Page 31 of Absent Feeling

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

“Anotherdead end,” he said.

“Butone we had to check,” Amber replied. She’d found it easy to imagine that AshleySeaver’s hatred of the Rorschach test might have spilled over into somethingmore.

Simonnodded. “And we found some potential additional motives for the killer. It’sjust worrying that we already know the most promising looking suspect for eachof those motives isn’t the killer.”

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

“So,what now?” Amber asked.

“Iwant to go back through the evidence,” Simon said. “I want to look at theconnections 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 withother conditions too.”

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

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

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

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

Amberknew 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 werehunting. If she could only crack it, then they might be able to solve thiscase.

Ambertried to go along with what Simon was asking for, though, by calling theGuisborough Wellness Institute.

“Hello?”

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

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

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

“Whatcan I do for you, Ms. Young?”

“Wewere hoping to rerun the search with some slightly wider parameters,” Ambersaid, 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, wecan really only look at patients admitted in the last ten years, thanks to thecomputer glitch.”

“Iknow that,” Amber said. “We’re more interested in expanding the search indifferent ways.”

Therewas a pause on the other end of the line.

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

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

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

“Butyou 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’tdoing so well out of the agency work, I think she would have come on staff awhile ago.”

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

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

“That’spotentially a lot of people,” the administrator said. “Schizophrenia is thecondition that is most diagnosed with the test as a part of the process, but doctorshave used it for all kinds of personality disorders, and even just to try toexplore personality and emotional traits.”

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