He sounded as if he meant it, as if he accepted what he’d done and the impact that it must have had on the people he’d attacked.

  “Matthew wouldn’t hurt anyone now,” Sara said. “He takes his medication; he goes to see his therapist. He’s stable.”

  “Do you take your medication?” Simon asked Matthew.

  Matthew nodded. “I do all the things they say I need to. It keeps me … steady. I don’t hear the voices telling me that they’re trying to kill me anymore. I know now that that was a delusion, my own fears, my own mind.”

  He put his head in his hands, and Sara stepped over to him, putting a hand on his arm.

  “It’s all right, Matthew.”

  “It’s not all right. I hurt you. I stabbed you.”

  That caught Amber by surprise. She hadn’t known that one of the people Matthew had stabbed was his sister. It obviously caught Simon by surprise too.

  “Your brother stabbed you, but you’re letting him stay here with you?”

  If anything, Sara’s hand tightened more possessively on her brother’s shoulder. “That wasn’t Matthew. At least, not the real him. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

  “And he does now?” Amber asked.

  Sara nodded. “He wouldn’t hurt anyone. He hasn’t hurt anyone.”

  She sounded so certain about it that Amber wanted to believe it. Certainly, Matthew seemed calm and in control. But she knew that they couldn’t just take his and his sister’s word for it.

  “We need to know where you were yesterday, Matthew, at around six pm, and then this morning between midnight and one.”

  “This morning, Matthew was at home with me and a couple of our friends,” Sara said.

  “Yesterday, I was talking to my therapist from six until seven.”

  It wasn’t a perfect alibi, but it was more than enough. Matthew Aymes probably couldn’t have committed the second murder, probably couldn’t have committed the first, and the same killer had undoubtedly murdered both victims. They would still need to check the alibi with Sara and Matthew’s friends and his therapist, but Amber had no doubt that it would stand up.

  That was a problem because Matthew Aymes had been their only suspect. They’d gone wrong somewhere, and Amber didn’t know where.

  “Matthew, one last thing,” Amber said. She held up a picture of the inkblot that had been found at the scenes. “Does this mean anything to you? It’s similar to a Rorschach test inkblot. Have you seen anything like it before? Did Dr. Werdly or Dr. Banks administer that test to you?”

  Matthew shook his head, though. “No, they didn’t use anything like that. After they’d talked to me, that was enough. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It was dark outside when Amber left the apartment building with Simon. She stood there on the sidewalk, trying to work out what they were going to do next, but there didn’t seem to be an obvious answer.

  “What now?” she asked Simon, hoping that he had a solution.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Matthew Aymes was the best shot we had. He was the obvious suspect.”

  “The only suspect,” Amber pointed out. That was what made this so difficult. Their search through the psychiatric institution’s records had yielded only one result that fit all the criteria they’d been looking for. If this had been some kind of logic puzzle, then it would have been impossible for him not to be the correct answer.

  Yet, somehow, he wasn’t. Matthew had an alibi, one that was easy to check, and which meant that he couldn’t possibly have killed anyone. Amber’s mind immediately leapt to his sister, who was obviously angry at the fact that her brother had been locked up and who clearly wanted to protect him, but the fact that they’d had friends over last night meant that her alibi was as good as his.

  “We’ll have to find a new one,” Simon said. “The killer’s out there somewhere, and I’m convinced that the connection between the victims is more than just coincidence.”

  “So, do we head back to the police department and go through the case files again, maybe call a few more places they might have potentially worked together?” Amber wasn’t sure what it would take to make a breakthrough on this case, but she was determined to keep going. There had to be something there that would let them make progress.

  “In the morning,” Simon said. “It’s getting late, and if we don’t have a clear lead to chase down, we don’t gain anything by pushing late into the night. We need to get some rest and come back fresh tomorrow. Maybe we’ll be able to see things differently then.”

  “I don’t want to stop now,” Amber said. “I don’t want to stop before we have some way into all of this. The killer’s still out there, and if he’s killing so quickly, us stopping might mean that someone else dies.”

  She wouldn’t stop with a puzzle if she’d run into a dead end. Amber would keep working on it, worrying at it like a dog with a bone, until she made some progress. She wouldn’t be able to sleep if she just tried to leave it because the problem would continue to be there at the back of her mind, refusing to go away.

  “In the morning, Amber,” Simon insisted. “I know it’s frustrating, but we aren’t going to be able to make any more progress tonight, and I need you to be fresh to start again tomorrow morning.”

  He didn’t seem to be backing down, and Amber knew that she wasn’t going to be able to change his mind. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to keep going with the investigation alone. Hospitals had already made it clear that they weren’t going to hand over information just to her; she needed Simon for that part.

  It meant that she didn’t have any choice other than to go along with Simon as he drove out to a motel. Amber found herself thinking about the case as they drove. Where had they gone wrong with the case? Amber ran over the chain of logic that had led the two of them to Matthew Aymes and, no matter how she looked at it, that chain of logic seemed irrefutable.

  The best link that they had between the victims was the potential of Raymond Werdly and Constance Banks’s husband David to have worked in the same place. Especially given the Rorschach test angle. It had to be about something psychological. There was no way that it wasn’t. A patient who hated both Raymond and David was the most logical explanation of the killer and his motive. Which led back to Matthew Aymes.

  It didn’t work somehow, and Amber couldn’t see how.

  “We should at least check the alibi and try to break it,” she said. “If we can find a way to do that, Matthew becomes a viable suspect again.”

  “I will, but do you really believe that it’s him?” Simon countered. “You saw him, Amber. He’s not in the middle of some kind of fresh breakdown, and it’s obvious that he feels remorse for what he did. I just don’t see him doing this.”

  “But he’s the most logical option,” Amber insisted.

  “Maybe in the morning, things will look different.”

  They reached a motel. Simon got them a couple of rooms. He passed Amber the keycard to hers.

  “Try to get some sleep. Don’t spend all night going over this in your mind.”

  “I’ll try,” Amber said, but she knew already that it was likely to be impossible to stop herself. Already, the question of how else this case could fit together if not around Matthew Aymes was lodged in the middle of her mind, refusing to move.

  She headed into her room, looking around at the plainness of the motel bedroom. It had a bed, a chair, and a small table. Amber took the chair, set it down in front of the table and perched herself there with her phone while she tried to work out the best way to do something that might be useful on this case.

  She couldn’t call the private psychiatric institutions and hospitals because Amber had already seen that they wouldn’t talk to her without a badge number to quote, and they certainly wouldn’t hand out patient details without a warrant.

  Maybe there was another way to do that side of things, though. Amber composed an email, trying to work out the best way to get the smaller psychiatric institutions to give her what she needed.

  I’m writing as part of the investigation into the murders of Raymond Werdly and Constance Banks. My partner Agent Simon Phelps is heading up that investigation. We are currently looking for any locations where Raymond Werdly might have worked alongside a psychiatrist named David Banks. Can you please contact Agent Phelps on the following email address to confirm whether the two have worked at your institution, either separately or together.

  Amber Young (consultant).

  She included Simon’s work email, knowing that it would look a lot more official than her own account. There was a chance that her efforts might actually get a response rather than being ignored. It was possible, wasn’t it, that this wasn’t about the Guisborough Wellness Institute, but rather about events that had occurred somewhere else? Sending the email was really the only thing that Amber could do to find out.

  Once she’d done that, though, Amber found herself calling up pictures of the inkblots that had been found at the crime scenes. She stared at them for a minute or two, trying to make sure that she would recognize them if she saw them. Then Amber started to search for images of inkblots. She knew that this wasn’t one of the ten main Rorschach ones, so that raised the possibility that it was something else—a historical example or a modern artwork.

  Amber looked through them one by one, trying to find one that matched exactly. It wasn’t easy because while there were some that were obviously vastly different, there were others that were only a little way from being the same.

  Did that matter? Was this a design that was deliberately between two or three other examples, trying to reference them because they meant something to the killer? There was one called “the orchard” that was similar and another called “the two rivers”. Amber wondered if those two names were significant, maybe a clue to a location where something had happened in the past.

  Amber found herself searching for those terms in local newspaper records, trying to find anything that fit the imagery. She had the skills to do this research, but she suspected that someone like Joseph would have been able to do a better job of it.

  The thought of Joseph made Amber pause. She was meant to be his girlfriend now, but she hadn’t even called him to tell him where she was. She should do that, shouldn’t she? She should definitely call him to see how he was doing. Maybe thinking about something else for a minute or two would help Amber to try to approach the case in new ways.

  Amber called Joseph, who picked up after only a couple of rings.

  “Hey,” Joseph said. “Are you in Guisborough?”

  Amber realized that he must have seen her on the news. That wasn’t the way that she’d wanted Joseph to find out that she’d left DC, and she felt guilty for not having called him on the way out of town to let him know that she was going.

  “Yes,” Amber admitted.

  “Does that mean that you’ve accepted the offer from the FBI department Agent Phelps works in?”

  Amber wished that she could give him a clear answer on that, but it still wasn’t that simple for her.

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “It’s like a … trial run, I guess. I’ve been brought along on this case to try to help, but I’m also going to try to work out if I should say yes.”

  There was a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Earlier, I thought that maybe we could have met up this evening. Then I saw the news.”

  “I’m sorry,” Amber said. “I should have told you what was going on. I should have let you know that I wasn’t going to be in town.”

  Because that was the kind of thing that a girlfriend would do, right? When the two of them had just been casual, Amber could run off to do whatever she needed to do without even mentioning it. Now, she suspected that it didn’t work like that; that she should probably at least give Joseph a heads up if she was going to be out of town for a few days.

  “It’s not a problem,” Joseph said, “but if you’d told me, maybe I could have talked to Harry to get him to send me to cover the murders.”

  “Plotting to find ways to spend the evening together?” Amber said.

  “Well, I could have,” Joseph said. “But now I’m stuck in DC, covering a couple of political stories.”

  “That’s a pity,” Amber said. She meant it too. She would have much preferred that Joseph was there with her, but then, that would have created its own issues. Amber would have had to be careful about how much she said to him, and just as careful not to be distracted.

  “It is, but maybe we’ll be able to make up for it when you get back. When are you getting back?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Amber said. “When the case is done. Soon, I hope.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know.” Amber couldn’t give him a definite timeframe for it. “Surely you understand? You don’t know how long a story will take.”

  “But I’m not chasing after murderers doing that. I worry about you, Amber.”

  “I’ll be ok.”

  “I hope so.”

  They both hung up, leaving Amber wishing that it had gone differently. She’d hoped that calling Joseph would reinvigorate her, but instead, she found herself wanting to throw herself back into research to stop thinking about him.

  Amber started to look through Raymond Werdly’s social media, searching for any pictures of him marked as being with David Banks. She found several, but they all seemed to be from the Wellness Institute. Amber kept looking through them, trying to find one that didn’t fit, one that might tell her something.

  She was still looking as her eyes started to drift shut.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He waited until he was sure that Ysabel Jones was alone in her house before he advanced on it, moving swiftly, his eyes darting around for any sign of trouble.

  He felt as sharp and focused right then as the edge of the knife that he had in one of the pockets of his shapeless, black jacket. He was becoming more focused by the day as the medications they’d forced him onto started to fade from his system.

  He reached the back door, avoiding the security lights for long enough to cut through the cable that controlled them. He knelt by the rear door to the house, working with lockpicks to open it. There was a satisfying click as the lock gave way to his efforts.

  He was inside then, moving quickly towards the only patch of light in the house, determined not to allow Ysabel a chance to get away. After everything she’d done to make his time in the institution worse, he was going to make sure that she got the justice she deserved.

  He hurried forward, standing at the doorway to the lounge, where Ysabel sat, barely thirty years old, blonde haired and pretty, dressed in sweats like she was contemplating going out running. She looked up, half rising out of her seat and taking a single step onto the cream-colored carpet before he drew the knife, stopping her short.

  “Who are you?” she demanded in a frightened voice. “What do you want?”

  “Don’t you know?” he demanded. He threw back the hood of the hooded top he was wearing under his jacket, letting her see his features. “After everything you’ve done to me, weren’t you expecting this? Weren’t you expecting me to come for you?”

  “Everything I’ve …” Ysabel trailed off, staring at him. “Wait. I know you. You were in the institution. You were—”

  “I was put there wrongly!” he snapped, cutting her off. “They said I was mad. They made me look like I was mad! And you … I could have been out years ago if it weren’t for you. You lied to them! You told them I attacked you!”

  “Because you did attack me,” Ysabel insisted, raising her hands as if they might fend off the knife. As if she could do anything to stop him now. “You tried to kill me in the middle of one of the group therapy sessions.”

  “That was an accident, and you know it!” he snapped, stepping forward with the knife in his hand. “You know that I never wanted to hurt anybody!”

  “You aren’t well,” Ysabel said, in that tone he hated, the one that was meant to placate him while still trying to be firm. The one that said that she was in control of everything not him.

  He couldn’t stand that. “That’s what you all wanted me to think. I see more clearly now than I ever have. Admit it. Admit what you did to me!”

  “We can get you help if you just—”

  He leapt at her then, the knife in his hand, ready to strike.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Amber was walking through a house with paper walls, each of them marked with a different inkblot. She could feel her heart pounding, feel the fear of not knowing what was going on, when she normally prided herself on always knowing what was going on.

  There had to be a pattern to the inkblots. There had to be some way of using them to find … what was she trying to find again?

  The killer. That knowledge leapt unbidden into her mind. There was a killer somewhere in this house, hiding somewhere from her behind the deceptions of the inkblots. No, not hiding, waiting. He was waiting for her, and now Amber knew that if she didn’t work this out, she was going to be his next victim.

  Amber started to make her way through the house, trying to make some sense of it all. The house seemed to consist of endless twisting corridors, turning it into something like a maze. Rorschach pictures hung down from the ceiling on strings, forming a dangling forest of inkblots that Amber had to pick her way through, trying to find some way to make sense of them all.

  She found herself wondering where Simon was. If she was hunting for a killer, then he should be here with her, shouldn’t he? Amber needed him there to take down any bad guys. Her role in all of this was just to solve the puzzles, to provide Simon with information that he wouldn’t be able to come up with alone.

  Amber started to look at the Rorschach inkblots dangling from the ceiling. All of the standard ten were there, but those weren’t the ones Amber was interested in. Instead, she found herself picking out the other inkblots, the ones that were identical to the ones that had been left at the crime scenes. Amber found those, each identical to the last, and for a moment, she stared at each one, trying to understand the meaning of it.

 

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