“I want to talk to them. Do you have the number for the agent in charge?”
Janney lowered himself into the chair next to her. He reached out to take her hand but she pulled it back away from him. “Listen, you let them do their job, all right? They’ll find them,” Janney said.
“You mean her. They’ll find her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. They’ll find her.” He tapped the table with his fingers, drumming out a slow, methodical beat, his eyes never leaving Lauren’s face. “Have you had any luck reaching Jack?”
Lauren didn’t answer. The sheriff already knew she hadn’t. She shifted her eyes to look out the window. Janney pressed on. “You know, it seems strange to me that a man whose daughter has just gone missing wouldn’t…” He let the sentence hang over the table, his fingers still thumping the table. Lauren didn’t take the bait. She turned her back to the sheriff, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing tears welling up in her eyes.
“Lauren, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Dr. Mansfield said from behind her. Lauren turned in her chair. A man stood next to the doctor, dressed casually in slacks and a button down, looking very uncomfortable. There was no color to his face and he wrung his hands as he waited to be introduced. “This is Scott Moran. He saw Jack earlier today.”
Lauren accepted the psychiatrist’s outstretched hand. It was cold and clammy, like shaking hands with a cadaver. Even in the midst of her own emotional agony she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the man. Something weighed heavily on his mind, and she suspected it had to do with Jack.
“Please sit. Tell me what you know,” Lauren said.
“Sheriff, I was supposed to tell you that one of your deputies needed to speak with you right away. Sorenson, I think his name was,” Dr. Mansfield said.
Janney looked to the door impatiently. He was obviously unhappy about missing whatever the psychiatrist had to say. To Lauren’s surprise, Janney got up to leave. “Moran, you come find me later and fill me in. You got that?”
Scott Moran nodded. Then he and Dr. Mansfield each took places around the small square table that Lauren had used as her base of operations throughout the long night. Moran grimaced as he sat down as though he were in physical pain. Lauren wondered if she looked the same way to the people around her. It was how she felt anyway.
“First let me say I’m sorry for your loss,” Moran started.
Lauren felt her stomach muscles clench. My loss. Dr. Mansfield cleared his throat impatiently.
“I mean, there’s still a chance they’ll find her, of course. I’m sorry. I…”
“You’ll have to excuse Scott,” Dr. Mansfield said. “He’s had some bad news in his family today.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lauren said, feeling bad that, in fact, she wasn’t sorry to hear it. She just felt sorry that it interfered with the man’s ability to tell her about her husband. It was a selfish thought and she chastised herself for it, trying hard to find some sympathy. “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“It’s my daughter, she…she” Scott Moran’s voice trembled and he bit his lower lip in an effort to control himself. Lauren looked up at Dr. Mansfield for an indication of what the man was talking about. The doctor scowled at the psychiatrist.
“Come on, Scott. Pull it together here,” Dr. Mansfield said.
Lauren caught the irritation in his voice and assumed that he thought the man was over-reacting to whatever was happening with his daughter. Ungracious thoughts poured through her as she waited for him to continue. My daughter’s missing. If yours is dead or dying, all right. Otherwise, shut the hell up. The thoughts made her feel like a terrible person but she couldn’t help herself. It was all she could do to keep from reaching over the table and shaking the man until he told her what he knew. But her lack of control over her thoughts didn’t extend to her actions. She sat quietly, feigning patience and empathy she didn’t feel.
“Go on. Tell Lauren what you told me.”
Scott Moran nodded his head. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He turned to Lauren. “You know my conversation with your husband would normally be bound by doctor-patient privilege. But since you are his spouse, and since it involves the commission of a crime, I’m not…”
Lauren waved he hand in the air impatiently. “Wait, wait. What do you mean commission of a crime? What did the two of you talk about?”
“Well, you know about the hallucinations, right? First the one with Huckley here in the hospital, then later at your house. The baseball bat?”
“Yes,” Lauren said softly, ashamed for the embarrassment she felt, as if Jack’s obvious mental illness were a dirty family secret instead of a medical problem.
Scott Moran whispered so quietly that Lauren was forced to lean across the table to hear him clearly. “So you know he thinks he heard Nate Huckley’s voice telling him what to do. He actually believed that Huckley caused his actions. That he was being haunted by him.”
“I know all this. What else did he say?”
“That Sarah heard Huckley too. That she was special. He went on and on about psychic phenomenon and these strange powers Sarah possesses. Do you know where he could have gotten such an idea? Has anything strange happened involving your daughter recently?”
Lauren though of the pages of numbers Sarah had drawn. The number 320 over and over. Huckley’s room. She wasn’t ready to talk about that. “No, of course not,” she said.
“Well, the idea fascinated him. He believed that Huckley was after her to try to steal these secret powers. On top of that, he was the only one who could save her. I mean, it was really paranoid stuff.”
Lauren swallowed hard. “All right. So how does this make you so sure that Jack’s responsible for abducting her.”
“Now I never said that, not directly.”
“You said you were telling me this because ‘it involved the commission of a crime.’ I think those were your exact words. What crime would that be Dr. Moran? Hallucinating?”
“Lauren, easy,” Dr. Mansfield said. “Scott is trying to help.”
Lauren smoothed her hair back and took a deep breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just getting a little tired of people who don’t even know Jack already convicting him.”
“Well, that wasn’t all he said.”
“O.K., what else did he say to convince you he’s a criminal?”
“There was one thing that shocked me enough to write it down word for word.” Scott Moran took out a piece of paper from his pocket. “Here you go. ‘I’d rather Sarah were dead than be captured by those bastards. She’d be better off being dead, that’s for sure. I just hope I have the guts to do it if it comes to that.’” Scott Moran folded the piece of paper.
Dr. Mansfield put his hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “It doesn’t prove anything, but I thought you had the right to know.”
“C-can I see that,” Lauren asked, pointing a shaky finger at the paper Scott Moran held. He handed it to her and she read through it, still unable to imagine the words coming from Jack’s mouth. “What did you—what was your recommendation to him?”
“I told him to admit himself for hospitalization. I thought he was a suicide risk and might pose a threat to others. He just laughed at me. Told me I was the crazy one. I didn’t push it because I thought he would become violent.”
“I just don’t understand,” Lauren said, her lower lip shaking. “How could it go this far so fast? I don’t understand.”
“On the contrary, I don’t think this was fast at all. If anything, it was very slow. He told me about the accident in California. The little girl who died.”
“That wasn’t his fault though.”