry, but it really is hard to narrow down the records the way you want.”

  “Forget the records for a moment,” Amber said. “Is there anyone you can think of who might be a good candidate to have done all of this? Did any of your patients hate the two doctors and Ysabel Jones? Have any of the ones released recently felt to you as though they might still be a danger to people?”

  “We don’t release patients who still represent a danger to the public,” Ms. Dern said. “And if I had to say that one was still unstable, again … it would be Matthew.”

  Who had a solid alibi, and therefore couldn’t be the killer.

  “Thank you for your time, Ms. Dern,” Amber said and hung up. She looked over to Simon. “Nothing. They can’t narrow it down without it just becoming Matthew Aymes again.”

  “And we already know it can’t be him,” Simon said. “Keep trying, Amber.”

  That was easy for him to say, but Amber couldn’t imagine what she could try next that might help. What was she meant to do, go over the files again to see if anything leapt out at her? The truth was that something already had leapt out at her. Her instincts said that the pattern the killer had left behind mattered, that it was the best route they had to get closer to the killer.

  Amber found herself calling up an image of the inkblot pattern in spite of everything that Simon had said about it. She found herself looking for meanings of the image. Amber tried to think of other things that the image might represent. She looked at images of local landmarks, hoping that it might prove to be some kind of impressionist representation of one of them, but there was nothing close to it. She tried looking for artworks produced by local artists in case the killer was leaving behind one of his own works. Again, nothing. She tried—

  “Amber, we don’t have time for you to start looking at the inkblot again,” Simon said.

  “But I’m convinced it has something to do with all of this,” Amber said.

  “I’m not,” Simon replied. “I think you’re just looking for a puzzle because it makes you feel like you can do more to help that way, but I need you to look into the evidence. We need to run this down using normal investigative methods.”

  “You heard me try calling the psychiatric facility,” Amber pointed out. “They didn’t have anything useful to tell us.”

  “There are still plenty of other places you could look.” Simon’s tone seemed to be growing firmer now. “Go back over the connections between the victims, see if there’s anything there.”

  “But I really think that this—”

  “Amber, I get it, that’s the part you want to focus on, but I’m the agent in charge of this case, and I need us to focus on the parts that are most likely to give us results. You’re a consultant on this, not an agent. I’m the one who’s responsible for this case, and I need you to work with me, not wander off, doing your own thing.”

  “Even if I think this is the right thing to do?”

  “Amber, the FBI isn’t about doing whatever you want. We follow procedure. We look into cases the right way. We follow orders. If you can’t do that … well, maybe you’ve found your answer about whether you want to work with me.”

  This was a side of Simon that Amber hadn’t seen before. He hadn’t put his foot down with Amber like this before, hadn’t stopped her like this. Amber wasn’t sure that she liked it.

  Amber snapped the folder with the inkblots inside shut pointedly, looking at Simon. She couldn’t just keep working on the inkblot now, not when Simon would stop her the moment she started. She also didn’t want to just dive back into looking at the connections between the victims when she was sure that wouldn’t lead anywhere. She had to think of something else, but she wanted it to be clear to Simon that she didn’t like this.

  Who might have killed them, if not one of their former patients or a man who obviously hated the Rorschach test? Amber found herself thinking about what Ashley Seaver had said: that someone who was obsessed with the Rorschach test was more dangerous than someone who hated it.

  Who might be obsessed with the test? Someone who applied it all the time? Maybe someone who worked with it?

  It was a longshot, but one Amber knew she had to explore. She called the Guisborough Wellness Institute, quickly getting through to its head administrator and putting the call on speaker.

  “Ms. Young?” Ms. Dern said. “Did you need something else? I want to help, but I’m really not sure what else we can do with our patient records.”

  “It’s not your patient records I’m interested in. I need to talk to you about your staff.”

  “You think one of our doctors might do something like this?”

  “It wouldn’t have to be a current one,” Amber said. “But it would have to be someone who you know has worked with Dr. Werdly and Dr. Banks, preferably with Ysabel Jones too.” Amber assumed that someone working in the psychiatric profession around Guisborough had the potential to have met an agency nurse even if it wasn’t immediately obvious from the records.

  “That’s potentially a lot of the staff,” Ms. Dern said.

  “We’re looking for someone who used the Rorschach test a lot. Someone who knew more about it than anyone. Someone obsessed with it. Does that description bring any names to mind, Ms. Dern?”

  “I … there might be a name. But I’m sure he wouldn’t.”

  “Who, Ms. Dern?” Simon asked, in a stern tone that left no room for holding back.

  “Dr. Andrew Harvis,” the administrator said. “He has literally written the book on the Rorschach test. Several books, in fact. He’s probably applied it to a wider range of patients than any of our other doctors.”

  “And he still works there?”

  “He does, in spite of his best efforts.”

  “What does that mean?” Amber asked.

  “He has been … difficult before. He’s argued with several of his colleagues.”

  “About the Rorschach test?”

  “Among other things.”

  Amber looked over to Simon, who nodded. The more they heard about Andrew Harvis, the more plausible a suspect he seemed. They needed to talk to him, right away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Amber stared over at the Guisborough Wellness Institute, wondering if their killer was in there, waiting for them.

  To Amber, the place looked like it had been designed to mimic some old-fashioned manor house, with elegant gardens spread out around it and ivy climbing up several of the walls. Everything about it seemed to be designed to cultivate a feeling of tranquility and peace.

  Amber found it hard to feel either of those things when there was a chance that they were about to talk to the man behind all of this.

  Simon also looked tense. “Before we go in there, I want to know more about him. I don’t want us walking in there blind.”

  Amber nodded. She’d started looking on the drive over, and she called up some of the relevant information on her phone now.

  “Dr. Andrew Harvis, fifty-two years old. Went to the top universities, graduated with honors, and started a career in psychiatry. There’s a page about his career on the site devoted to his private practice and his books. It seems that he’s worked at the Guisborough Wellness Institute for around ten years, as well as seeing some patients privately at his home in town.” Amber frowned. “I wonder if the administration here is ok with that?”

  “I’m more interested in whether it gives him a chance to come and go so that no one knows where he is at any given time,” Simon replied. “What else does it say about him?”

  “That Dr. Harvis has written five books on the Rorschach test. Five sounds like a lot. Why didn’t this guy come up when you were looking for an expert to talk to about it all?”

  “I wanted someone not closely connected with the Guisborough Wellness Institute.”

  That made sense, but if they had gone to see Andrew Harvis rather than Sally Lloyd, maybe they would already have solved this case.

  “The blurbs for the books say that he is one of the world’s leading experts on the tests,” Amber said. “And that he has been working on both new scoring systems for them that might make them fit a wider range of conditions and on additional inkblot prompts.”

  That caught Amber’s interest. Was it possible that the inkblots they’d found at the scene were one of those new prompts?

  “We need to get in there to talk to him,” Amber said, getting out of the car and leading the way into the facility.

  “Just remember that we don’t have anything concrete yet to link him to the crimes,” Simon pointed out. “He’s a suspect, but we’re not in a place yet where we can just arrest him.”

  Amber nodded, but she found herself feeling more and more as though this was likely to be the one. Didn’t it make sense that the killer would be someone obsessed with the Rorschach test, not someone opposed to it?

  On the ground floor, the interior of the medical center looked much more modern and medical than its exterior suggested. It was painted in white and subtle pastels, with most of the furniture removed to create a sense of light and space.

  A receptionist met them as they walked in. She was maybe twenty-five, dark haired and wearing large, round glasses that seemed almost too big for her features. She smiled at them as they approached, although the smile faded slightly as Simon showed his badge.

  “Are you looking for Ms. Dern? I think she’s over in our east wing, dealing with some contractors right now.”

  “No,” Simon said. “We’d like to talk to Dr. Harvis. Is he here?”

  “He’s up in his office on the second floor,” the receptionist said. “But I think he’s seeing outpatients at the moment.”

  Outpatients? The hospital had patients who came in just for treatments, rather than being held there? Amber hadn’t considered that as a possibility and something about it sparked a thought in her that maybe it was relevant, but the thought was quickly pushed aside by the need to speak to Andrew Harvis. He was their current suspect, after all.

  “We don’t have time to wait,” Simon said. It seemed that the urgency of the case was starting to get to him too. Maybe it was the additional victim last night, but Amber got the feeling that Simon was determined to power forward with the case right now, not stopping for anything. She actually had to run to keep up as Simon made his way towards a set of stairs leading up.

  They reached the second floor, which looked more like the manor house that this appeared to be from the outside. There was old-fashioned, wooden paneling on the walls, decorated with oil paintings, and thick rugs muffled Amber and Simon’s footsteps as they continued forward, looking for Dr. Harvis’s office.

  The rooms of the corridor they were in were all labelled with brass plaques, either with people’s names or to describe their function. Amber read them as she went, finally stopping short as she saw one with Dr. A Harvis engraved on it.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18