Page 61 of The Instruments of Darkness

“So what did you see in this flash?”

“Trees. Dirt. Sky. Parts of those two buildings or houses, but only briefly.”

“Do you remember anything about them, anything that might distinguish them: numbers, a name on a mailbox?”

Sabine closed her eyes. Pascal waited, the second hand on his watch counting off almost a minute.

“A blue door on one,” she said at last, “the one to the left. Junk in the yard, but I can’t be sure what kind. And—”

She frowned in concentration.

“There was a shape hanging from one of the trees, like someone had strung up a deer to be skinned, but it wasn’t that.”

Pascal did not speak. What she was telling him could not possibly be true, but he wished it to be so. He wanted desperately for her not to be a fake or a crazy, while at the same time needing her to be wrong—not only for the sake of his own convictions about the nature of this world but also for the Walters family.

Because if Sabine Drew was right, their daughter was dead.

“Look harder,” said Pascal. “Take your time.”

She opened her eyes again.

“You know what it is, don’t you?”

“I just want to be clear about everything,” he replied neutrally.

She huffed at his intransigence before reclosing her eyes. Her body relaxed, even as Pascal grew tenser. Was this some kind of psychic trance? Was she summoning the spirit of Verona Walters here, to this interview room? Would the air turn cold? Would Pascal hear his dead great-grandmother tell him where she’d hidden the family treasure transported from France by her ancestors, a running joke in the clan since it certainly amounted to no more than a couple of silver spoons and a bag of centimes? Was Ronnie Pascal, for the first time to his knowledge, about to be exposed to the presence of the uncanny?

Sabine unlidded one eye.

“In case you’re wondering, this isn’t a séance. It’s just easier to concentrate without visual or auditory distractions.”

“The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

“Liar.”

Pascal could hear someone speaking outside the interview room door and the ringing of a cell phone. He found that he was forcing himself not to think of the yard, like a gambler at a carnival sideshow who’d wagered a dollar that the mind reader couldn’t guess the nature of the animal he’d been told to visualize. But even as he tried, the trees became clearer to him, and he saw what had been suspended from the lowest branch of an oak, the weight keeping it unmoving despite the breeze.

“It’s a punching bag,” said Sabine Drew, her eyes still shut, “a brown leather punching bag. It’s been there for a long time: the grass beneath has been worn away by the movement of feet. There’s a strap around the branch, then a carabiner hook, and finally a chain leading to the bag itself. The links are a bit rusty, but still solid.”

She opened her eyes.

“You’ve seen it,” she said. “You know where it is. You know who he is, the one who took her.”

Pascal released the breath he’d been holding.

“Ms. Drew—” he began.

“Sabine.”

“Sabine. Again, I’m obliged to advise you that if you’ve come by this information through some means other than those you’re claiming, you should tell me now. Similarly, if this is some vendetta against a neighbor, or a guy who cut you off in the parking lot at Hannaford’s, and you’re manufacturing a story out of spite, I guarantee I’ll have you jailed.”

She did not reply, and her eyes never left his face. It was so quiet that he could hear the gentle ticking of his watch.

“Well?” he said.

“Sorry. I thought you were done, and had already figured out for yourself that I wasn’t about to dignify it with a response.”

Pascal gathered up his notes, adding the map to them.