She leaned over the counter, trying to catch a glimpse of the intake list. ‘Where have they put Cassie Gray?’ Erin hoped they’d given her the Larkspur room on the second floor. With its walls of primrose yellow and large windows overlooking the river, it was the nicest of the patient rooms upstairs.
‘Cassie Gray?’ Janine scrolled through the roster. ‘I don’t see her on the list.’ She leaned closer to the screen. ‘It says here she was discharged this morning.’
‘Discharged? On whose orders?’
‘Dr Westlund’s.’ A worried look clouded Janine’s eyes. ‘Is something wrong? I’m sure he said—’
But Erin was gone, sprinting up the staircase to Niels’ office. She rapped on the door and flung it open without waiting for a reply.
Perched behind an outsized mahogany desk, Niels stared at her, open-mouthed. One of his patients, a tiny, freckled girl from Ohio, who suffered from agoraphobia along with a host of other anxieties, sat primly in one of the big leather chairs.
Erin hesitated. Interrupting a patient session was a grievous flouting of the rules, but this couldn’t wait. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with you.’
Niels’ face was rigid. ‘I’m with a patient.’ Each word bitten off like thread.
‘I only need a minute.’
He turned to the girl in the chair. ‘Hold that thought, Lisa.I’ll be back in a flash.’
Niels hustled Erin into the hall and closed the door, his lips pressed into a thin line. But if he was annoyed, she was boiling with anger. What right did he have to discharge a patient without consulting her?
‘Why did you send Cassie home?’
‘Is that what this is about?’ He gave her an exasperated look. ‘It was time. And there was no clear indication she’s a suicide risk.’
‘She’s at risk of something. What about the foster mother? Cassie said the woman hit her. I can only imagine what else she does behind closed doors.’
‘Foster mother?’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘Oh, right. Janine called social services for a copy of Cassie’s file, and get this, they’ve never heard of her. She’s not a foster kid. Not adopted. Lonnie Tyler is Cassie’s real mother.’ He looked almost gleeful as he imparted the news. ‘Quite a little tale she spun for you.’
A pain bloomed in Erin’s chest. The hints of abuse. That bit about being a dumpster baby. All lies. And to what purpose?
‘Even so,’ she said, struggling to regain her composure, ‘you could have given me a heads-up before sending her home.’ But her words fell flat, even to her own ears. I’m an idiot. How easily she’d been duped. And yet… that Cassie felt compelled to lie could be taken as a cry for help. ‘I just hope the next time we see her,’ Erin said, trying for one last shot across the bow, ‘it won’t be in the morgue.’
‘Unless she seeks help on her own, there’s nothing more we can do for her.’ He met her look head on. ‘We did everything we could.’
Blood rushed to Erin’s face. She was in no mood to be reasonable. ‘Just so you know,’ she said, ‘I won’t be taking the Greenlake case.’
He had opened the door to his office, but pulled it hastily closed. ‘Why? It’s just a formality. Two or three days of your time, tops.’
‘A formality?’ Three people were brutally killed. And the man responsible could be released into the community on her recommendation. It was hardly a formality. Not when lives were at stake. ‘I have a conflict of interest.’
His mouth twitched. ‘Then take it up with the head at Greenlake. If he’s got a problem with it, I’d like to have it in writing. In the meantime, I’m going to tell the board you’re taking the case.’
*
Too upset to return to her office, Erin escaped to the soothing hush of the conservatory, hoping the tropical air and lush greenery would calm her down. Lately, Niels seemed to take pleasure in pushing her buttons. When they’d first met during the hiring process, his dedication to patient care, coupled with an affable nature, made for a winning combination. She thought they’d get along famously, but his handling of Cassie’s case revealed a side of Niels she hadn’t seen before.
She closed her eyes and allowed the enticing scent of citrus blossoms to transport her through time. A long-ago summer holiday in Crete, where she’d wandered through a lemon grove under a coppery sun, the blue Aegean glittering in the distance. Through half-open lids, she scanned the sky with its darkening clouds. More snow was forecast for the afternoon. She pressed her palm to the cold glass and shivered.
White male, 43. Mother and sisters brutally slain.
The branches of the chestnut trees scrabbled against the sky. Near the fountain, the naked limbs of a clump of hydrangeas shook in the wind, while the bronze dolphins and leaping sea sprites, glazed with ice, seemed oblivious to the weather.
Cassie was gone. Sara, discharged. Her three remaining patients, all suffering from various degrees of anorexia, were settled into their treatment programmes. She could afford to take a day and drive upstate to Greenlake. Once she’d met this Dr Harrison, she would invent a story to explain her connection to the patient – over from England with her family for a holiday in Belle River, the same year as the murders. Small world, isn’t it? – and excuse herself from the case. As long as the threatened storm didn’t block the roads, she could leave for Greenlake first thing in the morning and return to Lansford by late afternoon. Up and back in a single day. And that would be the end of it.
6
Belle River,
Maine August 1977
A kinetic knot of pre-teen girls hover by the ticket booth, passing around a tube of cherry lip gloss. Cascades of hair gleam under the lights. A girl with a pageboy haircut lingers by the door, plump arms clamped across her chest. She sneaks longing glances at the other girls, but they smirk and dance
