By two in the afternoon, the rain had stopped, the floodwaters had receded, and Detective Sage Dorian could no longer remember what sleep felt like. He sat in the station’s interview room across from Phelicity Green. She was dressed in a department-issue sweatshirt and sweatpants that were too big for her.
“Had you met Adam Walker before yesterday?” Sage asked her.
“Yes, he was having nightmares,” Phelicity said. “His father thought they were just bad dreams, but I knew they were real. He’s got the gift. He’s psychic.”
Sage tensed up. He thought of Brighton and his affair with the psychic girl’s mother. He thought of that sketch artist drawing, which still made no sense to him.
“He told you this was going to happen?” Sage asked, waving his arm around the little interview room.
“He had a dream about me, a dream about me and my sister,” Phelicity said. “He could see that night, that awful night. He was the only one who could tell me what happened.”
“But you were there that night,” Sage said. “You saw what happened.”
Phelicity shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut tight. It was several seconds before she reopened them.
“I can’t remember anything,” she said. “I can’t remember that night at all. Do you know what it’s like to not know what happened to your own sister?”
The remark made Sage look up in alarm. Had Phelicity been looking into his past, or was this her so-called gift?
“Do you know how he found you?” Sage asked. “How did Lance Walker track you down?”
“Oh, that was fate,” Phelicity said. “Fate’s an amazing thing. That’s what brought Adam back to me.”
“Who brought Adam to you?” Sage asked.
“Fate,” Phelicity said. “Something, some nudge from the universe, made me pull into the parking lot of the closed pharmacy. Why on earth would I go in there? And then there he was waiting for me.”
“He was in the parking lot?” Sage asked. He remembered driving to the pharmacy the day before. It had been an out-of-the-way spot. No way the kid could have just wandered over there from somewhere.
“Yes, he was just sitting there in his car waiting for me,” Phelicity said.
Sage blinked exhaustion out of his eyes as he took in what she was saying.
“You took him out of the car?” Sage said.
“Well, I had to,” Phelicity said. “I was meant to. That’s why he was there.”
“He was there because his mother was picking up something at the pharmacy,” Sage said.
Phelicity politely shook her head.
“He was there to lead me to the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” Sage asked. That was the thing he wanted more than anything—the truth—but would he kidnap a child to get it? No, he didn’t think so.
“The truth was that the dark lord took my sister that night,” Phelicity said.
“The dark lord?”
“You might know him as the devil,” Phelicity said. “That’s what Adam told me. He said the bad man had killed my sister. That’s his words for the dark lord. He has many names.”
“Couldn’t it also be his way of saying that a bad man killed your sister?” Sage asked.
Phelicity frowned at this, as if what Sage had just suggested was absurd.
“But there was no man there,” Phelicity said. “The dark lord has us under his control.”
“Okay, that’s one theory, but hear me out: Lance Walker, the man whose son you kidnapped—because, Phelicity, that’s what it’s called when you take a child who isn’t yours out of his car and run off with him—he used to live near you when he was a child. Do you remember him?”
Phelicity stared at him blankly, then shook her head. He couldn’t tell if she was following him or not. There was a spacey sort of look to her eyes. He didn’t know if that was the ordeal she had been through or if she always looked that way.
“When Lance Walker was a child, he used to sleepwalk. When he was very young, he killed his father when he was sleepwalking, and when he was a little bit older, he killed your sister when he was sleepwalking. He didn’t know what he was doing, not consciously, but—”
“That’s what I told you. It was the dark lord. He had us under his spell.”
“Right,” Sage said. “The dark lord.”
He excused himself and stepped out into the hall. He rubbed his forehead, then yawned. All he wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for days.
“What’s going on with her?” Rayanne asked. “We handing her over to the FBI?”
By rights, he knew he should. She had kidnapped Adam Walker. On the other hand, what good would it do? She was unwell, but she wasn’t a threat to anyone. Hadn’t she endured enough difficulty in her life? Because when a sleepwalking Lance Walker had killed Lily Esposito, he robbed young Jade of her future as well. That trauma had turned her into the sad, broken woman she was today.
Sage looked out over the squad room. Steve Arlo was putting his jacket on and getting ready to clock out after a long, grueling day. Steve had declined to charge a five-year-old with manslaughter, and then protected Lance Walker when he had murdered Lily. Steve’s motives hadn’t been purely altruistic, but Sage wasn’t sure he could fault him for his judgment call. Steve had done what he thought was best for the boy and best for everyone.
“I think we have to understand that any testimony she gives is tainted by the fact that she suffers from delusions and doesn’t have a strong grasp on reality,” Sage said.
Rayanne raised one eyebrow. “Okay?” she said, turning the word into a skeptical question.
“What she needs is counseling and medication,” Sage said. “I think the county facility might be able to provide her with the help she needs.” Rayanne nodded but didn’t say anything, so Sage continued, “She isn’t a threat to anyone. When she took the boy out to the creek, she wasn’t aware of the flash flood warning. She didn’t mean to put him or herself in danger.”
“Detective, I agree with you,” Rayanne said. “You don’t need to convince me.”
Maybe the one he needed to convince was himself. He looked through the door’s window at Phelicity sitting there at the desk. What he hadn’t told anyone was that he felt a kinship with this woman. Both of them had sisters who had been murdered, but while Phelicity, in her own reckless unstable way, had tried to find the truth, he had not set foot outside his comfort zone to find his sister’s killer. Phelicity was a better person than he was. He would make sure she received the psychiatric treatment she needed, and he vowed to do whatever it took to find out the truth about his sister’s murder.