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“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Will said, putting a hand on Valerie’s shoulder. “You did everything you could. It was just bad luck that Saldana got away.”
Valerie took a deep breath and nodded. She couldn’t afford to be too hard on herself right now. There was still a madman out there who needed to be caught and stopped. And she just hoped they would have plenty more opportunities to get him before it was too late.
“I’m so sorry,” Doctor Whitmore said with remorse. “I feel like this is all my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Valerie said, shaking her head. “None of this is your fault. You did everything you could to stop this from happening. And he hasn’t managed to kill another patient.”
There was a palpable sense of relief in the room as they all realized that despite Saldana’s escape, they had still managed to stop him from hurting anyone else. And that was something to be proud of.
“Thank you,” Doctor Whitmore said. “But what I mean is, I was the one who got him his job here.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Valerie asked.
“Yes,” Will interjected. “Anything you can tell us might help us build a better profile and predict his next move.”
Doctor Whitmore sighed and looked out through the nearest window, the shadowy trees still swaying in the dark. “I fought tooth and nail to get him that job as janitor here at Elmwood. He was a previous patient of mine, and we thought it would be good to have a well-treated patient to point to as an example to the other patients. I’m horrified that he’s the one who has killed all these people.”
“Normally ex-patients wouldn’t be allowed to work in that capacity, why did you push for it?” Valerie asked.
“It was a theory of mine,” the doctor said, sighing. “I thought the more contact patients had with ‘cured’ individuals, it would breed a sense of faith in what we were doing here.”
“Ah, clever,” Will said. “A bit like a positive placebo effect?”
“Precisely,” the doctor answered. “But I never thought for a second that Saldana would turn out to be violent. He has no history of previous violence.”
Valerie was shocked by that. She had been certain that the killer must have had a previous history of violence to have taken the leap toward killing.
“How did he get the job?” Charlie asked.
“I pulled some strings with the board of directors. I told them it would be good for all of the patients, but I think they just did it to humor me,” Doctor Whitmore said.
“Did he seem off at all, recently?” Valerie asked.
“No. He was a good worker, and he was always friendly,” Doctor Whitmore said. “Oh...”
Valerie sensed that Doctor Whitmore had just realized something important.
“What is it?” she asked as the fire beneath the mantel flickered and crackled.
“As part of the agreement when he started working here,” the doctor said. “Saldana agreed to do some continual therapy sessions. Just to check in and see how he was doing.”
“How often did you run those sessions?” asked Will.
“Thank you, Nurse Williams. That’s a great job,” Doctor Whitmore said to the nurse dressing the cut in his head. She smiled and said, “I’ll check on you in a couple of hours,” and then left.
“That’s the thing,” the doctor said, rubbing his brow with worry. “I didn’t run the therapy sessions. Someone else did.”
“Doctor Winters?” Charlie deduced.
“Yes,” replied Doctor Whitmore. “I am so sorry. With all of Doctor Winters’s problems, trying to hide it from the board and staff, trying to organize a detox clinic for her ... I forgot to check in with Saldana to make sure he was doing okay.”
“You mustn’t be too hard on yourself,” Will said, gently. “You didn’t know.”
The doctor looked up at Will from behind his desk. “Maybe I would have noticed something if I had spoken with him. Maybe I could have stopped the murders ...”
“No,” Valerie said, feeling sorry for him. “The only way we can stop anymoremurders is to track him down.”
“Like I said, Sam is organizing a search of the town,” Charlie reminded Valerie.