Oh, hell no.
Yesterday, the lot was two-thirds full, but today there are more empty spaces.
More trouble.
Keep your nose out of it.
“Get out of my damned head!” I shout, hands clapped over ears as I barrel through Loveland and toward the consulting room. “I have to tell someone!”
Tell no one. Too many people are working against you.
“Nonsense! If others are disappearing, everyone can’t be in on it.”
The ones who are disappearing don’t know anything, and the rest are part of it.
“I’m going to Jeremy with this.”
Jeremy’s the last one you want to tell. What proof do you have? He’ll know you’re going crazy. He’ll put you away.
Rounding a corner, I squeeze my eyes shut, grab hold of my hair. “But something has to be done!”
“About what?”
I look up. Evan McKinley stands outside the consulting room. He leans to one side, looks past my shoulder, then comes back to me.
“Nothing,” I say, struggling to put a lid on the voice. “Just thinking out loud.” I force a smile.
Evan forces one back.
He steps away from the door, and I work to tame my twitchy nerves into submission. I tell myself I’ve got to stay focused, that the evaluation is due in just a few hours. I’ve got to find out what color dress Donny Ray’s father made him wear, then confirm that it’s the trauma trigger for his disassociation. But upon entering the room, Donny Ray doesn’t seem onboard with my plan.
Not even close.
He stares ahead, unfocused, his body completely still. I follow his gaze, and where it ends chills me. Again, he’s honed in on the picture of that girl in the blue dress, and, just as before, seems transfixed by it. No reaction to my presence—in fact, no reaction to anything at all. I pad forward, keeping my attention on him, then take my seat. His eyes are glazed over, arms hanging loosely on both sides, fingers limp and spread apart.
“Donny Ray?” I say, trying to capture his attention.
Nothing.
I look at the picture, then back at him. He’s in some faraway place, and wherever that is, I need to bring him out of it.
“Donny Ray,” I say again, this time with volume and urgency.
And again, he shows no response.
I lean in closer so we’re face-to-face, snap my fingers, speak louder. “Donny Ray. Can you hear me?”
He blinks a few times, looks startled, as if just now realizing that I’m here, or that he is, or . . .
I pull back a few inches and continue watching. His eyes seem a little clearer but still clouded over by confusion, so I give him a minute to acclimate before saying, “Donny Ray, do you know where you are right now?”
He circles his gaze through the room, then brings it back to me. He nods but still seems marginally unsure.
“Can you remember the last thing you saw before this?”
His face is a blank slate.
“I need you to stay with me here,” I tell him. “Can you do that?”
Another nod, this one sluggish.
He’s still noticeably detached from his surroundings, and I need to ground him. Searching around, I say, “Donny Ray, can you find three things in this room that are red?”
He searches, too, and as he tells me, I see his awareness sharpen.
Excitement ripples through me. Conviction. Donny Ray has just been in a state of disassociation, triggered by the blue dress in the picture—a confirmation that my theory is dead-on. With time at a premium, this evidence couldn’t have come at a more perfect moment.
I grab a bottled water off the computer table and hand it to him. “I need to ask you about what just happened, and I need you to remain alert. Are you able to do that?”
He takes a greedy swig from the bottle, gasps for air, then gives me the okay to continue.
“What you mentioned when we first met, how you forget things. How they don’t fit together. Is that what you’re experiencing now?”
Donny Ray clears his throat and says, “Yeah . . . uh-huh.”
He’s lying. Don’t believe him.
What? No. This is one of the missing pieces of evidence I’ve been looking for. I don’t have time for you. Zip it, and let me do my job!
Going back to the question he was unable to answer earlier, I ask, “What’s the last thing you remember before seeing me here?”
He looks at the door and scratches his head. “Evan sitting me down.”
I point to the wall. “Do you remember seeing that picture at any point?”
He blearily narrows his vision on the girl in the blue dress, then nods.
“Was this before or after Evan sat you down?”
“After.”
“Okay. Going back now, can you give me an idea when experiences like this started happening?”
“Young.”
“How young?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Any idea at all? Maybe an approximate age, even?”
He takes hold of his shirt with one hand, and, with the other, starts twisting it. Then he shakes his head.
“Was it before or after Miranda’s disappearance?”
“After.”
Close enough. The disassociation probably began around the same time as his abuse, but since he blocked a lot of that out, it wouldn’t be unusual for him to be hazy about the circumstances that followed. I feel confident enough to move on.
But as I prepare, the noise I’ve heard before rattles above, much louder now. A thundering roll, followed by fast and frantic pounding that nearly knocks me from my seat. Next comes the shadow, so large that it nearly covers the entire room with darkness. I look up, and my body instantly pitches back, then jerks into paralysis.
The teenager in the red hoodie speed-crawls across the ceiling, chasing after his rubber ball.
I look back at Donny Ray. He watches me, brows crinkled, head crooked.
I cannot afford to let reality slip from my grasp or lose my patient’s confidence. I’ve got to hold it together at least until I’m finished here.
I shove my thoughts through the flurry of confusion, find my way back to our conversation. “Do you have any recollection of losing time when Jamey Winslow was murdered?”