Page 17 of Absent Feeling

Nowonder he sounded so impatient. It was probably hard enough working in ahospital without reporters trying to get information for their stories. Amberknew firsthand how persistent, and in some cases how unscrupulous, some of themcould be.

“I’mnot an agent,” Amber said. “I’m a consultant working with the FBI.”

“Withouta badge number, I can’t help you,” the man said, and hung up.

Amber’shand tightened on the phone in frustration. She could understand why peoplewouldn’t just give out information to a stranger like that, but it was far toobig a reminder of the strange in-between space she currently occupied, notquite an agent, not quite a civilian. She had worked with Simon a couple oftimes now, but both times, there had been a clear puzzle that she could bringher skills to bear on, justifying her inclusion in the case.

Now,she couldn’t even find out if two men had worked in the same place at the sametime. Her first instinct was to hand the call over to Simon, but he was stillcaught up with his own call. Besides, what was the point of her being there ifshe couldn’t do anything to help?

Amberset down the phone, taking out the inkblots from the crime scenes. If shewasn’t able to make any progress on the possible links between the secondvictim and the husband of the first, then maybe she could do something withthis. After all, she’d managed to unlock the last two cases by looking moreclosely at objects associated with the murders. Maybe there would be somethinghere too.

Amber’sfirst observation was that the two patterns were identical, spreading out in adark red stain across the cardboard that seemed to Amber to echo the pools ofblood they’d been found in.

No,not just echo. Amber had seen the crime scene photographs, but she called themup now, forcing herself to look closely at the bloodstains that had been leftafter the murders. It was hard, staring at pictures of the dead like that, hardto force herself to look past those dead bodies and take in the shape of thebloodstains.

Amberwas sure of it now; they were identical. She found a number for the coroner andput in a call to them.

“Thisis the coroner’s office,” a man’s voice said. “Who is this please?”

“Myname is Amber Young. I’m working with Agent Simon Phelps on the Constance Banksand Raymond Werdly murders. I need to ask a question about bloodstains at thescene.”

“Holdplease, I’ll fetch the coroner.”

Therewas a pause on the other end of the line, in which Amber found herself staringat the design on the card. It wasn’t quite symmetrical, which surprised her,because she had assumed that all the Rorschach cards were.

“Hello,this is Dr. Herb. My receptionist tells me that you have a question about the bloodstains.I have to warn you that spatter pattern analysis isn’t really my field.”

“That’snot my question,” Amber said. “Is there any sign that the bloodstains at thecrime scenes were interfered with somehow? Spread out in different directionsto fit particular patterns?”

Therewas another pause on the line, presumably as the coroner considered thequestion.

“Mypeople did find evidence of blood partially scrubbed away and wiped intodifferent spots with a cloth. My initial thought was that it was aboutcollecting some of the blood as a trophy or as part of a very poor attempt toclean the scene that the killer gave up on.”

“Atboth scenes?” Amber said. She could imagine someone trying to clean the bloodaway from a murder in a panic at one scene but not at both. In any case, thatwasn’t what she thought was happening.

“Yes,evidence of tampering with the bloodstains was present at both scenes,” thecoroner said.

“Thankyou,” Amber replied. “That helps a lot.”

Shehung up, staring at the two cards from the murder scenes. Was it possible thatthe killer had deliberately smeared the blood at the crime scenes to match thepattern here? If so, then understanding that pattern seemed vital.

Ambersearched for the Rorschach cards, and the first thing she found was that thiswasn’tone of the standard Rorschach designs. It was reminiscent of them, stillwith the appearance of an inkblot pattern, but this was something different,something custom designed.

Amberknew that inkblots had been around as art well before Rorschach had ascribeddiagnostic qualities to them. She found herself going down the rabbit hole ofsearching for them, looking at historical examples of inkblots, trying to findone that was the same. If the killer had picked out this particular inkblot, thenthere had to be some meaning in it for them. If Amber could identify it, maybeshe could get at the meaning and help to make progress on this case.

“Amber?”Simon said. “What are you doing?”

“Ithink I’ve found something to do with the inkblots,” Amber said. “They aren’ttrue Rorschach images, so I’m trying to establish exactly what they are.”

“That’sgreat,” Simon said, “but weren’t you meant to be calling around the localhospitals to find out if Raymond Werdly and David Banks worked there?”

“Theywon’t talk to me,” Amber explained. “Because I’m not an agent, they think thatI might be a reporter just trying to get information.”

Simonshrugged. “You know that when you take Palliser up on her offer, you won’t havethat problem?”

“When?”

“Well,I hope.”

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