Page 61 of The Guilty Trial

“She stopped coming. For a couple of years, there were no visits at all. Then, about six months ago, she returned.” Marsh looked up from the file. “She came perhaps three or four times before Arthur’s release. I tried to get him to talk about her, about the relationship and what her visits meant to him. He refused. He could be remarkably closed off when he chose to be.”

Jason pulled a small notebook from his jacket. “Can you describe Linda Hayes? What she looked like when she visited?”

Dr. Marsh tilted her head as she searched her memory. “She appeared to be in her thirties. Blonde hair. She wore sunglasses even indoors, which I noticed because it struck me as unusual. I never personally spoke with her. Visitors weren’t required to check in with the treatment team unless we had specific concerns.”

Allie read the shift in the doctor’s expression. “But you noticed something.”

“I noticed a change in Arthur after Ms. Hayes’s visits earlier this year. Before she reappeared, he was compliant and stable, progressing through treatment in a predictable way. After her visits began again, he became more purposeful. More directed.” Marsh chose her next words carefully. “He started talking about having important work to do after his release. He had never spoken that way before. In four years, Arthur had never once expressed a desire to be anywhere other than here. Suddenly, he had something to look forward to.”

Allie let that settle. A man with no family, no connections, no future beyond the walls of a psychiatric hospital, transformed by visits from a woman who wore sunglasses indoors and gave him a sense of purpose.

They thanked Dr. Marsh for her time and made their way back through the corridor toward the exit. Outside, the rain had eased to a fine mist that hung in the parking lot lights.

“Linda Hayes,” Jason said once they were clear of the building. “She stops visiting for two years, then shows up again a few months before he’s released, and suddenly he’s got important work to do.”

“Someone gave him a mission,” Allie said. “Someone took what was already broken in him and pointed it in a direction.”

“If it was her, she manipulated a mentally ill man into committing murder.” Jason’s jaw worked as they reached the Charger. “We need to find Linda Hayes.”

“We need to find Arthur Pym,” Allie said. “He’s the one holding the knife.”

Jason started the engine and pulled out of the lot, turning south toward the interstate. Allie reached for her iPad and opened the master exhibit list from the Torrino trial. She scrolled through the entries until she found exhibit forty-eight, and the name beside it sent a cold current down her spine.

“Exhibit forty-eight,” she said, looking up from the screen. “Witness affidavits. They were submitted by Sarah Park.”

Jason’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Call Reeves. Now. If Pym is working through these numbers, then Park is next.”

Before either of them could reach for a phone, Jason’s cell buzzed in the cupholder. He picked it up, glanced at the screen, and put it on speaker.

“This is Reeves.” The marshal’s voice was clipped, stripped of its usual professional composure. “Sarah Park is missing.”

Allie’s stomach dropped. She stared at the phone as Reeves continued.

“She went into Little Sprouts Daycare to pick up her son and never came out. One of the employees saw her go through the back door.”

Jason’s knuckles went white against the steering wheel. “You had marshals sitting right outside that building, Reeves. How the hell did you let this happen?”

“She walked away from us.” Reeves’s voice was tight but controlled. “She went out the back door on her own, Agent King. Nobody dragged her. The daycare workers said someone came and picked up her son, Lucas, before she arrived. Then she got a phone call. Whatever was said on that call, she chose to walk out the back.”

“Chose?” Jason’s voice was sharp enough to cut. “Someone took her kid and called her with instructions. That’s not a choice.”

There was a beat of silence from Reeves. “I’ve already partnered with Tacoma PD. We’re pulling traffic cameras, running her cell, issuing a BOLO. I’ll find Park.” His tone shifted, becoming harder. “But I need the two of you to find the killer. That’s where this ends. Find whoever is doing this and put him down.”

The line went dead.

Jason exhaled through his teeth and pressed the accelerator. Rain streaked across the windshield in thin lines, blurring the taillights ahead of them into smears of red. Allie stared at the iPad in her lap, at Sarah Park’s name beside exhibit forty-eight, and felt the clock ticking against them with every mile of dark highway that passed beneath them.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Unknown Location

Her head throbbed, a dull, heavy pulse that seemed to originate somewhere behind her left eye and radiate outward through her skull. Consciousness returned in fragments, each one bringing a new layer of discomfort. The cold came first, a bone-deep chill seeping through her clothes and into her skin. Then came the stiffness in her arms and legs and the ache in her wrists where something bit into the flesh.

Sarah Park tried to move and couldn’t. Her wrists were bound behind her, her ankles secured to what felt like the legs of a metal chair. The restraints were tight and offered no slack.

She blinked. Her vision swam as though she were looking through water. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling above her, casting a harsh cone of light that left the edges of the room in deep shadow. The space smelled of concrete dust and cold air and some faint chemical she couldn’t place.

As her vision cleared, she made out a metal table pushed against the far wall, directly under the reach of the overhead light. Items had been laid out across its surface with an exactness that unsettled her even before she understood what she was looking at. A knife with a polished blade. Stacks of documents arranged in neat rows. Boxes of latex gloves, their edges perfectly aligned with the table’s edge. And something else…a metal device with a cord trailing off the side, its purpose eluding her until a memory surfaced and her blood turned to ice.