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“Good luck.”
“You too,” she said, hanging up.
Valerie looked across the parking lot. Crisp, golden leaves from a nearby tree swirled past in the autumn wind. She approached Charlie and Will at the car.
“What’s the update?” Charlie asked.
Valerie wasn’t going to sugar coat it. She looked at her partners and her friends, her gaze grim.
“We might be on our own.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Valerie pulled up her jacket collar to shield herself from the cold wind.
She stood outside Elmwood Psychiatric Retreat, with the main building at her back. The trees nearby sounded like waves breaking against the shore.
It should have been peaceful; the place was designed to set people at ease. But Valerie felt the cold wind was an omen, carrying with it a sinister promise that things were going to get worse.
Will stepped out of the front door and joined her.
“It’s a bit chilly out here, why don’t you wait inside?” he said.
“Officer Teller should be here in a moment. I wanted to brief him on a couple of things straight away before he helps with trawling through these files.”
As if responding to her comments, an old beat-up pickup truck, with red paint flaking from its body, drove along the path and parked nearby.
The sandy haired, youthful Officer Teller stepped out, dressed in jeans, suede boots, and a checkered shirt. As if he didn’t realize how cold it was until now, he pulled a suede jacket from the passenger seat, turned to Valerie and Will, and waved at them.
“Is he off duty?” Will asked.
“I asked him to come in plain clothes,” Valerie replied. “Doctor Whitmore thought that the sight of more police might unnerve his patients. I agreed.”
“Good thinking,” Will said.
Will and Valerie walked over to meet Officer Teller.
“Sorry I’m a bit late,” he said, blushing slightly. “I had to pick something up from the station.”
He held up a large black box with a handle.
“What’s that?” Valerie asked.
“Oh, this?” He grinned and tapped the side of the box. “This is just my evidence kit.”
Valerie thought it endearing that Officer Teller was being as prepared as he possibly could. But she didn’t expect him to have to gather any evidence. What she needed was an extra set of eyes on the files at Elmwood to see if they could identify another suspect.
He shook Will’s hand in turn. “So, what do you need me to do?”
“We need to review all the patient files from the last three years,” Valerie explained. “But they haven’t been digitized, so it’s a manual search job.”
“How many files are we talking about?” Teller asked.
“Around four thousand, give or take,” she replied.
Officer Teller whistled slowly between his teeth. “That’s a lot of reading.”
“Yeah, we could really use some extra manpower on this,” Will agreed.