Page 14 of Absent Feeling

Ambernodded. She found herself thinking about the Rorschach test. Raymond Werdly hadbeen a psychiatrist, what had Constance Banks been? How could two people soapparently different from one another have been targeted by the same killer?

CHAPTER NINE

“Isit the best thing, meeting him here? Won’t it bring up a lot of stuff for him?”Amber asked as they drove up to the house where Constance Banks had died.

“It’swhere he wants to meet,” Simon said. “And there’s a chance that being therewill help to jog his memory about the things he saw. Now that the police havebeen through it and he can get in there, I get the feeling that he wants to bethere.”

Ambercould understand that. Maybe it was James’s way of wanting to feel close to hismother, but she was still worried that it might make it harder to get realanswers from him.

Asthey pulled up in front of it, the house looked both larger and older than theothers around it. It was the kind of place that local kids might have thoughtof as the local haunted house because of its old-fashioned look and slightlyovergrown gardens. Knowing that a murder had taken place there would only addto that.

Amberfound herself wondering then about what things were like in the aftermath of theinvestigations she and Simon conducted. She wanted to believe that her effortsto catch two killers already had made a difference, that there were peoplealive today who otherwise might not have been. But the crimes that had beencommitted still had long-term effects. They potentially changed the course ofwhole communities. That was the other side of the argument that as a puzzleeditor, she didn’t really do anything that changed people’s lives; as an FBIagent, she would have the capacity to, but it would come with an immenseresponsibility.

Sheand Simon walked up to the house and knocked on the door. The man who opened itwas in his thirties, average height and build, brown haired with strongfeatures. He was wearing overalls and was taking off rubber gloves even as he stoodthere. Amber could see the wariness on his features, mixed in with grief. Sheguessed that this was James Banks.

“Areyou the FBI?” he asked.

“That’sright, Mr. Banks,” Simon said. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with us. May wecome in?”

“Yes,just … I’ve been trying to clean everything up. Trying to get the blood out,but it doesn’t seem to go away no matter how much I scrub.”

Ambercould hear the pain in his voice, and she suspected that he was trying to getrid of more than a bloodstain. He was trying to scrub away the memory of walkingin there to find his mother dead.

Ambercouldn’t help feeling then that they were intruding on a private moment ofgrief. It was something that she didn’t have to do as a puzzle editor, but asan FBI agent, she would have to do this kind of thing all the time. Amberwasn’t sure if she liked that prospect.

Jamesled the way into a living room that looked as though it had been decorated fiftyyears ago and never changed since. The furniture, the floral wallpaper,everything about it seemed to have been picked out either in the 1970s or in anattempt to recall that decade. He gestured for Amber and Simon to sit togetheron a couch that was covered by an embroidered throw, while he sat in a rockingchair that looked as though it had seen plenty of use.

Beforeeither of them could get out a question, James started to speak.

“Iwanted my mother to go into a retirement facility, you know. I thought that shecouldn’t handle things here alone. I was coming here to apologize to her forarguing about it when I found her. Now, I wish I’d pushed harder. She wouldhave beensafethere.”

Ambercould hear the guilt in his voice, the part of him that wondered if thingsmight have been different if he’d only acted in some other way.

“There’snothing you could have done,” Amber said, trying to comfort him.

“Youdon’t know that. If I’d been there earlier …”

“Thenthe killer would have waited until you were gone,” Simon said. “We haveevidence that suggests he was watching his victims before he struck. That meansthat he targeted them, though.”

“Targeted?”

Ambersaw Simon nod. “We think that the killer might have picked your mother and hisother victim out for some reason. We’re hoping that, if we can identify whatthat reason is, we might be able to find him.”

“Ican’t imagine why anyone would want to kill my mother,” James said. “She … shedidn’t make enemies, she wasn’t involved in anything dangerous, it doesn’t makesense that anyone would want to kill her.”

“Itdoesn’t have to make sense to you, just to the killer,” Amber pointed out. “Mr.Banks, did your mother know a man called Raymond Werdly?”

“That’sthe other man that was killed? The one they’ve been talking about on the news?”

Ambernodded. “Did your mother know him?”

Jamesshook his head after a second or two. “I … don’t think so. I hadn’t heard hisname until the news today. My mother certainly never mentioned him.”

Amberhadn’t been expecting it to be that simple, but it would help a lot if theycould findsomekind of connection between the victims, some kind ofcontext in which the killer might have spotted them both and decided to makethem his victims.

“Wasthere anything new in your mother’s life in the days before her death?” Simonasked. “Did anything change, even if it only seems small?”

Again,there was a pause as James thought. “No, I don’t think so. My mother has hadthe same routines in her life ever since my father passed.”

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