'"Morning, Adam," McLeod said. "This is Alec Peterson, the police artist I mentioned last night. Alec, this is Dr. Adam Sinclair, one of our psychiatric consultants."
Proffering a smile and a handshake, Adam said, "Hello, Mr. Peterson. Sorry I'm a few minutes late. Has Inspector McLeod explained to you what it is we're hoping to accomplish today?"
"Aye, sir." The artist's voice was softer-spoken and far deeper than Adam had expected. "He tells me you're going to interview a hit-and-run victim under hypnosis, to see if she can remember enough to give us a description of the driver. With luck, I may be able to reconstruct a recognizable likeness."
He sounded more than a little intrigued at the prospect, and McLeod gave him a darkling glance.
"I'll warn you again, laddie: Don't let your imagination run away with you. This is a clinical procedure we're talking about, not a stage-magic act."
"No, sir. I mean, yes, sir, Inspector."
Adam bit back a smile, prepared, for his part, to make allowances for the uninitiated Peterson.
"Relax, Mr. Peterson - or may I call you Alec? The outward form of what you're going to see may seem a trifle unorthodox, but I assure you its object is quite consistent with normal investigative procedures. The only restriction I'll impose on you is to ask that once the session is in progress, you must make no attempt to address Mrs. Crawford directly, unless I give you permission. She shouldn't be able to hear you, but it could be distracting. I realize that there'll be a need for interaction, once you've established your preliminary sketch. All I ask is that you let me facilitate the dialogue."
"I understand, sir," Alec said meekly. "I'll be ever so quiet."
The party repaired first to Adam's office, where he stopped long enough to slip on a lab coat and check his desk for messages. Having taken note of a staff meeting scheduled for the following week, he led his companions along to the low-security wing, where Claire's room was situated. The charge nurse was seated at the desk, making out a list of medication orders from a stack of charts at her elbow, but she looked up with a smile as Adam approached.
"Good morning, Dr. Sinclair. Here to see your new patient?"
"I am, indeed. Thank you," Adam said as she handed him Claire Crawford's chart. "Did she have a quiet night?"
"I believe she did, Doctor. It was a quiet night for the entire floor. Oh, and young Mr. Balfour asked if he might have a word with you. He's looking very cheerful, these last few days."
Adam paused in his perusal of Claire's chart and looked up. ' 'Colin Balfour is looking cheerful? We are making progress. I'll have a quick look-in after I've seen Mrs. Crawford, probably just before lunch. Will you tell him that for me?"
"Of course, Doctor."
"Thank you. In the meantime, I'll be working with Mrs. Crawford this morning, in her room." He handed back the chart. "These gentlemen are from the police. Mrs. Crawford has agreed to let them sit in on this session, which essentially is a victim interview. I'd appreciate it very much if you could ensure that we're not interrupted for any reason other than a genuine emergency."
"Certainly, Doctor."
Having thus disposed of any staff curiosity about police interest in Claire Crawford's case, Adam led the way toward her room, which was located at the far end of the adjoining corridor. As they went, he unobtrusively moved his sapphire ring from his trouser pocket to the more accessible pocket of his lab coat. Claire's door was ajar, but the vital, invisible tingle in the air about the doorway confirmed that the wards he had set the night before were still in place and still intact. He rapped lightly on the door frame before stepping across the threshold.
"Come in."
Claire was sitting by the window in her wheelchair, awake and fully dressed, and swung herself around as her visitors filed in. During the ensuing exchange of greetings and introductions, Adam made note of her appearance. She seemed sternly in command of herself, but he was uncertain whether to regard this as a good sign or a bad one.
"Well, you're looking rested and alert this morning," he said easily. "How did you sleep?"
Claire shrugged. "Not too badly, thank you. I took the sedative you prescribed. It seemed to help."
"Good. That's why I ordered it. Let's take a quick moment to look you over, and then we'll go work."
He began by taking Claire's wrist and timing her pulse-beat with his pocket watch. While he performed the reassuring ritual, designed to begin setting the stage for what he planned to do, McLeod surveyed the room in preparation for the next phase. The furnishings were limited to the bed itself, a movable writing table, a cabinet on wheels for holding personal effects, and two starkly functional chairs upholstered in orange vinyl.
"Obviously in keeping with the rule, 'only two visitors at a time,' " he observed drily, starting to move one of the chairs closer to Claire. "Alec, why don't you see what you can do to scrounge us up an extra chair?''
The police artist set aside his satchel and disappeared outside, returning a few minutes later with a folding chair. Leaving McLeod and his subordinate to arrange the seating, Adam went to shut the door and set a DO not disturb sign in place, unobtrusively dismantling the wards as he did so.
"I think we're about ready to begin," he remarked, coming back into the room. "Noel, if you and Mr. Peterson would care to get yourselves situated, I'll see to the lighting."
He made a show of adjusting the Venetian blinds while he also dismantled the wards about the windows, tilting the louvers upward to diffuse the morning sun. Returning to join the others, he saw that McLeod had positioned himself and Peterson slightly behind and to Claire's right, where their presence would be least likely to distract. Nodding his approval, Adam moved the remaining chair directly in front of Claire and sat down, almost knee to knee with her.
"I think we can begin now. Are you comfortable?" he asked.
She shrugged, obviously apprehensive, but far less tense than she had been the day before.
"1 suppose."
"Good. Now, we touched yesterday on your recurrent dreams about your accident. Today, however, we'll try to bypass those dreams and have a look at the accident itself. The specific purpose of this exercise is to sharp-focus your memory of the accident and see if it's possible for you to give us a physical description of the driver. From that description, Mr. Peterson hopes to produce a sketch that will help us find the man who's to blame. And once that happens, there's a strong likelihood that the associated dreams will spontaneously come to an end."
Because of Peterson's presence, Adam left unsaid that once the dreams stopped, so would the accidents along Carnage Corridor. Certainly, that was their highest priority in the short term - to ensure that no more innocent lives were lost.
But a longer-term priority had to do with Claire herself. While, at a very basic level, Adam's duty as a physician was to help Claire achieve what peace of mind she could, with regard to her losses - at least to make her functional - Claire's case went beyond the usual mandate of psychiatric medicine, because of the psychic aspects. And even though, in his role as a sometime enforcer of cosmic justice, he could hardly object to justice being exercised, where Claire's drunken driver was concerned, he found it profoundly unsettling at a deeper level, as a physician of souls, that Claire should feel so compelled to catch and punish the person responsible for her situation. Such compulsions were not the hallmark of a maturing soul.
Yet the very existence of Claire's unformed psychic talent, coupled with Adam's brush with the persona of Annet Maxwell - probable evidence of at least one previous incarnation - suggested that Claire possessed greater potentials. But Annet Maxwell had achieved a serenity not yet granted Claire Crawford, also bereft by the loss of husband and children. If Claire was to progress as a soul and achieve the potentials being presented in this life, eventually she, too, must find a healthier way to come to terms with her losses. Meanwhile, finding John Crawford's killer was, indeed, one of their priorities - if only to remove the impetus thai kept triggering Claire's unschooled psychic powers. And to do that, an artist's sketch might well provide conventional law enforcement authorities with just the tool they needed to succeed. Alec Peterson was waiting with pencil and sketch pad poised - and for this, at least, the procedure was fairly straightforward, even if the more complex resolution of Claire's anger might have to wait.