‘Please call me as soon as you get this.’
The disembodied voice filled the office, as Adam stood by his desk.
‘I had a rather worrying chat with Gabrielle Grey yesterday and … well, I’d like to hear your side of the story.’
The voice disappeared, replaced by a harsh bleep. Adam hit the red button, killing his voicemail, but made no move to pick up his phone. He knew full well what Gabrielle had told Dr Gould, Chairman of the Illinois Board of Professional Regulation, and he had no idea what to say in response, nor how to defend himself. His actions over the past few days were indefensible – to the outside world at least.
Ignoring his phone, Adam sat down at his desk and turned his laptop on. Following replies to the emails he’d sent earlier in the week, he now had a few regular clients booked in for appointments over the next couple of days. He still wasn’t sure he was up to it, but there seemed no alternative to getting on with things. Perhaps slipping back into the normal routine would do him good.
But as he opened his schedule he was surprised to see that it was virtually clear. He had had five appointments scheduled in his diary when he checked yesterday. Now he had only two – three clients having cancelled in the last twenty-four hours. It could be a coincidence, of course, but the timing was curious. As well as being a highly skilled psychologist, Dr Geoff Gould was also a notorious gossip. If he’d spoken to colleagues, friends in the industry, about Grey’s concerns, then it was perfectly possible that people already knew about him revealing Rochelle’s address to a client, breaking into her house, as well as his close association with one of the suspects in an ongoing homicide inquiry.
Picking up the phone, he speed-dialled Vestra Healthcare, the agency from which he got most of his third-party referrals.
‘They just rang up and cancelled this morning,’ his contact explained in a bored voice, totally missing the anxiety in Adam’s inquiry.
‘Did you give them a chance to rebook?’
‘Yes, I offered all of them alternative times. But they said they’d call back …’
Adam ended the call, slumping back into his chair. Rochelle was a popular member of the healthcare community in Chicago – rumours implicating him in any wrongdoing concerning her death could be terminal to his career. Chicago was a big city, but his professional world was small, and it wouldn’t take long for his practice to be choked off at source. First things first: he would have to call Gould and see what he knew. But it was a prospect that filled Adam with dread. How honest should he be? How honest could he be?
His day had started badly and was getting worse. Kassie had vanished – he still had no idea where she was or what she was doing – and Faith had pushed him away. Even at his workplace, a space which had for so long been his sanctuary, things were turning against him. Adam suddenly had the strong feeling that forces beyond his control were at work, tilting his world on its axis, threatening to pitch him into the abyss. It was stupid to think like this, he was being crazy, paranoid even, but try as he might to dismiss his feelings, he couldn’t deny that, for the first time in his life, he felt genuinely scared.