started across the weeds toward the barn.
Joe and Dr. Sher fell into step behind her. As they neared the big double wooden doors of the barn, Louis came up behind Joe.
“The lock’s gone,” he said. “There was one on the doors the first time I was here.”
“Then how’d you get in?” Joe asked. Then she quickly added, “Never mind.”
Everyone waited while Shockey used both hands to slide the door open. The giant door moved with a screech. The odor of damp hay and manure floated out to them. Joe had the fleeting thought that it wasn’t an altogether bad smell. Still, her stomach was in a knot.
What were they all expecting?
Shockey was staring hard at Amy, hoping that something here would trigger a memory that he could use to avenge the death of a woman he had once loved.
Louis’s eyes were on Amy, too. But Joe had the feeling that he was seeing that picture of Lily instead.
Dr. Sher watched Amy with gentleness, but there was also a spark of intense and almost distant curiosity, like she was watching a grand experiment unfold.
Joe herself wasn’t sure what she expected — or hoped for — out of any of this. Maybe only that no one got hurt.
Amy was standing nearest the open door, peering into the gloom. She swiveled her head to give them all one last look, then stepped inside.
Joe followed.
Up…
She couldn’t help it. That’s where she looked first. Up, up, up… into the rafters and the slanting light of the barn. She had been in a barn once before, on a field trip to a pumpkin farm when she was in fourth grade. But never had she been in a place like this before.
Space. Huge, soaring space. That was all she could think about. And that odd sweet-sour smell of old hay and what she could only think of as the ghosts of the animals that had once lived here.
She shivered. The place was cold and swirling with the wind leaking through the old wood planks. She looked to Amy. She was just standing there, wrapped in her pale pink parka. She looked relaxed but alert, and Joe had the weird thought that she looked like her old dog Chips when he was listening to something no one else could hear.
“Amy?”
Joe turned at the sound of Dr. Sher’s voice. The doctor had moved closer to Amy. Louis and Shockey were still standing just inside the door, watching.
Amy ignored Dr. Sher and moved deeper into the barn. She walked slowly, examining the stalls, the rusted skeletons of the old machines, the hay bales that had long ago shed their true shapes.
They all waited.
Suddenly, Amy stopped. “Horses,” she whispered. She closed her eyes and tilted her head up. “I hear the horses.”
Joe exchanged a glance with Dr. Sher. The horses had been a benign memory Amy had retrieved under hypnosis.
There was a long silence.
“The horses are screaming,” Amy said. “They know something is wrong.”
More silence. Amy still hadn’t opened her eyes.
“They’re here,” Amy said.
Joe moved closer. They? She felt Dr. Sher at her side.
“Who is ‘they,’ Amy?” the doctor said.
“The men. They’re here. And they want…” Amy’s breathing quickened. “I have to hide, I have to hide. They can’t find me, they can’t find me.”
Joe started toward them, but Dr. Sher waved her to stand back a little. Dr. Sher took Amy’s hand.
“Can you remember what happened here, Amy?” Dr. Sher asked.
Amy nodded. Her breathing was becoming more labored.
“Can you tell me?”
A hesitation and a nod.
“It’s all right, dear, I am here with you,” Dr. Sher said. “Tell me what you see.”
“Corn,” Amy whispered. “I’m in the corn, and it’s so cold. I see clouds over the horses’ noses. The horses are scared, and the man in the carriage is whipping them. I see… they are looking for me. The men… looking for me.”
Shockey had come up to Joe’s side. “Men? Did she say men?”
Dr. Sher silenced him with her hand.
“I can’t…” Amy’s face screwed up. Joe hoped it was from concentration, but it looked like pain.
“Oh…”
“Amy? What is it?”
Joe watched as Amy clasped her hands together, holding them in front of her face. “No, don’t, don’t, don’t.”
“Dr. Sher,” Joe whispered.
“She’s all right,” Dr. Sher said. “What’s happening, Amy? Where are you now?”
“Here,” she said. Her breathing had turned to short gasps. “It’s cold in here. I have no clothes. He took my clothes…”
Joe shut her eyes. What the hell had Brandt done to this child?
Suddenly, Amy began to groan. “Oh… hurt… hurt… hurt. So much hurt!” Her hands were still clasped in front of her face. She raised them higher now, as if warding off a blow.
Her body jerked once, twice. Amy dropped to her knees, then to the dirt. She began to cough and gag.
Joe jumped forward, looking up at Dr. Sher. “She’s having an asthma attack. Stop this now.”
“Too late,” Amy whispered.
She had suddenly gone very still. She lay there in the dirt, curled on her side.
Joe knelt and gathered Amy into her arms. Amy’s eyes fluttered open. She looked first at Joe and then at Dr. Sher, who seemed frozen in place by what she had just seen. Finally, she knelt next to Joe.
“How do you feel, Amy?” Dr. Sher asked.
“Tired,” Amy said.
“Do you remember what just happened to you?”
Amy nodded.
Joe looked at Dr. Sher. The woman didn’t seem to know what to ask Amy — or what to do next. Louis came forward, and Joe knew he had to ask the question that was on everyone’s mind. In her nightmare back at the hotel, Amy had seen someone hung from a hook in the barn — and someone digging a hole here.
Joe’s eyes swept over the barn’s dirt floor and came back to Louis.
“Amy,” he said gently, “where did he dig the hole?”
Amy slowly broke away from Joe and rose. She walked five feet into the center of the barn and pointed.
“There,” said softly.
The scrape of shovels. The grunts of the men as they dug. The soft cooing of doves in the rafters overhead. It all came to Joe now in a blur of sound as she sat with Amy on a hay bale in a stall tucked in a far corner of the barn. Dr. Sher sat on a milking stool nearby, head down, lost in thought.
Amy was sipping from a plastic cup. Dr. Sher had given her some tea from a thermos. They couldn’t see Louis and Shockey digging from where they were. Joe hadn’t wanted Amy to be in the barn if a body was unearthed and had tried to take her out to the Bronco to wait. But Amy had insisted on staying.
The sound of the shovels stopped suddenly.
Joe rose and went to the entrance of the stall.
About twenty feet away, Louis and Shockey stood motionless. Their heads were turned toward the open barn door.
