Sage stepped out of the police station into the pouring rain. The icy cold water did little to revive him. It had been a long, sleepless night and everything had a fuzzy, surreal feeling. He glanced back over his shoulder at the guy he had passed in the hallway. He was pretty sure he knew him from somewhere. It could have been his sleep-deprived mind playing tricks on him. Most likely he just worked somewhere local, but Sage couldn’t place him.
He jogged through the rain to his car and was drenched by the time he sat down behind the steering wheel. Water dripped onto the upholstery as he leaned his head back against the headrest while the events of the hectic night passed through his mind.
The FBI field agents had shown up shortly after Sage scoped out the shuttered pharmacy. The feds commandeered the squad breakroom as their field office, much to the annoyance of the Culver Creek police force. Sage reported to Henderson on the closed-up pharmacy, though Henderson had barely seemed interested in what he had to say.
Sage stared at the photo that had been taped to the pillar in the room—the allegedly kidnapped little boy, Adam Walker. The kid was from New Jersey. What would he have been doing all the way out here? It was probably just a coincidence, but Sage had to say something.
“Walker,” Sage said. “Are his parents from here? Is that why they were out here today? There were Walkers that used to live over near the creek—”
“Atkins,” Henderson snapped without bothering to look up from his phone screen.
“What?” Sage asked.
“The father’s from Atkins,” Henderson said.
“It’s just I’m working on this cold case, and there was a Walker family that used to live—”
“It’s a common name,” Henderson said. “You got a Starbucks in this shithole town or what?”
“There’s a coffee shop on Main Street that’s pretty decent,” Sage said.
“Cool, do me a favor and grab me a mochaccino,” Henderson said. “Two sugars. Biggest size they got.”
Which was how Sage went from liaison to glorified gofer. It had been a very long night.
As dawn spread its rosy fingers through the grimy squad room windows, Sage had come around to sharing the Culver Creek police force’s low opinion of the FBI, and that was before they had curtly told him his services would no longer be needed as they were shifting the focus of their investigation.
“The kid’s not here,” Henderson said. “He was never here.”
“Are you sure?” Sage asked. “You haven’t even—”
“Trust me, we’ve got everything under control, Officer Dorian.”
“Detective,” Sage corrected before storming out of the building.
Sage shivered as he sat dripping in his car. What he should do was go home and go to sleep, but he felt too wired to sleep, and it seemed a shame to waste this restless energy. He could take another look through the Lily Esposito files. There had to be something he was missing. Except he had left the files he needed back in the squad room. The thought of going back out in that pouring rain filled him with dread. Lily Esposito had been dead for years. What difference did a few more hours make either way?
He had been hanging around Agent Henderson too long. That wasn’t how he worked. Besides, he was already soaked to the bone anyway.
The other officers didn’t hear him come in. They were too busy flipping through the folder from the Lily Esposito case that he had left on his desk. Well, Steve Arlo flipped through it while the two other officers peered over his shoulders. Sage thought Henderson had beat too hasty a retreat. The way the Culver Creek police force shirked their duties, it was very likely a little boy could have been kidnapped here in broad daylight. It was a small miracle there wasn’t an epidemic of kidnappings.
Sage was about to clear his throat to get their attention when he heard Steve say his name and instead eavesdropped in silence.
“He’s just running around talking to loonies,” Steve said. “It’s a fucking waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Sage thought that was ironic considering how hard at work Steve and the other two officers were at that very moment.
“I saw him in the coffee shop one day interviewing that crazy lady that works at the grocery store,” Steve continued.
“The one with the blue hair and all the tattoos?” one of the officers asked.
“Nah, the older one. She’s always going to that psychic place,” Steve said.
Sage thought of Brighton and his affair with the psychic girl’s mother. Something tingled at the back of Sage’s mind. He tried to focus on it, but it evaporated before he could even grasp it.
“What psychic?” the other officer asked.
“You know,” Steve said, “the whatchamacallit, dream whisperer. She’s always going over there, bringing her offerings of food. She’s a total weirdo. These are the sort of people this nitwit is going around questioning.”
This time it was more than a tingle. A jolt of inspiration hit Sage.
Left where? Maura had said that afternoon in the coffee shop before she caught herself. What if all this time Jade had been right here under his nose? He had a dream whisperer to visit.