Absent Feeling by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blake Pierce
Published: 2023-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Amber was impressed by the offices she and Simon were standing in, on one of the upper floors of a shining, expensive office building. Discrete cards left in the lobby promised therapy and psychological training for the discerning professional.

The office itself was decorated in soothing, pastel shades, with furniture that appeared to consist almost exclusively of precise and expensive recreations of 1950s designs. It was as if Ms. Lloyd had decided that giving clients the sense that they were stepping into something from the past was the easiest way to make them feel less threatened by the whole experience.

An assistant met Amber and Simon as they stepped out of the elevator. She had a brisk, professional look, her dark hair tied back, her makeup carefully understated, her dark pantsuit immaculate in a way that made Amber worry about how rumpled her own clothes were getting after running around trying to find a killer for more than a day.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

Simon flashed his badge. “We called ahead. Dr. Lloyd is expecting us.”

“Just take a seat for a moment or two,” the assistant said. “She’s just finishing with a client.”

It was frustrating, having to wait when the killer could be hunting his next victim even now. Amber didn’t like having to sit there until a middle-aged businessman came out of an interior office space and left. It felt as though they were wasting time that might have been better spent trying to figure out whatever meaning the killer had put into the inkblot.

“Who are we here to see?” Amber asked.

“Dr. Sally Lloyd. She’s a forensic psychologist.”

Meaning that she might know all about the Rorschach test.

The assistant gestured for them to go through into an interior office where comfortable looking chairs sat around a small, round desk. There were a couple of landscape paintings on the walls, but otherwise the space was mostly empty.

Sally Lloyd proved to be a woman in her fifties, tall and slender, with short hair bleached until it was almost white. Her blue eyes sparkled with intelligence as she gestured for the two of them to sit down.

“You must be Agent Phelps. And this is …”

“Amber Young,” Simon explained. “She’s working with me on this case. We could use your help, Dr. Lloyd.”

“So you said when you called,” the psychologist said. “What exactly do you need from me?”

“First, I have to ask you, have you ever been involved in work at the Guisborough Wellness Institute?” Simon asked.

“Very rarely. I did most of my work in forensic psychology before I moved to the area, and I’ve since focused more on applications of psychology within business.”

“Was that hard for you to do?” Amber asked. It intrigued her that someone had gone from an area where they were working directly with criminals, trying to make a difference, to taking a step back and focusing on something other people would have called more mundane. It sounded far too close to the decision she was trying to make in her own life.

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